JOINT statement issued after Delhi's Indo-Pak summit described improvements in their mutual relationship to be irreversible because of sizeable peace lobbies in both countries. War mongering is no longer popular. How irreversible is this peace process?
Things are often deceptive in politics. Entrenched powerful groups in both countries do not want India-Pakistan friendship, not even trade and economic cooperation. They like freer cultural exchanges even less. The two bureaucracies, each excelling the other in rigid approaches and in being actually backward-looking, do not want to change. Bureaucracies are always meant to preserve a system. They cannot be expected to take significant initiatives 'outside the box'. It is not their job. That is the job of political leadership that should make the bureaucracies implement their 'outside the box' thinking which requires change.
The two governments are a long way from settling down as friends and have still to build many bridges. Governments can always reverse their stances. There is the sudden reversal of India's policy over Nepal, for instance. Only a few months ago, India angrily condemned King Gayanendra's wrapping up the elected system by assuming total power himself on Feb 1 last. It stopped military aid to the Nepalese Army. Now suddenly it has decided to send him armaments against the wishes of India's leftists. One goes beyond a mere notice of this instance of a reversal for a reason.
The proferred reason was other countries would take advantage of the tiff between India and Nepalese King and would start supplying arms. The 'other country' in this case could either be Pakistan or
China because America and the UK were on India's side against Gayanendra. Now China, in its own national interests, would never give an excuse to India, US, UK to unitedly oppose China's help to Gayanendra. As for Pakistan, it would never go against the US and UK advice, all its gestures of independence notwithstanding. But even this flimsy threat of Pakistan establishing a relationship with Gayanendra was enough to unnerve South Block.
True, there could be a different reason. Maoist inroads in India itself demand that Indian government should enable Nepalese Army to prevent its Maoists from coordinating with their Indian friends. Doubtless the Indian bureaucracy is stoutly fighting against Indian Maoists. However, this Indian iron fist has not stopped Maoists from spreading operations from IndoNepalese border down to Andhra Pradesh. The logic of fighting the Maoists at home could impel India to cooperate with Nepal's antiMaoists. But India's stoppage of military cooperation with Nepal, had no links with the decades old insurgencies in India. Pakistan's fishing in Nepal's troubled waters could only be a minor threat.
Another example is military exercises that India is about to hold near Jallandhur. Who would be the
enemy to be vanquished in this exercise? The emotional underpinnings of such exercises make the enemy known: It is Pakistan. The Indian Army is for preserving Indian borders from Pakistan; the two are designated adversary states for each other. Three wars and many skirmishes have stabilised these enemy images. These inveterate enemies have recently gone nuclear. Pakistan's nuclear stance is India specific. Thus reversing the enemy image is going to take time and much more than diplomatic bonhomie and sweet talk; something has to be shown to the people before they change their inimical attitudes. The feel good factor created by the many 'permitted' cultural exchanges cannot long be sustained on sweet words alone. There has to be evidence of inter- state free trade, economic cooperation and a credible framework of a lot freer travel to permit cultural exchanges to do their magic.
The Army patronises many other forces. Among them, two need notice: first is political forces that demonise the enemy. In India there is the Sangh Parivar and parties like Shiv Sena that are anti-Pakistan and, up to a point, anti-Muslim. Bharatya Janata Party represents their political interests. The second group associated with armed forces
(and bureaucracies) comprises publicists. Whole battalions of them are embedded in the military establishments as well as civilian ones. Governments need special media persons to be properly guided by intelligence agencies; arrangements to this effect are in working order in both countries.
This is reality. Despite professed recent governmental desires of being friends hard progress has been slow and halting. A tribute to Americans is due for bringing India and Pakistan to the negotiating table. This has had a benign effect so far. It is for India and Pakistan to go farther than what the Americans want. They should go much beyond a mere normalisation of relations. They have tried hard to make the Composite Dialogue, agreed in 1997, productive. Despite many rounds, it has so far yielded no solution to any of the eight propositions.
The two states have fixed a 'normal' relationship as their goal, though the Composite Dialogue has so far refused to move forward. Both are still at the starting point. However many agreements on Confidence Building Measures, some along the LOC in Kashmir, may have been agreed, there needs to be some concrete agreements on disputes. These CBMs are wel-
come. But they are reversible. Can the bus between Sringar and Muzaffarabad not be stopped? Can Munabao-Khokhrapar line not be postponed again? The two Consulate Generals in Bombay and Karachi can be made to wait more years. The fact is the two bureaucracies are micro-managing the relaxation process. Each action is under strict control. No state is ready to give the citizens of the other the freedom of movement in its own country. The Indians in Pakistan are supposed to pose unexplained security threats. Similarly Pakistanis loafing around Indian cities constitute equally serious threat to India. The two bureaucracies remain unreconstructed and unaffected by new impulses.
The two countries are fated to keep going round the mulberry bush if their aim is no more than normali-sation. Normalisation is a vague concept. It can mean Peru's relations with Mongolia. It can mean, at the other extreme, relations between France and Germany. We must know what kind of relations we want. There has to be common aims before relations can stabilise and start growing into friendship. It is common objectives that hold the key. One recommends the goal of peoples' reconciliation between India and Pakistan from grassroots up. It has to be a no holds-barred reconciliation that should be reinforced with aims of common economic and cultural objectives.
Today India is desperate for a permanent seat in the UN Security Council. Here in Pakistan, supposedly working to befriend with India, openly campaigning against India being elevated. Nothing could be more absurd than the present sets of antithetical approaches. Why cant Islamabad think holistically whether it wants to change or remain in the comfort of old notions: India is the enemy. Why cannot a situation be visualised in which India and Pakistan would invite each other to enrich them culturally and economically through cooperation and trade? Here is an exciting goal: let the two jointly undertake to ensure that each Indian and Pakistani citizen becomes entitled to social security in his or her own state -- a minimal but progressive one. And it can be created at the cost of their military budgets, if necessary. That will deepen the friendship, especially if combined with cultural cooperation.
MB Naqvi is a leading columist in Pakistan.