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IT goes against Pakistan’s sense of
pride and the conviction of many of
its citizens to recognise that the
country could have a better economic future if it could somehow
work with India.
For several decades after Pakistan gained
independence, its citizens were proud of the
fact that Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the country’s founder, had succeeded in creating a
separate homeland for the Muslims of British
India.
Jinnah and his associates worked against
heavy odds. They were able to persuade not
only the British administrations in India but
also the Hindu-dominated All-India Congress
Party that the Hindus and Muslims would
not be able to live together in peace within
the boundaries of one state. Jinnah argued
that there was not one Indian nation but two,
Hindu and Muslim, nations. Each deserved a
country of its own.
Much of the pride that the people of
Pakistan felt about the story of its creation is
now gone. Both the country
and its citizens are troubled as
they face what appears to be
an insurmountable set of problems. The economy has slumped and is surviving on the basis of the largesse of the few
friends the country has left.
The world has become increasingly hostile to what one part
of the citizenry defines as the new idea of
Pakistan — a state that would adopt radical
Islam as its credo. As the American-Nato war
in Afghanistan continues to run into problems and the foreign forces begin to suffer
more losses, the West’s attention has turned
towards Pakistan.
There is no doubt that the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan have dug into the lightly governed tribal areas of Pakistan’s
northwest. The two Waziristans have become the centre of the Taliban’s activities
across the border in Afghanistan. As the
war heats up, Pakistan is being pressed
hard to do more. Doing more means using
force against the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Military shock and awe did not work in
Iraq; it will certainly not work in the
Afghan-Pakistan tribal belt. It will also do a
great deal of collateral political damage in
the rest of Pakistan by turning the people
even more against the US.
Working closely with India not only to
tackle the scourge of terrorism but to obtain
a better economic future for the country is an
option the current leadership should explore. The Americans, under soon-to-besworn-in-president Barack Obama, may be
prepared to help. The remarkable political
change that has occurred in the country may
also make such an approach possible.
The 2008 election highlighted what some
had believed all along: that radical Islam had
little popular support in the country; that its
grip could be loosened by encouraging the
moderate elements to pursue an agenda that
focused on improving the economic and social situation of the citizenry; that one way of
stopping the country from falling into an
abyss was to work towards its greater integration with the global system.
The Islamic groups that participated in
the elections (the Jamaat-i-Islami chose to
boycott the contest) lost most of the ground
they had gained in October 2002. People, by
their vote, moved the country towards the
centre in terms of defining the role of religion in politics. The belief that even in a
predominantly Muslim country such as
Pakistan, religion was essentially a private
matter may not have been expressed clearly, but by voting largely for the PPP and the
PML-N it was clear that the citizens wanted
the state to focus on what mattered the
most for them — social and economic improvement.
While the two mainstream parties had
won almost two-thirds of the votes in the
election neither could govern without forming coalitions. After a lot of manoeuvring,
the two parties agreed to work together. In
the past both had showed some interest in
working with India. Benazir Bhutto had a
meeting with Rajiv Gandhi in Islamabad during her first term in office and agreed to
work within a bilateral framework to resolve
the long-standing differences between the
two countries. Nawaz Sharif hosted Prime
Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee of India in
1999 at Lahore and agreed to bring the two
countries closer to each other.
The return to power of these two parties
could have resulted in a new beginning in relations between India and Pakistan had the
process of change not been interrupted by
the terrorist attacks of Nov 26 on Mumbai,
the nerve centre of India’s economy. At the
time of writing, it appeared that saner heads,
with some pushing by Washington, had prevailed and South Asia saved from yet another conflagration. Had that occurred, there is
no doubt that the result would have been
catastrophic.
There is also no doubt that India and
Pakistan cannot hope to take care of their
enormous economic and social problems if
the governments in the two countries allow
themselves to be distracted by the politics of
extremism. The extremist Islamic groups in
Pakistan don’t want the country to make
peace with India. They wish to distance the
country from India and also from the West. It
is only then that Pakistan could become the
central place in an Islamic caliphate that encompasses at least central
Asia but eventually also the Arab world. Terrorism is the weapon being
used to achieve
this goal. There are also groups
on the Indian side that don’t
wish Pakistan well and would
like to establish a Hindu political identity in their country.
One way of dealing with this
existential threat is for
Pakistan and India to work together, initially in the area of
economics, but eventually on a broader
front. This would seem an enormously ambitious undertaking at this point.
Not only is there the pressure being continuously exerted by extremists not just in
Pakistan but also across the border in India
against close ties between the two countries.
There is also a heavy burden of history that
weighs down both sets of policymakers.
Pakistan’s departure from the fold of British
India was not well received by the first generation of the Indian leadership. Initially, the
Indian government tried hard to cripple
Pakistan economically as it was trying to
stand on its feet after having gained independence. The memory of those events continues to live in Pakistan.
But good and wise leadership is supposed
to be able to deal with such hurdles. The
aim on both sides should be to achieve the
larger good for all people of South Asia, not
to serve the interest and diktat of a small
group of people.
Courtesy : DAWN
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