President Asif Ali Zardari is absolutely right when he says, ‘India has never been a threat to Pakistan’. Even logic does not support the notion that India had not accepted the participation of the Subcontinent wholeheartedly and wants to end our existence. Had it been so, Pakistan would not have come into being; the Cabinet Mission Plan, to keep India united, and its rejection first by the Indian National Congress, reveals it all. Our experiences with the Indian leadership tell much more.
The Indian leaders reached a consensus decision 62 years ago to solve a complex social equation of a large minority and a large majority by dividing India into two countries, India and Pakistan. Soon after, Mahatma Gandhi went on hunger strike. His purpose was to force the Indian government into releasing fast the share of Pakistan from the wealth pool of united India. He succeeded in his mission and saved Pakistan from a probable economic crisis. In turn, he lost his life at the hands of a fanatic, who thought Mahatma was too much pro-Pakistan.
Without going into the details of various wars and clashes, who started them and why, and how Kashmir problem originated, one thing is certain that Pakistan’s Junagadh and Hyderabad connection was understood, and rightly so, by the worried Indians as an attempt to balkanise India. Notwithstanding that Pundit Nehru sought ceasefire in Kashmir through the UN. If the war over Kashmir had continued, resource short Pakistan would have suffered further geographical losses. Nehru also entered into an agreement with Liaquat Ali on the question of refugees. He had realised that the additional burden of 10 or 20 million refugees would cripple the newborn state even before it starts walking. He signed one more agreement, the Indus Basin Treaty, in the early sixties with Ayub Khan. The treaty permanently secured water, the lifeline, for Pakistan.
Lal Bahadur Shastri and Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Declaration after the war of 1965, in which though there was no apparent winner, India had occupied such places, which could be rightly called the neck of Pakistan, but through the Declaration, Pakistan got its lost positions back. The war history does not have many such examples where the stronger party had so graciously accommodated the weaker one. Indira Gandhi and Z A Bhutto signed the Simla Agreement, after Pakistan was defeated in the war of 1971. The agreement is yet another unique example where the defeated party got a desired deal. No article of the said agreement reflects that it is an agreement between a humbled and a victorious party. In 1999 General Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure was not allowed to extend to other borders by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee. What better could we expect at that agonizing time?
Performance of the Indian leadership reveals that they were what politicians should be — wise. Had they been otherwise, India would not have been what it is today. My fellow nationals may not believe it, but the reality is that India is not only the largest democracy; it is also the most charming society in the world due to its almost infinite diversities.
India deserves admiration and not the terrorist attacks. The question who were the terrorists would remain unanswered, unless India comes out into the open with the proof. That is the moral aspect of it, where India stands so far on a puzzling wicket. Pakistan too has a weak side of its own. The questions are: Why were so many militant organisations working so openly in Pakistan and who allowed their emergence: Whether or not they are involved in the attack that is a subsequent question; the primary question is what good they have done to Pakistan, to others, or even to their own selves? Have not thousands of youth lost their lives under their patronage?
The cost of division was socially very high. The well-established societies, from Peshawar to Calcutta, and Delhi to Karachi, were disturbed, and at many places destroyed. Almost all the educated and middle-income Indian Muslims migrated to Pakistan leaving behind their poor and illiterate brothers to survive in an extremely competitive environment. The Punjabis from both sides passed through terrible moments. About a million Punjabi Muslims, Sikhs and Hindus lost their lives in riots. Next to suffer were the Kashmiris, who became victim of the Instrument of Accession, drafted jointly by the Congress and Muslim League, which formed the basis for Pakistan’s Junagadh and Hyderabad connection. The connection created a trust gulf that is just widening. Only two among our mainstream leaders tried sincerely to bridge the gulf, Benazir Bhutto during her first term as Prime Minister, and now Asif Ali Zardari as President of Pakistan. Benazir was immediately declared ‘security risk’, what happens to Zardari will determine what happens to an ever-turbulent Pakistan.
The sufferings of the Indian Muslims will not end until they get modern education to become competitive. Presently a large part of them prefer madrassa education, and many align themselves with Iqbal’s poetical concepts of Ummah (Muslim nationhood). The Kashmiris of Valley have not settled as yet, and they will continue to remain so till they realise that the reversal of history would create much bigger problems than the ones we presently have. The destiny of the Indian Muslims seems so far to be no different from that of the Pakistanis.
In Pakistan most of the Urdu-speaking Muhajirs have settled in Karachi. The Muslim East Punjabis moved en bloc to the West Punjab. The elites of these two communities and of the original Lahoris make up our establishment. They are special breed, liberal in actions but religious in political thoughts. It is they who have been administering Pakistan since its inception. It is they who gave Objectives Resolution that binds lawmakers to follow Shariah (Islamic Law). It is they who made the existing foreign policies. It is they who have converted mosques into madrissas with the support of the Americans and Arabs. The development that has dented their togetherness to some extent and brought into existence new alliances relates to a tussle over the economy of Pakistan; which place should have most of it, Karachi or Lahore. President Zardari acting wisely has managed to keep these two places calm, but what is bothering him is external front –India-Pakistan relations, which for improvement demand a 180 degree shift in the existing policies.
After the partition, India treading a socialist democratic course abolished feudalism and tribalism, but failed on two accounts; it could not end the caste system, nor did it utilise its manufacturing potential fully to improve the lives of a large section of its poor. The Pakistani administrators kept feudalism and tribalism intact and did not turn to the required industrialisation and that caused lot of miseries to most Pakistanis, particularly to those who were residing here before the partition, the Pukhtoon, Baloch, Sindhis and local Punjabis. Pakistan, too, has evolved a caste system of its own that is more terrible in some respects than that of its neighbour.
The terrorist attacks on Mumbai are a crime against humanity. Mere condemnation will not bring solace to the affected and the concerned. The terrorists could be from within as some people in Pakistan think, but most likely they are from without. Is it not a historical fact that the international players have been with the help of their local collaborators, on one pretext or the other, keeping our region turbulent? Time will, however, expose all those who were involved. Meanwhile, the leadership of Pakistan and India should continue with their mission of bringing peace in the region. Not only that they should also work for the betterment of those who are victims of history and partition.
If present crisis escalates and peace efforts fail, the resulting situation would unsettle even the beneficiaries of the partition.India and Pakistan, after the great divide, have not become socially different. Separation is not a unique phenomenon. In families brothers separate, in the world, peoples from the same origin separate. Examples of the Americans, Australians and British, are proof of that. The elders of India, Mahatma Gandhi, Quaid-e-Azam and Nehru wanted to see the two separated states, living with stability and in friendship. The people of India and Pakistan should support their leaders in their endeavours to fulfil the vision of our elders.
