A worthy initiative

Published : Jul 21, 2001 00:00 IST

The very fact that India and Pakistan advanced the hand of friendship to each other is noteworthy: it could well herald a new era in South Asia's tangled history.

PRAFUL BIDWAI

A MAJOR diplomatic initiative does not "fail" merely because it does not result in a joint declaration. The Agra Summit must not be judged harshly or hastily and declared a failure just because the draft declaration foundered on the commas and the full-stops. However one analyses the fine print of all the disparate statements made by India and Pakistan about Agra, there can be little doubt that the two nations attempted something new there. The very fact that they advanced the hand of friendship to each other is noteworthy. This could well herald a new era in South Asia's tangled history and put on the agenda what has so far been almost unthinkable: peace, tranquillity and cooperation between India and Pakistan as they proceed to resolve outstanding disputes.

The Agra Summit was not Lahore-II, nor a repetition of any of the earlier attempts at an India-Pakistan rapprochement. It took place in qualitatively different circumstances and has a unique significance. The Lahore meeting between Atal Behari Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif happened amidst tight police rule and the arrest of thousands of Sharif's opponents, especially from the religious parties. Division within the Pakistani political class was palpable as Vajpayee and Sharif embraced each other. This did not hold true of Agra. This Summit evoked little active or street-level domestic opposition, despite the reservations of the Pakistan People's Party and the Muslim League.

More important, the Agra Summit attempted something far more ambitious than Lahore: rather than mere confidence-building measures (CBMs), it sought to address some of the root causes of the mutual hostility, suspicion and mistrust that mark India-Pakistan relations and even their domestic politics.

Indian and Pakistani leaders came to Agra with their own conflicting priorities. Indian leaders wanted to get a series of agreements in place on nuclear restraint, conventional CBMs, trade liberalisation, economic cooperation, people-to-people contacts and so on. Very importantly, they also wanted to get Pakistan to withdraw its support to 'cross-border terrorism' in Kashmir - should Kashmir at all be given central place in the talks. For Pakistan, the top priority was to get India to accept the centrality or primacy of the Kashmir 'dispute', or as Musharraf diluted it in the morning of July 16, 'the Kashmir issue'.

In the event, the two sides agreed to accord Kashmir exceptional status as the central or main issue at stake between them. They could not agree on language and on a consensual formulation on ending 'cross-border terrorism' as a means of and one step towards resolving the Kashmir problem. They nevertheless agreed to resume their dialogue, with summits every year between the two heads of government, and Foreign Minister-level meetings every six months.

At the end of the day, the effort to produce a joint statement failed because diplomats from the two sides could not unshackle themselves from the stereotypes and the stated positions. But they could try again - and succeed. At any rate, it would be puerile to blame Musharraf's breakfast meeting with editors for the impasse that ensued in the afternoon of July 16. Unconventional as it was, the General's initiative did not represent a hardened stance, but just the opposite. He strained to indicate flexibility and a willingness to enter into a 'partnership' with India and turn this historic 'event' into 'historic gains'. Terms like 'partnership' and 'fruitful cooperation', and tributes to 'people-to-people contacts', and 'the high road to peace and prosperity', do not come easily to Indian and Pakistan leaders. 'Partnership', until now, was reserved for others, especially the United States. The fact that they are being used now reflects a change of climate.

This climate offers India and Pakistan a historic opportunity to unshackle themselves from one of the main fetters upon their potential development as healthy, pluralistic, open and democratic societies. The fetter is the mutual hostility that has attended their relations since their birth. Hostility has been a major input not just into their military preparations, but into the way they define their nationhood, the way their leaders envisage their future, the way their political systems decide on what is the 'acceptable' level of force to be used against their own people, as well as their adversary, and the privations they are willing to inflict on their own people by undermining their social, economic and civil and political rights.

The constant stoking of hostility has caused a major drain on resources away from the minimum needs of the people. It has also been an important aggravating factor in the growth of communal and sectarian politics. Above all, it has provided grist to the mills of intolerance. It has helped 'externalise' the true causes of their internal problems.

For Hindutva in India, rivalry with Pakistan provides repeated validation of the Two-Nation Theory and of the communal proposition that Muslims and Hindus have altogether different 'psyches'; intransigent, 'fanatical', 'violence-prone' Muslims can never live in harmony with 'peaceful and tolerant' Hindus. Contrariwise, for Pakistan's Islamicist jehadis, India-Pakistan hostility provides both cause and proof of irreconcilable differences: the 'incompatibility' of pluralism and Nizam-e-Mustafa, or the peaceful coexistence of the pious and the kafir.

The failure of the Agra Summit to produce a joint declaration is a temporary setback to the cause of combating the 'hostility-forever' mindset so favoured by the communalists. Representatives of the communal Right can barely hide their glee. (Some privately congratulate Sushma Swaraj for distorting the content of the talks.) And yet, they are profoundly mistaken to underrate the three factors that made the Agra Summit possible and influenced its far-from-trivial gains.

These are, first, the substantial growth of a popular constituency for peace in India and Pakistan; second, the support that Vajpayee received from the secular forces on inviting Musharraf; and finally, changes in the balance between the Pragmatists and the Cynics in India's foreign policy establishment. The peace constituency has grown by leaps and bounds over the past decade in both India and Pakistan. This is reflected in the multiplication of people-to-people initiatives - in terms of magnitude, scope, numbers and reach. There are at least 20 such non-governmental organisations, including the Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace (India) and Pakistan Peace Coalition, the Pakistan-India People's Forum for Peace and Democracy, South Asians for Human Rights, the Association of the Peoples of South Asia, Hind-Pakistani Dosti, the Women's Initiative for Peace in South Asia, even Soldiers for Peace. Along with growing people-to-people interaction, there have been seminars, workshops, and mutual visits involving students, journalists, trade unionists, social scientists and human rights activists. These have increasingly broken down the barriers of prejudice. All these groups hold that peace is possible and desirable, indeed imperative.

Among the most significant of these was the July 12-13 Pakistan-India People's Solidarity Conference held in New Delhi, sponsored or endorsed by more than 200 organisations. The Conference was the culmination of a long process of dialogue and deliberation on a range of issues. It demanded a negotiated settlement to the Kashmir problem, involving the people of all regions of Jammu and Kashmir. It declared that the only sensible way of reducing the nuclear danger in South Asia is to ensure that nuclear weapons are never deployed. It adopted a simple, yet far-reaching, Declaration which drew out and developed the logic of India-Pakistan rapprochement and peace.

There is simply no doubt that the Vajpayee and Musharraf governments have had to take this peace constituency into account and pay some heed to it. It is significant that Jaswant Singh, while criticising Pakistan's initial response to India's unilateral relaxation of visa restrictions, underscored the centrality of 'the people': how can the 'people's' concerns be 'peripheral', as Pakistan termed the step?

Vajpayee received flak from the hawks in the foreign policy and defence establishments, and from within the Sangh Parivar and the Shiv Sena for inviting Musharraf. The National Democratic Alliance's boycott of the July 14 tea party is related to this. Prominent among his critics have been diehard Pakistan-baiters such as Sanghi intellectuals and former ambassadors to Islamabad (who carry a baggage of prejudice from their bitter personal experience). It is no accident that certain individuals close to the Advani camp, K.R. Malkani, for instance, were openly dismissive of the Musharraf visit and left the Summit doomed to failure.

THE Vajpayee initiative received strong support from leaders of the secular parties of the Left and the Centre, who refused to boycott the July 14 tea party and who saw the Agra Summit in broad-minded terms as a worthy cause precisely because of its potential to defuse India-Pakistan hostility and strengthen the sentiment for reconciliation and peace. Vajpayee specifically urged them to support him and help isolate the "grumblers from the Right" in his own Parivar. He also interacted with a section of the liberal intelligentsia, which reinforced his Summit initiative. Vajpayee himself seems to have been influenced by a desire to leave a positive 'legacy'. Deeply impressed by the enduring popularity of the Lahore bus, he probably wants to be remembered for contributing to a resolution of India-Pakistan tensions and the Kashmir issue rather than for his Hindutva. The overwhelming support he received from secular politicians, the intelligentsia, and much of the media has certainly helped him.

This is related to the third factor. This is the ascendancy of the Pragmatists over the Cynics - the two broad tendencies that divide the policy-making and -shaping elite in New Delhi. The Cynics, who regard Pakistan as irredeemably recalcitrant and hostile, and prefer a hardline approach, have had to yield ground to the Pragmatists. In recent weeks, their 'proactive policy' in Kashmir has run out of steam. The Cynics wanted the government to take a tough stand on Kashmir, which they believe could be 'sold' to the Bush administration, which is more favourably disposed towards India than Pakistan. The Cynics believed nothing could and would come out of Agra.

The Pragmatists thought differently: India cannot indefinitely sustain hostility with Pakistan. This is dangerous, especially in today's nuclearised situation, which certainly worries the world greatly. Pakistan's internal problems, compounded by the Afghan imbroglio, may be worse than India's. But India cannot be indifferent to them, leave alone rejoice over them. A destabilised or 'failing' Pakistan is not in India's interest. Besides, argued the Pragmatists, India-Pakistan rivalry is a hurdle to South Asian cooperation. So India had much to gain from Agra. Jaw-jaw is always better than war-war. India made a big mistake by targeting Musharraf for too long, and insisting on an end to 'cross-border terrorism' as a precondition for talks, say the Pragmatists. It was okay to do so six months after Kargil. But a correction has been in order. Agra provides that, and more.

Admittedly, the line of demarcation between the Cynics and the Pragmatists has not always been clear. Many cross it for reasons of expediency. But in recent months, the Pragmatists have gained over the Cynics. That too has helped Vajpayee. Equally, a large number of people stand outside the Cynic-Pragmatist divide. They are fed up with the hostility with Pakistan and its accompanying rhetoric; they want a break so that both countries would be able to return to the real priorities of food security, shelter, healthcare, education, employment...

The forces that made the Agra Summit possible in the first place and which strengthened the drive for India-Pakistan reconciliation are deeply rooted in this society. They are not about to disintegrate. They must strongly push for a resumption of the Vajpayee-Musharraf dialogue. There is a whole rich agenda to be addressed. It would be positively dangerous to postpone some parts of it. What we need now is a popular campaign and grassroots mobilisation for India-Pakistan peace.

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