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Peace is the flavour of the season and with the SAARC Summit around the corner, talks of peace in South Asia have reigned supreme. At the first Hindustan Times Leadership Initiative on the Peace Dividend - Progress for India and South, a galaxy of international leaders, intellectuals and captains of industry spelt out why peace was so important in the region.
It was in the fitness of things that the initiative was kicked off by Prime Minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee. As Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee has constantly and continuously put his reputation and career on the line in his quest for a peaceful South Asia. Perhaps, what is more important is that he has demonstrated through his actions that he understand the importance of peace and recognises the dividends that come from following that path.
At the very outset, the Prime Minister drew a roadmap for a harmoniously integrated South Asia. Advocating open borders and even a single currency for the region, the Prime Minister said, were not unrealistic and utopian if “we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions” and develop “mutual sensitivity to each other’s concerns”.
Mr Vajpayee was of the opinion that the people of South Asia, were waiting to interact more closely with each other. The list of such people spanned businesses and organisations producers and consumers, investors and markets, doctors and patients, artists and audiences, students and universities. They were all part of the supply and demand dynamics of a vast sub-continent in which they saw the unexploited potential in their own neighbourhood. Said Mr Vajpayee, “They have waited for over a half century for its fulfilment and are now impatient to move ahead.” The leadership of the South Asian nations were aware of this impatience in the outpouring of popular sentiment after the initiatives for peace were taken up. If the respective governments wanted to banish hostility and promote peace, there was no other way but to respond to the popular sentiment.
India alone could not pursue the path of peace, said the Prime Minister. The effort has to be two-sided.”Our search for pragmatism, maturity and wisdom will have to involve both governments and civil society. It will also require a widespread understanding that, in today’s context, collective regional interest is an expression of enlightened self-interest.”
The path to peace can only be visible if “we can put aside mistrust and dispel unwarranted suspicions. We will also develop mutual sensitivity to each others’ concerns and promote our common interests.”
Reminding his listeners that the world did not anticipate the sudden end to the Cold War or the collapse of the Berlin Wall or even the end of apartheid in South Africa, Mr Vajpayee said that the most important common war today was against poverty, disease, hunger and underdevelopment. The war has to be waged by forging unity based on the commonalities the South Asian nations shared with each other. Sounding a note of warning to India’s neighbours, the Prime Minister said, “Whenever we have dissipated our energies in internal squabbling, external forces have come in to sort out our differences and stayed on to exploit our resources. We should never create the possibility of reliving these historical experiences in new forms and on different fronts.”
If the Prime Minister was all for a common currency in South Asia, the Congress president and Leader of the Opposition, Mrs Sonia Gandhi, spoke of the need for a South Asian parliament that would debate issues of regional concern and importance. “Such a body,” she said, “could expand the perspective on South Asia among all our countries.” But before everything else, India had to set an example of an open, liberal, pluralistic democracy, committed to secular values. To preserve its composite heritage, “we must fight those forces that seek to use regional tensions to polarise our own society. The fundamental task we face is to create an all-inclusive social architecture in which there is no place for bigotry, for intolerance, for obscurantism of any kind.”
Mrs Sonia Gandhi cautioned that South Asian society had become too fissured, resulting in a growing feeling of alienation. Result: violence had become endemic in many regions. To find a solution to this problem what was needed was “a determined search for the common ground, a serious pursuit of a consensus that allows us to move ahead, even while having differences,” Mrs Gandhi said.
A strong votary of democracy, Mrs Gandhi mentioned that the South Asian nation-states had become too centralised. While there could have been a need for such centralization half a century ago, what was essential today was a multi-tiered democracy, an empowered and decentralised democracy. That is because, there is no other system which is both representative and durable, both accountable and transparent. Mrs Gandhi mentioned the first Prime Minister Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru’s great desire of building “a just society by just means and to establish a secular state in a religious society”. And this could only come by building a representative democracy, which would result from development that was both efficient and equitable.
Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto brought up the issue of militancy and urged India and Pakistan to be ever vigilant to thwart the efforts of militants to undermine a breakthrough on the Kashmir issue. She said that the militants believed that without violence there would be no settlement of the Kashmir issue. Reminding Pakistan and India about the SAARC summit, Ms Bhutto said that the two nations would need to discuss how to have borders that are soft and which would also be safe.
The main cause of worry, she mentioned, was that the militants could spark a war that neither country really wanted. Citing the attack on the Indian parliament as one such spark, Ms Bhutto said that any instance like that could create intense public pressure on New Delhi to retaliate against Pakistan, triggering war.
Ms Bhutto also made a strong plea for restoring democracy in her country, noting that military dictators had led Pakistan during all the three wars with India. “And since the destabilisation of the democratic government that I led in 1996, India and Pakistan have come close to war three times,” she said. She also urged India to call a separate ceasefire with militant groups in Kashmir.
Ms Bhutto also advocated strong economic ties between India and Pakistan, which could foster better bilateral relations. She said, “Immediately after independence (in 1947), India was Pakistan’s most important trading partner. In the early years, 56 percent of Pakistan’s total exports went directly to the Indian market. Thirty-two percent of its imports came form India,” she said. As political relations deteriorated, trade dwindled.
Bringing in the US perspective to the peace dividend, former US secretary of state Madeleine Albright described Kashmir as one of the “most dangerous and tragic places in the world”. Time, said Ms Albright, had not proved to be a healer. “The peace process between India and Pakistan is as welcome as vital...ceasefire is helpful but more steps are required. Cross-border terrorism must cease and ceasefire must be institutionalized,” she said.
Spelling out a three-point formula for peace, she said, “India and Pakistan must respect the Line of Control, renunciation of violence from Pakistan is required and the two countries must resume dialogue.” Projecting the plight of the Kashmiri people because they were buffered between terrorists on the one side and security forces that had sometimes failed to observe basic human rights on the other, Ms Albright said that hostilities had to cease.
The Kashmir tangle, which inevitably comes up in any talks of peace in South Asia, was discussed at great length by J&K Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and National Conference president Omar Abdullah. The political opponents in Jammu and Kashmir and a generation apart, thought differently on the Kashmir issue. Each set out the broad contours of a possible solution for the Kashmir issue.
The Mufti describing J&K’s history as “small but very intense and troubled” said that by placing the problem in “water-tight compartments — Islamic militancy, cross-border terrorism, secessionist insurgency, ethno-national demands — does less good and more damage to the sheer complexity of elements that have caused the problem”. Ready-made solutions distorted the image of what the problem actually was and models made a mockery of the specificity of the issue, he said.
The major strands in the “resolution paradigm”, according to Mufti Mohammad Sayeed were the internationalists who looked towards a “marginalized” United Nations, the “status quoists” who favoured converting the Line of Control into the international border, and autonomists who wanted a return to the pre-1953 position. The Mufti felt that the status quoists and the autonomists could only form part of the solution since any answer to the issue “will have to be looked for in the future, rather than in the past”.
To some extent, Omar Abdullah agreed with the Mufti that converting the LoC into the international border and autonomy were not the only solutions. But, he was of the opinion that one or two good elections were also not the way out. Both the “external” and “internal” dimensions of the problem needed to be worked at. “We have to look for peace internally. If we seek solutions externally, the initiative will be doomed to failure,” Omar Abdullah asserted and emphasized that the feeling of alienation among the youth was one of the reasons for the internal discontent.
The academic views to the peace dividend were brought up in a panel discussion comprising Lakshman Kadirgamar, former Sri Lankan Foreign Minister and currently advisor to President Chandrika Kumaratunga, president of Pakistan’s Awami National Party, Asfandyar Wali Khan (grandson of frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan) and Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, a key US think tank. The panelists made a passionate plea for institutionalising regional co-operation for the security and socio-economic development of the region. They stressed that there was dividend from peace in store for India and Pakistan, which was also a pre-requisite for stability and security in South Asia.
“The world is now rooting for the same philosophy that we have been talking about for the last fifty years,” Asfandyar said. He was candid when he said: “Madrassas that preach religious extremism are being funded by petrodollars of the middle-east. Unless their finances are checked, no power can control fundamentalism.”
Richard Haass stressed that India and Pakistan would have to bridge their differences for the security of South Asia: “The solution lies in political courage, political perseverance and political sincerity... Regional co-operation on an institutional basis is a pre-requisite for a healthy socio-economic development.” Stating that US foreign policy reflected the growing importance of the region, Haass said: “India and Pakistan can create a situation of mutual gains… they need to replicate the example of France and Germany which were foes earlier…If India is to realise its potential, there should be stability and security in South Asia… India needs a stable and democratic Pakistan.”
Haass stressed that while the government of Pakistan needed to do more on the issue of terrorism, the two countries had to push trade relationship and people-to-people contacts.
Lakshman Kadirgamar also stressed the need for a dialogue. “Political will is the essence of regional security and co-operation…the only way is to talk freely and frankly to each other,” he said. On the issue of India’s role in South Asia, he advocated a “proactive engagement” by India in resolving the Sri Lankan crisis. “Proactive involvement for a solution will become inescapable for India as other countries do not have the stake India does.”
The other speackers on the panel was Francis Fukuyama, Professor of International Political Economy, Johns Hopkins University. He put forward his defence on social trust to further the cause for peace. Fukuyama pointed out that there were two elements: One, the formal elements which include the rule of law, treaties etc; and two, the informal elements which constitute the shared values that create a background for formal trust to exist. But he said trust was not a one-way street. As Fukuyama stated, trust could not be taken for granted. It is in this respect that there is a need to see the flourishing of institutions that foster multilateralism.
Peace with Pakistan, however, would not lead to immediate economic gains for India, as is widely believed, industrialist Anil Ambani contended. Ambani gave three reasons for his contention. He said that at less than 3 percet of GDP there would not be much of a squeeze that could be exerted on the defence budget. While pensions and salaries would continue to be a major component of this expenditure, the desperate need for defence modernisation would mean that India would have to find resources for defence even if peace with Pakistan was assured.
The Reliance Vice-Chairman pointed out that India’s security concerns transcended Pakistan and in addressing these the country would have to spend even more on higher cost of modern technology. Further, apart from regular defence expenditure, India would have to continue to spend on internal security and on modernising the response to terrorism. However, an environment of peace and cooperation could substantially alter investor sentiment.
Ambani then went on to urge SAARC leaders to agree to a pact aimed at reducing defence expenditure and earmarking resources for the social sector. Cutting military spending by five per cent annually could generate a peace dividend of around five billion US dollars, enough to finance most of the social services, he said.
South Asia had the potential to become the foodgrain basket of the world. It offered huge opportunity for renumerative investments in agriculture and agro-processing industries. “South Asia has the potential to become a major energy hub for this part of the world,” Ambani said. He discounted fears that integration of South Asian markets could create huge trade surpluses and argued that a part of such surpluses could be recycled as investments.
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