August 05, 2000

Passing the passport test
To Kashmir, via the world

There are interesting straws in the wind. Little signals that finally we are beginning to understand and appreciate our standing in a changing post-Cold War light

The Uttar Pradesh Tourism Department has lately been aggressive in advertising the Taj Mahal. But, if you look closely at the advertisement in question, the significance is more political than commercial. There is the famous picture of Bill and Chelsea Clinton at the Taj and a quote from the president: ‘‘The world is divided between those who have seen the Taj and those who have not.’’

The irony, or the absurdity, of a US president endorsing the Taj for tourists apart, when was the last time you saw any Indian, particularly in the government, see anything said by an American leader in such positive light?
Or when was the last time newspapers across the board front-paged, with such positive spin, a phone call from the US president to our Prime Minister in a moment of national crisis and tragedy?

These are interesting straws in the wind. Little signals that finally we are beginning to understand and appreciate our standing in the world in a changing, post-Cold War light. Not long ago, we had gone ballistic when the same US president had committed the crime of merely mentioning the K-Word at the United Nations General Assembly. In what was no more, perhaps, than a speechwriter’s alliterative flourish, he had spoken of the need to douse the fires that burn from the Caucasus to Kashmir. But such was our neurosis at that time that we thought finally Robin Raphel had succeeded in getting her president to “intervene”. Now, we seem to celebrate each time he talks of the need to resolve the Kashmir issue.

From the Caucasus to Kashmir to Kargil, we have already come a long way in terms of our post-Cold War worldview, and of our own stature and relevance in the world. Similarly, there has been a complete turnaround in the way the world looks at us. If you have any doubts, please put them through the passport test.

The esteem, or the contempt, in which a nation is held by the international community is directly proportional to the respect or the suspicion with which the immigration policeman at Kennedy, Heathrow or Frankfurt airports looks at your passport. If you’ve been travelling lately, you would have seen how we have risen on that index. So much so that Pramod Mahajan tells me with great delight how he got a few nods of appreciation even from Portuguese immigration officials who obviously presumed that he was responsible for India’s success in the information technology business.

But how does this influence the now unfolding gameplan on Kashmir?
For half a century we’ve been paranoid at the thought of international intervention, interference, even interest, in the Kashmir issue and the fear wasn’t entirely irrational. We had defied the UN resolutions on a plebiscite; we had consistently and calculatedly diluted the autonomy promised to Kashmir under the Instrument of Accession and Article 370; and although the Shimla agreement, and Pakistan’s own stupidity in attacking Kashmir in 1965, gave us pretty good arguments, we were never really sure the world, by and large, accepted the legitimacy of our control over Kashmir. Even at the end of the Cold War that situation had not altered too radically. But the past year has seen a clear change. It could have been partly because of Kargil, when one country was seen internationally as reasonable, rational yet firm and the other as adventurous, aggressive, even silly and unreliable. It could have also been because of the impact Indians have made in high-tech industry worldwide.

Or, perhaps, it is a combination of both these along with the opening up of Indian markets. But the fact is that today no nation in the world backs Pakistan’s dream of changing the cartography of the region. Implicit in that is the world’s acceptance of India’s sovereignty over Kashmir, though only what lies on our side of the Line of Control. If that is also our final objective, if we have by now got over the nostalgia of reclaiming not just Muzaffarabad and Mirpur but Gilgit and Hunza, we have to look carefully at how we could engage the world, particularly the big powers, to further that objective. This would imply reassessing the very idea of bilateralism in the India-Pakistan context.

Even in the past, bilateralism was a highly imperfect philosophy though it was seen as the Great Gain of Shimla simply because we believed that the UN and other multilateral groupings and the big powers had still not accepted our ownership of Kashmir as granted by the Instrument of Accession. Today, the very concept is outdated and shortsighted. To what extent can we trust an agreement signed by a dictator who is, at least for the record, around only till 2003 and may be replaced by someone who spends his first few months in power renouncing his legacy? Or, will any agreement signed with an elected Pakistani leader with curtailed powers deliver us more peace and stability than the Shimla agreement?

If this is the season for negotiations and if the acceptance of the LoC as the international border is a good enough objective, it is time to reach out to the world and invite it to help broker, sanctify and implement a final solution for Kashmir. It would be a grave mistake now to trust Pakistan with a purely bilateral agreement. Any new settlement must be internationally underwritten for it to have any legitimacy in what could only be a very unstable political future in Pakistan.

The fundamental problem with bilateralism is that it can only work between equals. Two nations do not necessarily need to be of the same size but they have to have political and constitutional systems that are comparable in their stability and consistency. We have waited far too long for such a perfect situation to emerge in Pakistan and there is no reason to believe the country is even moving in that direction. What should we, meanwhile, do? Hunker down and wait for the Pakistanis to really discover the merits of democracy and elected leaders who would be more trustworthy than Benazir or Nawaz? Or move ahead with the international community, not just Bill Clinton, on our side and find a solution? If it works, the gains for our children will be tremendous. If it doesn’t, what is to stop us, indeed, from hunkering down, fighting and waiting?

Updated weekly.

The author's e-mail address is: suchetadalal@yahoo.com

Other columnists:

Other articles by the columnist Bangles, Bhujbal and bankruptcy