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Affront on our own soil

One of the several mysteries about our national media is why they focus on people like Asma Jehangir who come here leading a peace delegation of Pakistani women and go on to lecture us and insult us on our own territory.

One can understand why the goody-goody Inder Gujral forgets everything from the 1947 raid of Kashmir to the treachery of Kargil as he almost seems to get an orgasm playing host to 60 such women from a country that, history has shown, harbours only hatred for us.

One can also understand why Khushwant Singh flirts with these visiting women for photo-ops that help enhance his cultivated lecherous image.

But the media? Why the dickens do they suck up to the likes of Asma Jehangir?

Harsh words, you think? Well, just recall some of the comments Jehangir made to our press during her latest sojourn here. Below are six excerpts from the generous interviews allowed to her recently by The Times of India and The Indian Express.

1. TOI: India has burnt its fingers. Is there any point in talking to a military dictator (who was the architect of Kargil)?

AJ: By refusing to talk you're leaving him no choice. As for fingers being burnt, Pakistan's officials will give you a long list of the times they burn their fingers.

(No response from the interviewer)

2. TOI: What emerged from your meeting with Jaswant Singh?

AJ: He said there would be no aggression from India's side, but I don't know if that really means India will stick to that policy.

TOI: Why do you say this?

AJ: Because this was a ceremonial meeting.

(No response from the interviewer)

3. TOI: Talks is all we've had and got nowhere.

AJ: Well, what I've heard in Pakistan is that those talks were not really intensive. And if they're not accompanied by a commitment to peace from both sides, then the agendas are very different.

(No response from the interviewer)

4. TOI: You said India and Pakistan should live as adversaries but with grace and dignity. Why not as friends?"

AJ: Our governments have reached a point where they should first revert to decent, civilised behaviour. Look at the words they use for each other, the statements they give at the United Nations.

(No response from the interviewer)

5. IE: What is your wish list from General Musharraf?

AJ: That we should return to democracy as soon as possible. I also wish the Indian government would take two initiatives: Engage the Pakistani government and recognise that there is the problem of Kashmir and something has to be done about it.

(No response from the interviewer)

6. IE: But India is reluctant to talk with General Musharraf. Do you still see hope for renewed dialogue?

AJ: Your government has talked to every dictator. Your government talked to Zia-ul-Haq who was the worst kind of dictator. So why be biased against this particular regime? This is not the real reason...

(No response from the interviewer)

The above six interactions are all of a piece wherein Asma Jehangir, a middle-aged but attractive mother, comes across as the typically shrewd woman -- one who conceals more than she reveals, who will not hesitate to dig a high heel into the male opponent's crotch and who will defend her family's honour at all costs, including prevarication.

Start with her plea that India should talk to Musharraf. She first twists India's refusal to do so by attributing it to his being a military dictator, then says the truth lies somewhere else, knowing fully well that the truth has been repeatedly made clear by our insistence on a stop to cross-border terrorism and anti-Indian propaganda and the need to respect the LoC. And her reference to this refusal of talks by India -- "leaving him no choice" -- is an attempt at veiled blackmail. What is she warning us about? That Musharraf will replicate Kargil on a larger scale?

Take her meeting with Jaswant Singh. By expressing doubts about his assurance on non-aggression from our side, she clearly considers our external affairs minister a person who cannot be trusted. If that is not an insult to the Indian nation, what is? Is it the naivete of a confused woman who doesn't know that India has never been the aggressor in its wars with Pakistan? And if she believes that "ceremonial meetings" are occasions to utter lies, what do we make of her political psyche?

Now look at her statement that India's previous talks with Pakistan were not intensive, according to what she has heard in her country. Where was she when Vajpayee visited Lahore in February 1998 with a full-fledged delegation, had extended talks with his counterpart along with the latter's team, and proceeded to sign the Lahore Agreement? Did she not even read the newspapers then? Or is she really so artless to believe that the historic Lahore Accord was just a charade, just some signatures on dotted lines after a couple of qawwali and shairi programmes?

The woman is indulging either in falsehood or in something beyond her intellectual capacity to grasp. And by lamenting that there was no "commitment to peace from both sides", she again shows, or feigns, ignorance about the earnestness of India's Lahore endeavour.

Why, the woman is so cheeky that she even accuses India of eschewing "decent, civilised behaviour" without citing a single example. She goes on to herself explain why India and Pakistan should live as dignified adversaries but not friends, thus revealing her innermost attitude on the nature of the desired relations between the neighbours. Forgotten in the process is that it is Pakistan that has stubbornly declined to reciprocate the Most Favoured Nation treatment accorded by India; that it is Musharraf, and not some Indian, who belittled the Simla and Lahore agreements in an interview to The Hindu months ago.

See her one-point wish list from Musharraf: Return to democracy "as soon as possible," conveniently forgetting Pakistan's need to immediately crush the unbridled fundamentalism being bred in madarsas, to quickly shut down the flourishing heroin laboratories, and to urgently restore the tottering economy.

She goes on to tell us of her widened wish list that entails India's recognition of Kashmir as a problem. But of course Kashmir is a problem ma'am, the whole of Bharat has recognised that for the last 53 years when your country first raided it, seized a part of it that was ours, then ceded a part of it to China, and terrorises us to snatch away the rest from us. That problem's solution? Return what you looted from us.

In fact, it is Pakistan that has many problems to recognise -- and tackle on a war footing. Below is a truncated list excerpted from two very recent articles in the International Herald Tribune written by Mansoor Ijaz, chairman of a New York investment bank and member of the Council of Foreign Relations, and The Dawn of Karachi penned by Aziz Siddiqui. These two contributions in black and white say the following about Pakistan:

* Pakistan's lawlessness now has no state organ willing to combat it.

* The picture of chaos and disarray emerging from an all-powerful military government is deeply unsettling.

* Afghanistan's opium production to finance warfare throughout the region, coupled with Pakistan's willingness to look the other way for the right-sized bribe while arms are smuggled in to train imported religious zealots, are signs of the military junta's complicity, complacency and abandonment of international norms in running Pakistan.

* In a country now presumed to harbour the largest number of heroin addicts in the world, Musharraf has no reason to allow heroin labs, which are a segment of the black-market economy, to function one minute longer.

* He should shut down the country's 4,000 or so radicalised religious schools where the roots of extremism are set. The network should be replaced with normal schools that educate normal children.

* The descent of Pakistan into the abyss of pariah status may be irreversible ---unless Musharraf finds the courage to stare down the bandits who have stolen the country's future.

* The jihadist bodies operate openly in the country. They recruit people from all parts. They list in detail their daily exploits against the well-trained and well-equipped professional Indian Army. And they declare their ambition to be not just to liberate Kashmir but to advance India's disintegration.

Islamabad has also virtually admitted to the world its influence over them by obtaining their withdrawal from Kargil last year. It also seems to have owned up running their supply line. The chief of the Ordnance Factories VBoard proudly claimed the other day that all the shells used in the Kargil fighting were made in the country's own factories.

* It is wrong to assume that militancy is the answer to any oppression of Muslims or that it serves the cause of Islam. Muslims will be able to fight any injustice against them and become a power to be reckoned with not by competing in arms but by excelling in skills and education. There is no shorter cut than that.

So, there you have it, Ms Asma Jehangir, a big agenda back home for you and your fellow social-cum-rights activists of either gender. Now that you've returned home after a hectoring holiday on our hospitable hearth, you better forget Kashmir, Jaswant Singh, Khushwant Singh and Gujral the Mr India International. Forget foreign affairs and get down to overcoming your domestic disasters.

Meanwhile, our mainstream media too would do well by the nation if their journalists forget focussing on foreigners merely because they are females from Islamabad or Iceland. Instead, our media folk should catch up on their homework that will enable them to recognise and rebut the falsehood of the fakes who have the temerity to affront us on our own soil.

Arvind Lavakare