7/9/2019 "Pakistan: The Cross-Crescent We Bear" - By Salman Khurshid

"Pakistan: The Cross-Crescent We Bear" - By Salman

Khurshid
Book Excerpt | Salman Khurshid | Updated: July 08, 2019 19:12 IST
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Cover of Salman Khurshid's book 'Visible Muslim, Invisible Citizen'

Look at J&K with a new outlook. Ask yourself why Pakistan must really continue to show special interest in Kashmir. Is it for the Muslim population of the state? Does
it not matter that India's vast Muslim population does not accept that view and that any adverse consequence in terms of J&K would inevitably have a negative
impact on the entire minority of India? Indian Muslims have fought and laid down their lives for the land and the idea of India. Brigadier Mohammad Usman and
Havildar Abdul Hamid are names that stand out among a legion of martyrs. Fifty years on, are we doing justice to the Muslims of India by creating a situation in
which their allegiance to the land in they were born in is constantly tested? It is a strange irony that Indian leaders who are immensely popular in Pakistan from time
to time have all been Hindus, from Atal Bihari Vajpayee to Lalu Prasad Yadav and Mani Shankar Aiyar. Muslim leaders in India neither get similar adulation, nor do
they even seek such attention.

Many years after the idea of Pakistan and the idea of India clashed and pushed us both to the brink and to the Partition, neither idea has reached absolute fulfilment.
Two decades ago we mustered up the courage to objectively examine the state of Muslims in India when the Sachar Committee and the Ranganath Misra
Commission handed down their far-reaching recommendations. Despite sincere efforts to implement the recommendations, the then government, UPA-II, of which I
was a member as Cabinet minister (including the charge of Minority Affairs), was merely able to take the first steps of the far-sighted justice project. The moderate
success gave little satisfaction to a community whose expectations suddenly exploded but invited undeserved hostility from the majority, egged on by the then main
Opposition - the BJP. The ideological resistance of the BJP in power has put the entire justice project in cold storage, to await the return of secular politics. Crucial as
this is to the idea of India, it is not the only dimension that has a lesson for steering our relationship with Pakistan. The continuous reworking of the States
Reorganisation Commission (SRC), with periodic demands for bifurcation or trifurcation of existing states - this time not on language or cultural differences but due to
regional disparities - has some insights for a review of the political approach that led to Partition I (India and Pakistan) and Partition II (Pakistan and Bangladesh) and
continues to feed the urge for another virtual partition (J&K). In a similar manner, first Punjab and Haryana, and then Bihar and Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh and
Chhattisgarh, UP and Uttarakhand, and Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, not to mention the several states born out of erstwhile Assam, have all emerged into
separate existence. The argument that the vast expanse of the erstwhile states made democratic administration difficult, if not impossible, is no longer valid because
of modern technology and communication. Yet the demands overwhelmed all arguments and efforts to the contrary.

We have not had the opportunity to conduct an exercise to assess the gains made by the bifurcation of states, though there is enough evidence of more rapid growth
of the newly created states. But, of course, there are many other aspects of the aspiration and its ultimate fulfilment that scholars and political observers will amplify
in due course. Inevitably, the interdependence of the new states will be greater than that in the previous arrangement. Whether that interdependence will grow into
common approaches leading to some form of local federal arrangements, informal to begin with and later more structured and formal, is anyone's guess. But there is
no reason that a similar thing will not happen in assessing what India and Pakistan have gained or lost in parting. Either way, it may not be a rewarding exercise to
look at hypotheticals of what might have been our state without the Partition and whether the Partition was inevitable. Given that history is etched deep in our
psyche, the analysis can at best give us some direction on what we continue to lose because of our inability to repair our estranged relationship. If, as the scholars
suggest, the concept of 'imagined communities' has remained incomplete, must we continue to pay lip service to it? Instead, working towards a grand reconciliation
may give us the elusive breakthrough we have been looking for. The imagination that caused the rupture between India and Pakistan is the very imagination that can
create a new reality that assures prosperity and comfort to both sides. The possibilities of cooperative growth between our two countries can be judged by the
potential of gas pipelines from Iran and Central Asia across Pakistan to Indian destinations. This would only state the obvious that there is an unlocked
interdependence between India and Pakistan, not to speak of the multiplier effect of our cooperation. Imagination and identity are the primary motivations in the
postmodern world, where imagination and discovery were to be our constant companions. If this equation goes wrong, the noblest of dreams can turn into
nightmares.

***

It is curious that most seeming breakthroughs between India and Pakistan take place when the Pakistani army is in direct control of the government machinery in
Islamabad. To think that the very institution whose stated raison d'etre is to protect Pakistan from real or imagined threats from India, among other objectives, should
also be the instrument of better understanding and relations is ironic in the extreme. The political schizophrenia is explained by the dire need for an identified enemy
to rally the nation for a common cause when not in government and display virtuosity in pulling off diplomatic successes when in government.

India has a stake in the success of Pakistan far greater than any sustained usefulness of a counter-argument against its initial conception. History has long bypassed
th l tt hil l litik i t t th f i ti A f l P ki t ld h l t hf if i t l bj t f h tilit d
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7/9/2019 "Pakistan: The Cross-Crescent We Bear" - By Salman Khurshid
the latter while realpolitik points to the former as an imperative. A successful Pakistan would have less reason to search for a unifying external object of hostility, and

it is equally true that a successful India must break free of its convenient obsession with a toxic Pakistan to overcome the Indo-Pak hyphen of international approach
to the subcontinent.

My Indian audience would, I imagine, be concerned and disappointed that a former Indian external affairs minister has spoken so long without lodging a legitimate
complaint about the pain and distress we continue to suffer at the hands of what is described by the Pakistan establishment as non-state actors and about whom we
tirelessly provide reliable evidence of official complicity. Let me right away publicly record my considered opinion that Pakistan's former prime minister, Mian Nawaz
Sharif, breaking from the past, is genuinely committed to peace with India and has more than once put himself in considerable discomfort to find an opening beyond
pious incantations. He made this clear during his election campaign. He shared the information with me when, at the Commonwealth Conference in Sri Lanka, he
took me aside for a coffee. 'My advisers said saying that would be fatal,' Nawaz Sharif told me, 'but I said I do not want to win by misleading my people. The young of
Pakistan want the life of their Indian counterparts. The past is past.'

Excerpted with permission of Rupa Publications India from 'Visible Muslim, Invisible Citizen' by Salman Khurshid. Order your copy here.

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