Dreams of peace for sale

IT is tough being a national leader these days as both Parvez Musharraf and Vajpayee will testify. Yet, never before has a country's adversity strengthened the hands of its leaders, as it has in the case of both President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee. In India, while exports fall, production goes into a slump and the stockmarket wobbles, Vajpayee's popularity graph stays up and even Sonia Gandhi hails his decision to discuss peace with Pakistan. In Pakistan too, the economy may teeter on the brink of a massive collapse and political parties across the board condemn the muzzling of democracy, but Musharraf's plan to visit India stays on course. He even appoints himself President and dissolves the legislatures in the meanwhile.

So now General Musharraf is about to be formally greeted by India's Prime Minister as President Musharraf at a much-hyped summit slated to begin on July 14. The feast shall then move to Agra, the romantic city of Taj, where the poet and the General shall sit down in blessed privacy to forge a union and discuss peace. The leaders of course continue to claim that there is no specific agenda (our side) and that they are cautiously optimistic (theirs), and that both are looking forward to their meeting in Agra. The media begs to differ on each of these points. Advertising a summit in a city such as Agra, seems to be tailor-made for controversy. Some ungrateful yobs in the media and political parties (including Vajpayee's own) are already underscoring the irony behind the choice of the city of love as the venue for talks between two countries, that have fought no less than three hostile wars against each other. Others are busy calculating its cost to the exchequer in these lean-mean times. So it seems the two leaders are unlikely to be able to shake off a huge mob of media men and women and political protesters, no matter where they sit down to have a chat over Sikandari Raan and Tandoori Jhingas. Protestors of all shades and inclinations and media reps of all genders and nationalists, we may be sure, must already have packed their bags to reach Agra by July 15, placards, gun-mikes, pads and tape recorders on the ready.

If the two leaders were keen on escaping these mobs, one feels, a large country like ours offers many alternative locations that would have discouraged voyeurs and shut up the protestors. They could, for example, have had the summit in Patna, where the state of the streets and police vigilance is too well-known to be happily experienced at first hand. Or they could go to the North East, where the ULFA and the SULFA and the MSN and the AASU and the MSUI et al have created a tourist-free zone of no mean order. There are also totally non-glamorous towns (that the austere RSS leaders may also have approved of) such as Jhinjholi or Nagpur, that, from their name onwards, sound downright dry, and vegetarian. They could even have settled for seriously nasty places such as the badlands of Morena or Bhind, or even Chennai, where Jaya's police has perfected the art of storming into the abodes of leaders at unseemly hours and creating mayhem.

But the poet and the General obviously do not wish to escape. They know very well that their mission is to sidestep the past, look into TV cameras, and to sell dreams of peace with honour, with the emphasis on the word "honour", that has such a nice ring to it. They both know that there are three basic strategies to deal with adversaries: fight them, escape elsewhere, or somehow manage to engage each other in a cordial dialogue. The first two of these methods have been spectacularly unsuccessful of late. And, despite two World Wars and Bretton Woods and Cape Cods, the world is still full of warring nations.

True, times were when one elephant run amok, or one riderless horse appearing on the battle field, could create chaos, decide the winner of the war and seal the fate of nations all at the same time. No more. Wars have become so costly, so murderous, and so complicated, that it is impossible to win one decisively. Even the US of A has been unable to impose its will on Korea, Vietnam or Iraq. It was for this reason that Sun Tzu, the great military theorist of 5th Century B.C. advised that to subdue the enemy without fighting is the supreme excellence. War remained prestigious so long as it was the most dangerous of all excitements. The Share Market, the globalised trading zones and the Iranian gas pipeline have long since beaten it. Hence Agra, hence the Taj, the Tandoori delights and the photo-ops against the monument of love.

Ah yes, say some scholars, but do the two leaders trust each other after Kargil and Kandhar? Trust, since the world began, has been the most frustrated of emotions, more so than sex. And yet neither procreation nor creation (of friendly nation states) has been halted. Even democracies such as ours, even today, continue to function largely on the principle of mistrust. Fact is, we do not trust but tolerate each other most of the time. On rare occasions, trusting the other may have been deliberately practised as a virtue, (as when Gandhi went to Noakhali) but most people do not wish to be martyrs or Mahatmas for whom the ethical and the timeless matters more than the physical here and now. So good humoured tolerance will do nicely for now, thank you.

Ultimately, most intelligent Indians and Pakistanis do not expect any substantive and miraculous outcome of the Agra summit. Yet there is no doubt that on both sides of the border, revulsion against cruel, bloody and expensive wars that suck up all the nations' vital resources in these difficult times, is growing. So also a keen interest in trade and corporate partnerships and joint efforts for acquiring inexpensive gas and oil from Central Asia. Unemployment queues are lengthening in our countries while the arrogance of those who have monopolised every thing from peace summits to the globalised markets is growing. It is time we got out of quibbling over terms such as The Core Issue and Trust and Honour, and instead discussed how to hang together, so as not to be hung separately. Tolerance may not be the wide-spectrum drug against all ills, but it certainly is a tried and tested folk remedy that gives immediate relief. So let's hope a new adventure begins in Agra, even while old habits survive.

MRINAL PANDE

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