The core issue first please!

Pakistan’s High Commissioner to India Salman Bashir’s statement that secret Indo-Pak parleys to normalise ties were on and his hint at the possibility of granting the MFN status to India at any time are a cause for concern. Though he stated that the Kashmir issue was also on the agenda, a man with such experience of diplomacy ought to remember that secret talks would only lead to a blind alley. Besides, any resort to secrecy is disconcerting particularly since Pakistan has nothing to hide. Islamabad is expected not to compromise on any of its principles of its traditional policy over the dispute. There is virtually nothing that Pakistan can either give or gain through buckling under pressure. In this equation, it is New Delhi that is the villain of the peace; it has been maintaining its rule merely by use of force, committing atrocities and human rights abuses that are now being censured by some of its acclaimed authors like Arundhati Roy and increasingly by the international community. The only way out is to pave the way for an impartial plebiscite in line with UNSC resolutions.

Furthermore, granting the MFN status would mean that trade has eclipsed the core issue, even though the cross-border commerce is not going to result in the kind of dividend some here might be expecting. If India was serious in resolving the issue, it would not have invented such bizarre terms as, ‘integral part’.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...ons/editorials

April 04, 2013



Pakistan and India have resumed Track II talks in Singapore, according to reports appearing in the Held Kashmir press, where secret talks have been held between diplomats and military officers of the two countries. The talks went on for two days and ended without any joint statement, or any agreement, beyond an accord to meet again. The holding of the talks show that Pakistan has not given up on Indian goodwill, though it had a very practical demonstration of it by India’s refusal to obey the decision of the international court when it refused to amend the designs for the Kishenganga project, thus disobeying its own solemn treaty agreements under the Indus Waters Treaty and continuing its theft of Pakistan’s share of the Indus waters duly granted to it under the treaty. A letter about this refusal to obey the treaty was sent by the Pakistani Indus Waters Commissioner to the Indian High Commissioner, which also warned that if India did not change its attitude, the matter might have to be referred to neutral experts. It said that Pakistan could not endanger its interests.

With India apparently not satisfied with the Kashmir dispute as a barrier to peace with Pakistan, it has gone ahead with its water terrorism, using water from the disputed territory to convert Pakistan into a desert. Under these circumstances, Islamabad is hardly justified in its supine participation in the USA-driven bid to reconcile with India, which includes the latest Track II effort, just as it did the previous ones.

It hardly needs pointing out that if the Kashmir issue was resolved according to the will of the Kashmiri people, the water dispute would disappear, because India would lose its ability to do what it wanted with the headwaters of the Indus. Therefore, if the only purpose of the Track II process is to make Indian hegemony acceptable to Pakistan, there is no purpose in continuing it. This is aside from the fact that Track II diplomacy is not right in principle. First, diplomacy should be left to the diplomats. Second, any agreement will not have official sanction: neither do the interlocutors have any official authority to commit their country nor reliable channels to the real decision-makers. The attempt by Pakistan to talk to revive a channel which has failed in the past will only be used by India to argue that Pakistan is not serious about the water dispute.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...ons/editorials

Friendship with India

Kunwar Idris


JUST six months after independence, in a pictorial write-up on Pakistan, America’s Life magazine noted that the newly born nation of 70 million desperately needed India’s capital and industrial know-how to “supplement its faith in Allah and the leadership of an ailing Jinnah”.

It has taken us six decades to pay heed to that advice. The belligerent past, however, keeps haunting us as the population of the country grows faster than in most countries. At the same time, scarce capital and skills flee the country to more profitable avenues abroad, including to Pakistan’s former less-developed half.

At independence Pakistan’s eastern wing had more people than the four western provinces put together. The population of Bangladesh now is 161 million against Pakistan’s over 180 million. The myth of Bengalis’ population growing rapidly thus stands exploded.

The threat to Pakistan’s survival, Life noted in its issue of January 1948, arose from religious warfare and political instability. That threat led to discontent and the ultimate separation of East Pakistan; the memory still haunts us, though less menacingly, in relation to what is left of the country, particularly Balochistan.

Given that the grievances in the case of East Pakistan and Balochistan are similar in essence, national thinking and state policy need to be recast to forestall yet another catastrophe. That Balochistan is contiguous and sparsely populated should not be cause for complacency. The question today is no longer of military conquest but of convincing the people that their security and prosperity lies in a unified Pakistan and not in a series of fiefdoms.

Religious violence and political instability accompanied the birth of Pakistan once the Muslim League, left with no other choice but to take it or leave it, agreed to the partition of Punjab, Bengal and Assam.

The partition of the three provinces weakened the secular forces and fostered schisms in a predominantly Muslim population. Under a divided and dithering political leadership, the civil servants and later the generals became the arbiters in a situation of recurring instability and violence.

In the 1953 riots, the army had to be invited to intervene when the civil administration could not control the violence. In the course of time the politicians became divided and civil servants were weakened by ill-conceived reforms and politicisation, and the control of state policy effectively passed into the hands of the armed forces.

The elections, lacking credibility, did not materially change that reality nor will the ones now coming up because the factors that gave rise to religious violence and political instability persist while evolving events suggest that they may even be aggravated. There should be no delusions about it.

Pakistan shares its unrest and uncertainty with Afghanistan and to a lesser extent with the Central Asian Republics and Iran, with whom it has little in common except religion, which is more divisive and a source of greater violence in Pakistan than in its north-western neighbours.

It will not be possible to effect any change in the political and economic direction of Pakistan so long as the country remains embroiled in the conflicts of its neighbours. The answer lies in a fundamental policy shift by promoting cultural and trade links with India. Both would come naturally and easily.

Pakistan’s cultural and linguistic links with India are rooted in history and the trade routes are diverse and economical. Communal frenzy caused by partition is over and the wounds have healed. The Muslims of India as a community remain backward but, perhaps, suffer much less discrimination and violence than the minority communities do in Pakistan.

Economically, India is growing faster than Pakistan and, unlike Pakistan, has never been ruled by generals. A ready measure of the strength of the Indian economy, besides its faster growth, is the value of its rupee. Two Pakistani rupees now buy one Indian rupee. Not long ago both were at par.

Apart from the benefit of trade, firmly rooted democracy and a secular tradition, the dream of an armed confrontation to wrest Kashmir stands buried for ever.

To quote from The Economist, “India is poised to become one of the four largest powers in the world by the end of the decade”. It has been the world’s largest importer of weapons for five years. The option of jihad no longer exists. Free communication and trade is the answer.

That is what the people want and army chief Gen Kayani has only endorsed it by a declaration that internal terrorism is a greater danger to Pakistan than India. The terrorism must abate with the eastern borders opened. If public opinion is hard to gauge, the call of the general is clear.

The writer is a former civil servant.


http://dawn.com/2013/04/06/friendship-with-india-2/

__________________
If you tremble with indignation at every injustice then you are a comrade of mine.(Che Guevara)

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had nurtured the dream of independent Bengal from early days. He and his henchmen got in touch with Indian intelligence agencies and during one of the meetings in Agartala in November 1963, finalized the plan to detach East Pakistan from rest of Pakistan. Under the garb of remedying political and economic grievances of East Pakistan, he formulated six points formula and fanned Bengali nationalism. Unearthing of Agartala conspiracy case in 1968 turned the secessionist into a hero in the eyes of Bengalis. Indian media was instrumental in lionizing Mujib.

Breakup of One-Unit Scheme, one-man-one-vote and change of separate electorate to joint electorate by Gen Yahya Khan so as to appease the agitating Bengalis gave the Awami League (AL) electoral victory in a platter. Year-long election campaign allowed Mujib to use high-handed tactics to not only intimidate the people of East Pakistan but also inflame Bengali nationalism. Indian media and secular Bengali intellectuals presented West Pakistan as a villain and publicized Mujib’s six point program as a panacea for all the problems of East Pakistan, which in actuality amounted to secession. All criminal and illegal acts of AL thugs were ignored under the policy of appeasement.

After sweeping the elections through massive rigging, Mujib and his henchmen became more arrogant and uncompromising. They stubbornly maintained that new constitution will be framed strictly in accordance with six points and refused to accommodate viewpoint of second largest party PPP. The situation became uncontrollable in Dacca on 1 March after Yahya unwisely postponed inaugural session scheduled in Dacca on 3 March on the insistence of Bhutto and hawkish Generals. It sparked horrible conflagration and let loose genie of Bengali nationalism.

On the afternoon of 3 March, Mujib demanded immediate return of troops to barracks and to hand over security of Dacca to him, or else his men would resist them. He also demanded cessation of flow of reinforcement from West Pakistan and disarming of non-Bengalis. Eastern Command Commander Lt Gen Sahibzada Yaqub capitulated to his wrongful demands, which was a blunder. Gen Gul Hassan said that to allow Mujib to restore calm was ‘somewhat like leaving a virgin in the care of a habitual rapist’.

A state within state was created and Bengalis took orders from Mujib only. Everywhere the chanting of ‘Joi Bangla’ could be heard. New Bangladesh flag was hoisted. Mujib’s hostile tantrums amounted to virtual independence. In order to provoke Gen Yahya to use force and thus give an excuse to start a popular civil war aided by India, a planned massacre of non-Bengalis including Biharis and pro-government Bengalis and rape of West Pakistani girls was unleashed. Their properties were torched and valuables looted. The madness continued till 25 March filling the roads and streets of Dacca and other major towns with blood. Stench of the dead bodies littered on the roads unattended became unbearable and it became difficult to breathe. Over 100,000 people, mostly Biharis were hacked to death. Stories of ‘torture to death’ are too horrifying and blood curdling to narrate and have been narrated in hundreds of books.

Non-Bengali and loyal elements butchery continued with unabated venom. None came to the rescue of the hounded. They were baffled and found themselves at the mercy of hounding wolves. They had no weapons to fend for themselves and no place to hide and as such got slaughtered like sheep. Even our media was blanked on the ill-conceived ground that broadcasting of atrocities would evoke a severe backlash against Bengalis in West Pakistan. The biased western media team located in Dacca turned a blind eye to the carnage of non-Bengalis. It also turned a blind eye to India’s meddling and induction of 90,000 Indian soldiers in West Bengal in March 1971.

The troops confined to barracks kept hearing the savageries committed on men in uniform and their families with impotent rage. Attacks on Army pickets were stepped up and the Army jeered at. Soldiers were spat upon and called Yahya dogs.

Sizeable number of men in Khaki and their families particularly those serving in East Pakistan Rifles (EPR) and East Pakistan Civil Armed Forces were hacked to death. By such acts, the Army was being deliberately provoked to lose patience and to take punitive action. This would have given Mujib and his henchmen a weapon to whip up anti-Army emotions thereby dubbing the Army as an occupation Army. It would have paved the way for civil war thereby fulfilling the requirement of India.

Yahya’s regime was subjected to extreme criticism for its procrastinating attitude and its passivity to confront Bengali defiance against the state. All those who mattered in West Pakistan and pro-Pakistan Bengalis exerted extreme pressure on President Yahya to take punitive action against the dissidents. Even Bhutto prodded him to use full force regardless of casualties before it was too late.

During the ten-day negotiations in Dacca in March 1971, Yahya team trying to find a way out of impasse remained totally defensive and apologetic and had no card to play. They kept giving in and got nothing in return. No political leader including Bhutto could soften up Mujib. The Mujib led team on the other hand maintained a highly belligerent and uncompromising posture. It was amply clear that AL simply didn’t want a constitutional agreement conducive to the retention of national identity. His mentors had briefed him not to agree on any point or concession offered at any cost.

Matiur Rahman in his book ‘Bangladesh Today’ writes, ‘It was indeed most mind boggling to note that while Yahya Khan and his team persistently offered power to Mujib, the latter constantly hedged, refused to agree to any settlement, shifted his position from six points and refused to accept any formula within the framework of a united Pakistan’. Mujib had made up his mind to part ways and that too through violent means.

It was on the evening of 24 March 1971 when Yahya got convinced that Mujib didn’t want anything short of confederation that he gave green signal to Gen Tikka Khan to save the federation. Orders to unit commanders were passed verbally on the morning of 25th March. The toughest challenge was in Dacca where the outcome of crackdown would have decided the fate of East Pakistan. The city and its suburbs housed heaviest concentration of armed rebels followed by Chittagong. As per foreign press reports, there were 200,000 weapons with the militants in East Pakistan.

Despite extremely heavy odds, the troops numbering 12000 went into action and by early morning of 26th, Dacca was cleared of miscreants and in next few days all other critical towns were also taken over since the rebels had fled. Reinforcement from West Pakistan were rushed in only when it was found that EBR, EPR and Police had also rebelled and rebellion had got transformed into a well-planned civil war supported by India.

When the prejudiced foreign journalists were ousted from Dacca by Gen Tikka, the jilted journalists got settled in Calcutta and played into the hands of Indian media. Indo-western-AL media cooked up fabricated stories of all kinds of atrocities and quoted highly bloated figures of those killed in Army action on 25th March and subsequently. All this was done to smoke-screen the large-scale atrocities committed by AL urchins and anti-social elements. The next round of killings and rapes was undertaken by Mukti Bahini after 23 November 1971, later joined by Indian forces. Raping of Bengali girls and women at a mass scale was undertaken by Indian Army and BSF soldiers in the refugee camps in India during their confinement period of over nine months.

It is ironic that today the AL led government at the behest of India is demanding apology from Pakistan for the so-called war crimes, and is convicting aged Jamaat-e-Islami members through Kangaroo courts, who had played their honorable part to save their motherland, but is completely ignoring the barbarities of its own members against Biharis and West Pakistanis and their collaboration with hostile India.

Can we notice the footprints of India in Balochistan and in Karachi where quite a few similarities with former East Pakistan crisis can be discerned? Are we alive to the two brewing lavas which are primed to burst? The only thing which probably has frustrated the designs of our adversaries is that the Army kept itself aloof. Hence the story of ‘genocide’ couldn’t be played. ‘Missing persons’ story played up in Balochistan didn’t prove so tantalizing to evoke an international outcry, particularly when ground checks negated the stance of propagandists.

(The writer is a retired Brig, a defence analyst and a columnist)
asifharoonraja@gmail.com

http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/

Welcome news has come from across the Wahga border. After the slight escalation in tensions between India and Pakistan in the last two months, India has started the ‘visa-on-arrival’ facility for Pakistani senior citizens over 65 years of age from April 1. And, no, it is not an April Fool’s joke played by our next door neighbor. If anything was foolish, it was that the unfortunate killing of two Indian soldiers along the Line of Control in January had been allowed to create a delay in Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) amongst the two neighbors, whom direly need to bridge their differences for each other’s good.

From now, senior Pakistanis citizens of more than 65 years of age can receive ‘visa-on-arrival’ at Attari/Wagha checkpost for 45 days. This is a single entry visa. The facility itself was due to start from January 15 as agreed upon in September 2012. However, no decision has been take on the group tourist visa facility to citizens of both countries. These visas were supposed to be launched on March 15. Indian newspaper Hindustan Times cites “no visible forward movement in India-Pakistan bilateral relations” that led to the decision to grant the visa-on-arrival facility to Pakistani senior citizens. Whatever the reason may be, the facility must be replicated immediately by Pakistan, whom has more to gain from normalizing relations with India, that its larger neighbor.

Only last month, a diplomatic crisis was in the offering, as Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said that the killing of Indian soldiers in Kashmir had “cast a shadow on bilateral relations” and passed the gauntlet to Pakistan to create a conducive environment for the normalisation process to be taken forward. India put the conditions as “tangible progress in dismantling Pakistan’s terror infrastructure,” something Pakistan needs to do on its own regardless. The admission has come directly from the Pakistan Army chief himself, when General Kiyani declared that “internal terrorism was a greater danger to Pakistan than India.” Opening our eastern border does not promise the end of terrorism, or, the end of the lingering suspicion in the two countries, but what it does promise is that people-to-people contact shall help erode hostilities in the short and long term. Will India all set to become the next global superpower, in terms of both economic and military might, Pakistan cannot afford to be in perpetual conflict with its bigger neighbor. Rather the fruits of trade shall be the harvest of a new era of peace amongst separated brothers; and the future of outstanding issues such as Kashmir shall be on the diplomatic table. The freeze of bilateral ties since the border skirmishes must end and talks must resume. India has taken the first step, Pakistan must reciprocate.

http://www.pakistantoday.com.pk/editorials/

Indian Defence Minister A. K. Anthony has said, while addressing the Indian Army Commanders Conference in New Delhi, that the alliance between Pakistan and China is a danger to India for which it is ready. Mr Anthony’s outburst must be seen in the context of the illegal occupation by India, not Pakistan or China, of Kashmir. This occupation not only affects Pakistan, but also China, whose border demarcation difficulties in this area go back to imperial China and the British Raj. It is true that a shared frustration at Indian intransigence is one of the factors that have contributed to bringing Pakistan and China closer, but to say that this constitutes an alliance is to box at shadows. Mr Anthony may not specifically have referred to a recent Wikileaks release of a map showing Kashmir as divided in two haves, though he was the Indian Minister who said that this map did not mean India accepted the division. It is true that the map did not mean that it accepted the division; but it must fulfill the commitments it has made, such as accepting that it had a responsibility to the international community to accept its decision on a dispute it had itself taken there. And that solution consists in making arrangements to enable the UN to supervise a plebiscite in the Held Valley through which its people are to exercise their inherent right of self-determination. It is to avoid such a plebiscite that Mr Anthony is conjuring up the bogey of a China-Pakistan alliance.

It is worth noting that both the so-called China-Pakistan nexus, and the Kashmir issue, should show Mr Anthony and his fellow decision-makers in New Delhi that the edifice of lies India has created is crumbling, and that Indian lies are being exposed. The map revelation, though it came in a publication online of a 1970s archive of both State Department cables and intelligence reports, should be a reminder of atrocities by Indian occupation forces in Kashmir. Mr Anthony, who is the ultimate supervisor of these forces, did not mention them. To justify the importance given to India by the USA, it has to stress the alliance.

India should realise that its oppression of the Kashmiri people can no longer be maintained, and only allowing them to exercise their right of self-determination in a UN-supervised plebiscite will allow it not only to establish its credentials as a responsible member of the world community, but also enable it to become the sort of neighbour which does not see a conspiracy against it in every alliance of its neighbours.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...inions/columns

US embassy cables released by WikiLeaks had earlier last year jolted Pakistan’s political system by exposing what pledges our political leadership had been making to Washington while posturing exactly the opposite before general public. At that time it appeared that these politicians were wired to the US and they were seen offering one justification or the other to explain their position. And now the Times of India and Press Trust of India have reported that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had offered to share nuclear technology with Pakistan in a letter to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1974, when it had conducted a test, provided it created conditions of trust.

It is heartening to learn that acting as a world-class statesman, Bhutto replied with the remark, “Thanks, but no thanks”. He told Mrs Indira Gandhi that many assurances given by India in the past had regrettably remained not honoured, adding that testing the nuclear device was no different from detonation of a nuclear weapon. Bhutto was a man of vision and could realise that the world community would strongly react to Indian nuclear test and might impose some sort of sanctions. This is what exactly happened. Bhutto also had the vision to know that Pakistani scientists, when assigned the job, were capable enough of producing better results, a fact that the world acknowledges today, as it talks of the quality of our nuclear technology.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...inions/columns

Addressing the closed-door army commanders' conference, India's Defense Minister A.K. Antony said: "There is need for Indian armed forces to constantly develop their capabilities to achieve minimum credible deterrence against China". He promised all support to the armed forces for the necessary measures to tackle any emerging threats. India's concern over China's growing military might and strategic partnership with Pakistan is not new, as India considers both these countries impediment to her hegemonic designs in the region.

The Indians had expressed serious concern over Pakistan's handing over the administrative control of Gwadar Port, and feared that China might get access to the strategically important Persian Gulf and the Arabian Sea, and even extend its military clout to these waters by using this port as a naval base. Both Pakistan and China has made it clear that this port is commercial and would not be used for military purposes.

India should understand that it is within each and every nation's sovereign right to develop its ports and give their management and control to any country it deems appropriate.
Did India care about some regional countries' concerns and apprehensions over Indo-US Strategic Partnership, which they considered a threat to their security and strategic interests? Anyhow, Pakistan is not obliged to consider concerns of India or any other state for that matter, especially when India is not willing to resolve disputes including the core issue of Kashmir with Pakistan. India's intransigence is too well known, as it has border dispute with China. Like Pakistan and Nepal, Bangladesh has dispute with India over river waters, because India has chosen to use river waters as a lever to force other countries to acquiesce to it. It was because of India's intransigence that SAARC has remained a non-starter for decades and could not realize its potential. After signing civil-nuclear agreement with the US, India is on a shopping spree with more than $100 billion in hand, and entering into defence deals with developed countries. Nuclear Suppliers Group's countries are selling also nuclear-related materials and equipment to India.
In December 2009, India had intentionally leaked the information that it was working on a new doctrine and preparing for a possible `two-front war' with China and Pakistan. Reportedly, Indian Army was revising its five-year-old doctrine to effectively meet the challenges of war with China and Pakistan, deal with asymmetric and fourth-generation warfare, and enhance strategic reach and joint operations with IAF and Navy. Former Army chief general Kapoor had then said: "The armed forces have to substantially enhance their strategic reach and out-of-area capabilities to protect India's geo-political interests stretching from Persian Gulf to Malacca Strait". This amply proves India's designs. Disregarding the needs of 400 millions people living below the poverty line, Indian government is diverting a very large part of its resources to become a regional and world power. If India could resolve its disputes with its neighbors, and instead of forging strategic relations with the US and the West it focuses on strong relations with its neighbors, the stage can be set for establishing Asian Union on the pattern of EU.

In India, no matter who is at the helm of affairs, policy of intimidating its neighbors, interference in their internal affairs and extending hegemony over them continues. According to Hindu daily's recent report, a war of words has erupted between Sri Lanka and India after New Delhi sought a human rights probe into the last 100 days of the island nation's 2009 military campaign against Tamil separatists, and Colombo accused its neighbor of actually starting the ethnic standoff in the 1980s by sowing terrorism in Jaffna. During military campaign, Manmohan Singh had expressed concerns about Tamils in Sri Lankia, and asked the Sri Lankan government to ensure uninterrupted relief supplies to internally displaced persons. He had also reiterated that there was no military solution to the conflict, and urged the President to start a political process for a peacefully negotiated political settlement with them.

Tamil-Nado government in Indian province might have expressed concern over displacement of Tamils in Sri Lanka in the wake of war between LTTE and Sri Lanka and exerted pressure on its coalition partners in the central government to take up the matter with Sri Lankan government. But it is tantamount to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. In the past, during crisis in Nepal Indian government and human rights activists had demanded of the SAARC members to dissuade former king from pursuing the Maoist insurgency, though earlier India had fueled the conflict by clandestinely supporting Maoists. A renowned Delhi-based human rights activist and a columnist Praful Bidwai in his article "SAARC and the Nepal coup" had then stated: "The Maoists use questionable, indeed, deplorable methods but they are not terrorists. All South Asian governments must encourage reconciliation through a dialogue with the opposition including the Maoists."

Such human rights activists should be asked as to why they do not tell India that Kashmiris are not terrorists, and they want implementation of the right of self-determination, which has been acknowledged by the United Nations Security Council. The Communist Party of India (Maoist) in their December 2004 meeting had observed: "In the light of the growing civil war in the country (India), the United Progressive Alliance government, headed by Dr. Manmohan Singh has been exhibiting its expansionist fangs against the people of Nepal right from the day it came to power, and turn Nepal as another Vassal of India similar to Bhutan". These facts are well documented and published in the international press, and expose Indian leadership's hegemonic designs. India continues with its intransigence and is not inclined to resolve disputes with its neighbors, and continues intimidating its neighbors through various means such as extending support to rebels or the oppositions of member countries of the SAARC. This gross interference in the SAARC countries is the reason that the organization has remained non-starter.

In India, no matter who is at the helm of affairs, policy of intimidating its neighbors, interference in their internal affairs and extending hegemony over them continues. According to Hindu daily's recent report, a war of words has erupted between Sri Lanka and India after New Delhi sought a human rights probe into the last 100 days of the island nation's 2009 military campaign against Tamil separatists, and Colombo accused its neighbor of actually starting the ethnic standoff in the 1980s by sowing terrorism in Jaffna. During military campaign, Manmohan Singh had expressed concerns about Tamils in Sri Lankia, and asked the Sri Lankan government to ensure uninterrupted relief supplies to internally displaced persons. He had also reiterated that there was no military solution to the conflict, and urged the President to start a political process for a peacefully negotiated political settlement with them. Tamil-Nado government in Indian province might have expressed concern over displacement of Tamils in Sri Lanka in the wake of war between LTTE and Sri Lanka and exerted pressure on its coalition partners in the central government to take up the matter with Sri Lankan government. But it is tantamount to interfering in the internal affairs of a sovereign country. In the past, during crisis in Nepal Indian government and human rights activists had demanded of the SAARC members to dissuade former king from pursuing the Maoist insurgency, though earlier India had fueled the conflict by clandestinely supporting Maoists.


http://www.thefrontierpost.com/category/40/

April 16, 2013


By levelling the charges that Pakistan is a danger to India and is responsible for covert warfare in the Held Valley, Indian Defence Minister A. K. Antony is parroting just what he and others of his calibre have been ‘programmed’ to say. And as usual, he turned to venting frustration over China’s control of Gwadar port, something that throws into relief Indian apprehension at growing Pak-China friendship.

This venom spitting is part and parcel of New Delhi’s routine meant to instil hatred in the minds of its public that Pakistan is a ‘permanent’ enemy, hatred which keeps the Indian war machine well oiled and the sordid games of RAW and the Indian extremists political classes. He is also forgetting the fact that what he is referring to as the covert warfare is actually the people’s expression of the will to exercise their right of self-determination granted to them by the UN to decide their fate. And that right was given because it was none other than Pundit Nehru who took the matter to the UN in order to settle the unfinished agenda of the departing Britain. But he later reneged on his own commitment and since then Indian leaders have been relying on the naked use of force to tame and subdue the people and we have been hearing phraseology such as ‘integral part’. The peace that the Indians are so desperately keen to achieve is linked to a just and quick settlement of the Kashmir issue.

http://www.nation.com.pk/pakistan-ne...ons/editorials

A NEIGHBOUR in Delhi, who happens to be a Narendra Modi devotee, asked me which leader Pakistanis would want as India’s next prime minister.

I’m no clairvoyant, I told the elderly gentleman from Punjab. There are Pakistanis and Pakistanis. The ones I know better — and they are mostly in Karachi, and a few in Lahore — wouldn’t mind seeing Manmohan Singh come back.

A fresh mandate (who knows) could spur Dr Singh to confront his obstructive bureaucracy and a self-regarding military to build durable bridges with Pakistan. It is another matter that his neo-liberal economic policies have brought wrack and ruin to millions of impoverished Indians.

Since my neighbour may have been seeking insights into the Pakistan Army’s mind, which many Indians regard as Pakistan’s God-given saviour (to the chagrin of most Pakistanis I know), I said that particular institution would heartily love to see Mr Modi as the new Indian prime minister.

I said India-baiters in Pakistan, led by its army, could not dream of a more effective and inexpensive way to harm India grievously, possibly even more fatally than the thousand cuts they had threatened to inflict through surrogates in Kashmir and elsewhere.

Pakistan only has to bet on a total sway of religious fanaticism in India, which buoys Mr Modi. India’s fascism has flourished on a successful campaign of religious revivalism that was set in motion even before 1947 by the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh with generous help from Muslim leaders, though everyone from the left to the right was complicit in its growth.

It was the Indian communists who shored up governments in which the Hindu right gained, usually at the left’s expense. Communists promoted Hindu festivals such as Durga Puja in West Bengal as a cultural facet of a liberal ethos, which it claimed to advance. It was a far cry from the left’s initial promise of excluding religion from state patronage.

In Kerala in 1957, for example, an authoritarian Congress under Indira Gandhi evicted the communists from power when they sought to limit the intervention of the church in the state’s educational curriculum. Times have changed, so has the left, perhaps. Motifs it deemed to be benignly cultural have been converted into a political asset by the right.

The new assertive Indian middle class is not just the Pakistan Army’s close ally, it also elevates India’s military to the status of the holiest of holy cows. In a perverse way this is what the Pakistan establishment would prefer. The more the urban classes growl at Pakistan the more they help the armies on both sides to become assertive vis-à-vis their civilian rulers.

Both militaries demand a greater role in framing policy while seeking untenable budgets. The new urban Indian is no longer concerned that over 70 per cent of his countrymen are robbed of their future by the elite’s consumerist obsession with security.

It is Navratri these days, a nine-day Hindu equivalent of Lent, or Ramazan. Just as khuda hafiz in Pakistan became Allah hafiz under Zia’s puritanism, in India the colloquial Ram-Ram turned into Jai Shri Ram. And Navratri has turned into Navratra in the Hindi belt, evidently to check forbidding regional challenges.

The gyms in Delhi are mostly empty as are the restaurants in Navratri. I’d thought that gym-users who were mostly gossiping about stock markets, cricket-politics and movie stars in the daily routine of pumping iron would be averse to the mumbo-jumbo of religious rituals.

But times have evidently changed. The seeds perhaps go back to the 1980s when colour TV brought mythological serials like Ramayana and Mahabharata to the urban classes, and subsequently to the rural masses. The streets were empty when the serials were on. The insidious religious offshoot took time to be noticed.

Much of urban India today seems committed to emulate post-Zia Pakistan when Islamisation was planted firmly in an otherwise multicultural country. In India too, Hindu, Muslim and Sikh identities are stronger than ever before.

An Indian relative who visited his cousins in Karachi during the Zia era came back with the following observation. “Lovely people, very hospitable, lots of money and imported cars. But there are far too many Muslims there.” It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that there are far too many Modi-fied Hindus in India today, overwhelmingly so in the influential electronic media, far more than Nehru or Gandhi could have provisioned for.

The hatred the Modi-loving middle class nurtures is not only towards Muslims. There are strong signs of other filters of prejudice. Dalits and tribespeople were commandeered as the sword arm of Hindutva in the Gujarat experiment against Muslims in 2002.

They have to be won over elsewhere for the Hindutva project to succeed. Militant and secular Dalit or tribal movements are wary of encroachment on their natural resources by state-backed corporate houses, which are spearheaded by religious hordes. They will test Modi’s alliance with the business captains against his revivalist moorings.

If there was one Indian leader Pakistan’s army feared and hated, it was Indira Gandhi. She wrecked their country in 1971 and turned the global issue of Kashmir into a bilateral discussion with Islamabad.

However, I believe she mocked Pakistan even more by adding two clauses in the preamble of India’s constitution four years after the Bangladesh war. She added ‘secular’ and ‘socialist’ to define the Indian Republic, the opposite of where Pakistan was headed. Now Pakistan can count on Modi to dismantle the preamble no matter how spurious it already looks against today’s free-market reality.

A combination of civilian and military rulers helped to convert Pakistan into a religious state. Fire-breathing Modi, admired by the military, is the best candidate to blow India’s floundering Nehruvian tryst to rubble. And the West should be there to applaud, as it once did for Pakistan.

The writer is Dawn’s correspondent in Delhi.

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