A Common Sensitivity for South Asia

New veins may contain less toxic blood. New generations in both India and Pakistan may be more willing to let the past stay in the past.

 In March 1948, when Indo-Pak bitterness over Kashmir was fresh, Eric Streiff of the Neue lurcher Zeitung asked Muhammad Ali Jinnah, Pakistan´s founder and Governor-General, whether India and Pakistan would cooperate against any outside aggression. Jinnah´s reply, reproduced in Karachi´s Dawn of 12 March 1948, and later on page 499 of S.M. Ikram´s Modern Muslim India and the Birth of Pakistan, was as follows:

Personally, 1 have no doubt in my mind that it..is of vital importance to Pakistan and India as independent sovereign states to collaborate in a friendly way jointly to defend their frontiers.

 But this depends entirely on whether Pakistan and India can resolve their own differences in the first instance… If we can put our own house in order internally, we may be able to play a very great part externally in all international affairs.

In this response, Jinnah saw South Asia as a unit, a "house" that needed to be put in order "internally" so that it might help in "all international affairs".

Just now, as I recall the far-seeing words, India-Pakistan relations seem a tiny bit better than they have been for months, which is not to say that they are warm. All the same, Nawaz Sharif, leader of the opposition in Pakistan, has said that he favours Indo-Pakistani talks, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has referred to his remark in positive terms, and India´s Foreign Minister Pranab Mukerjee has welcomed the idea of talks with Pakistan.

A more meaningful sign, perhaps, is the evident progress over regional trade. Meeting in New Delhi, the commerce ministers of SAARC have agreed to lowering tariffs and non-tariff barriers between the member countries. Pakistan´s Commerce Minister, Ahmed Mukhtar, has been quoted (The Times of India, 9 January 1996) as saying that there will soon be good news on the question of Pakistan granting MFN status to India.

Preferential trade within the region is but a stepping-stone, we are told, to free trade; SAPTA will become ´SAFTA´. Instead of paying steep prices to distant producers, South Asia´s consumers will pick up items inexpensively made in their own neighbourhood. Once citizens are locked together in trade, politicians will find it difficult to mobilise them for strife.

An attractive concept, but the region´s fears and hates have squashed it for years, and may do so once again. Why should common sense, long subdued by emotion in South Asia, now triumph? Have new circumstances or leaders suddenly blessed the region?

We can acknowledge the global trend in favour of regional cooperation, exemplified by ASEAN, EC, NAFTA, and APEC (promoting Asian-Pacific cooperation). No doubt many in the region ask themselves why South Asia should be the odd one out.

For quite a few, the question has led to a quest. This was shown in 1995 during two successful rounds of the India-Pakistan People´s Dialogue, one held in Delhi and the other in Lahore. Participants found friendship and common ground and issued joint statements. They also found, in both Delhi and Lahore, cordiality in encounters outside the dialogue.

Perhaps, too, there is some truth in the view that new veins may contain less toxic blood—that new generations in both India and Pakistan may be more willing to let the past stay in the past.

Yet, just one negative headline about a neighbouring country can kill the fruits of a series of dialogues. Putting it differently, we must hope that bridge-builders on both sides of the gulf will withstand a series of negative headlines.

What, to vary the question, is required of builders of a South Asian Community? For a start, they have to think of all of South Asia as their region.

This would cut across the South Asian ´norm´ of rubbing out the disliked neighbour from our thoughts and even our maps. It would mean a desire to let a flood, drought or earthquake in a neighbouring country affect us as much as a disaster in our own land would; it would mean a deliberate stretching of our hearts.

True builders will go beyond this. They will strive for a common sensitivity towards all wounds inflicted by humans in the region, no matter what the dateline—Karachi or Kashmir, Bombay or Manipur, Colombo or Jaffna—and no matter who the culprit militant, soldier or policeman. They will stretch minds as well, and fill gaps in their knowledge and understanding of the SAARC Seven.

Common Realities

True builders will recognise the similarities in the psychological and cultural traits of different parts of South Asia. Whether in politics, on the screen, or on the playing field—whether in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh or Sri Lanka, and perhaps, in Nepal as well—we have always wanted not performers, but stars. We don´t really want them to perform; we only want them to shine.

We want stars and we want dynasties. Our stars and dynasties love to feud, and to carry over their feuds from presidents and generals to their daughters or widows, and from one generation to the next. This is not an Indian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan or Bangladeshi thing; it is a South Asian trait.

In politics and outside politics, we hate compromises and coalitions. Our political alliances do not last as long as they seem to in Southeast Asia or in Europe, but our political stalemates can seem endless.

In almost all South Asian counties, another common trait is to see the state as the Great Provider, the Great Protector, and, at times, the Great Persecutor. The state seems Great, and the individual a helpless midget.

A focus on the past—sadly, not to learn from history but to avenge it—is another common feature. Who deceived or betrayed whom in the past is the staple of politics in almost every SAARC country.

Builders of a South Asian Community will recognise other common realities: the failure of state institutions to provide justice or redress, large economic disparities, remote-control from an often-distant national capital, discouragement or suppression of local identities and local political forces. They will face these formidable realities and yet extract hope from the fact that the realities affect all of South Asia.

They will also recognise the region´s joint assets that include a language—call it Hindi, Urdu or Hindustani—that brings much of India, Pakistan and Nepal together; another language, Bengali, that cements Bangladesh with India´s West Bengal; and a third, Tamil, which is common to the north and east of Sri Lanka and the south of India. They will note that South Asians laugh at similar things, enjoy similar food, and appreciate similar music.

Further, the region´s bridge-builders will recognise that cycles of revenge and the spiral of an arms race can destroy all hope in a precious part of the world called South Asia, providing retrospective justification for the alien hand that, for all its presumption and greed, brought some order to the region for two centuries.

They will listen patiently to opposite points of view, enlarge the friendship constituencies that exist, underline the similarities among South Asia´s adversaries, and, wherever possible, encourage wise initiatives. The region´s peacemakers thus have a role ahead of them which may not be any less important than that of attaining independence.