Need to shun divisive tendencies

IN recent years, a number of studies and articles making gloomy predictions of the collapse of Pakistan over the next 15 to 20 years have appeared. According to these studies, Pakistan would be paralyzed completely by 2015 as a result of sectarian and ethnic conflicts, deteriorating law and order situation and serious economic difficulties.

A new CIA study, the latest in the series, states that Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive politics, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction and militant religious politics. The report also warns that democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties.

It may be recalled that a US Department of Defence study, undertaken by 15 US “think tanks”, between July 25 and August 4, 1999, had also made a similar forecast about Pakistan. More or less, identical predictions have been made by Robert D. Kaplan, a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in his article The Lawless Frontier as well as in the studies carried out by a US National Commission, chaired by the former Senators, Warren Rudman and Garry Hart, and the one that was sponsored by the US Air Force on the Muslim world after 9/11.

Stephen Philip Cohen, in his book “The Idea of Pakistan”, however, holds that while Pakistan’s future is very uncertain, it is too early to write its epitaph. In the same book, Cohen also refers to Ian Talbot’s warning, made a few years ago, against the imminent collapse or total failure of Pakistan.

The political analysts and intellectuals in Pakistan seem to be divided on the grim forecasts about their country. Some of them feel that these predictions are purely hypothetical and bear no relation with the ground realities and hence they need not be taken too seriously. Some other analysts, however, argue that these predictions should be summarily dismissed as they actually reflect the inner desires of their authors.

It is noteworthy that these predictions have mostly emanated from America, which calls Pakistan as its “most allied ally”. It is, therefore, desirable that the political analysts as well as the policy-makers in Pakistan consider the matter seriously, without evasion and self-deception. Futurism may not qualify as a science but futuristic statements can be a useful tool for knowing what lies ahead. Pakistan is now passing through one of the most tumultuous periods of its history as a result of the on-going political polarization, inter-provincial rivalries and religious intolerance and extremism, which have made it one of the world’s most volatile regions. It is, therefore, imperative to address the critical issues that have divided the nation and blurred the Quaid-i-Azam’s vision of a united Pakistan.

It is a pity that while the world is moving towards increasing inter-dependence, reconciliation and integration of humanity, Pakistan is drifting towards ethnic and sectarian conflicts, which could prove disastrous for the country and its people. There is, therefore, an urgent need to contain these negative trends, on a priority basis, to prevent Pakistan’s slide into a state of national suicide.

Before the advent of Pakistan, the provinces which now constitute its territory, did not have the status of autonomous or independent states. The entire territory, though divided into different administrative units and inhabited by different ethnic groups, was one integral whole. However, the Quaid, who was a great visionary, wanted Pakistan to be a federal state so that all its constituent units enjoyed equal rights and autonomy in accordance with the accepted norms and principles embodied in the constitution of the federation, and did not contend against each other on this account.

Regrettably, however, the Quaid’s vision proved short-lived and after Pakistan’s independence, the ethnic concerns assumed critical proportions as a result of the denial to the minority provinces of their due share in the power structure of the country and uneven distribution of the country’s resources among them in violation of the constitution. The majority ethnic group in today’s Pakistan virtually dominated the country and showed no inclination to share power with the smaller provinces or satisfy their hopes and aspirations for a happy and prosperous future.

This gave rise to protracted ethnic conflicts between the provinces affecting national cohesion. In order to avoid further alienation among smaller provinces, it is necessary that instead of an oligarchy that controls the federal government, all its federating units are involved in this process.

Similarly, the menace of religious extremism has become a source of mindless militancy and has caused deep rifts among various sections of the people. It has not only tarnished the image of Islam but has sown the seeds of sectarianism, religious bigotry and hatred. Regrettably, the half-hearted measures taken by the successive governments, including the present one, to tackle this problem issue have been found pathetically inadequate when compared with the frequency and intensity of the violence perpetrated by religious extremists. They have merely denounced the sectarian violence whenever it occurred or indulged in rhetoric instead of taking meaningful steps to eliminate the scourge of sectarianism.

Pakistan also suffers from a number of other political, economic and social problems, which unfortunately have accentuated despair and despondency among the people. After 58 years of its establishment, Pakistan has yet to become a true democratic state, which was a prerequisite for national unity and integration. Democracy grows through a long and sustained process, but regrettably in Pakistan the successive rulers, with feudal and tribal background, have not only prevented the country’s democratic evolution but have also retarded its socio-economic progress.

The unity of the nation will, therefore, remain an elusive goal unless the monopoly of power, which remains in the hands of a few feudal families, is broken. This would however, require wide-ranging social and democratic reforms, which will certainly be opposed fiercely by the powerful elements that have a vested interest in keeping their hold on power.

One of the main grievances of the federating units in Pakistan relates to the uneven distribution of the economic resources of the country among them. Inter-provincial rivalries and antagonism can cease only if the cause of grievances among them is removed. Regrettably, however, no perceptible change is discernible in this regard. Evidently, rulers seem to be unwilling to do anything to alleviate the sufferings of the people, and to give them a genuine share in governance.

The people of Pakistan, who have a moral responsibility to help their compatriots in the smaller federating units, should not, therefore, remain apathetic and unwilling to fulfil this responsibility. Regardless of their political affiliations, they should persuade their rulers to address the widespread discontent prevailing in the smaller provinces to meet the ends of justice, which is the only way to avoid undesirable consequences.

The writer is a former ambassador.

Getting Bush on board

TONY BlAIR’S journey to Washington can be characterised as a dangerously quixotic mission: to keep alive hopes of meaningful progress with the Bush administration on helping Africa and taking action on the causes of climate change.

With a month to go before the Group of Eight meeting of leading industrialised nations in Gleneagles, time is certainly getting short to bring the US onside. But the cause is not yet hopeless, or presumably Mr Blair would hardly bother making a flight across the Atlantic just to risk humiliation.

On the issue of Africa, the first meeting of G7 finance ministers in February took place in a toxic atmosphere. US representatives were said to have disdainfully rejected any involvement in the plans for assisting Africa tabled by other members.

Since then, thankfully, the air has cleared somewhat. But even now the US makes it very plain that it is unlikely to sign up to any of the more intricate aid schemes on offer, such as the international finance facility — a complex frontloading of aid — or proposals for taxes on international transactions.

The signs of hope come as the US arm of the Make Poverty History campaign — the One campaign — shifts up a gear, and the US public and media becomes engaged with the issue. The best bet, as things stand, appears to be a US and UK deal over a plan for the G8 nations to write off Africa’s multilateral debts and follow up with further contributions of the same size to the World Bank’s international development agency. One prize the Americans appear to be determined to win is the credit. If such a breakthrough is to come, then expect to hear it from Mr Bush’s lips.

That, so far, is the most optimistic scenario, but far from an ideal one - which will disappoint those whose hopes have been raised by the British government’s rhetoric in the last year. There is a further danger of which Mr Blair must beware. The priority of winning US support is very high, for practical and political reasons, but the other major donor nations of France, Japan and Germany must not be left in the cold.

Already there are suggestions that those three governments are discussing their own debt relief proposal: a highly circumscribed set of criteria that would give only temporary, limited relief to a handful of African countries that were having difficulties servicing their debts.

— The Guardian, London

Peace with justice

THERE are five dimensions in the existing mode of bilateral relations which this writer presented during a recent visit to India and that may be of some interest to readers.

First: the current phase of relations between Pakistan and India should be described as a “peace through justice” process rather than only as a “peace process”. There can be no genuine and enduring peace without justice. In fact, justice is a pre-requisite for peace even though one party’s justice may be an injustice to the other. Waging war is perversely easier and less complex than bringing about peace. The aims, gains and losses of violent conflict are mostly visible and measurable. Comparable elements of peace are often the opposite. They require subtle compromises and adjustments, patient, non-violent containment of potential threats to stability.

Second: there is a need to place the current phase in the correct perspective of time. Recent steps to facilitate negotiations, travel, sports, communications, trade, etc., are presented as entirely new breakthroughs, as if they represent imaginative, courageous and new initiatives. All such changes are certainly positive and welcome. Equally, however, they are neither the “first ever” of their kind, nor are they unprecedented. For the most part, virtually all the changes for the better that mark the thaw actually take us right back to square one.

Subsequent to the violence of the 1947-48 period over Kashmir and the signing of the Liaquat-Nehru Pact, and notwithstanding the periodic ups and downs in the temperature, a period of about 10 to 12 years between 1951-52 to about 1962 (a year marked by the Z.A. Bhutto-Swaran Singh talks at the foreign ministers’ level, and then the Indo-China war) witnessed fairly normal relations. Travel by air, train, sea, visits by cricket teams, trade, even exchanges of media content such as films took place without hindrance. The 1965 war halted such contacts; the 1971 war reversed some of them.

Both countries also show a remarkable capacity to take positive steps in the shadow of war threats or in the immediate aftermath of war. The Shimla Agreement was fairly rapidly concluded less than seven months after the war of December 1971. Thirty years later, even as Indian troops massed on the Pakistan border in April 2002, the Pakistani government allowed 15 senior Indian editors to participate in a Karachi conference of the South Asian Editors’ Forum and then enabled them to visit Moenjodaro without prior visas at 24-hours’ notice. Both nations have almost always been able to take such symbolic or substantive steps during high tension.

A third correction required in the present phase of relations concerns the credit given to the “people-to-people” dimension for cooling the heat. Heads of state and government, ministers and official spokesmen join the media and civil society activists in crediting the people as being the “drivers” of the ongoing process. It is almost as if the people are showing governments the way forward. While this may be good play to the gallery, and reinforces the fashionable stereotype of painting all governments and political leaders as the villains who exploit issues to prevent good relations, the impression is wholly false.

Other than contacts between smugglers, criminals, saboteurs and the like, who operate outside the law and policy, there can be no people-to-people contact whatsoever, without the specific approval and support of both governments. By simply controlling the issuance of visas, means of communication, trade, exchange of sports teams and contacts in other fields, governments exercise the power to set the tone and direction of relations. Governments also have an unfortunate but undeniable capacity to withstand the pressure of media and public opinion.

When it comes to relations between these two countries, official or non-official, the ultimate determinants are the two governments. Despite several changes of governments in both countries over the past 12 years the quiet, non-official, non-media-reported Track-2 process known as the Neemrana Initiative (since 1992) is permitted to continue without hindrance by either side, except for a patch of about 18 months in 2002-2003. Neemrana makes its own, modest contribution undiverted by headlines and hoopla. Thus, when we cite the people-to-people dimension as the “new” driving force, let us remember that the two governments are the real “old” drivers and firmly in control.

A fourth aspect is the assumption that the cessation of violent terrorism is essential for the continuance of the process. Violent terrorism is “instant terrorism” and should be rigorously curbed. Yet there is also the “slow terrorism” of misgovernance and corruption that foments internal violence — not cross-border violence — in both countries. “Slow terrorism” also arises from deeply-rooted social inequality and economic disparity, of pro-rich and anti-poor discrimination. There is grave danger that the “people-to-people” contact becomes a “privileged people-to-people” process, bypassing the vast dispossessed majority, lighting slow-burning fuses for delayed-action bombs.

A fifth aspect requires expansion: the tendency to focus primary attention on what may be termed the “centralized grids” of Pakistan-India relations. These grids are: the official, diplomatic and leadership level contacts between New Delhi and Islamabad followed by subject-specialist talks (Sir Creek, Siachen, Baglihar, railways, border security, etc.) trade, sports, and more recently, by contacts between Indian Punjab and Pakistani Punjab and between Indian-occupied Kashmir and Azad Kashmir.

There is a need to create new, “multiple, regional grids” between different parts of both countries even as the centralized grids are maintained. For instance, city-to-city contacts between Mardan in NWFP and Mysore in Karnataka in southern India i.e. a real north-south grid. Or a grid between Balochistan and Tamil Nadu, between Sindh and Mizoram in northeastern India. To some extent, the India-Pakistan People’s Forum for Peace and Democracy does facilitate such contacts. But vast scope for increasing them remains as mutual ignorance persists to a degree surprising amongst immediate neighbours. It is only when contacts are broadened to become inclusive and participative for all principal regions and provinces of both countries that a relationship can become fulsome and resonant, one that is able to withstand transient incidents or specific disagreements.

All five of the above facets became part of the discourse conducted recently at the sixth conference of the South Asian Editors’ Forum (SAEF) held in Hyderabad Deccan, India, last month. Senior editors and media practitioners from Pakistan, including this writer, met participants from different parts of India and Nepal to exchange views on the theme of how indigenous language media, including both print and electronic media, can help promote peace and justice in South Asia.

The conference represented an unusual balance between participation from diverse sectors. These included eminent independent senior journalists and media specialists, some of them serving members of parliament (two from the Rajya Sabha of India), and some former members of Pakistan’s parliament (three), two serving union ministers from New Delhi, a governor of a neighbouring province (Madhya Pradesh), the chief minister of Andhra Pradesh, provincial ministers, many civil society activists and observers.

Unfettered exchanges during the three working sessions also illustrated how informative and productive such interactions can be between those who directly shape media content that reaches over 90 per cent of the region’s audiences. As Pakistani editors of Sindhi and Urdu language journals debated issues with Indian editors of Malayalam, Telugu, Gujrati, Marathi, Tamil, Karnataka, Hindi and Urdu journals, editors of English language dailies and magazines from both countries enjoyed the ironic advantage that the only common lingua-franca making communication possible between these diverse indigenous language practitioners was good old English.

What is to be noted here is that whereas all previous five conferences were held in the immediate aftermath of violent conflict as with the first two events in 1999 held after Kargil and the subsequent three events held in the shadow of 9/11 and the anti-Taliban war in Afghanistan and the 2002-2003 Pakistan-India stand-off, the May 2005 conference was held at a time of exuberant bilateral goodwill. Deliberations in previous tense times were also marked by cordiality and candour. This time round, there was a more wholesome and relaxed amiability even where clarifications or rebuttals were sharp and strong.

The writer is a former information minister.

Politics over markets

THE crisis over the European constitution is about much more than the fate of one treaty. It is fundamentally a question of whether Europe has the wit and will to defend its distinctive model of society, or whether it will simply be allowed to wither away in the face of mounting global pressure.

European civilisation is at a crossroads. In one direction lies inertia followed by disintegration; in the other, a renewed attempt to create a political settlement that will enable the nations of Europe to do together what they are no longer capable of doing alone.

This is not a question exclusive to left or right. It was, after all, a German Christian Democrat, Ludwig Erhard, who coined the term “social market economy” to describe an ideal embraced in different ways throughout postwar western Europe. Yet, in a very real sense, the prospect of Europe’s disintegration is for the progressive left a threat of existential significance. To describe the European model as social democracy’s best possible shell conveys a misleading impression of choice: it is social democracy’s only possible shell.

The opening salvos of this debate leave few grounds for optimism that the left is in the right frame of mind to meet this challenge. To the extent that the battle over the constitution has become a proxy for a much bigger question about Europe’s relationship to global economy, there are broadly two schools of thought, both equally misguided. The first accepts globalisation as a fait accompli and takes the essentially defeatist view that the best progressive governments can hope to do is mitigate its worst excesses. This has emerged, gradually and without any real internal discussion, as the New Labour position.

Those who share it believe themselves, quite sincerely, to be following a long and honourable tradition of social democratic revisionism, but they are no longer on the left in any historically valid sense of the term. The ambition of social democracy over the last century has been to bring market forces into balance with the social needs of people.

The third way inverts this idea by stressing the responsibility of people to adapt to the needs of global markets. Attempts to second-guess market outcomes are dismissed as foolish and counter-productive; the only appropriate role for the state is to equip individuals to cope as best they can with whatever the hidden hand throws at them. Irrespective of its merits, it is hard to see this idea becoming a popular rallying point for the next stage of the EU’s development.

The message from France is that voters have no wish to live in Tony Blair’s brave new world of market discipline, where the “tough choices” always fall on those least able to bear them. A larger problem still is one of credibility. If you accept global capitalism as an irresistible force of nature, what’s the point of political integration in Europe? Why not simply dismantle the EU and join the North American Free Trade Agreement? Whatever you think of the Tories, at least their analysis and conclusions match.

The second school of thought has no more to offer than the first. This demands a rejection of European integration, at least on its current basis, and a retreat into the protective embrace of the nation state. It is ironic that this idea should have taken hold in France of all places. It was there, in the early 1980s, that the limits of national sovereignty were most painfully exposed as the Mitterrand government’s attempt to unilaterally reflate the French economy collapsed in the face of capital flight and an exchange rate crisis. Any attempt to pursue a purely “national road to socialism” would prove as futile today as it did then.

Many on the anti-constitution left talk loftily about creating a different sort of Europe, but remain curiously vague about what it would look like or how we would get there. Like their elder siblings in the anti-globalisation movement, the euro-rejectionists have no alternative project of their own; only a critique of the existing order and a reflex to oppose. In their negativism, they become agents for the very thing they claim to be against.

At first glance, the defeatist and rejectionist positions would appear to occupy opposite poles of the Europe debate. In fact, they are little more than different routes to the same destination; a Europe dominated by global markets and their hegemonic sponsor, the United States. An alternative strategy must draw on insights missed by both.

The first is that the experience of globalisation does not, as the defeatists suppose, confirm the victory of markets over politics. The countries that have fared best — America and China — have done so by using their immense political leverage to shape globalisation to their advantage: the former through the global reserve status of the dollar, the latter by regulating access to its vast market. No European country is big enough to do this on its own, but an EU that acts collectively certainly can.

The second insight, ignored by the rejectionists, is that the European social model thrived in its “golden era” thanks to international cooperation, not an assertion of national sovereignty. The major industrial democracies worked together to share the social adjustment costs of open trade flows, to regulate economic demand, limit speculative capital flows and stabilise exchange rates. This system collapsed when America withdrew from it in the early 1970s and welfare capitalism has been on the retreat ever sense.

If Europe has a mission, it must be to recreate that grand bargain in a modern form by reasserting its core belief in the primacy of politics over markets and devising structures strong enough to make it stick. This may seem like a remote prospect in today’s political climate, but the crisis over the constitution could yet produce some unexpected responses.

It was only 12 years ago that Gordon Brown was calling for European-level demand management through the creation of a European Recovery Fund and the closer coordination of economic policy in Ecofin. “We cannot deregulate 17 million men and women back to work in a European version of the crude market dogma that has failed in Britain,” he told the House of Commons. The old Brown would certainly be better placed to lead in Europe than the one who, over the last two weeks, has been busy opposing limitations on working hours and demanding cuts in the EU budget.

One way or another, Europe’s crisis can only be resolved if it is prepared to match economic integration with political structures that bring markets back into balance with society. If this cannot be achieved with the agreement of all member states, including Britain, it must be achieved - like the first stage of European integration - by a smaller group with the vision to forge ahead on its own. It is a depressing thought, but the greatest hope for social Europe may turn out to be a French conservative president fighting in the teeth of opposition from a British Labour prime minister. —Dawn/Guardian Service

The writer is a former Labour government adviser.

Mixed verdict

IT used to be said that the harshness of Russian law was mitigated by the fact it was rarely, if ever, implemented. In sentencing Mikhail Khodorkovsky to nine years for tax evasion and fraud, a term that even the oil oligarch’s critics found harsh, that aphorism can no longer stand.

Mr Khodorkovsky’s treatment in court and the dismemberment of his oil empire Yukos have won no friends for President Vladimir Putin abroad. From behind the bars of his private cell, the billionaire has run a highly effective campaign that has placed his case on the agenda of presidential summits. As a result, the notion has gained ground, especially on Capitol Hill, that democracy, which flowered a decade ago, is once again on the retreat in Russia.

That is only partially true. Mr Khodorkovsky made his money as an oil trader by declaring only a fraction of his income to the tax authorities, using shell companies to export billions of dollars abroad. Other oligarchs used the same system, but were allowed to keep their liberty and their indecent wealth. Where Mr Khodorkovsky crossed the line was when he began to buy up deputies in the Duma to pursue his goal of moving from big business to the big time in politics.

Mr Putin can be attacked for conducting a politically inspired vendetta. But if this trial is all about politics, can Mr Putin be accused of misjudging the national mood?

—The Guardian, London

When Advani came visiting

LAST week was India Week. The local media gave generous coverage to the visits of the two Indian politicians who, while they represent different ends of the Indian political spectrum, and are spiritually and ideologically poles apart, have at least one thing in common.

Both men, in a sense, treated their visit as something of a homecoming. It is, after all, a little difficult to forget one’s roots. In 10 highly charged days crammed with meetings, receptions and dinners, Lal Krishna Advani, the old stalwart of the BJP and Mani Shankar Aiyar, the articulate rising star in the Congress firmament, attempted to further cement relations, make new friends and rekindle old memories.

For Advani, born in Karachi in 1927, who was once accused of being involved in a plot to assassinate Mr Jinnah when he was 20, this was largely a nostalgic trip. He had, of course, visited the city in 1978. But in those days the political climate was vastly different. Talks were often a labyrinth of subterfuges, lies, resentments, suspicions and passions, where dialogues took the form of a coarse patchwork of inane exchanges whose very banality was supposed to be loaded with moment and simmering undertones.

On this occasion he expressed a natural desire to familiarize himself with the sights and sounds and smells of the old fishing village where he was born, where he played marbles as a child and first confessed to his parents that it was his desire to study law and become a journalist.

To say that he was well received in Karachi would be a gross understatement. The reception was overwhelming wherever he went, whether it was to his alma mater St Patrick’s High School, Mohatta Palace with its embarrassment of riches, or the largely attended get together organized by the central co-ordination committee of the MQM.

On this occasion nobody seemed to remember that Advani had once referred to Pakistan as a “theocratic state” with an “extremely tenuous tradition of democracy” that was “unable to reconcile with the reality of a secular, democratic, self-confident and steadily progressing India.” Or that he was a strong opponent of the principle of dual nationality.

“Does this mean”, he once asked at a global investors summit in Ahmedabad, “that all those Indians who had migrated to West Pakistan and East Pakistan after January 26, 1950, in support of the two-nation theory, including many of those who have since then indulged in virulent anti-Indian activities, would be welcomed with dual citizenship?”

Or the time after the attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001, when Advani had sought to explain Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism again in the light of the two-nation theory. He said the “only answer” he could find why this attack was planned while Islamabad was part of an international coalition against terrorism, was because it was a product of the “indefensible two-nation theory”.

All that, as the sage says, is water under the bridge. The fact that the same person can appreciate the secular vision of its founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah is not only a comment on the success of the peace process initiated by former Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, but also his reminder to Pakistan on the distance it has strayed from this vision.

Though some of the functions he attended were florid with platitude, Advani and his family were probably taken aback by the warmth, friendliness and extent of the welcome they received. No country can match Pakistan when it comes to hospitality. It was almost as if the prodigal son had returned to the fold.

The highlight of the Karachi visit was certainly the stop at the Mohatta Palace museum, where hawk-eyed security officials watched the distinguished visitor like insurance agents, estimating how much life cover they could offer without insisting on a medical examination.

One wonders what must have gone through the mind of this self-righteous and cerebral individual as he stood there gazing at a portrait of the all-powerful conqueror of Sindh, Sir Charles Napier whose whiskers, twisted into ringlets and cascading down his chin, were larger and more imposing than the string of portraits of those fierce looking Baloch warriors, while he was spied upon by life size marble statues in chilly white hidden in niches — Victorian assertions of the unflawed propriety of imperialism.

Nobody really knows where or when or why it happened. But there was that moment of deep reflection in Karachi, when etched in total solitude Advani, as BJP president, sat down and wrote the following letter to the party-general secretary Sanjay Joshi.

“I am writing this letter just before departing from Karachi. I have decided to request the party to relieve me of the presidentship. I am sure acceding to my request would be in the best interests of the great cause I have served all my life, as also of the party which has given me so much.

“I have taken this decision after pondering the matter very carefully. And I believe that my visit to Pakistan last week has immensely reinforced the initiatives taken by the NDA government to bring about peace and normalcy with Pakistan. I have not said or done anything in Pakistan which I need to retract or review.” There was apparently a number of reasons which prompted the resignation, among which was the surprising reaction by certain BJP members to the statement he made in Pakistan about Mr Jinnah being a secular man.

Now every Pakistani schoolboy who has read the speech Quaid-i-Azam delivered at the State Bank of Pakistan in 1948 knows the Muslim League leader and founder of this country was a secular man. Even members of the Pakistani clergy, whose feathers Advani apparently ruffled by expressing his opinion, know this, as do many of the fringe thinkers in positions of power who have mawkishly tuned in on the coat tails of the mullahs and are ideologically cloistered in wombs of the same sly mould.

Advani apparently agonized over the fact that party leaders did not react even after some people labelled him a traitor for venturing such an opinion. This is probably the first time a group of Indians has called one of their leaders a traitor for speaking the truth.

The latest news is that L.K. Advani, the ‘iron man’ of India, after categorically stating that he would not budge an inch, has taken back his resignation, with the party embellishing the decision with all kinds of riders.

Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, Pakistan’s information minister, must be deeply relieved. He had stated that he was deeply shocked when he initially heard the news of the resignation, because in Pakistan, hanging on to one’s seat has been honed into a fine art. What he apparently doesn’t know is that in India where politicians are often on permanent near-apoplectic guard against the slightest nuance or shift of perspective, people still resign on principle.

Mani Shankar Aiyar, Indian minister of petroleum and natural resources, after doing the rounds in the capital also landed up in Karachi. Born in Lahore in 1941, he was another “son of the soil” to have returned to the land of his birth, and as a newspaper wag commented, probably has a season ticket as he has made the trip 16 times.

Some of the people who knew him 23 years ago, when he did a three-year stint as India’s first ever consul general in Karachi, were given an opportunity to meet him at a reception hosted by the urbane and polished Indian high commissioner Shiv Shankar Menon. In between the nostalgia and the emotional references to his days in Karachi — all of which he recorded with an ingenuous air of bemusement, the insouciance of the seasoned controversialist — three points of interest nevertheless surfaced.

The Indian consulate general and the Khokrapar-Munnabao rail route will most likely be operational before December 2005. And a project that had floated about in the ether for 17 years had been resolved in 72 hours in cordial meetings with the president, prime minister and the Pakistan minister for petroleum. This was the much talked bout Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipeline which Aiyar felt should hug the Makran coastline as it was less prone to seismic violence.

Aiyar, the founder-president of the Society for Secularism, is also the author of six books including The Confessions of a Secular Fundamentalist, in which this parliamentarian, commentator and crusader for a secular credo, put under the scanner contentious issues like conversions, the uniform civil code and Article 370 and nailed the falsehoods underlying terms like pseudo-secularism, appeasement and soft Hindutva.