Crisis India-Pakistan:
Achtergrondinformatie, analyse en nieuws
uit de Indiase, Pakistaanse en internationale media.

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The Times of India, July 31, 2003

Such a Long Journey

Toy Bus Cannot Bring Indo-Pak Peace

Krishna Kumar

Take away the hype, and there is little left in the Delhi-Lahore bus to feel great about. An ancient or mediaeval monarch would have laughed on being told that the rulers of modern India and Pakistan considered a lone bus a matter of diplomatic achievement.
Normally, a new bus-service is something for a district collector or an MLA to be proud of.
The Delhi-Lahore bus is different because its symbolic value is totally disproportionate to its functional efficiency. When it was first introduced four years ago, it symbolised the maturation of nation-building in the two countries. Its withdrawal 18 months ago signified India's anger over the attack on Parliament House. Now, when the bus has been suddenly reintroduced, it symbolises the NDA government's commitment to peace.
It does not take much effort to see through this state semiotic. The feudal psyche of South Asian rulers is the real theme of the bus story. From a modest transport facility, which the people should have as a matter of right, the bus has been turned into an instrument for manipulating the public mood. Its hype and glamour and the suddenness of its withdrawal and resumption show that it is nothing more than a political toy.
If it were a real, ordinary bus, why would it leave from Delhi? A jeep with armed guard escorts it all the way to the border. Security staff is posted at all three stops where passengers are given meals.
All this would be unnecessary if the bus ran between Amritsar and Lahore, possibly as a shuttle plying three or four times a day. A shorter run would mean greater convenience and safety for passengers, and fuel saving. But then, Amritsar wouldn't have the symbolic value Delhi has. Like the evening ceremony of gate-closing enacted at Wagah, the bus has a mock heroic appeal. As it negotiates the long route through Punjab, the national flags of the two hostile neighbours impressively peep through the bluish windscreen. A bus boy shouting Lahore, Lahore at the Amritsar bus stand wouldn't be as exotic.
The bus fits in well with the festive character of earlier peace initiatives. Remember the ethos conjured up for the summits at Agra and Lahore? Both could be episodes in Harry Potter, constructed to convey the illusion that peace was magic, attainable at a war-like speed. The seasoned civil servants on both sides surely realise that to be authentic, a peace process must be low-key and sustainable. But perhaps their vision has been clouded by the new mana-gerial culture of confidence-building. It promotes the belief that peace is a posture; all it requires is a manual of appropriate moves.
Indeed, there now exists a whole new shastra that teaches the ritual steps to be taken to mitigate conflict. Pundits of this shastra discuss strategies of confidence-building in ways strikingly similar to the strategies recommended by others for winning a war. Not surprisingly, the pundits of the shanti shastra are often the very same people who specialise in preparedness for war. This may be why the road maps of peace indicate so unabashedly the time and spaces to buy the latest bombs and aircraft carriers.
The conflation of war and peace expertise has taken away the element of moral awareness from the idea of peace. Trying to achieve peace in a few clever, fast strides would be as self-defeating as trying to win a war with transparent integrity.
Some basic distinction between the concepts of peace and war must be maintained in order to avoid the degradation of peace into a strategy. In modern societies, no amount of confidence-building measures can substitute the mobilisation of public support for an anti-war policy. And this is where we see no preparation at all in either India or Pakistan. In neither country has the leadership made an attempt to mobilise public opinion in favour of peace and reconciliation.
Over the years, it has become amply clear that ordinary citizens have little to do with the decisions that governments take. Worse still, any active mobilisation of public opinion through the news media, cinema and education has always been in favour of violent conflict. No examples can be cited where such means have been deployed for the promotion of peace.
The case of education is particularly serious. This modern instrument of ideological dissemination has served to legitimise and perpetuate hostility. In my book, Prejudice and Pride, I have given numerous examples from the textbooks used for the teaching of history in Indian and Pakistani schools to make the point that education reinforces the tension between the two countries. Schools do nothing to sow the seeds of peace in young minds. They are also responsible for keeping the two societies in the dark about each other.
A lot of Indians and Pakistanis maintain the illusion that they know each other only too well. Often, their knowledge is no more than a memory, a poster-image of Partition which is still capable of arousing resentment and passion. A number of declarations made from the SAARC platform have articulated the intent to promote a futuristic regional perspective through education. Not a single step has been taken towards this goal.
The resumption of an air-conditioned bus between Delhi and Lahore can hardly compensate for the enormous backlog of the effort that needs to be made to start undoing the sinister and madly expensive preparedness for war.
Considering how limited a facility it offers, and how vulnerable it has been to political whims and violence, we can't seek in it the consolation that peace is being given another real chance.

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The Hindu, July 31, 2003

Students say 'bus' to hostility between India, Pakistan

By Y. Mallikarjun

HYDERABAD July 30. The pun is not lost on anyone... 'Bus' meaning enough in Hindi is the central metaphor of a short film revolving around the bumpy journey towards peace by India and Pakistan. The film was co-produced by young students from the two countries at Karachi earlier this month during a 10-day educational tour by 15 Indian youths from Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Nasik and Pune. A tribal girl from Addatheegala in East Goadavari District, Andhra Pradesh, was also part of the group.
For 19-year-old Shazia Imroz, a second year degree student from old city of Hyderabad, who acted as a Pakistani actress of the same name, the opportunity to travel to the neighbouring country and share her views and feelings with young Pakistanis proved to be an exhilarating and memorable experience. The trip was co-sponsored by many NGOs, including Chicago-headquartered 'Play for Peace', which brings together youth from conflict areas to promote peace and compassion.
Narrating her experiences to The Hindu, the Hydearabadi lass said that they joined another group of 15 Pakistanis on July 3 at Karachi, where they were asked to jointly write the script, score music and produce a short film on conflict resolution centring around India-Pakistan relations. "Bus" (enough in Hindi) was the theme of the short 10-minute film in which a group of Pakistanis, after missing their bus, board the same bus in which the Indians were travelling. Even as they befriend each other, misunderstandings develop with Indians blaming the Pakistanis for all their troubles and vice-versa. After a lull, one each from the two quarrelling groups, takes the lead saying they should not allow hostile attitudes to hold them to ransom and a new leaf should be turned in their relations. The film ends with all of them together singing a song symbolising the quest for peace.
"Before going to Pakistan, I thought that it was totally an Islamic country...However, I found women were dressed in modern styles with some of them wearing jeans. I did not feel as if I was in a different country. The people, the language and the culture were so similar", she exclaimed.
During the Indians interaction with different sections of society in Karachi, the unanimous view expressed by all was that the two countries should live as friendly neighbours and a majority of the people wanted the removal of all hurdles in promoting people-to-people contacts.

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Dawn, July 30, 2003

Co-joined with Kashmir

By F.S. Aijazuddin

One would have to possess a heart of granite not to have been moved by the plight of the Iranian twin-sisters Ladan and Laleh Bajani. Co-joined at the head for all the twentynine years of their common life, they showed unbelievable determination in wanting to be separated.
They disregarded an insensitive fatwa denouncing such an operation, they defied their foster parents, they consciously took the risk of undergoing a lengthy, complicated operation knowing that it could result in their simultaneous deaths. And in the end, it did. What nature had fused together, the painstaking diligence of medical science could not rend asunder.
Their brief, brave lives though have not been a waste, for in their act of self-sacrifice, Ladan and Laleh have provided a parable for others to consider. The Pakistan government for one could learn from their example. For the past fifty-six years (coincidentally nearly the sum of the twins' lives), Pakistan has chosen deliberately to remain co-joined at its head with Kashmir. To some observers, this diplomatic deformity is a case history in itself, but not unique in world history, no more than the Bajani sisters were the only co-joined twins in medical history.
A squabble for political custody similar to the argument over Kashmir occurred in northern Europe during the nineteenth century. It was known as the Schleswig-Holstein question, and consisted of a tussle between the small kingdom of Denmark and its larger and more powerful neighbour Prussia over the two contiguous Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein that lay in between.
From 1844 onwards, control of these inconsequential territories oscillated between Denmark and Prussia with such confusing frequency that Lord Palmerston (then the British foreign secretary) confessed that there were only three people who had ever understood the Schleswig-Holstein question: one was dead, the other had gone mad, and he the third had forgotten what the original issue was.
Eventually, after almost eighty years of argument, in 1920, a plebiscite was held. The north part of Schleswig voted to join Denmark, and the southern opted for union with Germany. Today, most of Schleswig-Holstein which has a population roughly half that of Indian-held Jammu and Kashmir is a part of the present Federal Republic of Germany, and no one except historians can be bothered to remember why it was ever such an inflammable casus belli.By that measure, the argument between India and Pakistan over Kashmir would appear to have many more years to go before a comparable solution can be found. During the past fiftysix years, though, ever since the Maharaja of Kashmir's signature on the fateful instrument of accession on August 25, 1947, almost as much ink has been spilt over Kashmir as human bloodshed over it. Shelves of books have been published on it, reams of articles written on it, yards of speeches delivered on it, millions of grey cells have turned white over it, and yet it remains a bone of contention between two neighbours, a bone that is slowly petrifying into a fossil.
Is Kashmir such an intractable problem? Is it really the core issue preventing a modus vivendi between the two countries? This is a question that needs to be asked. It is a question that countless young men and women on both sides of the border, in the dying moments of their unnecessary martyrdom, have asked. It is the question that every surviving mourner - every grieving mother, widow or orphaned child - continues to ask every day that they are forced to live without their loved ones. It is a question that one billion Indians and 150 million Pakistanis are entitled to ask, of themselves and their governments, today and every day, until a definitive answer is forthcoming. Is Kashmir really the core issue?
To some, if it is indeed a core issue, it is the core that has been left after the surrounding body flesh has been eaten away by Time. Today, when the United Nations, half a century after its first intervention in the dispute, finds itself emasculated, its aged discoloured resolutions cannot be expected to have retained any of their relevance. In any case, the outside world beyond the subcontinent is suffering from Kashmir fatigue. It has heard the same refrain sung too often, it is over-familiar with the repetitive rhetoric, the same circular argument. Neither Pakistan nor India needs to play to the international gallery anymore. They have lost their audience; the gallery has emptied. Now, they have an audience of only one - each other.
If Kashmir was essentially a political problem, then three generations of politicians since 1947 should have been able to resolve it by now. They have met often enough over the years - Ayub Khan/Nehru in Murree, Ayub Khan/Shastri at Tashkent, Z.A. Bhutto/Mrs Indira Gandhi at Simla, Benazir Bhutto/Rajiv Gandhi in Islamabad, Nawaz Sharif/Vajpayee at Lahore, and the last time at Agra when Musharraf interacted with Vajpayee. On each occasion, though, something always prevented consummation.
Was it the force of public opinion on both sides? Definitely not. The Kashmir question has never been put to the litmus test of a public poll or a referendum by either side. What masquerades as 'public opinion' in Pakistan is, in all honesty, nothing more than the prejudices of right-wing editors of high circulation Urdu dailies. Because they believe they mould public opinion, periodically they take plaster casts from that mould and present them as fresh impressions of the public's mind on any particular issue.
Why does Kashmir remain an issue then? Is there any other inhibiting factor? Perhaps the answer lies in the question itself. It may need to be re-framed: Is Kashmir a core issue, or simply a corps commanders' issue?
One is aware that such a daring statement could be read in some barracks as a sinister play on words bandied by an uninformed, ununiformed civilian. It is not being proffered as a provocation. It is intended as a genuine, earnest attempt to use a pen to cauterize, even if only at the edges, and to let ink disinfect a wound that should not be allowed to suppurate for another generation.
Whatever the solution to the Kashmir question may be - a plebiscite, union with India, merger with Pakistan, independence, autonomy, acceptance of the Line of Control, continuation of the status quo - whatever may be the framework of a political or constitutional settlement, it can only be signed, sealed, and delivered for implementation after it has also been duly witnessed by the nine Pakistani corps commanders.
Had President Musharraf enjoyed the unequivocal mandate to decide Kashmir on his own, he would have done so when he was alone with Prime Minister Vajpayee at Agra. It is because as the Chief of Army Staff, he needs to take his corps commanders into this battle with him, he needs their unanimous support. He cannot afford to rely on a reluctant comrade, or lean on an impatient successor.
Is any government in Pakistan ever likely to fall should there be an agreement over Kashmir? One doubts it. Whenever governments have fallen as a result of public agitation as opposed to when they have been removed by the military, they have invariably been sent home over mundane issues like the price of sugar or the blatant rigging of elections. If the public has choked, it is over such gnats; it has swallowed elephants like the nuclear programme or constitutional violations without a hiccup.
There will be one school of thought that will advocate letting the sleeping dog of Kashmir lie. It has its uses, especially when awakened. There is a much larger number on both sides of the border which would want to see this ageing animal put to sleep. It would be an act of mercy, a merciful end to far too many merciless killings. Pakistan, unlike the co-joined twins Ladan and Laleh Bajani, has a choice because its attachment to Kashmir is a deliberate, voluntary act of political co-junction. The solution is simple. It requires Bajani-like courage. Who knows? Both Pakistan and Kashmir may well survive the trauma, and actually thrive as a result. If asked their opinion, one billion Indians and 150 million Pakistanis would consider the risk worth taking.

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San Francisco Chronicle [USA], July 30, 2003

Hatred springs from texts of Pakistani schools

Juliette Terzieff

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN - Sohail Khan thinks he knows all he needs to know when it comes to Pakistan's larger, predominantly Hindu neighbor, India.
"Hindus cannot be trusted," the 15-year-old said firmly. "Since the day Pakistan got independence, India has been trying to destroy us any way they can with the help of other infidel nations." Dismissing renewed efforts by both countries to reconcile their bitter and bloody 55-year-long rivalry, he insisted, "Talk of peace hides a different plan that only they know."
Young Khan's harsh words - echoed widely in varying degrees by Pakistanis across the social and political spectrum - are hardly surprising, because they are the product of a government-endorsed curriculum taught in public schools around the country.
Pakistan's madrassa (religious school) system, where ultra-conservative Muslim clerics dole out an excruciatingly narrow world view, has achieved global notoriety for producing thousands of young men dedicated to holy war. But the public school curriculum weaves in many similar concepts - including insensitivity to other religions, militancy and the glorification of war.
"Honestly speaking, there should be less fear of madrassa curricula, which is comparatively limited in scope, and more fear of the books being used in public schools," said Ahmed Salim, director of Urdu publications at Islamabad's Sustainable Policy Development Institute (SPDI).
"While President (Pervez) Musharraf has spoken passionately about the goal of a modern, tolerant, progressive Pakistan, the curriculum used is serving exactly the opposite purpose and will reflect upon his policies badly," Salim said.
Public school textbooks are replete with examples.
A Muslim chauvinist view dominates the curriculum, and knowledge of Islam and the Koran is compulsory, even for non-Muslim students. Social studies teachers in grades 1 through 5 are ordered to include units each year that instruct students in the concept and importance of jihad (holy war), and even require youngsters to deliver speeches on the subject.
The 10th-grade Pakistan studies textbook minces no words in its endorsement of Islam:
"A good person is one who leads his life according to the teachings of Allah and the Holy Prophet. He is pious and virtuous. He follows the principles and teachings of Islam individually and collectively and makes an effort to promote them. According to the teachings of Islam, a person who follows the right path is distinguished from others."
Intolerance toward other religions is often stated unequivocally. "Hindu has always been the enemy of Islam," according to the fifth-grade Urdu textbook.
The sixth-grade social studies book, chapter 5, tells of how higher-caste Hindus have abused humanity by crushing the lower castes, and how Buddhism was eventually corrupted after it arose to challenge Hinduism. One sentence declares: "Islam preached equality, brotherhood and fraternity. The foundation of Hindu (society) was formed on injustice and cruelty."
The curriculum also stresses male superiority over women, sometimes in subtle ways.
From the early grades, girls are depicted nearly exclusively in traditional roles - such as helping their mothers in the kitchen, taught in the pages of a third-grade Urdu textbook. Rarely are they described as playing sports or having professions - and when they are, they appear as foreigners or non-Muslims, like "Mrs. Brown," the airline hostess in the grade 8 English book.
Even famous Pakistani and/or Muslim women are cast in stereotypical roles. Fatima Jinnah, one of only a handful of women to appear in Urdu textbooks, is cited only for serving as the nurse and fervent supporter of her brother Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. Fatima Jinnah, in fact, was a pioneer, beginning her adult life as a dentist who founded and ran her own clinic in Bombay before abandoning the profession in the 1930s to join her brother's political fight. She set up the All India Muslim Women Students Federation in 1941 in Delhi and then formed the Women's Relief Committee in 1947 (which eventually morphed into the All Pakistan Women's Association, still active today). She later ran for president against Mohammad Ayub Khan in 1965.
Warped accounts of history and reverence for Muslim or military figures are drilled into students' heads - a holdover from the need after the 1947 partition to create a vision of Pakistan as a nation separate from India. The vision was then further refined by successive governments for their own political goals - especially the military, which has ruled by force for 30 of Pakistan's 55 years of existence.
Salim says: "Throughout the formative years, children are presented with pious glorious images of the military and given numerous glorified accounts of military heroics and the respect that gains. If a child learns that violence is a positive attribute, then that child is more likely to resort to violent means in situations that don't justify the action."
Textbook depictions of the subcontinent's bloody partition, a time when 1 million people lost their lives through atrocities by both Hindu and Muslim militants, are one-sided.
A passage in the fourth-grade social studies book stresses the agony of Muslims making their way to Pakistan while glossing over the price paid by others:
"They came leaving their homes, shops, agricultural, goods and beasts in India. On their way to Pakistan, a large number of immigrants were killed by the Sikhs and Hindus. They suffered a lot during their journey. At that time Sikhs and Hindus as well left Pakistan for India."
There were, in fact, enough atrocities to go around, and the textbooks omit a two-month rampage in the Pakistani military city of Rawalpindi that saw thousands of non-Muslims beaten, killed or maimed. For most older Pakistanis, last year's riots in Gujarat, India, during which mobs of Hindus hunted down Muslims after militant Muslims torched a train carrying Hindu pilgrims, were a lamentable continuation of post-partition scarring. But students see the event as course work come to life.
"It's plain to see the Hindus can murder women and children and go unpunished, but when the Muslims stand for themselves in India, they are called terrorists," said teenager Khan.
School Principal Raifakat Hussein says that the curriculum's selective history prevents a proper understanding of events and does little to encourage self-criticism and analysis among the younger generations.
"Children need to learn the truth about the history of their country, society and government - even if it's not all pretty and neat," said Hussein, who oversees the Montessori Primary School in the eastern city of Lahore.
Educators, psychologists, lawyers and minority representatives joined with the SPDI to study the current curriculum after its revision this spring by the Musharraf government - which included improvements in English grammar sections, and the slight toning down of the glorification of holy war and dismissive references to non-Muslims. Classroom priorities are centralized under the command of the Education Ministry's Curriculum Wing.
"We are constantly looking at ways to revise, reorder and update," contended Haroona Jetoi, joint education secretary of the Curriculum Wing. "Where there are problems they are addressed, and will continue to be."
But participants in the study call the recent curriculum changes "poorly defined alterations" unlikely to filter down into a mass revision of textbooks. "Historical inaccuracies, omissions and incitement to violence remain key features," said Salim. Some government and education officials quietly admit that most textbooks remain the same, and that many provincial-level education officials are lax or content with the status quo.
There are no plans on the table for further curriculum changes in the next five years.
And therein lies great danger, educators say.
"Children are impressionable - they are molded by what they are taught," said principal Hussein. "If they learn intolerance and hatred at a young age, it will stay with them their whole lives. "If we are seriously talking about peace with India, modernization and being part of the global community, how can teaching our children to hate be compatible with those goals?"

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Dawn, July 22, 2003

Moot on Pakistan, India conflict resolution

By Our Staff Reporter

LAHORE, July 21: Parliamentarians, journalists and experts from Pakistan and India will assemble in Islamabad for a four-day conference being held on August 9-12 by the South Asia Free Media Association (SAFMA).
The conference titled 'Understanding, confidence-building and conflict resolution' aims at exploring ways to initiate a process of de-escalation, confidence-building and a sustained dialogue to resolve conflicts and to build bridges of cooperation between the two countries, said a news release issued here on Monday.
The event will be participated in by 45 Indians, including legislators, editors/columnists and civil society representatives as well as several Pakistanis.

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The Daily Times (Pakistan), July 20, 2003

It's not just Noor Fatima

Munnoo Bhai

All day he had been getting calls from people who said they were praying for the child’s health. He did not know whether those praying for her were Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or Christians

I don’t just value the Indian throb in Noor Fatima’s heart, I love it. I also pray for India’s people, its children and the joy of their parents.
Noor Fatima is the 30-month-old who travelled to India by Dosti Bus for a heart surgery. Her tiny heart had two leaks and two of its arteries were choked. The successful surgery in a Bangalore, Karnatika, hospital involved three doctors working for six hours. Throughout the day, Noor Fatima’s parents received phone calls from India, Pakistan and all over the world. Callers of all nationalities and religions told them they were praying for the health of the child.
Dr Devi Sethi, the surgeon at the private hospital in Bangalore, said Noor Fatima was well and improving after the surgery. She said surgery on children was never easy. It was particularly difficult on children with a congenital defect. Noor’s father, Nadeem Sajjad, 35, and mother, Tayyeba Sajjad, 28, said the duration of the surgery was agonising. “It was only after the surgeons stepped out smiling that we relaxed,” they said.
They said they were found a lot of encouragement in India for Noor Fatima’s treatment. “For that we are grateful to Indians. We did not need the funds we were offered for the operation. We propose that the funds be used to set up a trust for the treatment of poor children in the two countries.” Nadeem Sajjad said the love he had found in India could only bode well for the relations between the two countries.
Noor Fatima’s mother said she thanked God and was grateful to the doctors in the Bangalore hospital for the successful operation. She hoped that the child would lead a normal life. She said they would take the child to see Taj Mahal once she was discharged from the hospital.
Earlier, children carrying placards wishing Noor Fatima well lined up the Bangalore streets during the surgery and total strangers visited the hospital to present bouquets to her parents. Nadeem Sajjad said he was impressed by the love and felt at home four thousands kilometres away from home. All day he had been getting calls from people who said they were praying for the child’s health. He did not know whether those praying for her were Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs or Christians and whether the prayers were being held at mosques, temples or churches but realised that these were human prayers for the cause of humanity.
The two days, Noor Fatima’s parents said, had left them great piles of best-wishes cards and flowers. They will carry home to Pakistan the message of love and friendship. “We need love for each other, justice and friendship. Both the neighbouring countries need to share the joys and sorrows.”
The government of Indian state of Karnataka, which has its capital at Bangalore, had offered Rs 10,000 assistance towards Noor Fatima’s treatment. The hospital, however, decided to forgo the fee. Her parents announced that they were setting up a joint Pakistan-India trust with the Rs 140,000 to help poor child patients in the two countries.
It is not just Noor Fatima. The two great Asian neighbours are also suffering from leaks in the heart caused by their ruling classes. Or else the ruling classes have the leaks as congenital defect and the arteries supplying blood to each other are choked. It is difficult, but not impossible, to treat the congenital defects provided the working poor in the two countries are allowed to perform the operation. Besides being Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, Parsees and Buddhists, they are human. As humans, they can share one another’s joys and sorrows. They can include and participate. For this they need no third party, arbiter or mediator. Try if you will, like Nadeem Sajjad and Tayyeba Sajjad, the working people who operate on the heart will emerge smiling from the theatre.
Munnoo Bhai is a writer and columnist

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Frontline, Vol 20, Issue 15; July 19 - August 1, 2003

The valley of love

Badri Raina

Incalculable suffering of the past decade or more has helped the people of Jammu and Kashmir rediscover the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.


In Dal lake, Srinagar, a shikara (houseboat) waits for tourists. (Nissar Ahmad)
A WEEK, it is said, is a long time in politics. With respect to Kashmir, a week can indeed be a very long time. As life gets busier and busier, and time and space become more and more precious in terms of profit-making, `up-market' approaches to problems require that we solve them even before we have understood them. Or that we understand them in instant, post-modernist ways. Thus, for example, globally, `terrorism' has been identified as a simple enough expression of `Islamist' ill-nature, and the answer has been located in quashing `terrorists' with extreme force. Such emphasis on the products of history envisages that the processes that inform them are relegated. Our historical sense is thus labelled not sense but nuisance. It is another matter that, be it Afghanistan or Iraq or Palestine or Kashmir, such market-driven impatience leads the world every day into more intractable problems, belying the elementary postulates of rational existence. Current `advances' in science and technology thus go hand in hand with monumental and potentially catastrophic historical illiteracy. Often, of course, as with respect to Kashmir, it is not so much a question of illiteracy as of a coercive refusal to acknowledge that the problem bears dimensions that refute the construction we have chosen to place upon it. We recall what Karl Marx had underlined penetratingly that the trick that informs bourgeois revolutions is that the method of science will be used to the hilt to master nature, but strenuously prevented from any application to cognise social relations.

As I report on my two-week visit to the Valley (June 8-21), however, some watershed markers of Kashmir's modern history are best recapitulated as informing points of reference. If the changing times there are to be harnessed towards desirable conclusions, those markers must not be lost sight of. For a century between 1846 and 1947, the most comprehensively oppressed section of Kashmiris was Muslims, who had next to no presence in rural property, or the services and hardly any education. Indeed, when Sheikh Abdullalh came with an MSc degree from Aligarh in 1930, he was the first Kashmiri Muslim to have gone that far. As a peculiar form of serfdom obtained among the Muslims (called `begar'), it is small wonder that the first political organisation floated by the Sheikh should have been called the Muslim Conference; the appellation may have seemed to connote a merely communal concern but, in fact, took in a much wider reference to class oppression - much as Dalit politics expresses class inequities in addition to social realities. This, after all, was the reason that the Sheikh was able to draw support from distinguished Pandit intellectuals of the time as well.

The Pandits, meanwhile, lived by their wits, maintaining their indispensability both to the Dogra rulers and to Kashmiri Muslims, but sharing with the latter deep ethnic intimacy. The one time that the Pandits found cause to express resentment with the establishment was in the early 1920s when the Maharaja began importing Punjabi bureaucracy into the State service. Thus, in 1924, the Pandits were to raise the slogan `Kashmir for Kashmiris'.

Impelled by the syncretic Sufi Islam of the Valley, which intersected everywhere, and accreted Pandit folklore, practices and modes of worship (the second day of Sivaratri celebrations in Kashmir is called Salaam), and by what seemed the socially radical and secular dynamics of the `National Movement' shaped in the main by the preferences of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, Abdullah rechristened his political organisation as the National Conference. Thus, when Muhammed Ali Jinnah visited the Valley to plead his communal thesis with Kashmiri co-religionists, he received significant rebuff. As the Partition set the subcontinent aflame, Gandhi said the only light he saw was in Kashmir. The invasion in October of 1947 found a dithering Maharaja and an undefended Valley. Abdulllah's party of the plough, however, organised Kashmiri masses across communities in heroic resistance to the invader; rows upon rows of disciplined Kashmiris marched - with wooden sticks and wooden rifles in hand - to the ringing slogans Hamla Avar Khabardar/Hum Kashmiri Hein Tayar, and Shere Kashmir Ka Kya Irshad/Hindu, Muslim, Sikh Itihad. Had Kashmiri Muslims then desired to join Pakistan, there was nothing to stop them (something that the Togadias of our time need to ponder).

The installation of the popular government led by Abdullah yielded the Naya Kashmir programme with two revolutionary axes of transformation, namely, land to the tiller, and free education up to the post-graduate stage. In the Kashmir Constituent Assembly, the Sheikh pronounced both the desire of the Kashmiris for maximum freedom and the conviction that a Sufi Kashmir could not tie up its future with a theocratic Pakistan. The Delhi Agreement of 1952 followed, to be incorporated as Article 370 into the Constitution.

Even as that historic covenant between the Centre and Kashmir began to be subtly but systematically undermined, a new class of college-educated Kashmiri Muslims emerged by the mid-1970s, only to find that their future remained effectively confined to the less-than-meagre opportunities that obtained in the State. This new articulate and politically aware class also began to see that political democracy was to be denied to them as well. As Yusuf Shah of the Muslim United Front was cheated, among others, of electoral victory in the Amirakadal constituency in 1987, he was to transform into Salahuddin of the Hizbul Mujahideen; the bullets were to follow. Since then, the incredible cupidities of the major political formations were to ensure that the darkness remained unrelieved. In fact, the most deleterious occurrence with respect to the `Kashmir Problem' has been the convergence between fascistic `nationalism' at home and the designs of a new, unchallenged imperialism emanating from one single nation abroad.

LET me say with responsibility that during my two-week stay in the Valley, I travelled freely and without `incident' to all parts - north, south, west, east - and to every nook and corner of the city of Srinagar, including the `forbidden' down-town. Having left Kashmir some 42 years ago, my first endearing recognition is that no magic works as well in Kashmir as the ability to speak the language. Clearly, as an interventionist, this was a huge, initial advantage. Let me also say that the persons and groups I interacted with included Kashmiris of every conceivable definition - shikarawalas, itinerant furriers, retailers, hoteliers, office-goers, students and teachers at the university (where I was privileged to lecture on two separate occasions), artists, ex-militants, legislators, and a thousand-strong-mass of people at a public meeting. This is not to speak of `tourists' who, in large numbers, seemed to be having a `good time' indeed. That new lessons have been imbibed across the board was in evidence everywhere; confidences-in-vernacular available to me leave me in no doubt of that reality. The coordinates of the change that has come over the Valley seem as follows:

With the exception perhaps of the hard-core Geelani faction, disenchantment with the jehadi tehrik seems total. The erstwhile supporters of jehad whose allegiance followed a patently communal logic - among them the non-Kashmiri-speaking Muslims who have felt a closer ethnic bond with similar co-religionists across the Line of Control (LoC) - acknowledge, however sadly, that the General Pervez Musharraf-run `client' state of Pakistan (client to the United States) is no longer either a worthwhile or a realisable option. Young people from such families, whom this writer had known a decade ago to spew rabid `Islamist' fervour, today poke fun at Musharraf's strutting entrapment between an obsolete theocratic project and the diktats of an `anti-Islamic' imperialism. An important element here is also their greater willingness to see opportunities of personal advancement in newer technologies and correlated institutions in a market-driven world of seemingly undifferentiated scope. A proliferating access to the visual media has made accessible to such young people the burgeoning desire for peace, democracy, and modern development among wide sections of the urban elite within Pakistan, and the articulate critique of such elites of the Pakistani state works as a decisive influence. Those others whose allegiance to the idea of Pakistan has been less literate, more subliminal, curse that country for having betrayed Kashmiris in the way in which the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP) today pours scorn on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. That disgust is captured in the eloquent Kashmiri phrase Pakistanus gao Dakistan, that is, `May Pakistan suffer annihilation'.

Lighting oil lamps at the Kheer Bhawani temple near Srinagar. (Mukhtar Khan/AP)

Perhaps the most telling source of repugnance with the jehadis is centred around the experience that most of them have used the gun either to amass wealth, or to get any sort of job done (from property-grabbing to college admissions, marriage deals and appointments), or generally to acquire social power and recognition - all of that inimical to the `mission' and, in popular parlance, more in the nature of `commission'. One of the results is that either the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) no longer feels the confidence to give calls for hartal, or, when it does, it is sniggered at and largely observed in the breach.

The old sentiment for azadi remains real, but with new caveats. One, that total independence is simply a bit of a pipe dream. Many made the point to me that Pakistan has never endorsed that option anyway. Some are even willing to embrace the thought that separation from both India and Pakistan, were that to happen, could very well turn Kashmir into an imperialist enclave and playground, with catastrophic consequences for Kashmiriyat.

As to religious freedom, Javed, the itinerant furrier, makes the point that whereas Kashmiri Muslims have always enjoyed complete religious freedom, it is not unusual to find mosques in Pakistani cities fired upon, or Shia Muslims attacked by Sunnis. This concatenation of perceptions, imbued universally with the incalculable suffering of the past decade or more, has, as I found in all my interactions, led to a surge and sentient rediscovery of the old values of Kashmiriyat, something that expresses itself first and foremost as an overwhelming desire for peace and non-abrasive coexistence.

A rapid, and alas, all-too-brief enumeration of the treatment I received best illustrates that change. The hotel that charges some Rs.1,200 for a room charged me but Rs.600 accompanied every day by a bouquet of felt intimacies; the famous bakery establishment that makes giant bakerkhanies only upon order gave me all I wanted accepting nothing in return; the sisters, Neelofer and Ayesha, upon hearing me ask a boatman-vendor at Nehru Park in the Dal for a cup of Nuna Chai, dragged me and my wife home to a dilapidated houseboat, whereupon the mother not only gave us the choice cup but a dear old familiar shower of the sweetest Kashmiri blessings; at Kheer Bhawani, the two elderly Muslims who see to the infrastructural requirement of worshippers could restrain neither a tight hug nor their precious tears; at a party hosted by a well-known Kashmir Pandit doctor, who spent close to three months in captivity with militants, a highly respected Muslim bureaucrat turned the evening into a saga of Kashmiri songs and made moving lament as to how it is the Pandits who had taught `us' all `we' know, and why would they not come back; my breakfast at Soz sahib's turned out to be a feast of not only converse, but also the rarest of Pampore Sheermal, of which I received a carry-home gift; and if you wanted to share one of those spontaneous experiences of Kashmiriyat try this: upon my return from Kheer Bhawani it is the gracious Mrs. Soz who asks me what the colour of the water in the holy pond was. Legend has it that the water changes colour, beckoning good or bad times.

Kashmiri Pandits are spoken of with regret and deep poignancy - regret that they should have exited in the face of a shared fate, and poignancy at the thought of the suffering they have had to experience away from `home' and at the thought also that soon they might return to `complete' Kashmir. At the airport shop, the gentle Muslim owner poses the question whether many more Muslims have not been killed, and expresses the hurt that Pandit `brethren' rarely remember to mention the sufferings of their Muslim `brethren'. Also commented upon is the sad irony that while the Muslims seek to free themselves of jehadi pressures, influential sections of the Pandits should veer towards right-wing Hindu chauvinism.

At the university, my audience of young men and women listen with an intensity born of the deepest life-experiences. Their analysed openness and warmth renders shallow my experiences as a teacher at Delhi University. Yet, the trapped agony in their bright eyes, the questions they pose with gentleness, tear me apart - How do they make a future in a country where Gujarat happens, where the Togadias openly seek to recast the state as a majoritarian, fascist one, and where the government of the day seems not just helpless but closely allied in consenting silence and non-action?

The public meeting organised by the State unit of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), led by its secretary Mohd. Yousuf Tarigami, to greet Member of Parliament Somnath Chatterjee, visiting the State as the Chairman of a Parliament Standing Committee on Communications, provides clear proof of the credibility that democratic politics is beginning to enjoy. The Mufti Mohammed Sayeed-led government is seen to mean well and to be working with honest purpose.

All those who address the meeting (Chatterjee, Tarigami, Soz, the Mufti, and this writer briefly) draw felt responses, even applause, at the programmes and ideololgical directions that are shared. Departing from its unsavoury record, the Congress(I) behaves with a new-found patience and wisdom; the group led by Tarigami provides both secular credibility and democratic energy; and the Mufti educates without euphoria or despondency. One senses, however, that soon this government will have to determine how the `healing touch' policy may be extended/transformed into a desirable political conclusion. Although the first formal demand for `secession' from the Union in post-Independence India came from the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), correctly understood as a demand, at bottom, for devolution of democracy and power, it has been a tragedy that similar demands from Kashmir have tended to be read as `Islamist'. In changing times, perhaps, it will be appropriate to revisit the autonomy question in ways that such devolution is made available to all provinces of the State.

In an article written in a special number of Seminar, this writer had suggested that Kashmir be seen as a `window to India', not just as a showpiece of secularism but fraught with consequences for the entire nation-state. This requires, foremost, that Kahmiris - and not just the territory - be embraced as the very best of Indians. And if I say that they are not just among the brightest of us but also the most loving, do not read that as an expression of hopeless ethnic subjectivity.

May I also keep my word to the many citizens of Srinagar to say that the city deserves drinking water quality, far better roads, and avoidance altogether of the driving habits of New Delhi.

Dr. Badri Raina, Professor of English at the Delhi University, writes on cultural and political issues. This article is based on his recent visit to Jammu and Kashmir.

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The Daily Times (Pakistan), July 19, 2003
Staff Report

Indian peace activists speak at Pakistani convention

WASHINGTON: For the first time in its history, the Association of Pakistani Physicians of North America (AAPNA) which met in Florida, earlier this month, invited two Indian peace activists to address one of the sessions.
The invitees were Dr Amit Shah and Gautam Desai, both Indian-Americans. Dr Shah is a member of the governing body of American Association of Physicians of Indian descent (AAPI) while Desai is co-founder and president of Develop-in-Peace (DIP), a non-profit organisation, which is dedicated to promoting peace in South Asia. He is also linked to the Association for India's Development (AID).
Another invitee to the conference was Dr Pervaiz Hoodboy of the Quaid-i-Azam University, Islamabad, who spoke on the issue of nuclear proliferation in the subcontinent. He also showed a 35-minute documentary called 'South Asia under the nuclear shadow.' The screening was followed by a question and answer session. The message of the documentary and the gist of the subsequent discussion was that a nuclear holocaust in South Asia was a "real possibility" and that the people of the region needed to work for a durable peace.
According to the Syed Asif Alam, head of the Association of Pakistani Professionals, "Our Indian colleagues noted the influence of almost 50,000 physicians of South East Asia and argued for a proactive stance from the community toward peace and prosperity in South Asia. Issues pertaining to interracial and ethnic issues in India, with a particular reference to the sectarian violence in Gujarat, India, were also discussed. Deliberations at the meeting culminated in the creation of a group called the Action-group of Physicians of South Asia (APSA). It was decided that the initial focus of the group will be on promoting exchange of intellectuals and activists between India, Pakistan and America.
APSA will take up a series of activities, starting with the screening of the documentary "South Asia under the nuclear shadow" for its members and the public."

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Business Standard (India), July 19, 2003

The Indo-Pak cycle of chills and thaws

Sunil Sethi

How heartwarming, how simple and touching and true, to wake up in the morning and find yet another Indo-Pak spring in bloom. To Baby Noor, bless her happily repaired heart, goes all the credit.
But however moving her story, the response to it - tributes, donations, political photo-ops and endless media filibustering - seems misplaced. It is wholly askew and out of proportion with everyday reality.
Not only do thousands of little children suffering from cardiac disorders in India and Pakistan die unnoticed each year, many perish because there is no money and no bus, far less a Lahore-Delhi bus, to carry them to a competent surgeon.
More pointedly, the outpouring of emotion over baby Noor is in chilling contrast to the anti-Pakistan feeling that prevailed between the summer of 1999 (Kargil) and December 13, 2001, the day terrorists attacked the Indian parliament.
The love-hate relationship between India and Pakistan, its endless saga of chills and thaws, is by now so repetitive and clinically schizophrenic that it should be a subject of psychiatric study at Sloan-Kettering rather than of political intervention at Capitol Hill.
To some of us (who’ve had the opportunity to visit Pakistan often since the mid-1970s) the persisting arguments, changing political regimes and hackneyed diplomatic phrases appear stupefyingly dull. (Example : “Kashmiri aspirations versus cross-border terrorism” has provided gainful employment to innumerable politicians, generals, bureaucrats and academic windbags on both sides of the border.)
Stand back and think: if such talk is monotonous for many Indians and Pakistanis, how does the rest of the world feel over a dispute that will be 56 years old next month? The world feels deeply bored. Sniggers dissolve into stifled yawns.
Still, what is at the bottom of these wild mood swings, veering from intense hostility and warmongering one summer to intense elation and generosity the next ? Why is middle class public opinion in India so malleable when it comes to Pakistan? Is the overblown Baby Noor episode a shabby media distraction for the silly season? Or is it just that Uncle Sam has acquired universal powers to solve all problems, from quieting warring neighbours to mending little girls’ hearts ?
I doubt it. If the two countries and its people were up for a bout of analysis on a shrink’s couch, it could be argued that they suffer from emotional damage, are unable to do with or without each other, and the accrued hurts could be passed on generation to generation.
For 20 years I went to Pakistan as a reporter, but also as a north Indian curious about family history and the unfinished business of Partition.
Strapped to the spinning wheel of love and hate, I turned away in the end. In some ways the place was a mirror image, with many of the distortions underscored. Greater than Pakistan’s fear of India’s size, economic power, military might ( or even medical expertise) was its fear of being swamped culturally.
I remember a Pakistani minister saying - it was yet another of those political springs - that the one Indian Pakistanis longed to see and hear on their soil was Lata Mangeshkar.
But the security risk would be too great, he sighed, “The crowds would be uncontrollable. There could be riots.” Years later I asked the great diva herself if she had been invited to Pakistan.
“Yes,” she said, “but I was advised by my government that it would be unwise.” In the current thaw it would be equally inadvisable for Aamir Khan or Shahrukh Khan to nip across.
It always struck me as strange, and ineffably sad, to enter into a debate about the Islamic nation state with people the bulk of whose Islamic history lay over the frontline.
Talking to ‘Kashmiri martyrs’ in Muzaffarabad was odd - no one spoke Kashmiri and the place did not remotely resemble Kashmir. Later, chatting to the large community of immigrants from ‘Azad Kashmir’ in Sheffield, I realised that they were from what was once a hill kingdom of old Punjab. They proudly called themselves Mirpuris, not Azad Kashmiris.
Enfrcing a religious identity is no compensation for political or regional aspiration. Paradoxically the worst thing to say to a Pakistani is that Partition was a mistake, an utterance that shades of Indian opinion, from liberal to orthodox, cannot resist repeating. It is lucky that Baby Noor made it on the first bus. But one swallow does not make a summer.

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The News International (Pakistan), July 18, 2003

People's initiative for peace

Shafqat Mahmood

The people are taking over the business of creating a bond of trust and affection between India and Pakistan. This is a happy development considering that the two governments are circling each other like frightened prize fighters. I was one among many who suggested that we should move cautiously this time around but the two establishments are taking this caution thing too far. Months after the first breakthrough was made, we are still at the preliminaries.
The people's initiative started with a parliamentary delegation from Pakistan taking the symbolic walk across Wagha. This poignant gesture did serious damage to the artificial curtain of hate put up by the two establishments. They were received with open arms and garlands of roses amid loud slogans of friendship. The delegation went around Indian cities spreading a message of peace and was treated with respect and affection. This visit was not sponsored by the Government of Pakistan.
Then, the well known journalist and occasional politician Kuldip Nayyar came over with an Indian parliamentary delegation. They visited major cities of Pakistan and interacted with a broad cross section of the people. They were wined and dined and feted royally and went back with great memories of friendship and love received from the ordinary people. This visit was not sponsored by the Indian government.
The people's initiative of peace continued with a Chambers of Commerce delegation from Pakistan visiting Delhi. They had important meetings with their Indian counterparts and were successful in identifying areas of mutual trade. They also met the Foreign Minister and were honoured by a meeting with the Indian Prime Minister. Government of Pakistan has been at pains to point out that this delegation had no official status.
Then the younger people got into the act. A whole host of young journalist came over on the first bus from Delhi and had, according to them, an exciting time in Lahore. They were so busy and their programme so full that some hosts like the great Imtiaz Alam from the South Asian Free Media Association could not trace them for a pre-arranged dinner appointment. They met everyone; journalists, film stars, politicians, students and were even treated to a sumptuous tea by Governor Khalid Maqbool. Again, this visit was not sponsored by the Indian government.
From Karachi, we hear that an Indian Youth delegation spent two weeks with young people in that city and by all accounts had a fabulous time. They sang songs together, swapped stories and experiences and jointly visited every possible place of interest. Remarks by one young Indian in an interview are revealing. He said that we had all kinds of strange notions about Pakistanis before we came here. Now we feel that they are more like us than anyone else. Hallelujah.
Not to be left behind this people's initiative of peace and friendship, the Maulanas have now joined the act. Maulana Fazlur Rehman and that irrepressible wit Hafiz Hussain Ahmed are now in India. Fortunately for us, our Maulanas are of two distinct stripes. There is the Jamaat-e-Islami that hates India and created a huge uproar when Vajpayee visited Lahore. Then there is the Jamiatul Ulemai Islam whose attitude is relatively soft. It has a close affinity with the Indian religious school in Deoband and this may be one reason for its moderate view on friendship with India. Maulana Fazlur Rehman is making all the right noises in Delhi and he and his party could become important players in a people's coalition for peace.
The reintroduction of the bus journey between Delhi and Lahore seems to have opened up a well spring of emotion among the two people. A young Pakistani girl with a hole in her heart has been treated at an Indian hospital free of cost. I have no doubt that this gesture would be reciprocated at Shaukat Khanum Cancer Hospital, if someone came over from India. The narratives flowing from the visits to each others country always speak of special consideration, of friendship and affection, of shopkeepers reducing prices or chaiwallahs or roadside hotel wallahs offering free meals.
These demonstrations of love are not a put on or just for show. The mutual bond of affection among the people is real despite Kashmir, despite four wars, despite incessant and hateful propaganda, despite the lack of contact. There are other neighbours of India and Pakistan. Yet, one does not find the same spirit or the same feelings from their people for us. When the Indians and Pakistanis meet anywhere, they are drawn to each other. The same cannot be said of the Iranians or the Afghans or even of the Sri Lankans or Nepalese.
This demonstration of affection or this love fest does not mean that we do not have any differences or that we do not express them. We argue and we quarrel and we disagree on many many things but it is like a disagreement within a family. We are each others peers and therefore will have emotions of jealousy or envy and even of hate. We will try to keep each other down as people do with peers but this does not mean that we are separate or alien.
This is the important point to understand. More unites us than that which divides us. We share a culture and a language, at least with people of North India. We enjoy each others music and avidly watch each others plays or movies. (Plays from Pakistan, movies from India) We play the same games and are good cricketers and atrocious footballers. Our mannerisms are similar, our habits despite different religions remarkably the same. It is because of this that we treat each other like long lost brothers when we reopen contact after a temporary or a long hiatus.
The two establishments are now no longer calling the shots in the sense of determining the emotions of the people. The people have moved on and their perception of each other is now independent of the hate brigades on both sides. It is for the first time since 1947 that I find people becoming the vanguard for peace between the two countries. Every day, every week, and every month, the people are telling the establishments through their actions to take a move on.
For a long time a myth has floated around our establishment circles that anyone who deviates from the stated stand on Kashmir will be destroyed by the people. Wrong. The people want the establishments to move on from their stated stands and find a solution. And if a solution is not found in a hurry, no matter. Keep it aside for the next generation to decide and not let it become a millstone around our neck.
The people want the borders to be opened up, for the visa regime to be less tight, and for mutual interaction to take place. People want to play and do business with each other. It is time that the two establishments heeded this call and moved quickly towards a durable peace.

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The Daily Times (Pakistan), July 17, 2003
Editorial

Indians visiting Pakistan

In the wake of the resumed bus travel between India and Pakistan, the seats were fully occupied on the Indian side, but from the Pakistani side only a few visitors could make it. Let it be said that from the Indian side, most of the travellers were journalists. There was a delegation of young Indians travelling through Pakistan, too, despite some uncivilised comments made about them in the Urdu press. It is quite apparent that after a period of non-communication the Pakistani high commission was able to be liberal about giving visas. Whoever took the decision for this policy, it has paid off because the Indian visitors have said things back home about Pakistan that puncture the myth created by hostile Indian state propaganda.
One well-known Indian TV journalist has written to say that Pakistan was nothing like what it was bruited about to be. The common Pakistani, he said, was without prejudice; in fact, he showed particular warmth and affection after finding out that the visitor was an Indian. He was "pleasantly surprised" to find that living under a government controlled by the military Pakistani society was remarkably free and had one of the freest presses in the third world. He went as far as saying that even the dress of common Pakistanis was very comfortable, attractive and egalitarian. There were many like him who entered Pakistan thinking that it would be an oppressed society with a crazy anti-Indian orientation; but they went back completely changed in their thinking. The warm treatment meted out to them by lay Pakistanis at the individual level was simply too winning in its ways.
Not long ago, India and Pakistan were playing the game of diplomat-bashing, kicking out each other's officers from the high commissions. Everybody knew what the charade was. Most of the staff in the high commissions was fake. Most people designated as diplomats from both sides were - and continue to be - spooks from the intelligence agencies. The ambassadors were ordered not to give more than a restricted quota of visas to avoid infiltration of RAW agents who caused horrible incidents to take place in Pakistan. When the spooks felt that too many visas had been issued they planted news in the Urdu press about the now-famous "black cats" from India who would cut a swathe through our lascivious politicians with their seduction. The truth is that warmth was shown to the visiting Indians even as Islamabad was accusing RAW of instigating the sectarian murders in Quetta. What this proves is that no matter what the governments might do to each other, the people don't register the official hostility. It's as if a game is being played in which the rules don't extend to private behaviour. Don't discuss the political issues because that kind of thing gets lost in the miasma of indoctrination. What the jihadis say here and Bal Thakeray says there is not the voice of the people, but of a few who have a vested interest in war. At the level of the people, Pakistan remains a humane society.

...and Pakistanis visiting India

The Pakistani press was probably too stunned by the gesture to editorialise on the story of a two-year-old girl named Fatima whose perforated heart has been successfully operated upon by Indian doctors in Bangalore. The chief minister of Karnataka offered a donation of Rs 10,000 and was on hand to welcome the patient, and the total expense was taken care of when a large number of Indian donors came forward. Yet the 34-seat bus that went from Lahore on Friday last had only nine passengers in it as compared to the full Indian bus that came to Lahore in exchange. But the fact is that when travel between the two countries is relaxed and institutionalised, many more Pakistanis are likely to visit India than vice versa, and that too from the big four cities of Sindh, which are home to the muhajirs who have come to Pakistan in their multitudes from India since independence.
To be sure, visas are a problem. The consulates have remained closed now for a long time. For Pakistanis wishing to travel to India the closure of the consulate in Karachi is a source of suffering. India's new high commissioner, Mr Shiv Shankar Menon, has just entered Pakistan. He says he is going to relax the visa regime. Good. That will help a great deal. But not everyone is happy in Pakistan about people visiting India. The JUI's Maulana Fazlur Rehman who has just gone to India has been editorially hauled over the coals by one influential Urdu paper for having responded to the invitation of the son of Maulana Hussain Ahmad Madani who had allegedly opposed the Quaid-e-Azam in undivided India.
Like Bal Thakeray on the other side, there are many here who don't want to have any truck with India unless it is to fight a terminal war. But truth on the ground is quite different. It seems Pakistan has got over its "successor state" complex and is no longer scared of gestures that might smack of a "relapse". So what if an Indian at the Piccadilly Circus says "we are one"? The issues are there and have to be resolved. Goodwill at the level of the people will only help. On the other hand, the "ill-will" practiced as a profession by the spooks on both sides will create more problems and resolve nothing. Our last high commissioner in New Delhi nearly got bumped off twice because of these shenanigans. If Pakistanis start visiting India in large numbers the Indian side must restrain deputy prime minister Advani from starting a manhunt for those who may have unwittingly overstayed.

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The News International (Pakistan), July 17, 2003

Talking peace

Deepti Mahajan

Conflict is not new to South Asia. For long, the region has been witness to violent conflicts triggered by international, religious or ethnic differences. The Maoist insurgency in Nepal, the Tamil-Sinhala conflict in Sri Lanka, the violence in Kashmir, religious tensions in Bangladesh and India are some examples of conflicts that have either led to continuing violence or are potential flash-points waiting to erupt.
A close look at the issues that form a part of these conflicts provides clear evidence of the complexity of these situations and the enormity of obstacles in the peace processes. A set of diverse factors -- social, political, religious, economic -- calls for resolution at different levels. It is imperative that peace-builders at all levels -- political actors, diplomats, conflict resolution experts, academia, journalists, NGOs -- engage with the dynamics of these conflicts.
As an Indian, I recognise, that the conflict between India and Pakistan is one such a conflict, a solution to which has eluded the two countries, for a very long time now. It would not be putting it too strongly to say that the Kashmir issue has been talked about so much that it has become difficult to comprehend. Perhaps it is not just the views and reviews; but the problem in Kashmir has so many dimensions to it that it requires a lot of thinking to get a clear picture of the situation on ground. The media, in its own way, has added to the confusion. Conflicting views about the will of the Kashmiris have made it difficult for the common man to understand the nature of the problem.
Fortunately, I have had the opportunity to meet my friends from across the border. Last year, I attended a peace conference -- 'Focus on Kashmir', at the United World College of South East Asia, Singapore, which brought together 40 young Indians and Pakistanis to work as a youth movement. Again, this year in June, I had the privilege of participating in the Conflict Transformation Workshop organised by Women in Security, Conflict Management and Peace (WISCOMP) where I met people from Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh and Tibet. The Pakistanis are as peace loving as the Indians are and are equally anxious to resolve matters between the two countries. When I recall the faces of the Pakistanis I have met, something strikes my mind and tugs at my heart -- there is nothing that marks a Pakistani different from an Indian. We look alike. We wear the same kind of dresses. We understand each other's language. In fact we are battling the same problems back home.
Wisdom lies in coming together to fight the plethora of problems that plague India and Pakistan. The Prime Minister of Palestine, Mahmoud Abbas' statement on the West Asia peace process, rings in my ears -- "Enough killing, enough tragedy, enough pain -- let's move forward with courage to the future we all deserve." What is it that is stopping India and Pakistan from moving on the path to peace?
Surely, the key to a peaceful resolution of the Kashmir problem is sustained dialogue, both within the two countries, and between India and Pakistan. Though it might be difficult for the two nations to even accept each other's position as a starting point, the beginning of a process of dialogue is of immediate importance. Beginning from the groups within India and Pakistan, the talks must then extend to the inter-state level. Grass root movements are of immense importance, not only for preservation of peace but also for the initiation of a political process. After 56 years of hatred and border skirmishes, it is time we started thinking of a final solution. Though the idea may sound far-fetched or even unrealistic, sanity demands at least a movement in this direction.
It is high time that political bigwigs start thinking for the people of Kashmir and rise above petty vested interests. Doing the right things at the right time, and most importantly, doing them rightly, is what can lead us to a peaceful future.... if only, wiser counsels prevail.
The writer is a second year student of Journalism (Hons) at Lady Shri Ram College, New Delhi, India



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