3.1) A Pro-Active Approach in the Neighbourhood

There have been serious suggestions coming from the strategic thinkers that India should shed its 'traditional obsession with Pakistan' and not link its relations with great powers 'particularly the U.S, to its problems with Pakistan.'95 The Indian foreign minister Inder Kumar Gujral recently announced a proactive policy towards Pakistan. The crux of this policy is to 'dump the old insistence on reciprocity and to strike out afresh with unilateral offers to Islamabad.'96 Following this policy India has stopped reacting to each and every anti-India statement or action by Pakistan, as according to analysts this 'psychopathic obsession with Pakistan makes our neighbour much taller than it actually is; delinked from that obsession.'97 This policy move by India is highly significant and reflects very clearly how determined India is to take on the wider/global role and, accordingly, how keen it is to identify and remove the constraints in this way. It is not just a tactical move; foreign policy analysts view this proactive approach 'as a conceptual breakthrough with regard to Pakistan' and they believe that the old policy of an eye-for-eye with Pakistan, 'in retrospect appears rather foolish.' 98 The former foreign secretary of India J.N Dixit called it a 'shift in our policy.'99 The Indian position on all core issues of dispute between India and Pakistan has further hardened and the 'unilateral offers to Islamabad' under the new policy will be those concerning trivial matters like, for example the number of staff in the embassies, visa procedures etc. etc. Similar will be the case with other 'small' neighbours. For example, I.K Gujral's recent visit to Bangladesh was very much illustrative of India's proactive approach. Gujral played down bilateral contentious issues, gave rich verbal assurances to its neighbour and when the B.B.C correspondent in Calcutta, Sudhir Bhoomik was asked what Gujral got back for India in lieu of all these assurances, Bhoomik replied that the minister had secured its neighbour's support for India's stand on CTBT and for its bid to seek a permanent seat at the U.N Security Council.100 So without getting entangled into the small neighbour's 'small agenda', India is advancing its own 'big agenda'.

3.2) Highlighting the Issue of 'Instability'

Regarding the other more serious constraint namely that of 'instability', it was the former Indian Prime Minister Rao who first took it up as a serious issue sensing its implications for India's emerging role. Rao characterised the freedom movement in Kashmir as one of the kind that threatens the 'stability' of the modern nation-state in general. This way Rao struck a common chord with the key players in the NWO, as it conforms very well with the general security and strategic outlook of the NWO i.e the main source of threat in the world being conflicts not between but within the states (cf.1.1.4.3). Kashmir, with its Islamic dimension (cf. 2.1.2.2) fitted well in Rao's characterization and the so-called world community looked at India's case as a typical instance of 'Islam threatening the stability of key states in the NWO' (cf.1.1.4.3). This explains the concerns of Russia and China---key states in NWO--- about India's 'stability'. When Rao visited Moscow after Boris Yeltsin's India visit in 1992, the 'shared concern for the stability and survival of multi-ethnic and multi-linguistic societies'101 found a prominent place in the joint declaration. The Chinese ambassador to India while addressing a press conference in Calcutta in April 1994 stated Beijing's intention to formally accept Sikkim's accession to India102 and also said that 'there was no question of China backing any insurgencies in India in future.'103 Before this China used to bitterly contest Sikkim's accession, but now it was the question of 'stability': If China could help India , India could in turn come to China's help who equally finds 'stability' threatened by a sizeable Muslim presence there.