archive: Silence of the lambs
Silence of the lambs
Ashish Sharma
The Indian Express
June 11, 1999
Title: Silence of the lambs
Author: Ashish Sharma
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: June 11, 1999
Silence. Stunning silence. As characteristic as gunfire is to the
troubled Himalayan heights and casualty to war, or war-like situation,
is the silence of the lambs, or the doves of peace who retreat with
the first signs of the breach of misplaced trust by the other side.
More than a couple of weeks have passed since India began losing some
of its finest men in response to the Pakistani perfidy in Kargil. And
for just as long we have stopped hearing from all those who have been
advocating magnanimity as the cornerstone of our Pakistan policy. All
those who react with righteous indignation whenever any Pakistani
musician is stopped from performing in a public concert anywhere in
India.
All those who travel to Pakistan on goodwill trips and come back with
notions of cosy brotherhood which people-to-people contact between the
two nations can supposedly ensure. All those who lustily cheered Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee's historic bus ride to Lahore as the
harbinger of new harmony just as they had bemoaned Pokharan II as an
avoidable act of provocation. All those who genuinely seemed to
believe that if we didn't let political hostility come in the way of
cultural ties, even if it was scarcely reciprocated, Pakistan would
eventually be sobered into submission for the larger good.
All of a sudden, as it becomes clear that the Lahore spirit only
served as a deceptive facade for the 52-year-old Pakistani designs on
India, reactivated with all the vigour that our not-so-friendly
neighbour could summon without sounding the war cry, the talk has
shifted to the failure of assessment on the part of India. All of a
sudden, it is Vajpayee the Indian Prime Minister who is called into
question, rather than Vajpayee the statesman of the subcontinent. All
of a sudden, it is the political perseverance and administrative
acumen of Vajpayee that is at test, rather than his singular capacity
to deflate the anti-RSS-controlled-BJP bogey.
Which is just as well. For the rhetoric-ridden BJP, which seems at
pains to be everything to everybody, Kargil is yet another rude
reminder of the complexities of the real world. It can only do the
party a lot of good, as it endeavours to come through the crisis with
a show of firmness.
For the so-called secularists and Friends of Pakistan, though, it
might be altogether another story. Every Pakistani shell that pounds
the peace in Kargil, inflicts additional blows to the theorists of
India-Pakistan amity.
More specifically, the all too familiar voices that are periodically
raised to denounce the Government of India for its want of liberalism
in dealing with the globe-trotting cultural ambassadors from Pakistan.
The same voices that exhorted India to forever play the benign elder
brother to its impertinent younger sibling. The same voices that were
won over but once, in that heady brief spell which lasted until the
euphoria of the bus ride to Lahore. Even as the Indian soldiers
reclaim the strategic heights inch by embattled inch, these voices
seem to have been bombed out.
It is time for these nagging voices to find courage to own up that
they have been as mistaken as any other wishful thinker. It is time
for these voices to speak up against the Pakistani perfidy just as
they constantly do in favour of initiating overtures to our neighbour.
They have two good reasons for doing this. One, the Delhi-Lahore-Delhi
bus service is still up and running with not a seat vacant on either
side, which should give them sufficient ground for advocating the
validity of people-to-people contact.
And two, which should be even more of a motivation, if they stay
silent now, they will have lost the moral high ground to carry on with
their refrain ever again. India is waiting.
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