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PlainSpeak
India's Vision of
Peace with Pakistan is a Mirage
by Dr. Subhash Kapila
India’s
vision of peace with Pakistan is a mirage, if unfolding events in
Pakistan, the Middle East and the global strategic situation are taken
into account. Much has been written in the past on this count and yet
India persists in pursuing this mirage. Many American policy analysts
also have conceded that Pakistan is an improbable partner for peace with
India. They have arrived at this conclusion after a long study of
Pakistan’s policy attitudes and fixations and a survey of its
demonstrated patterns of approaches to conflict resolution.
The most significant obstacle in an India-Pakistan peace dialogue or
peace process is that the perceptions on peace differ. So also are the
differences in approaches to establishing peace.
India believes that peace with Pakistan can be brought about by adopting
the route of Confidence Building Measures (CBMs), focusing on the civil
society in Pakistan as the core of an enlarging peace constituency in
Pakistan. It believes that this route may lead to the removal of
distrust as more people to peoples contact grow. Eventually this could
lead to more mutual confidence enabling resolution of contentious issues
between the two countries , including Kashmir
Pakistan’s perception of peace with India is seen through the route of
first resolving the Kashmir dispute (on Pakistani terms) and that this
will itself will be the biggest CBM to enable other CBM’s to follow on
the road to peace.
Both India and Pakistan are mistaken in their respective approaches to
peace between the two countries. India fails to realize that in a
country like Pakistan under long spells of military rule, including the
present regime, no space is given for the existence of viable, prominent
and enlarged ‘civil society’ or ‘peace constituencies’ as they negate
the very justification for military rule in Pakistan. Pakistan on the
other hand is mistaken that India under any political dispensation will
ever part with Kashmir or concede to the Pakistani General’s outlandish
proposals of joint sovereignty over Kashmir or the Chenab Formula—both
proposals designed to secure a backdoor Pakistani entry into Kashmir by
other means.
The regional events in the Middle East are being interpreted by
Pakistani intelligentsia as a bid by the United States to reorder the
Muslim World. Israel is being projected as America’s surrogate for
executing this design. The Pakistanis are now propagating that India
will be the next American surrogate entrusted to reorder Islamic
Pakistan. The Pakistani intelligentsia is currently engaged in
conspiracy theories of projecting the Middle East conflict in
civilisational terms as a struggle between USA/West and the Muslim
World.
When such mindsets exist within the policy establishment of Pakistan how
can India hope that peace with Pakistan is possible and that peace is
also the end-game of Pakistan’s approaches to a dialogue with India.
Mumbai 7/11 bombings by Islamist religious terror groups based in
Pakistan and last week’s expulsion of an Indian diplomat by Pakistan do
not indicate that Pakistan is sincere in its pledges of peace between
the two countries.
India should move away from this mirage. While maintaining the minimum
modicum of diplomatic propriety in its relations with Pakistan,
accompanied by a firmness in dealing with provocations,, it should focus
its gaze on the larger canvas of a liberalized world.
August 13, 2006
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PlainSpeak
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