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COVER STORY: PAKISTAN
Candle In The Wagah Wind
Track II, talking shop plus
jet lag, has grown so much in size that it has become an industry of self-important
peaceniks
By S. Prasannarajan
The flowers are
too fresh to be from Jhelum. The men are not. The weariness of distance
and the heat and dust of the Delhi summer have made these men in flowing
kurta pyjamas tired travellers of peace. The air conditioner in a small
visitor's room at 5 Janpath seems to be the only thing that keeps them
from withering away, as if the fragility of peace has migrated to its
messengers. And you are with them courtesy I.K. Gujral, and they are here
courtesy I.K. Gujral. "Please wait, some people are coming from Jhelum.
They have set up a library in my name. Please meet them," the former
prime minister had called you back as you were leaving his residence after
enlightening yourself from an hour-long monologue on, well, how the humanism
of Inder Kumar Gujral longs for eternal harmony with Pakistan.
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IN MEMORY: Candlelight and prayers for peace at the Wagah border
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Now in Gujral's official residence, peace rhymes
with Punjab. "We are here to promote Punjabi brotherhood, and I.K.
Gujral is the Most Important Punjabi," says the leader of the three-man
team from Jhelum, M. Yusuf Raza, whose overprinted business card describes
him as secretary-general, Saanjh Vichaar (International Literary Society),
and organiser, Indo-Pak Public Relations Organisation, VPO Dhanyala, Jhelum,
Punjab, Pakistan. This is his third visit to India. The first was in 1998,
when Gujral was the prime minister, and it was on an ICCR invitation,
and it was also the year he set up the Shri I.K. Gujral Library in Jhelum,
the former prime minister's birthplace. The following year he crossed
the Wagah border on foot.
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| PUNJAB CONNECTION: Their shared
background helped Gujral and Sharif get along well
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Each visit has been a metaphorical reduction
of distance between Jhelum and Delhi. "This time we are the special
guests of Gujral. We want to invite him to lead a delegation of 300 Punjabi
personalities from all over the world to Jhelum. See, there is a Punjab,
here is a Punjab, and a Punjabi brotherhood that breaches the border is
the best way to achieve peace." That is why he saw so much hope when
both Pakistan and India had Punjabi prime ministers. Is there any hope
today? For Raza, there is, and it is the Punjabi intellectual. "In
the age of globalisation, non-official diplomacy is more effective."
The flowers in his friend's hand nod in approval.
Raza is a minor member of the vast peace industry
known as Track II, the alternative diplomacy. It is a grand vision, or
illusion, unleashed by men and women-academics, ex-bureaucrats, social
activists, superannuated politicians, retired generals and journalists-who
would like to see the border of hate and history between India and Pakistan
replaced by the candlelight of love and forgiveness, the geographical
division repudiated by subcontinental brotherhood, a historical error
corrected by collective nostalgia, political small mindedness mocked by
popular large heartedness. Track II-ism, talking shop plus jet lag, has
grown so much in size that it has become a nightmare of acronyms-CASAC,
IPSIP, DPG, HPD, IPNI, WIPSA, etc-and each one has its own peace mantra.
Indo-Pak bhai bhai against Indo-Pak ha ha ha.
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This
grand illusion wants India and Pakistan to undo hate and history
by forming a subcontinental brotherhood.
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Chanting it now is Gujral, the highest dove in
what the Pakistani journalist Khaled Ahmed calls "the ornithology"
of the Indo-Pak theme, for whom Track II is an extension of the Track
I he once practised as prime minister. As prime minister, he "worked
out a doctrine that was a new idea of peace and cooperation in south Asia.
And I had four productive meetings with Nawaz Sharif. To some extent Vajpayee
has carried forward that initiative, the Lahore trip being the best example."
But Citizen Gujral continues to be, in his own admission, prime minister
Gujral's hyperactive afterlife, perhaps as active as a Track II veteran,
invariably a man of grey gravitas, can afford to be: "Track II is
a movement. The power of the citizen will triumph."
The most ambitious Gujral-specific movement
is called Citizens' Commission for South Asia, which itself is a child
of Coalition for Action on South Asian Cooperation (CASAC), choreographed
by the German foundation Friedrich Ebert Stiftung. casac, says the brochure,
is a recognition of a "South Asian Society reflecting rich and complex
plurality of cultural and religious traditions and being at the same time
an heir to a profound common civilisational continuum spanning over 6,000
years". A brave new south Asian community, like the European Community,
and that happens to be Citizen G's vision too: "The ultimate Kashmir
solution can be achieved only through SAARC and India should take the
lead." Though people like Raza believe that the Most Important Punjabi
like Gujral should take the lead-the Jhelum formula. For the current chairman
of India-Pakistan Friendship Society, founded in 1987, with a current
membership of 100, and engaged in crossborder brotherhood activities,
that must be a natural calling.
No, it is an ancestral calling. That is Track
II as memorial service. Or the nostalgia division of the Track II industry.
"There is a great humanism behind Track II." Gujral, the native
of Jhelum, along with his mother, sister and wife, crossed Partition in
a steamer and it took 10 days to reach the Okha, Saurashtra port. "And
it took another six days to reach Delhi. There was a curfew in Delhi and
we spent the first night at the railway station. You know, for seven years
we lived in a one-room flat. Those memories make me humane." Make
Track II the humanism of Inder Kumar Gujral.
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