BEFORE AND AFTER AGRA
by B.Raman
In an article in the Sunday edition ( July 1) of a New
Delhi-based daily, I had described the Indian Prime Minister, Mr. A. B.
Vajpayee's, invitation to Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the self-reinstated Chief
of the Army Staff (COAS), self-styled Chief Executive and self-elevated
President of Pakistan, to visit India for summit talks at Agra as a
calculated gamble.
I had added that if it succeeded Mr. Vajpayee would be
hailed as a statesman par excellence, but if it failed, his judgement
would be questioned.
Such gambles are a part of the art of diplomacy and
statesmanship. Sometimes they click, sometimes don't. The fact
that they didn't is not a good argument against such gambles.
Such gambles had been taken by other Prime Ministers too
in the past, but with negative results.
At Tashkent in 1966, Mr. Lal Bahadur Shastri gambled in
trusting that India's magnanimity in vacating some areas in the Kargil
sector recovered from Pakistani occupation by the Indian Army during the
1965 War would be reciprocated by Pakistan by giving up its policy of
permanent hostility to India. His gamble failed. One could argue now
in retrospect that if Mr. Shastri had not trusted Ayub Khan, Kargil--1999
might not have happened. However, such arguments would be pointless
except to underline the pitfalls of trust in diplomacy.
At Shimla in 1972, Mrs. Indira Gandhi gambled in
trusting the oral promise of Z.A.Bhutto that he would ultimately agree to
the conversion of the Line of Control (LOC) in Jammu & Kashmir (J
& K ) into the international border and did not insist on a written
commitment. Her hopes that gratitude for the release of the
Pakistani Prisoners of War would make Bhutto keep his oral commitment were
belied.
In 1987, Rajiv Gandhi gambled in sending the Indian Army
into Sri Lanka with the prior agreement of Colombo in the hope of thereby
restoring peace and protecting the honour and future of the Sri Lankan
Tamils. His gamble failed with tragic consequences.
One has to wait for some months before coming to a
definitive judgement on the outcome of Mr. Vajpayee's gamble vis-à-vis
Musharraf. However, one could flag even at this stage some positive
and negative aspects of Agra.
On the positive side, one could mention the following:
* The Government's insistence on the General's reportedly
informal assurances relating to the stoppage of cross-border terrorism
being mentioned in writing in the Joint Declaration.
* The Government's insistence that Agra should be seen
as a continuation of the process started at Shimla and carried further
forward at Lahore instead of as a fresh initiative unrelated to Shimla
and Lahore as Musharraf sought to make it.
* The Government's insistence that any discussion on
Kashmir has to cover the terrorism and proxy war dimension too and
cannot be confined only to Pakistan's territorial demands.
* The Government's readiness to let the summit end
without any declaration or statement if Musharraf did not give up his
obduracy--- even at the risk of the lack of a declaration being
exploited by the opposition to project it as a failure of the
Government's initiative in inviting the General and as evidence of its
alleged lack of wisdom.
The Government needs to be complimented for standing
firm on these points and making it clear to the General, though belatedly
instead of doing so even before the summit, that India is not desperate
for forward movement at any cost. The Prime Minister also did well
in disabusing the General, in his opening remarks, of any wishful-thinking
that the Indian Security Forces are battle-fatigued and hence the
invitation to him.
The Indian Security Forces have energetically confronted
Pakistan's proxy war in the North-East for 45 years now, in Punjab for
over 20 years and in J & K for 12 years. They have mental and
physical reserves of energy, which would outlast those of Pakistan and its
jehadi hordes many times over. This must be constantly drummed into
the heads of Pakistan's military.
In the after-summit debate in Pakistan, one could notice
another wishful-thinking that the Indian economy has started to suffer as
a result of the Indian Army's involvement in J & K and that if the
jehadis and their pupeteers in Pakistan's military and intelligence
establishment kept up the pressure, India could be forced to choose
between letting J & K go or seeing its economy collapse.
This wishful-thinking is too absurd to deserve any
reaction from us. However, it needs to be underlined that when
Pakistan started its proxy war India's foreign exchange reserves, for
reasons not connected with J & K, had touched rock bottom, forcing it
to pledge its gold to borrow money to repay its debts. Today,
despite the proxy war, India's reserves are US $ 40 billion plus, a figure
which the Pakistanis cannot hope to see for many generations in their own
country. The proxy war is hurting their economy. Not ours.
On the negative side, one could underline the following:
* The impression created before the summit that we were
over-anxious for it.
* The unwise attempts by the Government and by many
leaders of the ruling party to dim the negative side of Musharraf and to
project him as not the villain as he was perceived in the past to
be. This was apparently done in order to justify the abrupt turn
in the Government's policy by inviting him after having kept him at an
arm's length since October 1999. This had the effect of not only
confusing large sections of public opinion, but also of mentally and
intellectually demobilising Indian public opinion vis-à-vis
Pakistan. In the past, the BJP's major contribution to national
security management was to constantly keep the focus on threats to our
national security from Pakistan and thereby mentally and intellectually
mobilise public opinion on this issue. The sudden demobilisation
since the middle of last year, for reasons which are not clear, was
uncalled for and could hurt us ultimately.
* The impression widely shared by many that the
Government, again for reasons which are not clear, had let Musharraf lay
the ground rules for the summit. The ease with which he managed to
have his way on many issues before the summit and his misperception that
our leaders were over-anxious to please him created a wrong impression
in his mind that he was coming to talk to the leaders of a country with
a demoralised army and that, therefore, he could take liberties with us
without worrying about the consequences.
* While Shri Jaswant Singh, the Foreign Minister,
energetically reiterated our stand on J&K and other issues on two
occasions before the summit, the failure of others to do so encouraged
the General to maintain his rhetoric before the summit, with New Delhi
doing nothing but to watch in embarrassed silence. If we had at
that time threatened to withdraw the invitation, he might have been put
in his place.
* Our failure to mobilise our media in our favour in
an effective manner. The media, by and large, hurt by the way it
was ignored by our officials and with its ego tickled by the attention
paid by Musharraf himself and other Pakistanis to it, became, for all
practical purposes, his cheer brigade used against us.
What are the lessons for the future?:
* While the dialogue process should continue, we should
not agree to any dialogue, at the political or official level, unless
there was prior agreement on the agenda and the ground rules. We should
not hesitate to cancel a meeting if these are not observed.
* Pakistan's Punjabi-dominated Army, of which Mohajir
Musharraf is the mouthpiece, has been following against us for years now
the policy of "talk and fight" at the same time. But, we
are content to follow a policy of "talk and defend
ourselves". As a result, all the blood is being shed in our
territory. Unless we make the Pakistani security forces and
jehadis bleed in their territory and prevent its economy from recovering
through appropriate counter proxy war strategy, the proxy war is not
going to end in the near future.
* The process of mental and intellectual
demobilisation of public opinion has to be reversed before we become a
nation reluctant to hit back and soft towards our ill-wishers.
* The nations, which count today---whether it be the
US, Russia, Israel or China or even small South/North Korea-- have long
memories for excesses and brutalities committed on their citizens, for
damages done to their country and culture, and for perfidies directed
against them and do not let the urge and the need for retaliation, when
called for, be diluted by misplaced pangs of goodwill or by lapse of
time. Our short memories and our desire to be seen by others as men of
peace and goodwill, whatever be the wrongs and perfidies of which we are
victims, are making us prisoners of inaction against our
ill-wishers.
(The writer is Additional Secretary (retd), Cabinet
Secretariat, Govt. of India, and, presently, Director, Institute For
Topical Studies, Chennai. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com
)
