Commentary/Saisuresh Sivaswamy

Pakistan's dilemma: peace pipe or smoking gun?

Most underestimate the weight of the historical baggage one carries. To a significant extent, after all, we are prisoners of the past, the range of this legacy ranging from generations earlier to just a few years.

And, when applied to nation-states, this historical baggage can often stultify popular will, as evidenced in the thrust-and-parry indulged in by our neighbour across the Western frontier. Even as the latest round of foreign secretary-level talks between the two sides commences after a break of three years, this is a fact that needs to be borne in mind by everyone advocating easier relations between the two sides.

A difference needs to be drawn between granting concessions that will be construed as genuflection on India's part -- which is what the military junta overseeing the destinies in Islamabad would like, to confer legitimacy on its own claims -- and concessions that reflect popular sentiments across both sides of the border.

In this sense, India's unilateral announcement easing restrictions on travellers from Pakistan is a step in the right direction; that was clearly the heart heeding to pleas dripping with sentimentality. At the same time, the head needs to bear in mind that given the antipathy among the Pakistani ruling elite towards India, these concessions are not exploited to send in agent provocateurs across the Line of Control. Here there can be no room for mushy sentimentality, given the Pakistan government's inimical attitude -- even if it is not shared by the common man -- towards this country.

Thankfully for India, there is something about Pakistan's historical baggage that could work in its favour. A nation-state of barely fifty years vintage, it came into being as the antithesis of India, and is founded on a strong anti-India sentiment. Its leaders too have often been unable to break free of this mould since the country's raison d'etre is anti-India, whatever their pronouncements may have been in the runup to the polls.

But a contradiction here is that while the nation's historical baggage extends till 50 years, its citizens's goes back right to the time when civilisation took shape in the subcontinent -- together. The Pakistani -- nor for that matter, the Indian -- cannot overcome the fact that for thousands of years the two peoples lived together, sharing everything from land to water to livelihood.

The politician does not understand this, but when you have shared someone's past can the future be asunder? The yearning for peace and the groundswell in its support on both the sides is nothing but a reflection of this truism.

The difficulty for the Pakistani is that his is a pseudo-democracy. It is a military dictatorship in the garb of democracy, an exercise basically meant to dim the edge of criticism and continue the flow of goodwill and funds on Capitol Hill, USA. As such, the government of the day need not heed popular will, if that will were to run contrary to the junta's tenets, as in the case with Indo-Pak relations.

Having committed themselves vocally and unequivocally to the 'liberation' of India's Kashmir, the junta cannot junk this demand without seriously bringing into question its own existence. And those do not agree with the contention that Kashmir is a crucial issue fail to see it in perspective. Which is that after broken away from India and using this as an affirmation of its two-nation theory, it is galling for Islamabad to see a Muslim-majority state in the Indian Union, when it believes that as per the two-nation theory Kashmir should rightfully belong to it.

Just as it is important for Pakistan, the border state is also crucial for India, since its continued presence with us will served to debunk Pakistan's founding credo, which was that Hindus and Muslims cannot live together. India debunked this theory once earlier as well 25 years ago, when it collaborated in the formation of Bangladesh.

And the record is there for all to see: In its 50 years of existence, unreligious Pakistan, which broke off from India over religion, itself broke up over the issue of language, while multi-religious India has remained intact. Wobbly at the best of times, but intact. And this is a record that is more unflattering for Islamabad than it is for New Delhi.

The latter, of course, has done what it thinks is the honourable thing. Which is to let Pakistan occupied Kashmir remain with the other side, the only time our politicians coming closer to even talk of reclaiming it was when the then prime minister P V Narasimha Rao very uncharacteristically thundered that India will be forced to conclude the unfinished business of Partition. But there is no fear of that.

It is obvious that India has no intention of doing anything like that, the tacit understanding here being that we keep ours, you keep yours. Otherwise, there is no reason why an army that won the 1971 war most conclusively let the 'occupiers' (as the term PoK implies) be.

India obviously would also like the Line of Actual Control between the two countries become the international border, but this is not something that can be done without extracting something in return from Islamabad. And this can only be done in return for something substantive, possibly the two sides agreeing to buy the past and letting the two Kashmirs be.

This, again, is easy for the Indian side, begin a full-fledged democracy but one doubts if those who are talking on behalf of Islamabad are empowered to even broach such a topic. And the ones who are empowered to do so suffer from two drawbacks.

One is that doing so will be equivalent to writing off their own existence in power, and the other is that they lack legitimacy before New Delhi which has insisted that it is willing to discuss bilateral issues only with an elected government in power in Islamabad. So you have a junta that can talk but lacking the moral authority to do so and an elected government that has it but cannot talk with New Delhi.

And if that is not a South Asian conundrum, nothing is. The only positive thing about the current dialogue is that the two sides are at least talking.

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