From my column in today’s DNA – “

“Read WikiLeaks, smirk and move on”

Tortuous Convolvulus is one of the most fascinating comic book characters. He appears in Asterix and the Roman Agent. Tortuous Convolvulus is a troublemaker par excellence — he just has to walk past two people to get them to start fighting. He causes distrust, strife and fights wherever he steps foot. He is the ultimate anarchist – who revels in the discord that he is able to create. He is used by Caesar to create divisions in Asterix’ village — till common sense, shared values and a wee bit of magic potion saves the village.

Julian Assange, the Australian who is on the United States’s ‘most hated’ list — is a modern day Tortuous Convolvulus. While on the face of it WikiLeaks — the organisation that he directs — has the stated aim of creating ‘open governments’ in the long run, in the short run WikiLeaks has become the ultimate tool of creating distrust and discord.

Most countries, their ruling parties or coalitions and their opposition parties have been fairly mature and sensible about WikiLeaks. For one, the cables published so far — both in India and outside tell you nothing earth shaking. In the main, they are drawing room conversations between American diplomats and locals.

There are the ‘oh, I am so important’ conversations, then there are the ‘I am your friend, the rest of my team hates you’ snippets, and the gossip ‘he is really strange, people say this about him’ reported back in official language. Most people in power or aspiring for power may have read WikiLeaks and may have smirked at someone else’s silliness, but they have more or less kept a dignified silence. After all, there is no point making a song and a dance about the content of WikiLeaks, when you don’t know what part of your conversation is in the US government cables and reported in what form. But, Indian politicians, as we all know, are a different breed.

So how should one see the WikiLeaks — especially cables that concern India? At the first level one needs to look at the information gatherers — the United States of America. A country, whose foreign policy since World War-II, has epitomised the statement, “The path to hell is paved with good intentions.” They have been incredibly naive in their reading of local situations — reports of which they have got from their ground level diplomatic staff; they have misunderstood nationalism for anti-Americanism, they have looked at self-reliance as the onset of socialism, and to counter that they have gone about supporting the worst dictators, creating terrible conflicts and leaving societies tattered in their aftermath. Their understanding of our world in its shades of grey is non-existent. Countries are for it or are against it. It may have been slightly more sophisticated in stating this than former president Bush — but, this has been the core of their relationship with anyone else in the world. Its employees across the world are in tune with this philosophy.

At the second level, one needs to look at the information providers:the Indian ruling elite — Indian politicians and Indian politician wannabes. A breed that epitomises the line ‘how do you tell a politician is lying. His lips are moving’.They see the world as a set of alliances that will take them to the next level. These alliances are not permanent, nor are enemies. Also, it is a tribe that mostly has no firm ideology — except staying in power. This is a breed, which throughout history, has tried to impress the ‘foreigner’ about how wonderful they are and how beneficial a long-term relationship would be to the foreigner, and more importantly — how terrible their opposition is.

Wikileaks India is essentially a conversation between these two parties. One which sees no ambiguity in its world and the other which is totally ambiguous in all things, except its climb to power.

The problem with accepting the Wiki cables as Gospel Truth has three issues attached to it. If you accept one cable as truth, you cannot question the veracity of the rest. Related to this is that, you don’t know what your side has said to impress the diplomat— it could be equally ‘impressive’.And thirdly, if you accept only one part and debunk the rest — you do look opportunistic at best and confused at worst.

So how does one read WikiLeaks? As gossip. Nice, juicy gossip. Read WikiLeaks, smirk, and move on.