Pervez Musharraf and India Pakistan Rapproachment

tahmed,

{US sanctions that had crippled Pakistan in the 1990's were lifted.}

The sanctions were lifted after 911. Before that Mushy was a pariah & the Pak economy was languishing.

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Re: # 155

"HP/Giani ji, agreed that we have to come to terms with history and accept each other. But how? What can the two countries do, except let the other believe what they believe (as tahmed suggests, but that contradicts what HP has posited)?"

When I first joined chowk, I thought it to be a forum for intellectuals to discuss precisely this point. Now, I am convinced chowk is not the forum. The baggage of history and perceived grievances have been carried over here as well.

There are few individuals here such as DM who have their romantic notions, but then romatic notions have never solved issues and always tended to focus more on the selective "happy memories".

Unless the baggage of grievances can be cast more as a lesson of history and be discussed in perspective without prejudice to both parties, there is no solution.

IMHO, other than economics and desire to survive the onslaught of globalization, there is no common driving force for Pakistanis and Indians. This common cultural, similar language etc alas are but figments of a romantic perspective.

Jinnah was right. We always were two nations who coexisted peacefully for a common purpose and that being economic security. That is why a south asians in a minority in a third country tend to be friendlier under the guise of common cultural crap when the real motive is survival - Americas being a good example. However when the same group finds a larger group of their people ala UK, they revert to their ethnic prejudices.

I beleive that this was the real driving force behind Vajpayee and Advani's desire to improve relations to open up economic relations. The mass Bangladeshi migration to India, inspite of having their own country, also supports this arguments.

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Giani

The first threat of a nuclear strike was by the Foreign Minister of Pakistan when India conducted Operation Brasstacks in the 80s. This "excercise" had so scared the Pakistanis, perhaps rightly so and so much so that they felt that it was a prelude of an invasion of their country.

This was in the 80s, around the time when the Israelis wanted India to provide bases to them so that they could take out the Kahuta and other facilities in Pakistan.

Indira Gandhi refused. Since she was dead in 1984, the genii of the big bomb was already out in the open among the diplomats in the 1980s.

All that the BJP did was make it all public. The Pakistani leadership felt the public pressue, it wasnt the army that pushed for retaliatory tests.

I agree with the assessment that the Advani et al felt that Pakistanis would suffer more than the Indians at the inevitable sanctions. Vaypayee was never for the tests. It was Advani who pushed for it.

Maybe Pavocavalry can provide some wisdom on who benefited more from 1998 onwards.

#194 Posted by zeemax on February 28, 2008 10:54:42 am


India will have to give up Kashmir sooner or later.


That's like saying pigs will sprout wings and fly sooner or later...

India will have to give up Kashmir sooner or later. It's better it does it sooner so saharanpuri quits moping.

Re: # 190

Saharanpuri:

Moving article you posted here.

"What is lost?" and then answered his own question. "I think it is love."

The above is true. He, and others like him, kept the place alive, so that time could not consign it to museums or turn it into a heap of dust. This is another beautiful reality too.

Sadly, when romanace fails, it turns into anger and spews out as hatred of kind HP Mian has done - Ganesh Mutants, and Mother Burners; and his ilk from otherside of the border have done here also.

Nony's children's generation is a new reality. It was sad to read that she met someone at Pakistan Tea House who was seeded with wrong dreams. My wish is for such people to be in minority in Pakistan, for Pakistan's benefit.

Pakistan would never think of charging Hindu and Sikh pilgrims any money for visiting their religious places. A tourist brings enough money as it is in terms of visa fees, hotel, shopping, transportation, etc...

Saharanpuri, nice article.

Re: # 190

A lovely post. I am afraid HP is going to say that this indicates that Indians want Pakistan and are not reconciled to that country's existence.

A PRINCESS BRIDE

The great-great-granddaughter of the legendary "Lion of the Punjab" returns to her home in Pakistan after an overlong absence

BY SUKETU MEHTA/LAHORE

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One day in august 1947, Nony Singh overheard her father talking about shooting her. She was around ten then, a Sikh girl growing up in a big house in Lahore, just before partition. She was walking along a passageway when she overheard a conversation out on the veranda: her grandfather, her father and her uncles were planning how they would defend themselves against Muslim mobs that were returning with increasing frequency to the house. The men--most of whom were army or police officers--had stockpiled a huge cache of arms in the house. The teenage girls in the family--her oldest sister and her three aunts--had already been sent to safety across the border to Simla, a hill resort that would eventually fall to India; only Nony and her two younger sisters were left in Lahore. She heard her father tell the others that, if Muslims broke into the house, he would fight to the end. But before the end came, he said, "I will take the three girls into a room and line them up and shoot them."
We were standing on this same veranda now, my friend Nony Singh and I, 50 years later. It was the first time she had returned to Lahore since 1947. She was making a unique crossing, not merely from the country in which she lives to the one left behind, not just from her present home to an earlier one, but from approaching old age back to the territory of childhood, a realm preserved only in dreams and old photographs.

What made her return unusual was that she is the great-great-granddaughter of Maharajah Ranjit Singh, the "Lion of the Punjab," the Sikh king who at the beginning of the 19th century ruled over all of Punjab from Lahore. So when she came back, it was with a special sense of belonging, above and beyond that of the many other partition refugees visiting ancestral homes. Signing the Pakistani visa forms in Delhi, she had remarked: "I felt I own the place. How dare they ask for a visa?"

Nony had left Lahore on a sour note: a fight with her best friend Fauziya, who lived next door. Nony had made a doll, with a long plait, the face painted with watercolors, and a wardrobe fashioned of brightly colored scraps from her aunts' old clothes. Fauziya wanted Nony to marry her attractive doll to Fauziya's male doll. At first Nony agreed, but then Fauziya told her that since her doll was female, it would have to come with a dowry--all the doll-clothes and doll-bedding that Nony had hand-stitched. Also, Fauziya insisted, after the wedding the female doll would have to stay in the male doll's house--as was the custom among humans. Nony turned down the match, and Fauziya stopped speaking to her. A few days later, Nony and her family left Pakistan forever, taking the doll with her. She has always regretted, she told me, that she left Pakistan on a fight over the distribution of property.

What she wanted to do now was to go back to the two houses in which she had grown up: her maternal grandmother's amid the winding lanes of Anarkali Bazaar, and her paternal grandfather's in Model Town. Her grandmother had died soon after crossing the border, Nony said: "We were thrown out. We felt very hurt. My grandmother died of sorrow."

The Anarkali Bazaar house is now a printing shop. Sometime after partition it was taken over by the former tenants, and stacks of old books crowd the rooms where her grandmother once conducted business from behind a latticed screen with the accountants, making sure that rent-collection from her numerous shops in the bazaar was in order. Though he was quite ill, the old man who now owns the house invited Nony for dinner because, he said, he had something to explain. He was ashamed. At partition, he said, Nony's grandmother had given his father the key to the house for safekeeping. The father had kept all her grandmother's possessions locked in the upper rooms of the house, allowing no one to enter them. Then, he said, after a family dispute his cousins had broken into the rooms and stolen everything. He said he had lived with the guilt for 50 years. Now at last he could explain and apologize. Nony said later, "I was embarrassed also, and I was hurt. This was my house, and some other people took it over. But I admired him for telling me. His family was so affectionate. The human feeling was what mattered."

When she left the man's house, she was given bangles and an embroidered veil--the traditional gifts a daughter of the house is given when she returns to her in-laws. The symbolism was clear: this was Nony's true home, here in Lahore. Delhi and India were merely in-laws, the family into which she had found herself married.

Nony was overwhelmed at the reception she received, not just from the people who lived in her family's houses, but from taxi-drivers, bellboys, merchants in the bazaars. Her coming from India was good for substantial discounts in the ancient shops of Anarkali Bazaar. As a daughter of the neighborhood, she was able to buy a 750-rupee suit for 600 rupees. The elderly proprietor of a photo shop, upon learning Nony was from India, said he was, too, and asked her to have lunch or dinner with his family.

One evening we went to the Pak Tea House, a writers' cafe that Pakistan's greatest poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, used to frequent. A group of poets and writers clustered around us. Surprisingly, this was the place in Pakistan where Nony found the closest thing resembling hostility toward her as an Indian. A professor of Urdu literature declared that the enmity between India and Pakistan would be solved if India "liberated" Kashmir, Punjab and Assam. "I was scared of their fanaticism," Nony said. "They were so vehement. These are the people that create the frenzy. If they were my age, they would never have talked that way." After one in the group maligned Maulana Azad, a prominent Muslim in the freedom struggle who chose to stay in India and is therefore reviled in Pakistani history texts, Nony added: "He was talking like a fanatic about Pakistan. I wish he had seen that united India [before partition]. We sacrificed together, we shed our blood together to win freedom. Then what happened?" For all her warm feelings toward ordinary Pakistanis, Nony remained clear about the political gulf between the two countries: "The difference between India and Pakistan is army rule. Their youngsters hate India. Army rule has dinned it into their heads to make war. Our democracy, whatever it is, has worked."

Not always. Like most Hindu and Sikh refugees who fled to India, Nony's family did well in their new homeland. She married a fellow refugee, a farmer who in 1965 set a record for wheat production. Then in 1984 India's Sikhs suffered through what for many of them was a second partition: the pogroms against Nony's community that followed Indira Gandhi's assassination by her Sikh bodyguards. Nony and her three daughters were saved by a Hindu neighbor across the street, who hid them from the fury of the mobs for 11 days.

Once the riots were over and she could return to her house, Nony worried about what she should put on the name plate outside her gate. After all, she had just witnessed the evil attention a Sikh name could attract. In the end, she used only the number 15, the address of the house. She still regrets not being able to display a name. "I felt one day people will be reduced just to numbers," she says. "We are not proud of being anything--Sikh, Hindu, Muslim."

Her grandfather's home in Model Town was a household of women before partition. Nony's father was frequently away on army duty, and her grandfather usually closeted himself with his second wife on the ground floor. As teenage girls are wont to do, Nony's aunts and her sisters liked to play the radio full blast, mostly film music--Saigal, Kanan Bala, Nurjehan. Her aunts often stole away to the movies, a forbidden activity. Once they took the family tonga, or horse-cart, and caromed down the road until they lost control of the horse, crashed, and fell off laughing--shocking all the neighbors. Before partition the family was united, rich and happy.

When she traveled to Lahore, she was looking for something that would be defined for her by Badar, the man who now lives in her grandfather's house. At the end of the lavish dinner his family had laid out for Nony and me, Badar became thoughtful. Like his wife, he said, he was the child of partition refugees who had made the crossing the other way, from Delhi and Bhopal to Pakistan. "It is a miracle you're here," he said, turning to Nony. "It's like a movie, a dream. After 50 years, coming back to this house." Then he reflected: "Man is always in search of old things. We go to ruins, to museums. You have come to look for old things. Something is lost. That is common to all men." A little later, he asked, "What is lost?" and then answered his own question. "I think it is love."

Now, age 61 and living in Delhi, Nony is not at peace. After her husband died in 1982, she became ensnared in property disputes--the curse of the descendants of India's princely class. Her days are taken up dealing with her six lawyers and her multiple ongoing law suits, many of which she has inherited from her ancestors like a useless watch. All this has made her a bit lonely in her adopted city. Says she: "Delhi to me seems faceless."

I returned to Delhi ahead of Nony. She wrote me from Lahore: "Here I am in conversation with my grandparents, my mother, my father, my aunts, my sisters, my little brother. For the first time I am not grieving for my grandmother having gone, for my Daddy having gone... For the first time I feel that part of my grieving shall go--as if I have called them all back to meet me at a place where they gave me birth, as if I have had a long conversation with them and clarified all my doubts, of not having done my best for them, for not having given them enough love... Here, meeting them after their deaths was easier because we all belonged together, we belonged to each other, we belonged to this soil, this town. On the other side of the border we had all separated, our personalities scattered. Here we are all one, we are together in grief and in happiness... Here--in Pakistan--an enemy of my country India!"

#187 Posted by Ally on February 28, 2008 9:27:20 am


I think Pakis should look at the relationship with India on a business and economical front without any sort of emotion or any of that kind of stuff...


I think that's a great idea..unfortunately(for pakis), the pakis don't want any of that. they'll only open up trade if kashmir is resolved..resolved the way THEY want it..


They should sign a 'no war' treaty with India


Does that include no proxy war?

not only that, the nukes meant pakiland could continue to support islamic terrorism against india...bleed india without being affected..

wonder if col koolaid agrees with this alternate version of reality...

Dost Mittar Ji

Thanks for the article... i havent read the 000's of replies, zahir haiN lots will be aney taney, tu tu meiN meiN which i am not going to partake in... khair here are my two annas worth

I think Pakis should look at the relationship with India on a business and economical front without any sort of emotion or any of that kind of stuff...

They should sign a 'no war' treaty with India this way Pak army cant justify the humongous budget they take... also now that the M1 is complete a person can go from Lahore to Peshawar on a real and proper motorway like what you get in the west and developed countries... Pak can open this route for over ground trade between India and A'stan, charging money out of the Afghanis and Indians for using the land route...

We should give Indians and NRI's visa on entry access so that they can come and visit their shrines etc and add to Pak economy...

We should remove 3rd party countries like Dubai and Singapore for trade and trade directly...

Pak should market itself aggressively to India and allow Indian businesses to invest in Pak freely...

The usual cultural shor sharaba should also be increased, Pak should ask B'wood people to film in Pak, this way ALL Indians get to see Pak :)

Khair... this is just my thoughts maybe its time we rose above the haters and jhuppi brigade and made sensible trade... after all South Asia region was richest in world at one point, why? because of traditions of trade!

#184 Posted by tahmed32 on February 28, 2008 7:13:22 am


So, what happened? Nothing. Indeed, suddenly the clouds lifted for Pakistan


yeah..the clouds lifted and pakiland was able to occupy parts of indian kashmir without having to worry about the indian army fighting back...their nukes kept the indians in check and the pakis still control kargil...

Re: # 168

Tahmed sahib:

There is a shade of BJP walas who are known to provoke Pakistan, and Indian Muslim too, you have seen this shade here at Chowk also. Pakistan predictably returns their favor each time, just like many Pakistanis do at Chowk. That time it returned, BJPs provaction with the explosion, even though following Bill Clinton's advise would have been a lot saner. Pakistan would have benefitted, and India would have been isolated on this nuclear issue.

Rest of what I wrote are factors and evidence that why India and Pakistan fought their final war to settle scores militarily a long time ago.

These factors are - Generational Change in both countries, Presence and Emergence of Grass Root Democracy in Pakistan, Tired Pakistani Middle Class of Army in Politics, and soon would be fed up with Army in their businesses also.

I also included that nature of coalition democracy in India does not lend to unanimity need to treat Pakistan as large enough enemy to go to war, something Indian generals on their own - unlike in Pakistan - cannot do.

I also mentioned that the dreams and aspirations of Indian middle class no longet make armed forces and even civilian bureaucracy as preferred choices for professional and personal growth.

I mentioned that a new paradigm will be defined by likes of Shoab Akhtar, Adnan Sami, and even our own Romair. When a new wave of Pakistani entreprenuers inevitably emerges, they too will be party to defining this new paradigm.

These new wave Pakistanis will compete in India, and not with India. They will compete with anyone, anywhere and at anytime, just as the rest, in globalized economy. Their dealings will have no room or time for older romantics or haters who express their anger or thoughts that allow Pakistanis, like HP Mian, to express ingrained hatreds by calling Indians as Ganesh Mutants and Mother Burners.

shankar: as long as we are clear on the basic facts i think we are already ahead. the next step, i.e. to process facts without tinting them with our emotional ties is i suppose much more difficult if not humanly possible. (how's that for "chowk psychiatry", doc?) but..let me try anyway to take this next step:

you say that BJP was "well aware" that pakistan had the bomb (as it should have been) and its rhetoric was designed to bring it out in the open. This is quite a stretch - given that India itself had to come out in the open as well on what it had been claiming for years.

But let us for the sake of argument accept this stretch as well. So - India brought Pakistan into the open (per your argument). So, what happened? Nothing. Indeed, suddenly the clouds lifted for Pakistan - BJP switched from threats to peace-talk. US sanctions that had crippled Pakistan in the 1990's were lifted. Hey, with enemies like BJP, Pakistan never needed any friends. ;-)