Men Matters, Memories
Indo-Pak summit at Agra

By M L Kotru

Gen Musharraf and his wife will have visited their Haveli in Delhi and set out for Agra for talks with the Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee by the time this appears in print. The General-President will have also met Delhi's glitterati at the Pakistan High Commissioner's reception with the red herring called Hurriyat present (hardly matters) or who knows, even without it being there (matters even less). Going by the standard set by our media, you will forgive me if I am unable to list the menu at the tea reception, and also who of who was not at the do.

The past two weeks have seen the media hype acquiring nauseating proportions. Irrelevancies like the hotel room furnishings, the chefs who will cook for the dignitaries, rediscovery of long lost relatives of the Delhi-born Pakistani leader et al as if these formed part of the agenda.

We have even had TV crews outdoing each other in the race to Islamabad and one newspaper Editor who claimed to have had the ''first'' interview with Musharraf for his paper prior to the summit had obviously taped it and got it flashed on a TV channel a day before it appeared as the year's most ''sensational'' exclusive in print the next morning. Never mind the editor, who alongwith one of his predecessors, is the same one who, not very long ago, had bragged that he was the second most important person in India, next only to the Prime Minister.

First the hype over Hurriyat Conference, the pro-Pakistani conglomerate, operating in the valley. Does it really matter whether the Hurriyat attends the tea party or not? Hurriyat, at the very best, represents a section of opinion in the valley, the strictly pro-Pakistani section. One of its most vocal constituents, the JKLF of Yaseen Malik, insists that independence for the entire State of Jammu and Kashmir continues to be an option, something which the pro-Pakis of the Hurriyat and their mentors across the border do not accept. Pakistan has not even allowed the JKLF to contest the so-called elections in PoK or Azad Kashmir. They were barred because they would not pledge loyalty to Pakistan. So whether Hurriyat attended the party or not is hardly relevant to the summit. The Hurriyat has openly been accused of receiving money from Pakistan; its men have been constant visitors at the Pak High Commssion in Delhi. By appearing to be making an issue of the High Commissioner's invitation to its leaders (Musharraf's keeneess to meet them notwithstanding), Indian media managers seem to have erred badly. Pre and post-tea, the Hurriyat is best ignored. It refuses to meet Pant but wants to meet Musharraf and very generously asks to be received by Vajpayee. The Hurriyat is a victim of self delusion fed with ''maternal'' care by Islamabad. It's this make-believe persona that causes the Hurriyat to believe that it is the authentic voice of Kashmir.

On to more concrete issues. Gen Musharraf insists that he would want to keep the focus on Kashmir during the two or three sessions he has with Vajpayee. It speaks poorly of Pakistani understanding of the situation when it demands that the stated objective of the summit should be for India to accept Kashmir as a ''dispute''. Three wars and 52 years of acrimony offer fool-proof evidence of Kashmir being a dispute. It has been accepted by New Delhi and Islamabad as such. Both the Simla agreement and the Lahore declaration speak of peaceful, bilateral talks to resolve the issue.

By restating the demand as the prime priority at his meeting with five former Pakistani Foreign Minister and six retired Service chiefs the other day in Islamabad, Musharraf was to my mind, harping on a non issue. Had there been no dispute over Kashmir why should we have had three wars? Why should Indian and Pakistani leader from Nehru and Liaquat Ali down to Vajpayee and Musharraf have felt impelled to meet at various points of time during the past half century.

I had on one occasion pointed out that Musharraf in his current multiple incarnation has the capacity to reach an agreement on all outstanding bilateral issues. I must qualify it now by adding the rider that apart from the extremist fundamentalists the armed forces are the one institution that has least interest in Indo-Pak peace. The Pakistani armed forces have benefitted the most from the continuing crisis in the sub-continent. The Pakistani military has during the past half century acquired all the trappings of the country's traditional feudal aristocracy. They are the new zamindars and waderas, if you will.

Having said that Musharraf knows it that the military's assertive role in the past has taken his country nowhere. Therein lies hope that he may have realised that he must work out a modus vivendi with India, one that transcends old prejudices like that the Hindus and Muslims cannot live together, or that Pakistani cannot co-exist with a multi-religious plural society such as India's. He must also be aware that India has the world's second largest Muslim population and that there is more at stake for this country in Kashmir than mere territory.

Vajpayee has shown his willingness to travel down the road of reconciliation. His unilateral decision, committing India to make travel between the two countries less cumbersome by opening additional checkpoints along the international border, with visa facilities provided at entry points at designated spots, is an extraordinary step. Even more extraordinary his decision to facilitate travel across the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir by offering similar facilities at one or two points. Not many would have even considered the possibility of such a development. If Musharraf, like some of the Pakistani spokesman have already done, chooses to pooh pooh these positive moves as gimmickry, the future for the summit cannot be particularly bright. The time may have come for Musharraf to call the hardliners within his establishment to order.

It does not do his liberal image any good when one sees his Religious Affairs Minister saying that the destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas by the Taliban was the right thing to do. There is the more disturbing bit of information which the Pakistani writer Khaled Ahmed has revealed about Musharraf contemplating introduction of an ordinance to reinfoce the implementation of Shariat in his country. The Hisba Ordinance, as Khaled Ahmed points out, will start doing what Islamic measures taken by Bhutto did to him after 1971. He (Bhutto) banned liquor and apostatised the Quadianis to defang the mullahs but the step spurred the clergy on, till it got rid of him to usher in a new Islamic phase in cohabitation with the Army, says Khaled. Today the Army has cleared the decks for the clergy once again. This Hisba Ordinance will probably please the warrior priests but will Musharraf be able to save his skin from the religious ''minority'' which he wants to neutralise?'' Reading the statements of the owners of religious militias',, says Khaled ''the Enemy Number One remains Musharraf himself, 'an American agent and slave of IMF and the World Bank.'' The Hisba ordinance will set up a system of namaz that Zia tried to establish in his time but failed. The ordinance will see to it that business closure is complete five times a day. If someone is open, presumably there will be punishment for it and ''the police will be happily involved in capturing the new crop of culprits because it will absolve them from the tougher duty of capturing the armed dacoits against whom the citizen no longer has any protection''. Mind you Pakistani industry has been complaining ever since Friday replaced Sunday as the weekly day off. Its contention has been that this virtually deprives them of three working days internationally, Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

Much as one would like to see Musharraf (for the of Pakistan) succeed in fulfilling his dream of being a Pakistani Attaturk, the omens do not seem to be all too good. And. God forbid, should thinking akin to the Hisba ordinance inform his dealings inIndia, there may not be very much to look forward to except that an empty-handed Musharraf would return home to proclaim from the top of the Aiwan-e-Sadr that Indians did not play ball on Kashmir. Yet, the window of opportunity is beckoning both countries. Vajpayee, in spite of warnings by opposition leaders at his meeting with them five days ahead of the summit, has expressed his willingness to discuss Kashmir. But it can't be a discussion on terms dictated by Musharraf.

In any case Agra can only be the starting point for any meaningful future dialogue on Kashmir. The two leaders would have served their cause well by institutionalising a process of dialogue not subjected to the mood swings in bilateral relationship. Grand results I am afraid, are going to elude them. There are a series of other measures they could work out which in the course of time may help build mutual trust Agreements on seemingly peripheral areas of contention could lay the basis for more purposeful dialogue in the future on more intractable issues. They should make a start with giving substance to the sabotaged Siachen agreement, by agreeing on confidence building measures on nuclear policy, by resolving the disagreement on Tulbul, by discussing reduction of force levels along the cease-fire line accompanied by an assurance by Musharraf that Pakistan would check further influx of mujahideen into the valley.

For Pervez Musharraf, the General who made himself President just prior to the summit, the invitation to Agra is no less than a legitimacy card. It's for him to decide what to make of it. Kashmir will continue to be a bone of contention should be stick to the cliched, hidebound position adopted by some of his predecessors. He will have to decide how best he can, help build an atmosphere conducive to a realistic, working future relationship. Whether the mullahs and the Talibanists in his country will allow him that much room is something which he alone can tell. But an opportunity is beckoning him and he cannot hope to find a better interlocutor than Vajpayee, if he wishes to give a new direction to Indo-Pak relations.

Yours Randomly
Atalji won't ye straighten thy spine?

By Dr. R L Bhat

Once upon a time, once after a long time, India actually did some plain speaking and plain shooting with Pakistan. That was the year Kargil happened. That was also the election year when a precarious government had been overthrown by a fluke. All that summer the guns boomed, towards Pakistan for a change, and threw them along with their jehadi cohorts off the peaks of Kargil hills. In the aftermath Pakistan mistakenly called the Pak army-threw away the PM who had 'failed' to force-drown India and fell for... a general, (who else?) while the Indians put a hitherto precarious Vajpayee comfortably on the PM's chair. The Kargil wounds were still fresh and India shut off the usurper of the Pak realm. It vehemently... apparently on behalf of the unduly quiet Pakistanis, too.,. condemned the take over and refused to have any truck with an illegitimacy of rule.

Then time the great healer took over. Twenty months later when the same general put the plume of Pak presidency in his cap the Indian PM was hours ahead in putting in his salaam-ilia-kum to the new head of the Pak government. The general, probably with a red face, had to remind him that he was not 'the President yet' but that did not matter with the dove with peace in its beak. The PM was dutifully followed by the president of the largest democracy upon the globe; his greetings landed when the farcical oath must have still be reverberating in the usurping ears. If the alacrity of the duo was remarkable the unison of a normally differing President-PM pair was little short of complicity. Indeed, on this and other circumstantial evidence, you could build a good case for Indian hand in Nawaz Sharif's dismissal and the subsequent take-over by Musharraf, if you did not know how pusillanimous the Indians are!

In any case the Indian heads of the State and the government were a relieved couple. Sticklers of form as they are, probably, the nuances of protocol weighed heavily upto them. The president could have been uncertain how to welcome a 'head' who did not actually head his country. The Prime Minister must have been worried how to justify the bending over backwards that he was planning. Now both have good reason to go overboard. While the Presidential somersault will be seen today, the PM has already gone some way along the course. Even as the Pak general....err, President keeps roaring in his lair Atalji has been announcing one good-will measure after another. Prisoners are freed, visas have been granted, Rawalpindi road is all but opened and the gas-pipe is theirs for the asking. Indeed, so free has the old sangi dyed in Nehru's colour been with gestures, he looks like a traffic-cop showing the way to India's conquers. And, never ask what he has left for the talks? For there is plenty, if you are a bend-some Vajpayee!

Why, he can take the Hurriyat from the tea party and sit them on the Agra table. He could even take himself off and let the two decide the future of not only Kashmir but India as well. That would be much appreciated by the peers the PM has been looking to. So when Atalji says that Kashmir is not the only thing they'd discuss, he could be speaking the truth: they'd be discussing the fate of India too. How, for example, India is to be pawned in a pipeline that would be at the mercy of every fundamentalist, every mullah, every jehadi out to earn a piece in the paradise. Could he be asking for a little of the Pakistani culture of insensitive arrogant upmanship that makes the Pak President... inspite of his illegitimacy, inspite of the uneven keel he stands upon back home, inspite of the his pressing need to flaunt a peace-like pose.... to dictate not only the agenda for his invitation but also the choice of hosts?

That, if it were asked... it could be for culture is on the agenda and this the sole culture Pak has... would be one thing of Indian interest that may come from Agra. It could teach Vajpayee how to go about premiering with straight spine. Else, it is all fries and favours for the Pak plate. And, one is not talking of Kashmir and Kashmiri food that the Indian host is cooking. The Summit has already steadied a tottering general though Atalji would protest that he has been only preparing for peace. It has opened new vistas for the Pak saboteurs to spread all over India, though Atalji might say that he is only being a graceful host. Indian economy is ready to be mortgaged to Pak caprice not at a cost but with a royalty paid in dollars, though he keeps telling you that it is all for India's good. Of course, the Indian sensibilities are soundly trampled underfoot, though Vajpayee may say it is just tepid tea.

Why, he could even say that the nation paid only to brace his knees not his back and now he is standing on firm legs and bending only the spine. For he is a master of phrase and idiom who can turn tables on any argument as his cabinet has known for a couple of years. And, now the whole of India is going to see, feel and know. In fact, there are die hard devotees of his who believe that he can still turn the same tables he has spread for his guest, if he does not get too carried away by the paradigm of peace. And, that is the big question today: would he straighten his back or bend it some more; would he pray for peace or pay some more of India for it ?