Blind date at the Taj

Boys versus men, or why Pakistan’s leaders need to grow up

SHEKHAR GUPTA

WHEN the red carpets are rolled out for Musharraf today, the contrast between the two delegations will be hopelessly stark. And it will not exactly be about the numbers — we Indians are always supposed to outnumber the Pakistanis anyway. It will be about age, certainly, then stature, experience, survival instinct and so on.

While Musharraf may hold six offices — the cruel joke being that even if he added six more he couldn’t become a Punjabi, the ultimate determinant of power in Pakistan — he would do well to closely survey the somewhat geriatric, but very astute rival army of interlocutors. President Narayanan, who rose from a background that would make a log cabin look like the White House, through four decades in foreign service and four years overseeing the many transitions in coalition politics. Advani and George Fernandes, fitter in their 70s than most soldiers, but with a half century each in public life, in power and out of it, some of it in Mrs Gandhi’s jails. Then there is Jaswant Singh, with a short but distinguished service in the army — actually, the cavalry — rising to a rank no higher than major, and following up with an entirely self-made career in politics, the world of strategic studies and now diplomacy. And finally, Vajpayee himself, the last of our Long Marchers, with another half century in politics, from the freedom movement to student politics to 12 Lok Sabha campaigns, including two defeats, a stint in jail fighting the
Emergency, and so on.

These are not perfect people and certainly this writer, as any other in India, has made his living cursing and criticising each one of them at some point of time. But experience in public life is an interesting virtue and it is worth pausing to consider how Musharraf’s mere two years place him in comparison. His foreign minister has been around a bit longer, in the foreign service and then popping up each time the establishment of the day wanted to send a tough message to India, and the constituency back home. He is a formidable figure in his own right, but that is purely at a diplomatic level. Overall, the mismatch is stark and colossal. Here is why it is also worrying.

MILITARY men are congenitally contemptuous of politicians. In how many Hollywood films have you heard the dashing general, from Patton to Montgomery to Rommel to MacArther, protest, ‘‘but I am not a bloody politician.’’ Politicians are old, vile, dishonourable, lazy, flabby, so unsoldierlike. History tells us this. In the case of the Pakistani soldiery, this prejudice gets compounded by the larger, deeper contempt of the Hindu, the dhoti-clad, wily but cowardly lala stereotype. This is where miscalculations begin.

Ayub made his in 1965. Nehru, with his anglicised background, had seemed a more formidable, a more equal character. But the arrival of Shastri emboldened Ayub and Bhutto. How could a short, dhoti-clad, lentil-eating, soft-spoken Shastri, nursing an army still reeling under the 1962 drubbing, handle a resurgent, militaristic Pakistan? That war in 1965, as so many authentic accounts from Pakistani participants tell us, grew out of that belief. But by the time peace came it was Ayub who had diminished in stature while Shastri had grown. Even 1971 was a story of typical military underestimation of an elected politician, in this case a woman to compound the contempt. ‘‘If that woman wants war, I will see her in the battlefield,’’ was Yahya Khan’s famous, disdainful outburst that inspired Mrs Gandhi to call in Manekshaw and fix the D-day.

Zia, actually, has been the only Pakistani general who understood the power of this very chaotic, confused India and its leadership. He visited India more times than all the other Pakistani rulers, including this one now. Altogether he came five times between 1982 and ’87 and each time his objective was to avoid war. He knew a mismatched war would be disastrous for Pakistan. He also understood the importance of the other, enormously more fruitful and almost riskless war his country was fighting at Uncle Sam’s expense. The spoils of the Afghan jehad were essential to his strategy of rebuilding Pakistan. For India, he chose the calibrated proxy war, preferring Punjab to Kashmir as that was less likely to attract international censure, howsoever shrill India’s protests were. But, perhaps, because he had seen the enormous popular power of Bhutto in his heyday or because he was now acknowledging the courage of the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD), he was never disdainful of the Indian system or its leaders. He himself used to recount, with great delight, an unequal exchange he had had with Giani Zail Singh on one of his visits shortly after Mohammed Khan Junejo had been sworn in prime minister through a partyless election.

‘‘Now I am like you, a naam-ka-vaaste (titular) president. The prime minister has all the powers,’’ he told Zail Singh, obviously to pull his leg at a time when he was battling with Rajiv Gandhi.

‘‘But there is a difference. My job is only for five years. You could have yours for ever,’’ replied Zail Singh. Nothing, the mischief, the irony, the sarcasm was lost on Zia.

THERE is something about public life, street politics, parliamentary exposure that teaches people the art of negotiation, persuasion, even diplomacy and evasion that no course in the military or foreign service academies can match. It also toughens them the way no commando training can. In the India-Pakistan context, Musharraf and his boys failing to estimate the viciousness with which India responded to Kargil, rejecting ceasefire offers, lining up a hundred artillery guns to blast the top off a single peak, unleashing the air force, the stoicism in the face of the early setbacks and casualties is only one aspect of the problem. The more significant one is the fact that in the absence of a matching cast of characters the bilateral exchanges have often been uneven.

After a 54-year history of hostility we do not have a set of leaders on both sides who know each other, or who enjoy any sense of continuity in their bilateral discourse. The same Indian leaders have had to deal with a different Pakistani every few years. In fact, the last Pakistani leader who could claim some experience in this business was Ayub or, more accurately, before him Fazle Haq because the other veteran Khan Wali Khan, never really rose to national stature. Nawaz and Benazir had only started the process of building a Pakistani counterpart to the Indian political pantheon, such as it was, but it was all over too soon. The India-Pakistan dialogue, therefore, has suffered from a gap that is generational, as well as temperamental. It’s a funny thought at a time when we so desperately hanker for younger leaders, but could our relationship have taken a different course if post-Ayub Pakistan had nurtured its own generation of ‘‘senior’’ leaders?

FROM what we know of Musharraf it is unlikely that he could be personally disrespectful towards Vajpayee. But when personal chemistry is all that makes or breaks summits, would he have the intellect, the open-mindedness, the humility to understand that the much older, slower, softer, so un-fauji-like Vajpayee packs experience, fortitude and credibility that no dictator by definition could ever acquire? The old politician is usually a very patient animal. But you also need patience to level with him. Does this general have that quality?

What is a summit, after all, if not an uncertain, nervous blind date. Particularly this one since not only have the two never met, almost none of the senior Indian leaders has seen Musharraf in person. Worse, Musharraf hasn’t even been exposed to the type at home or overseas since most of his travels have been to authoritarian capitals. A first-time summit is not where historic treaties are signed, not unless one side is as comprehensively defeated as Pakistan was at Shimla. First-time summits are about personal chemistry, about form, about the images that endure, or rather that one frozen image that defines it for posterity.

Gorbachev and Reagan made a mess of theirs at Reykjavik and the Soviet Union was pronounced the ‘‘evil empire’’. Then they got it all in place and the lasting image was Nancy and Raisa traipsing together, of Reagan mouthing to Gorbachev his most eloquent one-liner ever (predictably no more than three words): daveryay no praveryay, trust but verify. Similarly, Rabin and Arafat shook hands for the cameras in Clinton’s presence but then the hands separated the moment they thought the cameras were gone. Unfortunately, that remained the frozen image.

It is this that all of us, the cameras and the instant historians, will be looking for these two days. How they smile at each other? Does one lean across the table to whisper something? How does Musharraf seem at Raj Ghat, respectful or stiff and formal as a fauji at an unavoidable drill? In short, can the frozen, lasting image of this summit alter the bad one that endures so far, Musharraf twirling the pistol in his hand, the cigarette in his lips. To change that he has to level better with a veteran of Vajpayee’s stature than a dictator normally would. It is this that will define the relationship that emerges from this blind date. The rest, further dates, the courtship, the consummation can then be left to the armies of faceless, nameless bureaucrats who draft agreements, treaties, joint statements.