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| Any ears for Musharraf’s words | | |
Pakistan’s former President Pervez Musharraf who was recently in New Delhi where he shared table with Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah at a conclave organized by the India Today made quite a few interesting sounds. It is a thin line that differentiates between bravery and bravado, and it is difficult to decide on which side of it fall Pervez Musharraf’s recent performances in India. It must be recognised that he was aware he would be encountering a hostile post-26/11 “intellectual” audience, was man enough to face it squarely, and not flinch from insisting on what India refuses to accept - that terrorism and the unsolved Kashmir dispute are inextricably intertwined. And that India’s RAW and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence agency are up to the same kind of mischief. Few Indian leaders would have willingly walked in to a similar situation in Pakistan. But that is just about all for which he deserved the standing ovation from an upper-crust gathering. For the rest of his offering was a re-run of the over-simplified, seemingly duplicitous explanations, theories and “out-of-the box” solutions he advanced before being ejected from the seat of power in Islamabad. It is so very easy to talk of forgetting the past, starting afresh, but retaining the very same positions that had triggered three-and-a-half wars and inspired/ sustained a continuing low-intensity conflict, and made terrorism an instrument of Pakistani policy. That he had to repeatedly vouch for his own sincerity is clinching evidence it was ever in grave doubt. Nobody could have expected him not to press the Pakistan case, reject allegations that the army he once led thrived on an anti-India staple diet, but did he not cut a sorry figure by claiming ignorance of Dawood Ibrahim’s presence in Karachi? Perhaps the most valid point he made was the need to accept the reality that terrorism could devour the entire region, and that more than military force was required to thwart it. Valid perhaps, but definitely far from original. While his interaction at more than one forum ensured much liveliness and some provocation too, it actually has little impact on the vexatious yo-yo bilateral relationships that remain generally unaffected by the much-vaunted goodwill generated by people-to-people contact. A moot point being whether the present dispensation in Islamabad attaches an iota of significance to the views of the man who staged a military coup, appropriated the title of “President”, and was subsequently pressured to shed the uniform, and then high office. Despite the odd hiccup, the ex-commando would be happy at the turn of events. The city of his birth had provided him a platform ~ something denied back home
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