I read recently that Malaysia has advised India not to interfere in its internal affairs and wondered what that might mean. You open the newspaper and you find instance after instance of country after country interfering in the most blatant manner in the affairs of every one else and then wonder what really is going on. Iraq and Afghanistan are the most obvious instances where militaries just marched into the countries concerned, overthrew the governments in place and put in place a new government whose credentials are perhaps as dubious as the ones they displaced. The same is being contemplated in Iran and perhaps North Korea.
The concept of internal affairs is increasingly becoming passé in a world which is borderless in many senses and where the climate is that of creating open societies where information, commodities and people enjoy a free flow. The most xenophobic of regimes have now realized in their own way that the concept of a secluded and contained society where the State keeps things under wraps and no one else knows or cares is long gone.
Witness the events in Myanmar for example. Though the regime there did their best to suppress and repress with impunity, the word did and still does get around, in spite of every thing of all that was happening. Ditto with Pakistan where with the imposition of a state of emergency, media restrictions were attempted to be imposed. Further based on these and other reports, Pakistan as recently suspended from the membership of the Commonwealth. At the time of the discussions, did Malaysia make any noise about the Commonwealth interfering in the internal affairs of Pakistan? Oh, no! According to Reuters, Malaysia did act a bit coy but eventually went along with the rest of the world opinion in voting to suspend it from the Commonwealth. One may well wonder how the definition of “interference” in the internal affairs of a country changed so fast and so quickly.
I do not know whether the Prime Minister had events in Malaysia in mind or other occurrences but according to the Indian Express, reverting back to his earlier avatar as a teacher, he has been prescribing as reading material for all who would care to listen, a speech by the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao in Singapore while attending a program at the National University of Singapore about a fortnight ago. The speech is significant perhaps not just because of what it says – but from the context it comes from. China was after all the protector of the Bamboo curtain, suspicion of others’ intentions and motives. Till the time of Deng Sao Ping, China was intensely focused on being self reliant and deeply suspicious of things foreign.
So what did the Chinese Prime Minister have to say that impressed our Prime Minister so much, that he is intending to hand out copies of the speech to all who matter. Wen Jiabao said this
“Only an open and inclusive nation can become strong and prosperous, while a nation that shuts its door to the world is bound to fall behind…A small country becomes big when it embraces the world…The world today is an open one….” “Opening up has worked not only for Singapore. A review of China’s history leads to the same conclusion…As early as 2,000 years ago in the Han Dynasty, China opened the famous Silk Road and started exchanges with West Asia. In the 1960s and 1970s when waves of dynamic economic growth and scientific technological revolution were sweeping across much of the world, China was in the grip of the decade-long ‘Cultural Revolution.’
“Fortunately, we changed course in the late 1970s and embarked on the track of reform and opening up, that is, to carry out reform domestically and open up externally. As a result, China’s overall national strength has been greatly enhanced, the living standards of its people have significantly improved and the country’s international standing has steadily risen.”
It is educative that the Chinese Prime Minister chose to be so candid in front of a foreign audience and admit that the days of the bamboo curtain, the days when the Cultural Revolution and others social experiments took place behind closed doors were regressive years. They were not of benefit, they set the country back. But the most important point that China made in the speech is to perhaps debunk that there is any thing called internal affairs any more. We live in a fish bowl world and no matter how hard people try, no matter how hard repressive and inequitable regimes try, there are others watching and they can and will speak up. One can snap at an octogenarian Karunanidhi and say that he is interfering when he is expressing solidarity with his ethnic counterparts. But that tack does not work any more. There are no internal affairs and external affairs any more. There are only human affairs and human rights and wherever and whenever they are violated, some one will speak.