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Advani dares Pakistan to fourth war

Deputy Prime Minister Lal Kishenchand Advani on Saturday kick-started the Bharatiya Janata Party's election campaign in Gujarat by throwing a challenge to Pakistan.
Charging Pakistan with nursing a wound since the creation of Bangladesh, he said in Bhuj: "Let us fight it out face-to-face. We have fought thrice; let there be a fourth war."
Advani said had Pakistan fought with the Indian security forces he would have had no reservations. "But killing of innocent civilians by attacking temples like Akshardham and Raghunath is unacceptable," he added.

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Stop the lunacy in Kashmir

I refuse to accept that shooting or blowing up children is a reasonable concomitant of fighting, no matter how monstrous the regime being combated. Chechen rebels do it, and so do Russian soldiers. Palestinian suicide bombers do it and the Israeli army does it

It does not matter whether you support Kashmiri independence or are a proponent of any solution to the mayhem in that unhappy region, you cannot, unless you are a psychopath, condone last week¹s murder of three women and two children in Indian-administered Kashmir. The report came in the usual, accurate, matter-of-fact Reuters item with the by-line of the urbane Sheikh Mushtaq in Srinagar: "A landmine blast and clashes left 22 dead... on Saturday, the bloodiest day since a new state government took office earlier this month calling for an end to the violence."
The outrage came a day after a suicide attack on a Srinagar hotel being used as a security forces' base in which six soldiers and two militants died. The Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorist group said it was responsible for the hotel raid, and the gallant guys who killed the kids came from that band and also, apparently, from the Harkat-e-Jihad Islami.
Let us put aside for a moment the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir dispute and consider the people on the bus that was blown up while taking soldiers and their families on leave. It might be claimed that members of the armed forces take their chances freely and that if they come to harm, then tough luck. I don¹t buy this, and it is certainly not the case when children are shot or blown to bits, be that in conflicts in Kashmir, Israel, Chechnya, Colombia, Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria, Nepal, Philippines, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, or....
Well, you get the message. Murdering children is wicked, no matter the cause or the place. Try to imagine being one of those waiting in Jammu for the bus carrying your daughter and grandchildren to arrive. Then a soldier comes up and asks your name and looks sad and ticks his list and tells you that, sorry, they won't be coming and that for you their lives have ended.
I refuse to accept that shooting or blowing up children is a reasonable concomitant of fighting, no matter how monstrous the regime being combated. Chechen rebels do it, and so do Russian soldiers. Palestinian suicide bombers do it and the Israeli army does it. But the races involved or the location or cause of the insurrection and the counter-measures mounted against it are irrelevant. People who kill children are demented terrorists and no civilised nation should show mercy on those who perpetrate atrocities. Those concerned should be found, brought to trial, and, when guilt is proved in court, they should be hanged. And in parenthesis I state that the Indian army doesn't kill kids. Some of the weird security forces, such as the evil (and unconstitutional) Special Operations Group, have done so, but the army is still pretty clean.
It is obvious what the terrorists want. And all people of goodwill must hope they don¹t achieve it: failure of the newly-elected government in Indian-administered Kashmir. The kid-killers want terror to continue, because without it they would forfeit their reason for existence. They are not gallant freedom-fighters. They are cowardly criminals. The latest pronouncement from Mr Rafiq Ahmed Dar of the Al Umar Mujahideen called for a two day strike this week. If it is not observed, said this self-appointed autocrat, there will be terrible consequences: "Any vehicle found on the roads, and shop found open anywhere shall be set ablaze", he threatens. These are not the words of a man who cares about his fellow human beings. He obviously doesn't have to worry about where his next rupee is coming from - but, by God, the stall-holders and shopkeepers do. And so do the drivers of scooters and taxis and buses. They have a living to make, and don't get paid unless they work. Why should they have their livelihood destroyed just because some repulsive thug wants to make a point?
Al Umar Mujahideen ostensibly wants union with Pakistan. Let me say as emphatically as I can that the last thing Pakistan needs is support by criminal bullies such as this bunch. There are problems enough with extremists in Pakistan without Al Umar's vicious gangsters being tacked on to the list. Mr Dar has forbidden some Muslims to worship at the Jamia Mosque in Srinagar, and threatens death to any member of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference who does so. "If any [Hurriyat] leader does not heed the warning and dares to venture in the mosque he shall be shot dead," he declares.
This is not Islam. Members of the Hurriyat are perfectly good Muslims. Better Muslims, indeed, than Mr Dar, because they seek compromise in the name of religion, not killing for the sake of it. Mr Dar wants to destroy the approaches being made to a peaceful solution in Kashmir but has no constructive solution for the region's future. He believes in the bomb and the bullet, not the brain and the ballot.
Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Syed, the new leader in Indian-administered Kashmir, seems a good enough person, even if regrettably naïve. Good, because he wants to move towards compromise and has been energetic in exploring ways of bringing opposing sides together. Naïve because he announced that militancy in the region was "on its last legs", which was an unwise thing to say when psychotic screwballs like Rafiq Ahmad Dar are able to let loose the filth that murder children.
Islamabad's Kashmir policy is identical with that of the UN Security Council whose resolution 122 reinforces previous accord by stating that "the final disposition of the State of Jammu and Kashmir will be made in accordance with the will of the people expressed through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite conducted under the auspices of the United Nations."
We have seen that the UNSC is able to agree unanimously - if only in circumstances in which a resolution has been blessed by America. If Washington wants a resolution badly enough it will go to almost any lengths to ensure that it is agreed. Its tactics are unpalatable - fearsome economic pressure, plain outright bullying, devious horse-dealing involving repudiation of human rights' principles, and threats of aid denial and trade strangulation - but if the US really wants to solve the problem that, as Mr Bush himself has said, could lead to nuclear war between India and Pakistan, then now is the time to act. There is terrorism in Indian-administered Kashmir, and the most effective way to combat it is by giving the people the opportunity to speak. Let Mr Bush show some backbone, and encourage the UNSC to act on its existing resolutions.
Colonel Cloughley writes extensively on military and international affairs. He is also the author of the book, "A history of the Pakistan Army: Wars and Insurrections." His website is www.briancloughley.com

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The human face of Kashmir's sad and dangerous conflict

TOSSED by the river¹s swollen waters, Shehnaz Parveen had just one thought: "I said to the river: 'Please kill me, let me die.' "

Hours before, the young bride had fled the home of her in-laws in Pakistani Kashmir, her face stinging from blows delivered by her husband of three months.
Married life had proved a disaster, with endless abuse from her husband and his family about her inability to conceive a child. Sobbing, she arrived at the river and threw herself in. But she did not drown. As the current swept her downstream, three men on the far bank spotted her and waded in to drag her out.
Despite her distress, she noticed that they were wearing unfamiliar uniforms. The current had carried her across the invisible line dividing disputed Kashmir between Pakistan and India.
Many times over the next seven years, Shehnaz had reason to wish she had drowned that day. Time and again, she fell victim to the enmity between India and Pakistan. Hers is the human face of that sad and dangerous conflict.
At first, Shehnaz did not realise that her rescuers were Indian soldiers. The only thing that she noticed was their guns. "I begged them to shoot me because I had failed to kill myself," she said. "Then they asked me what a Pakistani was doing on Indian soil." She convinced the authorities that she was not a spy, but was sentenced to a year's imprisonment for entering India illegally. One morning a male guard, Mohammed Din, entered her cell and raped her.
"I tried to resist, but I was too afraid to scream," she recalls. "Then I realised no one would help me because I was a Pakistani and an enemy."
A month later she found that she was pregnant. Her first thought was that she would never be accepted back into Pakistani society as the mother of an illegitimate child.
Eight months later, as she was being driven to court to give evidence against Din, she went into labour. The birth was hard and it was not until three days later that she first saw her daughter. That moment transformed her life.
"My in-laws had succeeded in making me believe I was infertile," she said. "But here, out of the saddest moment in my life, came the happiest thing I could possess." She named the child Mobin after a character from the Koran.
By that time Shehnaz had served her sentence, and the Indian authorities tried to deport her. But Pakistan refused to accept Mobin, arguing that she was an Indian citizen.
Under Indian law, however, she was not. Mobin's paternity had never been legally proved, so technically she had no nationality. Mother and daughter were returned to jail under the Enemies Ordinance Act, whereby illegal entrants from enemy countries must be interned in the interests of public safety.
Shehnaz's next chance of freedom came on the eve of the India-Pakistan summit in July last year. The two countries agreed to exchange six prisoners each as a gesture of goodwill and Shehnaz and Mobin were among those chosen. Shehnaz dressed her daughter in her best clothes and set off for the border. But when they arrived, the Pakistani Rangers once again refused to take the child. As the other prisoners crossed over, mother and daughter returned to jail.
By this time, their case had attracted the attention of A. K. Sawhney, an Indian civil rights lawyer. He brought a public interest case questioning Mobin's detention. The case came to court last July. In a landmark judgment, the court awarded Mobin Indian citizenship and ordered that her mother be allowed to stay in India. Mobin was also awarded 300,000 rupees (£4,000) in compensation for her illegal detention, a vast sum by Indian standards. On August 2, Shehnaz and Mobin were freed.
Four months later, they are still awaiting the compensation and are due back in court to force the state government to pay up. Until that happens, they are living with the Sawhney family in a cramped flat above his practice.
"I would not have survived those years in prison if it hadn¹t been for Mobin," Shehnaz said. "She gave me hope." She is even willing to marry Din to give her daughter a name, but he continues to deny raping her and the case against him is still proceeding.
Shehnaz is uncertain whether she will ever be able return to Pakistan. Her husband wants nothing to do with her, and their long separation means that the marriage has been legally dissolved. Letters from her own family dried up about a year ago.
Shehnaz is suffering from political, as well as cultural, forces far beyond her control. She will live in limbo until her native and adopted countries learn to co-exist.

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Kashmir's Leaders Struggle To Deal With Feared Police

SRINAGAR, India -- The three young guests left as soon as the wedding feast ended. It was not safe to be out late on the streets of Srinagar. As they sped along on their motor scooter, relatives said, the men were stopped at a security checkpoint outside the city and an officer of India's feared counterinsurgency police, the Special Operations Group, emerged from the shadows and began to question them.
That was not a good sign.
When they did not arrive home in the Srinagar suburb of Soura that night three years ago, their families went to the local police station. Although the motor scooter was parked outside the station, the relatives could find out nothing about the men's fate. Finally, after a week, news arrived: Someone had found a body in a jute sack that had floated to the surface of a nearby lake.
"It was my brother Nazir's tortured corpse," said Farooq Ahmed Gilkar, 50. The bodies of the other men were found elsewhere two days later.
Known as the "triple murder case," the killings became the focal point of surging Kashmiri anger that summer against the Special Operations Group, or SOG. The widows of the three men and a prisoner who said he saw police torturing Nazir Gilkar filed a legal complaint, which is being heard now in a Kashmir state court. The main police officer accused is still at large, and another has pleaded insanity.
Jammu and Kashmir, India's only Muslim-majority state, has been the focus of a 13-year revolt by Islamic separatists backed by neighboring Pakistan. India has tried to crush the insurgency by sending thousands of troops to the Himalayan region and has been accused of running roughshod over civil liberties.
The SOG is perhaps the most controversial force in Kashmir. Comprised of local police, village informers and former militants, the group is accused of detaining people without cause and indulging in extortion, custodial killings and forced disappearances, according to the Public Commission on Human Rights in Kashmir.
That may now change. The group is under fire from a new coalition government that took over the state this month. Led by the Kashmir-based People's Democratic Party (PDP), the government has promised a "healing touch" with the people and vowed to rein in the SOG, investigate killings of people in police custody, withdraw a tough federal anti-terror law and open talks with militant groups. Perhaps the most controversial promise is the one to make the SOG more accountable.
"The SOG became a law unto itself. They are killers. Can we let them go scot-free?" asked Mehbooba Mufti, deputy leader of the PDP and daughter of the new chief minister, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed.
The SOG men were given cash rewards and promoted when they killed militants, making service in the group a fast lane for ambitious officers and turning the lower-rung officers into "bounty hunters," according to Pervez Imroz, a human rights lawyer in Kashmir who has brought hundreds of cases against the SOG.
"There is no accountability in SOG. It is banditry in uniform," said Ravi Nair, director of the South Asia Human Rights Documentation Center in New Delhi. "But it is not easy to put the genie back into the lamp. It's now a Frankenstein."
The PDP's promise of reforms has sent shivers down the SOG apparatus. Once regarded as an elite police wing, it has become demoralized, and security officials say that under the new government, it has become inactive and no new suspects have been detained. On Friday, the government sacked the entire network of village informers called "special police officers" who worked with the SOG.
But many admit that the PDP may find it very difficult to dislodge the force and may be able to make only cosmetic changes.
The Indian army chief in Kashmir recently defended the SOG, saying it played a crucial role in India's fight against militants by giving valuable intelligence on militant hide-outs and helping with cordon-and-search operations.
"When you fight an urban guerrilla warfare," said a senior police official in the state who worked closely with the SOG, "you need a committed force" that is "flexible, quick, ready to risk social stigma and ready to die." He said that sending the SOG officers back to the regular police barracks would make them easy targets for militant groups looking for revenge.
Questions about the SOG's future are part of a debate in India over some of the tactics the country has used in dealing with armed insurgency over the past two decades, first in Punjab state and now in Kashmir. K.P.S. Gill, a retired police officer who is credited with clamping down on Sikh separatist violence in Punjab by creating a precursor to the SOG about 10 years ago, charged Sayeed of bringing "sentimentality" into his "perspectives on terrorism."
"You cannot negotiate with terror on your knees," Gill wrote in the South Asia Intelligence Review.
But a young Kashmiri police officer in Srinagar, who worked with the SOG for over a year, said he is still "filled with shame and guilt" when he remembers his association with the group's operations. "I know you have to fight this war ruthlessly, but interrogation at SOG usually meant third degree torture, search operations meant humiliating people," he said on condition of anonymity.
Indian officials are trying to work out a way to make changes without losing the gains made by the SOG. One official suggested that suspects be questioned by interrogation cells with representatives from the army, border police, state police and intelligence agencies.
But for the widow of Ghulam Masood Mattoo, who was killed with Gilkar, it is a battle that does not end with changing the SOG.
"They killed him once that night," said Gulshan Mattoo, 27, her 7-year-old son at her side. "But I have died again and again every day since then. I would find my peace only if the killers are punished, no matter what it takes."

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The final partition

When Mr Jinnah contemplated the new country he had been pivotal in creating 55 years ago, he did not sell his property in India as he could not visualize a future in which travel between the two neighbours would become extremely difficult.
The mass killings and the vast migration that accompanied partition on both sides of the border must have been a heavy weight on his conscience.
He could not have foreseen the bloody consequences of the division of the subcontinent. Indeed, being a rational and secular person, he probably did not fathom the capacity for hatred and violence concealed in so many human hearts.
Gandhi, a leader of an altogether different mould, went on hunger strike to protest against the Congress government's delaying tactics in transferring Pakistan's share of the divisible cash resources, and as a result, he was assassinated by a Hindu fanatic.
Many people who fled the violence in both countries left their property and possessions in the expectation that they would be able to return to their homes once the madness had faded. Indians and Pakistanis of that generation still speak nostalgically of growing up in cities that have suddenly become enemy territory. But despite the magnitude of their loss, they are not bitter about their old friends and neighbours; indeed, they retain nothing but fond memories of their childhood. Their anger is focused on the leadership of both countries that have made travel between the two such a nightmare.
Despite the political gulf that opened up with partition and the still-festering Kashmir dispute that erupted immediately afterwards, the cultural and personal affinities between the two countries remained largely intact for some time. Until the 1965 war, travel was relatively simple and people thought little of going across the border to attend a wedding or watch a Test match.
In short, the slogans and shrill rhetoric that emanated from the leaders and propaganda machines had not infected the minds of ordinary citizens who continued to make a distinction between politicians and people. In short, the demonization of the two countries had not yet begun in the popular imagination.
During the 1965 war that began in Kashmir (where else?), pilots of both air forces took great care to avoid civilian targets. Similarly, artillery fire was directed at military targets only, and the little activity that the two navies were engaged in did not include commercial shipping. Although the propaganda war was probably more fierce than actual combat, most Pakistanis did not consider ordinary Indians to be their enemies.
Meeting Indians after the war, one did not get the impression that they felt any differently. Officers from the opposing armies who met after the end of hostilities did not harbour any personal animosity either.
Although the 1971 war evoked far greater bitterness, it was largely confined to the eastern theatre. In West Pakistan, the fighting was more of a defensive nature. But despite the air superiority the Indian air force enjoyed over Pakistani skies, it did not engage in deliberate attacks on civilian targets. I was in Lahore then and remember watching an Indian jet attacking the radar installation at the old airfield in Gulberg (which, incidentally has been taken over by our air force for officers' housing colony). Despite the target being close to so many private residences, I do not recall any reports of civilian casualties.
It was in the seventies that travel became more and more difficult. An entire generation of Pakistanis and Indians grew up with no personal knowledge of each other, their minds poisoned by jingoistic textbooks and official propaganda. More and more young people on both sides of the border began to harbour a personal animus without really knowing very much of the cultural ties that still existed. Even though Pakistanis watched (and continue to watch) Bollywood blockbusters and Indians were enthralled by Pakistani TV soap operas, the gulf between the two countries grew. Popular music, cricket and hockey supplied just about the only glue to the relationship.
Over 30 years have passed since the 1971 war, and apart from Kargil, we have not engaged in any major conflicts. But Kargil was a watershed in many ways. For the first time, there were allegations of uncivilized conduct when infiltrators from this side were accused of having mutilated the bodies of Indian soldiers.
Right or wrong, ordinary Indians were shocked and outraged that the peace moves initiated by their government had been answered by an act of perceived aggression. Being mostly unaware of the hold the military has on decision-making even when a civilian is nominally in power, they saw the infiltration as an act of treachery. More than that, they became convinced for the first time that Pakistan was not interested in peace.
Coming as it did after a decade of escalating violence in Kashmir, for many Indians, Kargil was the proverbial last straw. A hit movie was soon churned out showing Pakistanis as brutal killers; a computer game carried the same message. On our side, the official media and many private newspapers spared no effort in showing Indians in the same light.
Similarly, when General Musharraf travelled to Agra last year, many of us in Pakistan wished him to succeed, and were bitterly disappointed when the talks were broken off when they seemed so close to success. The general perception was that the hawks in India had succeeded in derailing the negotiations just when there was promise of a breakthrough.
Whatever the reality, the fact is that relations between the two nations have never been worse. Despite the economic, cultural and geographic imperatives, we are further away from normality than ever before. Whenever I have written about the urgent need for peace, I have been tauntingly reminded of Kargil by Indian readers who have also gratuitously informed me that their country is far ahead of Pakistan and does not need us. Several of them gloatingly sent me reports of the successful visit of Microsoft's Bill Gates to India. Pakistani detractors, on the other hand, go on at length about the rights and wrongs of the Kashmir issue and advise me to return to India if I am unhappy about the state of affairs in Pakistan. Irrespective of whose fault it is, the fact is that we have succeeded in partitioning the subcontinent far more thoroughly than was originally visualized for we have achieved a division of a shared culture and a shared past.

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Are the People of India and Pakistan Poles Apart?

The custodians of power with elements of communalism and military interests in India and Pakistan would want us to believe that there are irreconcilable differences between Pakistanis and Indians and also between Muslims and Hindus; hence all these hatred, wars, and enmity.
To ascertain whether this hateful and destructive thesis has any firm logic to stand on its own or is it, simply a policy to control and keep people of both countries apart by exaggerating the normal differences one can find in any society or even a household, we have to ask few questions: 1. Is there an enmity? If yes, how widespread it is? 2. Do Hindus and Muslims in both countries have anything in common? 3. Is reconciliation impossible?
Is there an enmity, and how widespread? Out of India, Pakistan was created in 1947 when the British colonial rule ended. It was a bloody partition in the true sense of the word: about a million people died and more than 10 million people migrated in the opposite direction - Hindus and Sikhs to India, and Muslims to Pakistan. Still millions of Muslims decided to stay in India for various reasons. In East Pakistan (now Bangladesh), about 15 percent of the population was Hindu and there remained a tiny fraction in West Pakistan. The British - being honorable and civilized­left for India and Pakistan a one-time alimony in the form of Kashmir, for which both are still fighting while gradually destroying the alimony.
After the partition, there was some trade between both countries and an exchange of films. The 1965 War resulted in a ban on Indian movies in Pakistan and vise versa. To say that the partition did not create any ill feelings would be a big lie. Nevertheless, it was an internal problem among the same people who had lived together and survived for thousands of years. Once the Partition trauma was over, the hate intensity was never that severe. However, to maintain it, the governments relied on propaganda and wars; to some degree, they succeeded too. Later on, also the religious bigots joined in this dirty war.
However, many people, both ordinary and intellectual, have always wished that peace would prevail in South Asia - where a fifth of the world's people live but in a wretched condition.
Due to wars, travel restrictions, and little trade, most of the avenues for any meaningful contact between the two neighbors had ceased for a long time. The things that kept the people of both countries in some contact were music, movies, and TV dramas.
Pakistanis have always craved for Indian movies. The members of the elite class would slip into the Indian embassy and consulates quietly to watch movies. Then there were those who would visit India on a pleasure trip and fulfill their entertainment needs, and yet others who would go to meet their relatives and would try to see as any many movies as possible. This was when the visa restrictions were not in force. In the 1970's, with the advent of VCRs, the Indian movie cassettes became a household thing¹. On the other hand, in India, TV dramas from Pakistan, because of their high - and in many cases intellectual­quality became common. The availability of satellite channels in the 1990s has enabled people in Pakistan to watch several Indian channels. During visits to Pakistan, one can notice that in most places people watch Indian channels². The satellite TV has done a wonderful job of letting people know both beautiful and ugly sides of the "enemy" - rather than relying on the official media.
For a long time many people on both sides of the border have pointed out that the common people of both countries do not want adverse relations between them; "it is the politicians who have created this mess.
"An incident which happened this August says a great deal about this mess. Since last many years, peaceniks from both Pakistan and India have regularly gathered at the Wagah border around 14th and 15th of August (Pakistan's and India's Independence days, respectively) with the aim of bringing both countries closer. This year, a Pakistani journalist wanting to see more people on the border, published a news item that Madhuri Dixit and Shahrukh Khan (famous Indian actors) were also expected at the border³. Playwright Shahid Nadeem writes that the march-organizers and the rangers were caught unawares when thousands of "patriotic Pakistanis" converged at the border. It was uncontrollable and the mounted police was called in⁴. Madhuri is Hindu and Shahrukh is Muslim⁵.
Before delving any further, one thing need to be understood: India and Pakistan - that is, the governments of both countries, a section of over and/or pretentious patriots, and religious nuts­are archenemies. Both nations have gone to war four times, or three and half times as M. J. Akbar (editor, "Asian Age") puts it.⁶. But majority of the people in both countries do not have ill feelings towards each other. However, one has to admit that the establishments in both countries have succeeded in poisoning quite a few people's minds. Contributing further, since late 1970s in Pakistan and early 1980s in India, (Bangladesh is not far behind), is the menace of communalism - with a great increase in both the number of fanatics and of violent activities. Additionally, the historical baggage is still there: the Indian establishment holds a grudge against Pakistan as a breaker of the "Akhand Bharat" or the pre-partitioned India portraying it as a villain; where as the Pakistani establishment's strategy is to present Hindus in bad light and thus implying Islam's superiority.
However, as can be seen from the above incident­even after fifty-five years - the Pakistani establishment has not succeeded totally: (a) People in Pakistan are well aware that Madhuri is Hindu. They also know that sometime back she got married to a Hindu doctor. (b) They know that Pakistan was created out of India. (c) They know that India is an "enemy." (d) They know that India is committing atrocities in Indian held Kashmir. (e) They know what happened to Muslims in Gujarat. Still they thronged in thousands to the border⁷. Nevertheless, they also know that there is a difference between the Indian government and the common Indians, as there is a divergence between the rulers and the common Pakistanis.
(In old Pakistani films, one could hear phrases like "Ram naam satya hai" or Lord Rama's name is truth⁸. After 1965 war, things started to change and especially, after the loss of East Pakistan.)
It is not a wholly one-sided affair. Pakistani artists are also immensely popular in India. Mehdi Hasan, Ghulam Ali, Munni Begum, Farida Khanum, Abida Parvin, late Noor Jahan, and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan are household names in India. Pop singers, including Ali Haider, are recognized names. Pakistani female artists have played hosts on Indian TV programs interviewing Indian artists. There has been collaboration between artists of both countries in making music albums. More Pakistani artists perform in India than their counterparts perform in Pakistan - not that they would not like to, but because of restrictive atmosphere, clergy's street power, and government's cool response, their number is small. Singers Jagjit Singh, Chitra, Lucky Ali, late Talat Mehmood, tabla maestro Zakir Hussain, and others have performed in Pakistan. However, sometime back, internationally acclaimed Indian actor and activist Shabana Azmi and Farooq Shaikh were to act in Feroz Khan's play, "Tumhari Amrita," but was cancelled because the sponsors could not guarantee their safety.
(Think about this ironic tragedy: Pakistan was created for Indian Muslims; the Muslim sponsors were arranging the play; Azmi, Shaikh, and Farooq are Indian Muslims. Their Muslim ness does not count, but their Indianess definitely bothers the Muslim fanatics.)
In India, hostile reaction to Pakistani artists is rare. In 1998, the Shiva Sena party supremo Bal Thackeray's goons known as Shiva Sainiks stopped Pakistani singer Ghulam Ali's show in Mumbai. Few years back, a Pakistani filmmaker offered the Nepali born Hindu Indian actress Manisha Koirala to act in a Pakistani film. Thackeray⁹ refused permission. (Recently, a Pakistani filmmaker came up with a novel idea: he is using footage of Manisha from a Nepali film and would somehow connect it in his film.) Not long ago, Indian singers Kavita Krishnamurti, Sonu Nigam, and Kumar Sanu recorded songs for Pakistani films. Famous Indian singer Asha Bhonsle sang for Zeba Bakhtiar and Adnan Samii's film "Sargam, but the government controlled PTV (Pakistan Television) refuses to play her songs. Bhonsle and Sami also have few music albums together. Sami is in India and has applied for a citizenship. He is very popular over there without losing any popularity in Pakistan. In India, one of his songs has been on the top slot for months now. Another one of his video song "Lift karade" is also immensely popular. (In 1997, I bought an audio cassette with that song from Pakistan, however, it needed huge Indian market to gain worldwide popularity among the South Asians.) Zeba Bakhtiar has worked in few Indian movies too. (Bakhtiar is the daughter of former attorney general of Pakistan, Yahya Bakhtiar.) The Bollywood Awards held every year in New York invites few Bangladeshi and Pakistani artists to perform on stage. In a recent interview, Pakistani actor Mira has openly expressed her desire to work in an Indian movie. I used the word "openly", because many of them are afraid of being labeled as "non-patriotic." Actress Rima was accused as such for taking part in Indian Zee TV's program, "Antakashari," on which she sang few lines of both Indian and Pakistani national anthems. The famous Pakistani music group Junoon experienced similar wrath for its interview given in India in which they expressed their support for Indo-Pak friendship.
Is there anything in common? Yes. There are many things common between them­and up until 1947, they had the same history. Geographically, they are tied; linguistically, they are linked; culturally, they are connected. Of course, there are differences between Hindus and Muslims, and between Pakistanis and Indians. Then, there are also differences between Hindus and Hindus - that is, between the high caste Brahmins and the low caste Dalits (keeping in mind that even within the same caste there could be lack of unity), and between Muslims and Muslims - that is the majority Sunnis and the minority Shias. Within India, different states have differences as there are between the provinces in Pakistan. However, it is the similarities between Pakistanis and Indians and between Hindus and Muslims which pricks the fundamentalists­who are hell bent on bringing uniformity among their co-religionists to segregate the "other." The ruling classes work on not very dissimilar pattern. On a broader level, there are similarities in food, clothes, customs, ingenuity¹⁰ corruption, entertainment, etc. One has to keep in mind that South Asia is made up of several ethnic groups, multiple languages, innumerable dialects, variety of food dishes, many religions, uncountable denominations, infinite customs and traditions, and so on and so forth. It is a huge medley. So on a broader level one may find quite a few similarities between people of different religions and different ethnicities, one may find more affinity among the same ethnic group, even though the religions may be different. A Sindhi Muslim or a Sindhi Hindu in Pakistan may be able to converse with a Pushtun Pakistani on a general level, provided both can converse fluently in Hindi/Urdu, but both Sindhi Hindu and Sindhi Muslim would be more comfortable in talking to each other despite the difference of religion - unless one or both of them are religious zealots. It is also true for Pushtun or any other group. However, same cannot be said for a Pakistani Muslim and a Muslim from Saudi Arabia. May be, they'll pray together­provided they are practicing Muslims, but then what? They can converse only if they know each others' language, and even then they will be lacking that cultural affinity, which a Hindu and a Muslim (and a Sikh, and a Buddhist, and a Christian) has whether they share the same language or not.
In some places in India, even the religious customs are similar. There are some Muslims who burn their dead and there are some Hindus who bury their dead. There are Muslim shrines in India which are visited by Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, and others. Now imagine a Saudi Wahabi seeing this. Either he will have a heart attack or he will kill himself. Every religion has its own peculiar brand of religious practices, and they differ in each region of the world. The Islam in South Asia with its shrines and Sufis has its own specialties. In addition, throughout the history of South Asia, there have been people of all religions and without religion who have tried to bridge the gap. The poet Akbar Allahabadi (1846-­1921) once wrote: "I asked the water of the Well of Zamzam Why did you mix with the water of the Ganges?" It replied, "Sir, don't you see, I was shut up in a bottle, And have now begun to flow" (Muhammad Sadiq's translation. Zamzam is a well, considered holy by many Muslims and is situated in the Great Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, Ganga or Ganges is a river in India, considered holy by many Hindus. One explanation for the United States' corporations: the Zamzam well has just the water in it!) Just recently, writer Mukul Dube made this suggestion: "Is it too far-fetched to visualize an on-going exchange of children between the two religions? A Hindu child could go to spend two days in a Muslim household, possibly one in which there is a class-mate or age-mate. Traffic could be reversed over the next weekend. There might be no monsters left after this, only Uncles and …" ("The Hindustan Times," September 5, 2002.) The custodians of both religions would want their co-religionists to do otherwise!
In these circumstances, for the governments and the fundamentalists, it becomes a full time job to manufacture differences - it is not only a matter of bread and butter but also of power and politics. So what they do first is to distort history. For the Pakistan government and the Muslim fundamentalists, the whole universe was created just fourteen hundred years ago when Muhammad, Prophet of Islam, emerged on the world scene. On the other hand, for the Hindu fundamentalists, Indian history began with the Aryans - easily forgetting the Indus Valley Civilization and the original tribal people residing in India for thousands of years.
Irreconcilable Differences? Many years back, a thought struck me that if Islam would have never come to India, probably South Asia would have been relatively peaceful, or if it came then it should have succeeded in converting everyone to Islam. Well, any irrationality, if attacked on time, has an effervescent existence, and so the next thought was about the religious violence being committed among the followers of the same religions: in Pakistan, Muslims are gunning down Muslims not only on the streets but also in the mosques; and in India, barring few, majority of the Dalits are still awaiting humane and equal treatment from their higher caste fellow religionists.
Most probably, it was poet Sahir Ludhianwi (1921­1980) who once wrote: mandir ko jala do, masjid ko gira do, dunya se mazhab ka nam o nishan mita do or the temple, burn it; the mosque, demolish it every trace of religion from this world, erase it.
The main issue of contention between both countries is the Kashmir problem. At the time of partition, Pakistan's claim on Kashmir - where majority of the population was Muslim­was fully justified and India was wrong in getting Prince Hari Singh's assent for joining India, because the basis of partition was that areas with Muslim majority would go to Pakistan and areas with Hindu majority would go to India. The British should not have left this problem. But then they should not have come to South Asia (or for that matter anywhere else) in the first place.
However, the subsequent events in South Asia have changed the whole basis upside down. Pakistan's claim on Kashmir rested on it being a Muslim majority province, but then the West Pakistan based rulers could not treat their fellow Muslims, the Bengalis (in the eastern wing or East Pakistan), as equal human beings. In 1971, East Pakistan separated and became Bangladesh, On the other hand, India's claim that loss of Kashmir would injure its secular nature, is nothing but a hoax. Since partition, India has witnessed numerous religious and caste riots or more appropriately violence where the victims are mostly members of minorities, especially Muslims, and low caste Hindus. In the last two decades, there have been four major incidents¹¹. So at this juncture in history, both Pakistan's and India's claims are flawed and should be thrown into the trash bin. The probable solution is to make the Line of Control or LoC, which is the ceasefire line, a permanent border. The Kashmir problem is not of such nature that it cannot be resolved; it is simply in the hands of the ruling classes in both countries to permanently solve this problem - provided that they really want to.
Just look at Pakistan and Bangladesh; both governments have amicable relations. It is hard to believe, but it is true. Here it becomes necessary to give a brief synopsis about what had happened between them. The East Pakistan's population was about 55 percent, mostly Bengalis ("non-martial" race, the British colonialists labeled so)but the power rested in the hands of the Punjabis, about 27 percent (the "martial" race.) Bengalis were economically exploited, socially humiliated, politically subjugated, and religiously ridiculed. Gradually, they started demanding autonomy. In the 1970 election, the first fair one since 1947, the East Pakistan based Awami League won the majority of seats. It was denied power and instead in 1971, the West Pakistan based army, mostly Punjabis, went on a killing and rape spree. Thomas Payne says the "massacres" went on for months in all areas. "Muslim soldiers, sent out to kill Muslim peasants, went about their work mechanically and efficiently, until killing defenseless people became a habit like smoking cigarettes or drinking wine. Before they had finished, they had killed three million people. Not since Hitler invaded Russia had there been so vast a massacre"¹². And thousands of Muslim women were raped by the Muslim soldiers from the Land of the Pure or Pakistan because those women were not proper Muslims - according to the rulers-due to their cultural traits which were same as those of West Bengali Hindu women of India. None of the Pakistani government has ever repented or asked for forgiveness from their victims - let alone trying those criminals. A few years back, Nawaz Sharif said a few words to the Bangladeshis and recently Pakistan's ruler, Pervez Musharraf used the word "excesses.
"If these Punjabi Muslim soldiers would have been asked - that is, before the atrocities began - to marry the Bengali Muslim women, they would have thought about all the negative labels imposed on that ethnic group and would have refused. But they would not mind raping those same women - because rape was an act of patriotism and of degrading Bengali women. So where is religion in this? Where is the "Islamic brotherhood" in this?
India is beset with similar contradictions. Just recently, five Dalit Hindu men were murdered by the high caste Brahmin Hindus. Their crime was that they were skinning a dead cow! More surprising or rather more tragic is that one of the Hindu fundamentalist, VHP leader Giriraj Kishore justified the murders on the ground that dead cow is more precious than those Dalits!).
No doubt, the agony and bitterness of Partition created immense hatred in many people, but with the passage of time, the wounds healed. One cannot deny that there would always be a group of people who would nurse the past pain and would hold grudge and/or oppose amiable relations. However, as we can see among most of the people, the bond of music, movies, and TV dramas is still intact and is helping to fight back the religious insanity. Just by changing religion, one cannot escape from a set of patterns, which has a history of thousands of years. There are too many commonalities among the Hindus and Muslims (and Jains, and Jews) of South Asia. It would take many Ashok Singhals and Fazlur Rahmans and Samiul Haqs and Praveen Togadias to really break the link totally. And if Bangladesh and Pakistan can establish normal relations - realpolitik is there, of course - why cannot the governments of India and Pakistan do the same - if for nothing else than at least for realpolitik.

End notes:
1. Occasionally, police officers conduct raids to stop stores from carrying Indian movies, but usually they are there to extract money from the owners. Moreover, everybody knows it. Many a times it has happened that when a new movie was released on Friday, somebody in a cinema house in Bombay was tapping that film in the three o clock show and would then fly to Karachi the same evening. The same night, pirated copies were available. (Distance between the two cities is about 500 miles.)
2. In 1998, in one of the Karachi neighborhood I was visiting, for a couple of days due to some clash between the local channel operators and the TV networks Indian channels disappeared. The people came to know the stories of the missed segments of their favorite TV serials, particularly, "Saas bhi Kabhi Bahu thi or "Once, a Mother-in-Law was a Daughter-in-Law too," from their masis. (Literally, aunt, i.e., mother's sister, but is also used for domestic female workers who clean houses and wash dishes and clothes. Here it is used in the later sense.)
3. The Indian actors and actresses are very popular in Pakistan and other South Asian countries, and among people of South Asian origin residing in other countries. The Indian movies are also popular in the African countries, the Middle East, the Central Asia, and the Far East.
4. "Culture Vulture: Let the Children Play," "Daily Times," August 15, 2002.
5. Basically, Indian film industry is quite secular and the inter-religious marriages are common. Shahruhk, Amir Khan ("Lagaan" fame), Nasiruddin Shah ("Monsoon Wedding" fame), Arbaaz Khan have all Hindu wives; Saif Ali Khan is married to a Sikh actress; Salman Khan has a Hindu actress as a girlfriend whom he wants to marry; Hrithic Roshan (a Hindu) is married to a Muslim girl. Three of the top four heroes are Muslims (Shahrukh, Amir, and Salman; Hrithic is the fourth one. In her 1959 novel, "Aag ka Darya" or "River of Fire" (her own translation), Qurratulain Hyder has compared the Muslim presence in the Indian film industry with that of the Jewish presence in Hollywood.
6. Two months after independence in October 1948 over Kashmir, in 1965 over the same issue, in 1971 over East Pakistan (which became Bangladesh when the war ended), and in 1999 a small battle in the Kargil area of Kashmir. However, there have been times when the leaders of India and Pakistan decided that they wanted to end hostilities, and were courageous enough to meet. Somehow, they have proved themselves more courageous in blowing up - that is, always­at the last minute.
7. Ninety-seven percent of the people in Pakistan are Muslims and so it is safe to assume that most of the people who went to border were Muslims - besides, the minorities have never been aggressive in Pakistan, and especially after mid seventies they lost any faith they might have had in the justice system. In addition, they would not want to take any risk in this charged atmosphere.
8. It was used in Khwaja Khurshid Anwar's beautiful film, "Ghunghat." One of the finest music director of South Asia, he gave music in Indian films and after partition moved to Pakistan. He was multi-talented and made many movies which he himself wrote, directed, and gave the music.
9. Thackeray's party is one of the coalition partners in the central government made up of about two dozen parties, the biggest is BJP or Bhartiya Janata Party of Atal Behari Vajpayee. Basically, Thackeray is a roguish communalist who is famous for issuing hateful and provocative statements against the Muslim minority, Pakistan, and against various ethnic groups. Though his street power is limited to Mumbai, his political influence is slightly more. He openly boasts of controlling the central government through "remote control." His hold on Mumbai's film industry or Bollywood is phenomenal. He has also successfully opposed holding of cricket matches in Bombay.
10. Few years back, in the restroom at the Karachi airport, a person gave me paper towels for wiping hands. I could have taken it myself, but it was his way of earning a living; one cannot blame him. After few hours, I was at the Bombay or Mumbai airport, where I had an exactly similar experience. If I were a believer in telepathy, I would have thought that this person's counterpart in Pakistan would have given him the message to serve me.
11. In 1984, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards, more than 2,000 Sikhs were massacred, Rajiv Gandhi, the successor and son of Indira, said, "when a big tree falls, many suffers." In 1991, after the Babri Masjid was demolished, more than 2,000 people were killed, mostly Muslims. In 2000, many Christians were murdered and their churches were burnet down or demolished. This year, more than 2,000 Muslims were massacred in Gujarat.
12. Robert Payne, "Massacre: The Tragedy at Bangladesh and the Phenomenon of Mass Slaughter throughout History" (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1973).

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The opening in Kashmir: Turning over a new leaf

The verdict was overwhelmingly against New Delhi's Kashmir policy, of which the NC was seen as an uncritical representative. It was not an endorsement of New Delhi's "anti-terrorist" measures, or of J&K's categorical "integration" with India...The Kashmiris long for a return to more peaceful, less violent, life and to human rights. They also voted for an unconditional dialogue with all shades of opinion and scrapping of draconian laws, including POTA.
The Congress has done something unusual. It has agreed to share power with another party in a coalition with a negotiated agenda. It has even handed over the leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir alliance to the People's Democratic Party (PDP). This is something its instincts militate against.
The maturity, and one might say, grace, with which the Congress has acted in the larger interests of Kashmir and of India, reduces the damage from J&K's fortnight-long-jockeying for power.
It also conveys the seriousness with which the Indian political system can sometimes respond to certain issues.
The deal between the Congress, PDP, Democratic People's Front led by Mr Yusuf Tarigami, and other, falls in the same class as the Rajiv-Longowal (Punjab) Accord, or the Mizoram and Assam agreements. These had the potential to create a political breakthrough in a situation of great social turmoil, administrative chaos, popular alienation and militant violence.
The central issue in J&K is how to convert today's opportunity into a solid, enduring gain. This needs a three-pronged approach: roll back the damage wreaked by 13 years of violence; establish responsible governance to win the people's hearts and minds; and engage the world on the J&K issue to bring about a peaceful settlement.
The Congress-PDP alliance's Common Minimum Programme outlines this approach's domestic component. This must be supplemented by the international component, including a dialogue with Pakistan.
The onus here falls squarely upon the Centre. It also holds the key to the success of Mr Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's attempts at reconciliation. India's national leadership must seriously reconceptualise its entire understanding of Kashmir and radically rethink strategy.
J&K's electoral verdict was a resounding rejection of the National Conference, and in the Jammu region, of the BJP. The NC was punished for its opportunist national-level alliance with the communal BJP, for its monumental corruption, betrayal of "autonomy", and unresponsiveness to people's needs. The BJP was virtually wiped out from Jammu.
The verdict was overwhelmingly against New Delhi's Kashmir policy, of which the NC was seen as an uncritical representative. It was not an endorsement of New Delhi's "anti-terrorist" measures, or of J&K's categorical "integration" with India.
The Kashmiris long for a return to more peaceful, less violent, life and to human rights. They also voted for an unconditional dialogue with all shades of opinion and scrapping of draconian laws, including POTA.
Going by opinion polls and field reports, including this writer's recent visit, the Kashmiris regarded this as the most credible and fair election since 1977. They voted without prejudice to their views about a long-term Kashmir solution. They want an administration more alive to their immediate needs related to water, jobs and roads.
The elections were undoubtedly fair, if not entirely free. But that doesn't mean the "Kashmir problem" has gone away, and popular alienation has ended. The problem has only acquired a less malign, more manageable, shape.
The CMP recognises this. Seventeen of its 31 points are welcome peace-restoration measures, including putting POTA on hold, rehabilitation of violence-affected families, establishment of an ehtisab institution to enforce accountability, and abolition of the STF-Special Operations Group of former militants.
Implicit in the promise to heal "emotional wounds" is acknowledgement that such wounds were indeed inflicted by hawkish policies which involved cheating on India's own Constitution, rigging elections, imposing unrepresentative governments, and committing large-scale human rights violations.
These wounds will take long to heal, but the process must begin with a demonstration of good faith.
The CMP is somewhat overcautious -- reflecting the Congress' sense of vulnerability to the BJP's criticism that it is "compromising" with pro-azadi opinion. Instead of an unconditional dialogue with all currents of opinion, as promised by Ms Sonia Gandhi, it limits itself to "requesting" the Centre to "hold ...
wide-ranging consultations and dialogue, without conditions, with the members of the legislature and other segments of public opinion ...".
The CMP drops the PDP's promise of investigating allegations against SOG/security forces relating to disappearances/custodial killings. It leaves a dialogue with Pakistan entirely to the Centre.
Some of this caution may restrain pro-Jamaat-i-Islami elements in the PDP's support-base. However, for the people, any realistic solution to the Kashmir problem must involve Pakistan. They include the vast majority, not just supporters of the Hurriyat (which has lost much credibility).
That's what the international community too wants. It is in India's own interest to start a dialogue, however tortuous -- without conceding anything to Pakistan in advance.
India's greatest asset lies in the credibility of the democratic process and the moral case against terrorist violence. There is no substitute for peaceful, patient diplomacy and engagement with the international community.
Domestically, the litmus test will be how soon the new government can end state and militant violence, and restore the people's faith in the possibility of elementary justice. Here, it needs the full backing of the Centre, whose leadership will have to break with clichéd "pro-active" (read, hardline) strategies.
Equally crucial will be tackling unemployment among J&K's educated youth. Here, ironically, the Jammu region is as important as the Valley. It's in Doda, Rajouri and Poonch that the militants are recruiting.
So, J&K will need an extraordinarily imaginative development plan -- not a souped-up version of the "packages" the Centre periodically announces, nor a replica of earlier plans for Punjab and Assam, such as setting up an Institute of Technology or big public project. Only a plan which takes into account the state's endowments and people's skills, and targets their needs, will work.
Without such an initiative, there is a danger that the window of opportunity in J&K will slam shut -- as in the Northeast, in the past. If, on the other hand, India's leaders show wisdom and foresight, things could change dramatically. India's appeal to Kashmir's people will grow if they feel assured of the representative character of its democratic system. That's worth fighting for.
Praful Bidwai is an eminent Indian columnist.

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History, Ideology and Curriculum

Mubarak Ali

To control the past is to master the present, to legitimise dominion and justify legal claims. It is the dominant powers states, churches, political parties, private interests ­ which own or finance the media or means of production, whether it be school books or strip cartoons, films, or television programmes.(1)
In the past, rulers and aristocrats used history to glorify their achievements as saviours and benefactors. In the modern period, political leaders use it to assert their authority and domination and legitimise their status as rulers. In the newly independent countries, particularly, leaders reconstruct history to suit their agenda in the changing political situation.
After decolonisation, a new generation of political leaders, who had struggled for freedom and assumed the status of freedom fighters, claimed to rule the newly independent countries. As rulers they were in need to legitimise their claims. This is why the concepts of the 'freedom struggle' and 'war of liberation' emerged with great lustre and romance. Sacrifices of these leaders have become dominant themes in recent history writing. In India and Pakistan, the role of these freedom fighters is highly eulogised in order to give them the right to rule the new nations. Interestingly, the British historians describe the freedom struggle as a 'transfer of power', implying that the change that took place was a voluntary surrender of power and not as a result of struggle. These two interpretations reflect two antithetical approaches to history.
Like most of the newly independent countries, Pakistan also had problems about how to reconstruct its history in order to legitimise its creation. It faced two problems: how to treat the colonial period, and how to justify partition. Most of the colonised countries have been sensitive about their colonial periods, which marked their humiliation, surrender and defeat. Dealing with these periods requires an acceptance of national and societal weaknesses in these countries. Pakistan found an easy solution. It looked at the whole period of colonisation as the Indian past because Pakistan had not existed at that time. It left it to the Indian historians to deal with the colonial period. However, the Pakistani historians had to grapple with a number of complicated and complex issues on the partition of India. While handling these, they kept in their minds the interests of the ruling classes.
In Pakistan, historiography has developed under the framework of the 'Pakistan Ideology', which is based on the idea of a separate Muslim nationhood and justifies the partition of India. The Pakistani historians are told from the very beginning to construct their history within this framework. It is well understood that whenever history is written under the influence of an ideology, its objectivity is sacrificed. Facts are manipulated in order to justify the political acts of leadership. Eric Hobsbawm has said: "Nationalist historians have ­ often been ­ servants of ideologists".(2) He observed: "History as inspiration and ideology has a built-in tendency to become a self-justifying myth. Nothing is a more dangerous blindfold than this, as the history of modern nations and nationalism demonstrates".(3)
In power politics, an ideologically based historiography provides legitimacy to the political leadership. Michael W Apple poses the question: What does ideology do for the people who have it? He writes that it "distorts one¹s picture of social reality and serves the interest of the dominant classes in the society".(4)
Pakistani historians also face the problem of how to deal with the ancient past. Islam came to the Indian subcontinent in the 8th century. On the basis of the two-nation theory, the ancient Indian past does not belong to the new country. A teacher and a Jamat-i-Islami member, Asadullah Bhutto, once gave a press statement that Mohenjo Daro and other such archaeological remains should be bulldozed as they do not belong to Islam. Turning their attention to the early Islamic past, the historians seek an Islamic link with the Arab conquest of Sindh, known in history textbooks as "the door of Islam" ('bab al-Islam'). According to them, the conquest of Sindh made the Indian Muslims a part of the Arab empire. This makes them more enchanted with the glories of Damascus, Baghdad, Cairo, and Cordoba than with the Indian counterparts of Delhi, Agra or Fathepursikri. They also trace central Asian links. A reputed Pakistani archaeologist and historian, A H Dani, has said that Pakistan has closer and stronger cultural links with central Asia than with India.
How one treats medieval Indian history is also problematic. During this period, Muslim dynasties ruled over India but the centre of power was situated in India and not in the area that constituted the new country of Pakistan. Though the period is reconstructed under the title of History of Pak-Hind, there are some fundamentalists who totally reject the rule of the Muslim dynasties as being un-Islamic on the grounds that the Muslim rulers preferred to rule on the basis of secularism and did not establish an Islamic state. They inducted the Hindus in their administration and weakened the Islamic character of the state. These historians also condemn all attempts that led to the development of a composite culture. I H Qureshi, a leading historian, criticised the policy of cooperation with Hindus that was enunciated by Mughal rulers, especially Akbar, who included Hindus as partners and treated them equally.
Qureshi has argued: "And in the final analysis, if the Muslims were to forget their uniqueness and come to absorb as Akbar did, contradictory tendencies and beliefs from other religions, could the Muslim nation continue to exist as a separate nation? Akbar's policies created danger not only for the Muslim empire but also for the continued existence of the Muslim nation in the sub-continent".(5) Akbar is much maligned in the Pakistani historiography and is completely omitted from the school textbooks.(6)
Recently in an article entitled "At Last the Fall Became our Destiny", a Jamat-i-Islami intellectual wrote: "After Muhammad bin Qasim, all conquerors invaded India for plunder and not for (the) propagation of Islam. They had no desire and passion for holy war. Some of them conquered territories after shedding Muslim blood and assumed the royalty that was similar to the Romans and the Persian rulers."(7) He condemned them for emulating the practices of the non-Muslim kings. "They built palaces and castles for their luxurious living and personal protection, kept slave girls for their sexual satisfaction, and recruited eunuchs to watch the conduct of their women. Following the traditions of the Pharaohs, they even built tombs for their queens."(8)
He said that the reason for the downfall of the Muslim rule in India was the attempt to create a composite culture. When Akbar and other Mughal rulers adopted the policy of marrying Hindu women, the process of polluting the Muslim culture began, which ultimately led to the disintegration of the Mughal empire. He wrote: "When the Mughal rulers married Hindu women and allowed them to keep their religion and worship according to their religion, it was disaster. As a result of these marriages, Mughal rulers were born from Hindu mothers."(9) Medieval Indian history is not regarded as a part of the Pakistani historiography because the Hindus and the Muslims both shared it. The culture that was produced by both is looked upon as a denial of Muslim separateness.

Problems Posed by Recent History
In dealing with the recent history of the freedom struggle, the emphasis has shifted from the freedom struggle to the "struggle for Pakistan". The Congress, dominated by Hindus, is considered to be the main adversary because it did not recognise the Muslim community as a separate one and opposed partition. This approach makes the Hindus more hostile to the Muslims, than the British. Therefore, the creation of Pakistan is regarded as a victory against the Hindus and not against the British.
The reconstruction of the regional histories poses another problem. How does one adjust them in the ideological framework? In the case of Punjab, its Sikh period is rejected and downgraded as the 'Sikha Shahi', which is synonymous with anarchy and disorder. The wars of the Sikhs, which were fought against the British, have no place in the history textbooks. On the other hand, the British conquest of Punjab is hailed as a blessing for the people of Punjab because it delivered them from Sikh rule.
The British ignominiously defeated the Talpur Mirs, the rulers of Sindh, in 1843. To minimise the humiliation of the defeat, historians attempt to glorify some individuals who fought bravely against the British. Sindh is given credit because its legislative assembly was the first to vote for joining Pakistan. The North West Frontier Province is remembered for its resistance to colonial rule but the allegiance of its political leadership to the Congress is condemned. The political leadership and not the people are blamed. On Baluchistan, the resistance of the Kalat state not to accede to Pakistan is not mentioned in the schoolbooks.
Pakistani historiography tries to homogenise the culture, traditions, and social and religious life of the people. This suits the political attempts towards centralisation. Any attempt to assert the historical identity of a region is discouraged and condemned. This also affects the non-Muslim religious minorities, who are also excluded from the mainstream of history.
Pakistan has passed through a number of political crises. It has experienced military dictatorships, corruption of feudal democracy, the separation of East Pakistan, the rise of fundamentalism and ups and downs in relations with India. History textbooks became the victim. History as a subject was discontinued in 1961 and was incorporated into the textbooks on social science.
Textbook writers are allowed to select only those portions of history, which suit the ruling party in power. Michael W Apple observes: "Selectivity is the point; the way in which from a whole possible area of past and present, certain meanings and practices are chosen for emphasis, certain other meanings and practices are neglected and excluded. Even more crucially, some of these meanings are reinterpreted, diluted, or put into forms which support or at least do not contradict other elements within the effective dominant culture."(10)
When there is democracy, the army rule is blamed for all existing problems. When the army comes to power, it accuses politicians and democracy for causing disorder and corruption. Even when there is a democratic change, the past government is condemned for political and economic problems. As George Orwell said: "All history is a palimpsest scraped clean and reinscribed, exactly as often as is necessary. The past is written in the light of the present requirements of the authoritarian government."(11)
The disjointed and selected version of history fails to create any historical consciousness among students and the general public. When full facts of historical processes are not recorded, it reduces the power of analysis and society is condemned to repeat its history again and again.
-----
Notes
1 Marc Ferro, The Use and Abuse of History, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1984, p vii.
2 Eric Hobsbawm , On History, Abacus, London, 1999, p 35.
3 Ibid, p 47.
4 Michael W Apple, Ideology and Curriculum, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1980, pp 20, 21.
5 I H Qureshi, The Muslim Community of the Indian Sub-Continent, 1962, p 167.
6 Mubarak Ali, History on Trial, Lahore, 1999, pp 76-82.
7 Zahid Ali Wasti, 'And the Fall became a Destiny', ( Urdu article) in Awaz, No 9, October-December 1999, pp 247, 248.
8 Ibid, p 248.
9 Ibid, pp 250-57.
10 Apple, p 6.
11 George Orwell, Selected Writings, Heinmann Educational Books, London 1976, p 165.

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Vajpayee's domestic bind

After having announced de-escalation and demobilisation of 700,000 troops at the border and having agreed that Prime Minister Vajpayee would attend the next SAARC summit, the Indian government is again vacillating and hedging. Apart from differences over a trade agreement, the real cause for New Delhi's hesitation pertains to internal rivalries within the National Democratic Alliance and a major power struggle that has broken out within the sangh parivar, where Vajpayee is at the receiving end.
On October 17, exactly a day after the Cabinet Committee on Security announced the de-escalation, a television channel quoted minister of state for external affairs Digvijay Singh as saying Vajpayee would definitely travel to Islamabad for the SAARC summit in January although "not for any bilateral process".
Within hours, Ministry of External Affairs officials began to brief journalists to stem "speculation" that a "final" decision had been taken on Vajpayee's visit: there exists, they said, a "large gap between possibility and reality". But defence minister George Fernandes-leader of the Samata Party, to which Digvijay Singh belongs-reiterated that Vajpayee would visit Pakistan.
Soon, a war of words began over the summit dates. On October 23, MEA declared India is still "waiting" to finalise the dates. Pakistan's Foreign Office accused India of "trying to create confusion". Pakistan's acting High Commissioner said he was "a little bewildered ... we are getting conflicting signals". The dates, formally proposed by the SAARC Secretariat and Pakistan High Commission in August, were further discussed at a foreign ministers' meeting in September where Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha was present. The dates agreed were January 11-13. India was to have re-confirmed them by September 25. It hasn't.
It now emerges that New Delhi would like to make Vajpayee's visit conditional upon "progress" on SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement) and SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Area). Vajpayee has also said that he would go to Pakistan provided there is "clarity" on what is to be discussed there. Clearly, the official message is, Pakistan must discard its no-trade-with-India policy and accord to India Most Favoured Nation status.
However, the weightier reason for Vajpayee's hesitation has to do with internal conflicts within the BJP. A substantial section of the party, now controlled by the hawkish LK Advani, is unhappy with the demobilisation decision and does not want any normalisation of relations with Pakistan unless that is linked to ending "cross-border terrorism".
Even more important is the power struggle that has broken out between the parliamentary wing of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the Hard Right component of the sangh parivar, including the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, Bajrang Dal and Swadeshi Jagran Manch. This has now taken the form of a campaign of abuse. Abuse pervades the mainstream political discourse. The worst manifestation of this is in Gujarat, in pre-election campaigning.
There, VHP's "international secretary" Praveen Togadia recently descended to the gutter level by calling Sonia Gandhi "an Italian dog". Narendra Modi too termed her "Italy ki beti". He threatened to "wipe Pakistan off the map of the world" through "Hindu militancy" as well.
This came on top of VHP president Singhal's threats to repeat Gujarat's ethnic-cleansing "experiment" all over India. Meanwhile, the Shiv Sena's Bal Thackeray has appealed to Hindus to form "terrorist suicide-squads". Worst of all, VHP vice-president Giriraj Kishore, citing the shastras, has put the cow higher than humans-especially Dalits.
True to cowardly type, Togadia now says he didn't name any particular individual in his Oct 19 speech. Thackeray claims his remarks were only directed at "pro-Pakistan Muslims"-a ludicrous statement, falsified by the speech's transcript! Thackeray's defence is fundamentally obnoxious in the first place. It is downright criminal to threaten anyone with "terrorist squads".
These vituperative speeches mark a new low in India's Right-wing politics. The public discourse here did not plumb such depths even before Partition, with its ghastly bloodbath. Such intensely intolerant politics couldn't have developed 40, 30, even 20 years ago. What gave birth to it is the parivar's still-unfolding anti-Babri mosque campaign, launched in the mid-1980s.
Parivar hate speech is backed by action. Maharashtra and Gujarat witnessed India's two worst pogroms. In Rajasthan, the BJP-RSS and VHP are polarising politics communally. Tamil Nadu has banned religious conversion-against the Constitution. In Haryana, five Dalits were beaten to death in police custody because the VHP spread rumours that they had killed a cow.
Many BJP leaders have joined the VHP's hate campaign. There are revolving doors between all the parivar's components. Half the VHP's top leaders have been BJP MPs in recent years. The Shiv Sena and BJP are inseparable. The Bajrang Dal's topmost man (Vinay Katiyar) is the BJP's Uttar Pradesh president.
The intra-parivar power struggle is triggered partly by the BJP's appalling governmental performance. Togadia, Thackeray and Kishore are upset at the NDA's drift towards economic policies they don't like, and towards "appeasement" of Pakistan through troop demobilisation.
These aren't differences over principle, but over sharing the spoils, and sustaining enmity with Pakistan. Recently, Thackeray plucked out the Sena's electricity minister from the Cabinet because he didn't deliver "enough" moolah. He raved against the sale of a public sector hotel in Mumbai not because he opposes public sector disinvestment, but because he wanted it sold to a friend! The hardliners are also stepping up the Ayodhya temple campaign, although there is no popular support for this.
This is their way of getting even with the BJP's parliamentary wing. They don't want to play second fiddle to it. They believe-not without reason-that they put Vajpayee & Co in power; without the Ramjanmabhoomi campaign, the BJP couldn't have grown from 2 to 89 seats between 1984 and 1989, and then eventually to 180 (in a Lok Sabha of 545 seats).
Hindutva hardliners see Vajpayee & Co as interlopers. The BJP leadership thinks the hardliners are a nuisance. But it lacks the stomach to deal with them upfront. So it relies on the paterfamilias, the RSS, to settle internal differences. This strategy is becoming unworkable. The RSS leadership's equation with the BJP has changed. Their recent mutual compromises have come unstuck. The same thing will probably happen to the latest uneasy truce, reached on October 24.
It is a sign of Vajpayee's desperation and weakness that he still begs the RSS to help him. If he really wants to assert himself, he must act in consonance with Constitutional principles and the law. His government should strictly apply hate-speech laws like Section 153 and 153(A) of the Indian Penal Code to members of the sangh parivar. It must not cave in to Thackeray's hollow threats to set Mumbai "on fire".
It is unlikely that Vajpayee can summon the will to take on these dangerous fanatics. He may temporarily overcome their resistance and attend the SAARC summit. But so long as he remains their prisoner, he is likely to make reconciliation with Pakistan hostage to Hindutva.
Islamabad would only play into the hardliners' hands, and work against its own interests, if it persists with the no-trade policy. It would be well-advised to show that it is serious about SAPTA and about giving India the MFN status required under the WTO.

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A Fine Fix

THE SUCCESS OF a new alliance of six conservative Islamic parties in Pakistan's general election on October 10 may have come as no surprise to military ruler President Pervaiz Musharraf. In fact, his army and Pakistan's intelligence agency, the ISI, engineered the victory of the fundamentalists like much else in the polls.
In the past, the military has supported religious parties as a bulwark against the mainstream political elite and to help the army carry out its foreign policies of maintaining hostility towards India, regaining the mutually disputed territory of Kashmir and supporting Pashtun allies in southern Afghanistan.
That equation has not changed, despite Musharraf's need to maintain a strong alliance with the United States. The religious parties' platform of anti-Americanism did not deter Musharraf: In fact, it appears that the army and the ISI sponsored the religious leaders, or mullahs, to ensure that the West does not question the need for continued military rule to contain the religious parties. And by keeping Kashmir on the boil, the election ensures a predominant role for the army in the new political set-up.
"Strategically the military want to hold a red rag up to the West and say 'Look, West, you need a military dictatorship because if there is not, then pro-Taliban parties are going to come to power," opposition politician and exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told reporters in London.
While the army imposed a raft of obstacles preventing Bhutto and other potential candidates from the two largest secular democratic parties from standing in the elections, the path was cleared for mullahs. For example, secular politicians were barred from running if they did not have bachelors' degrees, while mullahs were only required to have degrees from religious schools.
The result will be a continuing state of crisis for Pakistan, beginning with the current hung parliament. The largest block of seats went to the pro-army Pakistan Muslim League Quaid-e-Azam, or PML-Q, with 78 seats. Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party took 62 seats and the alliance of six religious parties, the United Council of Action (UCA), won a remarkable 50 seats--the highest for any Islamic grouping since Pakistan's inception. The opposition faction of the Pakistan Muslim League led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif won 14 seats. Another 100 candidates will be chosen from religious minorities and women, bringing the total to 392 MPs.

WHAT THE MULLAHS WANT
The European Union called the election "seriously flawed," and strongly criticized the army's interference in the pre-poll electoral process. The EU raised serious doubts about whether there would be a real transfer of power from the army to civilians.
In a not-so-surprising contrast the Bush administration in Washington had little to say about the election, describing it as "a milestone towards democracy."
Bush and Musharraf appear to be the only leaders to be so optimistic. Whether the UCA joins hands with the PML-Q or remains in opposition, it will pose immense problems. The UCA will demand greater Islamicization and changes to the constitution at home while questioning the country's alliance with the U.S.
Furthermore, Musharraf has in the past described the religious parties and their militias as the first line of defence in any war against India. With the hardline mullahs in parliament, it will be inconceivable that the next prime minister will be able to hold meaningful talks with India. The mullahs' victory will also push to the back burner the pledges made by Musharraf to reform Pakistan's religious schools, which have spawned Islamic militancy.
The UCA will certainly control the provincial governments of Baluchistan and the North West Frontier Province bordering Afghanistan. This could weaken Afghanistan's leader, Hamid Karzai, as the UCA leaders have close links to the Taliban and to renegade commander Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. Western diplomats say Hekmatyar is already getting support from Pakistan.
"All of Pakistan's neighbours will see the UCA as a threat, and that will increase the army's leverage with the Americans," says Rashed Rehman, editor of the Frontier Post newspaper in Peshawar.

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Enlarging the silver lining

The results of Pakistan's elections come as a comprehensive disappointment to liberal and secular-minded Indians just as they represent a massive setback to the democratisation prospect in Pakistan itself.
To start with, the ground-rules of the whole exercise were severely rewritten by President Pervez Musharraf even before it began. This made a grotesque mockery of the very function of elections as an instrument of expression of the popular will. The mockery was further compounded by the exclusion of the leaders of the two biggest political parties, and by the doubts cast over the powers of the legislatures to be elected.
Worse, the government's shady agencies egregiously messed with political parties, promoting favourites and discouraging adversaries, and thus further damaging the election process's credibility. Since then, nothing -- including campaigning restrictions, low turnout and (independent observers' reports of) rigging and ballot-tampering -- has salvaged that credibility.
On top of this come the results which reveal a badly fractured popular mandate, but which nevertheless show that the Islamic-communal jihadi parties comprising the Mutthahida Majlis-e-Amal doubled their vote over the seven percent "barrier" which many had hoped (and some confidently forecast) they would never cross.
In my view, the MMA's emergence as the National Assembly's third largest group -- besides its likely leadership of governments in two provinces -- is the elections' single most retrograde or negative outcome. This is so not so much because Islamic extremism is as socially malign, ideologically distasteful and politically dangerous as, say, Hindutva -- which it is--, but primarily because of why the MMA rose to such prominence and what it is likely to do. There are five reasons for this view.
First, the MMA's ascendancy is rooted in "negative" factors like the growing anti-US popular sentiment over the past year, especially in the provinces bordering Afghanistan, and the space created by popular disillusionment with "normal" political parties whose monumentally corrupt and unresponsive leaders have twice proved a letdown.
But above all, that ascendancy is a tribute to years of malgovernance and the deep crisis in which "normal" democratic politics finds itself in Pakistan on account of its inability to acknowledge and address the elementary concerns of the mass of the population, and vent them in policies -- however obliquely or imperfectly.
Second, the fundos' support has grown on account of a "positive" factor: ethnic-religious "identity politics". This, regrettably, brings to fruition some of the darkest prophesies of the critics (including myself) of the post-9/11 Bush Doctrine and the US's disastrously militarist approach to "terrorism". The worst forecast was that America's open-ended "anti-terrorist" crusade would end up strengthening the forces of religious extremism, especially in the Muslim world. Predictable as this might have been, it is a retrograde development.
Third, the MMA is set to push Pakistan's society and politics backwards. If it shares power in a Federal coalition, it will certainly impose some elements of its agenda upon its allies. It is already talking about banning co-education, releasing pro-Taliban extremists like the Jaish-e-Mohammed's Masood Azhar and former Lashkar-e-Toiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, and making Friday the weekly holiday. Even if it is excluded from the next government, the MMA will wield considerable influence given the PML(Q)'s severe credibility crisis, the PPPP's weakness, and its own clout in the NWFP and Balochistan.
Fourth, the MMA's ascendancy will be seen by India's religious bigots as their own vindication, and a signal for hardening their political stance. Nothing feeds extremism in one country of the subcontinent as strongly as Right-wing extremism in the other. The MMA will also encourage India's "secular" hawks to paint Pakistan in dark hues, as a society obsessed with Islam and incapable of throwing up a democratic culture.
Such perceptions could subvert or slow down moves towards badly needed reconciliation and dÈtente -- to our collective detriment.
Finally, the MMA will confront Musharraf with new challenges -- and (ironically!) opportunities. On the one hand, allowing the MMA to join a coalition government risks incurring US displeasure. On the other, he cannot keep it out without inviting grave charges of subverting democracy. This "Algerian" dilemma doesn't auger well for Pakistan's health.
If Musharraf chooses to be super-devious, he could use the MMA's existence as a bargaining counter vis-a-vis the US. He could cite it as a potential threat to US plans for this region -- to highlight the military's indispensability for Pakistan. Alternatively, he could use the MMA as an excuse for his failure to deliver on his own promises to rein in extremists and prevent cross-border infiltration. After all, nothing sells in Washington like the "compulsions" of an ally, especially one in "democratising" mode.
This is, admittedly, a grim picture. The only silver lining to the proverbial dark cloud has now appeared -- India's de-escalation and demobilisation from the border, euphemistically called "redeployment". This has been long overdue. Keeping 700,000 troops on high alert for 10 months has proved -- as many critics, and in particular the peace movement had argued -- counter-productive, and drained away anything between Rs 5,000 crores and Rs 8,000 crores from the exchequer, which means from the social sector.
Atal Behari Vajpayee took the decision to demobilise partly under external (largely US pressure), partly because the armed forces were fed up, because the build-up was unlinked to a clear political objective, and because nothing tangible would be achieved by prolonging the "coercive diplomacy" with some nuclear brinkmanship thrown in (duly reciprocated by Pakistan).
The demobilisation opens a window of opportunity for quick resumption of diplomatic relations and an India-Pakistan dialogue. There is fairly widespread support for this, including from the Congress and the Left. The Congress demands that air and surface links be restored.
There is pressure from the West for a dialogue on Kashmir too. As an unabashedly pro-US analyst puts it: "Washington does not want to get embroiled every other year in defusing a nuclear crisis between the subcontinent's nuclear rivals. It would rather make a sustained effort now to see if India and Pakistan can find ways to resolve the Kashmir dispute and normalise bilateral relations."
One might not agree with the assessment that India has made "an important political leap" and now recognises "it needs the cooperation of the international community in pressing the Pakistani Army to discard the instruments of extremism and terrorism". But the mood among India's policy-makers is already a far cry from the cowboy-style belligerence of a year, or even a few months, ago.
Today, Vajpayee for his own domestic reasons might want to promote a dialogue. He is beleaguered by his increasingly strident Right-wing sangh parivar colleagues, who have escalated their hate campaign against the religious minorities and Dalits.
Any agenda to counter them, assuming Vajpayee has the stomach to do so, must logically involve restoration of diplomatic relations and reconciliation.
Whatever Musharraf and Vajpayee do, it is the interests of Indian and Pakistani citizens to enlarge the silver lining. Militarism, chauvinistic nationalism, religious extremism and nuclearism feed upon one another in unique ways in South Asia. People-to-people contacts and state-level detente are the best way of taking the sting out of that toxic nexus. They are also the only way of saving the democratisation process from fundamentalists of all kinds.

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Women break boundaries for peace

BHUBANESWAR OCT. 19. Even as India and Pakistan move towards de-escalating tension along the international border, women from South Asia broke all boundaries to come together on a common platform today. On the penultimate day of the 10th conference of the Indian Association for Women's Studies (IAWS), women from Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and India spoke out strongly for peace and an end to conflict in the region.
The conference, which has brought together women scholars and activists from around India and from several South Asian and other countries, has focussed on the theme "Sustaining democracy: challenges in a new millennium". But perhaps the discussion that had the greatest resonance in the face of the continuous state of "simultaneous war and peace" in the region, as described by Ritu Menon of Kali for Women, was the one on South Asia.
Khawar Mumtaz, a leading women's rights activist, from Pakistan spoke of the increasing challenges and difficult choices that the still embryonic peace movement faces in her country.
She said that it represented a coalition of a variety of emerging social movements ranging from the women's movement to organisations of peasants, of fisher folk and of trade unions.
"The State in Pakistan always colluded with the religious right and this has pitched us in conflict with the State and the religious right," she said. After the recent elections, and the victory of the fundamentalists in the North-West Frontier Province and Baluchistan, social movements faced an even bigger challenge.
Ms. Mumtaz said the first targets of the fundamentalist groups were civil society organisations. For example, when the U.S. began bombing Afghanistan last year, eight offices of groups working with women and on education in the NWFP were attacked and razed to the ground. There have also been attacks on schools run by women's organisations. Despite these threats, the peace movement in Pakistan, which stands for separation of religion from politics and is opposed to all forms of violence, continues to grow.
From Sri Lanka, anthropologist and feminist scholar, Dr. Malathi de Alwis spoke about the dilemmas facing groups that had argued for a political settlement to the violent conflict in their country but now had doubts about the process. "Peace is about compromise, it's a contract, it's about negotiation. Feminists have always asked for a political solution to the ethnic conflict but we must have peace with justice," she argued.
She suggested that even as peace negotiations were proceeding, there were violations of the rights of individuals and minorities that were being ignored.
Meghana Guha Thakurta from Bangladesh emphasised that no country in the region was an island and that what happened in one inevitably affected the other. She said that the minorities in Bangladesh had become increasingly insecure in the last year and had been targeted each time Muslims were attacked in India or Ahmadis were attacked in Pakistan.
For the Hindu minority, problems began after December 6, 1992 and the demolition of the Babri Masjid in India. Since then, each communal conflagration in India had its fallout on these communities in Bangladesh.
Kamla Bhasin, well-known women's activist, ended the deliberations by stating that we did not need "Bush-ful thinking - where you don't need dialogue, don't need to talk, but just decide who to kill."
The day ended with a special session on Gujarat, where activists narrated their firsthand experiences of the last months in the State following the communal carnage, and a silent, candle-lit peace march through Bhubaneswar.

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Landelijke India Werkgroep - 19 maart 2003