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Introduction: The Agra summit shows a very different peace route starting India and Pakistan in the face. Time for constructive disengagement, says Raja M
The Agra summit gifted sobering lessons. But how many listened? Another summit. Another flock of frail expectations declared dead, or considered as hope gasping in ICU. One tribe says the summit dropped the promise of golden eggs in future. The other tribe says it is bird droppings. And the bottom line reality continues being the body count in Kashmir. We’ve been here before. Do we need to get here again?
Agra showed yet again how the wall between the two brothers is too tall. We need time to grow to see each other beyond the wall. We need patience. Sure, we share blood, culture and history. But the perception wall in between appears impenetrable, for now. The recent summit emphasised it. When it comes to Kashmir, only hardliners exist both sides of the border. We saw the liberal face of Pakistan in our TV news channel live chat shows. They showed their conviction of India terrorising Kashmir. The most liberal Indian won’t believe Pakistan saying it has nothing to do with violence in Kashmir. How many Pakistanis will accept the Line of Control as the definite border for all time? How many Indians will agree the best impasse breaker is a plebiscite in Kashmir?
Agra produced the familiar cries about Kashmir. Freedom struggle says one side. Terrorism, says the other. One side is brainwashed by a military-overshadowed media. The other side’s independent media is now often losing its perspective in cut-throat electronic warfare. For better or worse, India’s independent media let General Pervez Musharraf conquer it. That India and Pakistan will experience peace is an inevitable destiny. But getting there needs a different vehicle from what’s been taking us for a ride, for half a century. Let’s face it. Constructive engagements and re-engagements are spinning us in circles. These summits may be filled with good intentions and impressive rhetoric, but are empty of substance.
The moment Kashmir appears, summit success vanishes like a ghost at cockcrow. So can we at least consider pragmatic alternatives? Call one alternative as constructive disengagement. We stop premature tail now, so we grow in maturity to talk more productively in future. The silence won’t be of hostility. It only reflects reality. To build bridges, we first need the construction material. Hasty, ill-prepared summits are destroying the construction material more than building peace bridges. So delicate and complex a creature, this summit was apparently fatally disturbed by one careless or a misunderstood statement by one Indian minister who wasn’t even part of the official delegation.
Agra may not go the same betrayal way as Lahore. But it went the same circular way as other India-Pakistan peace initiatives. Meet and only agree to meet again. Some political analysts say that’s “movement”. Reality says we haven’t budged much from 1971. It’s nice that, thirty years later, a military dictator and a respected statesman have found mutual amicability to do business together. But one of many India-Pakistan leadership riders is that people of the two nations give the mandate to make peace, but never the mandate to make deals. For all the talk of positive personal chemistry between Gen. Musharraf and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, Agra had that inevitable dark shadow of all preceding summits. A peace deal could mean a potential suicide pact, particularly for the General. Pakistani military rulers generally ride too many tigers at home, not all of them under their control.
If Gen. Musharraf had complied even tacitly on reducing violence in Kashmir, he would have been flayed for betraying the jehad. If Mr Vajpayee had agreed to the “self-determination” of the Kashmiri people, his government would have been pulled down for undermining the structure of the Indian union.
So how do we untie the Gordian Knot? Step one isn’t about mutually accepting that Kashmir is the primary subject to talk about, or accepting that it is one of the many things we need to talk about. Step one is realising deep wounds take long to heal. For the sake of future generations, our political leadership needs to respect time and make offerings of patience in its altar. Politicians and media armies thinking they are making or seeing history in summit stories need to recognise a basic reality. This story can’t make history. History makes this story.
The possible summit in Pakistan later this year will be another Agra clone in essence. Hype, expectations, reality check, deflation. No deal, but at least wore talking, the optimists will say. And have established bureaucratic mechanisms to talk more. The mechanisms then break down, for which Pakistan blames India and vice versa. We’ve been there before. Do we need to go there again?
Step two is India stops sending mixed messages to the world. Pakistan is hands down winner of the consistency award. We can’t get beyond until we get beyond Kashmir, they have said. But India’s voice has been confused. We say Kashmir is a non-negotiable, integral part of India. Still we talk to Pakistan about it, in between wars over it. We tell Pakistan we can’t talk until it stops infiltrating terrorists into India. And then we offer to talk when Pakistan hasn’t stopped its mischief. The NDA government is still to explain what made it change the earlier stance of “stop terrorism first and then talks”.
Step three is India recognising the urgency of stopping violence in Kashmir. It is a double-edged step. The first involves the army. Untie its hands. Trust it to responsibly do whatever is needed to stop terrorists entering Kashmir. A part of India is in flames and India needs to do the extinguishing, not merely ask the neighbouring arsonist to stop it. “India has the stamina and will to stop terrorism in Kashmir”, Mr. Vajpayee said at Agra. Now is the time to prove it, Sir.
India doesn’t need to ask anyone’s approval to exercise the sovereign right to protect her people. Enough innocent blood has been spilt in Kashmir. Don’t blame our army. We see in the USA how not even a super power can make its borders infiltration-proof to illegal immigrants. Unless they are allowed to strike at the source, not even half a million Indian soldiers will be able to stop brainwashed fanatics and suicide squads fed by a hostile army from sneaking in.
Instead, Kashmir being the world’s most army-concentrated land means a continuing disaster for India. An army forced to react to unpredictable terrorist attacks is antagonising the very people it’s dying to defend. Not all army bullets kill only terrorists and not all terrorist bullets kill only Indian soldiers. Innocent deaths have meant Indian Kashmir fearing and hating the Indian army. The next inevitable result is Indian Kashmir hating India. Right now, Kashmir and the Indian army are victims of the Central government’s passive, ineffective half-measures.
The other half of step three is a political offensive complementing the military’s resolute moves. The ministry of external affairs has to convince the world that India wants peace, but not at the cost of being victim of a proxy war. So, until the world tells Pakistan to stop mischief in India, the world risks a full-scale war between two nuclear-armed countries. Jaswant Singh and Co need to convey that Pakistani violence in Kashmir is the urgent issue, not Kashmir. And when the Indian army gets down to its legitimate business, Pakistan and the world won’t have any choice but to sit bolt upright and listen. Nobody wants a war. Step four is understanding the time now isn’t fertile to support summits. The Kashmir issue isn’t so complex as the multi-layered complexity of India-Pakistan relations. The core of the complexity is Pakistan’s continuing birth pangs as a nation. Let Pakistan come to terms with itself It’s a globally accepted fact the country is imploding. India needs to keep its guard, keep its distance and let Dr Time Heal still raw wounds. Disengage direct, high-level political contacts. Let diplomatic rear channels work to maintain routines. Let’s have no more false promises of breakthroughs.
If we aren’t sure we can make things better, let’s ensure we don’t make things worse. Agra and the inevitable increase in bloodshed in Kashmir is just one more warning that the more India and Pakistan talk futilely, the less is gained. And the possible Islamabad summit will be yet another warning. History, they say, is a vast early warning system. Ignoring those warnings means unwanted history repeating itself. First at least let’s agree on what to talk before getting down to it. Pre-mature talk not only becomes part of the problem instead of the solution, but also worsens the problem. Agra, like other flopped peace talks, has only strengthened the hands of lunatic fringes both sides of the border. The most positive outcome of the Agra summit came before it. India giving scholarships to Pakistani children is the road to actual, enduring peace in the Indian sub-continent. More than the politicians of the two countries talking to each other, let the children talk and play together.
They don’t carry scars, or reel under historical, emotional biases. The children of India and Pakistan carry the real peace medicine. Perhaps their children will experience lasting peace and brotherhood between the two brothers. That’s destiny, later than sooner. Fifty years is a wink in time of histories of nations. Don’t let’s delude ourselves we can get the answers in this wink in time, or in lesser time of a weekend. I hope I’m wrong, but know I won’t see an enduring India-Pakistan peace in my lifetime. But I don’t want to see a war. For ‘that, India has to first stop Kashmir burning. Or the fire could turn into a conflagration. After which India’s political leadership can tell Pakistan, like the instant media says, “Now it’s time for a short break. Stay with us. Well be back soon”. After maybe 75 years....
In the mean time, India builds bridges with bricks of patience. It doesn’t matter if Pakistan doesn’t agree, or stops crying for Kashmir. It may be impossible for one hand to clap. But it’s not impossible for one hand to build. Time to stop talking and start building, Prime Minister Sir.
(The author is Mumbai-based freelance
writer.)
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