was
six years old when Pakistan was so turbulently born. Six
obviously is a difficult age to try to comprehend major
national and international events even when they create
extreme upheavals in a child's life. Still, I could sense
the rising tensions around me. We already had just moved to
Delhi when it was decided in June 1947 that India was to be
partitioned. My father was appointed to the Railways
subcommittee of the Partition Council to work out the
division of the rolling stock and financial assets of the
Railways between the new countries. Here we were positioned
in the eye of what was for us the gathering storm. It was
quite disturbing for me to find that the cheer and warmth of
our home rapidly was vanishing. My parents spoke in hushed
and somber tones and always urged the children "to go out
and play" - in other words, not listen in to the fretful
adult conversation. We found ourselves on prolonged holiday
from school and, with no friends around, my brother and me
grew quite bored with life, as our two elder sisters already
had been packed off to my grandparents in Karachi.
All this was puzzling. I found it terribly strange. Being in
the Railways service my father had always been on the move.
Packing and unpacking, living in unfamiliar places and
changing schools had become a normal pattern of our lives.
All of us accepted it as routine. But in August 1947 the
prospect of yet another move suddenly seemed radically
different. My parents, though practicing Muslims, were
really secular minded in all their social relationships.
They had many Hindu and British friends with whom they mixed
quite freely and unremarkably. It was the looming change, a
splitting apart of old India, that was to shake up their
lives - and the lives of millions of others - that made them
so extremely apprehensive. Uncertainty of this magnitude
breeds a gnawing sense of insecurity because of the fear of
the unknown. Besides, they knew, once they departed, that
many dear relatives and friends would be left behind and
probably out of reach in the 'new' India.
There was no escaping the unsettling tension in the air as
Hindu-Muslim riots already were breaking out in
not-so-distant places. Those in government service had been
given the option of going to Pakistan or staying in India.
According to my harried father, a "snap decision" had to be
taken for there simply was no time for "rational thinking".
My father opted for Pakistan but he frankly described this
even at the time as a "gamble." Later in the twilight years
of his life when he talked to me about the partition days he
didn't regret his fateful decision to migrate - he was too
pragmatic to agonize over bygones. But he did emphatically
say that he and others of his idealistic generation had
never visualized Pakistan as the actual flawed country that
emerged. They had dreamt of a splendid secular nation where
Muslims, generous to others in their midst, would have the
freedom to live as they wanted to just as the founder of the
country, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, had promised.
On 4 August 1947 we took the train to Pakistan - one of the
last ones to get through without suffering attack. I was
later told. the train after ours arrived in Lahore from
Amritsar full of corpses. After a mercifully safe arrival,
however, came a number of grim and traumatic experiences.
Our next door neighbor's cook was stabbed, allegedly by a
Sikh, in the market where he had gone to shop for groceries.
(Many years later when I had grown up I did wonder why a
lone Sikh would be foolish enough to attack a Muslim in
Lahore, which was the heartland of the Muslims - obviously
it was a figment of a fertile and malevolent imagination
bent on inciting communal hatred.) Another friend found a
trembling Sikh hidden in the washroom when she went there
late in the night. He was trying to escape the sectarian
fury and begged and pleaded for mercy, which was indeed
shown to him. But the incident was enough to drive a spike
of fear into the heart of a very young child. Then came a
grim and memorable visit to the refugee camp at Walton with
my mother. The vast camp had been set up by the government
for the millions of people fleeing from East Punjab and the
United Provinces (as India's largest state, Uttar Pradesh,
was known under the Raj) to seek shelter in heavenly
Pakistan. The desperate refugees arrived in a mostly
dreadful condition - women raped, families looted, and all
in very bad shape after having trekked who knows how miles
in the blistering heat of August to reach sanctuary. The
camps were there but there was not nearly enough manpower or
resources to supply and operate them. A large number of
women who were lucky to have escaped rape and other abuses
would visit the camps daily to distribute food and clothing
to the hapless people. That is how I was brought face to
face with mass tragedy. I had been in one of those
troublesome moods which children at times get into when they
must tag along with their mothers and do not let go of
them. So she resignedly took me along with her and what I
saw there affected me deeply: women in a state of shock with
babies dying in their arms, men sitting gazing into space,
whimpering children wandering all over. Mayhem everywhere.
Those were hardly uplifting memories and with so much hatred
in the air, not surprisingly I grew up believing that all
the Indians were bad guys and not to be trusted, ever. They
wanted to destroy Pakistan at the first opportunity - that
is what we were told and that is what we firmly believed.
And that was the general belief in Pakistan. Why would a
child think differently? A whole generation grew up in the
painful shadow of the bloody partition experience and
consequently perceived India as an implacable enemy. The new
government only encouraged this black and white perception.
The radio - in those days there was no television - and the
newspapers overpoured with anti-Indian rhetoric and it was
taken for granted that we could never reconcile with
Indians.
Here was a state - the largest Muslim state at the time -
that had sprung onto the world map out of nowhere. For the
Muslim League, latterly, the struggle for independence had
been directed more against ambitious Hindu rivals and the
Congress Party than against the British. Jinnah, the founder
of Pakistan, had propounded the somewhat slippery 'two
nation theory,' saying the Hindus and Muslims were two
distinct nations which could not live together in the same
country (although saying all religions somehow should live
in amity here). Hence the bitterness and mistrust between
the two communities - more political than anything - had
spilled indelibly into the post-independence period. The
nasty quarrels over division of assets between the two new
dominions and the shocking bloodletting that accompanied
their birth stoked incalculable anger and ill feeling. This
found its way into our textbooks. We were told that the
Indians were Hindus who deeply resented the Muslims who
earlier had ruled India for a glorious thousand years. They
were jealous of the "greatness" of the Muslims and could not
accept the partition of India. Hence they sought to stamp
out fragile Pakistan.
These hostile images of India were strongly reinforced by
the 1965 war. Since 1947 the dispute over Kashmir - a Muslim
majority princely state in the north ruled by a Hindu
Maharaja - kept the two surly neighbors at loggerheads. The
raja decided to join India. An uprising at the time in the
area bordering Pakistan and a tribal invasion backed by the
Pakistan Army failed to seize the Kashmir Valley -- widely
described, with some justice, as a scenic paradise on
earth. Protracted debates in the UN and untiring mediation
by UN appointed middlemen only generated greater
frustration. Come 1965 with India's defeat at the hands of
China in their border war fresh in people's memories,
Pakistan opportunistically sent infiltrators across the
ceasefire line into the disputed state and tried to stir a
popular uprising in the valley. This gambit turned out to be
a gross miscalculation on the part of General Ayub Khan's
government. The uprising never took place. As Pakistani
forces tried to cut off India's communications with the
Valley, New Delhi retaliated and the Indian Army soon
crossed the international border near Lahore. Thus the two
states found themselves in a full fledged war in September
1965.
This clash was wholly different from the 1948 conflict,
which had been confined to Kashmir alone. This time the
vulnerable major cities of Pakistan came under deadly
attack. On those long balmy September evenings we sat in
semi-darkness observing black-out regulations - the window
panes covered with black paper and the lamp draped in a
blanket to keep its light dim -- listening anxiously to the
radio to catch the news bulletins and get the latest
information on the war. Suddenly came the screaming sirens,
the drone of the aircraft above us and the undercurrent of
fear and excitement was like adrenaline to the animosity we
felt against India. Here was the perennial enemy out to get
us, yet again, unprovoked.
As we focused on our war with India, China jumped into the
fray issuing its famous warning to New Delhi demanding the
return of a dozen yaks and 40 odd sheep which Beijing
claimed had strayed across the border in the Tibetan region
from where they had been abducted by the Indians. China gave
an ultimatum - return the yaks within 72 hours or face the
consequences. Of course no serious action was taken. But the
point was well understood as the changed tone of All India
Radio amply confirmed.
We citizens were awash with an intense sense of relief. At
last there was someone on our side who was trying to pin
down wicked India. Our friends in the Muslim world had never
done anything practical to help us except issue a lot of
sympathetic, tongue-clucking statements. As Pakistan ran low
on ammunition it seemed frighteningly clear that we all
could be defeated, all the loud talk of our bravery and
courage notwithstanding. Hence when the United Nations
called for a ceasefire, Pakistan authorities readily agreed
with relief. We would not face the specter of being occupied
by India.
Yet I, and many friends, underwent a dramatic change in
viewpoint after the war ended. I shall speak only of myself
here to whatever degree I am representative of other
Pakistan citizens at the time. People didn't want to discuss
the war, so strong was the sense of having been betrayed by
the leadership. The post-war protests were used by Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto, who was out of the government by then, for
political gains and to unseat Ayub Khan.
Having emerged safely from the dangers thrust on us, I could
not ignore the grief and trauma of those who had lost their
near and dear ones in the war. There was the constant stream
of obituary notices in newspapers, some with pictures of
young men in uniform who were declared shaheed (one who dies
in jihad) I didn't know these men personally but they were
very like the young men I knew at work or had known at the
university. I thought of their mothers and brothers and
sisters and wondered how they felt. It was then that I
began to ask myself, was war really unavoidable? Was India
such a belligerent power? Do we have to remain locked in a
confrontation on Kashmir? Isn't there a way out?
Other developments helped to change my entire outlook. I
hungered for news but the press was tightly controlled. So I
would look for foreign printed material on the war published
in non-partisan newspapers and journals abroad. Of course
the BBC's world service on the radio was something I had to
listen to religiously. A colleague of mine at the research
institute I worked in was highly and unguardedly critical of
the government's policy. Her brother was an Air Force
officer who had emerged from the war unscathed but I shared
her worries and relief when the war ended. Gradually the
realization dawned on me that the government in Islamabad
had taken me and so many other citizens down the garden
path.
Four months after the armed conflict ended the two
governments were invited by Alexie Kosygin, the Soviet prime
minister, to Tashkent to formally wind up the war. Tashkent
itself was food for thought. The meeting simply put a seal
on the status quo ante. No one won and no one lost. We were
back to square one after so many people needlessly died and
were maimed. How could we be so certain that the Kashmiris
really wanted to join Pakistan? If they did, why hadn't
there been a heroic mass uprising in the Valley when
paratroopers from Pakistan crossed the ceasefire line, as it
was called then? So the 1965 war was a major turning point,
as wars inevitably are. It served as a catalyst and a
crucible to our thinking process, hemmed in before by
propaganda, history and habit. Although there were some
intrepid souls who criticized the military regime of General
Ayub Khan all along, the resistance was stepped up after the
war. In East Pakistan, where a strong and highly justified
sense of deprivation had taken root soon after independence,
a movement for secession was gaining momentum. Many like us
wanted to get better information about India. But there was
no way to get it directly since the borders had been sealed.
There was no official communication between the two
countries. Even to send a letter to a relative in India you
had to resort to the roundabout route of sending it to a
mutual friend in a third country - maybe England or America
- who then put it in another envelope and mailed it to the
address in India. You could tune in to All-India Radio but
being government-controlled it merely broadcast news
bulletins that were as off-puttingly propagandistic as
ours. Mercifully, some Indian newspapers were free and
competent and did not simply toe the line regarding their
government's policy on India-Pakistan relations but in those
days they did not offer a third option…
Up until the 1971 debacle got under way, our military
dictator went all out to suppress the people of East
Pakistan and tried to rule it with an iron hand with the
help of the Army. It suited him perfectly to project India
as an arch enemy so as to rally the people behind him - a
not unfamiliar tactic elsewhere. But now much of my
generation refused to swallow hook, line and sinker whatever
accusations it read about India in our newspapers
(incidentally I was not a journalist then). What was
broadcast from the radio and television (recently introduced
in major cities) was taken with some corrosive caution.
Meanwhile, the world had been opening up for a new
generation of Pakistanis who had not directly experienced
the horrors of partition but had heard about them from their
elders. They were travelling abroad for tourism, higher
education studies, and jobs and in the process they were
meeting Indians and finding them similar to our own
compatriots, warm and friendly. When I arrived at the London
School of Economics in 1970 I met many Indians there and
discovered quickly that they were not at all unapproachable.
States may not behave the same as individuals do, still It
surprised me and others like me why India and Pakistan
couldn't work out a good relationship.
On my return to Pakistan from LSE I found it very nearly
transformed. The crisis in East Pakistan was heating up.
India was again declared the black-hearted villain of the
piece, deviously wanting to break up Pakistan for no good
reason. This time the supposedly foolish Bengalis were
India's accomplices - the 'miscreants,' as they were called.
The Bangladesh crisis and the war with India in 1971 brought
me much closer to the actualities of death. Although the
press played the Establishment's tune, it retained little
credibility in the eyes of the skeptical public. Everyone I
knew instead wanted to tune to BBC to hear the news
bulletins. Another rather delicate exercise was to listen to
both All-India Radio and Radio Pakistan and try shrewdly to
negotiate between the two extremes presented to listeners.
The public in Pakistan was remarkably subdued this time.
Still, the war was on and the safety regulations had to be
observed. The blackout rules had to be followed and the
nation remained patriotic, despite so much skepticism and
cynicism simultaneously in the air. We were torn. How else
would one feel when you sympathized with the Bengalis for
their just demand for a share in power but had your close
relatives and friends butchered at the hands of the Mukti
Bahini (the freedom fighters)?
In addition to the recognizing massive human rights abuses
in East Pakistan, many people had ceased seeing India in
black and white. It was no more the psychotic bully of the
region who was out to get Pakistan. Few believed the
jingoistic messages Yahya Khan's regime spewed on the radio
and television about the Bangladesh crisis being a ploy of
India to break up Pakistan. The people saw it as a political
crisis, which was the manifestation of the rueful failure of
our democracy. West Pakistan, which dominated the Army and
the political Establishment, not only had failed to devise a
power sharing arrangement with East Pakistan, which had a
majority of the population but declined to cede the
political control which should rightly have been Dhaka's.
True, India did not remain a passive and disinterested
onlooker in 1971 either. It cleverly exploited the
situation, which it did not create, to its own advantage.
With 93,000 prisoners-of-war penned in Indian camps,
Pakistanis began to reconsider their often cartoon-ish views
about India. There was hardly a family that was not affected
in some way. Even when the prisoners came home to tearful
reunions in 1973-1974 and Bangladesh and Pakistan recognized
each other, our relations with India continued to be quite
tense because the governments remained locked in their
dispute on Kashmir. The people were weary of war, but there
was nothing much they could do about it apart from
expressing support for peace in very personal ways such as
when any of them visited India or met an Indian. The more
this happened the more the word got around, and the clearer
it became that the two countries had much in common
culturally and socially to build on. In spite of the
artificial barriers erected by leaders on both sides, the
cultural affinities were not destroyed - language, customs,
dress, and many other subtle bonds became potential areas of
cohesion.
What are members of an officially discouraged peace movement
to do? We recognized and identified many gray areas in
India-Pakistan relations. We knew there were some major
problems but they were not irresolvable ones. We also
started with the knowledge that the Indians were not the bad
guys they had been made out to be. We could do business with
them. We could play cricket with them. We could watch their
movies and enjoy sifting out their cultural nuances. We
could talk to one another in our own subcontinent language(s)
- as the editor of the Indian Express, Mr. Mulgaokar, and I
would do, and tell our Western friends who scratched their
heads and wanted to know which language we were speaking
that it was Hindi (according to him) and Urdu (according to
me).
These contacts were all at the people-to-people level from
the mid 1980s onwards and the governments were surprisingly
unconcerned as to the slowly changing sentiments of a large
section of the population. This was a crucial period when
it finally began to dawn on many Indians and Pakistanis that
our countries could come to terms. Over the years a
significant emergence of a peace lobby on both sides of the
border took place. Meanwhile, given the two governments'
reluctance to negotiate a durable peace accord, the
initiative passed informally to cross -border
non-governmental groups which began to meet periodically to
explore options. Termed the track-2 diplomacy, this option
encompassed peace activists, human rights champions, retired
diplomats, retired generals and others, illustrious and not
so illustrious, but all intelligent and courageous.
Although these groups did not represent the opinion of the
governments in Islamabad and New Delhi, they won implicit
official backing without which they could not have obtained
visas. All the track-2 meetings were held in India or
Pakistan, and not in a third country. In due course more
working groups were formed comprising professionals, such as
lawyers, writers, journalists and so on who interact quite
frequently with each other to dispel noxious images and
prejudices, promote peace initiatives, and establish
friendly networks.
It was plain that a growing body of opinion in both
countries did not want another war. This public stance was
further strengthened when the two countries exploded nuclear
devices and proclaimed their nuclear weapons status in 1998.
While there was some Uncomprehending celebration of the
technical achievement, as the possibility of a nuclear war
in South Asia became a reality, its potential horrors began
to hit people who had some understanding of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. The momentum of the anti-war movement rapidly
picked up as activists joined hands across the border. Today
they light candles on the Wagah border on the night of
August 14/15 every year – the anniversary of Pakistan's and
India's independence respectively. Their voices are louder
than bombs, to borrow the title of a book of interviews by
David Barsamian, since they are people of repute on both
sides who wield great influence. Arundhati Roy, Asma
Jahangir, I.A. Rahman, Vandana Shiva, Admiral Ramdas,
Mubashir Hasan and many more are doggedly pursuing the
difficult path of peace. Two years ago writer Arundhati Roy
proclaimed in Karachi that were she to learn that India was
planning to fire a nuclear missile at Pakistan she would be
the first one to fly to this country to act as a human
shield. After that declaration, how can anyone feel that we
can't live as friends with the Indians?
The feeling, I believe, is widespread that the people of
India and Pakistan want to live in peace with each other,
but governments think differently. They have had their own
interest in perpetuating a state of conflict in the region.
In the absence of political will, the disputes lingered on
as hairsplitting arguments are cleverly advanced to make
every issue ever more complex and beyond resolution. In all
this the media's role has been a very mixed one. The English
language press tends to be progressive and liberal in its
outlook, and has generally supported peace overtures. But
the right-wing Urdu papers, especially from the Punjab, have
adopted a hard line vis-ŕ-vis India, questioning the wisdom
of dialogue so long as the Kashmir dispute goes on. A
contradiction, but there they are.
The groundswell of public opinion in favor of peace in both
countries has been a major factor, apart from the
international environment, that induced governments to
rethink their approach to one another. Paradoxically, what
elected leaders Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif found
themselves unable to do has been undertaken by another army
leader, General Pervez Musharraf. He sincerely, so far as we
can tell, has called for a public debate on options on
Kashmir so as to provide the two countries the opportunity
to move away from the deadly fixed positions they have kept
for over 50 years. Given the power structure, no civilian
government in Islamabad could have effected so radical a
change in its India policy because it was the Army that was
always calling the shots. It was the Army which was
spearheading a hard line policy on Kashmir. Now that a
military leader has taken the initiative, one has legitimate
hope that some formal progress will take place.
The so-called composite dialogue which began in early 2004
has given rise to hopes that the two governments mean
business this time. Even Kashmir is on the agenda, which
signifies a remarkable change in the Indian position. But no
one expects a solution to all the vexatious disputes
between India and Pakistan in a flash. Even if the talks
drag on, does it matter? Wasn't it Churchill who said, "It
is better to jaw jaw than war war"? But in this case a lot
depends on the political drama being enacted in Islamabad.
Governments in Islamabad and New Delhi have displayed a
strong propensity to use their foreign policy to pull their
domestic chestnuts out of the fire. Irrespective of his past
adventures, Musharraf is constrained to pursue the policy of
dialogue. There is no turning back for him now.
What is the lesson one should draw from this experience of
changing images of India, and ourselves? Communication at
the popular level is just as much a key to stable
international relations as is formal diplomacy. When walls
are built around human minds and they are not exposed to new
ideas, thoughts, and approaches, how will we emerge out of
the rut in which we have fallen over the decades? This
emergence will inevitably happen - a bit later if the
governments continue to be obstructive, and sooner if they
act as facilitators of the process. With new means of
communication and transmission of information available to
large sections of populations, they are able to access each
other without government interference. They can create, and
test, their own images of each other. Television channels,
the Internet, emails, websites have allowed the people of
the two countries to exchange views and understand one
another's viewpoints. They can read one another's newspapers
on the Web and even interact with them. Small wonder then,
many young people who saw India as 'enemy territory' changed
their mind when they met young visitors from across the
border or went on a voyage of discovery. The generation
which is coming of age in South Asia, if given the chance,
would break fresh ground. It has no sad emotional hangups.
There is no horrific historical baggage which it has to
carry. When it meets its contemporaries on the other side of
the Wagah, things will change. They cannot remain the same.
Zubeida Mustafa is an
Assistant Editor of The
Dawn in Karachi.
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