Commentary/Mani Shankar Aiyar
Gujral must shift the paradigm of India-Pakistan
relations from the 20th to the 21st century
Since Gujral is not minister for South Asian affairs but for the
whole gamut of our foreign policy, he deserves applause for having
persisted with our stand on CTBT, although my plaudits would have
been more sustained if he had anticipated and prepared the country
for the drubbing we got in our bid to wrest a non-permanent seat
on the Security Council.
Gujral's first six months have, however, been stretching exercises
for the real task that is to come. By about the time this column
appears in print, the elections in Pakistan would be over and our
most refractory neighbour ready for the Gujral touch. Narasimha
Rao offered a dialogue on all issues including those related to
Kashmir. But the dialogue failed to take off, largely because
our offer matched Pakistan's acceptance of it in insincerity.
Gujral will, I hope, I pray, prove
to be a sincere interlocutor. He also needs to be both patient
and persistent with Pakistan. He has shown he is capable of all
this and more by his refusal to be provoked by Pakistani posturing
at the UN or elsewhere. But Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka are
child's play compared to Pakistan. Going through the other neighbours
before getting to Pakistan is like Vishwanathan Anand readying
for the big one against Kasparov.
I am going to Pakistan to see whether the unsolicited advice I
have served up in the past to Gujral's predecessors is in need
of revalidation or modification. And whether he needs it or not,
I have every intention of button-holing Gujral when I come back.
But unless Gujral sees that
the need of the hour is to shift the paradigm of India-Pakistan
relations from the 20th to the 21st century, we are not going
to be able to make the imaginative leap required to take us from
confrontation to co-operation.
For if the 20th century has been about the re-ordering of political
relations on the subcontinent, the 21st century is going to be
about the re-ordering of economic relations. And in that endeavour,
it is energy co-operation that is going to take pride of place.
If Gujral bears in mind Petroleum Secretary Vijay Kelkar's apt
aphorism about the 20th century having been the century of oil,
while the 21st century will be of natural gas, then he will see
that the two most important countries for the conjoint flourishing
of India and Pakistan (and Afghanistan) are Iran and Turkmenistan.
Whom Kashmir goes to or remains with us is nothing compared to
the natural gas we both need to, and can, secure from the countries
to the immediate north and west of our sub-region.
Second, I had warned Gujral last September that if we did not
seize the initiative to push for the Geneva-based Conference on
Disarmament to put the elimination of weapons of mass destruction
on its agenda, the euphoria over India's stand on CTBT would soon
evaporate (or, worse, give the Bomb lobby in India an opening
to take us down the path of doom). That, I am afraid, is happening
because Gujral chickened out of taking such an initiative at the
last UN General Assembly session.
The Congress having, apparently,
lost the nerve to sack his government, Gujral will, perhaps, be
given one last chance to show his mettle at one more UN General
Assembly session this autumn. He needs to begin preparing for
that now.
Gujral can do so, for he alone shines among the dross on the Treasury
Benches. Why the Treasury Benches are so called, however, I am
unable to tell; for with Chidambaram also adorning them, surely
it would be more appropriate to call them the Treachery Benches!
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