Author: Swapan Dasgupta
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: December 23, 2003
URL: http://us.rediff.com/news/2003/dec/23swadas.htm
Now that sadbhavana has acquired
the status of a growth industry with international stakeholders, it is
only natural that every blip and twitch in Indo-Pakistan relations is being
monitored with the zealousness normally reserved for blue-chip corporates.
Consequently, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visionary appeal for
a common currency for South Asia at the Hindustan Times symposium in Delhi
last week invited a generous bout of over-interpretation. Particularly
excited were those who, for some inexplicable reason, believe that Pakistanis
are people like us.
There were those who saw in the
dream of a localised Euro, which some slavish enthusiasts promptly named
Rupa, an expression of innovative thinking and the prime minister's personal
commitment to sadbhavana. There were others who, equally innovatively,
perceived it as a new approach to the hoary notion of Akhand Bharat. And
finally, there were a handful who commented on the awesome significance
of the missing T-word from the speech. Is India, they rued, in another
fit of misplaced magnanimity, again forgetting that terrorism is the key
issue?
Not one to allow Vajpayee to steal
all the thunder for thinking out of the box, President Pervez Musharraf
hit back with his interview to Reuters last Wednesday. He let it slip casually
that Pakistan has 'left aside' its fanatical devotion to the 1948 UN resolution
for a plebiscite to determine the future of Jammu and Kashmir.
Predictably, this statement too
has created a storm. Hizbul Mujahideen chief Syed Salahuddin protested
that by 'sidelining the UN resolutions, Pakistan will cease to be a party
to the dispute' in Kashmir. Former foreign secretary Niaz Naik, a back-channel
aficionado, told The Telegraph that giving up the plebiscite demand was
part of a 'secret' understanding between Nawaz Sharif and Vajpayee in Lahore.
No wonder, even at the grave risk
of implying that Musharraf is a loose talker, Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah
Jamali clarified that Pakistan still stood by the UN resolution of 1948.
Within India, the Cabinet Committee on Security decided that Musharraf's
call for 'flexibility' was a ploy to get Kashmir back on the agenda but
welcomed it all the same.
Going by the Musharraf prescription
of first identifying the completely unacceptable facets of the Indo-Pakistan
problem, the past week has seen a step forward. If Musharraf is able to
negotiate the domestic storm and institutionalise this important shift
in Pakistan's position, it would imply that the redrawing of national boundaries
is now a non-issue. It could pave the way for Vajpayee to suggest that
India could also seek a review of the 1994 resolution of Parliament that
insists that the whole of Jammu and Kashmir, including the so-called Azad
Kashmir, is an integral part of India.
In short, Pakistan's change of tack
could force both countries to acknowledge that the Line of Control has,
whether by accident or design, become the de facto international border.
If Musharraf demonstrates his flexibility on a plebiscite he knows is a
pipedream, Vajpayee can, without any inhibition and with a great deal of
magnanimity, reciprocate by eschewing claims on Pakistan- occupied Kashmir.
Apart from a handful of boisterous irredentists who may disrupt cricket
matches, it is unlikely the loss of territory which was already lost 55
years ago will generate any popular backlash.
Indian Kashmiri politicians such
as Farooq Abdullah have repeatedly indicated that a united Jammu and Kashmir
is not a project they endorse. Musharraf, of course, will find his negation
of a plebiscite much more difficult to sell domestically. Between the jihadis,
the ISI and the army there are powerful interests committed to keeping
the conflict in Kashmir alive.
Despite the November cease-fire
and the fall in infiltration, there is no evidence as yet of any Pakistani
reassessment of its strategic objectives in Kashmir. Like in his UN General
Assembly speech last October, Musharraf still boasts of his ability to
regulate the temperature of violence in Jammu and Kashmir. And there are
other military strategists who openly advocate the creation of a fifth
column within India. This is why Washington's instant support for Musharraf's
audacious departure is significant.
International pressure will make
it that much more challenging for Pakistan to wriggle out of the commitment.
Indeed, the priority for Indian diplomacy is to ensure that Islamabad sticks
to its president's word. Based on past experience, it would be prudent
for India to proceed on the assumption that any show of reasonableness
by Pakistan will invariably be accompanied by some act of adventurism.
Kargil, after all, was a direct
consequence of Vajpayee's bus ride to Lahore. The personality of Pakistan
is centred on a detachment from India and its civilisation. More trade
and greater interaction of people can dilute the animosity but it can't
change the ideological foundations of hatred. For any peace dividend to
accrue, Pakistan has to be first convinced that India will not yield and
that it will brook no nonsense.
From this perspective, India has
every reason to be delighted with the results of the Bhutanese army's crackdown
on ULFA and other secessionist outfits that are using Bhutan as launching
pads for a war on India. These groups, after all, were no ordinary insurgents.
Financed and equipped by the ISI and encouraged by Islamists in Bangladesh,
they were a key element in Pakistan's strategy of bleeding India with a
thousand cuts.
The tremors from Bhutan are being
felt throughout the SAARC region. It should signal to Pakistan that India
is not extending the hand of friendship either from a position of weakness
or because it has no stomach to fight. Being essentially a criminal enterprise,
Pakistan doesn't know economics beyond aid, a euphemism for international
extortion. Otherwise it would have realised that the sadbhavana mania in
India is being driven by economic success. India is too busy making money
and scripting a success story to want to devote too much attention to a
neighbour that is barely able to overcome its medievalism.
