THE New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP) Conference held in Bandung last month (April-22 to 24) has been hailed by some of its participants as “a historical watershed in international relations, especially for the Third World.” In the post-9/11 world order tolled by two preemptive wars waged by the sole superpower in pursuance of its national security strategy to achieve unchallengeable primacy in the new century, will NAASP be able to play a role in moderating the excesses of unilateralist preemptive use of force and promoting a multilateralist international order?

A retrospective glance at the international situation that obtained fifty years ago when the first Asian-African conference was held in Bandung, Indonesia, (April 18-24, 1955) would help focus attention on the tectonic shift in the power-political configuration that has since taken place.

In the fifties, the global geopolitical landscape presented a scene dominated by the United States and the Soviet Union — two superpowers armed with thousands of kiloton nuclear weapons, megaton hydrogen bombs and missile delivery systems dedicated to mutual assured destruction, and divided into two rival ideological and military blocs locked in cold war.

The first Asian-African Conference, convened by Indonesia, Burma (Myanmar), Pakistan and Ceylon (Sri Lanka) — five newly independent states — met in Bandung in 1955 (18-24 April). It was attended by 29 countries many of them led by heads of state or government. Among them were a few larger-than-life figures — Zhou Enlai of China, Ho Chi Minh of Vietnam, Jwaharlal Nehru of India, Soekarno of Indonesia, Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt and Kwame Nkrumah of the Gold Coast (Ghana). Pakistan was represented by Prime Minister Mohammad Ali of Bogra.

At the conference the vast majority of the participating states where unaligned to the US or the Soviet Union. Only China was aligned to the latter. Turkey, a Nato member, Iraq which had joined the Baghdad Pact (later Cento) and Pakistan a member of Seato alliance were military allies of the United States.

Inaugurating the Bandung 1955 conference, President Soekarno hailed it as “the first intercontinental conference of the so-called coloured races in the history of mankind,” making it loud and clear that anti-imperialism, anti-colonialism and anti-apartheid segregation and racial discrimination would be the main themes for the orientation of the assembled delegates. He also stressed the importance of cooperation for economic development to address the poverty and backwardness of their peoples exploited when under colonial rule.

Pakistan had anticipated that the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence that China and India and China and Burma had adopted in 1954 to govern their bilateral relations, would be seized upon by unaligned India to denigrate and isolate Pakistan at the conference for having opted for a military alliance with the US. We therefore decided to amplify the Five Principles (respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit and peaceful co-existence of state with different social systems) by the inclusion of UN Charter’s article 51 on the right of individual and collective defence and the relevant Charter provisions enjoining peaceful settlement of disputes. These amendments won sufficient support.

Three other points were added and the final declaration of the conference enlarging the five into ten principles of international conduct that included “respect for the right of each nation to defend itself singly or collectively in conformity with the Charter of the United Nations.”

The 1955 conference was also momentous for Pakistan’s bilateral diplomacy and for China’s emergence from international isolation. In a meeting with Premier Zhou Enlai on the conference sidelines, Prime Minister Mohammad Ali assured him that Pakistan, though a member of Seato, that China had branded an aggressive military pact directed against it, would never be a party to any aggression against China. The premier readily accepted this assurance which was in conformity with one of the ten-point Declaration on the promotion of world peace and cooperation, namely “abstention from the use of arrangements for collective self-defence to serve the particular interests of any of the big powers.”

Thus, a foundation was laid for trust in Pakistan by China, leading subsequently to exchange of visits by the leaders of the two countries and paving the way for the conclusion of the boundary agreement of 1963 delineating as their common border the watershed of the Karakorum mountain range between China’s Xingjiang province and Pakistan-controlled Northern Areas of Jammu and Kashmir.

The 1955 conference declared its support for the right to self-determination of the peoples of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia and the rights of the Arab people of Palestine, thus giving an impetus to the liberation struggles of Asian and African peoples still under colonial rule and apartheid. On disarmament, it called for arms reduction and the prohibition of production of weapons of mass destruction while asserting the right of developing countries to peaceful use of nuclear energy. In the cultural field, the conference called for the renewal of old cultural links between the two continents and exchanges in education, science and technology.

Scores of Asian-African countries and island territories have since decolonized and apartheid abolished in South Africa. Within a month of the 1955 conference eight newly independent countries recommended by it were among fifteen admitted to the United Nations.

It was also at Bandung that the seeds were sown of the Non-Aligned Movement which took shape at Belgrade in 1961 belying President Kennedy’s faith in the movement’s non-alignment for its failure to condemn the violation of US-Soviet moratorium on nuclear testing concluded several years before. The Non-Aligned Movement set up the Group of 77 in the 1970s to coordinate the positions of Afro-Asian countries in international economic forums, and initiated South-South cooperation to stabilize the prices of primary commodities which were the staple exports of developing countries and intra-regional trade.

However, as it turned out, in the on-going regional conflicts and those that erupted subsequently, the Asian African states could play no role in preventing or mitigating them. Notable instances are the India-China border conflict of 1962, the Arab-Israeli wars of 1967 and 1973, the Vietnam war in the late sixties until the mid-seventies, the India-Pakistan war over Kashmir, in 1965, India’s war to dismember Pakistan in 1971, and the Iraq-Iran war of 1980-88.

Global geopolitics have undergone a sea-change since 1955 with the collapse of communism in eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union in 1991. Today the world finds itself in a unipolar era — of American imperium and market economy, powered by globalization from the exponential advance of information technology.

As the sole global superpower, unchallengeable by any would-be regional rival, the US has opted for an operational national security strategy of unilateral pre-emptive use of military force to achieve the strategic goals of its Project for a New American Century (PNAC). Seizing the opportunity presented by the 9/11 atrocities, the US launched two unilateral pre-emptive wars — against Afghanistan and Iraq to change their regimes. In this it has been successful. it has altered the geopolitics of the Middle East in favour of Israel. For it the cold war has been replaced by the war on terror, making many Muslims in the world wonder if it is directed against their religion — Islam.

Bipolarity having passed into history, the countries of Asia and Africa can no longer anchor their international relations to non-alignment. As a result of the post-9/11 tectonic geopolitical shift, they have perforce to readjust their politico-security policies towards coexistence with the sole superpower which perceives the promotion of its democratic values and strategic interests to lie in recourse to realpolitik unconstrained by international law.

To commemorate the Golden Jubilee of the first Bandung conference, President Bambang Yodhoyono of Indonesia and Thabo Mbeki of South Africa convened a second Asian-African Summit Conference which was held last month, again in Bandung. More then a hundred countries of the two continents were represented The conference adopted as its theme “Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit: New Asian-African Strategic Partnership (NAASP) to forge a new framework of solidarity, economic cooperation and socio-cultural ties to seek measures to cope with global threats and problems and cooperate at the UN in the spirit of unity and strength created at Bandung in 1955.

Although this new strategic partnership calls for multilateral approaches to conflict resolution and to addressing the issues of terrorism and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, it seems set to shift its focus from international politics to geo-economics — from security to trade, development and investment in a world in which the bipolar balance of power is morphed to a single pole. NAASP may therefore bypass political and security issues that might impact on its relations with the UN — such as Iran’s right under the NPT to process uranium enrichment for peaceful purposes but under intrusive IAEA inspection — which is being challenged by the United States at the present NPT’s seventh review conference in New York.

Also, while Bandung 2005 continues to back a sovereign Palestinian state, will it take a stand against Israel’s undermining of the Quartet’s (US, Russia, EU and UN) road map to a viable Palestinian state by withdrawing its settlements only from the Gaza Strip but consolidating those in East Jerusalem and the West Bank that have been under its occupation for nearly forty years?

Confronted by Pax Americana, will a reinvigoration of the spirit of Bandung fuse solidarity among the leaders of Asia and Africa — a sine qua non for promoting a multilateralist, if not a multipolar, world order? In their ranks are allies of the US — Japan, South Korea and others states — Central Asian republics, Gulf and some other Arab states, in close relationship with the sole superpower. India too has become a strategic partner of the US and on the eve of Bandung II, also with China. How it will balance or tilt between the two conflicting paradigms remains to be seen.

While the US views China as a potential threat to its primacy, China remains opposed to hegemonism, global or regional. Sino-Japanese relations too are not free from tensions as Japan asserts a security interest in the status of Taiwan which China considers a challenge to its determination to reunify the island with the mainland. Other disputes such as Japan’s urging the EU not to lift its arms embargo on China and that over islands in the East China Sea also exist. Pakistan and India, though committed to a peace process, remain as divided as ever on the final disposition of the state of Jammu and Kashmir in accordance with Kashmiri wishes. The military balance and strategic stability between the two cannot but be further upset by the military implications of the US strategy to help India become a major world power.

In a global perspective of shifting power equations, what role the African member states, with their own rich potential for development and growth, will seek to play in the world order that India wishes to shape, together with China, in their shared vision of an Asian century in which America, though militarily dominant, will play a receding economic role while the two rising Asian giants drive the global economy?

The spirit of Bandung could hopefully, in the forthcoming summit session of the General Assembly in September, give impetus to the movement for the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals by 2015.

Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s report “In Larger Freedom — Towards Development, Security and Human Rights for All,” specifically with reference to the expansion of the Security Council as recommended by his high-level panel, could unite the Bandung strategic partnership in rejecting the first option of enlarging the permanent membership of the Security Council by six new permanent members but with no right of veto — even though seized upon by Germany, Japan, Brazil and India — as this would be conducive to the hegemony of the larger state members of the United Nations.

The alternative option of adding eight new members each to serve for a renewable four-year term, could still fail to enlist the support of two-thirds of the General Assembly even though it would be tempting for the African Union as it would provide two such semi-permanent seats to its members.

Could a third option of confining expansion to non-permanent or rotating members to a two-year term by increasing their present number by ten elicit a consensus of the new strategic partnership?

Kofi Annan’s report calls for permitting recourse to the use of force exceeding the UN Charter’s article 51 on the right of states to individual and collective defence against armed attack, by legitimizing the pre-emptive use of military force against latent, though not imminent, threats of terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction — nuclear, chemical and biological — provided such preemptive use is authorized, subject to certain guidelines or criteria by the Security Council. Any such criteria may well contravene existing international law. Could the new strategic partnership, reinvigorated by the Bandung Spirit, be able to adopt a united stance?

There remains the question of the further responsibility of the International community to act to protect innocent civilian populations from genocidal violence, including war crimes and crimes against humanity, should the state concerned be unable or unwilling to protect its own citizens. The High-Level Panel recommends that in extreme circumstances and as a last resort, the Security Council should authorize, besides diplomatic pressure and other measures of humanitarian intervention, the collective use of force to prevent and to halt genocide.

The lessons of the Rwanda and Bosnia genocides in the 1990s still haunt the international community which had the capacity to prevent and halt both but lacked the will to act. According to the UN Secretary-General’s Special Adviser on Prevention of Genocide, there are five countries facing potential threat of genocide and ten more at risk. Will the new strategic partnership take a united stand on prevention at the summit session of the General Assembly in September?

As the Jakarta Declaration itself cautions, “history will judge them (NAASP) by their performance, not by their words.” However, the distance between this promise and its fulfilment has yet to be walked across a geopolitical landscape of seismic tremors that are shaking the cohesion and solidarity of alignments and partnerships by subjecting them to shocks and pressures. As for Pakistan, having locked its time-tested ties with China in a friendship treaty derives further assurance of withstanding them.

The writer is a former foreign minister. He participated in the 1955 Bandung Asian-African Conference as a member of the Pakistan delegation led by Prime Minister Mohammad Ali of Bogra.

IN its new role as a key player in the US-led war on terrorism, the Pakistani establishment has toned down many policies that previously fostered militancy and religious extremism. At best this is a short-term response. It is doubtful whether the establishment truly intends to set Pakistani society on a sustainable course leading to political pluralism and religious tolerance.

The government has acted weakly on the reforms that it proposed. The reasons for not delivering the goods can largely be attributed to the lack of political will, the absence of a tangible political mechanism to implement the reforms, and an expedient brand of romance between the establishment and the religious right. The continued marginalization of liberal, democratic forces has aggravated the situation. Small wonder, one third of all children being educated in Pakistan attend madressahs. They study in a religious environment that has been radicalized by the state-sponsored exposure of the jihad in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

According to one estimate, one and half million students at more than 10,000 seminaries are being trained for service in religious sectors. Poverty and the lack of a modern curriculum have proved destabilizing factors for Pakistani society. Religious organizations banned by the government continue to run schools and produce militant literature.

Madressahs have a long history in Pakistan and Muslim society. They only came under close scrutiny after 9/11. The perception in the West about them is not altogether correct. Not all madressahs breed revolutionaries. In Pakistan, there are five distinct types of madressahs divided along sectarian and political lines. The two main branches of Sunni Islam in South Asia, namely Deobandi and Barelvi, dominate this sector. The Ahl-e-Hadith have their own schools as do the Shias, while the predominantly Sunni Jamaat-i-Islami shuns sectarian tags and has a distinctively different character.

Madressahs under these entities provide Islamic education with a sectarian bias. They offer free boarding and lodging to the students who come mainly from the poor strata of society. The vast majority of the students are in the age group of 15 to 18 years. The pupils learn how to read, memorize and recite the Holy Quran. Certificates are issued equivalent to a Masters and Bachelor degrees. In the madressah system, university for higher religious education is called Darul Uloom. The products of the system are hafiz-e-Quran, qari and ulema. Graduates work only in mosques and affiliated organizations.

The religious parties and clergy have never been as powerful in Pakistan as they are today. In 1947, there were only 137 madressahs. According to a survey in 1956, there were 244 madressahs in West Pakistan. Since then, after every 10 years, the number of madressahs is found to have doubled. The government speculates that 10 to 15 per cent of the madressahs might have links with militant outfits, but has no credible data. The advent of the Taliban drew the attention of the international community to the madressah phenomenon. They were seen as a supply line for the jihad in the Soviet-Afghan war during General Ziaul Haq’s rule.

Militancy is only a part of the madressah problem. Most madressahs do not impart military training or education but sow the seeds of extremism in the minds of the students. In their mission to prevail over rival sects, madressahs educate their students to counter arguments of opposing sects. The promotion of a particular sect implies rejection of the other, which means the production of literature against one and other. The crux of the problem comes down to the type of education madressahs impart. This education is responsible for creating barriers, stifling creativity and breeding bigotry.

Sectarianism in Pakistan is the latest form of a conflict within Islam dating to the 7th century caliphate. The beginning of the madressah system in the Muslim world was also a Sunni reaction to the rise of the Shia sect. The first chain of madressahs appeared in the rule of Nizam-ul-Mulk in 11th century Iraq. Court patronage helped it to become an educational system with the purpose of serving as the centre of Muslim educational activity, but colonialism left the institution struggling for survival.

In India, Muslim rulers opened madressahs for both Muslims and non-Muslims. Schools of mystic traditions taught subjects such as philosophy, mathematics and astronomy to prepare students for court jobs, the royal bureaucracy and religious duties. The traditional madressah survived British colonialism in South Asia largely because of a group of early 18th century ulema hailing from Farangi Mahal, a residential area in Lucknow, India. They developed the Dars-e-Nizami, the first standardized madressah curriculum that is still used as the standard course in all Sunni madressahs in Pakistan. This curriculum does not teach militancy or jihad.

The need to adjust to British rule produced two educational movements for the Indian Muslims. On one extreme was the development of English learning at Aligarh and the other was the madressah of Deoband. The introduction of western education threatened traditional Muslims. As a result, the Deobandi madressahs became one of the symbols of resistance to the West. During the confrontation with the British, the Deobandi ulema institutionalized the madressah system. This school of thought clashed with the more flexible Sufi tradition. The Muslim peasantry, however, integrated with the local culture and Deobandi thought was alien to it.

A counter-movement was founded by Raza Ahmed Khan Barelvi whose followers set up their own madressahs. Sectarianism within Sunni ranks started to take shape. Meanwhile, the main rival of the Deobandi school of thought came in the form of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan who instituted the modern Aligarh school. This movement gave rise to the struggle between the forces of modernization and the traditionalist clergy.

The Pakistani establishment has often formed alliances with religious parties. In this process, society has become violent and bigoted. It is a matter of record that madressahs multiplied during Ziaul Haq’s reign. Today, Pakistan is reaping the harvest of the seeds of militancy that were sowed by successive military governments.

The years that followed after the creation of Pakistan saw the establishment playing a cloak and dagger game with the clergy, using them for their political purpose and at the same time bringing about non-effective reforms to try and curtail the rising influence of the madressahs. The politics that engulfed the region from the time when dissidents such as Gulbadin Hikmatyar and others took sanctuary in Pakistan after the 1973 coup in Afghanistan, and that included the creation of the Taliban and the jihad against communism and in Kashmir are all contributory factors. The revolution in Iran gave a new impetus to Shia fundamentalism. The Iran-Iraq war of 1988 united the Sunni Arabs against Iran and they sought influence in other Muslim countries thus giving rise to foreign funding for various madressahs pursuing their particular school of thought in Pakistan.

It was during the Zia period that the Sunni-Shia divide assumed an even more militant form. Sunni sects provided recruits under Saudi patronage for the Afghan war while Pakistani Shias were inspired by the 1979 Khomeini revolution in Iran. Pakistan thus became a battlefield for the Arab-Iran dispute. During this period, the Ahl-e-Hadith also established many madressahs in Punjab.

Ziaul Haq’s policies during the anti-Soviet war in Afghanistan played an important role as madressahs were created to produce militant literature, garner public sympathy and recruit and train jihadi forces. Then there were also independent madressahs of the JUI which opposed Ziaul Haq but were nevertheless a part of the Afghanistan war. The role of the ISI and funding by the United States also contributed to the strengthening of the madressahs. With the passage of time, the students of these madressahs took up arms against sectarian rivals in Pakistan.

The present dispensation lacks the political will to confront the religious right as it relies very heavily on the latter to perpetuate itself in power. It will be recalled that when fundamentalist parties were banned, they sprung up under different names under the very nose of the government. Then bail was granted and permission given to the late Azam Tariq, a leader of a banned religious organization, to contest general elections in 2002. He voted for the PML (Q) prime minister.

In order to consolidate power in Balochistan, two former MMA MPAs were released on parole by NAB. They were included in the cabinet and a coalition with the MMA in the same provincial government was set up. The chief minister of Balochistan released all those arrested in the swoop against the fundamentalist parties.

The laws with reference to the madressahs’ curriculum, their funding and regulation await implementation. Recently, the government has executed an about-turn on the religion column in the passport and has stopped mixed marathon races. Once again, it has proved that it lacks the political will to pursue a liberal agenda. But then, this should not come as a surprise because the complexion of the ruling party is right of centre and the establishment thrives on this to perpetuate its power.

On the other hand, the establishment is showing the West the other face of Pakistan with which they would have to do business if it does not support the government. In the short term, there may be a momentary lull, but as the history of the region reminds us, the storm to come may be reminiscent of the one unleashed in the Shah’s Iran or of that which followed Ziaul Haq’s policies. This should not be the fate of the Pakistani people.

The writer is a member of the Senate

IT happens to political parties as to individuals. They become old even when they are young in years. At 25, the BJP looks jaded, sounds outmoded and stuck in the past. The party reminds you of the fable of a horrible old man who clung to the back of Sindbad the Sailor.

The party is celebrating its silver jubilee but there is everything in ideas and policies to suggest that it is the same Jana Sangh of yore. There is no difference in the attitude and the party has picked up the thread of parochialism, fundamentalism and even arrogance from where it left off. Still when the erstwhile Jana Sangh group parted company with the declining Janata Party in 1979 and gave itself the new name of BJP, it appeared as if a new outburst of ideology — Hindu nationalism — had taken over. But it has turned out to be Hindu chauvinism and it is worsening day by day.

The reading that the Jana Sangh members merged with the post-emergency Janata Party to get respectability of secularism has come true. In 1977, they swore by the Gandhian socialism and secularism at the Raj Ghat.

Two years later, they took a 180-degree turnabout and refused to break links with the RSS, the preceptor of Hindutva. One had imagined that even the RSS would have realized that communal politics could not strike roots in a country which inhaled the air of tolerance and accommodation for centuries. Apparently, the RSS had joined the Janata to poach into the territory of secular groups. This was proved when the BJP assembled the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

Strangely, the RSS, which first constituted the Jana Sangh and then the BJP to serve as its political instrument, never faced the reality: It was counterproductive to argue that Hinduism was in danger in a country where Hindus numbered 80 per cent. Religious parties in Pakistan and Bangladesh are doing the same, appealing to Muslims in the name of Islam and polluting the atmosphere. They too are losing the ground after the initial bout of activity.

After leading the NDA for six years, the BJP should have known that it got support from secular elements because it kept apart its core agenda of building a temple at Ayodhya and of deleting Article 370 that gave a special status to Jammu and Kashmir. Both these emphasized India’s ethos: pluralism and diversity. For the BJP to go back to the line that the Jana Sangh took is proving fatal. The cauldron of communalism cannot be put on fire twice. The BJP has experienced this by vainly reviving the mandir issue.

The success of the party in the past was because of the mistakes that the Congress committed. Rajiv Gandhi amended the constitution to undo the Supreme Court’s judgment which gave maintenance to Shah Bano, a Muslim divorcee. The BJP exploited the situation since Hindus felt horrified over a secular party compromising with communalism. Later, when Rajiv Gandhi had the locks at the Babri Masjid opened to placate Hindus, the BJP had a field day. But now the atmosphere has changed and the voters have become mature.

Had the BJP become purely NDA, not only by shelving part of its agenda but by jettisoning it altogether, it might have emerged as an alternative. People, not happy with the Congress, might have begun thinking whether the BJP should be strengthened to cast off its Hindutva clothes. (In the sixties many joined the Congress to change it from within). The biggest fallout would have been a dent in the Muslim vote which makes a difference in some 200 Lok Sabha seats in the 546-member house.

Muslims are not enamoured of the Congress because they have been at the receiving end in the riots during the party’s regimes. Still they might have supported the BJP in the Hindi-speaking states at least to find out if the leopard had changed its spots. The leadership of Atal Behari Vajpayee did make many Muslims and liberal Hindus tilt towards the BJP which looked fiercely Hindu nationalist, but not anti-Muslim.

This was despite the harm done by three people: L.K. Advani, Murli Manohar Joshi and Narendra Modi. Maybe, they brought to the fore the real face of the BJP. Maybe, they thought that the foundation of a Hindu Rashtra had to be laid when the BJP was in power. Maybe, they imagined that they had changed the Indian people to such an extent that they would give up their traditional spirit of living together in peace, whatever their religion.

Advani of the Rath Yatra fame communalized the administration. He saw to it that the RSS wishes were carried out to the extent of pracharaks serving as governors and ministers in the BJP ruled states or members in the Rajya Sabha. Joshi was the education minister who changed India’s history to spread the RSS line that Hindus were a suppressed lot under the best of Muslim rulers. He tried to spoil the minds of children, similar to what the books in Pakistan have been doing since the country’s birth. Strange, the confidence building measures between the two countries have not a single committee to look into the books taught in the two countries.

In fact, it is Modi who has delivered a fatal blow to the BJP. The planned killing of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat has alienated minorities and liberals for decades to come. He may have exposed the real agenda of the BJP and in doing so he took the mask off from people like Vajpayee and Jaswant Singh, who were considered the liberal faces of the party. Their lack of action against Modi, when the BJP was ruling at the centre, ended the illusion of some liberal Hindus who hoped against hope that the BJP could be reformed.

The BJP does not admit that Gujarat cost it the Lok Sabha elections. But its poll ally Telugu Desam has openly admitted it. In fact, Telugu Desam leader Chandrababu Naidu is so disillusioned that he has begun the exercise of assembling a non-BJP and non-Congress alternative at the centre. The Left on which the Congress depends for its survival is helping him.

What has happened to the BJP in the first 25 years should be a lesson to the party — if it needs to learn any — that it cannot come to power with its anti-Muslim image. Twentyfive years should be an adequate period for the party to understand the country’s temperament. Secularism may still be weak in the country but nobody can play around with its ethos. The party can retire Vajpayee or Advani and have a younger person from among the squabbling second and third line leaders. Still, it cannot go far if the party does not change its character.

The writer is a leading columnist based in New Delhi.