Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: May 20, 2003
URL: http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/may/20arvind.htm
Road maps to Indo-Pak peace and
friendship are the hottest flavour of the season.
We've been told about the existence
of at least two such road maps -- one made by Delhi and the other by Islamabad.
And nobody but nobody knows whether the twain shall ever meet -- excepting
perhaps our poet PM named Atal Bihari Vajpayee and the new Empire of the
US which probably has its own road map for a South Asia compatible with
its Pax Americana concept of the world.
Since the telephone call between
the prime ministers of India and Pakistan on April 28, the foreign office
in Delhi has been saying that a 'road map' existed on the next steps to
be taken with Pakistan. And in a television interview, our foreign minister
said, 'Every step is clear in our mind. There is no confusion and we will
proceed according to the plan.'
'No confusion'? Then why did Defence
Minister George Fernandes say subsequently that a road map was 'being drawn
up'?
'No confusion'? Then see the answer
by our PM to a journalist's question as to whether an end to cross-border
terrorism was a pre-condition for talks. The answer was, 'It is not a condition;
it is necessary. We are not calling it calling a pre-condition. But without
that (end to cross-border terrorism) how can a conducive atmosphere be
created?' (PTI report in The Hindu of May 14, 2003.) So 'necessary' is
not 'pre-condition' and 'no confusion' is not 'crystal clear'. You need
poetic licence to prove that but right now it's QED all right.
If it's any consolation, such 'no
confusion' prevails in Pakistan also. In his report datelined Islamabad,
May 12, B Muralidharan Reddy of The Hindu wrote that the Pakistan information
minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, claimed that Pakistan is ready with a road
map for talks with India for the resolution of all differences, including
the core issue of Kashmir. But Reddy also mentioned in the same report
that "The truth of the matter is that Pakistan's foreign office has little
idea about the so-called 'road map for talks'".
In fact, confusion seems the highest
common denominator in this current round of Indo-Pak peace business.
There is that recent visit of a
Pakistani parliamentary delegation to our land. The Vajpayee government
granted a visa to it but didn't grant it an interaction. Even the Lok Sabha
speaker scorned it. But Mulayam Singh, a former defence minister, Somnath
Chatterjee, the Communist elder, played the good host to the delegation,
photo ops, smiles and all that. So, one heard, did three former PMs of
ours. So what's really cooking? Confusion.
Some members of that Pakistani delegation
addressed the business community in Mumbai and spoke of the importance
of bilateral trade with India as a harbinger of harmony between the two.
But, strangely, they refused to answer the question of a member of the
audience as to why Pak was not granting India the Most Favoured Nation
facility mandated under the WTO agreement while India had given that status
to Pakistan some six years ago.
There is also confusion amongst
us laymen as to why India can't go or won't go to WTO's grievance redressal
mechanism to secure what is its rightfully, instead of waiting for Pakistan
to oblige us.
Talking to reporters in Kolkata,
three members of the Pak parliamentary delegation -- Ishaq Khan Khakwani,
M P Bhandara and Shakila Khanam -- claimed that terrorist activities in
India had never been sponsored by a Pakistani government agency and that
the ISI is only a part of the Pakistan army and is not involved in any
secret attacks on India. (The Times of India, Mumbai, May 15).
It is confusing, firstly, how Indian
editors have known to show no compunction, whatsoever, in lambasting their
own government when in Pakistan, while the latter's parliamentarians visiting
India do not accept their own president's contention of giving moral, political
and diplomatic support to jihadis in J&K.
It is further confusing that Pak's
parliamentarians got away by blatantly glossing over (i) the well-publicised
US opinion that Pakistan has not done enough to stop terrorism in J&K
and (ii) the latest study by a geopolitical analytical firm, Stratfor,
revealing evidence gathered by the US military about ISI's involvement
with Islamabad's militant groups and cross-border infiltrations. (Reported
in an AFP despatch on the front page of Free Press Journal of May 18, 2003).
It is confusing, further, that Bhandara
referred above can speak one tongue when in India but wield a totally different
script when writing in his country's newspaper. Thus, in his article in
Dawn reproduced by The Asian Age of May 15, 2003, Bhandara states (i) 'The
time has come to face the issue of our supporting or acquiescing in the
so-called jihad in Kashmir squarely and honestly' (ii) 'If we are to make
India a negotiating partner in resolving the Kashmir problem, the cross-LoC
movements of jihadis must be reduced to zero' (iii) 'Our secret closet
is the ISI, which is the invisible maker of policy and it thrives on open-ended
state funding.'
'Solutions' offered to resolve the
'core issue of Kashmir' are also confused if not totally bizarre. Thus,
Bhandara's above-referred article advocates that Jammu and Ladakh regions
should continue to form part of India just as Baltistan, Gilgit and Azad
Kashmir should remain with Pakistan. The Kashmir valley should ultimately
be independent and, in the interregnum, Article 370 of the Indian Constitution
should be confined to the Kashmir Valley!
The Bhandara chap and all other
present Pakistani advocates of independence for the Valley must surely
know of their country's stand in the long-winded UN debates of the late
forties when Pakistan supported the UN resolution calling for a plebiscite
that offered the people of Jammu & Kashmir the choice between accession
either to India or to Pakistan, but opposed the world body's earlier resolution
offering independence as the third option.
And nothing has changed since then;
when President Musharraf says, 'Kashmir is in Pakistan's blood', he just
doesn't mean an independent Kashmir Valley. So how come that a Pakistani
MP is overnight making a volte face on the issue? Confusing.
Some readers too are totally confused
-- in tune with the season's flavour. They choose to remind us about the
plebiscite offered in Lord Mountbatten's letter to the J&K Maharaja
when accepting his state's accession to India, and about Nehru's assurance
of a plebiscite to the people of J&K.
The first truth here is that both
these offers violated Section 9 of the British government's Indian Independence
Act, 1947, which conferred on the rulers of the 562 princely Indian states
the exclusive sovereign right to decide on the accession either to India
or to Pakistan -- without being obliged to consult their subjects.
Secondly, India did in fact accept
the plebiscite formula of the UN, but Pakistan has, till date, refused
to implement the first pre-requisite of that formula viz total withdrawal
of all its men and forces that had entered J&K in October 1947 for
the purpose of fighting. Pakistan has thus wanted to make the Kashmir omelette
without breaking an egg.
One confused reader has raked up
-- in CE 2003, mind you -- India's refusal to accept the Nizam of Hyderabad's
proposition of acceding his Hindu majority state to Pakistan while consenting
to accept the Hindu Maharaja's accession of his Muslim majority state to
India.
The truth of the matter is that
when Mountbatten, as the Crown Representative, addressed the Chamber of
Princes on July 25, 1947, he told the princely rulers that their accession
to either India or Pakistan had to keep in mind the geographical contiguity
of their states and also warned them that their refusal to link with either
of the two dominions entailed the grave risk of being cut from any source
of supply. Thus, Hindu majority Hyderabad state just could not be acceptable
as the malignant tumor in the Indian belly, while J&K territory was
in perfect geographical contiguity with the rest of post-partition India
while also being perfectly legal.
The revived euphoria among sections
of the metropolitan elites of the two countries is part of the current
confusion over this business of Indo-Pak peace and friendship. It is these
elites who believe that just a couple of Test cricket series between the
two countries will help produce that peace.
It is these elites who, like J&K's
chief minister, offer the 'soft border' LoC as the panacea to the pain
of the 56-year-old relationship. They forget that a 'soft' border will
be a licence for smuggling counterfeit Indian currency, permanent illegal
migrants and droves of terrorists. They forget the history of hate that
Pakistan has harboured for India right from the time of Jinnah and Liaqat
Ali Khan down to Nawaz Sharif and Pervez Musharraf. They forget that the
leopard's spots can't change excepting by a miracle.
Valmiki was transformed from a dacoit
into a saint by a miracle of severe penance brought about by Narad Muni.
We will have to await a similar divine intervention across our borders
for the much-desired Indo-Pak amity to come about.
Let there be no confusion on that
road map being the 'necessary pre- condition' -- without the poetic licence
to distinguish in Hindi between the two words in that phrase.
