The Uninterrupted,Uninterruptible Kumbhakarna

It is hard to match Mani Shankar Iyer’s uninterrupted,uninterruptible observations on
national television ! This verbal eloquence is not matched by a serious analysis of
the political realities of the subcontinent. His latest display was in a Times Now discussion post the much trumpeted talks between Foreign Ministers S.M.Krishna  and Qureshi.

He was insistent that Bharat should continue the talks in uninterrupted, uninterruptible
dialogue with Pakistan.If Mr.Iyer had his way this charade could go on for the next 60 years. A close second to this kind of inanity was the polyannish Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu.

He made some sheepish remarks which were close to an apology for the Pakistani
Foreign Minsister’s grandstanding today (as Arnaub Goswami  of Times Now,rightly called it). NDTV did the nation a service by broadcasting parts of the press conference, with Vikram Chandra ably conducting the broadcast. The journalist present in Islamabad pronounced this Indo Pak press conference as the worst she had
attended.

And indeed all of Bharat must have watched dumbfounded as the bluff and bluster of
the Pakistan foreign minister (never at a loss for words !) kept the unfortunate S.M.
Krishna on edge. He was left off on his return trip to Bharat with the same old assurances that Pakistan would look into India’s concerns regarding terrorism and the need to bring the perpetrators to justice and that Pakistan would not allow its territory
to be used for terrorism against India.

The liberal media has drawn a curtain of silence over the whole debacle. Only the
spokesperson of the BJP pointed out that Bharat had been unnecessarily put on the
backfoot because of the concessions made at Sharm el Sheik. All of Krishna’s rebuttal that there is not a shred of evidence of Bharat’s involvement in Balochistan carried no weight.

Qureshi, in fact, pressed home the point of the violation of human rights in Kashmir.Krishna’s reply was weak : Omar Abdullah is the elected Chief Minister of Kashmir and it is the state’s responsibility to look after law and order.

What he should have said is that Kashmir is an inalienable part of Bharat and Pakistan
has no business in commenting on events inside a neighbouring country ! Bharat does not comment on events inside Pakistan except where they impinge on Bharat’s interests,such as the cross border terrorism and the support given by Pakistan to any and everybody who claims to speak for Kashmir’s independence. What precisely is the dog that Pakistan has in this fight over Kashmir ?  As Arun Jaitley once put it in debating with Mehbooba Mufti of the PDP : Azad is not a distant dream, it is an
impossibility.

It is, ofcourse, no use crying over spilt milk and castigate the incompetence of Jawaharlal Nehru in the whole Kashmir imbroglio. One should add : his ego, as he looked at himself in the mirror and wondered at how good he would look in front of the international community at his gentlemanly behaviour !

Once the accession to India was signed by the Maharajah of Kashmir in October 1947 and once General Cariappa had effectively pushed back the armed triabals from the north west, supported by Pakistan, and once the Kashmiri Consitutent Assembly had ratified the accession, the issue was settled. Bharat would have been spared the 60 year long drawn out conflict over what in effect became an issue only after Jawaharlal’s folly.

The fact remains that Pakistan does not want any solution to its problems with Bharat.
It aims to keep the pot boiling. Thus far it brought in handsome dividends from the
U.S. And there was always the Chinese card. Nuclear co operation, receipt of conventional weapons, grants of money, all these for a state that had no serious development of its own and whose only raison d’etre for existence was the lifelong hatred it nurtured towards its larger and prosperous neighbhour.

Now, ofcourse, the U.S. has changed its strategy towards Bharat and the UN has also
come around to accepting that the situation on the ground had changed. The UN Secretary General firmly pronounced that Kashmir is India’s issue.

There is not a single issue, whether it is Afghanistan, Balochistan or Kashmir that
Pakistan actually wants to talk about in a meaningful way. And in addition to the financial dividends which upheld a tottering state, there is another dimension that
cannot be overlooked. Since the Quaid-e- Azam’s rationale for creating Pakistan was
the possibility that Muslims in Bharat may not be looked after, any creation of trust
between the two peoples must be scotched, since there would no longer be any justification for Pakistan’s existenc as a separate entity.

This question has been briefly touched upon in an analysis by Shri T.P. Shreenivasan in his article in Rediff, July 14, 2010: ‘India- Pakistan Talks- Futile Quest for Trust’

And our Kumbhkarnas can go on with the old rhetoric. It is high time that a nationalist
party like the BJP took this up as a serious issue. The UPA is unable and unwilling to do  so.

( The writer is a Political Scientist who taught at a Canadian university).

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