The author is a well-known

journalist and freelance columnist

mbnaqvi@cyber.net.pk

June 13, 2001

The 'South Asian Conference on Fundamentalism and Communalism: the Role of Civil Society' in Dhaka, called by Bangladesh's National Professor Kabir Chowdhry, early this month was a significant assertion by secular liberal opinion in the region. India, Pakistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka had sent strong delegations. Fresh from that conference, one was pleasantly surprised by Chief Executive General Parvez Musharraf's Tuesday (June 6) address at a religious gathering in Islamabad. It was later welcomed by the Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. That augurs well for the upcoming Indo-Pakistan summit in Delhi. Indeed the significance of the latter pronouncement, obviously with an eye on world opinion, transcends the summit's atmospherics. It would help the fight against religious extremisms in all their manifestations in both India and Pakistan if Islamabad actually implements these ideas. This, in its turn, would help sensible and liberal sections in all of South Asia.

It is good that Gen Musharraf has stood up to be counted. He should be praised for his forthrightness. Gone is his humming and hawing on the subject of the Jehadis and his defensive support to them. He has minced no words on the sectarian poison being spread by extremist (orthodox) religious parties. Deprecating the dangerous loose talk of some Jehadis that they will not only carry Jehad into India but would fly Pakistan flag on Delhi's Red Fort, he berated their lack of concern for its impact on Indian Muslims. It is unnecessary to emphasise how foolish this militaristic notion of conquering India by force of arms is, quite apart from the fact that there is no earthly reason why any Pakistani should want to conquer India-despite its perceived faults. That such talk can boomerang by encouraging their Indian counterparts mouthing Hindu Rashtra and Hindutva slogans. The RSS parivar would want to do something similar to what is being vacuously talked here. That the Jehadis hyperbole is nonsense should be obvious to all sober Pakistanis and Indians.

Let no one ignore the strength of a similar lunatic fringe in India. Jehadis' rhetoric would be grist to its mills. Fanatics of both the countries should actually be taken seriously. They have had such an awful record. Didn't India witness the world's largest and goriest bloodbath and history's largest ethnic cleansing in 1947? Aren't communal riots caused easily enough all over the subcontinent? How easy it has been for fanatics in Pakistan and Bangladesh to burn down churches and temples or to harass Qadianis. Their hectoring, bullying and boasting needs to be painstakingly countered.

Above all, it needs be explained what are the implications of conquering India by violent means. What shall we do with India, supposing we can conquer it? Apart from the nation's realism, the Jehadis need to be asked: do we want to be like Israelis in Palestine or European colonialists in Asia and Africa or shall we set up another Sultanate in Delhi on a crushed populace of a billion? Would not this Jehadi enterprise presuppose another all out war with India in which Pakistan is already out-gunned. Nuclear shields of both countries, thanks to fanatics on both sides have fomented extreme chauvinism and jingoism from which not even the governments are free. Both sides, as far as can be seen, would drop atomic weapons if there is a war, probably each trying to be the first to use. Do these bigots understand what a nuclear exchange will mean for Pakistan: All its big cities will get wiped out.

What happens to or in India is not relevant for this argument. This was a necessary digression. The central point is that the military, the true rulers, ought to stop the Jehadis and other militant groups in their tracks. Unless they are made to do that, Kashmiri and Pakistani people risk a descent into Afghanistan-like anarchy and unending strife by their success. But if they fail eventually, they will have brutalised all and set a multitude of groups against one another. Gun culture in any society is an evil. It needs to be nipped in the bud. In Pakistan's case the task is harder; here a big grown up tree needs to be uprooted. It may be difficult. But it has to be done-if we want to survive as a modern state that hopes to make progress.

The immediate context, to repeat, is of course the Vajpayee-Musharraf summit. For all but two years, the Musharraf government has been asking for talks with India on virtually a daily basis. The Indians always turned a deaf ear. First they said that they cannot talk to a coup maker general, with a hint of how he staged Kargil to abort the Lahore process. Later the true reason was admitted: how can an Indian PM sit down to talk with one who daily sends armed Jehadis into Kashmir who kill Indian soldiers.

Musharraf could however scarcely end the Jehad, the only card up his sleeve. What can he give in a give-and-take session with Vajpayee? But then Vajpayee has, for his own obscure reasons, changed tack and has invited the general incharge of Pakistan for talks. But would any Indian PM actually negotiate on Kashmir while Indian soldiers are being daily killed by those seen as Pakistan's proxies? This has to end first if any progress is desired.

Jehad in Kashmir has to be wound down-to nothingness, if we Pakistanis care about Kashmir's and our own future. Let Kashmiris revert to non-violent methods of protest; that will be more effective and civilised. Probably and hopefully Musharraf is signaling to Vajpayee that Jehad will be wound down in earnest of his wish for a modus vivendi with him. While Islamabad attaches great importance to Kashmir, all of it justified, no realistic negotiator can forget there are other issues of importance, some of which may be seen as more important by the other side. India certainly attaches great importance to free trade, cultural exchanges and regional economic cooperation. Indian governments have had reservations about Saarc. But this was in the context of unresolved disputes with Pakistan. But once an overall modus operandi can be evolved with it, India is likely to become a champion of a comprehensive regional integration on the European model.

But large scale Indo-Pakistan cooperation looks quite unrealistic today. It is doubtful if the Musharraf government has any such wish. All it seems to want, in the name of realism, is to de-escalate the present tensions, remain in the business of negotiations, work out a set of ground rules and understandings over the so-called restraint regime vis-‡-vis nuclear weapons and missiles and some minimal trade and cultural exchanges. These things are the minimum demands of national security as the generals define it. This is also the minimum action, apart from Afghanistan-related issues, that will satisfy the G-7 without which Pakistan economy will not get the lifeline it desperately needs.

It can be doubted that India can be persuaded to grant all that Musharraf government might actually be looking for. If Kashmir is the core issue, one point is clear: what Pakistan could not (repeatedly) win on the battlefield, India is not going to present it on a silver platter. Kashmir inevitably will be a long haul. But meaningful talks on it will only be possible - including the continuation of negotiations themselves - if Pakistan can persuade it by concrete actions in other fields that can be seen to be helpful and in India's larger interests: things like free trade, free cultural exchanges, some political cooperation, neutrality, if not acceptance of, India's regional role of pre-eminence and various other matters.

Insofar as can be ascertained, the military government is psychologically not capable of doing a comprehensive deal with India. It probably does not even want it. Nor is it strong enough to clinch it. There are however two objectives that the two governments share: first appearing to major powers to be earnestly engaged in working out a deal; just this. Secondly, both need a detente, or a limited set of agreements (CBMs), on the two rival nuclear deterrents for not allowing them to go off accidentally or being used unauthorisedly; there are a large number of specific agreements of a technical nature that are needed by both. An MOU was signed in Lahore for the purpose. There is a good chance of some of these restraint measures being agreed upon - to applause from the international gallery.

One objective needs to be shared but does not appear to be. There is an immediate necessity to arrest the growth of chauvinist and jingoistic forces in both countries. Their fountainhead - religious extremism that is now becoming terrorism - has to be dammed first. That requires inculcating religious and political tolerance of all heresies and dissent and minorities' religious rights. It is a tall order for both governments that were thrown up by forces of intolerance and indeed prejudice. And yet this is the requirement.

While one is cheered by the prospect of the Indian and Pakistani governments are getting down to, hopefully, long-drawn-out but useful negotiations. Maybe some incremental benefits will accrue, like freer travel and more cultural exchanges and a detente on the nuclear matters. But one can scarcely hope for a meeting of minds between a Pakistan Army general and a BJP leader. Disagreements on Kashmir have now graduated into near permanent war and psychoses that go with it. Kashmir is likely to go on poisoning everything else.

It is a fit case where the best minds on both sides need to delink themselves from the daily controversies of the governments and evolve a win-win formula on Kashmir in which neither side's macho boys would feel that they have suffered a defeat. For instance Air Marshal Asghar Khan's suggestion of an India-Pakistan condominium on Kashmir requires a cool and detailed probing by both sides' intellectuals for its implications and prerequisites. Such a solution would require propitious political conditions before it can be acted upon. But above and beyond Kashmir, there are other imperatives for Pakistan.

Insofar as we Pakistanis are concerned, it is probably true our politics can never become normal without a change in Kashmir's status. But then it is equally true that there is unlikely to be an Indian government that can be expected to concede, in one form or another, Kashmir to an inimical Pakistan. Not finding a resolution of this problem will mean an early war, probably a nuclear one, that at least no sane Pakistani can want. Cerebral ingenuity might show the way out.

Pakistanis need to demilitarise their politics, economy, culture and indeed minds. They need to come into their own, begin actually owning Pakistan and set it on a course that will give all the freedoms to all Pakistanis without exception, including the right to gainful employment to all able bodied adults or some social security to all unemployed women and men. In short they need a true participatory democracy free from all social, foreign or ideological bondage. A democratic resolution of Kashmir dispute will have to be a part of that process.