[Reader-list] fwd: policy shifts not war by Raza Rumi

[inder salim]

Policy shifts not war
Thursday, December 04, 2008
Raza Rumi

The dastardly attacks in Mumbai have irritated the old wounds and
replayed the familiar, jingoistic tunes across the Indo-Pak borders.
The Pakistanis, clamouring for friendship with their larger and
problematic neighbour, have condemned these attacks in no uncertain
terms. Who could be a worse victim of terrorism than Pakistan in these
extraordinary times? Yet, the Indian media and sections of its
establishment are quick to involve 'Pakistan' as the key perpetrator
of the terror regime. This has obviously angered some and allowed a
few Cold-War practitioners to call for self-defence and fighting with
India till the last. The truth is that much of Pakistan does not want
war. Hopefully, the Indian citizens are also not looking at war as a
solution, or so it seems.

It is almost a cliché to state that war is not a solution to the
current imbroglio despite the hysterical calls by the Hindu right to
'neutralise' Pakistan. The saner elements in India have already
pointed to the implicit and deep-seated issues of misgovernance,
short-termism and the mess of Partition that were neither carefully
deliberated nor rectified during all these decades. The non-state
actors in both India and Pakistan have gained ascendancy due to the
power distance of the Raj induced steel-frame structures of
governance. If there are dozens of districts in India that operate
beyond the writ of the formal state, there are areas in Pakistan that
are not just outside the scope of the formal state but in a state of
rebellion due to the war on terror.

Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, an ignored persona in Pakistan, termed the
partition of India as a partition of Indian Muslims. Whether we like
it or not, this tragedy has happened in actual terms, leaving scars
and wounds that will take years to heal. As if the 1947 bloodshed was
not enough, the 1971 war of liberation fought by the Bengalis against
the Pakistani state further divided the mass of Muslims into three
distinct categories under tottering, imagined nation states.

Kashmiris are up in arms once again in India – this time Pakistan
cannot be blamed for the excesses of the Indian state noted by the
international groups and the bold sections of Indian intelligentsia.
The inimitable Arundhati Roy has already called for India's 'azadi'
from Kashmir. The rise of the Hindu dominance movements allegedly to
correct the wrongs of one thousand years of misdoings by the Muslims;
and the concurrent branding of Muslims as terrorists have further
fuelled the alienation of Indian Muslims. This is not just a Pakistani
position but a fact recognized by many Indian thinkers themselves.

In Pakistan, years of misguided policies using Jihad as a policy
instrument have also brutalized the society with a dogmatic
interpretation of the lofty Islamic notions of struggle, change and
self-improvement. Thus we have bigoted and political jihad factories
that appear to be drifting away from the central hold and assuming a
life of their own.

So we have a self-fulfilling cycle of violence, hate and
war-mongering. Acts of violence in India are blamed on Pakistan, and
groups of Indian Muslims thereby adding to further profiling of a
beleaguered community that is huge in numbers despite being a
minority. Pakistan plays up this trend and attracts the criticism of
the Indian extremists for sponsoring terror by misleading the minority
youth. And, any insurgency in Pakistan is immediately traced to Indian
intervention, real or fabricated. The wound festers and bleeds
unabated.

Things have come to such a pass that we have jihadist state officials,
especially a few retired ones who use war as a road to Pakistani (read
Islamic) glory, TV presenters who predict that India will be ruled by
Muslims once again and madressahs that preach stuff that can put most
of us to shame. On the Indian side, the involvement of serving and
retired army officers in communal, barbaric violence is also a matter
of public record. In addition, you have serving chief ministers and
leaders of political parties who preach hatred and talk of 'fixing'
the Muslims within India and beyond through regional and global
coalitions that would make Gandhi and Nehru turn in their graves.

Religion and communalism sell where economic opportunity is short
supply and where the modes of governance reinforce exploitation and
alienation. This is the crux of the problem that is faced by India and
Pakistan and to some extent by Bangladesh as well where abuse of
religious sentiment has gained currency much to the horror of the
secular Bengalis. Therefore, the need of the hour is for India and
Pakistan to acknowledge that they have to cooperate and address the
menace of poverty, social and cultural exclusion and rethink their
eagerness to espouse the neo-liberal mantra of growth at any cost and
identifying consumerism with general prosperity. This requires
fundamental policy shifts within these states. Calls for war and
revenge are mere ruses to avoid taking the hard route to reform and
social transformation. The entrenched civil and military bureaucracies
would need to take a backseat in the policy-setting process.

Pakistan's current and former presidents have presented India with
some unprecedented proposals that include shift from the traditional
positions of Kashmir, trade-facilitation and responsible agreements on
the use of nuclear warheads, among others. The recent Mumbai attacks
have occurred right after President Zardari articulated bold and
fearless proposals on a long-lasting peace.

This is why the Indian establishment needs to review its current spell
of belligerence aimed at the domestic, pre-election milieu and
understand that this is what the miscreants are aiming for: a breach
and reversal of what was optimistically named as an irreversible peace
process. The Pakistani state needs to ensure that it provides full
cooperation in future investigations to allay the fears of Indian
public. This is how the cycle of violence, hostility and war-mongering
will start to break. Any kind of war – surgical, targeted, small-scale
or large scale – is not the answer. The sub-continental states have to
reinvent themselves after six decades of independence and re-examine
how the colonial legacies of social and economic exclusion, the great
games and communalism have to be done away with.

If we as a region fail to act, history shall be brutally candid about
our collective illusions, suicidal streaks and the shared contempt for
history.



The writer blogs at razarumi.com and edits two e-zines: Pak Tea House
and Lahore Nama. Email: razarumi at gmail.com



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