|
|
February 23, 2002
Images and reality
I.A. Rahman highlights the changes that have taken place in Indian and Pakistani perceptions, as the realization has dawned on the two people that they have a stake in each other’s strength and progress as modern, democratic, peace-loving states
About 12 years ago I had an opportunity to look at a UNESCO-sponsored study on the space newspapers in India and Pakistan gave to news from each other’s country. The staggering finding was that each side carried very little information about the other and the news reports that did find space were in the nature of disaster stories. The impression these reports created was that the bad news from the other country confirmed what the state functionaries and the masses already knew that nothing good could be expected from it either in bilateral terms or in its treatment of its own people. The assumptions underlying this attitude on both sides were rooted in history.
The Indians inherited at the time of Independence a robust Press that had by and large supported the struggle of the Congress party for freedom. The communal politics that had raged during the 1930s and the forties had deeply affected it....
Pakistan was less lucky at independence as it had a small Press incapable of boasting of strong traditions. Whatever was there comprised largely the allies of the Muslim League who were steeped in the pre-Independence communal debates. Within a few years of Independence nearly 40 per cent of the population of the main cities consisted of migrants from India. They formed a large chunk of readership and the press reflected their bitterness towards India. India’s reluctance to transfer assets, the disagreements over Junagadh, Manavader, Hyderabad and finally over Kashmir gave rise to the theory that New Delhi had not reconciled to the emergence of Pakistan and that it was the latter’s enemy No. 1. The wars of 1965 and 1971, specially the break-up of Pakistan in 1971, consolidated this image in the eyes of the Pakistani Press.
The Press in the two countries was not the only agent working to sustain these enemy images. Both countries chose to develop the electronic media as state monopoly and on both sides it functioned as a second fiddle to states in confrontationist postures. In Pakistan an additional factor contributing to the media’s treatment of India as an implacable adversary was the Ayub regime’s plans to bring a large part of the press under state control. Further the education authorities in both countries made sure that they instilled in the children feelings of hatred towards each other through garbled and biased history texts.
The situation has considerably changed over the past decade or so. In a sentence it can be described as the beginning of a realization that India and Pakistan have a stake in each other’s strength and progress as modern, democratic, peace-loving states. Many factors have contributed to this salutary shift in media perceptions.
Access to each other’s national TV channel enabled a sizable population in both states to get images different from what newspaper and electronic media (news programmes) were presenting. The common people in both countries were seen in features and dramas to be struggling against poverty, wastage of resources, official oppression and corruption. Common experience of adversity attracted the people to each other. The Indian families that had migrated from Pakistan and the Pakistani families that had migrated from India saw the places where their forefathers had once lived. The bitter memories of partition riots and migration hardships gave way to nostalgia for one’s roots. The demand for easy travel facilities between the two countries grew, as evident from the hordes of visa applicants and the success of the Lahore-Delhi bus service.
The emergence of non-official TV channels, more of them in India than in Pakistan, has broken the monopoly of the state-controlled media. Instead of being treated to a single demoniac image of the other, the people in either country are receiving a variety of images. Demons are still seen on both sides but an Indian and a Pakistani has begun to be recognized as a human being, not much different from the onlooker.
A breakthrough was achieved in bilateral media contacts. Convinced that Pakistan could no longer present an obstacle to India’s realization of its status as a dominant power in the region, India’s media leaders started using their non-aligned media centre and the national press centre to exchange views with Pakistani media persons in the eighties. The launching of SAARC generated interest in regional media initiatives and platforms. A South Asia Media Association was formed and made a good contribution to understanding among the national media. Last year a new regional organization, South Asia Fair Media Association, was created at a largely attended conference of media representatives from the region in Islamabad.....
Whatever one’s views on the Agra Summit may be the fact that a considerable number of Indian and Pakistani mediapersons were thrown together cannot be ignored. These extended contacts between mediapersons of the two countries have given rise to many personal bonds of friendship. In quite a few newsrooms in both India and Pakistan the wire stories are checked up or improved with the help of friends across the border. More Indian and Pakistani journalists are contributing columns to publications across the border than before. Of course, all contacts have not bred better understanding of each other.
Fortunately, bilateral contacts have not been limited to professional level exchanges. Some years ago an Indian journalist and I audaciously brought Indian and Pakistani politicians, businessmen and retired bureaucrats and defence officers together in New Delhi for exchanges on all issues concerning the two countries and a return meeting was sponsored in Islamabad by The Frontier Post. The News brought human rights activists from the two countries together in Karachi and then organized a groundbreaking conference of parliamentarians in Islamabad.
Mention should also be made of mediapersons’ participation in Track II activities. They have met in Rajasthan and Goa and the United States. The Pakistan-India People’s Forum’s five joint conventions (New Delhi, Lahore, Calcutta, Peshawar, Bangalore) have been attended by mediapersons from both countries.
The result of wider bilateral contacts between the media of India and Pakistan, increased coverage by TV channels, and a sustained people-to-people dialogue is an upsurge of desire for peace at the public level. This came out strongly during the Agra Summit. Significantly, Malini Parthasarthy, joint editor of the prestigious daily Hindu of India, included journalists among the advocates of peace. This public yearning for peace between India and Pakistan is rooted in the people’s realization on the one hand that confrontation has led to mass impoverishment on both sides and on the other hand the peace dividends are better appreciated.
While the environment in the newsrooms in both countries has begun to change it will be unrealistic to presume that the legacy of acrimony and hatred has been completely overcome. War weariness and recognition of common interests are offering possibilities of growing out of the communal politics that has bedevilled India and Pakistan for five decades. The enemy images have been superimposed with friendlier images. But in both countries the rise of bigotry rights poses the threat of serious setback. And the entire movement towards good media relations could be derailed if the states concerned continued to dilly-dally on resolution of the outstanding issues of discord.
Above all the media in both countries have only indicated their acceptance of normal India-Pakistan relations in terms of benefit to the respective nation-states. The recognition of the media’s responsibility to fight jingoism and to actively pursue peace as a professional obligation is still rather inadequate. Much sustained work is needed before the media in either country starts giving primacy to the common good of the population of the two countries, even at the risk of deviating from the narrow nationalist thought.
However, there is no gain saying that the media cannot by itself determine the state of India-Pakistan relations. Yet it will reflect the trends in the thinking of power elites that define a state’s relations with another....
The Indian ruling elite hopes to gain great benefits if it can normalize its ties with Pakistan. Its stock in the comity of nations will rise. Securing a permanent seat in the Security Council could be facilitated. The inflow of foreign capital may increase. And so on. New Delhi also perhaps believes that prospects for a settlement with Pakistan at an affordable cost have improved in view of Pakistan’s reduced bargaining strength. Three other factors favouring settlement have recently emerged.
The charisma of the nation-state as the supreme deity in the land to whose goals the interests of the different regions and communities must be sacrificed is wearing off. The emergence of power centres at the state level is plainly visible. Power in almost each state will pass into the hands of elements that are considered capable of promoting development, ensuring an efficient administration and meeting public expectations better than others. The hold of national ideology will decline. This means that the states are unlikely to share New Delhi’s posture on disputes and disagreements with Pakistan with the same vigour as hitherto. New Delhi’s capacity to command nation-wide support for its traditional policy will weaken.
Secondly, the drift away from the centre-oriented thinking is equally visible at the popular level. The last general election and the recent state elections in India showed the people’s preference for effective rulers at the state level to the Union leaders. The ordinary citizens are more concerned with their poverty, lack of jobs, hardships on the way to material advancement than abstract notions of national glory. As a result they are ready to throw their weight behind peace moves at the slightest indication of their leaders’ inclination in their favour. With the passage of time this passive desire for normal relations with neighbours, including Pakistan could generate a positive demand, which the leaders may not be able to ignore.
Thirdly, a battle between the forces of Indian capital and its market and the ideologized nationalism of the establishment has begun. Indian capital will not allow traditional policies to deny the benefits it sees in normal relations with Pakistan. But this battle is going to be fierce because BJP leaders cannot fail to see the threat market economy presents to their religion-based politics. Eventually they may have to give up the ideology of hostility towards Pakistan because they cannot check the forces of capitalist growth. The situation in Pakistan is similar in essence though the trends are not as strong as in India.
Pakistan is beginning to realize that hostility with India can no longer be afforded. For it a settlement with India is a precondition for a political and economic turnaround. Islamabad perhaps believes that in view of the gains from peace that India expects and its social dynamics New Delhi may be prepared to concede more than before. Here, too, regional aspirations are stronger than propositions of national pride. All parts of the country do not feel as strongly about the issues in dispute with India as the traditional establishment does.
At the popular level attention is focused on citizens’ problems of bread and butter, jobs, and opportunities of social and material advancement. A settlement with India is increasingly being viewed as a pre-requisite for reducing defence expenditure and the consequent economic recovery. However, the situation is different from India’s in two respects. In India the military establishment is advising New Delhi to have a political settlement with Pakistan. This may not be the case in Pakistan. Secondly, Pakistan’s capital and market are much too weak to counter the threat from religious forces, partly because they fear being wiped out in competition with Indian capital and industry.
In any case both the states are adjusting themselves to the changing reality. It is no secret that both have shifted their positions on bilateral issues. They will try to hold on to what are described as their fallback positions for some more time and will be willing to revise them only when they become untenable. That will enable them to find a solution of even the Kashmir dispute.
The future of India-Pakistan relations will depend on the outcome of the interplay of contending forces within each country. If the Indian leadership chooses to prefer the Hindu Parishad prescription to the political and market forces unleashed over the past two decades, its desire to settle with Pakistan will weaken. And if Pakistan fails to break out of the siege laid by religious militants it will have more serious problems to contend with than relations with India. The priorities indicated for passage to normal India-Pakistan relations are identical for both the countries. Neither side will achieve domestic targets of progress or acquire the capacity to establish bilateral goodwill without consolidating non-religious, democratic structures.
Excerpts from
Kashmir: what next?
Friedrich-Naumann-Stiftung, P.O. Box 1733, House 40, Street 27, F-6/2, Islamabad Tel: 051-2278896
Email: fnst@comsats.net.pk
100pp
|
|
