Men, Matters & Memories
M L Kotru
The day Narendra Modi went to Ahmedabad during the midweek to take leave of his home State to formally take over as Prime Minister of India there came the unexpected news-break about the P.M.-designate wanting heads of governments from the SAARC countries, among others, to attend Mondays’ swearing-in ceremony.
The surprise element in this was that Mr. Modi’s party which would habitually throw a fit whenever the name Pakistan surfaced in any form of discourse, regardless of the context, has accepted the invite to Nawaz Sharif gracefully. To that extent this seems to be a marked change, an advance: that Mr. Modi and his new government is willing to talk about talking to Pakistan.
For the record, when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was elected to the Prime Ministerial office in his country his invitation to Dr. Manmohan Singh, Modi’s predecessor, was not accepted. I know it for sure, though, that had Dr. Singh accepted the invitation and gone to Islamabad he would have been instantly hauled over the coals (no pun intended) by the BJP and lesser saffron entities.
That has been the extent of the hate element in the saffron parivar’s attitude towards the neighbouring country. Mr. Modi’s own stamp on the state of relationship was captured long back by his contemptuous references to “Mian Musharraf” and, during the present campaign, by some of his party men, who made a virtue of inappropriate and mischievous statements including the one that those who did not accept the saffron view had better go to Pakistan.
That is neither here nor there. The important thing is that Mr. Modi, on the eve of taking over as the head of the Indian government, is not at all averse to constructively visit India’s relations with the neighbouring countries, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal. Dhaka again was very much a part of the poll-time discourse, particularly, when Mr. Modi visited the eastern State like Assam etc. There was the question then of the illegal influx of Bangladeshis into neighbouring Indian States, Assam foremost among these.
There are serious issues which New Delhi has in recent times not confronted concerning its relations with neighbouring countries. If only for that, Mr. Modi’s invitation one hopes is accepted by the invitees as a declaration of intent on his part.
One is fully conscious of the serious unresolved problems that bedevil Indo-Pak relations including inevitably the Kashmir issue. This is not to suggest that a Sharif visit, -or that of his representative- will lead to a resolution of problems but it would indeed be a move in the right direction.
Mr. Modi, representing in most Pakistani eyes (as indeed he does for many Indians) the rightist Hindu view, may, for all you know, turn out to be as much of a surprise as Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the only other BJP leader to have held the prime ministerial office. It was during Mr. Vajpayee’s tenure that Indo-Pak relations had at one time seemed to be on the mend. Don’t forget the Vajpayee bus ride to Lahore where he was feted by the then Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. And everything had looked honky dory till the military, in Gen. Musharraf’s colours chose to spring Kargil.
Vajpayee tried to build on the initiative after Nawaz was toppled and sent into exile. It might not be the most popular thing to say but it was Musharraf, who as the country’s military dictator, very nearly nudged the stalled Indo-Pak dialogue towards what then had seemed a purposeful denouement. So, who knows Modi might even be thinking in terms of doing a Vajpayee of his own, an Agra -like summit. The odds are loaded against that coming to a pass at the moment. For one thing, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in his second year in office, has his hands full with a host of domestic problems. Pakistan is crippled by a war from within, one notable for the ease with which domestic terror has continued to flourish; you then have the utter unconcern shown by the Federal government for the regional aspirations of the Baloch people. Balochistan is Pakistan’s biggest province, where the people must face the wrath of the Army as much as the onrush of colonizers in the shape of Punjabis and Pushtoons, hell bent on partaking of the natural riches of the province. There is also the problem of factional schisms, the Shia-Suni one being the foremost.
Internally – this applies to the entire country – the government has singularly failed to curb the terrorist outfits including the feared Tehreek-e-Taliban, Pakistan and, of course, Lashkar-e-Taiba, a favoured brand of Nawaz Sharif and his brother who heads the provincial government in Punjab.
Add to this the Army and its all powerful intelligence wing, the ISI, which has lately become very assertive yet again.
Take the recklessness of the civilian government which in one fell stroke banished the country’s most powerful TV network, Geo. Why, because it had allegedly rubbed the ISI on the wrong side.
When it comes to Indo-Pak ties, in Pakistani eyes it instantly boils down to Kashmir. This is where the rub lies. And it was this what Vajpayee had sought to confront or circumvent. Vajpayee invested substantial effort on the issue including when he was Morarji Desai’s Foreign Minister. I was with Mr. Vajpayee on one of his trip to Pakistan I witnessed some of the touch-and-go phases of Indo-Pak negotiations. I have seen this exercise many times before and after that. Even the one at Shimla where Z.A. Bhutto virtually black-mailed Indira Gandhi into returning his 93,000 prisoners of war in return for promises he had no intention to fulfill.
There is some good news from the valley for Mr. Modi. The People’s Democratic Party of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has delivered a severe drubbing to its rival, the National Conference currently led by the Abdullah twosome of Farooq and son Omar. By taking all the three seats from the valley Mufti Mohammad Sayeed has re-established his party’s numero uno position among the State’s mainstream parties. Mufti, a former Minister in the Union Cabinet, under several dispensations, including Rajiv’s and VP Singh’s has turned his PDP into a potent force.
With his daughter Mehbooba in tow, the Mufti as Chief Minister, did at one time stand out as a political doer who could well leave the separatists with little ground to manipulate and yet protect his turf. He was however, outdone by the Congress Party politics as practiced by New Delhi. Mufti, was in a coalition with the Congress and had finished three years of the CM’s six year term when New Delhi (Sonia Gandhi) insisted that the remaining three years be given to her nominee, Ghulam Nabi Azad, a trusted Gandhi acolyte. Azad, incidentally lost his Lok Sabha election from the State the other day. Sonia did ensure that Azad got his pound of flesh; he was Chief Minister for three years but in the process succeeded only in widening the chasm between the valley and Jammu apart from alienating the local populations. Mufti Sayeed is back with a bang, in full stride and by all accounts ready and willing to take on the Abdullahs and the Congress simultaneously. The Congress in any case has always played a negative role in the evolution of a balanced political equation in the three regions of the State. Manmohan Singh unlike his boss woman, Sonia Gandhi had definitely developed a liking for the Mufti’s approach to restore normalcy in the regions but had to yield to the pressure exerted by Sonia. In fact it was during the Mufti’s Chief Ministership that Manmohan Singh goaded by the Chief Minister enforced several Indo-Pak confidence-building measures including restoration of the bus link between the divided parts of the State. To that extent Mufti would seem to be an asset in promoting any of Modi’s initiatives to guide bilateral relations with the neighbouring country into more purposeful ways. The former Chief Minister by all accounts appears to have built a solid constituency of his own in the valley as well as in Jammu.
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