India-Pak relations

While one can barely deny the importance of the episode of Noor Fatima from Pakistan receiving medical treatment in Bangalore, an excavation into our mass psyche would perhaps reveal something extremely disturbing. Treating Fatima was not a usual apolitical medical practice. It is rather an unusual political gesture of benevolence arising out of a profound sense of otherness based on a clash of national identities, Indian versus Pakistani. In the otherwise spontaneous gesture to negate the otherness of her there is simultaneously an unconscious affirmation of her otherness premised on national identity.

The ringmaster's leash is tightening on both India and Pakistan. While the US military presence has become overt in Pakistan, in India its covert hand is looming large. Instead of resisting these pressures, the two countries persist in their obduracy, refusing to follow the dictates of common sense by beginning a process of ending the 50-year old bloody dispute over Kashmir.

General Musharraf's declared resolve to make Pakistan a nontheocratic state is a step towards Pakistan's transformation from an ideology-based to a territory-based nation. Unfortunately there is a growing trend among some sections in India to give a Pakistan-type ideological orientation to India's nationhood. But the tendency to purify Indian culture from 'alien' accretions poses a threat to the security of the country by weakening national unity and the unique civilisational experiment that is India.

For all the opprobrium that the All Party Hurriyat Conference has earned for its lack of action on many counts, it is a valuable platform. This is why its recent announcement that it would hold three-stage elections under a people’s election commission needs to be appreciated and supported. The move is the strongest evidence of change at the ground level placing politics over the gun and selfdetermination over the moth-eaten autonomy/plebiscite paradigm.