Will Indo-Pak relations improve ?

By M L Kotru

External Affairs Minister, Pranab Mukherjee, and a day or so prior to that, the Foreign Secretary will be in Pakistan to resume the stalled talks with Islamabad. Will it be a new ball game, with Pervez Musharraf, who was central to the dialogue over the past eight years, reduced to the sidelines. Will the talks with the new Foreign Minister of that country and other Pakistani leaders turn into a replay of the old worn out song or will there be a move on from the ground covered so far by Musharraf and his interlocutors ranging from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Manmohan Singh.
I am not being cynical, given my several visits to Pakistan, some of these in the company of Prime Ministers and our Foreign Ministers or even Foreign Secretaries from 70's onwards, I am not quite sure whether the present rulers in Pakistan will adopt the path indicated during the Indo-Pak contacts of the Musharraf era.
Asif Ali Zardari of the PPP has already veered back from his initial proposition not to allow any more bloodshed in the name of Kashmir and that the issue would be resolved in a non-zero-sum manner. The fundos, including those operating from Muridke, a short distance away from Lahore, from a 35-acre estate, the land given to them by Nawaz Sharif during his tenure at the helm of affairs in Lahore and later as Prime Minister, have served notice that they (Lashkar) mean business. The Harkatul Mujahideen, headed by a former Kashmiri school teacher, Syed Yusuf Shah now answering to the name Salahuddin, has not failed to revive his own war cry in the name of the ‘‘oppressed Kashmiri Muslims’’.
I recall the joint press conference by Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto at Islamabad's Aiwan-e-Sadr, promising peace and tranquility in the region; they even agreed to a much freer visa regime, increase in trade and commerce between the two countries. And these were among the lesser gains, for they both had envisioned a peaceful resolution of all bilateral problems. A little while later Prime Minister Narasimha Rao and Nawaz Sharif had a meeting at Devos and the prospects held out on that occasion looked, if anything, rosier. Within three days of the Davos talks Nawaz Sharif returned home to announce February 5 as a Black Day, an expression of solidarity with the terrorists trained in Pakistan and POK unleashing a blood bath in the state.
Yes, Nawaz Sharif did receive Atal Bihari Vajpayee on that historic bus ride into Pakistan. Many at the time saw it as a precureor of better relations. And one is not sure where exactly the bus-ride would have taken the Indo-Pak dialogue.
But Musharaf who deposed Nawaz Sharif after the General's disastrous adventure in Kargil did during the last four years of his dictatorial rule show far more resilience. After the Agra debacle Musharraf did change course, giving it a positive direction and New Delhi responded well and in equal measure. The peace process in Kashmir did win many supporters in Pakistan, particularly within the civil society and indeed the Kashmir issue did not figure in the poll campaign that left Musharraf crippled in the Presidential Palace and brought into existence an unlikely coalition of arch political enemies, the PPP and the Nawaz Muslim League.
Much as I would like to believe that all this belongs to the past and that the Musharraf initiative will continue to be pursued the ground realities in Pakistan do not seem very encouraging. Of course, if you were to go the PDP President, Mehbooba Mufti's grandiloquent assertions on her recent visit to Pakistan, the issue is all but settled. She chose to assign to herself and the militant groups operating from Pakistani bases the role of stake-a-holders in Kashmir. Some of her utterances left me totally speechless. She wanted all ‘‘misguided’’ youth who had transferred themselves to the militant training camps in Pakistan to be allowed to return to the valley etc etc.
I wondered at the end of it if she had replaced Mirwaiz Umar, as the spokesman-cum-leader of the moderate Hurriyat. It is not surprising that Mehbooba's views should have found an instant echo to the demand made by her that anyone who was a State subject and had crossed over to Pakistan be allowed to return, some having migrated in 1947-48.
My experience as someone born in Srinagar, schooled in the city and having studied for two years at the City's best known college, Sri Partap College and as Someone who has visited Kashmir regularly ever since, I am not entitled to State subjecthood. I realized this when the Chief Minister of the day, Syed Mir Qasim wanted to compensate our family for our land grabbed by someone by simply by hoisting a flag on it with the legend ‘‘Maqbooza Ahal-e-Islam’’.
Qasim's Revenue Minister insisted that I take two plots as compensation in one of the newer city colonies. The catch lay in the column which wanted to know (a) if I was a State subject which I thought I was (b) if I had lived in the State continuously for the past seven years which I had not. I had taken a journalistic job in Delhi in 1950 soon after my graduation. The helpful Revenue Minister insisted that I fill up ‘‘yes’’ to both the queries. I told the man, a retired judge, that he was asking me to file a false affidavit. On a subsequent visit sheer curiosity took me to the office of the Kashmir provincial Commissioner to discover that I was not a State subject. My ancestral home where my brother was living till 1992, before he left for Delhi, unable to keep up with the rising militant activity, was burnt down because someone discovered that I was an Indian agent who had been writing against militancy.
In time my brother was approached by a Kashmiri broker who ultimately bought the property including the partially burnt houses spread over some 3,000 sq, yards for a song (at Pandit rates which were 40 percent less than the Muslim rate. So, don't blame me if I find this urge among the valley leaders who want to bring back Kashmiri Muslims to the valley as an affirmation of the communal divide.
Mehbooba Mufti and her ilk insist that their demand for the return of all Kashmiri State subjects and the ‘‘misguided’’ militant Muslim youth be welcomed back.
Mehbooba and some others are probably jumping the gun. The ISI and the fundamentalists backed by it are bound to impede any hopes of a settlement. Even after the Feb 18 elections the ISI and the Army are unlikely to see any merit in doing business with India which the main political parties may wish to pursue. The honeymoon between Nawaz Sharif and Asif Ali Zardari is unlikely to last. The strains between the two major parties are already visible.
It is necessary to remember that the ISI could play the spoilsport with the political leadership's policy towards India, Kashmir once again becoming central to any form of long-term reconciliation. Then there is the ever present danger that even the political leadership in Pakistan may wish to keep the Kashmir pot boiling to divert attention from domestic problems- not of economy as much as the presence within the Pakistani society of youngmen wedded to the Taliban creed. If you ask me I would very much like that the Kashmir debate is rested for a while. But that needs statesmanship on the part of everyone. Mehbooba Mufti wants every section of Kashmiri opinion including the militants involved in deciding the future of the State. Mind you, to the PDP leadership Jammu and Kashmir means just the valley. There is no room at the high table for the five lakh Kashmiri Pandits forced out of the valley in the wake of the terrorist insurgency in the valley. I remember Mehbooba Mufti saying once, some years ago, in an interview: ‘‘why should you bother about the Pandits, they can always turn to India. Who will the educated Muslim youth of the valley turn to’’. Draw your own conclusion. I have nothing more to say on the subject for the present.
But don't forget that the so-called mainstream parties like the Mufti's People's Democratic Party is hellbent on steam-rolling its way in the Valley. If daughter Mehbooba wants free flow of Kashmiris (read Muslims) the LOC, father Mufti Sayeed has taken a quantum leap by virtually ruling out the existence of the Indian rupee in Kashmir. He wants Pakistani currency to be used in transactions involving Kashmir and Pakistan. He twists history, turns the constitution to which he, his daughter have sworn their loyalty, on its head by seeking free use of Pakistan currency in the State which for him means the valley. The shrewd, opportunistic politicians that they must be, they should know the very thought of floating Pakistani currency in the entire State would be repugnant to everyone except of course, the separatists whose ground the father-daughter Mufti duo is dying to grab.
May be I am wrong. The Muftis might only be wanting to eliminate the ‘‘hawala’’ route available to the separatists; it could also be that he wants the stop the flow of millions worth of forged Indian currency notes into India via the valley route an well. You cannot forget the fact that he was the country's Home Minister once, Chief Minister of the State for three years and is still sharing power with the Congress in the State. How dare you call him a sepratist ?
It/s plain politics, as Omar Abdullah, the National Conference President said on Sunday last. The Muftis are desperate to emerge as the largest party in next year's elections in the Valley and ‘‘they will do say anything that helps them achieve that goal’’. Imagine, this was the man whose daughter, Rubbaiya, was kidnapped, when he was the Indian Home Minister, by the ‘‘misguided youth’’ of his other daughter, Mehbooba's description. Times do indeed change..