That is a faux pas for a start. I mean, my faux pas. I meant to say, Günter’s faux pas. His readers would see the point immediately. For his experiment can hardly be called a poem. True, all kinds of amateur attempts have passed for poetry; but one would have expected something more rhythmic from the author of Peeling the Onion, Cat and Mouse, Dog Years, and other literary masterpieces. Reading his latest faux poem, one would think that he had lost his talent.

But it may be that the awkward, halting tone is deliberate. For the subject he chose is awkward, made more so by the fact that he is German — and, as Benjamin Netanyahu, the prime minister of Israel, took care to point out, he was member of Waffen SS in World War II. If Grass was looking for notoriety, he could not have found a better publicist.

Except for the fact that it was from Günter Grass that Netanyahu learnt about his having been in Waffen SS. Grass mentioned it in an interview he gave in 2006 just before he published his autobiography. When asked why he was mentioning it only then, he said, “It struck me. My silence over all these years is one of the reasons why I have written this autobiography.” In other words, the autobiography was in part a confession.

Grass was 12 when the war started, and 18 when it ended. Germany was extremely short of manpower in the last years of the war, and routinely used children in war-related work. Once I was in a hospital in Berlin. My neighbour in the next bed said that when he was 14 in 1945, the government had drafted him, given him a gun and sent him to the eastern front to fight against the advancing Russians. He ran away; he came home, where his mother hid him in the attic. When the Russians took Berlin, they found him, tied him to a cart, and made him collect the thousands of corpses that lay on the streets and bury them.

All Germans who grew up in Nazi Germany have their stories to tell. A handful of them rebelled against the Nazis and were shot for it. Another handful participated in and enjoyed the atrocities of the Nazis. The vast majority went with the flow. Grass voluntarily joined Waffen SS, fought against the Russians on the eastern front, and was wounded. At that time, Waffen SS was an “elite formation, nothing frightful”, according to him. He was imprisoned after the war. (One of his fellow prisoners was another 17-year boy, Joseph Ratzinger, who is better known today as Pope Benedict XVI.) Does that make Grass a Nazi? An average German? A young patriot? We can take our pick; Netanyahu has already.

Not that Grass is a seeker of notoriety, let alone notorious. I cannot think of a less notorious German. I saw and heard him once. He is perhaps the least conspicuous, least dazzling of famous Germans one can think of. If I had not known who he was, I would have mistaken him for — I don’t know — a tram conductor? A cellist? A scholar? He was at a colloquium, where scholars tried to ask intelligent questions and make literary conversation with him. He was sensible, illuminating; but I would not say he was brilliant. He was not a show-off. Despite its instant success, I cannot help feeling that the poem was not a dramatic act.

What is it then? Its meaning could not be clearer. I once spent some years in Kiel reading in the library, which is one of the world’s best in economics. I lived in a student hostel on the north shore; across the bay was a naval base where one could see two pipe-like objects. They were submarines in the making. After it lost World War II, Germany was banned from making submarines. After it became a Western ally, the ban was lifted. But by that time, it had fallen two decades behind in technology; the Americans and the Russians were making nuclear submarines as big as hotels. But Germany found a niche market amongst small and poor nations for its small submarines.

The German government is about to deliver one of these to Israel; it will be capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Once Israel gets it, it will have none of the hassles it has had till now if it wants to hit Iran with a nuclear bomb. And Israel’s desire to bomb Iran is not a secret; its ministers have been publicly threatening Iran of bombings since 2008 at least. But bombing it would require Israeli planes to fly over at least two countries on the way. Iran could retaliate; and it could do so against any ally of Israel — for instance, Turkey next door. These possibilities have held Israel back till now. But once it gets the submarine, it can deliver a nameless, sourceless bomb: the submarine would creep up the Persian gulf, bomb any Iranian port, and get back to Israel without anyone being able to identify it.

That, in Gunter Grass’s view, would be a crime. The bombing would be a punishment for Iran’s arming itself with nuclear weapons; but there is no evidence of its having any. It denies having any. Israel neither denies nor confirms that it has nuclear weapons; but there is general belief that it has them. Both are undeclared nuclear powers, or maybe not. Both are posturing, threatening, belligerent. Germany should not, in Günter Grass’s view, help one threaten another, make it possible for one to bomb another in a deniable manner. All Western countries victimize Iran while they treat Israel as a normal, respectable, acceptable country; Grass calls this Western hypocrisy. He says, with his last drop of ink, that Israel’s nuclear power threatens world peace. He wants everyone to tell Israel to abstain from violence, and to work for international control of Iran’s nuclear plants and Israel’s nuclear whatever-they-are.

Grass’s poem has unleashed a flood of reactions, virtually all negative. This sort of stone throwing was known in medieval societies; even now, women are stoned to death for adultery in Muslim countries. What we are seeing is a Christian equivalent of the Internet age. Nowadays, people are not killed for heresy; they are merely abused.

The rain of abuse reminds me of another time. Just three or four decades ago, if anyone mentioned India and Pakistan together, Indians erupted in high dudgeon. India was a secular democracy; Pakistan was a military theocracy. How could both be mentioned in the same breath? It was Indians’ insecurity parading itself as self-righteousness. Today I see the West’s insecurity parading itself as self-righteousness. That is why Grass’s arguments have not been addressed on merit. I am not a German, a Nazi, an Arab or a Jew-hater. I am a neutral Indian; I would be as outraged at the idea of obliterating Israel as Iran. But seeing the reaction to Günter Grass, I am tempted to write the equation: Israel = Iran. Both Israelis and Iranians should together look for a way of making Palestinians prosperous and contented.