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“THERE is no terror,
Cassius, in your threats,”
Julius Caesar tells him.
Pakistan could have told
India the same thing at the
meeting of the joint antiterror mechanism: recent
bomb blasts at Malegaon
and Modasa were not the
doing of ‘Muslims from
across the border’.
Nor did the Pakistani delegation point out that India had its
own Hindu terrorists, led by a
woman and trained by some exarmy men belonging to an old
Sainik school. The meeting,
fourth in the series, was ‘positive’, although quiet.
The earlier ones generally
ended up with New Delhi demanding the custody of criminals
who had taken shelter in
Pakistan and Islamabad asking
for more evidence. New Delhi has
given ‘more evidence’ of the ‘involvement of the ISI’ in the attack on India’s embassy in Kabul.
Yet, the purpose was not to put
Pakistan on the mat because it
was conceded at that very meeting that there could have been
‘some other elements’ involved in
the incident. The matter was left
at that pleasant note. It was a
new beginning of sorts.
On the day the representatives
of India and Pakistan met in
Delhi the prime ministers of the
two countries discussed terrorism
in Beijing. Both reiterated that
they were committed to work together to clamp down on terrorist
forces. “Terror is a common enemy of both India and Pakistan,”
said Manmohan Singh and Yusuf
Raza Gilani concurred with him.
The equation between the two
holds promise for the future.
What creates doubts is that a
similar exercise was done more
than a year ago. But that wasn’t
translated into a joint anti-terror
mechanism. The Musharraf-led
army dragged its feet. However,
Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani has
put terrorism at the top of his
agenda. This may mean the end of
infiltrators into India. But if the
policy has changed the reasons
are not difficult to comprehend.
One, the terrorists have become a menace to Pakistan itself.
But the most important development is the change in the
attitude of the rulers. President Asif Ali Zardari is at the
helm of affairs. His approach
to Pakistan’s problems with
India is different from that of
the earlier regimes. He wants
to befriend India.
I saw this happening from
close quarters when I heard the
national security advisers of the
two countries. At a small dinner
given by the Pakistan high commissioner in Delhi, they said certain things which were unbelievable. India’s National Security
Adviser M.K. Nayaranan admitted that he was a hawk but had
come around to believe what
Manmohan Singh told him:
“India and Pakistan were destined to be together.” I do not
know what transpired between
the two during official meetings
but Pakistan’s National Security
Adviser Mahmud Ali Durrani
told me that the talks were more
successful than he ever expected.
It looks as if the clouds of hostility that loomed over India and
Pakistan are thinning. Both Manmohan Singh and Zardari reached some understanding on how to
fight terrorism in the two countries when they met at New York.
Both Narayanan and Durrani
were asked to prepare the
ground which they did at Delhi.
The joint mechanism will be built
on it in the days to come. It is obvious that the different agencies
operating in the two countries
will have to fall in line, stopping
what they are doing within and
without. In the next few days, the
Pakistani training camps which
are a sore point with India may
be dismantled.
All these measures are laudable. But they are only the means,
not the end by themselves. The
end is to normalise relations between the two countries. This is
not possible until both curb radicals, Hindus and Muslims, in
their own territory and stop efforts at mixing religion with politics.
India, a secular polity, is under
pressure. Hindutva is gaining
ground. Despite their anti-national activities, New Delhi is reluctant to take action against the
Sangh Parivar which has spread
all over, opening Hindu Jagran
Manch offices in every state. The
members recruited are getting
training and weapons. With its
eyes on the forthcoming assembly elections and later to the Lok
Sabha, the Congress is found too
timid, too faltering.
It is already a bit too late because the politics of hate is
spreading as has been seen in
Bihar and Maharashtra where the
lumpen are fighting on the
streets. Hindu terrorists want an
ethnic purity in the areas where
they live. A new avatar of the
Shiv Sena, Raj Thackeray, has
created his counterparts in Bihar.
One of their leaders came to
Mumbai this week and killed four
persons while looking for Raj
Thackeray to wreak vengeance.
This trend is reminiscent of
MQM’s violence in Karachi and it
is tearing apart the society in both
countries and creating fear in the
minds of ordinary people. How
will the joint mechanism check
those who have communalised
terrorism in India and politicised
it in Pakistan? Both are contaminating the liberal and democratic
atmosphere as the Tamil extremists (the LTTE) are doing in Sri
Lanka and the Harkatul Jihad-iIslami (HJI) in Bangladesh.
The entire South Asia requires
a common mechanism to fight
against the growth of disruptive
tendencies. India had kept them
in check with some courage and
determination. But lately it looks
as if politics has taken over be
cause of the impending elections.
India cannot fail South Asia when
liberal, democratic values are beginning to matter in the region.
For that reason, Islamabad cannot afford to talk to the Taliban in
the NWFP and Fata. This would
look like buying peace. It makes
no sense to New Delhi if the
Taliban are won over for the time
being. They will resume pushing
their archaic thinking after having consolidated themselves.
It is a pity that Nawaz Sharif, who
is all for a strong viable Pakistan,
favours a settlement with the
Taliban. He should have drawn a
lesson from what has happened
to Asfandyar Wali Khan. Wali,
along with his family, has taken
refuge in London because the
Taliban tried to kill him and
threatened to eliminate the entire family. They are against any
liberal thought. Nawaz Sharif’s
Muslim League should stand by
the Pakistan People’s Party to
eliminate the Taliban who have a
dream to rule both Pakistan and
Afghanistan. The region’s dream
is different. ¦
The writer is a leading journalist
based in Delhi.
Courtesy : Dawn Newspaper
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