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So, should we build walls?
Zafar Hilaly
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Let’s face it; Pakistan and India have incompatible mutual obsessions. Ours is Kashmir and security. What rankles with India is that we are still on the map of the world. Pakistan was not just a mistake in Indian eyes but an insult to the idea of India. Every so often well meaning Pakistanis forget this and try to square the circle. Like I did when, as a junior officer manning the India Desk in the Foreign Office, I felt that given a modicum of goodwill India-Pakistan relations were fixable and not permanently jinxed.
After all, I reasoned, had Jinnah not said he wanted the best possible relations with India? Then why were these old fogies of the Foreign Office going on and on about India being the ‘eternal’ enemy. And so, in my own puny way, I supported moves for better relations with India and spoke out whenever those who mattered were within earshot.
An opportunity arose in 1973 when I discovered myself in the presence of the then foreign secretary, a former foreign secretary – who was then a powerful minister in the cabinet of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – and our former ambassador to the US. That one of them was my father and the second my uncle made the occasion, in my view, all the more appropriate.
I pointed out that since the confrontationist approach towards India had failed, perhaps a different, more convivial and less abrasive approach may work. There was a stunned silence. None of the three ICS mandarins spoke for what seemed like ages and when someone did it was my father who told me to run along and fetch some more ice. I thought I also heard the foreign secretary muttering something about this “boy needing to grow up”.
The second opportunity arose when I was at the OIC summit in Casablanca with Benazir Bhutto in 1995. We had just finished making the rounds of the heads of state and, feeling pleased with her efforts, Benazir seemed in a receptive mood. I started off by saying that if amity with India was not possible perhaps managing differences more adroitly was a wise alternative but that this required engaging India far more robustly than we were doing then.
“Great”, Benazir remarked, “now put it down in black and white, take it to ‘them’ (the fauj) and if they let you out of the room in one piece come and tell me their response. Meanwhile, I’m off shopping”. And that was that.
I persisted, although I dropped the somewhat ‘in your face’ approach in favour of a more indirect one. I also tried drumming up support. I knew the arch-hawk and head of the Parliamentary Kashmir Committee, Nawabzada Nasrullah had a soft spot for me. His other failing was that he could not be separated for long from his hookah. So, after he had settled down in his hotel room in New York, where we had all assembled for the UNGA session and lit the hookah, I barged in to say my piece.
Midway through my soliloquy I noticed the Nawabzada was puffing away with unusual gusto and a little later smoke was billowing out not only from his mouth but I swear, from his ears too, when suddenly the door burst open. It was the hotel (Plaza) supervisor. Apparently the Nawabzada’s hookah had set off the hotel smoke alarm and, needless to say, we all had to rush out. I thanked my stars and decided not to tempt fate again.
Instead of rushing in where angels fear to tread I should have asked myself why Jinnah, who was about as areligious and secular a man as you would find in the Subcontinent suddenly had a change of heart and why this ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ (Gokhale) preferred, in his own words, “a truncated moth-eaten Pakistan” to remaining within India.
Or, better still, why my father thought nothing of leaving a score of family homes in a street named after his father in Bangalore (still there) in exchange for a rickety abode in Karachi, especially when in Bangalore and southern India in general there was little Hindu-Muslim animosity.
It was only when I was thrown onto the scrap heap that most retirees are and began reading intensively that the penny dropped and it occurred to me that the old fogies of the FO may have been right after all. They had roomed and schooled with their Indian counterparts; they had gone to college with them; they had eyed the same gals and knew and understood each other. And yet, this lot was convinced that for Muslims, Hindu majority rule was unacceptable. Were they all, to a man, mistaken? Surely not, I thought, and started looking for clues.
Consider what Jaswant Singh, a former Indian foreign minister and among the most intelligent of the lot India has had, confided to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot privately during their extended conversations in the mid 1990s: As far as India was concerned, Pakistan was not just India’s sibling but its twin – born of the same womb. However, from the moment of its birth Pakistan had gone terribly and permanently wrong. According to Jaswant, Pakistan was a relatively small incurably troubled and incorrigibly troublesome state that dreamed of parity with India it would never attain or deserve.
Kashmir was “closed history” and a case study in the fraught history of Pakistan. It was not fitting as a topic for international diplomacy. Pakistan’s fixation with Kashmir should be understood as an objectification of Pakistan’s predicament as a lost soul among nations, an ersatz country whose founder’s only real legacy was a permanent reminder of what a tragic mistake partition had been.
No one had had as much experience with Islam as India. India knew how to deal with Pakistan (and presumably Islam) and America must work with India in waging our common struggle against these forces.
Talbott remarked that although he agreed with much of what Jaswant said, namely that Partition was a huge and tragic mistake, “I am at a loss to understand how an indictment of Pakistan’s origins and a presumption of guilt about Pakistan’s every move could possibly help India dealing with Pakistan”.
Precisely, but the truth is that India isn’t really bothered whether it gets on with Pakistan. In Jaswant’s view it suffices that Pakistan is an illegitimate state and an illegitimate heir of British India and therefore can have no legal claim to the patrimony, certainly not in preference to that of the sole legitimate heir – Bharat.
Viewed thus it is unrealistic to believe that we can achieve anything more than a modus vivendi with India in the foreseeable future. And perhaps not even then, if our internal decay shows no signs of abating and the prospect of us fracturing increases. India will want to wait and see what kind of an entity or entities will replace Pakistan.
Perhaps that’s why very little has emerged from the composite dialogue. Agreements reached have not been concluded; every little molehill has been made into a mountain and used as a pretext to prolong talks. Even where agreements were signed their implementation has been delayed or suspended.
So let’s drop the notion that somehow if we keep talking things will mend. Keep talking by all means but let’s not have a delusional view of these talks and let’s also concede that there are few happy endings in the India-Pakistan saga. Frankly, the stronger and higher the walls between us neighbours, the better neighbours we will make.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com
Zafar Hilaly
Thursday, February 21, 2013
Let’s face it; Pakistan and India have incompatible mutual obsessions. Ours is Kashmir and security. What rankles with India is that we are still on the map of the world. Pakistan was not just a mistake in Indian eyes but an insult to the idea of India. Every so often well meaning Pakistanis forget this and try to square the circle. Like I did when, as a junior officer manning the India Desk in the Foreign Office, I felt that given a modicum of goodwill India-Pakistan relations were fixable and not permanently jinxed.
After all, I reasoned, had Jinnah not said he wanted the best possible relations with India? Then why were these old fogies of the Foreign Office going on and on about India being the ‘eternal’ enemy. And so, in my own puny way, I supported moves for better relations with India and spoke out whenever those who mattered were within earshot.
An opportunity arose in 1973 when I discovered myself in the presence of the then foreign secretary, a former foreign secretary – who was then a powerful minister in the cabinet of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto – and our former ambassador to the US. That one of them was my father and the second my uncle made the occasion, in my view, all the more appropriate.
I pointed out that since the confrontationist approach towards India had failed, perhaps a different, more convivial and less abrasive approach may work. There was a stunned silence. None of the three ICS mandarins spoke for what seemed like ages and when someone did it was my father who told me to run along and fetch some more ice. I thought I also heard the foreign secretary muttering something about this “boy needing to grow up”.
The second opportunity arose when I was at the OIC summit in Casablanca with Benazir Bhutto in 1995. We had just finished making the rounds of the heads of state and, feeling pleased with her efforts, Benazir seemed in a receptive mood. I started off by saying that if amity with India was not possible perhaps managing differences more adroitly was a wise alternative but that this required engaging India far more robustly than we were doing then.
“Great”, Benazir remarked, “now put it down in black and white, take it to ‘them’ (the fauj) and if they let you out of the room in one piece come and tell me their response. Meanwhile, I’m off shopping”. And that was that.
I persisted, although I dropped the somewhat ‘in your face’ approach in favour of a more indirect one. I also tried drumming up support. I knew the arch-hawk and head of the Parliamentary Kashmir Committee, Nawabzada Nasrullah had a soft spot for me. His other failing was that he could not be separated for long from his hookah. So, after he had settled down in his hotel room in New York, where we had all assembled for the UNGA session and lit the hookah, I barged in to say my piece.
Midway through my soliloquy I noticed the Nawabzada was puffing away with unusual gusto and a little later smoke was billowing out not only from his mouth but I swear, from his ears too, when suddenly the door burst open. It was the hotel (Plaza) supervisor. Apparently the Nawabzada’s hookah had set off the hotel smoke alarm and, needless to say, we all had to rush out. I thanked my stars and decided not to tempt fate again.
Instead of rushing in where angels fear to tread I should have asked myself why Jinnah, who was about as areligious and secular a man as you would find in the Subcontinent suddenly had a change of heart and why this ‘Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’ (Gokhale) preferred, in his own words, “a truncated moth-eaten Pakistan” to remaining within India.
Or, better still, why my father thought nothing of leaving a score of family homes in a street named after his father in Bangalore (still there) in exchange for a rickety abode in Karachi, especially when in Bangalore and southern India in general there was little Hindu-Muslim animosity.
It was only when I was thrown onto the scrap heap that most retirees are and began reading intensively that the penny dropped and it occurred to me that the old fogies of the FO may have been right after all. They had roomed and schooled with their Indian counterparts; they had gone to college with them; they had eyed the same gals and knew and understood each other. And yet, this lot was convinced that for Muslims, Hindu majority rule was unacceptable. Were they all, to a man, mistaken? Surely not, I thought, and started looking for clues.
Consider what Jaswant Singh, a former Indian foreign minister and among the most intelligent of the lot India has had, confided to US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbot privately during their extended conversations in the mid 1990s: As far as India was concerned, Pakistan was not just India’s sibling but its twin – born of the same womb. However, from the moment of its birth Pakistan had gone terribly and permanently wrong. According to Jaswant, Pakistan was a relatively small incurably troubled and incorrigibly troublesome state that dreamed of parity with India it would never attain or deserve.
Kashmir was “closed history” and a case study in the fraught history of Pakistan. It was not fitting as a topic for international diplomacy. Pakistan’s fixation with Kashmir should be understood as an objectification of Pakistan’s predicament as a lost soul among nations, an ersatz country whose founder’s only real legacy was a permanent reminder of what a tragic mistake partition had been.
No one had had as much experience with Islam as India. India knew how to deal with Pakistan (and presumably Islam) and America must work with India in waging our common struggle against these forces.
Talbott remarked that although he agreed with much of what Jaswant said, namely that Partition was a huge and tragic mistake, “I am at a loss to understand how an indictment of Pakistan’s origins and a presumption of guilt about Pakistan’s every move could possibly help India dealing with Pakistan”.
Precisely, but the truth is that India isn’t really bothered whether it gets on with Pakistan. In Jaswant’s view it suffices that Pakistan is an illegitimate state and an illegitimate heir of British India and therefore can have no legal claim to the patrimony, certainly not in preference to that of the sole legitimate heir – Bharat.
Viewed thus it is unrealistic to believe that we can achieve anything more than a modus vivendi with India in the foreseeable future. And perhaps not even then, if our internal decay shows no signs of abating and the prospect of us fracturing increases. India will want to wait and see what kind of an entity or entities will replace Pakistan.
Perhaps that’s why very little has emerged from the composite dialogue. Agreements reached have not been concluded; every little molehill has been made into a mountain and used as a pretext to prolong talks. Even where agreements were signed their implementation has been delayed or suspended.
So let’s drop the notion that somehow if we keep talking things will mend. Keep talking by all means but let’s not have a delusional view of these talks and let’s also concede that there are few happy endings in the India-Pakistan saga. Frankly, the stronger and higher the walls between us neighbours, the better neighbours we will make.
The writer is a former ambassador. Email: charles123it@hotmail.com
