Yaqoob Bangash in his recent article, ‘Maybe we have forgotten Kashmir?’ in a national daily presents a picture of glimmer and hope that Pakistan is all set to move beyond the Kashmir issue, and that today’s youth in Pakistan would rather take up a job in India than maintain a belligerent attitude towards the country. As fantastic as it sounds, there are numerous inconsistencies in Bangash’s argument.
The first and the most obvious is Bangash’s generalisation that somehow the next generation of youth has forgotten about Kashmir just because they were not active during the seminar that he organised at the FC College, upon which he based his entire argument. The fact that nobody stood up and argued, or that the seminar attracted a lukewarm response from the students is far more related to the issue of stage ‘fright’ and fear of being humiliated by experts on the high-table rather than lack of genuine interest or sentiment over the Kashmir issue.
Having taught Islamic Political Philosophy in my classes, I have experimented with this idea by giving out completely wrong details about Islam to students, expecting them to erupt and challenge me but as expected, nobody did and nobody would for numerous reasons. Being in teachers’ good books, getting an A grade, and fear of humiliation are just a few of them. However, they all criticised my arguments after class in their own group discussions with very logical points. So, I would be seriously interested to know what the students thought in their private sessions about the Kashmir issue after Bangash’s seminar. If he is really interested in understanding the views of students on Kashmir, it would be more appropriate to take a short written assignment asking students for their views on paper by remaining anonymous. This was something I did in one of my classes at the university where I teach, and the results were fairly opposite of what Bangash projects in his article. Indian atrocities in Kashmir, the Muslim connection with it, and the future of Pakistan in the region were all linked to the issue of Kashmir.
Second, what Bangash has not taken into consideration before reaching a conclusion on the matter is the phenomenon of relativity. While the Kashmir issue has declined in relative terms to other issues that Pakistan is currently tangled in on its western border, the issue if taken in isolation in itself is prevalent and burning. That is especially so at those universities that are politically active, for instance Government College Lahore, Punjab University, Gordon College, Quaid-e-Azam University, where I have personally visited to carry out research on youth sentiments over a variety of issues, and when it comes to India, Kashmir is hands down still the major issue. Therefore, looking at the Kashmir issue in relative terms with the rest of the issues of Pakistan will present a picture that Bangash has depicted in his article, but at the same time in relation to India, it is absurd to claim that the youth is ready to give up the issue of Kashmir for jobs in India.
Even if we agree with Bangash’s conclusion for the sake of argument, the same could be said about Indians that they too have forgotten about the Kashmir issue. They would rather have better ties with Pakistan than fight over Kashmir depending upon who you talk to in India, and in which geographical location. What Bangash missed is the idea that nobody in Pakistan wants estranged ties with India forever, but claiming that people of Pakistan want to dump the Kashmir issue and hand it over to India is a bit far-stretched.
Pakistan and India have a long way to go in their relationship, and it cannot merely be a one-sided affair. Having interviewed over 80 travellers from Pakistan who went to India, and government officials in Pakistan who are directly working on relations with India, the sentiment is fairly clear that the Indian government is not doing ‘enough’ and perhaps does not share the same excitement as Pakistan does over ‘mending’ the ties. Now that even the ISI and the Pakistan army have given a go-ahead on the ties with India, there is no reason why India is still hesitating or creating bureaucratic hurdles in the relationship. It makes one wonder that maybe Pakistan is trying too hard with India. It appears that India is waiting for Pakistan to bleed more, so that a deal with the former is struck at the right time with an Indian upper hand and out of desperation of the latter.
In addition, while in the past few years there has been a hype of the rise of India as a superpower and economic giant, recently this has started to die down internationally, especially in the United States. One of the senior government officials working on India, in a private conversation with me, mentioned how the initial American optimism about India has taken a downward spiral. It was only after extensive interaction and a better understanding by the Americans that they realised that India faces massive problems in almost all sectors of society, and beneath the shallow layer of the list of Indian billionaires, there is overwhelming poverty, health crisis, corruption, human rights violations, and militancy.
As much as I support strong ties and less border restrictions with India, it is also important for us to not get carried away by lukewarm responses from students on the Kashmir issue, or overly hyped ‘rise of India’ and put Pakistan in a weaker negotiating position with India. India needs Pakistan as much as Pakistan needs India, and both countries have to make big concessions in order to develop a long-term relationship. India being the bigger power should be smart enough to understand the importance of this opportunity and move forward more quickly with this relationship before the moment is lost.
The writer is a lecturer at the National University of Science and Technology (NUST) in Islamabad. He is also an Associate Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR), Kings College, London. He can be reached at [email protected]