NO PRICE IS TOO HIGH, JUST 'LOVE PAKISTAN'

Should anyone be surprised that after sweet-talking gullible Indian intellectuals and media stars into believing that he genuinely wanted friendship with India, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has bared his real Pakistani fangs? Reiterating his father-in-law's famous words that Pakistan would wage "a thousand-year war" over Kashmir which is "Pakistan's jugular vein", Zardari has warned India that this was a war of ideologies that would last for generations.

Is this mere rhetoric? Is Zardari making a noise just to please a constituency? Or is it, as by now should have been clear to even the most dumb-headed, a plain reiteration of a core reality that India has refused to recognise and deal with conclusively?

Zardari's statement comes a few days after the Prime Minister's Working Group on Kashmir - it hadn't met for over two years - submitted a report recommending greater autonomy for the state, and amidst reports that the government was talking quietly to separatist Kashmiri leaders to come up with some half-baked, surrender-based solution to bring peace back to the Valley.

In TV studio discussions following the submission of the report, mainstream Kashmiri politicians made it very clear, for the millionth time, that no real solution is possible unless Pakistan is made party to it. While some of them were airing the 'ideological', read communal, line that defines Pakistan's claim on Kashmir, others clearly had the reality of the situation on ground in mind, a reality that has taken deep roots, thanks to a confused and paralysed Indian leadership that reacts mechanically after every terror attack but has never given serious thought to putting Pakistan out of business in Kashmir.

A couple of days back, terrorists struck in the heart of Srinagar and engaged the security forces in a 20-hour gun battle. These two gunmen, like those of Mumbai 26/11, were in contact with their handlers in Pakistan. As per reports, this was not an isolated fidayeen attack. It was a part of a larger plan supported by the military to step up terror attacks in Kashmir. As many as 700 trained terrorists are waiting to stage more such and worse attacks. This may be to pressurise the US to pressurise India into giving fatal concessions on Kashmir. But, more fundamentally and enduringly, it is to warn India and Kashmiris that Pakistan will not let Kashmir slip away from its fingers, no matter what. Zardari was not shooting his mouth off.

Unfortunately, India's intellectuals and media lights have been hell-bent on leading India and Indians up just the path that Pakistan would want them to take. And it seems that they are not likely to give up their efforts anytime soon, no matter what Pakistan does or says to provoke India.

The latest in this manifestly carefully coordinated and well orchestrated strategy is what The Times of India unleashed on its unsuspecting readers on the first day of the new decade. On January 01, 2010, I was jolted when I looked at the Times of India. "Love Pakistan" were the two bold words in black that the management of the newspaper forced lakhs of Indians to stare at on its front page. A few pigeons flying above the explanatory print made the picture almost morbid.

Ostensibly, this was to tell India that the TOI and Pakistan's Jang Group were re-launching that completely worn-out 'people-to-people' -which people? - contact program in the form of "cross-border cultural interactions, business seminars, music and literary festivals and citizens meets" that would once again do little more than fill newspaper columns and entertain the well-heeled and well-protected in both countries. But TOI wanted all Indians to "Love Pakistan" already, barely a little more than a year after 26/11 and with no evidence whatsoever to show that the state of Pakistan had shed even a trace of its congenital hatred for India. Even then, well before Zardari's reality-check, to me those pigeons looked like innocent Indians being brought down by terrorists indoctrinated and trained by Pakistan, shouting 'Love Pakistan'.

This enervating disease of pretending that the DNA of the state of Pakistan will change if a few Indians and Pakistanis hug each other and enjoy a musical evening together, and that there is little more that India needs to do to protect itself and its citizens, had already cost India dear. This reality-defying belief is not limited to the TOI alone. It is endemic to the media that has got obsessed with creating emotional images padded with words that should find place in only mediocre works of fiction.

Karan Thapar, the otherwise terrorising interviewer, loses his fangs and even elementary commonsense when it comes to Pakistan. Last year, when he interviewed Pervez Musharraf, so fascinated was he by the latter's sartorial elegance that he completely failed to read the very dangerous statements that he made about more Kargils, Indian Muslims and the continuing role of the LeT, not just in Kashmir but in the rest of India. The same thing happened at the HT summit when he literally hand-held Zardari to make dove-like statements, and then asked India, in gushing-schoolboy fashion, to trust him.

Shekhar Gupta wants Indians to believe that helping Pakistan win its internal war on terror is in "India's supreme national interest". He also wants India to buy the preposterous argument that a strong Pakistan, the state that is waging an ideological war against that with the sole aim of winning it even of it takes generations, is in India's interest and that India must make whatever concessions are needed to strengthen the democratic government in that country.

It is beyond belief that India's so-called intellectuals keep finding absolutely non-existent grounds for beating Pakistan's drum and preventing India from doing anything that can put a decisive end to this existential threat that it has been confronting for decades now. Despite the fact that Pakistan has joined all the dots and left not no space for doubt about its intentions by its numerous acts, some of us want to keep pretending that Pakistan is the poor victim of terror and that once India gives in to its demands on Kashmir in a manner that is visible to ordinary Pakistanis, all will be well and TOI's campaign will then define the relationship between the two nations.

I may be wrong, but the more I see the manner in which India is refusing to take any logical steps to protect itself as it should and terminate this religious war-of-generations in this generation itself, the more I am convinced that this has less to do with Pakistan and more to do with harmful-to-India and potentially inflammatory manipulation of the dynamics of India's democracy, and the unbridled lust of its politicians to get to power in Delhi, no matter what the cost and damage to the nation.

In 1971, Indira Gandhi dismembered Pakistan. That should have, and to an extent did, put an end to this war that virtually defines Pakistan. But she lost in Shimla on trust what India's sons had won on the battlefield with blood. And now, nearly three decades later, a heavy price is still being paid for that lapse.

Surely, no one can disagree that such an ideological war can only be won by defeating the very ideology that is sustaining it. The Americans may not be going about the task in the best manner but they have understood that elementary truth. In India, on the other hand, what we are seeing is exactly the opposite; we are being told that this war can actually be won by trusting and strengthening the one who is fighting it against us.

Manifestly, there are powerful elements in India's political landscape who do not want Pakistan and, thereby, the idea behind it, to be defeated. These can only be those elements whose own strength and bargaining power is derived from the strength of Pakistan, not India. If there is no Pakistan, those who created it out of thin air will begin to look like small, obdurate men who were unable to stop living in the past, in another century and world. Even worse, those who are now trying to sustain it with the garb of jihad will show up for what they really are: uncivilised men fit to rule in an ignorant 15th century, not in an aware 21st. That will be a body blow from which recovery will be almost impossible and further decline precipitous.

It is evidently this group that has the ears of the present leadership of the Congress that has virtually no connect with India. It seems to have successfully managed to sell to it the story that if it does anything to weaken Pakistan, it will lose the votes of Indian Muslims. Conversely, Muslim votes - and electoral victory - can be its for the asking only if it props and helps hold together a Pakistan on the brink of collapse, no matter that it will mean shedding even more Indian blood to the ideology that is programmed to keep drawing it till its last breath. This group has also apparently convinced the leadership that Hindu votes and sentiments are irrelevant if they can be kept divided, that Hindu right is poisonous and that the only antidote to it is Muslim votes that can be delivered to it en bloc. For a 'small' price, of course.

That famous "maut ke saudagar" remark of Sonia Gandhi during the Gujarat elections of 2007, the Sachar and Ranganath Commissions, and the systematic media campaign that is attempting to psyche Indians into believing that no price is too high for gaining Pakistan's 'friendship', all appear to be a part of well-thought out election strategy prepared by the Congress think tank to ensure that it is well poised, with the help of Muslim votes, to thwart any challenge to it in the elections that are due to be held in 2014.

Had Indira Gandhi been alive today, would the TOI have dared to brazenly ask India to "Love Pakistan"? Would she have allowed Pakistan to regain its strength and will to mount and sustain the most serious and as yet unanswered challenge to India after Partition? Would she have let things come to this sorry pass where some individuals could gather the courage to even suggest that votes of some Indians could be ensured only if they were routed via Pakistan?

Something has gone seriously wrong somewhere. India's leaders after Indira have paid scant attention to an increasingly dangerous Pakistan and harmless-looking insects who are actually termites furiously at work below the surface. India has paid and is paying the price for this failure. And, as things stand now, it looks as if the scenario will get far worse before it begins to get any better. Be prepared for much bigger shocks in the build-up to elections 2014. A wave has to be generated. No matter what it takes.

Picture source: The Times of India
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Related reading:
1. A year after 26/11, calls for a strong Pakistan
2. Don't " beggar-my-buggering-neighbour"; strengthen him
3. Akbar turns Jinnah, asks for a Muslim state
4. Musharraf's shockers on terror, Kashmir and Indian Muslims

CONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION AND CONSPICUOUS POVERTY

"Mr. Sharma, can you comment on this damning article appeared in Times London . Our politicians, bureaucrats have already crossed lines into Criminality with their corruption and inefficiency, now our High flying media has joined them with gross delinquency of "basic duty" by not reporting on this. We the people of India are equally responsible..."

How does one respond to such a question asked by an Indian who is deeply upset by the stark reality of the conspicuous poverty that afflicts over 880 million Indians, in the light of the vulgar and conspicuous consumption flaunted by their affluent chosen representatives? Does one agree with him that the leaders elected by these poor - the rich don't give a damn about voting - are no less than criminals because of their corrupt ways? Or does one take the line of the urban rich, exemplified by media tycoon Prannoy Roy, who ask as to what is wrong if political leaders stay in five star hotels and otherwise splurge, as long as they are spending their own money?

Is it in order to view businessmen, CEOs, dons and politicians through the lens of the same money? That is indeed what many are doing, to justify the extravagance of politicians. Should politicians not be accountable to their "employees and customers" like CEOs are? If in a "company" of 1.3 billion people, more than 67% have a sub-human existence at less than $ 2 a day, should a little over a thousand of its top executives living in Delhi happily splurge tens of thousands of that amount, whether out of tax payers' money or their own earnings? Should not their pay and perks and lifestyles be linked to their pathetic performance due to which the income of so many 'employees' remains so low, 62 years on?

That brings us to another question. Where have much of the earnings of most of these politicians come from anyway? How have politicians who have no occupation other than politics become multi-millionaires? The rich Sachin Pilot, for example, is the son of a middle class Air Force pilot who joined politics. The late Pramod Mahajan, who was shot by his brother over money, manifestly 'made' thousand of crores as a politician, not an industrialist, if rumours are true; he had no other source of income, one hears. Jagan Reddy, the overnight-rich-businessman-turned-politician son of YSR Reddy, could certainly not have become anywhere close to a multi-billionaire had he been just another businessman operating in an honest environment. The examples are endless and well known. Everyone knows that barring say a Shashi Tharoor or Vijay Mallya, who earned good money before they got into politics, there will hardly be an Indian politician who has become wealthy as a politician by honest means.

Worse than the conspicuous consumption of these leaders is the "austerity drive" that has recently been launched by the government, for only a year, because of the drought. Ironically, had the government kept quiet, much information about the colossal waste of tax payers' money by politicians would have never come to light, along with the fact that this drive is just a farce to con India's people.

Sections of the media have been and are sleeping with politicians and political parties, no doubt. Let us not forget that the media is another business that has to survive and grow in the thoroughly corrupt environment that many, including the UN, have spoken about repeatedly. Every one knows that in India things don't move unless the system is "oiled" well. What better way to do it than keep the really powerful politicians in power really close?

Notwithstanding the above constraint, we must accept that there still are some in the media who can speak, and have done so, even if guardedly. They are the ones who have told India that this whole drive is a farce. Let us start from the very top. Sonia Gandhi travelled Economy Class once to Mumbai with heavy security. Sagarika Ghose told us that she saved Rs 7,500. Rahul Gandhi travelled similarly protected by train and, as per some channels, 'saved' Rs 445. Karan Thapar asked the question that if Rahul Gandhi really feels that politicians have a duty to be austere, then "why is he, a bachelor, living in...one of the largest government owned bungalows...he is not even entitled to it". MJ Akbar has, in similar vein, called this austerity an eyewash and asked as to why Tharoor, Krishna and Nilekani should not be made to contribute the money that they were spending from their pockets for their hotel bills to the Prime Minister's Relief Fund!

It may be recalled that Rajiv and Sanjay used to stay with their mother, Indira Gandhi. Today, Sonia, Rahul and Priyanka occupy three sprawling bungalows that must cost the government a huge packet to maintain and secure. If the Gandhis genuinely identify with the 880 million poor they represent and are sincere about cutting out wasteful expenditure, then the family should stay together in one bungalow. Robert Vadra, who faces no security threat, should also be taken off the SPG protectee list. Many crore rupees, not a few hundred, will be saved. But no, Rahul Gandhi will talk of only the khadi kurta pajama that he wears to define 'austerity'.

It is not that all in the media have done their bit. As far as I know, there has been no meaningful linking of the conspicuous consumption of the politicians and this austerity drive with the extreme poverty that has now been reported by Times London and earlier by others. And as always, there are the usual suspects in the media who are fuming at the security being provided to politicians, except the Gandhis, of course. Then there those who actually are grateful to Sonia Gandhi's for the austerity drive, and who resent politicians not for their filthy spending or for travelling first class, but for the special treatment that they get at airports. That is the only place where media maharajahs and maharanis lose out to them!

For many in India's media, India is no more than an exclusive bubble that contains them and politicians alone. Of late, film stars too have made an entry - with great TRPs, they bring in the moolah for the media, don't they? 880 million Indians live on another planet.

"Also look at the pic on the article.... Is this the symbolism of British media.... was there a need to put such a striking and appalling picture on the web page...", asks the same agitated Indian. In my view, the photograph that graphically depicts "India's damned generation" is apt for it. It has hurt him because it has forced him to confront an ugly reality that he and I and many others want to wish away, and don't want the West at least to tell us about. We desperately want to believe only that India is firmly on its way to becoming an economic giant. We want to see the gleaming Delhi Metro but not the poor shitting by the sides of the railway tracks; we want to talk of Mumbai as India's commercial capital but not as a city where 54.1% people live in slums. To top it, very few of us know or even care about the grind that life is for the poor in rural India.

How far our politicians have gone from the people and how arrogant they have become about their extravagant lifestyles is best exemplified by Civil Aviation Minister Praful Patel who says mockingly about the austerity drive: "at least we have to appear to be austere, if nothing else". How things have changed in the last sixty years. Democratically elected leaders have become rulers, royalty, above and separate from the people whose voice they were meant to be. No wonder a media personality says: "Hypocrisy is essential for public life". Hypocrites and worse in politics have little to fear. Powerful sections of the media understand their predicament and are one with them too.

But, it is no use blaming the media and the politicians alone. Conspicuous consumption is existing gleefully with conspicuous poverty only because all of us have let it take root. We have allowed politicians to deflect our attention from their criminal ways to issues of caste, region and religion, knowing full well that they are not going to add even a rupee to the recurring income of the really needy even as the coffers of the greedy are rapidly filled. Also, as some of us have moved up the ladder of prosperity, we have conveniently forgotten that many, many more remain at the very bottom, filling their stomachs on empty slogans like "garibi hatao" and gullibly believing in fake austerity drives undertaken by their so-called leaders.

So, if we really don't want to see disturbing pictures of stark poverty staring at us, we all have to do our bit to either make our leaders change themselves, or change our leaders. Till that happens, for 880 million Indians, things are going to change very slowly indeed.

Picture: Timesonline
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Readers may also read: Austerity and aam aadmi: games politicians play!

INDIA, LEARN HOW TO GET PAKISTAN TO WALK

Shashi Tharoor may have said that it was just a piece of paper and not a legal document. Shiv Shankar Menon may have said that it was a case of bad drafting. Many analysts and all opposition parties may have accused Dr Manmohan Singh of selling out mindlessly. The Congress party may have been stunned into silence. The Pakistanis may have been gloating that they had defeated Indians on the negotiating table once again, with such ease. General Kiyani may have been emboldened to ask India to stop messing around in Baluchistan.

Whatever may have been the noise, was there any way that Dr Manmohan Singh was going to admit to the world that he had indeed blundered at Sharm-el-Sheikh? Or that the famous Baluch Blunder that everybody is talking about actually is much bigger because it covers the whole of Pakistan?

The Congress party, Shashi Tharoor included, is now singing a different tune and is backing the Prime Minister for the Joint Statement that he and Pakistan Prime Minister Gilani issued after the recent NAM summit. That stance is born out of a compulsion to prevent those who are leading this nation from looking like amateur fools who have learnt nothing from history and who have in 62 years not been able to formulate well defined foreign policy and security objectives for their country.

Does India know what is the minimum it expects from Pakistan or its other neighbours who fall in its sphere of influence? Are their any "Lakshman Rekhas" demarcated by it that it will not allow Pakistan, Bangladesh or other nations to cross without reacting with punitive force? Has any thought been given to how India expects its neighbours, including China, to interact with it 25 years from now, when India will undoubtedly be a super power? Is their any implementable integrated plan that visualises the active deployment of all instruments available to the state, if required, to make India secure against terrorism ? Has the option of recourse to use of force up to and including war been completely ruled out no matter what the provocation by any country as long as it is short of a full fledged military attack or invasion, at which point there is no real decision left to be made?

Clearly, there are no real answers available to the aforementioned questions and a few more. In fact it is evident that a serious thought has not been given to them structurally and in a professional manner. Had that been done, then there would have been by now visible efforts to develop strategies, capabilities and professional structures to ensure that the country's expectations are known to all concerned along with the fact it has the ability and, above all, the indomitable will to ensure that India's concerns are not ignored humiliatingly by some nations as they have been till now.

When the US says that India is an "absent" power or that it needs to start behaving like the big power that it is, you should know that they know that India is almost ashamed of becoming the power that its size dictates it must become. When analysts and those guys in the government who have made sure that India still does not know what it wants to be and where it wants to go as a nation, say that India is a "status quo" power, be in no doubt that this is not a carefully thought out positioning; it is the manifestation of the confused and directionless mess that India has got into, thanks to a strategy blind political leadership and a stifling generalist bureaucracy for whom status quo is the oxygen without which it will be found to be as useful for formulating national objectives, and strategies to achieve them, as a poisonous fly is in a critical ointment.

Such fundamental proactive preparations are vital for this soon-to-be super power that wants to influence world affairs by becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council. It is bewildering that this elementary fact continues to escape our leaders who seem to have perfected the art of getting caught petrified on the back foot all the time. They want that seat in the UNSC out of goodwill of the big powers already there. Sucking up to them comes easily without embarrassment; standing up manfully to be counted as a big power and claim that seat by right is what they find embarrassing. Is that the way to get India ready to assume its global responsibility? Can a nation that has consistently displayed a disturbing paralysis in exerting its influence even in its immediate neighborhood be considered fit to assume the global role that it asking for, that is there for the asking the moment it is ready?

This mindset is not of recent origin. It has marked almost all our dealings with our neighbours since 1947, to India's great detriment. Starting from Nehru, India's leaders have been more than willing to walk more than half the distance unilaterally, without even bothering to look that the one they are walking towards is not only not stationery but is reacting by walking backwards to increase the gap, not reduce it, so that eventually he can get a settlement that initially even he did not believe was possible. Here are some glaring examples:

• In 1948, Nehru stopped the Indian Army from marching to Muzaffarabad when it was poised to, rejecting professional advise, and rushed to the United Nations to internationalise Kashmir. He was more keen to show to the whole world how reasonable India was and how clean its hands were rather than allow its military to consolidate its victory in a manner that would have, at the very least, made it immensely more difficult for Pakistan to create the mess that it has in Kashmir since then.
• In the fifties, Nehru kept walking gullibly into the arms of the deceitful Chinese even after there was little doubt left about their intentions about Tibet, Aksai Chin and Arunachal Pradesh. To compound that blunder, he ignored the advise of General Thimmaya to raise the strength of the Army and increase the defence budget so that Indian troops would be in a position to take on the Chinese Army in the event of a war that looked very much on. Nehru showed greater faith in Chou En Lai and Panchsheel and blindly walked more than half the way. As a result, he was given a knock out "Punch-sheel" in 1962, from which neither he nor India recovered.
• In 1965, General Ayub Khan launched a war on India with the boast that he would have his evening tea in Delhi. India almost won the war. But in Tashkent, it was Lal Bahadur Shastri who walked more than half way and handed back to Pakistan the strategic Haji Pir pass that Indian troops had captured. Pakistan was not made to pay any price whatsoever for its misadventure that could have had an even more damaging result for India than the 1962 blunder.
• In 1971, India's armed forces created Bangladesh. Within four months, Indian troops were out of that country and Indira Gandhi walked almost all the way to trustingly leave the course of relations between the two countries solely in the hands of Mujibur Rehman who was grateful to India for helping him become the first President of Bangladesh. When everything changed dramatically after he was assassinated in 1975, India was found helplessly watching that country become increasingly anti-Indian. Today Bangladesh fearlessly shows India the middle finger, openly harbours Indian militants and blatantly allows the ISI to export terror to India from its soil.
• In 1972, Indira Gandhi returned 97,000 Pakistani soldiers who had been taken prisoner by the Indian Army without getting anything in return out of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. She decided again that it was more important to walk more than half the distance even as he was deviously outsmarting her to keep Kashmir and other outstanding issues alive to be exploited at an appropriate time.
• In 1999, Atal Bihari Vajpayee bussed more than half the distance to Pakistan and got Kargil in return within a few months. But he still did not learn the right lesson. When the architect of Kargil took over Pakistan after a coup, Vajpayee embraced him and got the attack on Parliament in return. Even that did not dissuade him from taking another long and disastrous walk in which he is reported to have trustingly made unprecedented concessions on Kashmir. That "bold gesture" has now been more than trashed with a resounding slap by the Kargil commando. In a recent interview to Karan Thapar, Musharraf has openly said that India was forced to start talking about Kashmir only because of the war he launched in Kargil which, therefore, was a great victory for Pakistan. Vajpayee's statesmanlike move to befriend Pakistan has, in one deathly stroke, been reduced to a "majboori", a helpless reaction forced out by the panic and fear created by the Kargil war. That is also what the Kashmir Deal that Manmohan Singh nearly got trapped into agreeing by walking more than half the distance has been reduced to by that statement.
• In 2008, Pakistan launched another Kargil, an urban one, in Mumbai. Eight months after that, a resigned Dr Manmohan Singh told the world that India had no choice but to talk to Pakistan (aur koi chara nahin hai), and walked more than half the distance yet again to sign another disastrous joint statement with a country that has never taken a single friendly step forward willingly and, as everyone except perhaps those in the Indian establishment knows, never will. What do you think Pakistanis are going to say some years down the line? They will claim a la Musharraf that 26/11 was a great success, just like Kargil was, because it got the India to start admitting its role in promoting terror not just in Baluchistan but in all other parts of Pakistan too, and also scared them into de-linking terror from talk.
  

Let us face the truth: Indian leaders are scared to death by even the thought of war. And they have somehow concluded that the only way to avoid it is by taking that famous long walk. Pakistan knows all this better than all of us do. Look at the irony. It actually should be Pakistan that should be scared of war but it is India that publicly admits that it is even more scared. Pakistan is very scared too, because after 1971 debacle, its generals know that they cannot win the next war. But you will never catch any of them ever say anything that even remotely gives their fear away.

In 1948 and 1965, Pakistanis thought they could win, so they did not think twice about thrusting war on India. In 1971, Pakistan knew it was going to be mauled in East Pakistan, and indeed was - and much faster than it had even dreamt - but was left with no choice but to fight. It is the fear generated by that humiliating and confidence-breaking defeat that forced Pakistan start a covert proxy war in 1989 to wrest Kashmir; it is that fear that made Musharraf do Kargil and save himself and Pakistan from a full fledged war by pretending that it was the mujahideen and not Pakistani troops who were responsible for it. It is that fear that made its Army and the ISI do Mumbai 26/11 and pretend that it was the work of "non-state actors" and say that no one in the mainstream establishment was involved. It is that very fear that makes Pakistan resort to nuclear blackmail whenever there is even a whisper of war for the Indian side.

Pakistan's generals are mortally scared of facing Indians forces on the battle field. The fear of defeat has got deep into their bones. They know better than anyone else that any future defeat will destroy the vast military empire that they have carefully built in Pakistan. That is why they do not want a war under any circumstances. This is a chink that an alert India should have exploited to the hilt. But what we have done is exactly the opposite. Our political leaders have brainlessly allowed Pakistan to exploit the fact that they are even more scared of war than the Pakistanis.

An Indian leadership that refuses to do anything that leaves Pakistan with no choice but to behave, that hugs Pakistan tighter after every attack on India, that keeps saying one way or another that war or anything even resembling it is simply not an option available to India, no matter what Pakistan does or allows to be done on its soil, is just the tonic that Pakistan needs to fire up its jehadi and other elements that have been deployed to bleed India to death through a thousand cuts, by telling them and the world that India is cracking under the relentless pressure that they have generated.

There is another malaise that has afflicted Indian Prime Ministers starting from Nehru: the desire to create history and leave behind indelible imprints of greatness grounded in "peace" and magnanimity. Atal Bihari Vajpayee too was driven by visions of being remembered as a great Indian leader who "solved" the long standing Kashmir problem with Pakistan. That is what drove him almost unthinkingly into the arms of commando Musharraf who was more than overjoyed at being naively given the opportunity of entering history books too as the only Pakistani leader who inflicted a humiliating defeat on India on the negotiating table by making it agree to start the irreversible process of handing over control of Indian Kashmir to Pakistan, all thanks to what he believes was a masterstroke in Kargil, and the follow up pressure generated by subsequent terror attacks.

The mild Dr Manmohan Singh is also, despite his erudition, manifestly driven by a strong desire to be remembered as a great PM, quite in the mould of Nehru, minus his Himalayan blunders. When he signed the Nuclear Agreement with George Bush in 2005, the first words that he spoke after coming out from that meeting were: "We have made history today". Regionally, he has nostalgically spoken of his dream to have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul, just like his ancestors used to in the good old times.

In some ways, therefore, he is even more motivated than Vajpayee was to strike a deal with Pakistan. Like Vajpayee he also unrealistically believes that Pakistan is also being driven, or can be, by the same noble motivation. On that belief alone rests his dream of a new and durable era of peace, friendship and brotherhood in the sub continent. Like Nehru, he too is mindlessly hurrying towards the creation of a new mess in Kashmir for which India will, in future, wind up paying with much more of the same blood that he is scared of shedding today.

The latest joint statement at Sharm-el-Sheikh is, thus, the fundamentally flawed outcome of Dr Manmohan Singh's total aversion to the idea of responding with force to repeated overt and covert acts of war by Pakistan, coupled with use of the repeatedly failed Indian tactic of unilaterally walking much more than half way and showing India's clean hands to get Pakistan to give up a policy that has become almost central to the existence, orientation and enormous power of its military establishment.

Getting into a political deal of "peace and friendship" with Pakistan is not like getting a straight forward nuclear deal from the US. That exception was made by the US for India only because it began to realise that a strong strategic relationship with India was in its supreme national interest. George Bush, for all his faults, was not clouded by a desire to create history.

There is not even an iota of evidence to suggest that there has been any similar change in the aggressive and offensive military mindset that runs Pakistan. A few tactical changes have been forced on it only due to the presence of US troops in Afghanistan. The admission about 26/11 has also been reluctantly made only because of the capture of Ajmal Kasab and the irrefutable evidence picked up by the US and given to it.

Look at the irony. It is the much weaker Pakistan that should be saying what our PM is: there is no alternative to talks (aur koi chara nahin hai). But what do we have? Musharraf threatening India, in New Delhi, with more Kargils if Kashmir is not settled, and other Pakistani leaders repeating ad nauseum that terrorism will not stop unless that is done, obviously in Pakistan's favour. This unending blackmail is the result of the inexplicable fear and guilt, and the resultant inability, of India's leaders to even think of making Pakistan pay back in the only currency that its military leadership understands, has used and threatens to keep using, to bring India's leaders literally to their knees.

Mulayam Singh Yadav spoke a buried and forgotten harsh truth the other day in Parliament when he said that "We always win in a war with Pakistan but always lose on the negotiating table". Why does that happen? Pakistan loses in war because on those battlefields it is dealing with superior minds that are on the same page. But when it comes to the wars fought on tables, it scores easy victories all the time because on those battlefields, it confronts totally different and hopelessly foggy minds that are unforgivably ill equipped to understand and defeat offensive military minds that are completely focused on achieving clearly laid down and understood national objectives.

The near capitulation on Kashmir that Vajpayee was negotiating with Pakistan through back channels was willingly taken forward by the Manmohan Singh government in its first tenure. In fact, had Musharraf not been forced to quit, we might have seen the face of that sell out deal by now. To top it, Dr Manmohan Singh has further accelerated that process, despite 26/11, by caving in even more, manifestly because he is desperate to strike that mirage of a historic deal before his term ends.

The sudden and unprecedented giveaway to Pakistan at Sharm-el Sheikh is the result of that personal urgency. And it is going to prove hugely costly to India in the long run. The only saving grace is that, unlike at the time of Nehru when decisions taken by the PM were barely questioned, the India of today is not going to let any PM sell away the interests of the country easily.

Dr Manmohan Singh needs to hit the pause button and consider, at great length once again, all developments post 1947, in consultation with guys who know who India is dealing with. Once he does that, the disastrous consequences for India as a result of any "magnanimous" deal that he strikes with Pakistan, will dawn on him and prevent him from proceeding further downhill on the slippery slope that looks invitingly smooth today.

Dr Manmohan Singh will also do well to remember that it actually is time for India to get Pakistan to walk more than half the distance towards India to prove that it has honestly metamorphosed and is ready to embrace with an open heart his Amritsar to Kabul dream. There is absolutely no evidence yet to suggest that it is willing to consider even a lunch in Lahore because for that it will have to shed the very basis on which it rejected India as its country, the hate-filled mindset that is based wholly on that position, and the theocratic angle that is integral to it.

There is, therefore, near zero possibility that, in its present form, Pakistan's establishment, particularly the military one that runs the country, will ever even consider turning its foundational fundamentals on their heads. Given that harsh reality, any amount of one way walking towards Pakistan is not going to yield the dividend that the PM sincerely wants to get for India.

The mentality of readily and repeatedly giving away vital ground during negotiations primarily on the basis of small promises dishonestly made, has to be discarded firmly once and for all. To be able to do that, Dr Manmohan Singh and India's other political leaders have to learn how to get inside the military mind that represents Pakistan. Till they do that, they are going to keep facing defeat after defeat in negotiations. It may not matter much to them. But India cannot afford such defeats.

MUSHARRAF'S SHOCKERS ON TERROR, KASHMIR AND INDIAN MUSLIMS

President Pervez Musharraf has not lost any of the sting that made him stage the Kargil fiasco in 1999. Nor has he lost sight of what many believe is the long term objective of Pakistan with respect to India. This is something that emerges as clear as light at noon from the recent interview that he gave to Karan Thapar for CNN-IBN, despite the cleverest efforts of the latter to paint him in a light that even he can never see himself in.

The interview was long and covered extensive ground, with Musharraf making quite a few very significant statements, some of which should have seriously disturbed India and Indians. But the headlines said something else entirely. To cap it, writing in the Hindustan Times, Thapar spoke glowingly of Musharraf as someone whose "toughness and belligerence has yielded to a smiling and, surprisingly, soft spoken manner...commando recklessness..replaced by a more considered approach...a new truthfulness...he sounds more acceptable than offensive, more analytical than polemic".

Watch the interview on CNN-IBN and see if you can spot the new and improved Musharraf and even faintly deduce that the "partisan passion of the former President is spent", as Karan Thapar would like readers of HT to believe. I have no doubt that at the end of it, you will be alarmed by what Musharraf said and appalled, even horrified, at Thapar's inability to hear it and respond to it.

The dangerous Kashmir deal that never was

The transcript of the Musharraf interview on CNN-IBN carries the headline: "India, Pak were close to Kashmir Deal". Were they really anywhere close to it? Was the clever deal which Musharraf was aggressively pushing for really in India's interest and would it actually have been accepted by the Indian government and its people?

As per Musharraf, there were three main components of the proposed deal: demilitarisation, self governance and joint mechanism.

• Demilitarisation. Demilitarisation along the LOC and within Kashmir on both sides was proposed. Musharraf also wanted the Indian Army to move out of two or three cities like Srinagar, Baramulla etc. As to India's response to this proposal, this is what Musharraf told Thapar: I wouldn't say that it was hundred per cent positive or that they had given assurances or understanding. We did not move forward on that. We did not have any schedules. We had an agreement in principle on general demilitarisation.
• Self governance. This involved giving "maximum governance" to people on both sides of the LOC. But there was no common understanding about what it meant. Well, we had to work out those nitty-gritty, the details. This was what the General had to say about the real progress made on this principle.
• Joint Mechanism. A body comprising Kashmiris on both sides and Indians and Pakistanis was proposed by Musharraf to oversee self-governance and other related issues. On being queried whether there was any agreement or understanding on whether this body would have been appointed or elected, Musharraf was forced to admit: Frankly, again, we did not go into such details of what exactly that body would be.

As is evident, India and Pakistan were far, far away from reaching any deal that would have solved Kashmir. Translating broad principles into a comprehensive agreement is a daunting task even in much simpler cases. In this almost intractable imbroglio, the specifics had not even been touched by both sides in any concrete manner.

What has emerged from the interview is that Musharraf was trying the classic camel-in-the-tent trick to get India to shed its exclusive control over its part of Kashmir and give Pakistan an entry that could then be enlarged gradually by it subsequently through "popular support", terrorism etc till it wrested complete control.

As anyone who understands the demographic dynamics of Kashmir knows, any joint control/demilitarisation/maximum governance in POK would not have resulted in India getting any stake there whatsoever. It would have effectively been a completely one sided deal in Pakistan's favour. The parallels with Europe were totally misplaced and illogical. I shudder to think that India's leaders were even open to such an idea. At any rate, the deal was nowhere close to being finalised, and I suspect that it was due to the efforts of a small minority in the Indian establishment that does not wear magic glasses that transform reality into fantasy. Given a chance, there are a number of rootless 'stars' who would have surely sold India a number of times over by now.

To resolve terror, India must talk Indian Muslims with Pak.

It is simply shocking that no one in India has picked up and highlighted the very dangerous and paradigm changing statements made by Musharraf regarding Pakistan's interest and stake not just in Kashmir because it is a Muslim majority state being fought over since 1947, but in the rest of India too. As many as four times during the interview, the General openly linked terror and its eradication with the state of Muslims in India. Not once did Thapar respond. On the contrary, he stuck to Kashmir and pretended as if these words had not even been uttered, so fixated was he on projecting Musharraf in good light and pretending that the long term danger that India faces from Pakistani sponsored or, if you like, encouraged terrorism is needlessly exaggerated.

Thapar asked Musharraf about Obama's Af-Pak policy. That was enough for the latter to talk of tackling terror holistically to include Kashmir and, yes, India's alienated Muslim minority, particularly the youth. These were his words in response to four separate Thapar questions:

"I don't agree with this Af-Pak solution at all... I may add that there is an Indian connection there too in terrorism and extremism. There is extremism within India in the Muslim youth and it is developing linkages with others - the Kashmir issue too. Therefore if we want to finally deal with terrorism and extremism and solve it in its short-term and long-term perspective, we have to look at events in India, Pakistan and Afghanistan."

"Now if we were to only resolve Pakistan, Afghanistan and the borders and frontiers then it makes no sense because what you are talking about, these Lashkar-e-Toiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad, they are all there because of Kashmir. And now they have sympathies with the Muslim youth because they think they are being alienated, they are under-privileged etc. So how does this get solved? As far as Pakistan is concerned, the same extremist organisations will have a lot to continue on the path that they are following. Therefore India has to be brought in. I am sorry to be saying this to you, but India has to be brought into the fold."

"Why do organisations like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad exist? How can we pull the carpet from under their feet? Basically they are there because of Kashmir and now also because of the situation with the Muslim minority in India. These things need to be resolved".

"...we have to bring India into the focus, what is happening to India and how is it creating negative effects in Pakistan. Now that happens to be Kashmir and also what is happening with the Muslim minorities."

Did you not notice how openly Musharraf articulated that the state of Muslims in India is a bilateral issue, in which Pakistan has a stake and that India has to resolve with it? Did you not realise how blatantly he appropriated for Pakistan the role of spokesman of and arbiter for Indian Muslims? Did you not sit up alarmed at the manner in which he all but threatened India that Pakistani terrorist organisations like the LeT and JeM "will have a lot to continue on the path they are following", even if Kashmir is resolved, for and on behalf of Indian Muslims?

Conspiratorial silence?

In December 2007, Karan Thapar had virtually given a call for the elimination of Modi, so righteously wronged he had then felt about the latter's victory in the Gujarat Assembly elections, because of his alleged involvement in the riots of 2002: "Only the sudden removal of Narendra Modi can change this. For he is the agent forcing this change. And whilst he is with us, he will do just that. I have no doubts Indian politics after Sunday the 23rd is another country".

This is the tragedy of India. There are many Indians like Thapar who readily lose their pen and balance, and expose their disturbing aggression when it comes to Indian political leaders who do not belong to their political camp. But when it comes to Pakistani leaders, they turn blindly believing and readily forgiving. Musharraf, for example, has not only been totally forgiven for Kargil but is now even being exalted as a truthful man who honestly wants peace with India.

That Kashmir deal which has been used by Thapar to sell Musharraf to Indians was going to be nothing short of a sell out for India. In addition, is Pakistan or Musharraf ever going to be satisfied with Kashmir alone? To those who have been following real events and not fake cross-border friendships, there has never been any doubt that Pakistan has at no stage given up its fundamental objective of bleeding India to death through a thousand cuts. Musharraf reiterated that as plainly as an ex-President can to Thapar by giving it a contemporary and communal twist. But the latter was not listening then and is not speaking now.

Why have Musharraf's efforts to speak on behalf of Indian Muslims and his threat that terrorist organisations will continue to flourish in Pakistan, unless India discusses and resolves the issue of alienation of its Muslim citizens with Pakistan, gone completely unchallenged? While Thapar's silence can be attributed to his limited personal agenda and a weakness that flows from personal equations, praise and more, what has happened to the rest of the media and other analysts? Does India's unexpected and needless capitulation at Sharm el-Sheikh have something to do with it? Should Indians be prepared for more shocks and a big time sellout in the garb of "peace" soon?

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Readers may also read:
1. India to Pak: you keep shooting, we'll keep talking
2. Understanding and defeating the psychology of terror
3. India and Pakistan are not victims of the same terror
4. Kashmir and Afghanistan are two sides of the same coin
5. Secular Indian Mujahideen