THE OTHER SIDE OF SILENCE

COLUMN READING:

Exploring the Beast Within
By Sunil Khilnani

By Rajmohan Gandhi

A NEW development, heartening for all who desire peace, is the cross-border dialogue now taking place on the subcontinent. It occurs regularly on TV, in the print media, on the internet, and in a growing number of people-to-people conferences.

Until recently, Pakistan to most Indians was a vague, large, desertified tract somewhere in the subcontinent’s northwest, infested with guns, drugs and religious fanatics, and hostile to India. Suddenly it has acquired shape, colour and variety, and Pakistan is being seen as its people, who in their tastes and outlooks seem rather similar to Indians, even if some Pakistani views differ sharply from Indian opinions.

This fresh and frank cross-border interaction, enriching to all concerned, seems likely to last and to grow, even if governments should decide to block it. TV, the cell phone and the internet are not easy game for governments, and galloping technology will make a hunter’s task harder by the week. Moreover, technology is not the bridge-builders’ only ally. Human longings for knowing the neighbour are strong, the more so when signs from every side speak of ties and commonalities.

Yet, there are hard limits to the civil society’s role in transforming Indo-Pak relations. Deep wounds divide the subcontinent’s peoples, and negative images have the capacity to prolong mutual alienation. The healing of these wounds and the correction of distorted images are huge tasks that perhaps can only be accomplished by strong, respected and popular leaders — by Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf — provided they put their minds and souls into the tasks.

The wounds of 1946-47 were felt in both countries, and are remembered and nursed in both. India calls them the wounds of Partition while across the border they are described as the sacrifice that made Pakistan possible. Many of these wounds occurred on the bodies and souls of large numbers of still-living Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims of west and east Punjab. Others too were victims — many Hindus in the North West Frontier Province and Sindh and in Noakhali (in what is now Bangladesh) and numerous Muslims in Delhi, UP, Rajasthan and Bihar, and Hindus. But in scale and ferocity the violence in the Punjab’s two wings was perhaps the worst.

Such was the trauma from this violence that those who survived or witnessed it found themselves unable for the following 50 years to speak about it. Fiction, poetry and films could reflect some of the wounds but few victims or witnesses had the emotional strength to recall the events directly. The last few years, however, have seen the publication of some powerful and painful 1947 recollections. To equip themselves for a role to heal the 1947 wounds, I would urge President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee to read some of these accounts; perhaps one of the books they could start with is Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of Silence.

The effect of unhealed wounds is enhanced by the twisted images that continue to be harboured on both sides, despite the new and clarifying interaction to which I drew attention. Many Indians continue to think of Pakistanis as fanatical terrorists, hostile infiltrators, spies and saboteurs, and as those who answered Lahore’s proffered hand with a stab-in-the-back in Kargil. Equally, many in Pakistan see Indians as remaining unreconciled to Pakistan’s creation and existence, as denying them Muslim-majority Kashmir, Maharaja-ruled, while taking Hindu-majority Hyderabad, Nizam-ruled, and as having broken up Pakistan in 1971.

Correcting images that are partial, exaggerated or false should be every bridge-builder’s task, but one that would be greatly facilitated if Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf decide to address it in the days to come. They do not have to deny uncomfortable realities, whether of the present or of the past — they will make matters worse if they do. But they can remind Indians and Pakistanis of other and less negative realities — of the existence, for instance, of millions of ordinary Indians and Pakistanis who long for normal neighbourly relations and who are aware that in many respects they are far closer to their neighbours than to others in this world.

I know it is not my business to advise the two leaders. How President Musharraf and Prime Minister Vajpayee should go about healing wounds and dispelling demonised images is above all a question for their own sharp intellects and imaginations, and for the minds of their advisors. In fact, it is the two leaders, supported by their colleagues and advisors, who deserve much of the credit for triggering the civil society interaction that I have celebrated.

They should be lauded, too, for the statements with which the summit was initiated — Prime Minister Vajpayee’s wholehearted letter of invitation which among other things said that he was prepared to discuss Kashmir also, and President Musharraf’s openly-expressed desire for a new phase in Indo-Pak relations. And for Mr Vajpayee’s string of pre-summit measures offering relief to civilian prisoners or a possibility of relaxing tensions around the Line of Control and in Siachen or a prospect of easier cross-border travel, and General Musharraf’s gesture of releasing an Indian peace activist.

However, if the summit is to have any meaning beyond Agra, Mr Vajpayee will have to address Kashmir, and General Musharraf will have to address both the support that the armed mujahideen get from Pakistan and the sustained use of Pakistan’s State-owned media for condemning India. Surely, both leaders are fully aware by now that a movement by India on Kashmir has to be matched by a movement by Pakistan on hostility towards India, and vice versa.

While acknowledging the role of the two leaders in reminding all of us of the possibility of reconciliation on the subcontinent, let me present, for their consideration and that of their advisors, a simple suggestion: Prime Minister Vajpayee should seek an opportunity to speak to the people of Pakistan, and offer President Musharraf a chance to speak to the people of India. Let each of them attempt something not tried for a while: presenting his longing and vision for the subcontinent, and also explaining his compulsions, to the people, and not just the government, of the other country.

Reconciliation and justice on the subcontinent will remain a hollow dream, and any accord a mere piece of paper, unless the people of India and Pakistan are involved. If images are to be rectified, and wounds healed, and mindsets changed, the two leaders will have to go to the people, their own and those on the other side.

I will make two additional points that may be valid for both official and civil society dialogues. Let not the Indian side overdo the ‘failed State’ business. After India’s recent experiences over the Naga-Manipur issue, in Tamil Nadu and with UTI, any attempt to prove that life, the polity and the economy are greatly better on one side of the border may fall flat on Indian as well as Pakistani ears.

More importantly, the Manipur-Naga episode demonstrates that great costs are incurred when the fall-out of a possible accord is not adequately anticipated. In our ethnically rich subcontinent, conflicts and disputes are rarely confined to two sides. More often than not, our bitter disputes are many-sided.

As and when Kashmir is addressed, let Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf think of all the possible parties, large and small, to the Jammu and Kashmir question, and of the likely impact on all of them of the various formulae that might be proposed.

Along with, I believe, millions on the subcontinent and outside it, I pray that the summit will be a step forward towards peace and normality between and within India and Pakistan, and in Jammu and Kashmir, and that the two persons most directly involved and their advisors will find the gifts and skills needed.

I repeat what I said earlier, that it was Prime Minister Vajpayee and President Musharraf who helped spark off the cross-border conversations now taking place. However, the conversations appear to have acquired a life of their own. Whether the summit succeeds or fails, the Indo-Pak conversations of civil society are likely to continue.

Rajmohan Gandhi is the Grandson of Mohandas Gandhi..the Father of India. He is a political analyst and an authority on Regional Political Affairs.