Daily Times

Sartaj Aziz was not allowed to visit the Golden Temple. Generally, no one is disallowed from visiting and paying obeisance to the holy site of the Sikhs. Not, surely, an old man of 87 years of age. Even the British Queen came and paid her respects (though with gloves on, which did not go down well with many Sikhs). The Golden Temple is one of the few places which are open to all irrespective of any worldly affiliation to any creed or sect. Aziz was also given a short shrift at official meetings of the Heart of Asia Conference; keeping him many paces away from the pivotal events and meetings. Furthermore, even Abdul Basit was not allowed to speak to the press. It became ugly when Basit actually forced his way to speak to Pakistani journalists. There is no word whether the bouquet of flowers for Sushma Swaraj was smelled by the ailing recipient. This was not perhaps what was expected by Sartaj Aziz and his country’s ambassador in New Delhi. Many are questioning the decision to visit Amritsar: whether he should have come or not is perhaps not as important as the mirror which his reception held up to those who were waxing lyrical about hospitality not a few weeks ago. Lessons were being delivered about the magnanimity of some, and the incivility and vulgarity of others. That myth has been busted in Amritsar.

A few weeks ago, when the Indian ‘unofficial’ delegation came to Kashmir to know about the situation, a little hospitality drama unfolded. A couple of members came out of the fixed addresses to meet Syed Ali Gilani. At his doorstep in the suburban Srinagar, they received silence against their knock. Before finally being told that Gilani will not meet them.

A curt ‘no’ became a spectacular feast for the Indian media, and for those who believe in picking up civilisational interpretation from small pieces of events. They pick them up to hold for attention the generosity of the democratic India in reaching out to the Islamists and the willingness to talk to those who put up a militant challenge to the Indian state.

The point being made was that despite the regressive social and political order of which the expected host was the champion, the plural and progressive set up of which the willing guests are representatives, made the attempt to sit down with them; a sign of the liberal secular ethos of the ancient civilisation of India; a step which can only come from antique inclusive societies in their modern avatars. Everything else is chipped away; all context is washed out, the prisons are made invisible, the wiping out of political dissent is cast away, the pelleted eyes are an unimportant sideshow, what is isolated and amplified is the vulgar attitude of not hosting the guests. All the services offered to yatris, when blood is splashed on the roads, were plainly ignored.

A full display of motivated reasoning came into action, with one instance feeding into a previous pre-embedded perception. The hospitality of the leader was put on the test; with that the very culture of hospitality was put to examination and analysis. A leader of the ruling coalition suggested implicitly that Gilani shamed the Kashmiriyat culture in not opening the doors of his house. The panellists in Delhi came down heavily on the gumption of the octogenarian to defy the goodwill of Indian parliamentarians. Now, the shoe is on the other foot in Amritsar.

The spirit of hospitality died a quiet death in the holy city of Amritsar. Of all the cities, in Amritsar, which is a host and hospitable to one and all. No one seems to ask why Prime Minister Modi was inhospitable in Amritsar and why the burden of hospitality was put on Gilani in his home in Hyderpora, Srinagar? While the official note is clear that hospitality was accorded and Sartaj has no right to crib about being mistreated, the unofficial narrative is less ambiguous.

The point being that as a great civilisation, the host nation of the Heart of Asia Conference knows where to draw the line between a good guest and bad guest (an insight which is not available with the lesser wits of lower civilisations). Sartaj Aziz, despite his overtures, was a bad guest from a rogue house, who deserved nothing less than what he was given. On the other hand, Gilani as a bad host had better come to Kashi for mannerisms of serving tea to a set of refined guests. From the finer points about hospitality, the focus shifted from being a good host to the burden of becoming a good guest. The generosity of the guest was this time round read as the witchery of the entrant to Amritsar; he had come to draw a wedge between Afghanistan and India, and not for any meaningful purpose.

Dal Khalsa saw the wedge going down between Sikhs and Pakistan. Therefore, he got more than what was his due. And those leaders in Kashmir, who gratuitously questioned Gilani’s behaviour in turning away the guests, will read national interest and larger objectives in the bitterness between guest and host in Amritsar, or lift their eyes off the episode or conveniently believe that the yardstick to measure one’s ideological opponents should be severer than the ones used on one’s own partners.

Hospitality between rival ideologies is like a handshake; the latter can be warm or cold depending on the surrounding conditions. Even the best handshake can turn out to be the coldest if it comes in the backdrop of mistrust and a covert war against each other. However, an even pretentious warm handshake can improve the atmosphere and restore the heart to the conferences which bear ‘heart’ in their titles. That did not happen in Amritsar, and the clouds of suspicion are here to stay. Aziz is back in his groove, and Modi is back after feeding the poor in the Temple, and the people who could have benefited from their at least acting as good guests and hosts will continue to suffer from their hostilities.

The writer is a columnist, author, and lecturer at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar. He can be reached at javjnu@gmail.com