In self-destruct mode

Pakistan’s Kashmir chant turns boring

Be watchful that the roll of the juggernaut on the other side does not generate a backlash on the Hindu fringe, which is exactly what Pakistan wants

Just when New Delhi is contemplating its response on Pakistan, comes the latest assessment by Standard and Poor, placing Pakistan so far down in sovereign ratings as to be a cause for general concern. Surely an outfit like Standard and Poor must represent the distillate of where Pakistan stands in the eyes of Western financial institutions. "In the past three years multilateral flows have been disrupted by the Army’s nuclear test", says the report.

Cross-border terrorism, Shia-Sunni clashes, highest public sector debt and much more have all been cited as having contributed to the dismal picture. This disturbing economic picture is compounded by unbridgeable political fissures along linguistic, ethnic and communal lines.

Globally, the country stood exposed after Kargil. The Clinton administration in its final months had recognised Pakistani intransigence. Not only among the developed West, Pakistan was also being gradually isolated among Muslim countries. Since the Casablanca Summit at least, the OIC had demonstrated a sense of boredom with Islamabad’s continuous chant on Kashmir.

‘Should not Pakistan be saved from the impending implosion?’ an American scholar asked me. ‘Surely it is in India’s interest to help Pakistan come back from the brink’.

Of course, an economically viable, stable, Pakistan is in India’s interest, I said. But what can India do if the authors of the Pakistani state see hostility to India as an essential ingredient in Pakistan’s national self-definition. My personal attitude towards Pakistan has evolved from my childhood. My first exposure to Pakistan was through its cricket team which arrived in Lucknow to play a Test match on a ground next to the Gomti river. Lucknow in those days had three very colonial hotels — Carlton, Royal and Burlington, in that order of excellence. Since the visitors were staying at Royal, that precisely was where we were headed (having bunked classes) on a frenetic autograph hunt.

The main lounge at Royal had a large, semicircular bar, lined with wooden stools on which, to our great delight, sat several members of the Pakistan team, including a dashing looking pair, Maqsood Ahmad and Fazal Mahmood, sipping beer from large, frosted glasses.

For us school boys from backgrounds where drinking was a taboo, the image of players from the Islamic Republic sipping beer in public was a wickedly exciting sight.

It was years later that I realised that in the early 50s Partition had registered with us only as some sort of a temporary drifting away. Architects of the Islamic Republic or of Hindu India had not got down to the business of setting up their respective edifices. The Pakistani players sipping beer at the Royal were actually creatures of Lahore cosmopolitanism who had not yet had the Mullahs breathing down their necks.

I saw my uncle plant the sapling of electoral politics in his first assembly election from Rae Bareli in 1952. From that day onwards I never had any doubt that India’s diversities would be mediated through an ever-strengthening democratic process.

The picture on the other side was different. When I visited some aunts in Karachi who had drifted in that direction by the simple affiliation secure in the notion that the Ganga-Jamuna culture they had left behind could somehow be reconstructed on the sands of Karachi and Sind. This delusion of theirs was fed by the presence in their midst of such icons of Avad culture as Josh Malihabadi.
But the brutal crackdown by the ‘Punjabi’ Army on the Muslims of East Bengal (now Bangladesh) in 1971 inaugurated the process of various ethnic, linguistic groups to regard themselves against the looming backdrop of Punjabi dominance:
J osh Malihabadi wrote:
‘‘Yun Karachi mein hoon jis/tarah se kufey mein Hussain’’ (I feel in Karachi exactly as the Prophet’s grandson Hussain must have felt among the betrayers of Kufa in Iraq).

Sub-continental Islam, steeped in the linguistic and cultural hues of Hindustan, was of insufficient strength to hold together the Muslim state. Arabised Islam, cleansed of its Hindustani civilisational baggage was the answer. Maqsood Ahmad would no longer be seen sipping beer at the Royal bar.

The defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan gave this burgeoning Islamic fervour and its mentors, the ISI, a boost beyond measure. The Jehadi juggernaut lurched into Kashmir in 1989.

Local discontent, stoked and fueled by trans-border militancy is a lethal mix, not easy to manage. Indian mismanagement compounded the problem. For paramilitary forces working under pressure, local units of hospitality to externally sponsored terrorism becomes indistinguishable from the common citizenry. Alienation follows.

Even so, a great deal of ground had been retrieved in Kashmir in the past few years. Tourism was picking up. Vajpayee’s bus journey to Lahore would have consolidated on these gains but the project was scuttled in Kargil.
Let us face it. The roll of the bus to Lahore and the roll of the Islamic juggernaut are violently antithetical processes. The purpose of one is to retard the progress of the other.

This being the state of play, what credence should one give to anything resembling a peace overture from Islamabad. In any case, why would General Pervez Musharraf, who authored (or was the instrument of) Kargil be embarked on something for which he has so severely punished Nawaz Sharief? Is there a general amnesia on this count?

The world community, fearful of a nuclear armed Pakistan on an unstoppable Islamic spiral, hopes that an Indian overture to Pakistan, even a compromise, will have the effect of circumscribing the spiral, of making it finite.
Ask the world community to read the three recent articles written by Gen Javed Nasir, former Director General of ISI. It is clear as daylight that Kashmir is only a staying post. The project is actually to unravel the world’s greatest experiment in democracy and multi-culturalism which includes the world’s second largest Muslim population.

What then should India do? Wait till that trans-border terrorism ends. In the meanwhile calm the waters in India, including Kashmir. Be watchful that the roll of the juggernaut on the other side does not generate a backlash on the Hindu fringe, which is exactly what Pakistan wants. Patience, patience, and slow movement on the SAARC track.

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