People's Democracy

THE Indo-Pak relations have reached a critical point today, where any single spark may cause a big explosion. The situation is as grave as it was at the time of the 1965 and 1971 wars, if not more. Both the countries have begun to move their armies, tanks, fighter aircraft and even missiles to the line of control; occasional firing is taking place from both the sides. Villagers living in border areas, dead scared about their life and property, are running away. TV images and newspaper photographs dramatically depict their excruciating horror.

This is not the time to ask what brought us to this point. This is also not the time to weigh who is more guilty and who is less. All this is quite known to the people. Nor is this the time to evaluate who will win, and who will lose, if a war breaks out in the subcontinent. Any attempt to score points at this stage will be unpardonable. This is the time to diffuse the time bomb that is ticking in an increasingly menacing way. This is the time to prevent the situation from reaching the point of no return.

The people of India and Pakistan have already witnessed the horrors of the 1965 and 1971 wars, not to talk of the raiders’ intrusions in 1947 and the Kargil conflict. But the situation has dramatically changed; it is much more serious, rather extraordinary, today. Nobody is in a position to guarantee that if a war breaks out between India and Pakistan, it would not lead to a nuclear conflagration. Any war between the two nations cannot but have devastating effects on both of them. Moreover, as these are the two biggest countries of the subcontinent, a war between them will destabilise the whole South Asian region. Hence the anguish being felt in the entire subcontinent. And hence the deep concern being expressed by the world community about world peace, which is threatened by any war anywhere.

This is what the whole opposition conveyed to the government of India (GoI) in the recent all-party meeting. Nobody says that India must not act tough against terrorism; on the contrary, it must take determined political as well as administrative steps to root it out. Nor would anyone like to see India not defending itself in case a war is thrust upon it. But this is certainly not the case here. As the biggest country in the region, India has an added responsibility to see that the atmosphere of peace and security is not disturbed here. The opposition is well aware of its duty towards the nation and nobody can dare say that it does not cooperate with the GoI in the matters of national interest. For the same reason, the opposition cannot be a party to rousing jingoistic feelings in the country, which is certainly not in the nation’s interests.

In his latest signed article in some newspapers, our prime minister has indeed touched on some aspects of the Indo-Pak relations. In this article, he did recognise the change that has of late come in Pakistan’s approach but, on the other hand, he did issue an indirect warning to that country, maybe in a bid to cajole the RSS-led constituency. As the editorial in this issue deals with the prime minister’s latest "musings" in detail, we would not go into it any more.

The main thing to note here is that while the BJP-led NDA government has taken certain diplomatic steps to bring pressure on Pakistan, it seems it has stretched them too far, even to the point where they may turn counter-productive. For example, it has stopped the New Delhi-Lahore bus service and the Samjhauta Express from running between the two countries. This has only affected the common people of both countries as they have now lost all contact with their relatives across the border. The newspaper and TV images showing people departing from their relatives amid tears only prove how inhuman this step is. In fact, this has snapped all people-to-people contacts between the two countries, though these contacts could prove a valuable basis on which to build an atmosphere of mutual confidence. The simple truth is that the common people of both the countries abhor war and want to have cordial relations with one another.

Similarly, the GoI announced that it would allow President Musharraf to fly to Kathmandu through the Indian airspace if the Pakistan government makes a request for it. This was nothing but arrogance and showed that the GoI has not paid heed to even minimal diplomatic courtesy. Musharraf only retaliated by saying that he would go to Kathmandu via some other route. The GoI’s move will also have an adverse bearing on our relations with Nepal which, as a land-locked country, has its own peculiar problems.

Is it with such methods that the GoI hopes to influence world public opinion and bring it in India’s favour?

It is true that top BJP leaders have mellowed their anti-Pakistan rhetoric after their all-round criticism in the media and in parliament, and the sober advice from the army and the ‘advice’ tendered by the US. But, in accordance with the style of the Sangh Parivar’s functioning, the VHP and other outfits are still continuing this rhetoric virulently. In UP, the biggest Indian state, the BJP chief minister Rajnath Singh too is continuing to indulge in the same jingoism. Evidently, his fear is that if the BJP loses the UP polls, not only will it lose power at the centre before long; alongwith that, Rajnath Singh’s own head will also roll. But the BJP leaders would do well to remember that the people would not --- and never --- forgive them if their petty electoral interests harm the wider interests of the nation.

The same myopic approach is evident in case of Kashmir where the situation is going from bad to worse. Only a few months hence, Jammu & Kashmir too will go to state assembly polls, and the fear is that terrorist depredations will only increase in the days to come. As the media reports suggest, a large number of terrorists, including the Taliban who have run away from Afghanistan, are waiting for an opportunity to infiltrate the valley. But the BJP-led regime has miserably failed to acknowledge that no lasting solution to the Kashmir problem can be evolved without ensuring maximum possible autonomy to the state and thereby re-integrating the people of the state into the national mainstream. Reliance on army and administrative measures alone is not going to take us anywhere, as the sad experience of the Congress days proves beyond dispute.

The BJP-led regime has also to learn the bitter fact that its reliance on the US is not going to help it in this regard. As has been known since 1955, the US has its own game in this part of the world because of its strategic importance, and its game is to see Kashmir emerge independent --- if it can. As said last week, the US did not help Pakistan to have a say in the post-Taliban regime in Afghanistan. Musharraf and other Pakistani leaders have to learn a lesson from this fact that their role in Afghanistan finally failed to pay them a dividend. It is clear that they too are not going to get anything from the US insofar as Kashmir is concerned.

Evidently, in such a situation, the best course is to forge the process of dialogue, for which the Shimla accord of August 1972 provides the best possible framework. Here too, it is sad to note that while Musharraf is willing to hold a dialogue, the GoI is still talking about certain conditions being fulfilled before a dialogue may be started. The logic of events has already brought Musharraf to the point that this supporter of Taliban had had to join a war against them and to crack down on the homegrown fundamentalists. He has already put a number of them behind bars, and they include some top leaders of these outfits. It is clear that he can be further pressurised to take determined steps against the terrorists if the world opinion is aroused, and this is what the GoI has to aim at, instead of putting this or that condition.

As for Pakistan, if it wants that India must not put any condition for holding a dialogue, it too has to give up putting the issue of Kashmir before anything else. There are a number of important issues which the two countries may take up in order to forge mutual confidence --- like those of economic cooperation, people-to-people contact, river water sharing, etc --- before the knotty Kashmir problem may be taken up for resolution.

An immediate occasion for the purpose is provided by the SAARC summit; its ministerial meeting has already started by the time we go to press. It is true that the SAARC is a multilateral forum where bilateral issues are not discussed, but a preliminary Indo-Pak dialogue may certainly take place on its sidelines. Before leaving for Kathmandu, India’s foreign minister Jaswant Singh was non-committal about meeting his Pakistan counterpart Abdus-Sattar. As for Vajpayee, he declined to have any meeting with Musharraf. Yet one hopes that good sense will ultimately prevail upon these leaders and they will utilise the occasion in the best interests of peace, security and the people’s wellbeing in the two nations and in the whole region. Moreover, the SAARC is also slated to discuss the issue of terrorism as a multilateral issue and a constructive intervention in this discussion is what is expected from India.

It would be well to remember here that, barring the sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia is a region with the lowest human development index in the world, where the people are facing excruciating problems. And to further compound their misery, the state of regional cooperation is quite pathetic here. Despite one and a half decades of its existence, the SAARC remains a weak, loose-knit entity, and comes nowhere near other regional cooperation entities like the European Union and the ASEAN. This is one of the major obstacles to our development and has to be removed at the earliest. Needless to say, being the two biggest nations of the region, it is India and Pakistan upon whom the responsibility of rejuvenating the SAARC and making it a force primarily devolves.