Author: Sandhya Jain
Publication: Organizer
Date: June 12, 2005
Implicit in media coverage of Mr.
L.K. Advani's resignation as party president is a critique of the RSS as
intolerant of positive talk about Mohammad Ali Jinnah and the reality of
Pakistan. Since the BJP leader had gone to Pakistan to further peace talks
initiated by the NDA Government, it may be pertinent to examine if there
is merit in reservations expressed by sections of the Sangh Parivar.
To begin with, can the diplomatic
dialogue between India and Pakistan be dubbed a 'peace process' merely
by opening the border at multiple points in disregard of our security interests?
Particularly questionable is the claim of a change of atmosphere (fiza)
across the border, from which India will receive commensurate security
benefits.
Mr. Advani's native Karachi was
engulfed in Shia-Sunnis violence at the time of his visit, causing cancellation
of his proposed visit to Hyderabad in Sindh. The renewed violence against
the Shia community comes barely weeks after Gen. Musharraf procured a "unanimous"
fatwa from the ulema declaring religious violence within the country as
un-Islamic. Given the high level of intolerance amongst Islamic sects,
genuine tolerance by Pakistan of a predominantly Hindu India seems difficult
to conceive. Anyone doubting this has only to look at the continued ethnic
cleansing of Hindus by erstwhile East Pakistan, in active collusion with
Pakistan's ISI.
A striking aspect of the BJP President's
visit was his inability for significant dialogue with major opposition
leaders. Former Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto live abroad,
and a strictly pre-planned itinerary would have deprived him of valuable
inputs from ordinary Sindhis who could speak to him in his mother tongue.
He thus got no first hand feedback from troubled provinces like Baluchistan,
much less aggrieved minority groups.
The issue of Mr. Jinnah, too, can
hardly be settled in the simplistic terms attributed to the deceased head
of the Ramakrishna Mission, whose organization was closed down despite
Quaid-i-Azam's 'secular' speech. Although westernized in many respects,
Mr. Jinnah was sufficiently Islamic to resist the notion of a popular democracy
in which Muslims would submit to Hindu leaders. His personal culpability
for the horrors of 16 August 1946, which forced Partition, cannot be undone
by a solitary speech in the Pakistani Constituent Assembly. The speech
may have been an attempt to woo the international community on behalf of
his fledgling and bankrupt nation; it could equally have been a belated
recognition that those populating the nation he created were not the same
as those who fought for it. The fate of the Mohajir (refugee) community
is too well known to need recapitulation.
An equally enduring legacy of Mr.
Jinnah is the problem of Jammu & Kashmir. We normally blame Pt. Jawaharlal
Nehru for being bamboozled by Lord Mountbatten and taking the issue to
the UN when the Indian Army was on the verge of reclaiming all territory.
This is true. But the architect of this crisis was Mr. Jinnah who, disregarding
his quest for a secular country as enunciated to the Constituent Assembly,
was determined to wrestle this Muslim-majority region from 'Hindu' India.
This is the genesis of the Kashmir
problem, and the Pakistani perspective on the state remains unchanged to
this day. For Pakistan a solution acceptable to the people of J&K means
that the Muslim majority must be allowed to bring the region into Pakistan.
The Indian position, as articulated by Parliament and recently by K.S.
Sudarshanji in his famous Walk the Talk interview, is that J&K is an
irrevocable part of India and only the return of Pak-Occupied Kashmir remains
on the agenda.
It bears mentioning that the Hurriyat
delegation arrived in Pakistan while the BJP leader was there, and Gen.
Musharraf scored a propaganda point by saying that their arrival without
Indian passports proved that Kashmir was disputed territory. Unfortunately,
the former Deputy Prime Minister did not demur. It is now imperative that
the BJP clarify if the party stands by Sudarshanji's views or accepts Mr.
Advani's statement that a solution must be acceptable to all communities
- Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and migrant Kashmiri Pandits. This is urgent
as there is some confusion whether talk about the unalterable reality of
history and two separate sovereign nations implies that India is ready
to give up PoK.
Actually, the trip was ill-fated
because neither the BJP nor RSS leadership was taken into confidence regarding
the proposed visit to Jinnah's mausoleum. The inauguration of the restoration
of the historic Katasraj temple turned out to be a trap by the savvy Pakistanis
to moot the idea that Gen. Musharraf be invited to inaugurate a mosque
in India. They meant, of course, the Babri non-mosque, an issue on which
the BJP leader was already disarmed, having called its removal the saddest
day of his life.
Pakistan thus got away with the
claim to be the leader of the Muslims of the sub-continent, while Hindus
were rendered leaderless. In the past, the Congress party strenuously resisted
this contention, but there has been a subtle change after the ascent of
Ms. Sonia Gandhi, as witnessed in her failure to resist a Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Hind
demand for communal reservations in Parliament.
