So, at last, General Musharraf has spoken. His televised address was intended as much for a domestic as for an international - specifically American - audience. It calls for analysis. Most of his one-hour address was aimed at his fellow countrymen. He recalled the words of Pakistan's founder, Mohamad Ali Jinnah and of the poet Iqbal. Pakistan, he said, would not be a theocratic state; he did not mention one of his presidential predecessors by name, but it was President Zia who had set the country on he road towards it, and one can admire Musharraf for his current zeal to make Pakistan a progressive, modern and dynamic nation.
To emphasise his point, Musharaff has asserted that Madrassas should not be used for spreading religious fundamentalism and that, in future, opening of any new Madrassa would need a government No-Objection Certificate. Bully to him. If such an order had been passed by the Government of India or any State Government, it would have been damned as anti-minority or communal.
But Musharraf knows what is good for his country. After suffering the depredations of foreigners he has now ordered that foreign students seeking admission to Pakistani madrassas should first get government's permission. Which is just as well. Under the patronage of Osama bin Laden scores of Madrassas had been opened both in Afghanistan and Pakistan which had been hotheds of terrorism. Musharraf has now woken up to the danger. He wants Madrassas to open up sufficiently to keep up with the times; one can only wish Musharraf well in his current attack on fundamentalism.
Aware that his speech might evoke violence in the streets he had wisely ordered the arrest of over 200 recognised jihadists, but apparently his address has gone down well with the country's intelligentsia. If only Musharraf can set his country on the path of secularism and technological progress, he would have rendered the greatest service to his motherland. In addition, Musharraf has banned the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jais-e- Mohammad (as also two other organisations of purely domestic relevance), condemned what he has chosen to call the Kalashnikov culture and unveiled, all told, a dramatic package of social and religious reforms unprecedented in Pakistan's tortured history.
It is clear that Musharraf wants to take Pakistan into a new era of progress and prosperity in which religion, fundamentalism, the gun-culture and terrorism become things of the past. In this one can only wish him success. So far as India is concerned what is satisfying is Musharraf's promise that he will not allow Pak territory to be used for terrorist activity, though one wonders whether that includes Pakistan Occupied Kashmir. His statement that "Pakistan will not allow its territory to be used for any terrorist activity in the world" will now be most carefully watched.
Will he, for example, disband all those terrorist camps which, in the past, had sprung up both in Pakistan and in POK? Will he deport all foreigners - Arabs, Afghans, Algerians et al - who once were active participants in Kashmir-targetted terrorism with immediate effect? Musharraf should know that he is being watched to see whether his words are going to be translated into action. Perhaps they will; one could discern earnestness in his address. And perhaps India should give him sufficient elbow room to carry out his new-found mission. Miracles are not wrought in public affairs. It needs time for his views to sink into the average Pakistani mind and India should be generous in giving it to him. But what India should worry about is Musharraf's comments on Kashmir.
True, he has set himself against terrorism and state-sponsored attacks on Jammu & Kashmir civilian targets. But he obviously can't rid himself of his obsession with Kashmir which, he says, "runs in our blood". If that is so, it is time he gets a different kind of blood transfusion so that the blood is, once and for all, rid of Kashmir, and is free of it. To claim that Kashmir runs in his blood is over-dramatisation. Perhaps it is intended to balance his anti-terrorism stance and to make his Kashmir-obsessed army commanders to feel more at peace.
If that statement was made by exiled Kashmir Pandits, or the community of Saraswats who claim Kashmir as their homeland, it would make sense. But for Musharraf, a Delhi-born Pakistani to make such a statement is, to say the least, ridiculous. Neither Musharraf nor the Punjabi-dominated Pakistan Army, nor any Pakistani whether from Baluchistan, Sind or the Northwest Frontier Province can make such a ridiculous claim. And the sooner Musharraf bids farewell to Kashmir, the better it would be for prospects of peace and prosperity in south Asia. Just as ridiculous is Musharraf's insistence that he would never "budge an inch" from his "principled stand on Kashmir". There is no principle involved in his stand. He has no locus standi in matters relating to Kashmir.
Pakistan never had it and Musharraf should not fool himself in this regard. He would be wise to read and re- read the recently declassified British documents from the period 1947 to 1965 which clearly show how Britain willfully connived at the Pakistan strategy of seizing Kashmir, beginning with the so-called tribal invasion of the state. But for the extremely partisan role of the "rogue" Minister for Commonwealth Relations, Philip Noel-Baker, Kashmir would not have become a problem today.
It was Baker, according to the documents, who masterminded the perpetuation of Kashmir as a dispute in the United Nations, not just in clear violation of the Indian Independence Act passed in the British Parliament, but pathetically enough, also in defiance of his own Prime Minister, Clement Attlee and his cabinet colleagues. And it is important to note that in 1947 even the United States questioned the tribal attack - backed, of course, by the Pakistan Army - on Jammu & Kashmir. All that is now attributed to the compulsions of the Cold War but what Musharraf should realise and remember is that no 'principle' was involved in that treachery and thrusting a knife in India's back.
In 1947-48 Britain deliberately chose to ignore the implications of the clandestine war launched by Pakistan, that was increasingly to lead to the latter's full-scale attack on Jammu & Kashmir. But now, if we interpret Musharraf's address aright, that should be a thing of the past. But Musharraf must first establish his credibility. And to do so, he must leave Jammu & Kashmir alone. He just has no business trying to give so-called 'freedom- fighters' in Jammu & Kashmir "political and moral support".
If he expects India to concede him that right, he must also concede to India its right to give "political and moral support" to the mujahideens in Sind who want to secede. If Kashmir is in Musharraf's blood, Sind is even more so in L. K. Advani's blood; at least Advani, like thousands of Hindu Sindhis who have settled in India, can legitimately claim that Sind is in their blood.
The truth of the matter is that the Jammu & Kashmir "dispute" was artificially created by the British and was later supported by the United States for their own Cold War purposes. That doesn't give it any legitimacy. Musharraf would be wise to leave Jammu & Kashmir strictly alone and mind his own business in restructuring Pakistan polity to rise to the times.
As Musharraf himself admitted in his address, his country is in a pathetic state, its economy ruined, its people in sad disarray. That situation is crying loud to be straightened out. His immediate attention should he to focus on the economic development of his country. In any event India does not expect him to turn over a new leaf in the matter of Jammu & Kashmir overnight. St. Paul may have seen the light on the road to Damascus but no one expects Musharraf to wear a halo round his head in the immediate future. If he has to say some strong words regarding Kashmir, he is welcome to do so, as long as he does not expect us to take him seriously.
Jammu & Kashmir is not his business and if he is wise, he would leave well alone. There is nothing for him to discuss about the future of Kashmir with the Indian Prime Minister; there is nothing, in fact, "to negotiate". The state legally, morally and in every other way, belongs to India and is part and parcel of it. If there are differences between the Centre and the state, these things can be quietly worked out without outside interference.
That is why India has consistently refused to have outside mediation. Accepting such mediation is contradicting India's "principled stand" - that is a phrase one can legitimately borrow from Musharraf - that Jammu & Kashmir's future is not negotiable. All that is really left to be done is for Pakistan to vacate its aggression and let the territory it now occupies revert to Indian jurisdiction. That would be a wise and correct step to take. It would restore happy relations between India and Pakistan and enable both countries to make fast industrial and economic progress.
Successive governments in Islamabad
had fooled themselves into believing that force can dictate terms to India.
By now, one hopes, wisdom has dawned on Pakistan's rulers. Musharraf would
be even wiser to hold general elections in his country and let a democratically-elected
government take over the reins of power. He could then happily retire -
and perhaps India would be generous enough to rebuild his old home in Old
Delhi for him to live in style. That, indeed, would be a fitting end to
fifty years of angst-ridden relationship between India and Pakistan. How
about it, General?