IT SEEMS THAT MR YASWANT SINHA, the Indian foreign minister, has taken a leaf out of the book of George Fernandes, his war-mongering colleague in the Indian defense ministry. It was Mr Fernandes who threatened to “wipe Pakistan off the face of the planet” following India’s nuclear tests in 1998. Now Mr Sinha is resorting to the same sort of “diplomatic terrorism” against Pakistan in a bid to provoke Pakistani leaders into saying or doing something outrageous that will make the world recoil. We recall how General Pervez Musharraf unwittingly stirred a hornets’ nest in Washington and London some months ago when he said that Pakistan would use “unconventional methods” (he meant guerilla warfare behind enemy lines based on motivated jihadi forces) to counter any “pre-emptive strikes” by India against Pakistani forces in Azad Kashmir. Mr Sinha has recently taken to suggesting that Pakistan is a fit case for pre-emptive strikes by India on the basis of the same logic that the US has apparently applied to Iraq.
The Pakistani foreign office has duly rebutted Mr Sinha in the nicest possible way. It says that if any country is a deserving case for a pre-emptive strike because it has not obeyed UN Security Council resolutions like Iraq, it is India that has brushed aside UNSC resolutions on Kashmir. It has pointed out that Pakistan is not a lame duck like Iraq and that India is likely to get as good as it gives in any conflict. Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Kasuri, has also cautioned Mr Sinha against any adventurism. And he has done so without resorting to the sort of linguistic terrorism being brandished from across the border. Unfortunately, however, our information minister, Sheikh Rashid, has stooped to the same level as Mr Sinha by lashing out at him. This was entirely avoidable, especially since by so doing he has fallen headlong into the trap laid by Mr Sinha.
However, the best riposte to Mr Sinha has come from Washington. Far from a wink and a nod, which is what Mr Sinha perhaps expected, Washington has pulled the plank from his argument by expressing its total abhorrence of any parallels between Iraq and Pakistan. Indeed, it appears from the US statement (that India should start talking to Pakistan) that the boot is on the other foot.
Here lies the rub. The BJP government in India is not interested in talking to Pakistan. In fact, it is doing everything possible to stall the demand for unconditional talks made by Pakistan and supported by the world community. Indeed, by all accounts, the BJP government is only interested in fanning anti-Muslim, anti-Pakistan flames in the country for purely domestic and party political reasons. The tragedy is that the BJP is bent upon equating its narrow party interests with the larger national interests of India and is extending the former at the expense of the latter. Most middle-class Indians don’t realise this fact, gripped as they are by the 1950 leftovers of nationalism, but they should, for the sake of their secular democracy and national well being.
The “threat from India” has long been the theme song of the Pakistani establishment led by the military. Much international goodwill and domestic welfare has been sacrificed at its altar. Of late, however, the military under General Pervez Musharraf has felt the pangs of a failing economy burdened with debt and defense expenditures and decided to pitch for a generalised peace with India. Unfortunately, however, India is currently saddled with the BJP that is desperately struggling to retain its political foothold in the country and can think of no better way to do so than by fanning the flames of religious apartheid and portraying the current Pakistan of General Musharraf as a bigger-than-ever threat to India.
Consequently, the roles have been reversed. The Pakistan military establishment wants to show flexibility on Kashmir and move ahead with the peace agenda unconditionally. This is the opposite of what it has said and done in the last ten years. On the other hand, the BJP wants to maintain a warlike situation between the two countries and refuses to talk to Pakistan except on the pre-condition of an end to “cross-border terrorism”. This is the opposite of what every Indian government before the BJP has said and demanded.
It seems to be finally dawning on the Pakistani establishment that the twentieth-first century will be an era of cold-blooded pragmatism in which passionate nationalism and purist ideology will be heavily discounted. That is good news for Pakistan. The tragedy is that the BJP has arrived so belatedly at the gateway to power in India that it is still clutching at the coattails of nationalism and religious ideology. That is bad news for India.
The last word on this subject belongs to Arundhati Roy, the celebrated Indian novelist. “ Whenever hostility between India and Pakistan is cranked up, hostility toward Muslims grows. Increasingly, Indian nationalism means Hindu nationalism, which is based not on self-respect, but on a hatred of the ‘Other’ – not just Pakistanis, but all Muslims. The parallels between contemporary India and pre-Nazi Germany are chilling, but not surprising”…