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VIEWPOINT: FIFTH COLUMN
Learning To Talk
The dialogue with Pakistan will yield results only
if both sides have open minds
By Tavleen Singh
 In
his letter inviting General Pervez Musharraf for talks last week, the
prime minister wrote, "Our common enemy is poverty. For the welfare
of our peoples, there is no other recourse but a pursuit of the path of
reconciliation." True. Despite our vaunted nuclear capabilities and
our vainglory, India and Pakistan are among the few countries left in
the world in which the average citizen still has no access to the most
basic requirements of modern life: clean water, education, reliable supply
of electricity, roads, public transport and healthcare. The vast majority
of Indians and Pakistanis do without these things because we spend more
on soldiers than on doctors, more on bombs and guns than schools and roads.
The result in both countries is a standard of living so abysmal that it
is not considered a standard of living outside south Asia.
The main reason for our backwardness and our
skewed priorities is the dispute over Kashmir and it is reassuring that
the prime minister considered this worth mentioning in his letter. Equally
reassuring was that he has finally decided talking to Pakistan is necessary
even if the main interlocutor for the other side is a military dictator,
even if he continues to train and export terrorists. Having said that,
is there anything else to cheer about? A difficult question to answer
because we do not know yet if either India or Pakistan really wants to
talk or simply go through the motions of doing so.
We have gone through the motions many times
before. Amid much fanfare and excitement our representatives meet in Islamabad
or Delhi and sit across tables looking self-important and purposeful.
To show how secular we are, our lot usually throws in a few pieces of
bad Urdu poetry while their lot responds with similar tawdry verse. Then
they return home empty handed and sullen. This has become a predictable
pattern.
 Our
attempts at dialogue usually fail because India refuses to discuss Kashmir-we
consider it a domestic problem-while Pakistan insists that unless we talk
about Kashmir it is not worth talking. It is for Pakistan, as Musharraf
often repeats, the core issue. So are things going to be different this
time? They could be if the A.B. Vajpayee Government sets itself a clear
agenda that unambiguously states what we can do and what we cannot do
about Kashmir. We cannot, for instance, consider redrawing borders and
we need to make this absolutely clear. No more partitions of India and
no plebiscite. Can we, though, consider a greater degree of autonomy for
Kashmir and a softer border between its two halves? Can we consider starting
a peace process that seeks to work towards this?
So far we have not had a single clear idea from
the Vajpayee Government on Kashmir or anything resembling a policy. Perhaps,
with the RSS breathing down his neck at every step, it is hard for the
prime minister to say or do anything that might be seen by Hindutva hawks
as a conciliatory move. Yet, because he could not just let Kashmir burn
he had to make some moves. So we have in the past couple of years stumbled
from one decision to the other without knowing which road we were travelling
down or why. If this is going to happen with the Pakistan dialogue then
we may as well just sit back and enjoy the bad Urdu couplets and the fake
bonhomie.
The Vajpayee Government is not entirely to blame.
Dealing with Pakistan has not been easy. The Lahore bus trip was a sincere
attempt at friendship and the general gave us Kargil. After that he has
whined on about being ready to talk to us anywhere at any time and at
any place without understanding that we saw no reason to talk to him.
In the words of a senior South Block bureaucrat, "We wanted them
to stew a little. Why should we talk to them anyway?"
Clearly, it is now our view that the general
has stewed enough. But what can he talk to us about? If he is going to
stick to the Pakistani position of a referendum under those ancient UN
resolutions, which even the UN secretary-general has described as unenforceable,
then there is nothing to talk about. If he continues to deny that it is
Pakistani terrorists who are killing innocent people on our side of the
border then again we face a dialogue of the deaf. If, on the other hand,
he is prepared to consider peace without Kashmir being handed to him like
some trophy, then there is a possibility of a dialogue.
Much as we hate military dictators we know that
the general is in a better position to talk about Kashmir than a democratically
elected prime minister would be because foreign policy remains the territory
of the military in Pakistan. So let's hope we can really talk to the general
and that all future wars in the south Asia will be against "our common
enemy"-poverty.
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