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Make Peace or Perish. Candles for Indo-Pak Friendship
Praful Bidwai
India-syndicate.com, 27 August 2001
There is a growing sentiment in favour of peace among both the elites and ordinary citizens on both sides of the border, and activists must capitalise on this to develop a mass movement demanding a nuclear freeze. This is the only way that the dangerous course of confrontation being charted by governments can be halted.
"But will Pakistan’s peaceniks reciprocate? Will their government let them reach the border?" This question repeatedly greeted us as we prepared to join the Hind-Pak Dosti Manch at their August 14 annual peace celebrations at Wagah. Most of us - students, teachers, writers, theatre-people and social activists from Delhi - were visiting Wagah for the first time, inspired by the successful Pakistan-India People’s Solidarity Conference held just before the Agra Summit - inspired despite the Summit’s inconclusive outcome. The query about reciprocation came from people sympathetic to India-Pakistan reconciliation. Others were much more sceptical, even dismissive of the August 14/15 candle-lighting ceremony. We were "totally misguided", we were told, to "dream" of any rapprochement between the two states or peoples.
The ordinary Pakistani "hates" India, the sceptics said. That’s why the Wagah event is like "unrequited love", a nostalgic indulgence by some old Lahorites. We need better fences, not more peaceniks. "Your Pakistani counterparts won’t be there". In the event, 40,000 Pakistani citizens turned up - hoping to reach the inner fences when the main Wagah gates open at dusk. (Each dawn-and-dusk ceremony displays military machismo, with coordinated rooster-style marching and aggressive gestures - cooperation even in hostility!) But the peace-seekers were mistaken. There wasn’t enough space for them. The Pakistan Rangers panicked and launched a baton-charge to disperse them. But 5,000 people stayed on. To greet them were 2,000 Indians, a fraction of those who couldn’t make it in time for the border ritual. Like us two busloads from Delhi, including 20 women students. But soon, some 15,000 people gathered. Some came from Amritsar, 30 km away, many from more distant villages. There was enchanting, stirring, Sufi music by Hans Raj Hans, and speeches resounding with sentiments for peace, friendship, harmony, emphasising a return to real agendas: food, jobs, social justice, freedom... There was electricity in the air. Those on the dais included vice-chancellors, affluent doctors, well-known journalists and impoverished activists. Evidently, peace is an idea whose time has come for the elite. The audience was youthful. At midnight, the authorities told us we couldn’t go to the border-for the first time in seven years. We were disappointed, not demoralised.
August 14/15 at Wagah celebrations will become a landmark for more and more citizens’ organisations, parties, and groups like Coalition for Nuclear Disarmament and Peace, Women’s Initiative for Peace in South Asia, People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy, and the 250 grassroots NGOs endorsing the Declaration of the July 12-13 People’s Solidarity Conference in Delhi. The Declaration, supported by diverse constituencies like the Left and large-scale industry, has been signed by 10,000 eminent individuals; there is a mass-scale signature campaign around a shorter version. (Visit www.pakindpeace.org)
Wagah isn’t the only index of the peace sentiment growing amidst us. Another is the public’s disappointment at the temporary halting of the Agra process. According to an India Today-ORG poll, those who want Mr Vajpayee to visit Pakistan far outnumber those who don’t-despite recent developments, including growing official hawkishness.
Two other events deserve mention: an August 4-6 Gandhian peace conference in Chennai, attended by 10,000, and an August 8-9 youth conference in Mumbai on nuclear disarmament. The Chennai meeting saw serious interaction between the Dalai Lama and Hurriyat Conference leaders, and among grassroots activists.
The Mumbai meeting brought together 450 activists from underprivileged social backgrounds from rural Maharashtra. The activists were exposed to nuclear matters largely through pamphlets, video films, essay competitions, etc. I found their enthusiasm unparallelled and critical curiosity boundless.
All these initiatives combine different concerns, interests and regions. They are ingredients of a large-scale peace movement. One of its premises is that nuclear weapons pose a special danger in South Asia. Fighting them is a good way of building peace. Nukes cannot be banished while leaving everything else unchanged. As a new book, Out of the Nuclear Shadow (ed Kothari and Mian; Rainbow Publishers) says, nuclear abolition will need "transforming the fundamental structures of injustice within and between states".
Peace activists, however well-meaning, cannot equate India and Pakistan. I have visited Pakistan half a dozen times and wouldn’t. The two societies have evolved divergently. As have their politics. For all its shortcomings - which this column often highlights - India remains more open, plural, and free of a religion-based state ideology. Indian politics, although deteriorating, is rooted in democracy. Pakistan’s misfortune is it didn’t get a chance to consolidate democracy. The grip of political Islam has tightened and leadership failure has killed Pakistan’s political process. Yet, the two face similar problems - widespread poverty, exploitative structures, rapacious elites, decreasing human security and a temptation to "externalise" internal problems through the "foreign hand". Mutual rivalry is one of their greatest obstacles to development. It buttresses communalism and aggressive national-chauvinism.
Kashmir and nuclear weapons have given India-Pakistan’s hot-cold war - the longest such between the same two rivals anywhere - a horrifying edge. Pakistan shouldn’t nurture the illusion that military means (via jehadi secessionism) will solve Kashmir. India shouldn’t delude itself that naked repression - which Mr Advani wants to promote through blanket immunity - will crush Kashmiriat. The only way of reducing the nuclear danger in South Asia is to prevent weapons deployment and agree to a nuclear freeze. Nuclear disarmament could bring a big peace dividend: SAARC’s evolution into a major trading bloc, and the freeing of India and Pakistan from bonds so they can address real agendas.
South Asia is at a crossroads. Either we win peace; or we descend into the nuclear abyss, reducing millions to mere specks of radioactive dust. This could well become our fate. To change this, our peace movement must transform itself, making a quantum jump to mass-level activity and organisation. Activists must broaden their vision to relate to the upsurge in peace sentiment. If they succeed, we could have security and prosperity. If they fail, we will have disaster
Copyright 2001 Content Providers International
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