Global Policy Forum

By Kuldip Nayar

The day after the summit between India and Pakistan may be ominous. This is the time when the hawks unsheathe their knives and put an end to whatever is infused with life. They destroy the agreement reached with pain and care. The history of India-Pakistan relations is littered with such examples.

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then foreign minister, was the one who sabotaged the Tashkent Declaration which had listed several steps to normalise the situation between the two countries. Hardly had the ink on the declaration by Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan dried when Bhutto denounced it as a "sell-out." He saw to it that Ayub would not rule any more. In the process he not only built hatred against India but also halved Pakistan, the eastern part becoming Bangladesh.

I recall meeting Ayub at Islamabad in 1972, soon after the Bangladesh war. My question to him was: "Why did you wage war against India in 1965 when it had accepted arbitration over a territory in Kutch? A process had begun."

He said: "Don't blame me. It was Bhutto's war and you should ask him about it." Later, when I met Bhutto, then Pakistan President, he didn't deny his complicity. His rationale was that Pakistan had a chance to defeat India in 1965 as it was not too powerful at that time. He said he felt that if Pakistan could not force the issue of Kashmir then, it would never be able to do so later.

Again, Bhutto broke to pieces the agreement at Shimla. He went back on the undertaking he gave to Mrs Indira Gandhi, then prime minister, to convert the line of control (LoC) into an international border. It is clear from subsequent disclosures that he had tricked her to get back the territory which Pakistan had lost to India during the Bangladesh war.

More recently, the person who planned and executed the operation in Kargil was Pakistan's Chief of Army Staff, General Pervez Musharraf. He was the one who ruined the Lahore Declaration which had set even a time limit of 15 months for the solution on Kashmir.

Checking a few days ago with Mushahid Hussain, Nawaz Sharif's information minister, I found that Sharif was an enthusiastic participant to the Kargil operation. True, he was "on board" but the entire plan and execution were Musharraf's doing. For, the army did not like the understanding reached at Lahore. Musharraf's explanation was that since the original Lahore Declaration did not contain anything substantial on Kashmir, the armed forces had to throw it out.

All these incidents underline the factor of sabotage, how and why the agreements or declarations go awry. Those who have developed a vested interest in sustaining the enmity between India and Pakistan jump into the arena whenever they see the two countries spanning the distance.

Musharraf may well be sincere in seeking a solution, which will put animosities behind us. He may have realised that hostilities with India are counter-productive. But the armed forces, which back him, may have other ideas. When I was in Lahore a few days ago I heard of some corps commanders not in favour of a dialogue with India. They may have another Kargil in their mind. It may not be easy to create another Kargil-type situation, but such a danger may not be ruled out.

Take the likes of retired Lt Gen Hamid Gul. They are not reconciled to any conciliation with New Delhi. They have a lobby in the army too and they openly talk about India's destruction. In his article in an English daily published from Lahore he has said: "India cannot live as a political entity as it is today. It has to be fragmented."

Such observations show the bias some people harbour. They are the ones who become active the day after an agreement is reached and they are the ones who see to it that no step for normalisation is taken.

It is sad that leaders at Islamabad have never lived up to the undertakings they have given. On the other hand, the governments in New Delhi have thrown out the baby with the bathtub because Pakistan had reneged on certain parts of an agreement. If New Delhi had taken unilateral steps to encourage people-to-people contacts, as it is doing now, the face of Indo-Pak relationship would have been more amiable.

I do not want to indulge in the I-told-you-so formula. But nearly 40 years ago I had written that the best way to improve relations with Pakistan was to allow its products into India without any levy. At the most, it would have cost us Rs.1 billion to Rs.1.5 billion.

But trade would have created in Pakistan a vested interest in Indian markets. The beneficiaries would have themselves seen to it that the two countries would come closer to each other. Even now such steps are worth taking. With the dire economic conditions the Pakistanis are facing, they will be welcoming commercial ties.

One remark, which Vajpayee made at the pre-summit meeting of the Opposition parties, has gone unnoticed. It is significant and should hearten the Muslims, who have been blamed for partition. He said that India had never accepted partition on the basis of religion. This takes the wind out of the RSS sails. The whole philosophy of that party organisation is based on the assumption that the Muslims have got their homeland when Pakistan was constituted and should, therefore, have migrated to it.

Vajpayee's interpretation of partition is correct.

Certain parts in the subcontinent, which were predominantly Muslim, did not want to stay with the rest of India. They grouped together and constituted a separate country of their own. True, the areas that seceded from India were inhabited overwhelmingly by Muslims but it didn't mean that the partition was to divide Hindus and Muslims. Had that been the thinking, the migration of the two communities would have been an essential part of the partition proposal.

It was the Congress Working Committee which strengthened the hands of Lord Mountbatten, then India's Viceroy, by resolving on March 6, 1947 that if India was to be divided, then Punjab must be partitioned into Muslim majority and Hindu majority zones, "since the havoc caused by the Muslims was much greater there than in Calcutta or Bihar." That meant that the Congress would be willing to accept Pakistan if Punjab and, for that matter, Bengal were divided.

In fact, Sardar Patel had said in a letter to a friend those days that if "the League insists on Pakistan," India's only alternative was to insist on "the division of Punjab and Bengal."

For Jawaharlal Nehru, the Congress resolution was a stratagem rather than an acceptance of the fact of partition on communal lines. He felt it was time Mohammad Ali Jinnah, founder of Pakistan, had seen the logical consequences of his demand for Pakistan.

However, for Mahatma Gandhi, who did not attend the Congress Working Committee meeting, the resolution spelled out a "partition based on communal grounds and the two-nation theory." Therefore, when the move to have an independent undivided Bengal was raised, Gandhi extended his full support. For him, this was a potential move towards restoring the unity of India, already crumbling before his eyes.

Recalling the partition days, Musharraf has talked about the killings of Muslims at the mohalla he lived in Delhi. I am one of the people who came from the other side. I saw the butchering of Hindus and Sikhs up to the Pakistan border. There was no difference in the ferocity of the killings. Only the victims changed. There is no point ripping open the old wounds. Both have been broken on the rack of history. Let's make a new beginning. Now.