Prime minister’s speech: vibrant statesmanship

Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali has acted like a statesman in unilaterally announcing some new and renewing some old measures to break the current political and diplomatic stalemate with India. Our president, prime minister, foreign minister and the teams of Foreign and Defence Establishments deserve credit and congratulations. They have earned the gratitude of the people.

What is now essential on Pakistan’s side is a period of dignified restraint on rhetoric. Let not our drum beaters go to town about the excellent measures our government has proposed and what may be in their opinion an inadequate response from India. Let it not be a competition between the two as to who has offered what and which offer is more worthy of praise. The ultimate objective is to convert the offers into a series of deeds — of measures implemented to usher in an era of permanent tranquillity and peace in South Asia.

Pakistan must take time out to let the proposals made by the prime minister to sink into the body politic of India. His proposals have deep and far-reaching significance. They are above the usual diplomatic give and take. In a way he has appealed to the people of India, who will gladly approve of them, but the intelligence about their approval will take time to reach New Delhi. Pakistan’s offer will also initiate a debate among the hawks of India. They will have a hard time making a case against the acceptance of the Pakistani offer but that also will take time.

Pakistan has given a bold and imaginative turn to its peace offensive. For years, Gen Pervez Musharraf had been asking India for dialogue any time, any place and without conditions. He was both genuine and sincere, but not political. It was unfortunate that his offers were not heeded.

India and Pakistan should know what each country wants most out of the other. They know what hurts the other country. Step by step, they should start taking measures that the other would like to be done. They may not even talk about it. Only reciprocity is required. The dialogue that is needed is nothing but a series of deeds to reduce miseries, atrocities, violence and oppression one is perpetrating on the other.

Pakistan seems to have more in its arsenal of peace. The present offer touches only a fringe of what it terms as the “core issue”.

All said and done, it is highly laudable to work on the problems between India and Pakistan. However, without a beginning towards implementing the measures that would bring peace in Kashmir, the process of peace-making in South Asia shall remain incomplete.

The people of Kashmir have suffered the most. They have been the prime victims of violence. Thousands of lives have been lost; tens of thousands have suffered incarceration. They live in perpetual fear from morning till evening.

The real battle for the settlement of the issue of Kashmir, for both, India and Pakistan, is for winning the hearts and minds of the people of the former state of Jammu and Kashmir. They have to be a partner in the process of ushering in a new era of peace and progress. India and Pakistan cannot snatch from them their identity.

They have become strongly conscious that they are a people of a former state during the British rule. They want freedom to freely express themselves. They want freedom of association. They want freedom to travel within and without. They want passports and visas to be given as of right. They want to enjoy life as the people of India and Pakistan enjoy. They do not want to be governed under laws which violate the constitutional rights accorded to citizens in the constitutions of the two countries. They want to sell their agricultural produce in Pakistan where the prices are significantly higher than the prices in India. They have families across the Line of Control they love to meet and be together with.

The peoples of Pakistan and India wait for the time when they, their parliaments, the people of Kashmir and their elected representative bodies will sit together and agree to a framework for a new political dispensation.

Pakistan needs to tread the route it has chosen with dogged perseverance. They day will come when the people of India and their parliament will see things as Pakistan and the people of Kashmir see.