INDO-PAK TIES 

Left Wants Dialogue On, No Third Party Role

 Harkishan Singh Surjeet

BY the time these lines appear in print, a five member CPI(M)-CPI delegation led by myself and A B Bardhan will be already touring Pakistan at the invitation of the Left Front of Pakistan. The front consists of the Communist Party of Pakistan, Kisan Mazdoor Party of Pakistan and Labour Party of Pakistan. A team of journalists will also be accompanying the delegation.

Significantly, this will be the first Left delegation that will be visiting Pakistan after the vivisection of the country in 1947.

CHANGE OF APPROACH

REPORTING on the proposed tour, a small item in The Times of India says on February 21: “It’s now the Left’s turn to add to the buoyant mood in Indo-Pak relations.” Here we can only say in a lighter vein, only in order to put the record straight, that it is not that the Left is just adding to the present buoyant mood; rather the Left has persistently worked towards creating such a mood. If one goes by the articles that appeared in these columns from time to time, one will find that we have been constantly demanding a change in approach on Indo-Pak ties. Our contention, put forward at the all-party meetings and other fora, has been that (1) both India and Pakistan must give up imposing conditionalities for initiating talks, (2) must start a composite dialogue on all pending issues without involving any third party, (3) solve as many contentious issues as possible, and (4) thus create a congenial atmosphere in which more contentious issues could be taken up in a spirit of goodwill and amicably solved in mutual interest.

And now, we have a feeling of satisfaction that, even though many more miles are yet to be traversed before the Indo-Pak ties could be fully normalised, the fact is that whatever progress has been achieved is the result of this very change of approach. The fact, again, is that soon after coming to power the Vajpayee government tried to solve the tangle in its favour by resorting to nuclear jingoism, but what happened then is also well known. The regime learnt to its utter astonishment that its jingoism failed to prevent Pakistan from going nuclear, rather prompted it to go nuclear, and the world too learnt with a sense of horror that a new zone of nuclear conflagration had been created. The fact is that, even after Pokhran I, India’s policy of peaceful uses of nuclear energy had deterred Pakistan for a quarter century from going nuclear, but the BJP led government removed this restraint at one go by itself going nuclear.

On its part, Pakistan too learnt the hard way that Kargil type misadventures could only cause a little headache to India but never give Pakistan an advantage.

It was in such a situation that demands began to be raised by the people of the two countries that both must give up their traditional enmity and futile approach, and do whatever they can to normalise their relations. It was to give voice to this popular feeling and desire that the Left had been raising its demand for an unconditional and composite Indo-Pak dialogue.

BAAT SE BAAT CHALE!

AND now, along with the peace loving people of India and Pakistan, we too have every reason to rejoice that the list of confidence building measures (CBMs) is steadily increasing and one hopes it would be further increasing in future. Starting from the heart operation of Baby Noor of Pakistan in Bangalore, and including the Indian cricket team’s visit to Pakistan last April, there have been hundreds of occasions in the last two years when the fervent brotherly feelings of the two peoples for one another have come out with a bang. And this effervescence has been so great that hawks in both countries have been forced to lie low, even if for the time being. 

This is natural for the people who have suffered the agony of having got separated from their near and dear ones. Even today, there are tens of thousands of families in both countries whose relatives are living on the other side of the border, and they are unable to meet one another even on critical occasions. Consider the case of a retired university professor and Urdu poet Dr Talha Rizvi ‘Barq,’ which we had quoted once earlier in these columns. This man was a kid of 9 years when his mother died and gave him into the custody of his elder sister who then brought him up. But, in 1947, his brother-in-law went to settle down in Pakistan after the partition and the ties between the two families got almost snapped. In the meantime, the increasing bitterness in Indo-Pak ties made the inter-country travels nearly impossible, and Dr Barq, who is now in the evening of his life, could not visit Pakistan even when his niece was married and even when his mother-like sister died. This has indeed been the tragedy of many, many in both the countries.

It is evident that insofar as the ongoing Indo-Pak dialogue is concerned, we cannot but repeat what late Sardar Jaffri wrote in 1972 on the eve of the Shimla accord:

Guftagu band na ho,

Baat se baat chale,

Subah tak shaame-e-mulaqat chale,

Hum pe hansti hui ye

taaron bhari raat chale!

The situation thus demands that both India and Pakistan must put their past legacies behind and look to the future with an open mind. This is necessary not only in the interest of the whole subcontinent but also to spare lakhs of people of an excruciating agony of the kind Dr Barq has been feeling.

HUMANITARIAN MEASURES

IT is in this context that the recent decision to start a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, capitals of the two parts of erstwhile princely state of Kashmir, has to be viewed. As per the agreement signed by India and Pakistan on February 16 during Indian foreign minister Natwar Singh’s visit to Islamabad, this bus service is scheduled to start in April this year. The announcement of this service has brought “something valuable on the table for Kashmiris,” and it has been followed with a general and widespread jubilation in Kashmir valley. But the big thing is that the service will not be confined to Kashmiris alone as was the idea earlier, but will be open to all the Indians and Pakistanis. Here, we won’t go into the technical details of the proposed bus service for the simple reason that, given political will, no technical difficulty is insurmountable. We can only say, in a voice with the Hindustan Times editorial (February 18), that “If all things go as scheduled, this April will be the kindest month for a people who have been separated because of an age-old dispute between New Delhi and Islamabad.”

According to The Times of India editorial on the same day: “This new cordiality is welcome. As more people travel across the border --- today, Indian missions in Pakistan clear about 1,20,000 visas every year compared to none three years ago --- ties between the two nations will improve.” And to The Indian Express, “any pact or proposal that in any way eases border crossings marks substantial progress.”

From Islamabad, Natwar Singh and his Pakistani counterpart Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri also announced their intention to reopen consulates in Karachi and Mumbai, launch a new bus service between Amritsar and Lahore (that were in a sense twin cities before partition), and re-establish rail links between Rajasthan and Sind. There is also a proposal to start an inter-country bus service linking the Sikh shrines in Pakistan. These are, in the words of The Hindu editorial (February 18), “humanitarian measures that have been delayed too long,” and therefore the progress achieved so far on these counts cannot but be welcome.

PENDING ISSUES

NOT only that, there are certain issues still pending but can be resolved in near future in a spirit of mutual accommodation. One such issue is that of a gas pipeline from Iran and, to quote The Times of India editorial again, “It is also good news that a gas pipeline from Iran to India via Pakistan, which had been proposed nearly 10 years ago, is a pipe dream no more. Iran will bring the pipe to India’s border, and Pakistan will have access to gas and transit revenues that could range between 400 and 600 million dollars every year.” (According to The Dawn of Pakistan, the transit revenue payable to Pakistan will be to the tune of 800 million dollars a year.) Needless to say, the fledgling economies of both India and Pakistan need the Iranian gas to meet their growing energy requirements, and thus its importance cannot be minimised. It is hoped that the agreement will be inked during Mani Shankar Aiyar’s proposed visit to Tehran.

To this may one add the issue of the transit route India has demanded from Pakistan to reach Afghanistan and the Central Asian republics. And it is not a question of India alone; according to a UN convention on the rights of landlocked countries, Afghanistan and Central Asian republics too have a right to have a route to India or other countries. There is no need to emphasise that such a transit facility will benefit not only India but also the said countries, particularly Afghanistan that needs it most for the sake of its ongoing reconstruction efforts.

The issue of demilitarising the Siachen glacier, known as the highest battleground in the world, must also be taken up soon. A resolution of this issue need not be a big problem, because considerable homework has already been done.

Yet the progress so far has already proved that, to again quote The Indian Express editorial, “through open-minded negotiation, India and Pakistan can accommodate each other’s concerns with their respective notions of national interest.”

Needless to say, the more knotty issues cannot be allowed to hold the whole process to ransom. What the Hindustan Times editorial says in the context of Kashmir issue is in a sense true for all the knotty issues --- that while these issues “would not --- could not --- be solved overnight, holding other beneficial measures hostage to the promise of a ‘permanent revolution’ would be mulish.” 

One can thus reasonably hope that both India and Pakistan will display mature statesmanship in the days to come and move towards a situation where even the pending issues, including the knotty ones, may be amicably resolved.

PARIVAR’S SOLO SONG

HOWEVER, while the whole country has welcomed the recent announcements, as is evident from the by no means exhaustive sample of editorials quoted above, there is an outfit in the country that stands blessedly isolated from the general public opinion in the country and the world. And you guessed it right. Yes, it is the Sangh Parivar led by the communal RSS that can go to any Goebelsian extent in line with its intense hatred for Pakistan and the Muslims.

Here is a sample of what the RSS says, through a front page write-up in its mouthpiece Organiser (February 27), about the recent announcement of starting a bus service between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad: “Remember, the last people who came on vehicles from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar were the raiders, who started a war in the third week of October 1947.” 

The implication, rather the insinuation, is clear: it is the raiders who came from Muzaffarabad to Srinagar in vehicles in 1947, and now it is the raiders again who will be coming by bus to Srinagar! And that too with the willing consent of the government of India, who “has been taken for a ride” in the bargain!

Moreover, the Organiser’s editor Shri R Balashankar, who wrote this valuable thesis, is so much swayed by his intense anti-Pakistan stance that he failed to ask one simple question: Who will be going from Srinagar to Muzaffarabad by the proposed bus? Going by the RSS scribe’s perverted logic, will they be raiders from India?

Shri R Balashankar and his tribe should also make a minor correction in their astronomical stock of ‘historical’ knowledge. He writes that the Pak-backed raiders occupied a part of Kashmir but could not quite reach Srinagar, “challenged as they were by the Indian Army at the edge of the airport and pushed back.” There is no doubt, again, that the Indian Army fought the raiders and pushed them back, but can one forget that it was the common people of the valley who, with arms in their hands, challenged and held back the raiders before the India Army could land in the valley? This of course does not mean that India or its army was at fault in the case. In fact it was the Maharaja who was reluctant to appeal for Indian help as he was dreaming to have an independent fiefdom of his own, and did not call for India’s help till he found himself at the brink of a fall.

This is just one example of the Sangh Parivar’s solo song on the issue, and there is no need to multiply its instances. And, before taking leave of Shri R Balashankar, nor do we find any need of recalling where the RSS stood at that time. That is known to every student of history, and the latter need not be reminded that at that time, operating in the garb of Praja Parishad, the RSS was supporting the Maharaja’s bid to retain a separate fiefdom. Moreover, the Praja Parishad was also busy murdering those fighting for Kashmir’s integration with the secular Indian Union.

Shri Balashankar also quotes the remark made by ISI director general Qazi Javed Ashraf on the issue of Baglihar power project, to the effect that war is the only option to resolve this issue. Now, there is no doubt that papers have reported the remark and that it is a cause of concern not only for the GoI but also for the peace loving people of India, Pakistan and the world. But, as we said earlier, of course there are elements on both sides of the border, who would do everything possible to scuttle the chances of normalisation of Indo-Pak relations. But the moot question is: Can you counter such elements by Organiser type propaganda that is no less jingoistic and complements the hawks on the other side of the border?

Be that as it may, there is no doubt that India and Pakistan are today at a stage where, given political will, they may effect a breakthrough in normalising ties. And there is no doubt that this will be in the best of interests of the two countries, in the interest of the whole of South Asia and in the interest of world peace. We thus cannot afford to waste this chance. And I can only assure our countrymen that we of the CPI(M) and the Left will do everything in our power to push this process ahead. Our delegation to Pakistan is only a small part in this direction and not the end of our duty.

                                                                            February 23, 2005