Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
50 years after Partition we need to signal that we are no longer
stuck in the mental grooves of the past
We can leave it to Nawaz Sharief's partners in the Sindh government,
the MQM, spokesparty of the Mohajir quam, to pressurise him into
reversing his predecessor's idiotic decision to close the Indian
consulate-general in Karachi. But even if he does not, Gujral
should now move on the proposal he congratulated me on selling
to the standing committee on external affairs (over the head of
chairman Vajpayee's muted objections) to open a visa office at
the Wagah-Attari border to issue visas on the spot to Pakistanis
traveling by train.
I got the proposal through by pointing out
that in my time in Karachi, based on Black Book entries, we were
denying visas to only around 2 out of 1,000 applicants. The last
Indians consul-general in Karachi confirmed to the committee that
the percentage of rejections - 0.2 per cent - had remained more
or less the same over the years.
The fact is that Pakistanis wanting
to stoke terrorism in India do not apply to us for visas; they
get theirs from the ISI. We merely end up harassing innocents.
Why, therefore, can we not help Pakistanis, especially less well-off
Pakistanis, avoid the expense and rigmarole of first going all
the way to Islamabad for their visas and then making the long,
circuitous journey through two Punjabs before reaching their friends
and relatives in the approximately 300 districts of India, spread
from Rajasthan to Tamil Nadu, where they go?
As also to make other alternations in visa regulations to bring
the Pakistani visitor on par with other visitors in regard to
the welcome they receive in our country?
We really need to signal
that 50 years after Partition we are no longer stuck in the mental
grooves of the past. We also need to recognise that it is only
ease of travel that will bring Pakistans other than the Sindh-based
Mohajir to our country. The Mohajir comes not to see us but his
kith and kin. We need to get both him and other Pakistanis to
wake up to the real India.
Zee TV has done more to bring the real
India to the drawing rooms of the Pakistanis than all the tortured
efforts of the foreign office over 50 years. But there is little
point in awakening the Pakistani mind, imagination and interest
through satellite television to the real India without encouraging,
even enticing the Pakistani-in-the-street (not to mention the
Pakistani-in-the-burkha) to come and see for him/herself.
Visas will cater to a Pakistani need. We also need to harness
Pakistani greed. Trade builds the most enduring ties. It also
builds a lobby with a vested interest in Pak-India co-operation,
if not friendship. The example of Bangladesh is instructive. There,
when we had a friend in high office, Sheikh Mujbur Rahman, he
crumbled at the knees to the anti-India lobby when our exports
to BD reached a mere Rs 30 million.
When, under Khaleda Zia's BNP,
the anti-India lobby got into power, it screamed its head off
with anti-Indian and, worse, anti-Hindu rubbish, but filled its
pockets by raising imports from India to Rs 30 billion. Middle-class
materialism may still undo the damage that perverted spiritualism
inflicted on peoples in 1947.
And can't we straightway get Siachen out of the way?
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