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Cover Story

Guns are Silent – Again!

Over the years, hundreds of diplomats and other experts of India and Pakistan have tried to normalise relations. None of them have succeeded.

By Kiran Doshi | May 2021

Once more guns have fallen silent along the LoC in Kashmir, and there are rumours of talks between India and Pakistan to normalise relations. The world has lost count of the number of times they have tried to do so. Wags say that hostility is the normal between the two countries. Sadly, they are right.

India has paid a heavy price : communal disharmony in the country, rise of religious extremism and, not infrequently, setbacks in attempts to play a greater role in the world at large.

Pakistan too has paid a heavy price. It has become an international basket case, increasingly dependent on foreign handouts (with strings attached). It has also become a hybrid polity, often described as ’an army with a country’. And it has become a hub of Islamic terrorism: violent, grotesque — the terrorists have killed thousands of Pakistanis too — and hopelessly backward.

Over the years, hundreds of diplomats and other experts of the two countries have tried to normalise relations. None of them have succeeded, for the simple reason that they have no power to tackle the root cause of the problem — which was described in crystal clear terms in Nehru’s letter to President Eisenhower in 1958: ‘Every government that comes to power in Pakistan bases itself on this policy of hatred against India . . . Kashmir and other matters between India and Pakistan are the result, and not the basic cause, of Pakistan’s hostility to India. The atmosphere has been worsened further by the incitement by Pakistan of subversion and sabotage in Kashmir and by speeches by Pakistan’s leaders advocating holy war against India . . .’

Nothing has changed since 1958. Pakistanis are still being trained to hate India — and Hindus (the two words, along with the word ‘enemy’, having become virtually synonymous in Pakistan). And leaders of all hues in Pakistan are still out-shouting each other to publicly voice Pakistan’s claim to Kashmir . . . No, one thing has changed. India has turned tough, Israel-like, warned Pakistan of tit for tat reprisals in case of any more terrorist attacks in India by fanatical groups nurtured by Pakistan, and cut off all but the most unavoidable contacts with Pakistan.

So why is India once more sitting down for talks with Pakistan? Not being privy to secrets of that kind any longer, I can only hazard a guess: India is being urged by common friends to defreeze its relations with Pakistan. Of course, the more important question is why Pakistan wants to have talks with India? For ‘internal reasons’? (which is always possible.) To get India to cough up Kashmir? Or because Pakistan is genuinely interested in having a normal, stable relationship with India?

arjun-asraniIf it is genuinely interested in that, it can achieve it without any help from India. For Pakistan is in the driver’s seat. India is only a strapped up passenger in the death seat by its side. All that Pakistan has to do is take a U turn, and . . .

. . . tell the people of Pakistan some basic truths, starting with ‘There are many paths to God and all of them are equally sacred’ and ending with ‘A thousand things bind Hindus and Muslims; the few things that divide them are artificial’.

. . . then do a few things (without waiting for India’s nod), e.g. make the ceasefire permanent, punish the terrorists guilty of murderous attacks in India, really ban every terrorist organization in Pakistan, close down madrassas that teach hate, allow Indian goods and services to enter Pakistan, facilitate trade between India and Afghanistan and beyond . . .

I need not go on. The list of what Pakistan could do to normalise relations with India can be drawn up by almost anybody in Islamabad. I promise that Pakistan won’t be disappointed with the response from India. Pakistan will not get Kashmir, but it will get a lot else, like prosperity, progress, peace of mind, dignity, genuine respect in the comity of nations . . . Look at Bangladesh. See what sound, non-aggressive, policies have helped it to achieve.

To take that U-turn, Pakistan would require great courage, for it would be up against some powerful institutions that have grown fat from the policy of hostility to India. But it would also have the support of millions of well-minded people — in Pakistan as well as in India — who want their children and grandchildren to have the best opportunities and who therefore yearn for the two countries to become good neighbours, like, say, the USA and Canada. The time to do so is now, before our world is engulfed by one or more of the calamities coming our way; the corona pandemic, climate change, grave food shortage, water shortage . . . Just make those first sensible moves, Pakistan. Then wait for India to catch up.

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