PAKISTANI perception that the Indian claim to secularism is bogus, and the Indian impression that Pakistan is on the way to becoming a theocracy, would both bear qualification. In theory and in law the Indian polity is secular. In actual practice the situation varies as between regions and levels of government. Society is more secular-minded in the southern states than it is in the northern Hindi-speaking belt. In its policies and practices the central government is more secular than are the state and local governments.

In a recent article in this newspaper (December 13), Mr Kuldip Nayar tells us that “safronization” is spreading in India, the communal “genie” is out of the bottle, the notion of “Hindutva” is seizing the minds of an increasing number of people, and that the BJP is no longer disguising its links with militant Hindu organizations. Let us suppose for a moment that India becomes, unabashedly, a Hindu state. What would be the consequences for its relations with Pakistan?

It is hard to say. For one thing, we have no historical experience on which to base speculation: there are no examples during the last one thousand years or so of a Hindu state’s transactions with its non-Hindu neighbours. Two indicators, one of them rather feeble, come to mind. First, India’s relations with Pakistan have been no worse when Hindu parties controlled the Indian government than when Congress leaders (Nehru, Shastri, Indira Gandhi) ruled. Second, India’s relations with most of the Muslim countries (other than Pakistan) have throughout been reasonably friendly and cooperative. Let us then not be overly apprehensive about the spreading “safronization.”

In theory, and according to its constitution, Pakistan is an Islamic, not a secular, state. Actually, this is not the case. Its people have repudiated the more serious proponents of Islamization (Islamic political parties) in every election. These parties did better in 2002 mainly because Gen Musharraf would not let the “mainstream” parties (PPP and PML-N) contest the election unhindered. Even Ziaul Haq’s commitment to Islam was more apparent than real; he too used it as an instrument in the service of his unbounded political ambition. Indian observers are doubtless aware of all this; their assertion that Pakistan is a theocracy can then only be regarded as hostile propaganda.

Pakistani policy makers and commentators have always believed that India is a hegemonic and expansionist power. I think it is safe to say that India does not intend to invade and absorb any of the currently independent countries in its neighbourhood. It may, however, covet influence, verging upon control, beyond its borders, which is about the same as hegemony.

That India wishes to be the dominant power in South Asia, and beyond, does not mean that it will actually achieve such a status. In this day and age hegemony cannot be imposed on others merely by a show of physical force. It costs a lot of money. America’s hegemony, such as it is, costs it tens of billions of dollars every year. India simply does not have that kind of money.

It may be assumed that the nations that are sought to be dominated will yield only if they are weak, internally divided, and on the verge of falling apart. North Vietnam did not accept the overlordship of either China or the Soviet Union, even though it needed their assistance in fighting the United States, mainly because it was internally a coherent and united whole. The best way for Pakistan to preserve its freedom of choice in its domestic and foreign policies is not to call upon India to stop being hegemonic but to put its own house in order and develop the inner strength to ward off external pressure.

Moving on to one of our self-perceptions, it has become customary on our part to think and speak of our country as India’s rival. Spain was a rival of England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when they were powers of roughly equal rank. But that ceased to be the case when Spain became poorer and weaker. Closer to our own time, Iraq was once a rival of Egypt, but Jordan is content with minding its own business. Students of international politics know that a relatively small state will likely ruin itself if it assumes a posture of rivalry with one whose capabilities are clearly much larger. It should be understood also that being somebody’s enemy is not the same as being his rival.

Pakistan cannot be India’s equal or rival. Its nuclear capability, like that of India, is at best a power to deter, not a power to compel. It follows that we should quit referring to Pakistan as India’s nuclear rival. Needless to say, if we wish to maintain the current momentum for peace and amity, we should also stop referring to India as “the enemy.”

There is no good reason for us to resent India’s efforts to build receptivity to its interests in Central Asia and elsewhere in the Muslim world. India’s exclusion from those places-assuming that it could be arranged — would not automatically instal Pakistan in positions of advantage. Note also that there are other powers active in the area and better situated to check and balance India’s designs.

Let us now turn briefly to the “core” issue in Indo-Pakistan relations, the one relating to Kashmir, and messed up in semantic ambiguities. Pakistan has been asking India to recognize its “centrality” to the good order of their relations. Pakistan wants it to be treated as a “dispute” whereas India wants to treat it as nothing more than an issue that might be taken up some day. Pakistan wants negotiations: India may, at best, agree to “talks.” This battle of words can be traced to Pakistan’s legalistic inclination to base its position on the relevant United Nations resolutions of more than half a century ago, the efficacy of which India denies in no uncertain terms.

This battle of words is wholly dysfunctional, it will go nowhere, and it should be abandoned — the sooner the better. India does recognize that the situation in Kashmir poses an exceedingly troublesome problem. It would like to exclude Pakistan from the list of those concerned, but I think it knows that this cannot be done. It may then be willing to discuss the subject with Pakistan somewhere along the line. It does not really matter whether the exercise is called negotiation, talk, discussion, or conversation. Nor does it matter whether the subject is called a dispute, issue, problem, question, or merely an “agenda item.”

Pakistani spokesmen have a very difficult act to perform. Beyond a genuinely sympathetic concern for the aspirations of the Kashmiri people, they have two very different audiences to address. They feel they must not give the domestic “hawks” ground for alleging that Gen Musharraf has knuckled down to India under external pressure and sold vital national interests down the river. To appease these domestic foes they say that the government’s stand on Kashmir remains unchanged.

At the same time, they have to consider the logic of ground realities and listen to voices of prudence both at home and abroad. Responding to these voices and considerations, General Musharraf has devised an approach to the Kashmir issue that should be eminently satisfactory from the Indian viewpoint. He proposes four steps or stages for tackling it: (1) the two sides should begin discussing the matter; (2) accept its “centrality”; (3) identify and discard solutions that are unacceptable to any of the three concerned parties (Pakistan, India, and the Kashmiris); (4) look for a solution that is acceptable to all of them.

India loses nothing by beginning discussions. That step alone will not commit either side to any particular direction. Nor does it hurt India to concede the problem’s “centrality.” That concession can have adverse consequences only if it means that the resolution of other issues between the two countries must await a Kashmir settlement. But Gen Musharraf has clearly stepped back from that position.

Quite a few of the peace moves proposed during the past few weeks have been accepted by the two governments without any prior negotiations. Others have been adopted following talks that lasted only a couple of days. This has been happening even though no talks concerning Kashmir are even scheduled. It follows that the Indian acceptance of “centrality” may not have any consequence other than that of giving Gen Musharraf a talking point vis-a-vis his opponents. So, why be niggardly with gestures that cost nothing, why not give him a little something to take home?

Reject solutions that are unacceptable to any of the three parties, and find one that all of them will accept, says the general. The option of holding a plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people, in accordance with the UN resolutions, may be the first to be knocked off the negotiating table almost. The search for a solution that will invite unanimous approval could extend over a very long stretch of time.

Students of diplomacy know that, depending on the nature of the issue and the attendant circumstances, negotiations can go on for years before a settlement is reached. Such, for instance, was the case with SALT ONE and TWO (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) between the United States and the Soviet Union. The present government in Pakistan may be as interested in taking credit at home for having got the talks on Kashmir started as it may be in their outcome. There is then really no good reason for India to be wary of these talks, or to insist that they will not begin until “cross border” infiltrations have stopped completely.

The writer is professor emeritus of political science at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, USA. E-mail: anwarsyed@cox.net

GEN Musharraf soon after taking over as ‘Chief Executive‘ of the country created a bureau for reconstruction and another for accountability to give practical shape to his ideas on constitution and governance. Headed by generals and now familiar to the people by their acronyms of NRB and NAB they have since been a scourge of the politicians and bureaucrats alike.

By tapping into the veins of anger and weariness running through the body politic of Pakistan, NRB was required to reform the state structures and NAB to punish the individual delinquents. The judgments on the performance of the two bureaus widely differ conditioned by the experience of the people and classes who benefited or suffered at their hands. However, there is near-unanimity on the point that their exertions over four years have not rid the politics of conflict nor the administration of corruption. Both in fact have aggravated.

The controversy over the Legal Framework Order may one day, and soon, end in a compromise of convenience, though the ruling coalition and MMA alliance both continue to insist their last-ditch stands are “principled.” ARD, the larger and more representative opposition alliance, yet remains utterly hostile to a compromise howsoever favourable.

Its objection is not to the content of the LFO but the manner in which it is being made a part of the Constitution. Then its major component parties also want a reprieve for their exiled leaders.

On that count the ARD cannot be faulted. If Gen Musharraf had no right to amend the Constitution, the MMA has lesser right to further amend it to suit its objective of coexistence with the federal government (if not to join it) to save its own governments in the NWFP and Balochistan.

For that a renewed mandate from the people is necessary. But neither the MMA nor the coalition is inclined that way. Looking at the MMA alone it polled barely 11 per cent of the votes cast in the last general election which comes to three and a half per cent of the popular vote as only one-third of the registered voters had turned up to vote.

Yet it won a disproportionate number of seats enough to hold the balance of power in the parliament. That position of advantage the Alliance may not be able to retain in a fresh election even if its unity and vote bank were to remain intact as the other parties the next time round would plan their contest strategies better.

As of now with the MMA marching but the government still cajoling, constitutional settlement seems set on a treacherous course. The negotiations though still continue under the shadows of intimidation involving the politicians, ministers and generals — all guarding interests.

A reference to the people being unlikely they will remain silent spectators, some turning into noisy protesters but a vast majority unconcerned.

The opposition, ARD and MMA both, have chosen to challenge the LFO for its clauses which, though constitutionally important, do not touch the life of the common man nor add to the privations he suffers. Leaving the dissolution of the National Assembly and formation of National Security Council aside, it is of little concern to the people how the chiefs of the armed forces are appointed or at what age the judges of the superior courts retire.

Perhaps the courts would be more independent if the judges were to serve for life (as they do in America) and thus not seek to please the government by their conduct and rulings to get another assignment after retirement.

On the other hand, the new laws on local government and police which the provinces have been barred from repealing or even amending affect the day-to-day well-being and safety of the people. The Local Government Ordinances and the Police Order have caused new stresses in an administration which was already tottering under the weight of its own incompetence and extraneous pressures and, at the same time, had set the public representative one against the other cutting across the party lines.

Through these laws the NRB has not only divided and weakened both the bureaucratic and political cadres but has also made serious inroads into the provincial jurisdiction. The federal government has all but assumed direct control of the district, municipal and police administration.

For the devolution plan faltering and the anomalies and jealousies it has created, the new chief of NRB, not unsurprisingly, has made bureaucracy a whipping boy. Bureaucracy is common to the districts and the provinces and, at a senior level, even to the federation. The officials move freely from one government to another. They could not be seen conspiring against a government or department which could be their next home or refuge.

The system is failing because the spheres of work, authority and responsibility between the district and provincial governments are not demarcated. All overlap all the time. Then at stake are the political interests of the ministers and members of the assembly on the one side and of the nazims and the councillors on the other.

The way the devolution plan was framed and is now being enforced by the NRB leaves neither the politicians nor the people in doubt that the district government has been made an entity apart from the provincial government and not its subordinate. No authority but largesse devolves from the centre.

The worry that haunts the provincial ministers and members (and to a lesser extent also the federal ministers, MNAs and senators) is that if all the policies were to be made in Islamabad and funds too lie there and the implementation is to take place through the district governments, pretty little is left for them to do.

The nazims and councillors, on their part, complain of harassment and interference by the ministers and parliamentarians. The complaints, for good reasons, are more frequent and louder from the nazims whose allegiance lies with the political parties opposed to the government of the province.

The federal and provincial governments cannot long remain indifferent to the demand of their ministers and members to give them a say in the administration of the districts and a share in the patronage at that level. Both governments to stay in office need their votes and goodwill and not of the nazims and councillors. The administration of the district thus would tend to become a hostage to the political interests of the legislators at all the three levels — local, provincial and central.

The expectation in the NRB’s plan that the district nazims would essentially be administrators rising above politics was wholly misplaced. They all have political affiliations and will be more firmly aligned with political parties in future. Will a provincial government allow its officials posted in the districts to let a politically hostile nazim to control the activity and finance of the departments including the police ?

And, conversely, will a government party nazim be allowed to do what he likes is a question which the NRB must address urgently. The answer to this question must necessarily be found in letting the nazims and councils perform all the civic and developmental functions but leave the regulatory part of the administration to the professional civil servants.

That is a requirement of detached approach to public affairs where diverse interests and affiliations are constantly at stake.

The Police Order of 2002 has been in force for a year and a half but the police force remains as it was under the Colonial Order of 1861. It has been given a lot of independence and some money but the public safety commissions and authorities which were to act as watchdogs of public interest have yet to come into being or make their presence felt. They too, it seems, have become victims of party politics.

The local government and law and order are provincial subjects. The NRB’s plan and the laws that followed have reduced both to a costly farce. In the making of the plan, the NRB harangued the provinces and the public a great deal but never listened to them, much less pay heed to their views. Now that political forces have come into full play and the failure of a one-sided dogmatic exercise stares in the face, it is time to put all heads together. The warnings and conspiracy theories would not help.

OVER endless cups of green tea, Toynbee would survey the past and produce a bird’s eye view of mankind’s history to gain greater insight into the present. The year was 1959. I was deputy commissioner, Peshawar. Once a week, Prof Toynbee would do me the honour of visiting my house on Fort Road, accompanied by my friend Abu Kureishi, who was his guide and constant companion throughout his stay in Pakistan.

“After the failure of the second siege of Vienna by the Ottoman Turks”, Toynbee said, “the western natural science consummated its marriage with technology and thereby generated for the West a material power that quickly put the rest of the world at its mercy”. A convenient date for this marriage, he said, is a A.D. 1660 which is the date of the foundation of the Royal Society of England. The marriage between science and technology, Toynbee said, was indeed a historic event. It was a turning point in the history of mankind. While such momentous developments were taking place in the West, the Islamic world fell into deep slumber, never got off the mark and lost the scientific and technological race forever.

Against this background, I was distressed to wake up in the morning a few days ago and learnt that two nuclear scientists of the Khan Research Laboratories, were “missing”. One of the missing scientists has since returned home after a week-long “disappearance” and “debriefing”. The government says the two scientists have not been detained and taken into custody, but were assisting the authorities in routine debriefing session.

The explanation has come from the foreign office, rather than the interior, science and technology or the defence ministry which is rather odd. The government has sought to assure us that no foreign agency is involved in the debriefing and that the civil rights of the scientists were intact.

Nobody in Pakistan or abroad believes a word of this explanation. Everybody knows that it is yet another attempt by President Musharraf to appease the United States. This is no way to ‘debrief’ our scientists who have done so greatly for their country which owes them a great debt of gratitude for loyal and magnificent service. They are a national asset. They are our real heroes. Why humiliate them? Are they foreign agents? Are they spies? Are they disloyal to Pakistan? Are they subversive? Are they security risk? Where is the evidence that carries such gravest implications? If they are suspect, why not institute an open inquiry into their activities and order a security hearing? If there is no evidence to justify a security hearing, why are they being treated like ordinary criminals? Why were they picked up in the dead of the night, taken to a safe house, held incommunicado for days and “debriefed” with foreign assistance? Why this McCarthyism? Is this the way to treat our scientists, architects and builders of our nuclear deterrence, knowing it will tear them apart, knowing it will break their spirit, knowing it will destroy them and their families? People are indignant and demand answers.

J. Robert Oppenheimer, who helped the United States end World War II and build an unsurpassed arsenal of nuclear weapons, was suspected of disloyalty and working as a spy for Soviet Union and deliberately delaying the production of the hydrogen bomb. But he was not picked up by the FBI or taken to a safe house, held incommunicado and “debriefed” like the two unfortunate Pakistani scientists. Given the circumstances and the spirit of the times, all this was possible even in America, but none dare touch Oppenheimer. He was given a public hearing before his security was withdrawn. “I can’t believe this is happening to me”, Oppenheimer told his secretary”. “It was like Pearl Harbour on a small scale”. I can imagine what our scientists must have gone through during their “debriefing”.

When Lev Landau, the future Nobel Prize winner, was arrested in Soviet Union for being a German spy, Kapitza, head of the Kapitza institute for physical problems in Moscow — who would earn a Nobel in his turn — presented Molotov and Stalin with an ultimatum. If Landau was not released immediately, he, Kapitza, would resign from all his positions and leave the institute. It was clear that Kapitza meant business. Stalin could not afford to lose Kapitza and capitulated. Landau was cleared of all charges and released! Who will defend the honour, dignity and freedom of our scientists?

“Perhaps the most depressed community”, Prof Salam once said, “is the community of scientific workers. We seem never to have recognized that in a science-dominated world there ever could be any task for Pakistani scientists. The official attitude towards science has at best been one of reluctant indulgence; somewhat like the attitude of learned divines in the worst and most intolerant days of the Bukhara Emirate towards the local clockmaker who was a Christian. He was permitted to enter the mosque to repair the tower clock only on the plea that, after all, in the matter of technical usefulness, he was on par with the donkeys which carried the stone slabs into the mosque in the first place”. “Why should the clockmaker”, Prof Salam said, “suffer such a social slight”?

It is common knowledge that our scientists working in sensitive fields of national importance have never felt so frustrated, so insecure, so vulnerable and so scared as they do now. How can science flourish in such an unfriendly and hostile environment? Science depends for its advances on towering individuals. Conditions must therefore be created, so that such men conduct their scientific activities in an atmosphere free from fear and suspicion.

When the late Amos de Shalit (the director of the Weizmann Institute in Jerusalem) was asked by a UN committee what was the Israeli policy for science, his reply was: “We have a very simple policy for science growth which consists of just two elements. First, a working scientist is always right and the younger he is, the more right he is. We honour him. We treat him with respect. Second, we allow any scientist working in our universities or research organizations to travel freely, to migrate temporarily to anywhere in the world where his scientific work will flourish. We keep his position open at home”.

Not long ago, Dr Amir Aziz Khan, a highly respected orthopaedic surgeon, was arrested in Lahore and released on November 19 after a month-long detention on charges of having links with Taliban and Al Qaeda leaderships. Some “unknown” persons dropped him at his house in Lahore cantonment on November 19 in the early hours of the morning.

Dr. Amir Aziz was never produced before the Lahore High Court where a writ petition was filed by his mother. Following his early morning release, the Lahore High Court disposed of the petition as it had become infructuous. “I have been in the custody of Pakistani intelligence agencies in Islamabad where the FBI and CIA officials questioned me”, Dr. Aziz told newsmen who visited his house.

The defence of the country is not at the ramparts alone. Questions of victory or defeat in modern wars are decided not in the battlefields but in the stillness of a professor’s study or the scientist’s lab. Over a 100 years ago, the German poet Heine warned not to underestimate such people. Concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor’s study or a scientist’s lab could destroy a civilization. A few scribbles on a blackboard or on a sheet of paper could change the course of human affairs. Don’t mess around with such people? Hitler lost the war when thousand of Jewish scientists, who had lost their positions in German universities after the promulgation of the law for the restoration of the career civil service, escaped to the United States and produced the bomb. This may have a moral lesson for us in Pakistan.

“When I woke up the sun was shinning”, one of the scientists recalled. “I had slept deeply, soundly and long — for the first time in many weeks. The previous night I had arrived in London and gone to bed without fear that at 3 am, a car with a couple of SA men would draw up and take me away”. Before it is science and career, before it is livelihood, before even it is family or love, freedom is sound sleep and safety to notice the play of morning sun. Scientists are the flowers of our nation. Let them blossom in freedom.