Misperceptions about the other on both sides of the Pakistan and India border can be found galore. We are so close and yet so far. The more I meet particularly the Indian middle classes the more I feel there is a need to understand each other first to build a bridge to peace. On both sides, deliberately or because of their ignorance, our rulers and their embedded media breed misperceptions about the other country. For the last 60 years we have looked at each other’s political, economic and social interests as being static and inorganic. On the contrary, in this period, Pakistan and India have gone through a sea change in every aspect of life. Though not at a desired pace, the economic base of both countries has changed from heavily agricultural to industrial, and the service industry has grown to contribute 50 percent of the GDP. Globalised communications technology is sweeping away the old thinking. Notwithstanding opposition to globalisation by many in our respective countries, the transition to the information and knowledge age is happening. In this post-partition period, the middle classes have grown many times and the demographic profile has changed dramatically with over 60 percent under the age of 30. Unfortunately, all these developments are not factored in by our respective analysts and policymakers who are buried under the heavy burden of distorted history
At a recent seminar in Kolkata on ‘India-Pakistan relations: challenges and the way forward’, organised by the quarterly New Approach’s editor, Shekar Basu Roy, one thing all the nine speakers agreed about was that uninterrupted and irreversible dialogue is needed to beat the agenda of terrorism. The emphasis was on the fact that we need to understand each other better. Highlights of the speakers’ observations of this well-attended seminar would be in order here. Imminent journalist Bharat Bhushun, who moderated the seminar, succinctly described Prime Minister (PM) Modi’s Pakistan policy as a “flip-flop policy”. Modi invested in Pakistan relations at Ufa, keeping in view the forthcoming South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad in 2016.
Former Pakistan Foreign Minister Khursheed Kasuri says that a solution to all issues with India is possible. His optimism resides in his experience of dealing with India as General Musharraf’s foreign minister. “Pakistan and India have natural common interests and so the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) should be seen by India as a bridge to Central Asia,” he suggested. Giving teasers from his upcoming book, he says “We had made significant progress in back door talks with India on a number of issues and could have signed a settlement on Sir Creek and Siachen had PM Manmohan Singh’s visit to Pakistan materialised.” Kasuri was right to stress that in talks between the two countries nobody should claim victory to keep the peace process going.
A section of the media, which is embedded with the beneficiaries of the war economy, has led to the ‘mediaistation’ of Pakistan India relations, to borrow Javed Jabbar’s phrase. Their role has been anti-peace and, hence, anti-people. Former Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid criticised PM Modi for not taking the opposition into confidence and for the “policeman point of view”, which is a major problem.
To my surprise, the editor of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) magazine, Seshardri Chari, was very positive about the India-Pakistan peace process and said that “in spite of terrorism, we want to talk”. But his reservation was that Pakistan’s army and non-state actors were against giving peace a chance. He rightly concluded that the political class has the capability to overcome any hurdles on the peace track. Senator Taj Haider was of the view that building on the secular and socialist tradition of Subash Chander Bose’s peace process should be taken forward, which is resisted by the arms industry of imperialism and religious lobbies.
It was poet writer Javed Akhtar who touched the basic issue: “The fault line of Kashmir and the terrorism issue is in the basic concept of the Two Nation Theory. If we accept it in the case of Kashmir, what would be the future of Indian Muslims in India as they would be legally turned into B class citizens?” I have also heard this view from Muslim intellectuals in Delhi. Even the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind implicitly supports this view by declaring that they stand for a secular India. However, Javed Jabbar claimed his right of reply to Akhtar and defended the weak Two Nation Theory quite forcefully, maintaining that a nation can be made on the basis of religion.
Peace activist and former Indian minister Mani Shankar Ayer cleared the air and appealed for folk to move forward: “We should not try to prove who is clever instead of engaging each other to understand what Pakistan means to Pakistanis and what India means to Indians.” Speaking from first hand experience Mani told the Kolkata audience that “in Pakistan, the people’s position has more nuances than in India”.
My contention was that instead of talking about the way forward to peace from stated official line only, we should talk from the people’s perspective of the subcontinent. While talking about two countries we are talking about every third person in India and every fourth person in Pakistan living in poverty, we are talking about every third child under five years of age who is malnourished, we are talking about people who are killed on the border. In the last two years, 800 cease-fire violations were reported; in this July alone, 11 firing incidents were reported with one killed and 16 injured on the Indian side and 10 killed on the Pakistani side.
Peace is the most urgent imperative as far as the people are concerned while the cold impersonal governments and analysts in Islamabad and Delhi pontificate on who called who first and the silly optics of the Ufa meeting. Pakistan’s narrative about India is not monolithic in spite of the state’s propaganda machines. That needs to be emphasised at every forum to remove misperceptions and create better understanding of each other.
India is beyond Modi and Pakistan is beyond the likes of Hafiz Saeed as fundamentalists have never been able to get more than 10 percent votes. We are a moderate democracy-loving people, who love the soft power of Bollywood as the Indians love watching Pakistani plays on private Indian cable channels. Thus, anti-Indian sentiment has not been an election issue in Pakistan from the 1977 elections onward.
The writer is a freelance journalist and author of What’s Wrong with Pakistan? He can be reached at [email protected]