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Wednesday, Sep 29, 2004

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Opinion - Leader Page Articles

A conversation in New York

By Harish Khare

While the task of sending out to the Pakistani leader an unambiguous message of calm self-assurance may have been achieved, we need to summon the political self-assurance to let the democratic forces find their level in Jammu and Kashmir.

HISTORY IS replete with instances of leaders of one country mis-assessing the leadership qualities in another country. In our own backyard, a certain self-appointed Field Marshal had read wrongly the post-Nehru succession in India; Ayub Khan thought that the pocket-sized Lal Bahadur Shastri would neither have the personal courage nor the political system's support in a confrontation with Pakistan. The Field Marshal made a poor strategist. He not only began a process of organised enmity with Indian defence establishment but also implanted seeds of internal disintegration. Again, in 1999, another group of Pakistani Generals misread the seemingly bumbling National Democratic Alliance leadership in India and lit the fire of the Kargil misadventure; the consequences were far more unsettling for Pakistan than for India.

The 1965 and 1999 experiences were very much relevant when Manmohan Singh left for New York where he was to meet, among others, the current Pakistani ruler. Would Pervez Musharraf, a soldier by training and a commando by temperament, make a mistake in sizing up Dr. Singh, a life-long administrator who has spent most of his time in the shadow of others who called the final shots? Would the Roosevelt Hotel encounter induce the Pakistani leadership to embark on another misadventure against India?

Even before he left Indian shores, the soft-spoken Prime Minister had a tough message delivered to the General: "if you repeat last year's performance at the United Nations General Assembly, there will be no one-to-one meeting." The blunt message was conveyed through the General's confidant and hand-picked envoy, Tariq Aziz. For whatever it was worth, the Americans were also told to convey the same message to the Pakistanis.

And the message went home. When the Pakistani President took his turn at the General Assembly podium, he was remarkably restrained in rhetoric and insinuation. If last year he was an insultingly rude soldier, talking about a hostile neighbour, this year he was a well-behaved statesman, trying to position himself as a moderate voice of a moderate Muslim global community. So, two days later, when the Prime Minister spoke at the General Assembly, there was no reason for him to raise his voice. Unlike Atal Bihari Vajpayee who last year felt compelled to go ballistics against the General, Dr. Singh spoke as the Prime Minister of a self-assured country at peace with itself.

The Pakistani leader got another message when he met the Prime Minister at Roosevelt Hotel. At the very outset Dr. Singh told him that both of them were accidental leaders; he himself had not ever planned to be the Prime Minister of India and he ventured to suggest that the General himself had not fine-tuned his career so as to become the President of Pakistan. Those who came to power by accident had a greater responsibility to use the opportunity; power was a sacred trust that must be used for the welfare of the people.

The Pakistani leader got yet another message, delivered softly but in an unambiguously firm tone. The General heard the good Doctor telling him that both of them have first hand experience of dislocation caused by a religion-induced Partition. Another redrawing of boundaries on the basis of claims made in the name of this or that religion was unacceptable and unworkable. So, let us not waste our time and resources — as had been done in the past — in trying to achieve something that was not achievable.

And, then, came the coup de grace. When the Pakistan leader complained that he was misunderstood in India just because he was outspoken and blunt, he heard the fragile-looking Prime Minister telling him that was no problem as far as he was concerned. Not being a life-long politician, Dr. Singh is himself given to neither circumlocution nor equivocation; and, then, with disarming candour he could tell his Pakistani interlocutor that "I know where I stand." The leader of a democratic India can always afford to be firm but reasonable because he derives his authority from Parliament and the people and knows what can be — and what cannot be — sold back at home. Unlike Mr. Vajpayee who knew that he would not be able to sell any kind of peace to his own constituency of the Sangh Parivar and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Dr. Singh has a very clear idea of the extent of public support for any dramatic breakthrough.

The Pakistani leader was given no room to misunderstand his Indian guest. The General heard the Prime Minister tell him that certain promises were made in the January 6, 2004 Musharraf-Vajpayee joint statement and those promises had not been kept. The soft-spoken man spoke precisely, without emotion but with passion: as long as you allow a situation whereby innocent men, women and children get killed in mindless violence, do not expect India to accommodate you on any issue; democratically elected leaders have an obligation to public opinion and if you want any movement forward, see to it that nothing is done to inflame Indian public opinion.

The blunt General wanted some concession to the "people of Kashmir." And, again, he heard the Indian leader tell him that there was an elected Government in Jammu and Kashmir and that no small group of unelected, self-proclaimed leaders could be provided a "veto" power in the matter of representation of the people of Kashmir. Then, how about letting the All Parties Hurriyat Conference come to Pakistan, asked the General. Dr. Singh let him know that the Hurriyat leaders were anyway in touch with the Pakistani intelligence establishment; they were in touch with the Pakistani High Commission crowd in New Delhi and recently had met Pakistan's Foreign Minister.

And, finally, the General was told that there would be no "time-bound" framework. We are sincere in having peace, but there is lot of groundwork to be covered. Anyway, Mr. Tariq Aziz is due to meet Mr. J.N. Dixit next month; then the two Foreign Secretaries are going to talk; and, later, the Foreign Ministers are to meet. Meanwhile, the cross-border situation would be watched and we shall be the judge of your sincerity. A quite enunciation of a simple, Ronald Reaganesque realpolitik dictum: trust, but verify.

To begin with, the Pervez Musharraf-Manmohan Singh encounter was meant to last 15 minutes but it went on for 50 minutes as the two leaders sized each other up. Unless the General is a very bad judge of men, he will have every reason to respect the resolve beneath Dr. Singh's soft words. He cannot make the same mistake that Field Marshal Ayub Khan made vis-à-vis Lal Bahadur Shastri. Nor has the General been given any reason to discern any desperateness on the Indian leader's part of the kind that had made Mr. Vajpayee smoke the peace-pipe in Islamabad within three months of a verbal brawl in the General Assembly.

While the task of sending out to the Pakistani leader an unambiguous message of calm self-assurance may have been achieved, it is also important that we gradually learn to conduct our domestic discourse in a manner so as not to let the jihadis get under our collective national skin.

In recent years it suited the domestic political calculations of a section of our leadership that cross-border terrorism became our chosen national frenzy. Irrespective of whatever the imagination or rhetoric of the many wise, tough and patriotic men who came to crowd the decision-making corridors, the basic reality that began with the Zia-ul-Haq regime remained unchanged: young Indian soldiers continued to die in coping with Pakistan-trained and sponsored militancy in Jammu and Kashmir. And that will continue to be the case.

It is time for a calming of nerves and rhetoric. It makes little strategic sense to allow the jihadi thugs a voice in our collective affairs disproportionately larger than their actual capacity to kill innocent men and women. We need to summon the political self-assurance to let the democratic forces find their level in Jammu and Kashmir; just as we also need the moral clarity to stand by those voices in the secessionist camp that refuse to play the Pakistani game.

Above all, Pakistan and its patrons in the international community need to know that India has the resources and the resilience to see to it that a strategy of blackmail will not be rewarded with "diplomatic breakthroughs." Only then will there be peace. Dr. Singh has succeeded in delivering the message in New York.

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