Peace is patriotic

The flying oneday visit of Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari to New Delhi and Ajmer — an exercise in what is being called “dargah diplomacy” — went well enough, but amidst all the lowkey mutual back- slapping, the elephant in the room remains the Pakistani Army. Until the military men are convinced that peace with India is in their self- interest, they will remain the biggest obstacles to it. Mr Zardari is said to have consulted his generals before hopping over to India; it would be instructive to know what he has been telling them about his conversations here.

With trade acquiring greater prominence in the relationship, one hope may lie in the extensive reach of the Pakistani military apparatus and its multiple business and commercial interests. Perhaps India could encourage its firms to trade with enterprises owned by the Pakistani Army, in the hope of giving the military establishment a direct stake in peace. More military- to- military exchanges, even starting with such basic ideas as sporting contests between the two armies, would also help. The idea of joint exercises between the two militaries seems preposterous today, but it is entirely feasible in a UN peacekeeping context: just a few years ago, Indian aircraft strafed Congolese rebel positions in support of besieged Pakistani ground troops as part of a UN peacekeeping operation, MONUC.

In my UN days I personally witnessed the extraordinary degree of comradeship between Indian and Pakistani officers serving in the Peacekeeping Department headquarters in New York; perhaps being amongst foreigners served as a constant reminder of how much more they had in common with each other, so that they were frequently lunching together, visiting each other’s homes, and seeing the local sights together. Such contacts can and should be built upon to develop the right atmospherics for peaceful relations, which unavoidably require engagement with the Pakistani military. Indians are, understandably, amongst the strongest supporters of Pakistani democracy, at least in theory, but we have to live with the realities next door, and that requires us to see the Pakistani military not just as the problem, but as a vital element of the solution.

As good neighbours, Indians should be saddened by the continuing incidents of terrorist violence in Pakistan; we must wish Islamabad well in its efforts to repel militancy and fanaticism within its own borders. We would welcome indications that Islamabad shares our view that the forces of terrorism emanating from Pakistani soil are indivisible and that those plotting attacks on India from Pakistani territory are as much the enemies of Pakistan as they are of India. From such a diagnosis, the only possible prescription is that of co- operation, to build peace and security together. We hope that those who rule that country will make that diagnosis, and share the same prescription.

A former Indian high commissioner to Pakistan, G. Parthasarathy, once famously remarked that promoting peace between India and Pakistan is like trying to treat two patients whose only disease is an allergy to each other. This allergy has to be overcome. India does not covet any Pakistani ter- ritory. Because we wish to focus on our own people’s development and prosperity in conditions of security, we remain committed to long- term peace with Pakistan. If the civilian government in Islamabad sees that the need is for concerted action against terrorists wherever they operate, whether in Pakistan, in India or in Afghanistan, we can find common ground. Our willingness to talk will best be vindicated by their willingness to act. Trust can be earned, which is why peace must be pursued. But we must pursue peace with our eyes wide open. To do so is, in the words of the veteran Indian diplomat K. Shankar Bajpai, the “right, rational choice for a mature power”.

Too much of Indian public opinion is divided into sharply polarised camps of hawks and doves — the former insisting on nothing less than implacable hostility towards Islamabad, and hoping for the eventual destruction of Pakistan as we know it, the latter offering peace at any price, through a process “uninterruptable” even if new terrorist strikes emanating from Pakistan were to occur. Neither position, in my view, is tenable. Hostility is not a policy, and hostility in perpetuity is neither viable nor desirable between neighbours. And while the doves may be right that New Delhi’s visceral reaction to the terror attacks is tantamount to giving the terrorists a veto over our foreign policy choices, no democratic government can allow its citizens to be killed and maimed by forces from across the border, without reacting in some tangible way that conveys to Pakistan that there is a price to be paid for allowing such things to happen.

At the same time, insisting that Pakistan must change fundamentally before India can make peace with it is not particularly realistic. A creative Indian government must seize on whatever straws in the wind float its way from Pakistan to explore the prospects of peace. New Delhi must do its best to ensure that the Islamabad establishment abandons the conviction that terrorism is the only effective instrument that obliges India to sit up and pay attention to Pakistan and engage with its interests. Accepting Pakistan the way it is but pushing for peace nonetheless is, in my view, the only way forward. It will mean isolating those elements and those issues that both sides consider intractable, and placing them on the back burner for now, in order to proceed with those that can be solved. Trust and understanding can be built on the basis of small agreements on seemingly marginal issues, thereby improving the atmosphere within which the more difficult problems can be tackled.

It is essential to ensure that there is no return to the atmosphere of violence, intimidation and mayhem engendered by 26/ 11. This is where Pakistan bears the major share of the responsibility for making progress towards peace. No democratic Indian government will negotiate with a gun pointed at its head. A New Delhi that is prepared to make concessions will not want to make them if there is the slightest suggestion that it is doing so because it is intimidated by terrorist action. If, God forbid, there is another Mumbai — another horror perpetrated on a scale comparable to 26/ 11, with similar proof of Pakistani complicity — all bets will be off.

This remains the greatest danger facing the subcontinent — of a feckless Pakistan either condoning or conniving in another major attack, and a beleaguered Indian government feeling the snapping of the last straw and launching retaliation. It is the duty of responsible people on both sides of the border to work to prevent this. There is hope for peace, and a determination in New Delhi to pursue it. But the primary onus for confining, if not destroying, the deadly virus that it has long incubated, must rest on the Pakistani state. If it seizes that responsibility, it will not find India lacking.

Former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee had once declared that you can change history but not geography. He was wrong: history, once it has occurred, cannot be changed. The time has come, instead, for the victims of geography to make history. The writer is a member

of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram