National
The Pakistan stalemate
(Subramanian Swamy, Janata Party president, writes):
Does the Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, have a clue as to where he is headed on the Pakistan front? Judged by the January 12 TV address of the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, broadcast worldwide, there is a danger now of Mr. Vajpayee being again outsmarted.
The Government now talks of exhausting the diplomatic option. Does such an option exist? Going to Washington and addressing the Indian ethnic press in the Embassy (the U.S. media is not interested) or making calls on officials for ``a fruitful exchange'' (whatever that means) is not a diplomatic option at all.
India is wasting its time on these silly sojourns and getting the worst of both the worlds - of neither going for a decisive war nor achieving a just and durable peace. All the U.S. will and can tell us is: Wait. The General is going to give a speech - wait for that. Or that the unemployed U.K. Prime Minister, Tony Blair, is making another trip - wait for that too. And in the end what is the result?
The Pakistan President will emerge in a new avatar - a modern secular tough guy who is cracking down on terrorists and on madrasas. He will love to do it because they are his enemies anyway and were from day one. The real patron of the Taliban-fathered terrorists was not him but Benazir Bhutto, whom Mr. Vajpayee foolishly wined and dined recently.
So what will India be left with? A gentle subtle warning from the U.S. and China not to disturb the General while he is on this ``delicate mission'' to clean up his fundamentalist opposition in Pakistan. Gen. Musharraf may even hand over Dawood Ibrahim, but is that enough for all the death and destruction caused by terrorism against India?
What should India do? First of all, our mind must focus on what will solve the pending Kashmir issue. Eliminating terrorists has to be a byproduct of that and cannot come first. But the BJP is so blinded by its innate hatred of Muslims that from the very beginning it has been focussing on fixing them than seeking a permanent solution to the Kashmir issue which is the source of terrorism.
The communalising of the terrorism issue is today apparent on how the BJP treats the LTTE because it is Hindu-led. It goes into a frenzy over Dawood and Maulana Azhar, but not Prabakaran or Pottu Amman.
What, anyway, is our case on Kashmir? Do we regard the whole of Kashmir as Indian territory? If so, and I advocate that we do so, then why have we got that ramshackle outfit UNMOGIP stationed in Kashmir?
There is, however, no hurry for us to undo the damage Jawaharlal Nehru did to India on Kashmir. Nor is there any need to talk about Kashmir even if Pakistan keeps shouting about it. All that is necessary is a quiet determination that we will never ever part with an inch of Kashmir.
Future world events will provide us with an opportunity to redraw the map of South Asia. Till then, we should concentrate on economic reforms and development. If India became a genuine secular society where Hindu, Muslim and other minorities can live as amicably as say Hindus and Parsis do, then Pakistan will be undermined, losing it's raison d'etre for its own survival. That, the BJP or its patron, the RSS, can never achieve for India.
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