Place: Royal Society of Arts, London; Time: two sun-blanched days in the last week of June; Occasion: a gathering of political, corporate, cultural and opinion leaders from India and Pakistan convened by India's famous media group, Tehelka; Purpose: designing a new future for the two countries.

This largely attended "summit", as it was dubbed by the organisers was a notable departure from the usual forums in which the past, present and future inter-state relations in the sub-continent are discussed and may well pioneer similar exchanges on its own soil in the days to come. It was not a conference where academic papers are presented; nor was it remotely similar to the endless track- two meetings in which former generals and diplomats of India and Pakistan explore for ever possible openings in the hard declaratory positions of two traditional national security states.

The ambiance in London reflected the success of an imaginative experiment in which novelists such as Pakistan's Kamila Shamsie and Mohammad Hanif, visual artists and media celebrities carried as much, if not greater weight as politicians such as Jaswant Singh, Sachin Pilot and Imran Khan. Challenged to initiate their conversation with fellow panellists and an interactive and informed audience in seven minutes apiece, the speakers had to come up with a forthright version of what they thought were the main obstacles and what strategies would remove the road blocks to a new era of peace and cooperation in South Asia.

Political statements - the keynote opening address by India's former minister for finance and foreign affairs Jaswant Singh, Asif Zardari's speech read out in absentia and Nawaz Sharif's unedited video address - agreed that entering at such a new era was not only possible but had become a policy imperative. Zardari went further than any other interlocutor at the "summit" to indicate accommodation on Kashmir by talking of its future autonomous status without too many qualifying clauses. The Indian side of Kashmir was represented by Farooq Abdullah and Mehbooba Mufti. The Pakistani participants could not but note that their thoughts were not trained solely on Pakistani obstructionism but were more pointedly focused on the difficulties the Indian decision-ma kers continue to face in defining autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir.

What set the discussions apart were the "events" christened as inherited poisons, creating and eroding stereotypes in art and cinema and the role of religion. Sub-continental misperceptions and misrepresentations of the "other" have run a complex course and do not lend themselves to glib formulations. There have been long periods of amity in the past though we are, at present, witnessing the culminating phase in several decades of divergence and alienation.

The Indian independence movement got polarised because it was accompanied by strong Islamic and Hindu religious revivalist movements that seeped into political thought. The result was different trajectories, one of which led to the creation of the separate state of Pakistan. An ethnic and linguistic variant of the same separatism ensures the proud statehood of Bangladesh. In the post-colonial era, failure to solve disputes left behind by a hasty partition led to a deliberate accentuation of negative images for purposes of hostile mobilisation of peoples. This is exactly what most participants in the London moot were trying to reverse. Designing a better future clearly means a chart that would enable the three sovereign sub-continental states to carve out a much larger space to work together to resolve issues that impinge upon the lives of more than a billion people.

Divisive role

The divisive role of religion has often been exaggerated especially in much of the biased historiography in the post-1947 India and Pakistan. In reality, most of the Muslim rulers of India had no proselytising zeal and their frequent military campaigns were not driven by religious passions. More often the barrier was incomprehension between followers of a Semitic monotheistic religion with a well defined core of doctrines and those of an inclusive flexible system of beliefs and practices that allowed them to be good Hindus in a hundred different ways. This incomprehension was effectively reduced by syncretism attempted by Muslims and non-Muslims alike in India by tapping into the deeper spiritual meaning of symbols and rituals that looked strange at first glance.

The founder of the Mughal dynasty, Babur came to India at the end of long years of military peregrinations in which he won and lost territories in Central Asia and Afghanistan. As his autobiographical journal Babur Nama testifies, he had an enormous appetite for information about the culture of other people and the flora and fauna of other lands. And yet incomprehension marked his instant response to the temples of Gwalior.

It was not the simple reaction of a Muslim to the worship of idols; he was irked that the temple architecture and the manifestations of the divine in stone and clay did not conform to his idea of symmetry and design. Within a short span of time his grandson, Akbar the Great, had overcome this civilisation-driven incomprehension to such an extent that he virtually tried to synthesise a new religion from elements of Islam and Hinduism. Religion has become divisive only when there was an instrumental use of it for political purposes.

As a participant, I felt that the only negative notes in this extraordinary conference were struck by speakers deeply embedded in the national strategic enclaves. They were seen to be still preoccupied with antiquated concepts of regional hegemony: one group seeking to impose it and the other looking for countervailing strategies to avert it. India and Pakistan will not find it difficult to work closely in the larger interest of their peoples once the influence of these groups on decision-making is reduced.

Tanvir Ahmad Khan is a former ambassador and foreign secretary of Pakistan. He is currently the head of the Institute of Strategic Studies, Islamabad

Acknowledgements : http://www.gulfnews.com

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.

Powered by AkoComment Tweaked Special Edition v.1.4.6
AkoComment © Copyright 2004 by Arthur Konze - www.mamboportal.com
All right reserved