The events that followed a series of controversial incidents on the Line of Control beginning on January 6 lead to an obvious conclusion: the ups and downs that the Pakistan-India relations suffer from every now and then stem from deep-rooted bilateral mistrust, if not hatred and dislike with in certain segments of the Indian society.
Within a span of 12 days, almost all those who matter in India – from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Sushma Sauraj to the army chief inter alia – took umbrage to the incidents on the Line of Control, vowing revenge.
Then came the turnaround. “It is unfortunate that out of context debates take place in the media. But the media is free. You have to take the good and bad of the media if you believe in a free society. But we are not going to be influenced necessarily by jingoistic conversations that take place on some sections of the media,” India’s External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid told Karan Thapar on CNN IBN’sDevil’s Advocateprogramme (January 20).
Asked if the peace process had been put on hold, the minister said, “I don’t think so. I think the peace process is going well. What our indication is, we have got back on track quite a bit. I don’t even know to what extent we had gone off track but certainly there was a sense that we were slipping.” Only two days earlier, Khurshid had offloaded his anger by describing the alleged beheading of an Indian soldier as “absolutely unacceptable, ghastly, and really, really terrible and extremely short-sighted on their part”. He said any response would be “proportionate”.
This assessment on January 20 sounded ridiculous and paradoxical to earlier pronouncements. One simply cannot dismiss as a teenager’s reckless rhetoric what the Indian civilian and military leaders harped on for several days. It is therefore instructive to revisit what Indian leaders said.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh: “Those responsible for this crime will have to be brought to book. It can’t be business as usual.”
Sushma Swaraj(opposition leader in Lok Sabha): “If his (Hemraj’s) head cannot be brought back, we should get at least 10 heads from their side.”
General Bikram Sing(Chief of Army Staff of the Indian Army): “Local commanders have been asked to hit back at the place and timing of their choosing.”
Anna Hazare(Social activist): “We should repeat the lesson we gave Pakistan in ’65. If they call me back, I’ll go and fight Pakistan.”
Ram Gopal Yadav (leader of Samajwadi Party): “This issue has not been resolved since ’47. The only solution is war. India should go in for war.”
Imagine the poison that absolutist, vengeful statements from luminaries can inject into gullible public minds. And this came through clearly when most of the Indian media, the beastly 24/7 channels (not different from their Pakistani counterparts), indulged in “threadbare analysis” provoking the public and triggering a war hysteria.
Fortunately, some sober voices from within India attempted to cool off raging tempers.
“BJP leaders found an ideal opportunity to push their agenda and force the government to take a tough line. A nervous Congress party, busy second-guessing how the opposition would haul it over coals for being soft on Pakistan, itself upped the ante,” wrote Amit Baruha, a former correspondent for daily The Hindu in Pakistan, in a report for the Outlook magazine.
Rahul Gandhi reacted with unusual caution. “We should take tough steps but not be emotional in our response,” he said as the majority of participants sought strict action against Pakistan during his Congress party’s brainstorming conclave in Jaipur titled ‘India and the World’. Decisions cannot guided by emotions, Gandhi reportedly told the gathering.
The bombshell that Union Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde dropped on the BJP and Rashtria Sevak Sangh (RSS) for conducting terror training camps and promoting “Hindu terrorism also helped in moderating the vitriolic Pakistan-focused debate, and changed its focus.
“On one hand we are trying to bring peace in this country. We are also taking steps against injustice to minorities, as also against infiltration. But, in the midst of all this, we have got an investigation report that be it the RSS or BJP, their training camps are promoting Hindu terrorism,” Mr Shinde said at the AICC session here.
Shinde’s daring statement sparked an internal controversy, with BJP likening it with an attempt to “disrupting peace and harmony in the country”. The BJP also demanded an immediate apology from the Congress leadership but the Congress backed up Shinde, with Salman Khursid insisting institutional documentation supported Shinde’s statements on the BJP and RSS support for terrorist groups, which are often called the “saffron brigades”.
Congress General Secretary Digvijay Singh said, “It is not Hindu terrorism but Sangh-backed terrorism”.
“I am 100 percent with Shinde on this. This isn’t a secret. I want to thank the home minister for saying what everyone knows but do not have the courage to say,” another party leader Mani Shankar Aiyar said.
Strangely, it resonated with the situation within Pakistan, where most don’t dare speak openly about the conduct and views of radical religio-political militants.
The focus on BJP-RSS-sponsored terrorism in India obviously deflected considerable attention from Pakistan but it hardly fazes the Indian preoccupation, particularly of the Indian think-tankers and security officials, with Pakistan’s “expanding nuclear and tactical weapons arsenal, Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, and the cross-border infiltration”.
While the Indian political parties need to explain the major motivation for the “Saffron Brigades”, it is incumbent upon the Pakistani leadership to come clean, at least on the militant-terrorism front, and explain as to whether and to what extent the LeT and JeM still constitute an essential part of the foreign policy.
Lastly, bilateral mistrust rules the roost and flows from the cold-war era policies. In this context, Russian scholars recently drew on the Soviet Union-USA analogy to advise both India and Pakistan not to allow mistrust come in the way of a sustained dialogue. The advice resonated at a recent gathering at the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (Imemo), a top-rated Russian think-tank advising the Kremlin. They recalled that despite decades of mistrust, talks eventually bridged the confidence gap between Moscow and Washington. Russian experts also argued that despite the centrality of China to India’s nuclear strategy, it is unrealistic to expect Beijing to negotiate with New Delhi, because China’s nuclear forces are primarily aimed at countering the threat from the US.
Let us hope India and Pakistan take a cue from their Russian friends and continue talking rather than behaving like brash teenagers who usually are mindless of the impact their stated positions might entail. It is time for mature and restrained conduct.
They might also heed the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights Defenders, Margaret Sekaggya, who recently (January 18) advised India to keep politics with Pakistan on the Jammu and Kashmir situation aside and instead take up issues “about the people” and begin the “healing process” as they “have been suffering for many years.”
Imtiaz Gul is the executive director of the independent Centre for Research and Security Studies, and the author of the recently released book Pakistan: Before and After Osama, Roli Books, India
Fwd: This analysis originally appeared in the weekly The Friday Times (http://www.thefridaytimes.