Author: Harish Dugh
Publication: www.expressindia.com
Date: July 4, 2005
URL: http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=49678
From a blatant position of Kashmir,
at all cost, Pakistani editors have finally been shoved off their lofty
perch by the hard reality in their society and brought down to earth over
the immense harm that their country has been subjected to over Kashmir.
Not that they are asking President
General Pervez Musharraf to drop Kashmir as an issue. What they are doing
is asking for Musharraf to continue the current policy, minus the parts
that hurt Pakistani society!
The Dawn's Shahid Javed Burki in
an article titled Cost and Gain of Kashmir says, "Keeping the Kashmir issue
alive has cost Pakistan considerably more than the social, political and
economic costs paid by India."
Saying that till date India and
Pakistan had been playing by the rules of the 'zero-sum game' wherein every
time Pakistan loses, India gains. This is a mutually destructive system.
Now, he says, both the countries
should move to a new modus operandi called the 'plus-sum' in which 'both
sides lose a bit but gain a great deal more' and that it will bring Pakistan
greater success in its efforts to snatch away Kashmir from India.
What if?
Blaming the British for creating
the Kashmir imbroglio, and asking whether things would have turned out
differently if the foreign rulers had treated territories ruled by Indian
princes and those directly under England, Burki gives his version of 'What
if?'.
In that scenario Kashmir as a Muslim
dominant state would have directly gone to Pakistan on independence from
Britain, so would have Hyderabad, like East Bengal. Admitting that Jammu
was Hindu-dominant area, it would have gone to India.
He justifies, "Of course, we know
perfectly well that we cannot travel back in time and do things differently."
But the fact remains that Kashmir
ruled by a Hindu king and Hyderabad under the Nizam both preferred to side
with India, even though the latter was persuaded by force of arms when
Indian forces entered his territory. Pakistan had tried the same in Kashmir
but failed. But, it must be remembered that both Hyderabad and Kashmir,
being princely states, came India's way due to the decision of the then
rulers.
Also, post-1971 it was clear that
Pakistan could not even convince East Bengal, later Bangladesh from remaining
united with it. How could it have done any better with Hyderabad and Kashmir?
It would have just created more trouble in the sub-continent.
However, Burki goes on to say that
if the British had allowed Kashmir, sans Jammu, to merge with Pakistan,
"The problem of Kashmir could have been avoided."
Islamisation's threat to Pak
While agreeing that both countries
had paid a huge cost in terms of loss of life, crippling of the economy
due to enormous cost of mobilising troops 24/7 in a perpetual state of
high alert, he says that Pakistan suffered much, much more than India.
The reason being that Kashmir case
is much nearer geographically and spiritually to the Pakistani mainstream
than to the common Indian.
Burki says that the use of Islamists
to foment terror, though it brought tremendous benefits vis a vis India,
also laid waste Pakistani society. Choosing not to blame Pakistani policy
makers over the use of Islamic fundamentalism, first against the USSR in
Afghan War and later to put Taliban in power there, as well as doing great
damage to India by carrying out terror attacks and keeping Kashmir burning
literally and diplomatically across the world capitals, Burki says that,
"the infrastructure needed to produce jihadists proved corrosive for Pakistani
society. As it turned out, a heavy price was paid for the reliance on groups
whose members were deeply committed to Islamic fundamentalism. Often under
official patronage, these groups began to penetrate Pakistani society and
also its political system."
So much so that these very terrorists
started creating their own political parties like the Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal
which gained prominence even at the national stage to the extent of forming
an alliance and creating a government of its own in the North West Frontier
Province and a prominent partner in Balochistan government.
But, an even worse case scenario
came to pass at the social level that had a searing effect on the people
themselves. The success of the Islamists to brainwash the common people
and bring them round to thinking that terror was the right way has gained
prominence at all levels of Pak society. The common folk now want a radical
political dispensation at the Centre, a virtual Talibanisation of Pakistan!
What converted the people of Pakistan
to this point of view was the Salafist interpretation of Islam, says Burki
for which he laid blame squarely on the Saudi Arabia funded madrasas. Kashmir
was a central part of the curriculum there.
The first blatant salvo fired by
the Islamists to take over Pakistan happened in December 2003 when Musharraf
was targetted with two assassination attempts. Not only did the attack
point the finger of blame at the Islamists, it also subsequently showed
the growing Islamisation of the Pakistani army - when two armymen where
held guilty for the attacks
It forced Musharraf to say that
the biggest problem that he faced in Pakistan was the increasing radicalisation
of the country, courtesy Islamists. He even went to the extent of saying
that Pakistan's Kashmir policy provided life's blood for these organisations.
With an increasing realisation that
carrying on the Kashmir war, even by proxy, courtesy the terrorists, was
too costly, is it any wonder that the Pak intelligentsia and media are
turning towards a different approach. However, they still do not want to
abandon Kashmir as history and start a new partnership with India with
no excess baggage of past rights and wrongs.
Militarism to pacificism
What we are looking at is, perhaps,
a new Pakistan strategy to gain Kashmir with lesser cost to themselves.
So while the means have changed, the goal remains the same. This may very
well be the reason for Musharraf, surprisingly, to turn a dove all of a
sudden in the recent months. In short, as far as India is concerned, Pak
still wants to play the 'zero-sum game' sans its deleterious effect on
Pakistan - devil take 'sum-plus'. Hardly an entertaining thought for India.
