Richard Nixon, who in 1967 became the 37th President of the United States of America largely on the strength of his strident Communism-bashing, rabid advocacy of containment of the Soviet Union, and ostracising of the People's Republic of China to a point where a World War seemed imminent, astonished the world in 1972 by visiting Moscow and Beijing, uncharacteristically, for promoting co-existence, and in effect making war not inevitable. Soon thereafter, in 1973, he negotiated with the North Vietnamese the complete cessation of American involvement in Indochina - all of these initiatives simply unthinkable when Richard Nixon first captured the White House in 1967; indeed, even drawing-room talk then of such initiatives, especially breaking bread with China, would have been almost treasonable. The USA is today Vietnam's largest trading partner. China-America two-way trade accounts for almost 30% of world trade. The Pearl Harbour Night of Infamy (7 December 1941) during which the Japanese sank the American Navy is erased from the US memory by 55 years of longheaded longing across the Pacific. History is replete with instances of former foes becoming buddies and allies. Look at France and Germany, bitter enemies in two world wars, buddies and allies post-WW II!
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Consistency is not always consistent with national interest
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Russia and China are hand-in-glove with America in denying India entry into the Veto Club of the Security Council, our billion plus numbers notwithstanding. Now, how long ago was it that the PRC was year after year kept out through American veto from even the ordinary membership of the United Nations? And it was India that was year after year pleading for membership to China. Consistency is not always consistent with national interest.
Consider too the unlikely happenings of this sort, though regional in ramifications, here at home. In mid-seventies, India needed a Morarjee Desai and an Atal Behari Vajpayee, both inexperienced in foreign affairs at that stage, to mend relations with Bangladesh and China. In recent times, India needed a Jaswant Singh, whose disdain for the External Affairs establishment is well known, to explore what two of the world's biggest democracies could achieve together, an opportunity the myopic-vision-wallas in the South Block never did see. Again, it was Vajpayee, as the Prime Minister of India, who took the humble Bus to Lahore and secured the Lahore Declaration, and the January 2004 Islamabad Statement with Musharraf, both big steps toward understanding, just as Indira Gandhi - magnanimous and farsighted in victory - had earlier secured the landmark Shimla Agreement. Indira Gandhi was lonely then, and the most unlikely leader at that, for giving the bloodied Bhutto a reprieve, when more punishing and disgrace seemed well deserved! And, it was L. K. Advani, perceived the hardliner where Muslims and Pakistan are concerned, who suggested to Vajpayee that he invite General Pervez Musharraf for talks to India in 2002. In the event, is it not just possible that what L. K. Advani did and said in Pakistan early this month is a deliberate extension of an earlier initiative by a former full term Home Minister, based on knowledge gained, intelligence analysed and certain conclusions reached, to enhance the security environment for the well-being of India?
On our side of the border, many Indians are still not reconciled to the 1947 Partition of India, nor forgiving the Muslims for invading and occupying various parts of the country for eleven centuries. Not having decisively fought back or seriously resisted the many invasions and the forced conversions to Islam that followed, or decisively opposed Partition, some Indians take to sloganeering, and worse, fantasising about Akhand Bharat to cover up the painful impotence of our forefathers. Pakistan, not unreasonably, interprets such aberrations to mean, "India does not accept the reality of Pakistan".
The threat to India from Pakistan stems from its theocracy. A theocratic Pakistan breeds bigotry and intolerance and provides fertile environment for sectarian violence in that country. Many of Pakistan's ills are rightly attributable to the Shia-Sunni divide, the Punjab-Sindh divide, the mainland-outlands divide; they lost East Pakistan because of the West-East divide: there is no equality in theocracy. But Pakistan routinely and not reasonably blames India for all this and more.
In the event, a secular Pakistan is what we all must work for. And in this regard, what L. K. Advani did in Pakistan - acknowledging that Pakistan was a sovereign nation and "an unalterable reality of history" is path-breaking, a comfort to the Pakistanis; reminding his select audience in Karachi with the truth that the founder of their State wanted Pakistan to be a secular State by quoting two key paragraphs from Mohammed Ali Jinnah's 11 August 1947 Address to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, which paragraphs categorically imply commitment to secularism and equality, should be music to Indian ears.
Indeed, India should draw on board the USA and Europe for a global campaign to cajole Pakistan to return to the sane path of equality and secularism Pakistan's founder charted for his country at its founding. Such a campaign will receive wide support and gratitude of the people of Pakistan. The flame of democracy that is kept alive by some freedom-loving Pakistanis in the martial-law-like conditions deserves to be raised firmly higher, all over. President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair will be far more successful, and faster, in persuading countries in the Middle East to democratise if they first shed their preference for generals and clerics in Pakistan, their protégé and ally. After founder Jinnah and his top aide Liaquat Ali Khan (assassinated on 16.10.1951), the few civilians who rose to power duly elected were, almost by mutual consent, under jackboot control, and as such, booted out at will by the army. The conundrum in which Pakistan finds itself, becoming also the object of international mistrust in recent years, is the logical consequence of the cynical administrations of successive un-elected brigands in uniform usurping power after the untimely death of Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of the State, and the 1951 assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, the first Prime Minister of Pakistan.
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President George Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair will be far more successful,
and faster, in persuading countries in the Middle East to democratise if they first shed
their preference for generals and clerics in Pakistan, their protégé and ally
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A secular Pakistan, as Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, had avowed on August 11, 1947 would have guaranteed equality to all its citizens, and introduced the freedoms and responsibilities that equality entails in law. The wisdom and clarity of that Jinnah speech, on an occasion (the inauguration of the Constituent Assembly of the new State) that was sacred to the outstanding Constitutionalist that he was, and which should be sacred at all times for all Pakistanis, bears repeating here:
"Now, if we want to make this great State of Pakistan happy and prosperous…if you will work in cooperation, forgetting the past, burying the hatchet, you are bound to succeed. If you change your past and work in a spirit that everyone, no matter to what community he belongs, no matter what relations he had with you, no matter what is his colour, caste or creed, is first, second and last a citizen of this State with equal rights, privileges and obligations…We shall work in that spirit and in course of time all these angularities of the majority and minority communities, the Hindu community and Muslim community will vanish…You may belong to any religion or caste or creed; that has nothing to do with the business of the State…"
Sadly for the subcontinent, Jinnah did not live for long after making this declaration of a great vision for the State he almost single-handedly carved out of India, dying exactly 13 months to the date after August 11, 1947. Still, just as the Constitution we proclaimed on 26 January 1950, or the American Declaration of Independence of 1776 and the even earlier Magna Carta of 1215 are sacred scriptures for nations and peoples to live by, Jinnah's address to the Pakistan Constituent Assembly is sacred, and an inspiring, practical guide for Pakistan. Who can tell what Jinnah would have done, had he lived for a few years more, to give substance to what he declared as the national purpose in the Constituent Assembly? Most certainly, he would have shaped the country as he had wanted, and importantly, he could.
More sadly, for most years of its existence, the successive grabbers of power in Pakistan have dictated that Pakistanis live not by what the Quaid-e-Azam prescribed as a way of life for his people but by conduct that Jinnah would have found reprehensible; sometimes it appears that the only connection between the Founder of Pakistan and those who ruled or rule after him is the Jinnah photo they prominently display everywhere for a variety of self-serving ends. The Pakistan of today bears no semblance to the Pakistan its founder fervently wanted his State to be. But that only means a temporary distortion, a dislocation: history verily encompasses centuries, not just decades. The Muslims of Pakistan, in a decade or two, even earlier, will breakout of the quagmire they are stuck in; look at what is happening in Iran, officially a State ruled by the clerics!
That founding father's words are relevant for Pakistan today, even more so, for they succinctly diagnosed in his prescription the essentials of what ailed his people, and what he was, precisely and accurately, apprehensive about. Anyone carefully studying the Quaid-E-Azam's specific words quoted above in context against what is most ailing Pakistan all these decades on an increasingly alarming scale will realise how imperative it is for the Pakistanis to get back to their founder's prescribed path as a way of life for his people. For the path of cooperation, of forgetting the past, the burying of hatchet, and the categorical implication of equality and secularism he charted in that historic speech to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan is the only path that will lead to Pakistan's happiness and prosperity. Fifty-five years later, and after 9/11, the wise and the liberal in much of the Muslim world are prescribing the same Jinnah-charted path for lifting their respective countries out of incendiary pits. And the rest of the world is waiting, and watching. India cannot, and must not be indifferent.
Indeed, India must do all we can to make Pakistan secure, secular, happy and prosperous. Despite the past, we also must bury the hatchet. Akhand Bharat is an illusion we must discard. There are lessons from our own past we can hardly ignore: for more than a thousand years, from the 8th Century invasion of our motherland by a few thousand marauders from Iraq to Clive's conquest of the Moghuls in 1765, we allowed the barbaric invaders to defile us in every manner, forcibly converting millions to Islam. Come Clive and a few thousand Europeans fought and vanquished the earlier invaders and established a British empire all across India, including what is today Pakistan and Bangladesh. At no time during these invasions did the Hindus deploy even a fraction of our vast numbers to thwart the invaders or seriously fight the occupiers. So let us not hallucinate ourselves with undoing what we have merrily allowed to happen - the mass conversions to Islam, and as a long-term consequence of that indifference, the partitioning of India. Ignoring this past, or blaming Jawaharlal Nehru for all our post-WW II ills is to expose the trait we have of abdicating what responsible citizenship entails.
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So let us not hallucinate ourselves with undoing what we have merrily
allowed to happen - the mass conversions to Islam, and as a long-term
consequence of that indifference, the partitioning of India
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A prosperous Pakistan will not need theocracy as a prop. A secular Pakistan will not need the jehadis. And a Pakistan where religion is not the business of the State as Jinnah vowed, will make the land fertile for democracy. A secular, democratic Pakistan will make Jinnah's dream of happiness and prosperity for the peoples of Pakistan a distinct and speedy reality. Pakistanis deserve a lift out of the devastation and frustration of a virtually failed State. And America, Japan, China, the UK, and Western Europe must help in this effort, in the least to atone for their Cold War era intrigues against India for which agenda the propping up of the desperate, un-elected regimes in Pakistan was a handy instrument, the State and the people of Pakistan alone suffering the long-term consequences of the Anglo-American intrigue.
The Pakistani sheltering of Taleban was the unavoidable burden of theocracy; their engineering of terrorism against India a symptom of the frustrated State's failed attempts to slowdown secular and democratic India (for the inevitable comparison hurt) despite all the props the American and the Chinese had proffered in the past, and the vanity of its supercilious army. The Kargil adventure of Musharraf was the most recent example of how the armed forces justify their lust for power, and end up eating crow. Yet, in a possible new irony of history, Musharraf may just be the General who will pack the troops back to the barracks, and will come to terms with India - for a change, the Americans have told him some home truths, but they need to do more, for their own good also. In that event, Advani's visit to Pakistan, and what he did and said while there will go a long way in putting an end to the nearly six decades long destructive animosity between the two countries.
For India, there is more to the softer, wiser public face of L. K. Advani. India desperately needs and deserves a distinct two party political system for our democracy to mature evenly, and most certainly the BJP is that second party. Dr Shyama Prasad Mukherji and Deen Dayal Upadhayaya built it. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Lal Krishna Advani nurtured it to the national level in a matter of years. For the present and the near future however, only L. K. Advani has the stamina and the national stature to groom the party for the next general elections, which will be very crucial for the country because of the divisive profile and the dynastic inheritance of the Congress Party's present keeper. A modernising India needs also to shed feudal impositions.
Just as theocracy consumes Pakistan, spurious secularism is vitiating the politics in India - the Congress, the Communists and even the Socialists win elections only if they receive the Muslim vote, a distorted situation when you consider that Pakistan was created as a new homeland for the Muslims of India, and which, many, many millions of them rejected. The Congress Party, by 1962 on a weak electoral wicket after a decade and a half of Nehru's leadership, campaigned against the rising Hindu sentiment by dubbing them anti-Muslim (or anti-secular so as not to appear to be crude though in substance the charge was an unkind generalisation, and the branding unfair) to win the Muslim vote the BJP was not likely to attract. In this hunting for minority votes, secularism is distorted to the extent the minorities, mostly the Muslims of course, were pampered with retrograde social and religious concessions denied to Muslims in most Muslim countries, and rejected by most enlightened and well-off Muslims in India itself. But the powerful propaganda that the BJP is anti-Muslim and thus anti-secular vitiated electioneering, and gave the Congress Party and the Communists who thrived on the Muslim vote a stick to beat the BJP with. In turn, the BJP branded the Congress and the Communists pseudo-secularists, an increasingly appropriate indictment. Advani has now pulled out a major prop the votaries of Hindutva had provided the pseudo-secularists. He needs to do more. And for this cleansing, deserves nationwide support.
As a well read, and informed politician, L. K. Advani must be familiar with some of the ironies of history where leaders shed stated positions which fuel their ride to power, and once there, do quite the opposite if the national interest so dictates. In his fading years, Mao Tse-Tung, the founder of the People's Republic of China, who mesmerised a billion Chinese into toiling, hardships and self-sufficiency with strident anti-Americanism (paper tigers, barking dogs) continued to spread the red carpet for former President Nixon and members of his family even as Mao was physically enfeebled and Nixon was in disgrace at home, having resigned as President to avoid impeachment, characteristically, for lying and obstructing the course of justice in the Watergate Scandal. Nixon had opened America to China, and Mao, China to America. Advani deserves the nation's commendation as he has now boldly, and with foresight acted for what the national interest presently dictates - a settlement with Pakistan.
Born in Karachi, Lal Krishna Advani experienced first hand the trauma, hardships and displacement millions of Hindus, Sikhs and Sindhis (Muslims too) suffered as the consequence of the creation of a homeland for the Muslims. Kamla, his wife, born with a silver spoon in Karachi, was rendered homeless in 1947 and as a refugee here in the fifties was reduced to being a clerk in the Municipality of Delhi for survival. Therefore, it is presumptuous of his new critics to remind Advani of the pain of Partition. Indeed, they should forget the hurtful past as the Advanis have. India in the 21st Century is different from the India of the 8th Century or the 18th. The educated among our young are brimming with confidence, making new discoveries, meeting new challenges, scoring many successes. Our farmers are successfully absorbing new technologies, experimenting with new seeds and new inputs. We feed our billion plus with ease. Our workers are acquiring new skills and producing an array of advanced products competitively. We are now considered an exporter nation. Our teachers, scientists, managers and other professionals are making waves around the world. We matter in the world today; we will matter even more tomorrow. And we are continental in size; we are independent, free and powerful. But we need to be more realistic in our conduct, above dogma. Generous.
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In this changed world, the time has come for India (and Pakistan) to realise
that any problem that we have not been able to resolve for more than
50 years needs now a new, radical approach, perhaps a burial
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Above all, we must be creative and generous in conducting affairs of State. Ditches and fences once secured the borders in Europe, with watchtowers everywhere: a borderless Europe now behaves like a more secure continent. It is. In this changed world, the time has come for India (and Pakistan) to realise that any problem that we have not been able to resolve for more than 50 years needs now a new, radical approach, perhaps a burial. The past has created a situation where even a Manmohan Singh as Prime Minister wanting and hoping to resolve the Kashmir problem has to first shackle himself by publicly swearing commitment to protect the status quo on the borders, in effect ruling out any solution.
In the event, the outcome of all talks, meetings, visits India sponsors at even the highest level, produce no giant strides toward a solution, only statements of juggled words. The Pakistani situation in this regard is even worse: they have made wresting of the Kashmir Valley from India their prime mission (impossible!) - 50 and more years running. And the army, in effect, says they can get it, "so give us guns and money, and leave us alone to do what we think is best for you". Pakistan too juggles words, even more craftily and voluminously, to justify their petulance, the aggression in Kashmir and the engineering of terrorism they unleash on our side of the LOC. In the event, even small talk of a rational settlement alerts the Mullahs to mount the loudspeakers, verily demanding death for the traitors! That is their situation on the ground.
But we need not be the prisoner of the environment there. The nation we are blooming into allows us space to think differently. But we must first act differently. We have spent more than Rs 150,000,00,00,000 (yes, ten 0s after 150!) in the last 55 years on keeping Kashmir, and staying the problem unresolved. Now, for a change, may one suggest we invest just 5% of that amount - Rs 7,500 crore only - in the next three years, exclusively through the Department of Tourism of the Government of India to build in Kashmir infrastructure for 20,000 well-heeled tourists a day!
The Indians are on the prowl - and the world is eyeing them with hope and joy. Kashmir is the place for dream holidays, for adventure, sports, and romance. If the infrastructure is there, and popular Kashmiri support for all this, which is surely assured on purely economic and practical grounds, the new mobile Indian will flood the destination, enriching the poverty-stricken people of the valley. Once there are first class facilities for tourists, our tourism publicists - among the best in the world now - will do the logical rest. Kashmiris will thrive when there are massive tourist inflows, which only a continental India, millions of its citizens with travel-lust and deep pockets can generate. And when this happens, the Kashmiris themselves will police the State better than the Indian Army ever can - making the state safe for visitors and safer for locals.
More, such steps as above will prepare the Kashmiris for the now universally accepted method of resolving issues: referendum, an internationally monitored, one point, referendum: "Join India with a massive Yes vote or join Pakistan, and be gone with them forever; but do not blackmail us with talk of Independence and all that nonsense, we will simply not tolerate it, come what may", should be our firm new refrain. And if they do not vote a clear YES for India in such a referendum, then we must be sensitive and proud enough to realise that they do not want to be with us. And gracefully accept that verdict. This is the age of the Rose Revolution, the Pink Resolution, and the Cedar Revolution - surely we do not want any of that here. But first, offer the carrot. We can afford to.
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Advani may have realised, as every intelligent Indian must realise at least tomorrow, that
there is a high cost, great risk, and unpredictable consequence for India too if the
nearly-six-decades-long
reciprocal animosity with Pakistan continues
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While holding an important office and wielding power, a few incumbents also learn, make useful discoveries. As the Home Minister of India, when Pakistani military infiltrators had sneaked the Kargil heights, and the Pakistan-sponsored and trained jehadis had mounted the extremely provocative and reckless armed attack on the Indian Parliament House in the very heart of New Delhi, Advani may have realised, as every intelligent Indian must realise at least tomorrow, that there is a high cost, great risk, and unpredictable consequence for India too if the nearly-six-decades-long reciprocal animosity with Pakistan continues. In the circumstance, we must act today in a manner that will solve this problem now so that we do not cause an occasion for the youth of today to damn you and me in 2010, 2020 or in 2050 for being unimaginative, impotent over Kashmir. Advani may have also thought, as this writer has, of some such new approach to end the tension, acrimony and conflict that is unduly taxing us in time, money, and emotion. And opportunities lost.
And if Advani's acceptance of the invitation from Musharraf, and his movements and speeches there, are in response to such a realisation, which this writer suspects they are, then the country must embrace this new charioteer of peace with Pakistan. After the Agra fiasco, Musharraf blamed Advani for the failed talks. Yet, not long thereafter, the General invited Advani and family to Pakistan, and pressed the invitation when the invitee took time to decide. Who knows, our little Book of Ironies may yet have a new chapter: "How Advani and Musharraf Waged Peace."
Nice: 21 June 2005. |