5th Panos-Himal Roundtable
PARTICIPANTS
The national-security state
Aitzaz Ahsan, former Interior Minister, the Pakistan People's Party
The impact of fundamentalist groups on policy
Bharat Bhushan, editor, Delhi, The Telegraph
The Hindu-Muslim question
Shahid Siddiqui, MP and General Secretary, Samajwadi Party
The national-economic-security state
Talat Hussain, director, News and Current Affairs, Aaj TV
The opportunity of the current context
Salman Haidar, former Foreign Secretary of India
The external context
Tasneem Noorani, former Interior and Commerce Secretary, Pakistan
Reality testing
N Ram, executive Editor, The Hindu
Changing ideology
Hameed Haroon, CEO, Dawn Group of Publications
Introduction
The Panos-Himal Southasian media gatekeepers' roundtable,11-12 November 2006.
Since May 2002, five gatekeepers' roundtables have been held on the India-Pakistan engagement, organised by Panos South Asia and Himal Southasian. These started with the understanding that rapprochement between New Delhi and Islamabad is all-important for a safe, secure and prosperous Southasia, and have subsequently addressed a series of critical bilateral topics between the two antagonists. The reports on the discussions, all of which have been printed in past issues of this magazine, are a barometer of the changing times and moods. We notice in them that, even amidst continuing domestic and international challenges, there is a permanent place for reasoned debate and mature deliberation in the India-Pakistan dialogue.
The fifth and latest roundtable was held on 11-12 November 2006 in Cairo. Under the theme "Are India and Pakistan really in control of the situation?", the meeting discussed the following issues:
* Internal factors in India influencing relations with Pakistan, including issues related to political equations, vote banks, radical groups, popular will, militancy and so on.
* Internal factors in Pakistan influencing relations with India, including the role of the military, radical groups, political factors, popular will, militancy and so on.
* External influences on bilateral relations vis-à-vis Pakistan, including the 'US factor', the West's positioning and the Islamic world, energy needs, the role of China and so on.
* External influences on bilateral relations vis-à-vis India, including the 'US factor', energy needs, the role of China and so on.
The discussants at Cairo were as follows. From India: Shahid Siddiqui, MP and General Secretary of the Samajwadi Party; Salman Haidar, former Foreign Secretary of India; A S Panneerselvan, Executive Director, Panos South Asia; Bharat Bhushan, Editor, The Telegraph; Madhuker Upadhyay, Editor, Lokmat Samachar; N Ram, Executive Editor, The Hindu; Ranjan Roy, Editor, Times News Network. From Pakistan: Tasneem Noorani, former Interior and Commerce Secretary for Pakistan; Aitzaz Ahsan, former Interior Minister, lawyer, author, from the Pakistan People's Party; Hameed Haroun, CEO, the Dawn Group of Publications; Talat Hussain, News Editor, Aaj TV; Mujibur Rehman Shami, Editor, Daily Pakistan; Shaheen Salahuddin, Editor, Indus TV; Aslam Kazi, Publisher, Daily Kawish and Chairman, KTN channel.
As in the previous four meetings, the Cairo roundtable was moderated by Kanak Mani Dixit, editor of Himal Southasian.
Within the given theme – whether or not the governments of India and Pakistan were in any position to guide the evolution of the bilateral relationship amidst competing and ever-changing internal and external pressures – the participants of the Cairo roundtable engaged in two days of intense and free-ranging discussion. What we present here is a summary of key presentations made extempore by participants, which provided grist for vigorous debate.
Gatekeepers' Roundtables
Conflict and the India-Pakistan media
Nagarkot, Nepal, May 2002
The nuclear weaponisation of Southasia
Bellagio, Italy, July 2003
The India-Pakistan 'Composite Dialogue'
Bentota, Sri Lanka, September 2004
The question of Kashmir
Istanbul, Turkey, December 2005
Are India and Pakistan really in control of the situation?
Cairo, Egypt, November 2006
The national-security state
Aitzaz Ahsan, former Interior Minister, the Pakistan People's Party
The pain of the Partition has left a legacy. There also persists in some quarters a fairly widespread fragility syndrome – as if Pakistan would revert one day to India, and that it is a fragile state. It was something that was attributed to Jawaharlal Nehru. This held the minds of Pakistani intellectuals, because there was a crisis or a certain inability to properly identify and realise one's own identity. The only way we could identify ourselves was that we were Muslims. But the presence of a large number of Muslims in India, the creation of Bangladesh, among other things, weakened this proposition. The fragility syndrome helped suppress these uncomfortable questions – you don't ask questions, you cannot seek answers because Pakistan is fragile, India is hostile.
Indian hostility was manifested quite early. The first issue was that water was held back after the monsoons in 1947. Secondly, the division of assets became a sore issue. Now in the context of this fragility syndrome, and the initial hostility, a third feature emerged very early in Pakistan's life. Pakistan adhered to a protectionist regime for its industrialisation. Imports were regulated very strictly. So we historically sealed out borders in a way regarding the exchange of goods and business with India.
The Pakistan Army took over in 1958. Gradually, but very perceptively and very surely, the very nature of the state changed, from what was initially to be a social-welfare state to a national-security state. In a welfare state, the first priority of the state is the citizen; in a national-security state, the first priority of the state is the soldier, and the intelligence agencies and the state establishment. To justify a military government, you also need to have palpable threats to national security. So you also tend to convert your neighbours to being your enemies.
Now, India's contribution itself to this national-security paradigm in Pakistan has been profound and continuous. If India blasts the Pokhran sands with a 'smiling Buddha' in 1974, Pakistan has no option but to say 'We'll eat grass, but we'll have the bomb'. If India blasts the Pokhran sands on 11 May 1998, we have no option but to shake the Chagai mountains on 28 May 1998. And India continues to raise its defence budget, which elicits a response from Pakistan.
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto was democratically elected, but was a continuum of the national-security state. He also sought to appease the mullahs with some gestures but it was during Zia's time that money, weapons, weapon trainers came into jihad and empowered fundamentalist units. This period also saw the Islamisation of the textbooks. Hate literature came into it. Our history began in 712 AD, when Mohammed bin Qasim came to Pakistan. It was not the history of the land we were teaching; it was the history of the religion.
When you start creating a national-security state and paradigm, then you are bound to get into adventures like we did in the so-called Afghan jihad, against the Soviet Union, where we were used as tools. In that process of the jihad against the Soviet Union, Pakistan became populist, weaponised and jihadised, intolerant and militarised. All these jihadis were unemployed after the withdrawal of the Soviets and the failure of the operation in Jalalabad in 1989. And the whole swath actually moved into the Kashmir front, so that became live. All these events reinforced what was a marginal faction in Pakistani politics – the faction that believed that Pakistan was an ideological state, just like Israel.
The cold war between India and Pakistan has continued through this period and created vested interests – for instance, the weapons suppliers who sit and lobby in the Defence Ministry, sit and lobby in the prime minister's house. The other problem is that our foreign offices are locked in reciprocity. Neither state has the imagination or the guts or the initiative to say, 'We don't care about reciprocity, we are going to open visas. We're going to open imports.'
At present, Pervez Musharraf is incapable of breaking away from the hold of the national-security structures of the state and the national-security establishment. In fact, at least three close calls on his life in December 2004 have made him even more a prisoner. He owes his continued uniform and the holding of two offices to them, as they voted for him in the 17th Amendment.
Having said that, I think India is wasting an opportunity. The solutions that a Pakistan Army chief can undertake with India are not those that political parties will be able to do even after full democracy is restored. We should look at a gamut of measures in different fields that can improve ties – from the defence-security options to the economic security, and look for avenues and work on that. Pakistan will not cut its defence budget if India is increasing its defence budget. Secondly, nobody is stopping people from issuing visas, people-to-people contact. There has been a certain amount of movement in that. I think the visa regime should be relaxed enormously because it really brings people together.
Pakistan must realise the immense potential out of trade with India – it gets a market seven times its size. India gets a huge market as well. And despite such an opportunity, our commerce minister goes around begging for an increase of 0.01 percent in textile quota in category 622 in Europe and the US. On the import side, why is it the fault of my 160 million consumers, that he should have to buy a cycle for 4000 rupees when can buy it for 2200 rupees coming across on trucks from Wagah?
The impact of fundamentalist groups on policy
Bharat Bhushan, editor, Delhi, The Telegraph
Let us look at some internal factors. Does internal electoral compulsion affect India-Pakistan relations in India? Certainly it does, and it should. Because in an inclusive democracy, you must take the views of all constituents into account, irrespective of what we might call vote-bank politics. However, having said that, there are cynical politicians – and not only in the Congress, right across all kinds of parties – who see their policy towards Pakistan as an extension of their domestic compulsions. So, for example, the elections in Uttar Pradesh, which are due in February next year, before that you will see a certain kind of polarisation. There is a lot of guesswork involved in democratic politics, so there will be parties who think that being softer towards Pakistan, being reconciliatory, would help them with votes of certain communities or certain sections of society.
The second question is – do fundamentalist groups influence policy towards Pakistan? They certainly try to do that; sometimes they're effective, sometimes they're not. Fundamentalist Hindu groups like the RSS, Bajrang Dal, they're only anti-Muslim. They have a bias against Pakistan, to put it mildly. But they tend to have far greater influence on BJP-led governments. For other governments, they create communal tension, they create problems, law-and-order problems which can be dealt with. Are there Muslim fundamentalist groups in India which influence policy? We have an absolutely amazing organisation called Jamaat-e-Ulema-Hind, which took on Jinnah earlier with the two-nation theory. Exceptionally nationalist, even today they argue for moderation, particularly after the Bombay serial blasts; its influence on policy has been fairly remarkable. There is another element in the Muslim community that has emerged, but this is more a response to a lack of social and political justice. If I was a young Muslim kid living in Gujarat and I found that there was no justice for Muslims of Gujarat, I would turn towards extremism.
My next point is terrorist acts influencing policy. Some of these kids can get used by the powers that be to create terrorism in India. Are terrorist acts in India an internal problem in India? People suspect they are part of an external policy that Pakistan follows towards India. I've had very liberal Pakistani friends tell me that if we give up – not now, five years ago – if we give up using violence against India, you would never talk about Kashmir. I suspect they're right. But after every big terrorist act, whether it is the market blasts in Delhi, or Bombay, or Malegaon, it becomes that much more difficult for the leadership to pursue a line of reconciliation with Pakistan.
Popular will influences relationships. Popular will expresses itself in various ways – elections are one of them, and people by and large want peace with Pakistan, despite these aberrations and terrorist acts. The people-to-people contacts, which have gone up in the last five or six years, have had an amazing influence – the kind of warmth that has developed between the two peoples is amazing.
The media is a major problem, because in India it has become a force multiplier of the Defence Ministry and the Foreign Ministry, by and large. The best of our correspondents have become nothing more than stenographers, somebody who could go to the Foreign Office briefing and people would say, 'Sir could you go a bit slower, I missed that line.' We have internalised the national-security paradigm completely. There are very few newspapers which are outside of that paradigm. We do unsourced stories from Kashmir, we accept what the military intelligence says about Mr X being a Pakistani agent or his name being this or that – there is no way of cross-checking.
The Hindu-Muslim question
Shahid Siddiqui, MP and General Secretary, Samajwadi Party
I wish to place emphasis on some issues that have not been highlighted in the past, and realities which we have been pushing under the carpet for the last 60 years. India and Pakistan were born out of deep distrust. The two-nation theory stemmed from the strong belief that Hindus and Muslims of India could not live together as one people. Unfortunately, Partition did not solve the problem of communal and religious divide in the Subcontinent. Muslims and Hindus did not emerge as two separate nations – there were as many Muslims left behind in India as there were in the new nation of Pakistan.
This Hindu-Muslim question is the core issue between India and Pakistan. The second-largest population in India is the Muslim population, a fact which has influenced India's relationship with Pakistan, its own political and social character.
Despite pressure from various quarters, Indian leaders at that time realised that India could not and should not become a Hindu state. This pressure of creating a secular India, where minorities, especially Muslims, have equal rights, was at the back of the mind of Indian political leadership when conflict in Kashmir arose. The Congress party, Jawaharlal Nehru and all the leaders were seen to be soft on Muslims. The legitimate question raised by many in India was that if Kashmir belonged to Pakistan because it has a very large Muslim population, and there should be a referendum in Kashmir on this issue on religious grounds, then what was such a large Muslim population doing in India, and why should they have all these political and social and legal rights? People across party lines were articulating these ideas.
Indians therefore had to reject the two-nation theory in its entirety, if we wanted to build a secular state and give equal rights to our large Muslim population. This has created a situation where even secular and liberal political parties could not take a soft attitude towards Pakistan. On the one hand they had to defend Indian minorities, especially Indian Muslims. And in doing so, they were in competition with rightist Hindu parties, and pressure from within their own parties; therefore, they had to create a strong, rigid, sometimes even unreasonable stance towards Pakistan. This happened because nobody wanted to be seen as being soft both on Pakistan and on Muslims.
This situation continued till, say, the BJP came to power. A Hindu party was raising the issue of Muslims within Indian polity. The vote of Indian Muslims was extremely important, and has been wooed by a number of secular parties, while the Right Hindu parties realise that they cannot get this Muslim vote, and therefore they have been both anti-Muslim and anti-Pakistan. They wanted to cater to voters on issues of Islam being a threat, Muslims being a threat, Muslims being responsible for the creation of Pakistan, and that with such a large Muslim population in India, a further threat remained which would again lead to division of India.
In the post-9/11 period, this anti-Pakistan sentiment got converted more to anti-Muslim sentiments, and Muslims are seen to be terrorists. Therefore, there is a competition between all of the political parties as to who is more anti-terrorist, who is more anti-jihadi. And in a way, who is more anti-Pakistani jihadi. This takes place even among the secular parties.
In such a context, the liberal and the secular parties played on the insecurity of the Indian Muslims. And the Right political parties, and also sometimes the Congress, played on the insecurities of the Hindus. The Muslim vote has never been influenced by what happens in Pakistan. And anybody who tries to do that doesn't know the ground realities. But what happens is that when Manmohan Singh talks about reservations for Muslims, within a short time he makes a strong statement on Pakistan. When they want to get the Muslim vote bank, they say something very nice for Indian Muslims – that they are backward, something should be done, come out with 15 or 20 or 25 points in their favour. Immediately these secular leaders say something about Pakistan, which can in a way appease the other constituency.
Pakistan was created in the name of Indian Muslims. It was created because they thought they were insecure here, they will have their security there; but it did not resolve the issue of Indian Muslims. The resolution of this tension, this conflict, this suspicion, can take place if we understand that Pakistan has been created as a nation, it remains as a nation, but it is not a nation in the name of Indian Muslims anymore. It was not and it is not. Until and unless we accept this reality – until the larger sections of the ruling elite in Pakistan accepts that we are two nations in the political sense, and we are territorially separate, but we are not two nations because of religion – we will not ultimately be able to come closer.
But there has been one immensely positive change – the creation of a national consensus on improving ties with Pakistan. Despite all its rhetoric, once the BJP came to power and it faced ground realities, it was willing to engage with Pakistan. At the political level, the Hindu and Muslim debate is now getting separated from the issue of India-Pakistan relations.
Since even the Right Hindu parties in India have realised that there is a very large constituency for peace, a national consensus has emerged. And therefore, they have had to change their line. And since the pressure from those playing on the insecurities of the majority is not there on other so-called secular, liberal, democratic parties, this allows more space to negotiate with Pakistan.
There are some other factors that have contributed to better ties. Earlier, when a single party had to get a majority, all outfits played lots of games – and the foremost was the Hindu-Muslim card, or India-Pakistan card. With the emergence of coalitions, regional issues have become much more important. Regional parties are not interested in a confrontation with Pakistan. Economic growth has also influenced India-Pakistan relations. When it was not satisfactory, the Indian political leadership raised the threat of Pakistan, in order to divert the public attention. But now, in the post-liberalisation phase, Indian economic growth is taking us in a direction where political parties realise that we cannot have this eight to ten percent growth unless we have peace in the region, unless we have better relations with the neighbours, and unless our neighbours grow with us.
The media has made both sides aware of each other and helped in removing misconceptions. But at times, the competitive nature of the media, especially the electronic media, means that they can blow some issues out of proportion, which creates pressure on political leaders to be more aggressive.
The national-economic-security state
Talat Hussain, director, News and Current Affairs, Aaj TV
Let's look at the fundamental factors influencing Pakistan's outlook, primarily towards India and generally towards the rest of the world. The 'national-security state' term can be modified to explain the pre-9/11 foreign policy of Pakistan. Pakistan has always been, ever since its creation, a national-border-security state. Its borders have been the drivers of Pakistan's defence and foreign policy – the desire to protect these borders, secure these borders, reinforce these borders, to defend these borders, and also I would daresay the desire to expand these borders. The ideological factor was there, but frankly, at one level, the speed with which we discarded the Taliban indicates that the ideological factor was not exactly a big factor.
Post-9/11, while the national-border-security state was still concerned with its border, there was an inner debate that was emerging. If you were to look at Pervez Musharraf's first seven points to begin the reform process, economic security was a fundamental point that he was raising then, and has been hammering every since. The national-security operators in Pakistan came to the conclusion after the Kargil war that the cost of war is a bit too much for them to take. Rebuilding the economy has been the central theme of Pakistan's outlook as far as foreign policy is concerned. Post-9/11, the national-border-security state is trying to now become the national-economic-security state. This means you have to have economic stability, you have to have the depth of the economy, enough foreign-exchange reserves, enough integration through trade in order for you to have not just a good international image, but also enough in your pocket to sustain your defence and foreign policy.
This has had a rather sobering effect on Pakistan's external conduct. If you look at the entire thrust of Pakistan's foreign policy after 9/11, there isn't a single speech that Musharraf has made, isn't a single statement that the prime minister has made, there isn't a single core commanders' meeting that has taken place after 2000 in which the economic factor is not debated thoroughly. In fact, even in the National Defence College, which deals with pure and hardcore defence, there is a whole new course that has been evolved on national security driven by the economic factors. The sobering effect is that it has made the military think, and analyse situations available to them. The other is that it has worked as a break on the controlled, resistant elements within Pakistan's security establishment, because their ambition cannot be funded anymore.
Let's also look at the anecdotal history post-9/11. Accepting the US cooperation in the 'war against terrorism', and before that starting with the dislodgement of the Taliban, had a lot to do with hard-nosed economic calculations and what Pakistan would get in return financially. Similarly, the entire peace process with India is now being posited in the overall context of the economic benefits. Yes, there is a border-security issue – with the Afghanistan border in the state that it is, it makes sense for a border-security state to stabilise the border. But it also makes eminent sense, for an economic-security state, to derive some economic benefits out of it.
China and the Middle East is another case in point. Pakistan's cooperation with China is increasingly acquiring an economic dimension that needs to be figured out. The operation in Balochistan was undertaken not just to bump off an 80-year-old man, but to clear the path of the seeming obstacle in the way of bringing in investors who could utilise the remarkable natural resources of the area.
There is something happening in Pakistan that our friends in India need to look at. If we continue to use the old prisms of two different trajectories being developed by two different types of states, then we will fall easy prey to a cliché that hasn't taken us forward. India and Pakistan are potentially the most vibrant economies. There are immense opportunities, ranging from joint investment ventures to joint building of dams. Whether India and Pakistan will be able to make use of this change of the national-border-security state into a national-economic-security state or not hinges purely on the level of confidence.
There are two flip-sides to it, and that is where we need to probably be more forthright in assessing each other's weaknesses and strengths. Only a higher level of mutual confidence and resolution of conflicts will allow both of the countries to maximally exploit this potentiality. So economic cooperation will depend on where our defence and foreign policies are going.
The more dangerous flip-side is that with economic stability comes arrogance. Both on the Pakistani and Indian side, there is the possibility of new wealth and new confidence in economic stability being channelled into challenging each other. Once you have money in your kitty, you can either spend it wisely, or you believe that now you have a license to slap each other on the face. I am a little fearful of this flip-side because of the international arms-purchase report which has just come out. This reports that while Asia is the biggest purchaser as a continent, India is the biggest arms purchaser in all of Asia, to the tune of USD 12 billion.
The opportunity of the current context
Salman Haidar, former Foreign Secretary of India
The international situation at this time is extremely conducive for India and Pakistan to resolve their differences. Nobody is playing heed anymore to complaints that India and Pakistan might make about the other. Traditional Southasian diplomacy in that sense is now obsolete. 'Dehyphenation' means that we can no longer hope to prevail by running down the other side. For instance, every advantage India gets in strengthening its ties with America should not be viewed as being against Pakistan. Instead of being pushed, we are being encouraged at most by the supreme superpower, the hyperpower. The US has been wise enough to do so in a discreet manner. There is no public presentation, no public expression of concern that these two countries should make stronger efforts to resolve their differences.
The US position about Southasia has gradually been changing. In the early 1990s, visits from the Pentagon started taking place. Then a political dimension to this relationship was established, with the highly successful visit of Bill Clinton. A little later we came across this notion of a strategic partnership between India and America. There is a general sense that these two countries have harmonious, broader interests. India is seen as a factor for stability by America. And its influence outside its borders is not seen in negative terms. This is in fact a reversal of a traditional perception. The conclusion that was reached and then pursued by the US was that India was an acceptable and useful potential partner at that stage.
Some dangers in this relationship are also fairly obvious. India is accused, within India, of accepting a second role, even a subordinate role vis-à-vis the superpower. There have been times when this seemed to go further than the public could accept. There was a very real move, for example, for a couple of Indian divisions to go to Iraq as part of the coalition forces. This was scotched by Parliament – there are enough correctives within the system.
There is a danger of complacency. Figure everything is going well; we are chums of America. We've got our external coordinates worked out, and now can go along smoothly and steadily on this established course. Events are now going in our favour, and all we have to do is hold steady. Such an attitude would support the view that Pakistan cannot do anything much to disturb this. But I believe that Manmohan Singh knows that a supportive neighbourhood, good neighbourhood relations, are necessary if India is going to make the strides forward.
Energy needs are important. Here India has been very active, gone global – in Central Asia, Latin America, Sudan. Even though oil and politics go together, these are essentially commercial issues, not geopolitical issues. The Iran gas pipeline has been mentioned in this context, also a pipeline from Central Asia. It can be a major building block of good relations between India and Pakistan. I think that one should not think of the American position as unalterably opposed.
I do not see China anymore as a factor that promotes strife between India and Pakistan. China has been moving to a position of equidistance on Kashmir. However, if Indians are 'midnight's children', we're also children of 1962, and the memories and the lessons, the unabsorbed shocks of 1962 are still with us. There's an inclination in India to see Chinese assistance for the development of Gwadar port as a power-play on our doorstep, and as an attempt to establish a presence where it did not exist. Mutual disarmament between India and Pakistan has been discussed – it is a good idea, but it's not a simple idea, because from India's point of view, there is this other factor of China. We also have other naval responsibilities, and need to upgrade our equipment.
The war on terror does have difficult consequences. There is a perception and the sense that India is subjected to Pakistan-grown, Pakistan-trained terrorists. The 'war on terror' came long after our own concerns with terrorist activities in Kashmir and elsewhere. But it has reinforced those factors and increased the difficulty of India and Pakistan being able to come to a common cause. This knee-jerk reaction, blaming Pakistan every time something goes wrong, has to do with this history and present global environment. The fact that a lot has happened, especially in Kashmir, will provoke a certain type of reaction. Terrorism in India has been supported by Pakistan, which has trained terrorist in its own training camps.
There is no international bar to India and Pakistan sorting out their problems. Each will have to take into account many factors, but it is in their hands. The way forward is to be discerned. I think a process does exist. Autonomy is a big issue. We have already commenced the kind of activity that can permit a kind of statutory arrangement at the almost municipal, state-level arrangement between Azad Kashmir and Jammu & Kashmir. The other great area of concern is that of demilitarisation. Here again there is no dispute on the acceptability of it. But the notion of what demilitarisation is, where it leads, what it involves, is very different on the two sides of the Line of Control.
The external context
Tasneem Noorani, former Interior and Commerce Secretary, Pakistan
India was earlier aligned with the USSR, while Pakistan had the backing of the USA – the superior world power – and China, the strongest regional player. Now, India as a bigger regional player, a bigger economic force, a bigger consumer market and a bigger supplier of quality manpower, is wooed by the US, European Union and Russia. The relationship between China and India is also improving, with trade likely to go up to about USD 20 billion in the near future. China also now takes a softer stance on India, vis-à-vis Pakistan, than it used to.
India is currently the darling of the West. They're unwilling to push India to do anything against its will. India now perceives itself as a potential world power, and therefore wants a place on the high table – that's the Security Council. The goal of enhanced international support and pressure on India to find a solution to Kashmir has also reduced. The Indian statement on Balochistan recently indicates that it sees itself as a regional player.
Currently, the main concern of the US and EU is to avoid a conflict between India and Pakistan, not necessarily to look for a solution. The role of Bill Clinton in the Kargil issue was a case in point. The US agrees with India's stance that Kashmir is a bilateral issue, and needs not be internationalised. So, all matters pertaining to the Kashmir issue and other central issues are really more covertly handled than overtly handled. For its part, the Islamic world has only given moral support to Pakistan. There is no pressure on India from the Islamic world on this issue.
The one critical impediment for India could be energy. Many of these energy sources are available in Central Asia; but with strained ties with Pakistan, it will be difficult for New Delhi to access these areas. If you take a mature view, Balochistan is a site for many of these resources. There are problems in that region at present. But in the future, collaborative projects will benefit India as well, if it looks to improving ties with Pakistan.
What has changed for Pakistan? Post-9/11, Pakistan has become an important necessity of the US and its fights against terror. The US needs Pakistan's continued support in its fight in Afghanistan. The US, UK and EU understand the importance of solving the Kashmir issue in order to remove the main cause of the radicalisation of the Islamists in Pakistan, because this affects their war in Afghanistan and generally the 'war against terror'.
Are the governments of the two countries really in control? My perception is that in Pakistan, because it is in effect non-democratic, one man's decision makes a lot of difference. The government in Pakistan is in control in that sense, that if they were to enter into an agreement, they would certainly be able to deliver. But one is not sure if the same can be said about the Indian side.
My last point is really on the future scenario. India is confident, it continues to grow, there is no major international pressure, it is engaging with Pakistan on its own terms, the wait-it-out policy is continuing. On the other hand, Pakistan continues to spend disproportionately high sums on defence with resultant pressures on the economy; the army in Pakistan enjoys the centre stage due to this; the chances of a sustainable growth of democratic institutions are dismal. The extremist jihadi elements are still gaining strength. They have a cause, and the public empathises with them.
At present, external factors, barring perhaps a need for energy resources and trade and investment expansion, are not prodding India to seek a solution to the problems. The powers that be in the world are really excessively favoured on one side, on an institutional basis. In the case of Pakistan, it's an incidental basis, based on individuals, based on incidents. That is a very significant difference between the partnerships that exist.
Is a scenario where one is a success and the other a failure likely to continue? Probably not. Silencing Pakistan is also an unlikely option because of the nuclearisation phenomenon. It's not something that can be wished away or bashed into the ground. So what is the possible scenario 15, 20 years from now? If there is this smug attitude in India that everything is going fine, Pakistan is not getting any assistance from anywhere else, there is a standoff because of nuclearisation, then something will give way. It is important that India takes a more mature and confident view of the situation and review the strategy.
Reality testing
N Ram, executive Editor, The Hindu
There is a need to do what many call 'reality testing' of the India-Pakistan relationship, with reference to both the internal and external factors. Reality testing in psychology is the technique of objective evaluation of an emotion or thoughts against real life – as a faculty present in normal individuals, but defective in others. There has been some attempt in India to do this. There are visions of India's future, on this whole issue of India's place in the sun. It is arranged from the extremely bullish and upbeat, rooted in extremely optimistic projections of Indian economic growth, and in uninhibited realpolitik. At the other end, they are rooted in preoccupation with basic livelihood and human-development issues, and of moral concerns over recent and current foreign-policy developments. I would just like to cite as evidence the remarkable result of the 2004 general election, our 14th, where the slogan of 'India Shining' bombed. As for the mass of deprivations, I think the government figures tend to underestimate them.
The play of external factors has its limits. Basically, it is my conviction as a journalist that the two countries need to settle it themselves. There'll be some pressure as during Kargil that works to the advantage of one or the other, depending on who is on the right side on that. But this kind of impatience for results coming from external pressure is not realistic.
There is a significant crossborder input, which must be recognised by all sides. The big point is that it should not be converted into a polemical exchange. I think all reasonable people in India would say, 'Don't link it to talks'. The process of dialogue must go forward. Even if there are some inputs from that side, do you cease dialogue, terminate the process of détente, threaten Pakistan with crossborder strikes? Of course, you can turn around and say public opinion will not accept it. This is often a euphemism for being timid. And this is our criticism against the Manmohan Singh government, as well as the Vajpayee government.
The second strand of criticism is about the abandonment of what was seen to be a dilution of a commitment to what were seen to be core values. I personally believe that there has been this loss – the passion to sit at the high table, and all this has taken Indian foreign policy off the track. It needs serious correction. Nuclear weaponisation has destabilised the situation. But on the Pakistan side, you cannot escape from one conclusion: that you cannot depend on anyone else to force the pace, to deliver anything, other than the well-known methods that have worked when you have tried them or when India has tried them. It is not fully correct to say that nothing has happened on Kashmir with the dialogue. Reality testing would demand that you recognise, at least as a discussable proposition, that this is the Indian political consensus.
And we know that the reality in Pakistan is that this cannot be sold to the political forces in Pakistan. Therefore it looks like an intractable problem or an intractable gap, which has to be lived with, tolerated, you have to be patient with it, and you have to work on it to narrow that gap. There must be agreement on one principle: non-use of force to alter the status quo along the Line of Control. This is the sacred principle in India-China relations, and this is the only principle that would work in India-Pakistan relations, whether anyone likes it or not. There is no way, there is no god from the machine, no external factor that can force the pace.
Changing ideology
Hameed Haroon, CEO, Dawn Group of Publications
What is important and critical is ideology, because we have changing ideologies in both India and Pakistan. We encounter the mechanics of changing ideology every day. Everybody says in Pakistan that Pakistan cannot change its policy on Kashmir significantly because of public opinion. Everybody in India says that India cannot significantly change its policy on Kashmir because of public opinion. Yet peopl e will hold in history the governments of India and Pakistan, as past masters, on the arc of changing ideology in the short term.
Let's take India. India's leadership has steered its whole establishment, academia and public opinion, the schizophrenic heart of the India International Centre in Delhi also, away from its position as neutralist leader of the Third World to a pro-US stance, and to a subordinate relationship with Washington. Yes, of course, Indian academia is not dead, and Indian intelligentsia is not dead. But think of the enormity of the move, and how little has been said in response to it. Take Pakistan and its brigadiers. One day, they are pro-Taliban, and the next day they are told our policy has changed. So now you are going to be anti-Taliban and pro-Northern Alliance. This is the beginning of the change in Afghanistan, when the new government had turned over. Think of what the Pakistan government has gone through in order to ensure this change in implementation, the reining in of Kashmir militants. Maybe not successfully, but in a big way. How come India and Pakistan have both accomplished sea-changes in ideological perception? Overnight!
But when we say it's time for a change of mind on Kashmir, both sides throw up their hands and say, 'Hold on, this can't be done.' These are two candidates who change their ideologies and their policy positions quicker than a fickle man changes his garments to be noticed. How is it that Kashmir policies become so insubordinate to change, and we can't resolve Kashmir, but we can change everything else in our ideology, thinking, strategy, intelligence agencies, even in our morality – how is it we are able to accomplish this? I think this is the key question that needs to be addressed.
Five years of bilateral critique
A short assessment of Panos South Asia-Himal Southasian's half a decade experience of India-Pakistan dialogue, which finds a heartening trend towards openness and self-questioning.
A S Panneerselvan, Director, Panos South Asia
In 2002, when Panos South Asia and Himal Southasian launched the first roundtable of senior journalists from India and Pakistan at Nagarkot in Nepal, we did not expect that our initiative would become an annual event, let alone have any sort of impact on the polity of the two states. It was a modest attempt to bring together influential sections of the media and help them to listen to each other.
The time of the Nagarkot meeting was when Islamabad and New Delhi were on the brink of war. There was massive mobilisation of forces along the border following the attack on the Indian Parliament, an eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation; there were provocative statements from both sides, while self-righteousness and narrow patriotism governed the narrative of both countries' political and media discourses. Amidst such an atmosphere of heightened hate and mutual distrust, the participants at the very first meeting set the tone for all the sessions to follow Nagarkot, in Bentota, Bellagio, Istanbul and Cairo. They proved that the voice of sanity, reason and forbearance would be able to penetrate even ultra-nationalist chatter of the highest volume.
As the organisers started these series of meetings five years ago, media pundits and political scholars were sceptical of the result. In their view, the reasons for Partition had not disappeared, and in fact had become more complex over five decades. In their considered opinion, Kashmir remained an intractable issue because neither side could discuss it outside their stated state-side positions: that total possession of Jammu & Kashmir was vital for the two countries to complete their nation-building exercises according to their chosen paths; that Muslim-majority J & K had to be an integrated part of India to prove the latter's secular credentials; that Pakistan could not give up Kashmir because that would challenge the former's very rationale for existence under the two-nation theory.
Back then, the arguments in favour of war and confrontation were cast in a modern-scientific mould, while the articulations in favour of peace between India and Pakistan were ridiculed as naïve, emotional yearnings of peaceniks woefully out of touch with reality. Against this background, in 2002 it looked like Panos South Asia and Himal Southasian were anachronistic sisters championing lost causes.
The security state
The new global political narrative after the attacks of 11 September 2001 was a significant impediment. In Southasia as elsewhere in the developing world, there was an attempt to force the focus away from the welfare state to the security state. Suddenly every requirement for a population's social and economic wellbeing was being viewed from a security paradigm, and the think tanks and geostrategic analysts quickly shifted gears to speak up for this new, exclusionist (some would say war-mongering) position.
The very use of language indicated this shift: what used to be termed 'food self-sufficiency' and 'energy needs' in discussions from the 1960s right up to the 1980s now began to be addressed as 'food security' and 'energy security'. The attempt to provide 'basic needs' was couched in the language of 'livelihood security'. Planning and implementation of welfare models were replaced by the notion of 'strategies' and 'execution'. The warmth of compassion was being substituted with the cold language of one society establishing 'strategic advantage' over another. All of this was given a market twist, and the pundits suggested that it was the demand of the market which required a hardening of stances.
But right from the first of our confabulations that brought together senior journalists and also politicians, analysts and former bureaucrats and diplomats, the organisers of the roundtable realised that the situation was not as hopeless as the sceptics in New Delhi and Islamabad wanted us to believe. Nor was it necessary to trudge down the path of confrontation they proposed. Through the dynamic of bringing together editors, media proprietors, columnists and politicians from the two countries to discuss the pitfalls and opportunities that lay before media in their coverage of bilateral issues, we found that space could be created for new possibilities.
At Nagarkot, participants discussed a variety of issues that determine the way India and Pakistan figure in each other's media. Also under discussion was the role that the media plays or can play in either reducing or inflaming the one conflict that has dominated all of Southasia for some time, Kashmir. Through these and various other exploratory discussions, a perhaps unprecedented exercise was carried out: one of Indian and Pakistani media on Indian and Pakistani media. The result was an illustration of the processes of journalism, and a revelation of the tensions that inform and emerge from the practise of this difficult trade in this difficult region.
Internal critiques
The myth that the market itself demanded a chauvinistic approach was exploded during the 2002 meet by Kalpana Sharma of The Hindu. She said: "The Hindu would not have been the second largest circulating newspaper if the market did not want to read the kind of things that it publishes. The Hindu is published from a very conservative part of the country, in the south, and the kind of news it has carried and its editorial criticism of the BJP has invited furious letters to the editor. But the paper's circulation did not decline for that reason. The market is therefore just an excuse behind which other kinds of priorities are being met."
One of India's dynamic ministers, former diplomat Mani Shankar Aiyar, was candid in explaining the problems of the state machinery and its understanding of the media. "I find this whole exercise of trying to either defend our own minds from the other side or inflicting our point of view on the other side so naïve. It assumes that you could very easily change what the other person's perception was or get your own perceptions so easily changed. The attempt to use intelligence information or the media for propaganda purposes is doomed to failure, especially in our countries."
Pakistani editor Rehana Hakeem brought out the pressures on media during intense conflict: "People do tend to take sides, and the media is not an exception. Besides, access to information is limited. Journalists are not allowed to investigate independently, and so they have to rely on the government. But usually – and of late, once the event is over – there is a fair bit of introspection, as happened in the case of the Kargil war."
By bringing such voices together and initiating an internal critique of both countries' media and governments, our roundtables have managed to energise and also be a part of a very important shift in perceptions among 'gatekeeper' practitioners in India and Pakistan. Instead of projecting the practitioners from the other country as part of the enemy camp, editors began looking at them as peers, besieged by the same set of problems. Over the years, we experienced increasing openness in the roundtables, and a willingness to set aside exclusive nationalist positions, and to question one's own state establishment.
Editors and media-house owners, once the floodgates were opened, were not hesitant to touch any tricky or sensitive issue. At Bellagio in Italy (2003), they discussed the wretched nuclear issue. At Bentota in Sri Lanka (2004), they took the discussion beyond the confidence-building measures, and scrutinised the Composite Dialogue between the two countries. The most inflammatory issue, Kashmir, was discussed amidst the presence of Kashmiri leadership at Istanbul in 2005. And at Cairo in November 2006, as reported in this issue of Himal, the media gatekeepers and policymakers of the two nuclear neighbours shared – with extraordinary candidness – their perspective on internal and external factors that affect the relations between the two countries. We believe that our modest but sustained initiative over the last five years has played a small role in keeping the process of détente on track, despite the many provocations we know so well.