India-Pakistan Grow Up, Please! -by Bahadar Ali Khan
The stalemate persisted during and after the fresh round of talks between foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in Islamabad. From cordial to hawkish overtures by Pakistani foreign minister didn’t help the matters either. Even during the wars, foreign offices are the only places where the tone remains calm and finds means to mitigate the razor sharpness of the relationship. This is exactly what the word ‘diplomacy’
stands for.
On the Indian side, it seems their snobbish behavior is equally deteriorating the already almost non-existent relations between bitter and nuclear South Asian rivals. Indian foreign minister’s insistence to focus talks only around the cross-border terrorism and discussing the means to circumvent the non-state actors to carry on the events of the like of 26/11 Mumbai attacks. Fair enough. But I don’t expect them to be naive enough to understand the complexity of the situation Pakistan is facing. Almost on daily basis the terrorists are exploding bombs everywhere, irrespective of the efforts done by the security apparatus of the country. We have a series of 9/11s, 7/7s and 26/11s in every nook and
corner of Pakistan for last three years. Who to blame but thyself. Of course Pakistan coined a misadventure by eulogizing the old dreams of Arab aggrandizement and subsequently translating that into a bloody civil war on its own turf. No one is safe, civil, military, minorities, majorities,
everyone is wounded. In fact the whole country is bleeding and the end doesn’t seem in sight. Now if under these circumstances India sees that these warmongers are in Pakistani state control, that would be a total miscalculation on their part.
When I recall the dream of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, to see India-Pakistan to be the two states of the likes of US-Canada or when I read Mohandas Gandhi’s fasting unto death in protest of India’s refusal to pay Pakistan’s share of resources right after the separation, all this seems like a dream now. The Muslim League and Congress leadership had different views and vision at that time of division. But then establishments on the both sides of the divide, the way they have institutionalized the hatred over the course of 60 years, is horrific and very unfortunate, to say the least.
I always had the understanding that as Pakistan always faced the Martial Law quagmire roughly once in every decade since its existence and consequently the genuine democratic leadership couldn’t emerge out to tackle the issues in a more intelligent and less belligerent way. However, this round of talks and those preceding these also broke the myth of Indian leaderships prudence and their realpolitik spell, at least in my view. Their insistence on carrying talks solely on uni-point agenda of terrorism earns them nothing on the Pakistani side. Non-state actors are powerful enough to break the shell and cause havoc anywhere in the sub-continent. The need is to bridge up differences and some confidence building
measures must be taken irrespective of what happened in the past. The fresh start is the need of the time as hostility has already kept the 1200 millions souls of the sub-continent hostage to the adventurisms of all sorts.
Indian leadership must assess the situation and bring their commercial interests to Pakistan as their top agenda. Under the fog of a chequered past they forget that Pakistan offers them a vast market for their surplus goods of their juvenile economy. A market that comprises of 180 million people, who are receptive to all kind of imports from Paan Masala to tea and from technological books to visual entertainment of all sorts. Owing to the fact that India is discovering a new romance with the West which Pakistan has already explored in its 60 years existence. One of the advantages (or disadvantages) of flirting with the Capitalist West, is to develop spending habits and credit based economies which leads to an extravagant and spendthrift life-style. And indeed Pakistanis mastered this style and are a big extravagants!. India needs to tap this luxury savvy nation and sell them the stuff at competitive prices to what currently they pay for. This would offer them huge profits because of the common border and almost no freight expense. But in order to attain this, they need to ease down the situation and show some brinksmanship on their part to win the hearts of the general Pakistani public. I don’t expect Indians to hand over Kashmir overnight, but at least show some open mindedness in this and other pending issues.
However owing to the nature of ambitious adventurism of the past, if amends are not made, things can turn really ugly for both of these countries. No doubt India has emerged as a more confidant nation on the global scale in the last 20 odd years, it still need to adapt new ways of co-existence vis-à-vis Pakistan. A Pakistan under constant pressure from the US presence in Afghanistan and an already over stretched military waging a war of its survival in the border regions cannot deliver more than what they are doing presently. Bullying Pakistan would only encourage the non-state actors to further destabilize it and would lead to a more nasty and grave situation which she could handle. An instable
Pakistan would certainly be counter productive to Indian global ambitions and designs. The only panacea is to break the status-quo and both nations should come forward with open mind and heart. As we have seen that hostility yields nothing but poverty and hunger, in which both nations don’t have any enviable record among the global community.
The irony is that both the parties are in pressure from their conservatives. PPP has a very clear stance and vision regarding relations with India, and the vision was best represented by the PPP Co Chairman Asif Zardari in a video conference after a few days of taking oath. He used a quote from Shaheed BiBi that Every Pakistani has a little Indian and every Indian has a little Pakistani in him, but the goodwill gestures was subverted by the Mumbai Tragedy, and know both are hostage of their respective hardliners, the fact is that as mentioned by the ANP provincial president and ex chairman Pakistan India peoples forum, Afrasib Khattak in his interview with Jyoti Malhotra that Indian Govt. always had dialogue with Dictators but they have avoided Political leadership. Infact wrt Pakistan situations, they consider it useles to discusse and have dialogue with civilian leaderships as they think the foreign policy as untouchable for the civilian Govt.
But they forget that any dialogue and discussion with a dictator has no political backing behind it and thus is a useless exercise , as in the case of Mush, as they claim they had significant progress in various issues but unfortunately the whole process has no proper documentation.
if only u could cut the rehtoric and grow-up.
excellent Bahadur sahib.
btw what was SM Querishi thinking when he made that stupid Pillay, Hafiz Saeed comparison comment.
The people of India, specially those born before 1947 feel that the Indo Pak tension is created and maintained by vested interest of both the countries. The division of the sub continent and the resulting mayhem was well designed mischief created by the British in early twentieth century. These days people donot take the trouble of reading history. They only hear politicians who create trouble under foreign funding. Governments are far away from people, whether it is India or Pakistan. They know their own priorities and dictates of their political masters and pay masters… Who will listen to you and me? Will common people of both the countries choose frindship or play into the hands of bureaucrats and politicians?