ARTICLE OF THE MONTH

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Articles of the Month

*Reducing the trust deficit, Dr. Mubashir Hasan, Aman Ki Asha, June 2, 2010
*We need to celebrate our successes rather than: Imran Aslam…, Aman Ki Asha, June 15, 2010

*Reducing the trust deficit, Dr. Mubashir Hasan, Aman Ki Asha, June 2, 2010
http://www.amankiasha.com/detail_articles.asp?id=75

At his press conference on May 24, Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh revealed that at his recent summit meeting with Prime Minister Gilani in Bhutan "we agreed that trust deficit is a major problem blocking progress in the direction of going forward and that it should be our common endeavour to reduce the trust deficit."

It is generally realised that the trust deficit has come to exist not because the armies of the two countries expect a war to break out between them, not because Pakistan calls itself an Islamic republic and India prides itself as a secular state, not because the Muslims are in majority in Pakistan and India is a Hindu-majority state, not because they subscribe to different political ideologies, and not because they had four armed conflicts in the first 24 years of their history.

There is no trust deficit between 1.25 billion poor, backward and oppressed people on the two sides of the border. The wretched of the two countries neither gain nor lose by not trusting each other. However, the ruling elites of the two countries, helped by their respective strategic communities, do harbour a strong trust deficit and make it impossible for peace-seeking political leaders to prevail. Strong vested interests of the ruling elites on both sides of the border feed the trust deficit.

The major issues concerning the peoples of Pakistan and India pertain to the normalisation of the regimes of travel, trade, transportation, free flow of information, cultural, educational and scientific exchanges and release of prisoners. These are not matters which carry much weight in contributing to the trust deficit.

Prime Minister Narsimha Rao was the first to take the bold step, one inconceivable until that time, of issuing visas to a group of more than 100 Pakistanis to hold the first convention of the Pakistan-India Forum for Peace and Democracy at Delhi (PIPFPD) in February 1995. The follow-up conventions were held in Lahore (November 1995), Calcutta (December 1996), and Peshawar (November 1998), with attendance reaching the 300 mark. The enthusiasm generated among the two peoples by the conventions did reduce the trust deficit and was certainly a factor which permitted Prime Ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpaye to meet and issue the Lahore Declaration in 1999. Unrestricted issuing of visas and free flow of information, along with cultural exchanges, will greatly help in reducing the trust deficit further.

The ruling elites of the two countries, having interests different from the interests of the people, do not trust each other's intentions when it comes to entering into negotiations to resolve the issues of strategic content. Even if the negotiators forget their vested interest for a moment, they cannot believe that those facing them across the table have the power or the capability to deliver on the promise they would make at the negotiating table. To the arguments put forward by the leaders of the respective strategic communities, our weak prime ministers succumb. They fear that since the strategic communities have the capability to mobilise a section of the media and public opinion against peace efforts, their political party may lose the next general elections. If our prime ministers were statesmen they would overrule the advice from below, win the next general elections and also make their place in history.

Take the case of a resolution to the Kashmir issue, the mother of the trust deficit between the ruling elites and their strategic communities. The governments of India and Pakistan should abandon the plan of first coming to some agreement among themselves before presenting it to the people of Kashmir on both sides of the Line of Control. Such a presentation, notwithstanding any secret agreement with sections of Kashmiri leaders, will prematurely expose the governmental consensus and materially damage the consensus for the future. They will never be able to secure the agreement of all the political leaders of the former state of J&K on their joint proposal. Those who do not fall in line will hold the trump cards in their hands, for the simple reason that the bulk of the population of the former state has adversarial views on India and Pakistan.

Instead, should the two governments jointly approach the leaders of J&K to present a joint scheme to resolve the issue, simultaneously safeguarding the security and other vital interests of India and Pakistan, the J&K leaders will, to the best of my knowledge and assessment, be prepared to: (a) let India and Pakistan defend the border with China as they do now, along with access to strategic communications; (b) the line of control will stand erased (however, arrangements will be devised and international guarantees secured that neither India nor Pakistan can aggress against the boundaries of the former state); (c) the peoples of India and Pakistan shall enjoy the all privileges of travel and trade over the entire state as India enjoys today over the area lying to the east of the Line of Control; (d) the future residents of the former state will enjoy the same privileges including the use of communication systems of Pakistan and India as they do today; (e) The new model for the future internal governance of the state shall give Jammu, Ladakh and other areas as much autonomy as will ensure freedom from oppression of any one ethnic group or community over others.

The writer is a former finance minister. Email: mh1@ lhr.comsats.net.pk
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*We need to celebrate our successes rather than: Imran Aslam…, Aman Ki Asha, June 15, 2010
http://www.amankiasha.com/detail_news.asp?id=170

Excerpts of a recent speech in Delhi by Imran Aslam, President Geo TV Network, Pakistan

It is wonderful to be in Delhi among friends, amongst fellow dreamers who dream with their eyes wide open. It is also poignant for the Jang Group to be here after 70 years in a city where its journey began.

Whenever Indians and Pakistanis of our generation visit each other, they go in search of their fractured past. Looking for some fragment of memory, an abandoned house, a lane that once was, an ink-stained mutilated desk carved with the initials of a face once loved, now forgotten, some half remembered fragrance, the source of a lullaby, a chalk-marked blackboard now wiped clean by a new class monitor or a letter that was written, was folded, was inserted in an envelope, was addressed, but never posted. It is a relationship drenched in nostalgia and patched with pain. All very romantic! All very poetic! All very tragic!

I think it is time we visited each other searching not for our fleeting past, but for our future. This is easier said than done. We have not yet unpacked the excess baggage we cart around at tremendous cost to our people. And we keep filling our luggage with unnecessary trinkets and souvenirs of prejudices, superstitions, stereotypes, induced hatreds, lies parading as history, aggressive intent and ticking time bombs poised to unsettle the delicate balance we achieve from time to time. It is a toxic relationship, where love and hate alternate with alarming regularity. A sensitive relationship where hurt refuses to subside and scars are amplified in the retelling. Only with truth will come reconciliation. And the truth continues to be inconvenient. But it needs to be spoken even if it is contrary to the national narratives we have been held hostage to.

If we are to create the enabling environment for a meaningful relationship, we need to take the debate to the people and out of these halls where very polite discourse amongst the like-minded and converted can lull us into a false sense of success. We have to engage with the passions, atavistic, irrational and vile as they can be.

We have fashioned the vessels that can take us into the heart of darkness. We need the will to navigate this vessel towards fairer shores. Plying our vessels only in the back channels without moving into the mainstream will not do.

I am alluding here to the media, the much hyped, much maligned media as the critical navigator. It is only the media that has the power, both constructive and destructive, that can set an agenda, disseminate new ideas, test the soundness of these concepts and reach the critical mass that has eluded us. It is this media only that can change mindsets and bring forth narratives of commonality and reconciliation, and it can also bring division and war. Unless we get our two people talking to each other, having an animated, sustained conversation with each other, sharing our fears, anxieties and apprehensions about our intentions, progress on the path to peace will continue to falter. Speech will be reduced to a stutter.

Ten years ago the satellites orbiting over Mother India had been a wakeup call for Pakistan. After decades of information and entertainment draught, it was as if prohibition had been lifted. We took to the exotic brew that was suddenly available and we drained the glass with the zeal of a born again drunkard. We killed the bottle and enjoyed the high of celestial freedom from terrestrial tyranny. But when we came to our senses, our head was throbbing with a hegemonistic hangover.

We were under a footprint of some satellite by default. It was the footprint of an abominable showman out to crush our identity, our carefully crafted values and our insularity. We were frightened. We now looked at our neighbours whom we had demonised for years and years and we were confronted with an image of our better selves. By some tele-visual surgery India had airbrushed away all its pock marks. There were no slums, no poverty, no dhotis, no chotis, no caste, no communalism, no rural hinterland, no hunger India had affected a makeover and was stepping out like a debutant. Twenty-four hours a day we were attacked by Madhuri Dixit’s navel bombardments. We decided to go the same route but we sobered up fast, realising that life was not about the endless battles of sasses with bahus.

Sadly, India did not come to our party. Pakistan has disappeared from the Indian media in a very uni-dimensional way. Doctor (Kiran Singh) sahib was just talking about Indian artists coming and not coming to Pakistan. I hosted Zakir Hussain myself when he was in Pakistan. Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik are the artists that you can talk about, have visited us. There was a time when we started out with Geo Television and what was the first thing we did was to organise a very interesting competition hosted by Anu Kapoor, done in Dubai named after a song by Noor Jahan and this was a competition between Indians and Pakistanis about songs and we paid tribute to Mukesh, Talat Mehmood, Rafi, Lata Mangeshkar, Asha Bhosle and so on and so forth. We did this in a very exciting manner because artists from India came and sang, artists from Pakistan came and sang each other’s songs and we created possibly the first glimmer of this Aman ki Asha.

It is time that some corrective measures are taken. We have to connect. We have to create more empathy for each others. There's a lot of talk these days about 26/11. Obviously we were traumatised by what happened, but over the last year, Pakistan for instance, suffered 26,000 deaths through terrorism. This is not a small figure. When I look at the awards that were given out this year, I saw names mainly of Colonels, Brigadiers and Captains who laid down their lives fighting against terrorism. We don’t find that kind of empathy in the Indian media.

We have not talked about not having any access to periodicals. The same applies there. But what has happened is that India is present in our homes, it's there illegally, through the cable networks, the cinemas are full of Indian movies. My eight-year-old son said to me yesterday that he wanted to go Badmash Company and I said what? But he went all the same and I think he enjoyed it terribly. We need to celebrate our successes rather than gloat at each other's defeats.

And this can only happen if the media takes us into the lives of the people in a holistic manner through cinema, through theatre, serials, talk shows, music, art, seminars, trade, investment and literature. I believe that the presence of the Pakistani media in India and the Indian media in Pakistan can help moderate some of the intolerance that passes as opinion in both countries.

Bans will only lead to contraband information. Powerful and meaningful people-to-people interactions can only take place on a platform or a media that gives space to a peace process and refuses to give in to the cynicism that untoward incidents induce. Shoaib and Sania had happened.

We must clear the mines planted by narrow interests to allow open cross-border flows of information.

It cannot be a monologue any more. It has to be not only a dialogue but a chorus of voices. And we must listen to these marginalised voices very carefully. Ultimately the politicians will have to frame policy. We can give them the space by trying to build an enabling environment where bolder initiatives can be taken without looking over their shoulders.

The joint editorial that appeared in the Times of India, The News and Jang on the first of January this year started with the words that peace between India and Pakistan has been stubbornly elusive and yet tantalisingly inevitable. I hope that in the interest of this great Subcontinent the elusiveness can morph into the inevitable in our lifetime

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