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A Tale of Two
Countries by Rajinder Puri.
Puri, an old hand in the field of journalism, would of course be well aware of the difficulty of past-dated columns portraying a situation at the time, being able to engage a current reader’s attention who is more interested in knowing the author’s view point and analysis of a fast-moving issue as it pertains to his time and era. Yet, his dispatches do provide an insight into the fluctuating fortunes of these two countries which till some time back were one entity and one nation, and an entry point for historians and others for a further discourse on the changes that have come about in the social and political fabric of over a billion people who today find themselves fenced off from each other by man-made borders that really should have not been there in the first place. If we put aside a hastily put together chapter on Benazir Bhutto’s sudden demise, Puri’s theme of the coming together of a union of South Asia, Indo-Pak relations and the "the real axis of evil", as he sees it (here he is referring to the US-China and Israel), are some of the subjects that can be profitably discussed by the experts and the common man who is affected the most. Puri writes on Indo-Pak relations, the foreign hand that he sees up to all kinds of mischief in the subcontinent, the hold of terrorism in the region and the type of new order that he sees emerging in the neighbourhood. Some of his observations do not tally with the known facts and it is somewhat surprising when he writes, "On July1, 1999, the Chinese army crossed the Line of Control in Ladakh to divert the Indian Army and help the beleaguered Pakistanis". An army such as that of China does not normally cross international borders to launch diversionary attacks, and in any case nothing of the kind happened as known to most of us from official government reports and other sources from some of the veterans from the armed forces who were deployed in these operations. In another dispatch written in June 2007, Puri opines, "India should demarcate the Indo-Tibetan border after discussion with Tibet’s government-in-exile". All this seems to be well off the mark when India has long recognised and accepted that Tibet is "part and parcel of China". He has also quoted from his earlier columns implying that India cannot trust America, China, Israel and Pakistan. So what then is to be done is the question, and Puri’s recipe is that "India can only trust itself". Today, no nation can become an island in itself and stop dealing with other powers, though a country’s own national interests would of course always remain paramount. Elsewhere, Puri writes of the fate of the Durand Line Treaty that lapsed in 1993 and the Pushtun love for independence, and suggests that, "as in the case of Hong Kong in China, the tribal belt areas of Pakistan’s NWFP should become a self-ruling province of Afghanistan". The ground reality today is what matters the most, and no amount of theoretical debate helps where even an inch of disputed territory is contested by sovereign nations. On terrorism and the destabilising of India, Puri seems to have his own solution. Written in May 2007, he says, "Unless and until President Musharraf prevails over Pakistan’s army, and President Hu overpowers the PLA, terrorism to destabilise and weaken India will continue". In another piece, he highlights that when "closely-linked ethnic and linguistic communities are separated by international borders", trouble spots in South Asia have erupted. "Thus, there is a crisis in Kashmir between India and Pakistan, in NWFP between Pakistan and Afghanistan, among the Tamils in Sri Lanka having close ties with Tamils of India, among Assamese and Bengalis facing the flow of migrants from Bangladesh." His own quick-fix solution to the problem is a South Asian Union. Puri even sees a scenario for Pakistan’s eventual dismemberment. But today, when Pakistan may well be on the road to a genuine democratic governance with or without Musharraf, such an assessment would have few takers. Puri sees a balkanisation of Pakistan, in case it launches a "cross-border adventure" with Baluchistan and parts of NWFP breaking away and only Sind and Punjab remaining in Pakistan. In all our wars with Pakistan so far, where it has been the aggressor, that certainly has not happened.
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RAJINDER
PURI, the cartoonist and columnist rolled into one, has put together
some of his columns published during 2004-2008 into a slim book,
focusing specifically on India and Pakistan, and to a lesser degree the
geo-strategic sight picture as obtaining in the whole of South Asia.