The Hindu : Voices for change

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Mar 12, 2003

Opinion

Opinion - Leader Page Articles

Voices for change

By B. Muralidhar Reddy

Intellectuals in Pakistan are increasingly urging the military establishment to seriously rethink its India policy.

A QUIET but dramatic transformation seems to be taking place in the discourse in the Pakistani press and civil society on Islamabad's India policy in general, and Kashmir in particular. Even the right-wing combine of religious parties, the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, has, in its manifesto, sought a dialogue with India on the basis of the Shimla Accord.

Kashmir has been the theme song of Pakistan's foreign policy for half-a-century, but now this is being questioned. The Jamait-e-Islami (JI) chief, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, surprised observers recently when he visited the Foreign Office to deliver a "lecture" to the officer corps and made a strong case for peace with India, rather than submit to the "dictates" of the United States. It is the same JI that organised street protests against the famous Lahore bus yatra of the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, in February 1999. Of course, Mr. Hussain did blame India for its "inflexibility" but implied in his exhortation was the suggestion for a fresh thinking in dealing with New Delhi.

The shift may for now be confined largely to the English press and the elite that is not (yet) part of the establishment — the Urdu press continues to passionately espouse the line Kashmir banega Pakistan (Kashmir will be part of Pakistan) and that India will disintegrate under the weight of its own contradictions.

Yet, the debate in Pakistani society on the India policy is perhaps unprecedented. Undoubtedly, 9/11 and its aftermath have been major factors. They have not only triggered the discussion but also defined its parameters.

It is important to understand that the debating club is agreed that India is determined to extract maximum mileage from what is perceived as the "universal phobia" about Islamic terrorism, no matter what Pakistan does.

It believes that the Vajpayee Government would like to keep the `Pakistan pot' boiling for the next 20 months with an eye on the general elections. Despite this, intellectuals in Pakistan are increasingly urging the military establishment to seriously rethink its India policy. It is precisely to end the "vicious cycle" and deprive India of any "excuses" that appeals for a rethink are being made.

The crux of the arguments put forward by the intelligentsia boils down to just one proposition. Can Pakistan sustain its policy of `jehad' in Kashmir in the post 9/11 world? The unambiguous answer is no. They are convinced that the Kashmir policy has become redundant. The thinking is that if the military establishment could get away with a u-turn on Afghanistan, after a telephone call from the U.S. President, George W. Bush, it could well do so in the case of India and Kashmir too.

Najam Sethi, Editor, Daily Times, and the weekly, Friday Times, even suggested in one of his editorials that if India was agreeable to a realistic dialogue, the Kashmir issue could be settled and perhaps peace could be negotiated without "redrawing" the boundaries. In other words, converting the Line of Control (LoC) into an international boundary.

As Ayesha Siddiqa-Agha, a strategic affairs expert, put it, "if Islamabad were to accept the LoC as the international boundary, the world believes the Kashmir problem will go away. For the past many years, the LoC has been practically the de facto border between the two neighbours. If the military relents and subscribes to this line of thinking it would mean undoing all that Pakistan has come to believe in over the past 56 years".

But Mr. Sethi's logic was unquestionable. "Confronted by Washington, Pervez Musharraf wisely about-turned on our Afghan policy. And since the Taliban, Al-Qaeda, Afghan mujahideen and Kashmir jehadis were all cut from the same anti-Western cloth, it was time to start thinking on how to wrap up our pro-active Kashmir policy before it ended undermining dividends reaped from abandoning the Afghan policy. But unfortunately, that hasn't happened," he wrote.

M. P. Bhandara, a member of the National Assembly, hit the nail on the head when he made a strong case for the military to get down to taking on the `jehadis' or risk international isolation. In a dispassionate analysis of Pakistan's state of affairs in the context of the changed world scenario, he lamented that the issue of `jehad' had never been seriously debated in civil society, the press or the Islamic Ideology Council.

"As a corollary to the above (aftermath of 9/11), it follows that our projection today should be the reverse of our high profile of the 1980s when we were flush with victory in Afghanistan. This means that the armed lashkars and jehadis of various hues have to be recognised as enemies of the state. It is high time the Riot Act was read to them. Article 256 of the Constitution absolutely prohibits the formation of private armies. There can be only one writ in Pakistan, the majesty of the Basic Law," he wrote in the Dawn.

These are but a few examples. Several commentaries in the Pakistani press were critical of Islamabad's recent decision to expel the Indian Deputy High Commissioner and three others in retaliation. They argued that "an eye for an eye" was not diplomacy but jungle law. Mushahid Hussain, Information Minister under former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and member-elect to the Pakistan Senate, did not mince words in his latest column in The Nation. Mr. Hussain has joined Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali's party and his candid views on poverty of ideas in the Foreign Office is yet another reflection of the growing debate on the India policy.

``Pakistan's India policy has been based on two planks: seeking a dialogue and a tit for tat approach. As for dialogue, domestic political compulsions have driven the BJP's Pakistan policy with Hindutva hawks seeking to capitalise politically by exploiting the bigoted sections of Indian society. Hence, the Indian hard line which remains unrelenting, more so given the state elections during the current year. The tit for tat approach is any easy out, because it is more reactive than proactive. Pakistan's interests would be better served by discarding this tit for tat approach..." Mr. Hussain said. He also urged the establishment to adopt a more liberal visa policy to enable greater people-to-people contacts.

Of course, the calls for a new India/Kashmir policy have had little impact on the `jehadi' mindset. In a speech delivered on February 5 — Kashmir solidarity day — the former Lashkar-e-Taiba chief, Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, reportedly said, "we are about to unleash a spate of suicide attacks in India to undertake the holy duty. God willing, these will cost you (Mr. Vajpayee) and your Army dearly".

Where does it all lead? Realistically speaking, the Foreign Office has a limited role to play as the India policy is in the military's domain. The ball is clearly in the court of the Pakistan President, Gen. Musharraf, and the military establishment. And Gen. Musharraf has said more than once that no one can survive in Pakistan by ``compromising'' on Kashmir and that he wants an immediate dialogue with India. He has also complained about the lack of "appreciation" in India for the "enormous risks" he has taken in confronting the `jehadis'.

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