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High
road to peace via Agra
IT
might be a sobering thought on the eve of the Agra summit that we
sometimes exaggerate our hawks. When the RSS mouthpiece, Panchjanya,
and the Pakistani right wing daily, Jang joined hands to
invite their respective readers to submit the agenda they would
have Vajpayee-Musharraf discuss at Agra, one expected fire and brimstone.
But when I perused the entries as one of the judges, I was actually
startled: the entries were the very essence of good sense and moderation.
The readers wanted an end to terrorism, continuance of talks beyond
Agra, cultural and economic exchanges. Here was an instance of the
people showing the way.
The
difficulty with Kashmir is that every pundit is out to solve it.
Not just in India and Pakistan: everywhere else I travelled. Visit
any foreign office and the lazy query is: "So what are you
going to give Musharraf?" I suspect the query is reworded for
Pakistani journalists. Mercifully, over the past few days, this
torrent has become something of a trickle.
The
external publicity department has handed me a document on Indo-Pak
summits. It transpires that the Vajpayee-Musharraf meet will be
the 49th such summit, either bilaterally arranged or on the margins
of other international meetings like SAARC, CHOGM, Davos or the
UNGA. Of these 17 mini or mega summits have been held since the
collapse of the Soviet Union.
And,
of course, Pakistan has difficulty climbing down from that minaret
from where it has sustained a chant of "Kashmir, Kashmir, Kashmir".
Since 1989 (the year of the Soviet departure from Afghanistan),
this incantation has been accompanied by a steady injection of militancy
from across the border.
It
can be nobody’s case that there was no local discontent. Indian
political masters of yore mistrusted the Kashmiri people when it
came to elections. It were the rigged elections which ignited the
fire. The fuel came from across the border. Some of these mistakes
were recognised. Hence the unilateral ceasefire. But injected militancy
had acquired a life of its own.
Gen.
Musharraf is part of a tradition which considers Kashmir as an unfinished
business of Partition. The Indian case is possibly more sophi- sticated.
Indian secularism protects, among a billion others, the world’s
second largest Muslim population and all issues, including Kashmir,
must be addressed in such a way as not to rupture this tapestry.
The
irony is that the unspeakable tragedy of the people of Kashmir is
aggravated beyond all threshold of bearable pain by these two positions.
No sensitive, feeling human being can deny the fact that Kashmir
is in urgent need of the "masih" who will provide the
healing touch.
Musharraf
has his army, the ISI and the jehadis to mollify. They will urge
him to gallop out on a charger and "solve Kashmir." This
kind of rhetoric sounds good in "Firdousi." In contemporary
diplomacy that grand equestrian image ends up with the rider tilting
at the windmills.
Kashmir is a high-voltage issue in Musharraf’s internal politics.
It is also an issue of high saliency in our internal affairs. No
democratically elected government can tinker with the issue without
considerable energy being expended in preparing public opinion on
the issue. And it is impossible to prepare public opinion for a
solution to the Kashmir issue in an atmosphere of tension. This,
I dare say, should be true on the Pakistani side as well.
Since
Kashmir is an urgent issue, a respected politician should be selected
from both sides and provided with high-level teams. In three months
the teams must agree to meet in Murree, then in Ooty and so on.
Take my word, between Murree and Ooty, the Ind-Pak temperature will
have dropped sufficiently to be conducive to the solution of even
the most intractable issue. Vajpayee and Musharraf shall meet on
the margins of the UNGC in New York in September. Musharraf has
to take a few steps towards democracy and another meeting could
well be possible at the CHOGM in Brisbane in October. If Kathmandu
stabilises, the SAARC summit may well be another early forum. The
foreign ministers will have to accelerate the pace of their meetings.
The
Lahore declaration promised intensification of efforts to "resolve
all issues, including the issue of Jammu and Kashmir" and to
"intensify the co-mposite and integrated dialogue process for
an early and positive outcome of the agreed agenda". Since
the Pakistani purpose is not to repudiate Lahore (that would blow
the summit), the "agreed bilateral agenda" is manifest
in the composition of Vajpayee’s delegation: Advani, Jaswant Singh,
Yashwant Sinha and Murasoli Maran. The international community will
scream murder unless a separate, specialised group is set up to
go comprehensively into the nuclear issue. In fact, Vajpayee himself
is keen on such a group, in addition to the seven others spelt in
Islamabad on October 18, 1998.
As
far as the Pakistan High Commissioner’s tea party, who knows Gen
Musharraf may return smelling of roses to his constituency having
"braved" the opposition in India and met the Hurriyat
leaders. For the Hurriyat, of course, there will be time "yet
for a hundred indecisions," visions and revisions "before
the taking of a toast and tea."
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