The Hindu : Opinion / News Analysis : An ambience for a dialogue

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Jun 01, 2005

Opinion

Opinion - News Analysis

An ambience for a dialogue

Javed Jabbarhas been a Senator and a Minister in three Federal Cabinets in Pakistan. He has been a part of the Track-II process between India and Pakistan, known as the Neemrana Dialogue, since 1992. Mr. Jabbar, in Hyderabad recently to attend the South Asia Editors Forum, spoke toJyotirmaya Sharmaabout the India-Pakistan peace process and its future.

Javed Jabbar ... committed to peace. — Photo: K. GAJENDRAN

There are indications of a seeming thaw in relations between India and Pakistan. Is there more to it than mere histrionics and well-meaning symbolism?

It is not `seeming'. There is a thaw. Secondly, histrionics are important. They set the tone, they create a mechanism, or an ambience, within which a dialogue can be conducted. A dialogue cannot be conducted while one is menacingly looking at the other. To create the appropriate process of listening to each other, and speaking with each other with civility and respect, histrionics and the ambience are extremely important. And that, I think, has been very successfully created in the last 16 months, since January 2004 in particular, by a host of factors. This encourages one to think that as the two countries broach the gut issues, hopefully the civility will remain even if there are divergencies of viewpoint.

What is the subterranean content of this process, one that takes us beyond the need to create the right ambience?

Underlying this process is really the reconciliation of both nations to the inevitability and the reality of their respective evolving personas and identities. We tend to think of each other in fixed terms, almost in stereotypical terms. India has the great advantage of being an older historical entity with a pre-1947 identity, even though it may not have existed as a singular nation-state. Pakistan doesn't have this. It has a much shorter identity. The subterranean context, therefore, is that we are working out the capacity to recognise our respective identities, and hopefully through a period of time, and through a period of listening to each other, we will get to know what this evolving persona of the two nations is.

India is changing as a society and as a state. It is aspiring to a new role in world affairs and in regional affairs. Similarly, Pakistan is going through an extreme internal ferment of a positive kind. It is working out its relationship with religion, its relationship within the country between the four provinces. There is, therefore, dynamic change taking place within both societies. Both these dynamic societies, then, are looking at each other and trying to relate to each other in an equitable manner.

Given this background, the inevitable `K' question arises. What do you see as the way forward on Kashmir?

The Kashmir question will have to be dealt with on at least three recognisable levels. On Kashmir in specific terms, while the two sides engage in a closed-door process, which has to be closed-door for the time being, the Track-II and the Track-III (Track-II comprises the non-official discourse and Track-III is media and people-to-people contact) processes need to start looking at actual options and start preparing people in both countries for what could be the various solutions that governments eventually can accept or present to people as possible alternatives.

What are these likely solutions?

There is no joint consensus on what these options are. But there is talk of a regionalisation of the devolution process, looking at Kashmir's diversity in terms of ethnicity, in terms of religion even, and in terms of territory. That is one approach.

Another is the simultaneity of processes on both sides of the line of control and creating mechanisms for interaction between them — whether through the bus service, whether through the respective legislatures, whether through joint economic initiatives.

The third is to look at not similar but equally problematic places like Andorra, Spain and France, and also the way in which Italy and Austria worked out issues of territory.

These are difficult sets of options, but they need to be discussed much further and refined and debated. Any solution will require flexibility on both sides; rigidity is not the basis for a solution.

You have often spoken of `instant terrorism', something that goes beyond the conventional definition of terrorism. Could you elaborate? Also, how much of a threat is instant terrorism to the peace process?

There will be two facets to this. The persistence of disparities and the increase in disparities.

Both countries are pursuing growth, both as an objective and as a mirage. Growth is the mantra of the free market. Both countries seem to have given in, thrown in their conceptual weapons to this `great' new philosophy of the free market. It is very sad to see this happening.

Even though, to their credit, both countries talk about poverty alleviation, in practical and real terms it seems to be growth first and foremost.

The thinking is: If only we achieve 7 per cent or 8 per cent growth will we be able to do all this. The relationship created between growth and creation of jobs is not a fully tested thesis. Time and again there has been growth without jobs.

The other crisis will be when pockets within society are not content with accepting disparity as a consequence of fate and destiny.

They will refuse to accept disparity of any kind or injustice of any kind. These disparities will create distortions. Then there are the naxalites here and religious fanatics in both the countries. There is no definitive answer to this.

Hopefully, this ferment will produce a philosophy, a political approach to economic growth, and state responsibility for the social sector which is not seen as a sop to poverty but seen as a central role of the state.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Opinion

News Update

Stories in this Section

Raising spirits and sharpening the focus

This time it could be for real

Effecting a change in post-Soviet republics

An ambience for a dialogue

Use of force and the responsibility to protect

Rich keep the poor just where they want them