Instructions

Read the passages to answer the questions that follow each passage.

PASSAGE - I
“Since wars begin in the minds of men,” So runs the historic UNESCO Preamble, “It is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” Wars erupt out when the minds of men are inflamed, when the human mind is blinded and wounded, succumbs to frustration and selfnegation. War is the transference of this self-negation into the other-negation. The three Indo-Pak wars and the persisting will to terrorise have emanated from this savage instinct of other-negation that is the legacy of the partition carnage and its still-bleeding and unhealed wound. Truncated from its eastern wing in 1971, Pakistan ever since has suffered from a sense of total existential self-negation. Plus the scars left the two previously lost wars to India and Kargil fill the Army and the Pakistan psyche with a seething urge to revenge :that India has to be negated, destroyed - in a deep psychological sense, another Hiroshima in the subcontinent is imaginable and possible. Terrorism in Kashmir springs from such deep negating existential grounds. Like the former Soviet Union, Pakistan came into being as a result of a grand delusion and massive perversion of reality - the so called two-nation theory. Like the former Soviet Union, it stands in danger of crumbling unless it modifies its reality perception and comes to terms with its post-Bangladesh identity within the prevailing subcontinental equation. Failing this, Pakistan is bound to break up, nudging the region to a nuclear nightmare, including possible South Asian Hiroshimas. With ‘hot pursuits’ and ‘surgical operations’ freely making rounds among the policy elite and the public at large, the national atmosphere looks ominously charged. “On the brink,” headlines The week adding, “As men and machines are quickly positioned by India and Pakistan, the threat of war looms real”. To which Gen. Musharraf counters, “If any war is thrust on Pakistan, Pakistan’s armed forces and the 140 million people of Pakistan are fully prepared to face all consequences with all their might.” According to Indian Express, “Pakistan has deployed medium range ballistic missile batteries (MRBBs) along the line of Control (LOC) near Jammu and Poonch sectors in an action that will further escalate the tension between the two countries.” And India’s Defence Minister ups the ante, “We could take a (nuclear) strike, survive and then hit back, Pakistan would be finished.” (Hindustan Times, December 30, 2001) Mr. Fernandes’s formulation is certainly a tactical super shot, even a strategical super hit in as much as this is the very logic of India’s ‘Nofirst-strike’ doctrine. The Defence Minister obviously has no idea of the ethical, phenomenological implications of abandoning chunks of the Indian population to ransom for potential Hiroshimas and then ‘finishing’ the neighbouring country of 140 million in what could be nothing short of an Armageddon. Forget these horrendous scenarios. But does this not repudiate the grain of truth for which India’s civilisation stood for and vindicated across the untold millennia of its history? Yet, Mr. Fernandes, the pacifist and Gandhian, is no warmonger. As Defence Minister he had to react at a level with the Pakistanis, with their proclivity to drop the nuclear speak when ever that suited them, could have registered the message.

Question 24

According to the passage, all of the following about the defence minister are not true, except


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