Dear Generals,
Cricketing between our two nations
has been by and large gentlemanly and the relations between our players
respectful of each other. Diplomats on either side have been symbols of dignity
in their interaction. Our politics may not have allowed play between our
players for some time but the real fun of this game for the world lay in the
engagement between our two teams which now is missed.
Our shepherds have shown reason as they sit
and talk on the line despite a stray sheep interrupting the engagement and will
perhaps soon find reason in working out a mechanism to monitor their herds
jointly in good mutual faith even as the products of neo journalism make it
their agenda to widen the cleavage that has stood between us. The people by and
large on either side continue to draw pleasure from our shared cultural
traditions. Ghulam Ali, except of course by a few is loved by Indians across
the nation, as is Lata Mangeshkar by yours. Outside the sub continent this
sharing of culture becomes more evident as Indians and Pakistanis as neighbors
share their longing of mother land in the closeness of one another.
We are one tradition divided by times
and interests that were not entirely ours. The option of separation was not so
much an expression of animosity of two communities as it was a product of a
divisionary policy engineered in time to serve interests which were not ours.
The compulsions for our separation notwithstanding, we have perhaps been, far
to removed from the central purpose of such a separation, development of the
two new nations.
Pakistan has always had the potential to grow
to its strengths given its resources and has performed with a degree of
excellence where it has chosen to, and would do still better provided it
adheres to the democratic system that its founders drew for themselves. Our two
nations would have been a better place had your army shown the need and resolve
to beat all armies of the world in gentlemanliness, and allowed the
institutions of governance and development in your country a domain left to
polity, and its defense to yourself, given your insistence of threat from India
which perhaps is not as grave as presumed, as is the fallout of the
incapacities of a nation resulting from neglect of growth and development of
its economy and people.
Our close existence in this part of
the world gives us a message that we can compete and cooperate in fairness to
give our people a sense of security, dignity and respect. Compete with one
another to lift our region to a higher level of civilized existence through
peaceful coexistence and respect for one another. All the nations of this region by and large are
striving to raise themselves economically to protect their sovereignty and
avoid being pawns in the hands of greater powers, Pakistan is not an exception
but there is an oddity which causes imbalance. While in each of these countries
the armies remain in barracks, in Pakistan, it is the people’s government that
is barracked, restricting free play and realization of people’s aspirations.
Gentlemanliness lies in the respect for the democratic values of the nation,
its institutions, people’s will and deference to the country’s Constitution.
The message that I mention is implicit
in the spirit of competition and cooperation between India and China despite
longstanding unresolved issues. The message lies in the growth story of the
Bangladeshi economy that gets recognized in the comity of nations by the day,
perhaps on account of the realization on the part of its army, despite its
questionable past, that it has to be an instrument of the state and not be the
contrary, if the prospects of the nation were to be realized. We are three nations with so much in common; two
born at one time and one a little later, but it saddens one to note why
Pakistan should be made to take this race with fettered legs.
Neither the government in India, nor China nor
Bangladesh see any logic in allowing the army to have the precedent over the
government nor have the enlightened armies of these nations shown any
inclination in recent times, and in two, at least never. It is in this shared logic of governance that
these three nations have assumed their due positions in the comity of economies
and nations. Six decades is a long time for sustenance on a singular issue of
Kashmir. India gave up Pakistan long time back as an electoral issue when
political parties realized that people across this side of the border preferred
subjects of growth and development more than assumptions of threat from
Pakistan, for the purpose of rhetoric, a passion of the past which now trends
only in the world of idiots in their boxes. Give your democratically elected
leaders a decade.
The two elected governments with
effective mandate are now in dialogue as mature representatives of their
people. Pakistan and its people have suffered more than any nation in this part
of the globe perhaps by an interference which was more internal and could have
been avoided or given up in the interests of the economically impoverished on
both sides of the border, vulnerable to radical thought and a potential threat
to peace and prosperity of our two nations and to the subcontinent as a whole.
Gallantry of armies lie in the sacrifices they make for their nations and a
sacrifice of interference in the policy making of the state would be a greater
sacrifice for establishment of a prosperous Pakistan in the subcontinent. Let’s
keep Kashmir on the backburner for a while, who knows one day our restraint and
resolve may lead us beyond Kashmir into
a better reality of a united “ Pak Hindustan “ a land of industrious
beings, of equal citizens and enlightened
human beings , into a true paradise of shared prosperity different from
the one our children are presently lured into.
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