No sign of Indo-Pak hostility abating

Perhaps in 2007 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh shared his dream of having breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. In his address to the 79th annual general meeting of the Federation of Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Singh had shared his heart-warming vision of a “long-term peace treaty” with Pakistan: “I earnestly hope that relations between our two countries become so friendly that we can generate an atmosphere of trust between each other and that the two nations are able to agree on a treaty of peace, security and friendship”. 

Relations becoming “so friendly” between two neighbours today seems to be a far cry. Instead, the savagery meted out to Sarabjit and Sanaullah will define the nature of Indo-Pak relations for now. If, by chance, they are not at war, then through such hostile acts against each other, India and Pakistan continue to accumulate reasons for a future war.

The bloody partition in 1947 itself speaks volumes about the most repulsive barbaric tendencies of the Indian sub-continent. The three full-fledged Indo-Pak wars and many mini wars further confirm the fear that both India and Pakistan lack the capacity of forging a lasting peace. The rabid hardliners in Pakistan instinctively hostage to the anti-India sentiment keep reminding Pakistanis that Hindu India has not at all accepted the existence of an Islamic state in its neighbourhood. The incidence of India’s unflinching support to Bangladesh’s freedom movement is repeatedly cited to keep alive anti-India feelings.

Former prime minister AB Vajpayee during his historic trip to Lahore in March 1999 had made it a point to visit Minar-e-Pakistan — at this very place on March 23, 1940, the Muslim League had passed the Pakistan Resolution — and had boldly ascribed that a “stable and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interest”. Even that noble gesture of Vajpayee had miserably failed to allay the anti-India paranoia. Within few months of Vajpayee’s visit, the Indian army was battling hard in Kargil against Pakistani incursion.  Similarly, the Mumbai carnage and Pakistan’s support to militancy in Kashmir and before that its active support to the Khalistan movement seem to have deeply ingrained in Indian psyche that probably Pakistan, an “untrustworthy neighbour”,  will forever remain hostile to India.

Despite this history of deep mistrust there have been several periods of detente. From 2002, particularly, the leadership of the two countries, regardless of many false starts, did make a concerted effort to bridge an otherwise unbridgeable gulf . In the beginning of 2007 India and Pakistan were thought to be very close to a historic agreement. Even intractable conflict on Kashmir suddenly looked resolvable. Greater people-to-people contact, joint management, demilitarisation, making the borders irrelevant, were some of the buzzwords providing credibility to the entire peace process.

The then Pakistani president General Pervez Musharraf had boasted that the two countries even had exchanged the agreed draft agreement on Kashmir; Manmohan Singh in his own subtle way too had dropped some hints about the possibility of an agreement.

The terrorist attack in Mumbai seems to have dashed all hopes for sustainable peace between India and Pakistan; since then it’s one step forward and ten steps back. In comparison with the parliament attack, Kargil war and Mumbai 26/11, the Sarabjit and Sanaullah episodes, though painful, apparently look not so consequential.  And, with crossed fingers, one hopes that the moment of madness passes by without destroying all hopes for peace. However, the Sarabjit and Sanaullah affairs give rise to the worst apprehensions that the constituency for peace, particularly in India, is shrinking with each such incident.

Sarabjit was killed brutally; hence, it exposed the dysfunctional nature of the Pakistani state. Right after Afzal Guru’s hanging it was feared that Sarabjit in a tit-for-tat act too would be sent to the gallows soon. That didn’t happen then but Sarabjit’s body arrived back home. In less than 24 hours in a revenge attack Sanaullah was brutalised inside Jammu jail.

For an ordinary Pakistani citizen Sarabjit was an Indian spy who had carried out bomb blasts inside Pakistan but was cremated with full state honours  in India. And Sanaullah in India was known as a terrorist involved in many acts of terror apparently resulting in the death of many innocents. Disgustingly, he too was buried will full military honours  in his native place.

While Manmohan Singh declared Sarabjit as a brave son of India, Sanaullah in his death was accorded an honour of a freedom fighter who sacrificed his life for the Kashmir cause.  Sanaullah believed to be a terrorist was honoured as a fallen hero. What message does Pakistan want to send across to India? That in pursuance of a so called national cause, death of innocents is justified? And was Sarabjit a pawn in a covert war as intelligence agencies reportedly seemed to confirm? If so, what happens to the high moral ground India likes to assume as a democracy? Pakistan, as widely believed, sponsors acts of terror inside India. Shall India also pay back in the same coin? These are very disturbing questions.

Undoubtedly, India is victim of terrorism. In vengeance if some pigheaded strategic experts sitting in a TV studio plead that India should enhance its covert capabilities inside Pakistan, irrespective of that country’s hostile acts, with a very heavy heart one is forced to think that maybe India too has lost its soul. If terrorism is the only answer to terrorism, then in  a world blinded by hatred where is the hope for peace?

The author based in Srinagar writes on contemporary issues. Views expressed are personal.