Jaipur Dreams

Inquirer,

Please do read Ayaz Amir`s article...

I am sorry to say this... you seem like a nice guy, but your reunificationist logic is what is the number 1 hurdle in peace between Pakistan and India... no Pakistani is ready to pay the price of our independence and sovereignty. The best way to peace between our two nations is to accept our existence, and without trying to undo Pakistan, move towards a mutually beneficial relationship, underscoring our geographical and cultural closeness.

-YLH

What is Pakistan afraid of?


By Ayaz Amir

Before saying yes or no, or maybe, to Indian peace initiatives, we have to settle one question in our minds. Is any move towards normalization a favour to India or does it serve our interests too?

We should be doing no favours to India or indeed to any other country. Every country looks out for itself, or should. France, China or the Holy Roman Empire, self-interest has always ruled foreign policy. There`s no reason for us to be different.

If normalization serves Indian interests alone, and shortchanges us, then we should be against normalization. If belligerence serves us better, bellicosity should be the permanent motto inscribed on our national banner.

War and peace are not moral imperatives. The history of the human race has been shaped by war. Wars have been fought to advantage while peace is not always an unmixed blessing. Indeed, a victor`s peace, imposed from outside, can be a pain in the butt (consult Iraqi opinion on this score).

How does our balance sheet stand? What say the lessons of the past 56 years? We have tried wars and intransigence. They have brought us nothing but pain and expense. While peace, not of the one-step-forward-and-two-steps-back kind but enduring peace, has remained an untested proposition.

So what should we do? Keep the doors locked and stick to the old ways or explore new avenues leading not to surrender but to normality?

Indian foreign minister Yashwant Sinha has presented a set of proposals envisaging freer travel between India and Pakistan. A bus link between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, a similar link across the border at Khokhrapar, a ferry service between Karachi and Bombay, talks on renewing rail and air links, resumption of sporting ties and better visa facilities. And a few items more.

Elsewhere on the planet such initiatives would invite derision. Look where the world is going and India and Pakistan are still stuck on visa formalities. But between India and Pakistan these are momentous initiatives. Remember that in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.

What should Pakistan do? Meet India halfway or draw the wagons into a circle and retreat into a bunker?

The easiest thing in the world is to nitpick or say no. It`s much harder breaking the mould of accepted routine and trying something fresh. All the more so for two countries which have not only fed on intransigence but turned it into a subcontinental speciality, the babu`s passion for red tape turned into an immutable principle of foreign policy.

This is an outmoded legacy and we should say goodbye to it. Not out of any misplaced sentiment or love for lighting peace candles at the Wagah/Attari border. But because the world has moved on and we risk being left behind.

Let us stick to our differences. Let us keep burning incense at the altar of Kashmir. Who says we give up our cherished beliefs or whatever we hold sacred? But what on earth are we gaining from the present policy of closed minds and unending hostility?

Look at our investment in hatred. Our two militaries are amongst the world`s biggest. Huge defence establishments now capped with the dubious glory of nuclear weapons. By all means, let us keep our nuclear arsenals. The old justifications for going nuclear stand immeasurably reinforced by America`s neo-con doctrine of pre-emptive war and America`s wars on Afghanistan and Iraq.

Let both our countries not be naked to external blackmail. But at the same time, there is little sense in wasting precious resources on a policy of point and counterpoint which, far from bolstering security, serves only to diminish it.

India and Pakistan have to realize a simple truth. India will be thwarted in its ambition to achieve great power status as long as its relations with Pakistan are fraught. Pakistan cannot liberate itself from external bondage, from the necessity of seeking unfavourable alliances with the United States, as long as it considers India to be its principal contradiction.

There was bitterness and hostility between the Hindu and Muslim communities before 1947. But partition should have taken care of that. India is India and we are we. Do we want to plant the banner of Islam on the ramparts of Delhi`s Red Fort? Does India want to undo Pakistan? The answer is no on both counts. Then why the distrust? What reason for the subcontinent`s babu curtain, the world`s second-last, to be still in place? (The last curtain of course being the cement wall Israel is raising along the West Bank.).

Ah, but there`s Kashmir. So there is but what of it? We have our position and India has hers. And while we believe our position to be just and India`s wrong, three and a half wars, Kargil being the half-volley, should teach both our countries the lesson that there is no military solution to this dispute. If recourse to arms could have settled the matter, Kashmir`s fate would have been decided long ago.

So let us stick to our position and let us not say, as President Musharraf has more than once, that for a settlement on Kashmir both countries would have to go beyond stated positions. This is not a question of bargaining. Our case is that the Kashmiris have been denied their right of self-determination (although we`ll be a lot more convincing on this subject if we attained something higher than military-dictated self-determination at home). And that they are being robbed of their aspirations by force. No sooner we modify this position than we don`t have a leg to stand on.

But while sticking to this principle, let us rid ourselves of the illusion that India can be forced to the negotiating table or that `jihad` can wrest Kashmir from Indian control.

`Jihad` can embarrass India and to some extent bleed it in Kashmir. These would be worthwhile aims if `jihad` were also not a two-way enterprise bringing more harm than good in its wake. Far more than any victories gained, it has caused problems for Pakistan, arousing international suspicion and at home acting as a spur to religious extremism.

There should be no sell-out on Kashmir, no turning the Line of Control into an international frontier. At the same time, we should have the wisdom to realize that there is going to be no Kashmir solution now or in the foreseeable future. One of history`s left-overs, it will be solved by history. Taking a leaf from our Chinese friends we should operate on the Taiwan principle: rigid theory, flexible practice.

We need to move on, not for India`s sake but for our own. Across the wide expanse of the Muslim world there are only two economic success stories: Mahathir`s Malaysia and the city-state of Dubai. If Pakistan is to mean anything, if what with some historical licence we call the Pakistani dream is to mean anything, Pakistan must become the third. But only if we can rethink India, only if we stop defining Pakistani nationhood in terms of India hostility.

So let us not shy away from meeting India halfway on the road to reconciliation. We are not a cardboard nation and no nation on earth can swamp us. If we get rid of our fears and phobias, and stop allowing old prejudices to dictate present policy, there is really nothing to be afraid of.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

Zia Ahmed:
I am from India and a Hindu. But I do want to say that you - consistent with your given name - reflect the light.
Now back to the ``strangers` world.``
WE NEED TO KEEP OUR FAITH. WE HAVE BEEN MISLED BY THE DIVISIONISTS. WE HAVE TO IDENTIFY THEM ISOLATE THEM AND NEUTRALIZE THEM.
Admittedly, we would have to work as hard to integrate - without any expectation of reward/rcognition, nay, some of our own will be unhappy with us - for this thankless job as the dividers had to create antagonism. But if we cherish our faith in humanness of humanity then we WILL ``overcome.``
Now to your write-up. It is so good that you are either an English professor or the zia of emotional intensity is radiating!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Dear Zia:

It is such dreams that reality is made from. Your narration touched my heart. Your generation will make new reality from your dreams, I am confident. Lost generation should remain lost in hatred.

ANIL KAPURIA

Hello Zia:
From time to time someone reminds us what chowk is all about. This is one of those articles. Thanks for sharing it with us. With your permission, I am reprinting this extract on ``Debate this``:
``So, Messrs. Musharraf and Vajpayee and others of your kind, listen up. I am tired of the bellicosity. I am tired of the rhetoric. Kashmir doesn`t run in my blood. It is not my jugular vein or inseparable part. I am tired of barbaric jihadis and freedom fighters and army jawans and lines-of-control and Siachens and grand slams. My India is a slightly portly, bespectacled man of charming disposition who calls me beta (son) and means it. I want to take the ferry to Bombay and meet the woman who grew up next door to my father and never tires of forwarding him nauseating emails from self-help gurus about God and peace and love and spirituality. I want to take the train to Rajasthan and see Dada Abba`s house in Jaipur. I want to fly to Delhi and visit all the friends that I admire and work with, to say namaste to their mothers and not feel weird. These are my Jaipur dreams.``

You are Jaipurian, if you want to! I have not yet read anything of what you say or others said.

Zia:

…a beautifully woven tapestry!…smooth, flowing and nostalgic…you have lit another dia:)

…the trouble is not with uncles…fate dealt them a blow and they learned to roll with it…the trouble is with nephews and nieces who grew up with links nourished over centuries traumatically severed…

…given sober second thoughts and tolerance and free access and contact the trauma of separation…with all its attendant hostility and suspicion would disappear over time…god and bhagwaan willing…

…the centuries of good blood (between uncles) cannot be stained with the surgical brute-ness of a mere 50 years for ever… if the nephews and nieces wake up…

rgds,

t

Hope that your dreams come true! Will be waiting for the follow-up.

=== Interact Filtered ===
view this users filtered interacts

I agree with this sentiment. -
``I am tired of the bellicosity. I am tired of the rhetoric. Kashmir doesn`t run in my blood. It is not my jugular vein or inseparable part. I am tired of barbaric jihadis and freedom fighters and army jawans and lines-of-control and Siachens and grand slams. ``

But all the peace loving people have a lot of work on their hands. We have to first disarm the megalomaniacs and ensure that they never ever get to touch the fire arms again . We have to show these persons, drunk in their false prides and over bloated self importance about their place in the God`s history, their CORRECT place in the modern world that we want to live in.
It is a lot of work- but it can be done.

Hi Zia . . . a few days ago, an Uncle of mine, now in the US, said that all this nostalgia would evaporate with his generation. I dont know about that.

Having said that, I liked your simple narrative, and would like to say just one thing . . . I have had the opportunity to bring Pakistani friends to my home in Delhi, and they have not felt wierd with my mother whose last memory of departure Jhung, Pakistan, is a house that was burning and a brother escaping slaughter, refugee camps, violence on trucks and trains, the works. As a matter of fact, my mother greeted them like the missing prodigal sons who have been away for too long, and while there was no fatted calf in her vegetarian kitchen, there was enough else.

All my mother wants is that somebody should some day get a copy or extract of her degree which got left behind.

Then I also have brothers and cousins and friends who have died on lines of control and elsewhere. So, I presume, do you. We need to respect them for bringing us to this day, too.

India as a portly gentleman saying ``beta`` . . . hmm. Never thought of that one.

Thanks again.