The shape of the table

By F. S. Aijazuddin

THERE ARE moments in history when the past slips into hibernation and the future stirs hopeful at the scent of an untimely spring. Such a moment is expected to occur in Agra when, as if in a modern re-enactment of a medieval joust, two champions, each representing a battle order of nuclear-armed forces, will confront each other across the negotiating table. Agra could become a battlefield of peace, a Kargil turned Kurukshetra where warring cousins search in each other's eyes for a new truth.

No one other than the Prime Minister, Mr. Atal Behari Vajpayee, himself could have foreseen that he would oblige Pakistan's President, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, with an invitation for such talks, for no Indian could have harboured fewer reasons for extending such an invitation. Mr. Vajpayee has been a democrat too long, a Foreign Minister too long and a Prime Minister too long to oblige political parvenus. His memory is long enough to recall the snub at the Wagah border by the same military high command that today expects equivalent protocol. He has not allowed himself to forget that, despite the advice of his staff, he visited the Pakistan Day monument at Lahore and tacitly acknowledged the actuality of the two- nation theory. He has not been allowed by his own people to forget that after he took the bus to Lahore, a consequence was that he then had to send troop carriers to Kargil.

What could have brought about a volte face in the mind of a veteran who thinks and plans in the same way that he walks, slowly, haltingly and with great deliberation? Some see Mr. Vajpayee's courageous invitation not as reversal of policy but more as another step forward in the same direction, a journey towards reconciliation with Pakistan that he began as Foreign Minister and has continued during his sure-footed Prime Ministership. Only a man who had dared to hope, suffered disappointment, and then dared to hope again would take such a recurring risk. Only a man with an unshakable belief in his own religion and in his political convictions would take the path of a premature prophet, and allow disbelievers to mock him and suspect his motives.

Ironically, both sides of the political divide in Indian politics - the rightist ruling BJP coalition and its counterpart the Congress(I) Government-in-waiting - are unanimous in supporting Mr. Vajpayee's invitation. Any disarray lies in the ranks of the guests not of the hosts. That is perhaps inevitable, given the current political situation in Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf represents a constituency that recognises neither a Constitution nor the legitimacy of any elected Government other than one of its own choosing. He represents a force that could dislodge the Pakistani signatory of the Shimla Agreement of 1972, derail the understandings arrived at between Ms. Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi in Islamabad in 1989, and then stall in its tracks the momentum of Mr. Vajpayee's bus yatra in 1999.

Why then, some Indian analysts may ask, should the Army junta have capitulated by agreeing to allow the hero of Kargil to go to Agra? Certainly it cannot be for him to revisit his birthplace in Delhi's old city or to be reunited with an ayah he hardly remembers. Visiting St. Stephen's College in New Delhi did little afterwards to temper General Zia Ul Haq's belligerence towards India. Could it be to obtain Indian recognition for Gen. Musharraf as the Head of State of a neighbouring country that its own citizenry has not yet accorded him? Or is he being sent to demonstrate an overt willingness to be seen to be speaking softly, without letting go of the big stick? The answers to such questions only the ruling junta of Corps Commanders, the ISI and other agencies know. It is conceivable that not all of them are in the know.

By going to Agra, Gen. Musharraf will be propelled into a position of global prominence that Mr. Nawaz Sharif attained by pressing the button detonating Pakistan's nuclear devices. For stealing the atom, that modern Prometheus paid the price. Does Gen. Musharraf's yatra to Agra, some people ask, carry also a price tag? After all, the economic pressures on the present Pakistan administration are too obviously compelling to be side- stepped by a Government that is now hostage to its own good intentions and inadequate performance. Could it have been persuaded to go to the negotiating table at Agra with the promise of a financial bail-out? There are some cynics who might regard the unexpected tranche of $350 millions suddenly released by the World Bank immediately before the announcement of Pakistan's Budget 2001 as akin to earnest money.

Whatever may be the truth behind Gen. Musharraf's decision to go to Agra, a reality is that he has already made a significant concession by agreeing to go without any preconditions. One such condition could have been a demand for representation of the very Kashmiris whose right of self-determination has been the cornerstone of Pakistan's foreign policy since its own Independence from India in 1947. Those with a feel for history will notice a parallel between Z.A. Bhutto's negotiating position before Shimla in 1972 and Gen. Musharraf's before Agra in 2001. In 1972, India held 5000 square miles of land and 93,000 Pakistanis as POWs and CUPCs. In 2001, from a hardliner Pakistani's standpoint, India holds the Valley and more than a million Kashmiris similarly hostage. That neither the Indians nor the Pakistanis feel the need to include the Kashmiris in Agra should be a lesson to those Kashmiris who have not read the minutes of the meetings between Hitler and Neville Chamberlain in 1939 over the issue of Czechoslovakia, when its future was negotiated without consulting the Czechs.

The final shape of the negotiating table at Agra will say it all. A sad joke that circulated in Pakistan following the 1965 war was that the solution to the Kashmir problem was a division - Pakistan should get Kashmir and India should retain the Kashmiris. A truism today might be that both India and Pakistan want Kashmir, preferably without the Kashmiris. Only the truly optimistic or the unflinchingly naive would expect that Mr. Vajpayee and Gen. Musharraf will be able to resolve the Kashmir issue at Agra. Gen. Musharraf cannot be going to Agra to agree to something on Kashmir that he would not accept in Islamabad or at the GHQ in Rawalpindi. What he needs above all is not a definitive solution but the time to arrive at one, and yet more time to sell it back home. That is the argument Z.A. Bhutto gave to Indira Gandhi at Shimla, his daughter Benazir gave to her son Rajiv in Islamabad, and Mian Nawaz Sharif gave to Mr. Vajpayee in Lahore. And each Indian leader accepted that argument, because by doing so they were ensuring that if they had to have an adversary, it might as well be one of their own fabrication, as pious Hindus do with the image of Ravana at Dussehra each year.

Today, there are millions of rational Pakistanis and multiples more Indians who want to regard the forthcoming meeting at Agra as a God-given opportunity, without debating which God should be thanked. To them, it is an opportunity of achieving an overdue reconciliation. There are millions on both sides of the border and of the economic divide who want Agra to succeed for they know that failure will not fill an empty stomach.

For the past 300 years, Agra has been the symbol of Shah Jahan's grief for his dead wife Mumtaz Mahal, separated from him cruelly by death. For the past 54 years, India and Pakistan have been separated by an equally cruel history. What better advice can anyone offer Gen. Musharraf at this critical moment in his life and that of the country he is determined to lead than the words of an earlier general who also crowned himself emperor - Napoleon. He had warned in his Maxims: ``With audacity one can undertake anything, but not do everything''. Having exhibited rare audacity, it is time for him and his counterpart on the opposite side of the negotiating table not to expect too much. By demanding less of each other, it is conceivable that they might both obtain more from each other.

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