Something is happening among the people of Pakistan that is worth India's attention. Their mood towards India is apparently changing. A PTI report from Islamabad dated June 24 said that members of the visiting Indian Parliamentary delegation seemed surprised to notice a change in public mood against jehad and the craving of the people for friendship and good relations with India. Shahid Siddiqui, MP, is quoted as saying: "I have visited Pakistan in past. This time I noticed fundamental change not only in the common man but even in the ruling elite in Pakistan about the realisation that there can be no solution to the conflict between India and Pakistan except through negotiations." And to that Siddiqui added: "In the past I used to hear a lot about jehad. This time I have not heard this in a single meeting anywhere. Even in private conversation nobody mentions this word. There seems to be a change in attitude in the ruling elite in Pakistan''.
What Siddiqui further added is even more significant. He said: "In the past, whenever I mentioned Indian Muslims I was not allowed to speak. This time not only people are listening to me but they are appreciating my point of view that Indian Muslims are crucial part of the Indian secular fabric. And Indian secular fabric is inextricably linked to the solution of the Kashmir issue". Apparently there is a change in Pakistani perception about India. The people are coming to realise that there is nothing much to gain through conflict. Then there is the evidence of Kildip Nayar who led the nine-man Indian Parliamentary team to Pakistan in midyear. On his return he wrote: "We, the nine Parliamentarians were swept off our feet by love and affection showered upon us at Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi. It was almost a people's war against the age-old prejudice and hatred against India. They were prepared to jettison the baggage of hostility so as to live as good neighbours in peace. They wanted to reach out to people in India''. At Lahore Kuldip Nayar and his colleagues were entertained at a dinner hosted by the India-Pakistan Soldiers Initiative for Peace (IPSIP).
Nayar writes to say that at the dinner the chairman admitted that the wars both countries had waged were pointless and it was time everyone forgot the past, began anew a fresh chapter of peace and harmony. The Indian Parliamentarians were also feted by the Jammat-e-Islami. It was their first reception to any Indian delegation since the establishment of Pakistan. Nayar writes: "They assured us that they would like to solve all problems, including Kashmir, through dialogue. Their wish was to bury the hatchet once and for all".
Nayar says later he received an e-mail from a Pakistani commentator which said: "You have achieved the impossible. Of all the people Liaquat Baloch of the Jamaat-e-Islam is ecstatic on the private channels of Pakistan about the reception they hosted". However Nayar quotes Fazhur Rehman, chief of the amalgam of six religious parties, the Mutahada Majlis-e- Amal as saying: "Track Two is all right. But without Track One, the fauj (the army), anything can be stymied. We should ponder over that."
What that means is that in Pakistan political life, it is the Army which is the most important factor and which remains the source of all trouble. Nayar writes: "Never before had I heard in Punjabi such a barrage of unprintable words against the military. Both former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have got to be rehabilitated in the eyes of the Pakistanis". Now take the evidence of Seema Mustafa, a columnist of Asian Age who accompanied the most recent Indian Parliamentary Delegation to Pakistan. She writes: "There is an upsurge for peace in Pakistan. From the shop-keeper to the taxi-driver to the retired civil servant there is only one question on everybody's lips: are the two governments serious about peace? Kashmir is lost somewhere in the middle of this overwhelming demand for peace. Pakistani analysts admit that it is something that they have never really witnessed before. It is as if the rhetoric of war and confrontation has created a sense of fatigue and the people of Pakistan want to break free".
Further Ms Mustafa adds: "In discussions with retired government servants, Army officers, journalists and others, the word "Kashmir" barely figured. The enthusiastic response to the visit of the Indian MPs in particular was tempered with a desire to see more of such exchanges with speaker after speaker in closed door sessions of the SAFMA conference speaking of the need to restore facilities for the people in both countries".
It is said that during the most recent visit of Parliamentarians, that joker, Laloo Prasad Yadav, turned out to be the most popular among the visiting dignitaries. But that apart, another member of the delegation, Saeed Naqvi who participated in the conference has noted that "the dominant message from the conference was an all pervasive desire in both sides to put an end to the `misunderstandings' of the past 57 years". Writing in Sahara Time (23 August) a reporter quoted journalist turned- politician Rajiv Shukla as saying : "The trip was excellent and the reception we received was unexpected. Most of the Parliamentarians were visiting Pakistan for the first time and the warm reception we received from the politicians as well as the public left us spellbound". Another Rajya Sabha MP was quoted as saying: "We never felt we were in a different country".
Is there any explanation to this situation? One answer is that the people are fed up with the daily dose of hatred that the Pakistani army has been feeding the people. Another is that the killing of innocents in Jammu & Kashmir is lying very heavily on the Pakistani collective conscience. Yet another reason may be a realisation that Pakistan can never get Jammu & Kashmir whether through war, terrorism or through third party mediation and it is more sensible to come to terms with that fact than to carry on an interminable proxy war.
But one suspects that there is yet one valid and urgent a reason for Pakistanis to become reasonable. Seema Mustafa put her finger right on the spot when she wrote: "A strong wave against the United States is sweeping through Pakistan. It has placed the government under President General Pervez Musharraf entirely on the defensive and strengthened the extremist parties under the Mutahida Majlis-e-Amal banner.
Jamiat Ulema-e-Islami chief Maulana Fazlul Rehman who visited India to talk peace, without US mediation, did so with an eye firmly on the home constituency. The visit had added tremendously to his popularity with even the Pakistan Muslim League members admitting that the Maulana has cleverly exploited the emerging situation. By linking peace with India to bilateralism minus the Americans, the Maulana has scored a major point with the masses... The current government has gone out of its way to embrace the Maulana's peace overtures to India, although all in Pakistan are not agreed that the visit had the full blessings of the government".
The question is: what does all this suggest? Has there been real change of heart among the Pakistan people? But then one might ask another question: are all those people from the taxi-driver onwards putting on a false show just to fool the Indians? Where is the need for them to do so? What do they gain from being nice members of the Indian delegation? Writes Virendra Kapoor the columnist: "Ordinary Pakistanis and the Pak elite alike could not get enough of this self-confessed simpleton (Laloo Prasad Yadav). He was mobbed by fawning men, women and children at airports, hotels, bazaars and conference halls of Pakistan. They wanted to be photographed with this kurta-pyjama clad Indian politician or shake his hand or simply get his autograph on pieces paper".
Where was the need for all that, even admitting that a "simpleton" usually attracts attention from all and sundry? One and not necessarily the only-conclusion that one can arrive at is that the vast Pakistani public is tired of war and peace and is not afraid of making it clear when the situation permits it.
Possibly the public has come to realise that their country's abject dependence on the United States has robbed it of its self-respect and self-confidence. It cannot be easy for the public to swallow the fact that a strong American armed contingent presently stationed on Pakistan soil and the desire to make peace with India is reaction to it. One never knows. But can the public push the Pakistani Army out power just by non-violent resistance? Can the people finally come into their own, bury the hatchet, as it were, forget all about the two-nation theory and get on with life in peace and contentment? There is only one war that the Pakistan Army cannot afford to lose: and that is peoples' non-violent war against the Armed Forces.
And that is the war that the Pakistanis must now determinedly fight. And the one way that India can help the people is to shower its love on them in a hundred different ways: by opening its doors to them, and showing them that India cares.
Musharraf and his generals must
be thrown into the rubbish dumps of history, but that is something that
only the Pakistani people can do. What India can do and what it is already
doing is to make such fantastic headway in science, technology, agriculture
and other fields of activity as make Pakistanis feel ashamed of their military
leaders sufficiently to feel the urge to throw them out. But the way Pakistan
is sliding into corruption and economic ruin, who knows, another
quarter century there may be a Pakistan for India to worry about. Which
is just as well.