Prof Javed Mughal
The wars, in the annals of human history, have ever occurred to satisfy the ego of a bunch of selfish souls resulting into the sufferings of innocent masses. The history is witness to the fact that the wars have never been the choice of the common public. At the moment India and Pakistan are standing at a point of bloated ego where they need to exercise patience and judicious approach to tackle the affairs. Under such circumstances the intervention of the main-line media of both the countries and the intellectual stratum of both Indo-Pak Civil Societies to motivate the disgruntled political mechanisms of both the countries is urgently needed since the political apparatus of India is not genuinely serious and that of ISI controlled Pakistan is not too competent to handle the issues like trans-border tensions etc. The recently cropped-up war-like situation has to be avoided. It is sure that a weak country like Pakistan, if compelled into war, can get inclined to China and create an intractable problem for us. The main tragedy with our politicians is that they never refrain from safeguarding their own chairs even at the cost of their country’s security. At a time when ruling and the opposition apparatus of the country both in India and Pakistan are supposed to be united, they are diametrically opposed and indulge into mud-slinging at each other, caring a fig for the negative impact of the recalcitrance on peace and security of their countries. We should not underestimate Pakistan and we should believe in his friendly gestures neither. However friendly or amicable Pakistan may pretend to be, the fact remains, that he is the worst ever enemy of India at the moment and we must not commit the mistake of supposing him to have forgotten his abject defeats in the past. Pakistan can go to any extent; even it can prefer being a colony of the USA or a refugee of China, to weaken the Indian democratic and economic structure. India has much to lose contrary to Pakistan who has nothing at stake. Four provinces stand already divided. A small fraction of military action can set all these provinces scot-free. But this damage to Pakistan is not going to give us any benefit at all. If, due to our defiant stance, Pakistan loses much, the fact is there that we will be the bigger loser too. Hence we should desist from the activities detrimental to the congenial atmosphere between India and Pakistan and conducive to the eruption of war. Even India can’t afford getting into war at this critical juncture. Our all efforts made by Congress led coalition and the Pak Government which were yielding fruitful results are now most likely to prove a futile drama. The opposition in India and Pakistan are playing dejecting role in the recent unwanted development. Similarly a military encounter on the LoC last week is a threat to erode the hard fought gains in relaxing trade and visa regimes by India and Pakistan in recent times. Yes, I have all reasons to call the diplomatic standard of Pakistan in question and strongly admit his diplomatic incompetence and I believe that despite having all good relations, our ever-disturbed neighbour should be, all time, kept under observation. The major weakness of a weak nation is to keep on swerving and tilting from its positions and stances and such poor and swaggering countries can’t be expected to remain stable when it comes to the point of foreign policy. Something of the sort is also true in relation to Pakistan. Recently India has, off-course been wronged but let us peel off our plaster of national prejudice and evaluate the genesis of this whole brutal act which happened on Pooch border. The facts do not seem to be one-sided. It is reported that when the Indian army recently started to build some bunkers in Charanda in Haji Pir Sector of the LoC, it violated an agreement of 2005 not to change the status quo. This incident gave rise to the tension and on 6th of January a Pakistani soldier was killed in response to which on January 8th another incident took place in which two Indian soldiers were killed. One of our jawans was beheaded and it was an unprecedented act of savagery which we can never forget. But if we look into the facts minutely and reasonably, we are also responsible to some extent for sowing the seeds all this development in which we lost our two precious lives. We should not indulge into the acts which can culminate into the emergence of trans-border tension claiming the lives of our innocent cops. We should not forget the incidents of beheading by both the sides in earlier encounters in the Kashmir sector. Several Indian journalists have drawn attention to such practices also by Indian troops since the Kargil conflict in 1999. With all reservations let me say that our Army also needs proper grooming and re-orientation. They can’t be exempted from their follies. If we sign agreements, we should respect our commitments and signatures. If we fail to do so, we have to face the consequences. All this sorry state of affairs was negatively exploited by Indian electronic mainstream media blocking all possibilities of normalcy restoration. There are two options for India-either to make attempts to normalize the cross border tension or to attack Pakistan to bring a permanent end to this substandard and inhuman hide-and-seek game being played by Pakistan. The misleading and politically motivated statements by our leadership, especially the opposition groups, will serve no other purpose than to mislead the already misled Junta of this country. If Pakistan’s Foreign Minister has offered ministerial talks to reduce tensions, we must think over it with a cool mind. Common sense suggests that our power-starved opposition and the lopsided media should stop playing the politics of opportunism in the larger national interests of the people and country.
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