[sacw] sacw dispatch #2 (19 Oct. 1999)

[Harsh Kapoor]

South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch
19 0ctober 1999
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#1. PAKISTAN: Rapprochement with India unstoppable
#2. Tilt To The Right [in India]
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#1.
IPS, 19 October 1999

PAKISTAN: Rapprochement with India unstoppable

By Beena Sarwar

LAHORE, Oct 19 (IPS): Although the general feeling of relief here at the
removal of the Nawaz Sharif government is tempered by apprehension of what
the future holds under yet another military general, one thing is clear:
people want peace with India. And so apparently does General Parvez
Musharraf, the new Chief Executive of Pakistan.

One of the salient features of his address to the nation on Oct 17 was the
announcement of a unilateral withdrawal of troops. Reassuring the
international community that there would be no change in Pakistans foreign
policy, Gen. Musharraf went on to discuss two key areas of our external
relations: international security and disarmament and our relations with
India.

Pakistan has always been alive to international non-proliferation
concerns, he said. Last year, we were compelled to respond to Indias
nuclear tests in order to restore strategic balance in the interest of our
national security and regional peace and stablity. In the new nuclear
environment in South Asia, we believe that both Pakistan and India have to
excercise utmost restraint and responsiblity.

Congratulating Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee on assuming office as Prime Minister
of India and welcoming Vajpayees offer for friendly relations, he
positively reciprocated by stating that Pakistan would welcome
unconditional, equitable and result-oriented dialgue with India.

The general went further and actually initiated a meaningful confidence
building measure, surprising all listeners: he announced a unilateral
military de-escalation on our international borders with India and the
return of all our forces moved to the borders in the recent past.

Pakistan would, however, continue its unflinching moral, political and
diplomatic support to the Kashmiris in their struggle to achieve their
right of self-determination. India must honour the UN Resolutions and its
own commitment to the people of Kashmir. It must also end its repression
of the Kashmiri people and respect their fundamental rights, he said.

Those least surprised by Gen. Musharrafs annoucement may be colleagues and
friends with a personal knowledge of his views. Investigations, and
interviews with serving and retired army officials and friends of the
general by Kamran Khan, special correspondent of The News, reveal that he
is known for his flexible position on professional matters and his
preference for seeking a collective decision over his personal position.

In a front page article in The News on Oct 19 titled Portrait of a general
as a young man, citing sources close to Musharraf, Khan reports that even
on the Kargil issue, Nawaz Sharif had been briefed about the development
at the ISI headquarters in March.

Instead of raising any objection or reservation about the mission, Sharif
raised his hands in prayer for success in Kargil, writes Khan, quoting a
source privy to the briefing.

A few weeks later, before India even had an inkling of the Mujahideen
occupying the Kargil heights, Musharraf informed Sharif that if he
desired, the Army could arrange for the Mujahideens withdrawal, an offer
almost instantly rejected by Sharif, reports Khan.

A partial withdrawal of the Pakistan army from its international borders
with India was started on Monday morning (Oct 18), according to an army
spokesman, in line with Gen. Musharrafs desire to reduce tensions with
India in the wake of the recent conflict over Kashmir around the Line of
Control at Kargil.

Indias response has been less than enthusiastic, with Indian army chief
V.P. Malik stating that he did not set too much store by this initiative.
We should not read too much in this Pakistani annoucement, he told the
PTI. We shall assess the situation on the basis of the overall security
situation along the international border as well as the Line of Control.

His wait-and-see attitude was mirrored by foreign ministry spokesman
Raminder Singh Jassal, who was reported to have shrugged off Pakistans
move and demanded an end to cross-border terrorism sponsored by Islamabad.

Analysts here are unsurprised by Indias reluctance to respond positively
to Gen. Musharrafs offer of an olive branch. India seeks, as always, to
project itself as the aggrieved party, commented the respected
Lahore-based political observer Abbas Rashid, a former full-time
journalist now engaged in research work on political and regional issues.

Tens of thousands of innocent Kashmiris have been killed in the Valley by
Indian security forces. It was India that introduced nuclear weapons in
South Asia last year, he wrote in a front-page comment in daily The News
(Oct 19). Rashid emphasised that Gen. Musharrafs re-stating of Pakistans
position on Kashmir should not detract from the significance of the
initiative. Nor is there reason for India to assume that it occupies, on a
permanent basis, the high moral ground, he said.

Again, the generals wish for a truly representative government in Kabul is
significantly different from indicating unqualified support for the
Taliban, Rashid pointed out. It is no secret that the army has had a major
say in formulating policy on Afghanistan and Kashmir. Maybe it can now
manage a settlement that civilian governments, not always for lack of
trying, could not.

Sharing this optimism is Dr Mubashir Hasan, a former hawk turned peace
activist who served as federal finance minister in Zulfikar Ali Bhuttos
cabinet more than twenty years ago. A leading exponent of people-to-people
dialogue and Track II diplomacy for several years now, Dr Hasan is a member
of the Pakistan-India Peoples Forum for Peace and Democracys National
Council.

The process of rapprochement between India and Pakistan is unstoppable, he
told IPS. The pace can vary.

Pakistanis must understand that the extraordinary step taken by the Indian
prime minister last February (coming to Lahore by bus across the Wagah
border), was not the action merely of the BJP but of a whole gamut of
Indian political opinion. Since that step was taken in the interest of
India, there is no reason to imagine that the compulsions which made it
take that step have in any way reduced.

Dr Hasan believes that the Kargil episode has, in fact, made it all the
more imperative for India to act with greater vigour than before and for
Pakistan to respond with greater fervour than before.

Given the Western, particularly US, disapproval of the situation in
Pakistan, his advice to India is to avail the opportunity and assure
Pakistan that India stands for real peace in the region and would not like
to support the USA in arm-twisting Pakistan.
(ends)
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#2.
The Hindustan Times, New Delhi.
Oct. 10 1999

TILT TO THE RIGHT

By Achin Vanaik

The former prime minister now turned elder statesman, Mr. V.P. Singh, got
it right when he declared on television that the Indian electorate has
taught a lesson to the two main national parties, the BJP and the Congress.
What he did not point out, however, was that the nature of the lessons
imparted were very different. The Congress has been seriously punished
whereas the BJP has not been rewarded!

The historical decline of the Congress which seemed to have bottomed out in
the last elections, has resumed. But whether it has now reached its nadir
or can suffer further decline is an open question. It depends on how it
copes with this, its most serious crisis ever. The silver lining is its
partial revival in the north, especially its re-entry into U.P., its
showing in Karnataka and its continuing presence as one of the two main
contending parties in certain states. The dark clouds in the otherwise
bright day for the BJP are its own electoral stagnation and the
strengthening of the weight of its regional allies in the NDA relative to
itself.

Since poll outcomes were overwhelmingly decided by state level issues of
performance and governance - apart from Gujarat, Andhra (where Naidu was
rewarded for his performance) and Maharashtra (where the split between
Congress and NCP was fatal) - anti-incumbency was the dominant common
trend. Neither the `charisma' of Vajpayee nor the `foreign origin' of Sonia
proved to be factors of major or national significance. What was revealed
was the strategic-political wisdom of the BJP leadership in forging a
pre-election coalition and entering the lists as such. The great strategic
failure of the Congress was its fateful decision at Panchmarhi to not try
and forge a strong counter-alliance because by confidently refusing to do
so it would have better chances of becoming at least the single largest
party.

The chances of this government lasting a full term, even if not certain,
are considerably stronger than that of the previous one. Though there
remain contradictions within the NDA and tensions will surface, it is also
more difficult for the smaller parties, singly or in tandem, to hold the
BJP-led government to ransom. What sharply distinguishes this Lok Sabha
from the previous one is the scale of the decline of the Congress. The new
electoral arithmetic greatly diminishes the likelihood that an alternative
government coalition can be set up to replace the current one without
precipitating another election which few want, certainly not the regional
partners in the NDA which cannot expect to do better the next around than
they have this time. This `stability' will please the stock market,
business interests and the so-called middle (but hardly median) classes but
will disturb those who seriously distrust the BJP and the Sangh Combine.

Together, the regional parties, whether in the BJP-led and Congress-led
alliances or independent from them, account for almost 250 of the total Lok
Sabha seats. However, the gravitational political pull that they can exert
is not commensurate with their collective relative weight in Parliament,
precisely because they are not a collective but are separate state level or
regional parties and cannot aspire to the same degree of ideological or
organisational coherence that the BJP has and even the enfeebled Congress
still retains. Specifically, this means that the moderating influence they
can exercise on the BJP-Sangh Combine in the NDA, while it certainly
exists, should not be exaggerated.

A hard-core and openly aggressive Hindutva will not be on the agenda. But
the space behind this is, nevertheless, large enough for the Sangh to
determinedly explore. For the regional allies and many others, it is as if,
as long as the three issues of mandir, imposition of UCC, and Article 370
are not pushed, then the credentials and activities of the Sangh are, by
and large to be accepted on trust, though they might `overreach' themselves
on certain issues, e.g. attacks on Christians, revamping history text
books, saraswati vandana, which then call for `rebuke' or `reprimand'.

What is missing from all this is the clear-sighted recognition that only a
decisive break between the RSS and the BJP can signal a fundamental
transformation of the BJP into an Indian version of a conservative-liberal
Christian Democratic party. The Sangh comes in a package and already
embarked, after its 1998 poll victory, on a long-term, unwavering project
that can best be described as a `long march through the institutions' of
State and civil society. In the former terrain, it is through the
systematic emplacement of ideologically committed fellow-travelers as well
as more subtle forms of suborning bureaucratic, educational, research and
other departments and bodies. What evidence is there that the regional
allies recognize this, let alone that they are concerned enough to want to
resist this except where they may be directly affected? In civil society,
examples of this `long march' include the recent attempt to selectively
harass those NGOs seen as ideological opponents by raising the issue of
foreign funding, as well as attacks and other forms of harassment of
churches and Christian orders and their associated social service, health,
education and recreational networks. This is then implicitly or explicitly
justified by raising the bogey of conversions.

We can expect the pursuit of this project, howsoever careful, slow or
disguised, to continue as it is integral to the ambitions of Hindutva -
witness the importance the RSS attaches to expanding its own networks of
schools, shakas, cultural-religious bodies, etc. These elections have also
cleared the ground for some degree of acceleration in the application of
neo-liberal perspectives concerning the issue of economic reform,
liberalisation-globalisation. If the fulcrum or center of gravity of India
on the issues of secularism-communalism, and on the economy, is itself
shifting, howsoever cautiously to the right, then the idea that regional
forces are exercising a moderating pull on the Sangh must itself be
seriously qualified. To put it another way, poll results may well have
shown that the electoral forward march of the BJP-Sangh is stalled, perhaps
enduringly halted. But this is very different from claiming that its
political-ideological forward march has been stalled or enduringly halted.

As for the Congress, it should now be clear that the search for a
`charismatic' and unifying leader cannot resolve its deep crisis. To
overcome its organizational and leadership crisis it must first overcome
its political-ideological-programmatic crisis. What, and therefore whom,
does it stand for? Which are the social bases it is most strongly committed
to and most determined to hold, even as it seeks in good old centrist
fashion to additionally offer something for everybody. The core, though not
the sole, constituency of the BJP remains the upper, middle and
lower-middle classes and the upper and higher backward castes. This cannot
be the terrain on which the Congress is to fight. But it cannot
successfully fight on any other terrain unless it rethinks its commitment
to economic neo-liberalism, and its flirtations with `soft Hindutva'.
Ironically, even now, the future fate of the BJP does not rest in its own
hands, but will be determined above all, by what the Congress, its
principal rival, does or fails to do.
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South Asia Citizens Web Dispatch is an informal, independent &
non-profit citizens wire service run by South Asia Citizens Web
(http://www.mnet.fr/aiindex) since1996.