by Dilip Hiro
On November 28, 2007, Musharraf had to resign as army chief before being sworn in for a second term as civilian president. And on August 18, 2008, he stepped down as president to spare himself impeachment by Parliament, which was dominated by anti-Musharraf parties following the general election in February. With this, the two South Asian rivals lost yet another opportunity for a peaceful settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
Three months later the sixty-hour siege of luxury hotels in Mumbai by Pakistani terrorists, recruited to bring about the liberation of Indian Kashmir, damaged Indo-Pakistan relations gravely. It took two-and-a-half years for the return of diplomatic conversation between the two capitals. Initially, India insisted that no progress could be made in normalizing relations until the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack were brought to justice. Later it relented.
Increased Trade Holds Promise
As the signatories of the South Asian Free Trade Area treaty, specifying reduction of customs duty on all traded goods to zero by 2016 for the eight-member SAARC, India and Pakistani started liberalizing mutual trade from 2009 onward.
But the PPP-led government failed to fulfill its promise to confer most-favored-nation (MFN) status on India by the end of 2012. Delhi had accorded MFN status to Pakistan in 1996. However, in March 2012 Islamabad replaced its positive list of goods that could be imported from India with a negative list. That raised the number of allowable Indian items by three-and-a-half times, to 6,800.
Following the return of Sharif to power in May 2013, India and Pakistan agreed on a nondiscriminatory market access protocol, thus skirting the term “most favored nation,” which had become politicized in Pakistan. During the fiscal year ending in April 2013, Indo-Pakistan commerce, at $2.6 billion, was way below the $4 billion worth of trade that Indians and Pakistanis conducted via third countries.
It is worth recalling that after signing the Lahore Declaration in early 1999, Sharif had expressed the hope in Vajpayee’s presence that “Pakistan and India will be able to live as the United States and Canada.”18 So cordial are the relations between these neighbors in North America that their 1,538-mile-long border is militarily undefended. Sadly, Sharif’s sentiment remains just that: a well-meaning thought stemming from infectious goodwill. All the same, it provides a glimpse of what could be—a notion of an alternative scenario for the twins of South Asia based on ongoing, mutual cooperation and benevolence leading to prosperity and peace.
Regretfully, the two neighbors’ pursuit of generally hostile bilateral policies, rooted in the intractable Kashmir dispute, have diverted scarce resources from advancing health, education, and social welfare to building up the military and the concomitant arms industry. With its 74 percent literacy rate in 2011, India—where education is a fundamental right according to its constitution—was way behind its officials’ often repeated aim of achieving universal literacy.19 In Pakistan, only 21 percent were literate in 2012.20 This was a dismal statistic for a country capable of manufacturing nuclear arms and engaged in a nuclear arms race with neighboring India.
Epilogue
Following the landslide victory of the National Democratic Alliance—led by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)—in India’s general election, BJP head Narendra Modi invited the seven other leaders of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation to his inauguration as Indian prime minister on May 26, 2014.
The generals in Islamabad advised Prime Minister Sharif to decline the invitation. He disregarded their counsel. The generals resented this because, to them, India remained at the core of Pakistan’s national security concerns, and that entitled them to have the last word in this arena. Determined to underline his supreme authority, on the eve of his departure for Delhi, Sharif ordered the release of 151 Indian fishermen arrested for fishing in Pakistani waters as a goodwill gesture.1
On May 27, Sharif had an hour-long one-on-one meeting with Modi, during which he invited his host to Pakistan. Their warm handshake in front of the cameras seemed to offer a promise of improved Indo-Pakistan relations. Sharif said that their top diplomats would meet soon to take their dialogue forward. As pro-business leaders they resolved to pursue normalization of trade relations. According to Barkha Dutt of Delhi-based NDTV, “Sharif said this strong mandate frees up leaders on both sides . . . to actually turn a new page in the history of India and Pakistan.”2 Sharif was thus referring to the large majority his party had won in Pakistan’s general election a year earlier.
Responding to Modi’s gift of a shawl for Sharif’s mother, Shamim Akhtar, the Pakistani leader presented a white sari for his Indian counterpart’s mother, Heeraben Modi, in early June.
However, as had happened before, violations along the Line of Control (LoC) in Kashmir increased in the wake of lowered diplomatic tensions. Between early June and early August, India identified more than thirty violations of the LoC, and Pakistan reported fifty-seven violations.3
On August 12, Modi visited Kargil in Kashmir to inaugurate a power plant. “Pakistan has lost strength to fight conventional war, but continues to engage in a proxy war through terrorism,” he said. Earlier that day, while addressing soldiers in the regional capital of Leh, he informed them that Indian troops were “suffering more casualties from terrorism than from war.”4
As if Modi’s statements were not enough to dissipate the Indo-Pakistan goodwill generated in the spring, Sharif faced a challenge to his office from a street protest in Islamabad that would last several weeks.
Starting on August 14, Pakistan’s independence day, the opposition leader Imran Khan led a protest march from Lahore to Islamabad, calling for Sharif’s resignation on the grounds that his party had rigged votes in the 2013 general election. Another procession was led by Muhammad Tahirul Qadri, a cleric whose Pakistan Awami Tehreek (Urdu: People’s Movement) was a broad alliance of moderate Sunnis and persecuted Shias. His party had boycotted the parliamentary election the previous year. Qadri advocated genuine democracy that empowers the underprivileged.
Sharif ordered a cordoning of the administrative heart of the capital with barbed wire and shipping containers, calling it the Red Zone.
When, on August 19, protestors tore down the barricades and entered the Red Zone, Army Chief General Raheel Sharif called on the government to negotiate with the protesters. But when the government appointed a team of politicians to talk to the protest leaders, Khan insisted that the prime minister must resign first. This was unacceptable to Sharif as well as all other opposition groups. While the military high command seemed unwilling to seize power, it was glad to see the Sharif government weakened.
Meanwhile, the Foreign Office had scheduled August 25 as the date for the arrival of India’s foreign secretary, Sujatha Singh, for talks with her Pakistani counterpart, Aizaz Chaudhry. Among other things, they were expected to prepare the agenda for a Modi-Sharif meeting in New York in late September. But a hitch developed.
According to Islamabad, it had been a “long-standing practice” ahead of Indo-Pakistan talks for Pakistan’s high commissioner in Delhi to hold meetings with dissident Kashmiri leaders in order to “facilitate meaningful discussion on the issue of Kashmir.”5
When India learned of an upcoming meeting of Shabir Ahmad Shah, a Kashmiri separatist leader, with the Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit, Foreign Secretary Singh advised Basit to cancel the appointment. Basit ignored the advice, as instructed by his Foreign Office. Given the street challenge Sharif faced at the time, he could not afford to be seen to be “subservient” to India. The Basit-Shah meeting went ahead on August 18. Pakistan’s spokesperson, Tasnim Aslam, argued that Kashmir was a disputed territory and that Pakistan was a “legitimate stakeholder” in the Kashmir dispute.6
The Modi government described the Pakistani envoy’s action as interference in India’s domestic affairs. It cancelled the foreign secretaries’ talks. By refusing to overlook Pakistan’s open contacts with the Kashmiri sepa
ratists, as the previous governments had done in order to preserve the peace process, Modi drew a fresh red line. He thus struck a blow against the renewed peace efforts he had initiated after his inauguration.
While still facing a crisis created by protests that had paralyzed the Pakistani capital, Sharif made a move to break the diplomatic stalemate with Delhi. In early September he sent a box of the choicest Pakistani mangoes to Modi. He also dispatched mangoes to India’s foreign minister, Sushma Swaraj, as well as President Pranab Mukherjee and Vice President Hamid Ansari, both of them veteran Congress Party members.7 The gesture implied an offer of sweetness.
This gesture proved insufficient to revive cordiality. Addressing the UN General Assembly on September 26, Sharif expressed his disappointment at the cancellation of the foreign secretary–level talks. “The core issue of Jammu and Kashmir has to be resolved,” he said. “This is the responsibility of the international community. . . . Pakistan is ready to work for resolution of this problem through negotiations.” Meanwhile, he declared, “we cannot draw a veil over the issue of Kashmir, until it is addressed in accordance with the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.”8 Soon after delivering his speech, he returned to Islamabad to defuse the ongoing political crisis there.
The next day Modi told the General Assembly that, with far more pressing problems facing South Asia and the world, “raising [the Kashmir dispute] at the UN won’t resolve bilateral issues.” He added, “We want to promote friendship with Pakistan too, but we can only talk without the shadow of terrorism over us.”9
In short, the decades-long Kashmir dispute remained frozen.
By contrast, a steady improvement in trade and cultural relations between the two neighbors continued. On September 11, High Commissioner Basit, who had been at the core of the cancellation of foreign secretary–level meetings, inaugurated the Pakistan Lifestyle Exhibition in New Delhi. It showcased Pakistani products in textiles, marble, and leather.10 More importantly, two weeks earlier the Automotive Component Manufacturers Association of India and the Pakistan Association of Automotive Parts and Accessories Manufacturers signed a memorandum of understanding in Lahore to set up testing facilities in Pakistan and work together on skills development.11
In the cultural field, an important development had occurred in June. Zee Entertainment Enterprises Limited (Zeel) launched a new channel, Zindagi (Hindi/Urdu: Life) TV, to make some of Pakistan’s best syndicated shows—comedies, one-off TV films, and dramas revolving around a household of characters—available to TV audiences across India. Zeel’s executive, Shailja Kejriwal, said that Indians were “deeply curious” about life in Pakistan. “It is quite startling that post-independence, the Indian viewer has never actually seen Pakistan visually. Test audiences were sort of stunned and excited when we revealed these places were in Pakistan because they felt so familiar to them.”12
The opening up of a vast TV market provided an enormous opportunity for Pakistan’s media business. It was also significant that during his visit to Delhi in late May, Sharif had a meeting with Subhash Chandra—chair of the conglomerate Essel Group, which includes Zeel—to discuss the content of Zindagi TV. Within weeks, Zindagi TV’s Pakistani fare proved popular, partly because, in the words of an Indian television critic, “the simple and straight to the point way of telling the stories in these Pakistani serials is a welcome change from the otherwise suffocating, never-ending Indian shows.”M13
All in all, therefore, while the Kashmir dispute shows no sign of progress toward resolution, Indo-Pakistani relations in the realm of commerce and cultural exchange are on a steady course of improvement.
Notes
Introduction
1. Jonathan Marcus, “The World’s Most Dangerous Place?,” BBC News, March 23, 2000.
2. Vinay Kumar, “LoC Fencing in Jammu Nearing Completion,” Hindu, February 1, 2004.
3. Athar Parvaiz, “INDIA: Kashmir’s Fence Eats Crops,” IPS News, October 31, 2011, http://www .ipsnews.net/2011/10/india-kashmirs-fence-eats-crops.
4. Ibid.
5. Dilip Hiro, The Timeline History of India (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006), 242.
6. R. Shayan, “Sir Syed Ahmed Khan,” Agnostic Pakistan (blog), December 14, 2008, http://agnostic pakistan.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/sir-syed-ahmed-khan.html.
7. Ashish Vashi, “Gandhi-Jinnah, Hindu-Muslim: Godhra Created Many Rifts,” DNA India, February 18, 2012.
8. Meena Menon, “Chronicle of Communal Riots in Bombay Presidency (1893–1945),” Economic & Political Weekly, November 20, 2010.
9. Cited in Jaswant Singh, Jinnah: India–Partition–Independence (New Delhi: Rupa and Company, 2009), 86, citing Mohammed Ali Jinnah—An Ambassador of Unity: His Speeches and Writings, 1912–1917, with a Biographical Appreciation by Sarojini Naidu (Lahore, Pakistan: Atish Fishan, 1989), 11.
10. Hiro, The Timeline History of India, 249.
Chapter 1: The Modish Dresser Meets the Mahatma
1. Jaswant Singh, Jinnah: India—Partition—Independence (New Delhi: Rupa and Company, 2009), 68–69. Watson’s Hotel, built in 1863, survives as Esplanade Mansion near Rajabai Clock Tower in South Bombay.
2. Dilip Hiro, The Timeline History of India (New York: Barnes & Noble, 2006), 247.
3. Singh, Jinnah, 86.
4. Cited by Tim Leadbeater, Britain and India 1845–1947 (London: Hodder Education, 2008), 38.
5. Cited in Singh, Jinnah, 100–101.
6. “Gurjar Sabha, January 14, 1915, citing The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 14, 342,” Bombay Chronicle, January 15, 1915, posted by Arun, September 9, 2012, http://thepartitionofindia.blog spot.co.uk/2012/09/gurjar-sabha-january-14-1915-from-cwmg.html.
7. “Mohandes Gandhi Travels to South Africa to Work Under a Year-Long Contract with Dada Abdulla & Co., an Indian Firm” (April 1893), World History Project, http://worldhistoryproject .org/1893/4/mohandes-gandhi-travels-to-south-africa-to-work-under-a-year-long-contract-with-dada -abdulla-co-an-indian-firm.
8. Louis Fischer, Gandhi: His Life and Message for the World (New York: Mentor Books, 1954), 43. As a pious Hindu, Gandhi believed in the myriad myths of Hinduism, including the one that bathing in the Ganges, consecrated by Lord Shiva, washed away all sin.
9. This episode was presented as a powerful flashback in the 1983 Academy Award–winning biopic Gandhi, directed by Sir Richard Attenborough. Today a bronze statue of the semi-clad Mahatma Gandhi, with his right arm raised in blessing, stands in the city center of Pietermaritzburg.
10. Fischer, Gandhi, 25.
11. Cited in ibid., 28.
12. “Bambatha Rebellion 1906,” South African History Online, n.d., http://www.sahistory.org.za /topic/bambatha-rebellion-1906.
13. Sanskrit: steadying.
14. Fischer, Gandhi, 41.
15. After failing to get Africans to work in mines or on sugar or cotton plantations, British owners used Indian agents in southern India to recruit rural, lower-caste, Hindu landless laborers on a small, fixed wage for a five-year contract. The agreement included an option for a further five years’ employment for the indentured laborer before being repatriated at the employer’s expense. The Indian government outlawed the indentured laborer contracts in 1916.
16. Sushila Nayar, Mahatma Gandhi, Satyagraha at Work (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1989), 678–679, 684.
17. Cited in Singh, Jinnah, 604.
18. Fischer, Gandhi, 60.
19. Barbara Crossette, “Pakistan’s Father: What Mohammed Ali Jinnah Accomplished, and What Might Have Been Had He Lived Longer,” New York Times, December 14, 1997.
20. Cited in Fischer, Gandhi, 80.
21. Motihari has the distinction of being the birthplace of Eric Arthur Blair, who acquired the pen name of George Orwell in 1933.
22. Rajendar Prasad, Satyagraha in Champaran (Ahmedabad: Navajivan, 1949), 115–116.
23. Fischer
, Gandhi, 59.
24. Ashish Vashi, “Gandhi-Jinnah, Hindu-Muslim: Godhra Created Many Rifts,” Daily Bhaskar, February 18, 2012.
25. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 57.
26. Singh, Jinnah, 96.
27. Stanley Wolpert, Jinnah of Pakistan (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), 40.
28. Kathryn Tidrick, Gandhi: A Political and Spiritual Life (London: I. B. Tauris, 2006), 122–124.
29. Mani Bhavan, “Chronology/Time Line, 1915–1932,” 2004, http://www.gandhi-manibhavan .org/aboutgandhi/chrono_detailedchronology_1915_1932.htm.
30. Perry Anderson, “Gandhi Centre Stage,” London Review of Books, July 5, 2012, 3–11.
31. Singh, Jinnah, 106.
32. Though Brigadier General Reginald Dyer was relieved of his command and shipped to Britain on sick leave, he was never disciplined. In March 1920 the House of Commons condemned Dyer by 230 votes to 129, but the House of Lords declared by 129 votes to 86 that he had been treated unjustly. He died in 1927. Thirteen years later, Udham Singh, a Sikh resident of Coventry, England, shot dead Sir Michael O’Dwyer, who had described Dyer’s massacre as “the correct action,” at the Royal Albert Hall, London, and was hanged.
33. Cited in Hiro, The Timeline History of India, 251.
34. “Jinnah of Pakistan: Calendar of Events, 1919,” Humsafar.info, n.d., http://www.humsafar .info/1919.php.
Chapter 2: Gandhi’s Original Sin
1. Gail Minault, The Khilafat Movement: Religious Symbolism and Political Mobilization in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 72.