False Arguments for Talks With Pakistan

The Bharatiya Janata Party continues to consistently oppose talks with Pakistan since the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, until Pakistan prosecutes the terrorists and dismantles their terror infrastructure. Since neither of these has happened, both the BJP and the country at large are opposed to opening up the so called dialogue. The Congress under Manmohan Singh, has set a tentative date for the talks between the foreign ministers of both countries for Feb.25,2010.

The reason for this change of heart in the Congress from 2008 has been attributed to U.S.pressure.

The U.S., anxious to pull out of Afghanistan by 2011 at the latest, is faced by a Pakistan
that is using this card to pressure India on making several concessions , especially on Kashmir. Pakistan is refusing to fully co operate with the U.S. until India resumes talks on Kashmir. That is the clear agenda. The present writer has discussed The Road Map
for Peace, the Congress initiative to promote peace talks with Pakistan. The conditions are those which no self respecting Indian would or should accept (See ‘The Road Show: The Aman ki Asha tamasha and its twin The Road Map for Peace’ in Haindava Keralam).

Both initiatives are dangerous because they are intended to deceive the Indian public and lull them into a false sense of security. While the government driven road map takes shelter behind the technicalities of peace conferences which can easily be deconstructed by any sensible reader, the tamasha project is particularly insidious as it appeals to emotional arguments which can easily disarm the Indian public.

An extension of the tamasha project is the liberal media’s deliberate publishing of articles
from three different perspectives which are seductive by their superficial logic:

1.Indian and Pakistan have a common enemy, the extremist Taliban. This is the scare tactic.

2.Give dialogue a chance. This is the bleeding heart approach which camouflages
dishonourable intentions.

3.Pakistan has always wanted peace with India but terrorists have prevented this!
No need to comment !

The Case For A Common Defence

This argument has been advanced by Pakistani academics and intellectuals who fear the Taliban regime and want India to team up with Pakistan in order to defeat the common Jihadi enemy and who are also looking for a comfortable berth in India.The argument goes roughly as follows:

Both India and Pakistan have to fear the threat of a nuclear armed Pakistan under the terrorists. They will start a war with India, if necessary by going nuclear. The most recent persuasive argument has been put forward by Pervez Hoodbhoy who teaches at the Quaid –e- Azam University in Islamabad. Religious extremism is the common enemy. The extremists hate India more than they hate fellow Muslims. Hoodbhoy’s solution is for India to be more co operative with Pakistan on the key issue of Kashmir:

“In fact, the extremist groups that threaten both countries today are an unintended consequence of Pakistan’s frustrations at Indian obduracy in Kashmir.”

Pakistan is not to blame, it is all India’s fault ! Hence, India must perforce co operate
with Pakistan and settle the issue. Nothing is said about Pakistan’s perfidious behaviour in all this. It is all India’s fault.

Hoodbhoy goes on to say that India must be seen as genuinely working towards Peace.

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article56002.ece

Ofcourse, even a schoolchild in India knows that for several years now India has offered to formalize the Line of Control. It is Pakistan’s obduracy and the building up of terrorist groups to use them as a battering ram against India that has been the main problem. The reader should also note that Hoodbhoy’s argument against a common enemy, suddenly morphs to Kashmir and the blame game !

The Pakistani elite are the very same people who left India at Partition, while the everyday Muslim, the craftsman, the weaver, the artisan etc. stayed behind. Now that they see the writing on the wall this self same elite want to return to India!

Indian should firmly shut the door because they will take up the resources of the Indian public and most likely will secretly act as fifth columnists at the first opportunity, when they see that they can once again return back to their old haunts when the time is ripe. Their soldiers and military had no compunction in slaughtering their fellow Muslims in former East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) in 1971. These are not people who can be trusted with anything.

The Bleeding Heart Argument:

The bleeding heart approach is :let’s give peace a chance, let’s give a dialogue a chance, even if it ends up only as a ritual of having tea and samosas. The bleeding heart approach morphs into a lecture to India on how to engage in international relations, and, note, reader,how the language has changed, that this is all about Pax South Asia, not about Pakistan or India’s welfare. Suddenly, it has become Pax Asia :

“ New Delhi will serve the region better if it shelves the threat of suspending dialogue every time there is a terrorist strike. “

‘The need to give dialogue a chance ‘ by Sherry Rehman

http://beta.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article107788.ece?homepage=true

(The author of this article was former Minister of Information & Broadcasting and Member, National Assembly, Pakistan).

The lecturing mode conceals the actual aim of the article : Kashmir. There is also a reference to the Indus Water Treaty. There are some pious (but false) invocations of how Pakistan in the 1960s withdrew its forces because India was engaged in a
face down with China (even a school child knows that this was at the behest of the U.S. and that Pakistan has always been hand in glove with China in its designs on India).

The author ends with the pious statement :

“ We need to go beyond crisis management. We need to shift into conflict resolution and business momentum mode.”

Now, any sensible Indian would ask: why with India’s economic growth, should India
turn to Pakistan for encouragement ? The trade is relatively small, as compared to that with China. And why should India prop up a failing
state that has since its founding, only administered a thousand cuts to India as its leaders threatened continuously and carried out in practice ?

As the present writer has remarked on previous occasions, the Quaid e Azam who started the horrific Direct Action Day in 1946 which led to the killing of thousands of Indians/Hindus being killed in Bengal, had done so because of his twisted view of the differences between Hindus and Muslims. Mohammed Ali Jinnah had based
his demand for Pakistan on the argument that Hindus and Muslims were two distinct
peoples with distinct culture, religion etc.

In a bizarre way he was right. India is a multi ethnic , multi cultural, multi religious, tolerant and inclusive democracy. The Islamic state of Pakistan is a theocracy. India is flourishing and is already one of the two economic giants in Asia.

Why would any sensible Indian citizen want to bail out Pakistan ? The third argument, ,that terrorists , not the Pakistani government and military and the ISI, want to sabotage the India Pakistanic talks is too far fetched and depends on the premise that it is India, not Pakistan that is always the quarrelsome partner.

India should firmly and without hesitation reject these false arguments . It is not the
failure of the South Asia project that India has to fear. It is the wahabi Islamic project of establishing Islamic rule over the regions it considers vulnerable to its project that India must fear. As pointed out by many commentators, Pakistan has deliberately adopted an Arabic-Islamic identity in order to garner support for its anti India policies and on the other end, the Saudi encouragement of wahabi Islam has neatly dovetailed into the Pakistani agenda.

A recent article in Tehelka magazine does not quite fit into the category of scare tactics. Ms. Seema Mustafa , a journalist, who also writes for MJ Akbar’s blogsite gives a fairly detailed report on what the jihadists are upto ( ‘Mother of All Jihads’,Tehelka,Feb.20, 2010). Ms.Mustafa is simply reporting on what on the face of it, appears to be a grim situation.

Anyone who has watched the jihadi groups threatening India and the scandalous behviour of Pakistani Foreign Minister Qureshi fulminating against India, shouting and screaming that India has finally been brought to her knees should certainly not laugh the whole exercise off, but neither should India be stampeded into negotiating Kashmir along Pakistani terms. Mehbooba sounded virtually like an angel as she talked about the youths (the militants who had gone for training to Pakistan Occupied Kashmir) as she pleaded that they should be allowed to return to their families in Jammu&Kashmir. There was no mention from her or Chief Minister Abdullah or the Congress about the return of
375,000 plus Kashmiri Hindus who were driven out by these same militants from their homeland and who are living in wretched conditions in refugee
camps in India.

Even a single militant should not be allowed to return under the specious
argument that Pakistan occupied Kashmir is a part of India and that they are Indian citizens who have repented of their deeds and want to return to their families. These are the same people who sawed men and women in half, beheaded people,
gouged their eyes out and committed such atrocities on Kashmiri Hindus, that their sins should never be forgiven nor forgotten ! Yes, Pakistan occupied Kashmir is a part of India, and is India supposed to prove this by welcoming bandits and thugs,who on return will resume their favoured occupation ?

It is the utmost naivety to believe that a mere signing of a paper will change them overnight into law abiding citizens. At the first opportunity they will resume their activities.

As for the argument that letting the militants return after signing agreements, so that the nation as a whole will benefit, this is the classic example of wishful thinking

Unlike the militants in the North Eastern states who have tentatively surrendered,the Kashmiri militants are not to be trusted.

Peace with Pakistan can only happen when Pakistan destroys the terror infrastructure and vigorously prosecutes the culprits and abandons its dream of establishing a caliphate in South Asia, with some obliging allies and friends.

(The writer taught Political Philosophy at a Canadian university).

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