HVK Archives: A break with the past
A break with the past - Rediff on the Net
Kanchan Gupta
()
february 20, 1999
Title: A break with the past
Author: Kanchan Gupta
Publication: Rediff on the Net
Date: february 20, 1999
Till the moment the exact details of the Radcliffe Line were publicised,
everyone thought Lahore would remain in India. After all, it was a
Sikh-Hindu majority town and contiguous with the border that was being
worked out to carve the subcontinent into two.
In fact, even after the migration to India began -- a trickle that was
to turn into a torrent of human misery -- Lahoris stayed put in their
havelis. Even after the Radcliffe Line was unveiled, they refused to
believe they would have to up and leave.
The Sikhs put up a valiant defence, but had to yield ground when the
nascent Pakistani Army trooped in to round up the people, put them into
trucks, and set them on their way to India, a mere 40km away.
Overnight, residents became refugees and part of the tide of human
misery that was swept into India, drowning the celebrations of freedom.
Lahore became a part of Pakistan.
That was more than 51 years ago. In these five decades, India and
Pakistan have fought three bitter wars, the first almost as soon as the
Union Jack was lowered, the second in 1965, and the third as the
liberation struggle in Bangladesh climaxed.
But it is the object of the first war, Jammu & Kashmir, that has
remained a thorn in the Pakistani psyche, firing the Islamist zeal that
had, in the first place, planted the seed of a separate Muslim nation --
Mohammed Ali Jinnah's two-nation theory.
Pakistan had tried to grab the erstwhile princely state by force and
failed. But that failure in 1947 has never stood in the way of Pakistan
trying relentlessly to get what it believes should be on this side of
the line drawn by Sir Cyril Radcliffe.
Pakistan's resolve was only strengthened after India unabashedly played
a role in the liberation of Bangladesh, thus reducing Jinnah's
"moth-eaten" Pakistan to just its western half. Indeed, in the following
three decades, Pakistan has tried to do unto India what India did unto
it, by first backing the Sikh militants and then the Kashmiri
separatists.
Indeed, with Pakistan openly backing the decade-old terrorism in Jammu &
Kashmir and exporting both men and lethal arms to the Indian state, as
well as upping the ante on Kashmir at international fora, any
normalisation of relations between the two countries appears remote and
improbable.
The hostilities of the last 50 years had, it appeared, come to stay. And
when India conducted five nuclear tests at Pokhran last May, to which
Pakistan replied with its own tests in the Chagai Hills of Baluchistan,
the two neighbours seemed to have drifted further apart.
Ironically, they also came to share a commonality after sanctions were
imposed on both. The common perception on either side of the border was
that relations had taken a further nosedive.
Given this immediate backdrop of estrangement and five decades of
unrestrained hostility, nobody could have imagined that history would be
made at the fag end of a winter of subcontintental discontent.
Yet, the unimaginable happened on Saturday, February 20, when Prime
Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee rode a bus across the border at Wagah to a
warm welcome in Pakistan. In a flash, he not only crossed the
subcontinental version of Checkpoint Charlie, but also marked the
beginning of a new chapter in Indo-Pakistani relations which could well
end on a happy note of co-operation and collaboration between two
countries whose peoples, despite their shared past, shared ancestors,
and shared culture, have revelled in establishing their post-colonial
separateness.
Jawaharlal Nehru was the first and, till now, last Prime Minister of
India to visit Lahore when he came here in 1960 to sign the Indus Water
Treaty. Rajiv Gandhi visited Islamabad in 1988 and 1989. This makes
Vajpayee only the second Prime Minister of India to visit Lahore and the
third to visit Pakistan.
These, however, are minor details. The larger detail is in the fact that
he has demonstrated his skills as a foreign policy initiator.
Vajpayee may not have lit candles at Wagah, as his predecessor Inder
Kumar Gujral, who was among those forced out of Lahore in 1947 because
of the quirk in the Radcliffe Line, did. He may not have subscribed to
the widely hailed 'Gujral Doctrine' which offered unilateral
concessions, but failed to convince Pakistan. He may not have succumbed
to American pressure, as three of his predecessors did, and refused to
keep India's nuclear programme locked in the basement.
Yet, Atal Bihari Vajpayee has achieved what none of his predecessors
could even dream of: driving into Pakistan as a friend.
This is not to suggest that starting today India and Pakistan will be
the best of friends, but to underscore the fact that a historic step was
taken in a matter of seconds, forcing into insignificance, at least for
the time being, the bitterness of the past.
"As we approach a new millennium," Vajpayee said at the banquet hosted
at the Governor's House, "the future beckons us. It calls upon us,
indeed demands of us, to think of the welfare of our children and their
children, and the generations that are yet to come."
It is this focus on the future, and not on the past or the present, that
makes this visit, this hugely symbolic gesture that has caught the
imagination of the people beyond the sub-continent, so important. A
fresh start cannot rest on old premises; the future must be independent
of the past.
It would, however, be self-defeating to overlook realities that stare
you in the face, especially on this side of the border. While Vajpayee
has come to Pakistan backed by a national consensus for better relations
with Pakistan, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief cannot claim even a
semblance of such consensus.
On one side of the Pakistani fracture stands the political class, on the
other is the Army. On one side is Mian Nawaz Sharief, who appears to
understand the imperatives of peace. On the other is Benazir Bhutto, who
would rather be pushed by the imperatives of opposition politics. On one
side of the fracture is the Pakistani government of the day, on the
other is the viciously fanatic Jamaat-e-Islami which tried its best to
scuttle the visit and halt history in its tracks. And caught on either
side of the fracture are the people of Pakistan -- the elite is gung-ho,
the impoverished are cannon fodder for the Jamaat.
Sharief has a difficult task of reconciliation on his hands, as opposed
to Vajpayee, who will return to New Delhi nothing short of a victor --
he has gained without losing anything, something which cannot be said
for Sharief.
Yet, if this visit were to result in the signing of economic agreements,
for instance the purchase of Pakistani power by India, and a movement
forward on security-related confidence-building measures along with an
agreement to continue bilateral dialogue on Kashmir, then it would be no
mean achievement. Not only would it amount to the happy start of a new
chapter in Indo-Pakistani relations, it would suggest a happier
conclusion in the new millennium, reducing the bitterness of the last 50
years to no more than a footnote of subcontinental history.
The way ahead will by no means be as easy a ride as Vajpayee had from
Amritsar to Wagah this afternoon. But that cannot, should not, be
allowed to be a restraining factor.
Sharief has demonstrated immense courage and foresight by opening the
steel gates at Wagah and receiving Vajpayee with open arms. He will now
have to convince his people that the past cannot be allowed to impinge
on the future, that the line that Cyril Radcliffe drew across India
cannot be allowed to become a barrier, that the next 50 years cannot be
wasted merely because the last 50 were spent hating each other.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee has scored his point. It is now Nawaz Sharief's
turn.
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