17dec

Wednesday 18-25 December , 2014
CONTD.
22
Talking with Pakistanis
much of a policy. Pakistan can tus quo power that would like to
deny our shared history but India be left alone to concentrate on its
cannot change its geography. Pakistan
economic development; Indians
(Contd from page 6) Something
similar could be said about India
and Pakistan. Straightforward disagreements
between two states
can be resolved through dialogue
and compromise. But how can that
work when Pakistan's abiding hostility
towards India is rooted in fundamental
insecurity about its national
identity as the "not-India" for
the sub-continent's Muslims, and
even worse, driven by the self-interest
of a rapacious military which
commands a greater share of the
national GDP than the military of
any other country in the world, and
needs this hostility to justify its
power and privileges
The visit of the Pakistani MNAs
(as their Members of Parliament
are called) did not meet with universal
approbation among those
who became aware of their presence
in New Delhi. For there are
not many takers in the Indian political
space right now for pursuing
dialogue with a country whose military
intelligence (or elements
thereof) almost certainly have had
a hand in every terror attack on Indian
begun to take on the challenge of
fighting some terrorist groups - not
the ones lovingly nurtured by the
ISI to assault India, but the ones
who have escaped GHQ
Rawalpindi's control and turned on
Pakistan's own military institutions.
But the unpalatable fact remains
that what Pakistan is suffering from
today is the direct result of a deliberate
policy of inciting, financing,
training, equipping militants and
jihadis over 20 years as an instrument
of state policy. As Dr. Frankenstein
discovered when he built
his monster, it is impossible to
control the monster once you've
created it.
Attempts by glibly sophisticated
Pakistani spokesmen to
portray themselves as fellow victims
of terror - indeed, to go so far
as to compare the number of
deaths suffered by Pakistan in its
war against terrorism on its own
soil with those inflicted upon India
- seek to obscure the fundamental
difference between the two situations.
Pakistanis are not suffering
death and destruction from terror-
The moment the Pakistani establishment
genuinely disavows
the nurturing and deployment of
terror as an instrument of state
policy, and concludes that it faces
the same enemy as India and
should make common cause with
it to stamp out the scourge, is the
moment that a genuine prospect
of peace will dawn on the subcontinent.
Such a sentiment is, alas,
far from even glimmering on the
horizon.
So should New Delhi resume
talks with the government in
Islamabad Track-II is all very well,
but the days of sari-shawl exchanges
have been supplanted by
a frigid silence. Talking again before
there has been any significant
progress in Pakistan bringing the
perpetrators of 26/11 to book,
many Indians feel, would mean
surrendering to Pakistani intransigence.
Is there any point talking
to people whose territory and institutions
are being used to attack
and kill Indians
And yet it is also clear that "not
talking" to any Pakistanis is not
is next door and can no
more be ignored than a thorn
pierced into India's side.
India's refusal to talk after 26/
11 worked for a while as a source
of pressure on Pakistan. It contributed,
together with Western (especially
American) diplomatic
efforts, to some of Islamabad's
initial co-operation, including
the arrest of Lashkar-e-Toiba operative
Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi
and six of his co-conspirators.
But it has long passed its useby
date. The refusal to resume
dialogue has not just stopped producing
any fresh results; the only
argument that justifies it - that it is
a source of leverage - gives some
in India the illusion of influence over
events that New Delhi does not in
fact possess.
Instead, it's ironically India - the
victims of 26/11 and other examples
of Pakistani malfeasance
- who have come to seem intransigent
and unaccommodating. The
transcendent reality of life on the
subcontinent is that it has always
been India that wishes to live in
peace. India is, at bottom, a sta-
see Pakistan as the troublemaker,
needling and bleeding its neighbour
in an effort to change the power
balance and wrest control of a part
of Indian territory (Kashmir). Refusing
to talk doesn't change any of
that, but it brought India no rewards
and in fact imposed a cost. When
Pakistan was allowed to sound reasonable
and conciliatory while India
seemed truculent and unreasonable,
New Delhi's international
image as a constructive force for
peace took a beating.
To say that we will not talk
as long as there is terror is essentially
to give the terrorists a
veto over our own diplomatic
choices. For talking can achieve
constructive results. It can identify
and narrow the differences
between our two countries on
those issues that can be dealt
with, while keeping the spirit of
dialogue (and implicitly of compromise)
alive.
So yes, by all means, let us
talk to Pakistan and Pakistanis on
every "Track" available. It is what
we say when we talk that will make
all the difference.
soil, even while its government ists trained in India. No one trav-
professes peace. Few in the government
eled from India to attack the Marriott Friendship With Russia Comforts, Even if it Doesn't Electrify
are prepared to accept Hotel in Islamabad or the
(Contd from page 6) thanks to ence in Ukraine is certainly a ness-to-business ties are a fragile
link in the bilateral relationship,
that we are obliged to pursue normal
relations with a Pakistan that stanis sailed to Mumbai to wreak
base at Mehran, whereas Paki-
Western sanctions. India, on the cause for concern here, as is the
other hand, is a country everyone
seems anxious to embrace, ments in Kiev, strategic chal-
weakest.
intransigence of hardline ele-
and people-to people relations the
incubates terror while the country's mayhem on 26/11 and crossed the
civilian government remains either border to attack Uri last month.
especially given the excitement lenges in South Asia, West Asia, Unless Moscow and New
unable or unwilling to curb the socalled
non-state actors who roam cer in its own midst, but a cancer
Pakistan has to cauterize a can-
Modi has triggered among international
investors.
reinforced the importance of Rus-
ways of marrying India's human
the wider Asia-Pacific region have Delhi are able to find innovative
freely preaching hatred. Hafiz that was implanted by itself and
What was left unsaid in the sia for India.
capital endowments with Russia's
Saeed's recent rally where he its own institutions. And this will
run-up to Thursday's meeting was India and Russia will continue comparative advantage in the
preached jihad against India to 5 only happen if our neighbours eliminate
the warped thinking, amongst
the Western hope that India to provide political comfort to one fields of mathematics, science
lakh deliriously bloodthirsty fanatics
could not have taken place with-
powerful elements in Islamabad,
would try and put some strategic another on major global issues and engineering, the West will
distance between itself and Russia.
The Indian government may excitement in the economic pensive -- source of technology.
but is there scope for genuine remain a more exciting -- if exout
government support. And we that a terrorist who sets off a bomb
are supposed to be nice to such a at the Marriott in Islamabad is a
have had misgivings over Crimea's sphere Modi and Putin are trying
to push cooperation in the field operation remain, but these will
Defence, nuclear and space co-
government, some Indians ask incredulously.
off a bomb at the Taj in Mumbai is
bad terrorist whereas one who sets
secession from Ukraine but has
baulked from airing these publicly.
but Russia is too far for there to sian technologies in these fields
of diamonds and hydrocarbons only be relevant so long as Rus-
It is true that the Pakistani a good one.
Army, however, selectively, has
And while Moscow's interfer-
be any viable pipeline link. Busi-
are.
Nuclear Deal with Russia is No Reason to Celebrate
naval
(Contd from page 4) Tapping all these
sources might provide such huge surpluses
over and above India's immediate
needs as to make it possible to extend
the pipeline right across India to southwest
China through Myanmar. We would
earn far higher transit fees from any such
arrangements than we might have to pay
out to get west Asian and central Asian
gas into India.
To promote this as a pan-Asian
project, we should extend TAPI to send
out tentacles to Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan
and Russia itself - for the Caspian petroleum-rich
port town of Astrakhan lies in
the Russian Federation. If Astrakhan were
to be a key hub of the proposed Asian
Gas Grid, the other Central Asian Republics
might have the greater confidence to
become part of this revolutionary new network.
As far as north Asia is concerned,
while a pipeline all the way from Siberia
or Sakhalin to India might not at present
be technically feasible, swap arrangements
might be possible between India
and Korea, as well as India and Japan, to
supply them gas from our contracted lots
in north Asia (particularly Sakhalin) in
exchange for our getting the LNG they
have contracted from Indonesia and possibly
Australia. To do all this requires,
however, a revival of the Nehruvian vision
that led to India convening the Asian Relations
Conference under Jawaharlal
Nehru in March 1947 even before we were
wholly independent. Asia is the continent
that led the world in the progress of human
civilization from the earliest recorded
times till the onset of European colonialism
some 300 years ago. But Asia remains
the most divided continent despite
the Nehruvian initiative of 1947. That is
because, in spite of progressively shaking
off the colonial yoke, Asia has been
the playground of Great Power rivalry in
the second half of the 20th century and
into the 21st.
This must change. We should take
note from the European experience of
having first set up the European Coal and
Steel Community before moving to the
European Common Market, the European
Community and now the European Union.
An Asian Union might be a century or more
away but we can move towards that goal
by establishing an Asian Gas Grid as the
first step towards an Asian Oil and Gas
Community that might over time then
evolve into an Asian Union. But how can
an India narrowly wedded to Hindutva and
a Hindu Rashtra, and controlled by the
likes of Sakshi Maharaj and Sadhvi
Jyoti, even begin to have the all-encompassing
vision that guided the
Father of our Foreign Policy No wonder
Modi prefers to limit himself to buying
nuclear reactors that no one else wants.