The Kashmir quandary — I

By V.R. Krishna Iyer



The time for action is now, said the Army Chief, General Padmanaban, the other day but with wise moderation added that the final decision is for the nation to take. Sure, as Clemencean long ago observed: War is much too serious a matter to be entrusted to generals. Nor indeed, can that grave issue be left to the indignant ipse dixit or decisional hysteria of a pro-tem Cabinet. Remember both India and Pakistan are nuclear nations and statesmanship echoes what the British Prime Minister, Harold Mac Millan, way back in 1960 warned:

"The East-West conflict cannot be resolved by weakness or moral or physical exhaustion of one side or the other. It cannot, in this nuclear age, be resolved by the triumph of one side over the other without the extinction of both. I say, therefore, we can only reach our goal by the gradual acceptance of the view that we can all gain more by agreement than by aggression."

Military superiority cannot be measured in our atomic age by conventional weapons standards and we have to reckon with a dangerous dictator unaccountable to party or people and desperate to do or die when a battle bugle sounds. Never restrained by scruples in the past in scuttling democracy or sweeping aside Constitutional functionaries, the Pakistan President, Pervez Musharraf, has to be weighed on scales of opportunist possibility. We may win the war but lose many lives. That Pakistanis are bombed out in larger numbers is no solace since life everywhere is precious and the two countries are too close geo-demographically that demarcation of nuke jurisdiction is impossible. There will be victims on both sides whoever may bomb. War must obviously be the unavoidable last item on the prudent agenda although a military dictator, gone berserk with futile cross-border terrorism, may not assess the consequences of his strategy with the humanist maturity of a mellow civilian leader.

The Kashmir dilemma cannot drift or dawdle nor even the agonising suspense be permitted to paralyse the nation's will to act. We are dulled by platitudes of "appropriate'' response, and timely reprisals, while casualties escalate, punctuated by daily militant intrusions and suicide squad slaughters. How long can this sanguinary struggle go on, how long can this terrorist tactic prolong vitiating normal relations and draining our resources and patience?

The attack on Parliament was horrendously outrageous. This last massive murder, in scale the worst, in suddenness most shocking, and in impact on the nation's morale a terrible consternation, has justly awakened parties into an immediate parliamentary debate where rare unanimity was displayed in passing a militant resolution of great moment, after customary perorations, canny or naive, were delivered, although ending without spelling out significant strategies to counter the systematic attacks of an ambitious, military dictator for whom, even after September 11, between terrorism and liberation "thin partition do their bounds divide.''

The Parliamentary consultation was good and necessary, but great expectations of creative contribution to meet the Pak. confrontation were not fulfilled, save the consensus vividly brought out, cutting across diehard hostilities and hearteningly demonstrating national unity in times of Indian crisis.

Patriotic passion needs to be reinforced by paradigmatic strategies and imaginative, innovative ideas, beyond conventional promise of support. Here the parliamentary debate, from both sides of the House, generated no original thought, no striking formula, no serendipitous stroke. Are we bankrupt in new initiatives, plans of action, operational philosophy in overpowering the enemy on the diplomatic plane, or international terrain, in rousing Indian humanity to a high nationalist sentiment and readiness to sacrifice in the fields and the streets, in the factories and the farms, in the beaches and over the skies, whatever the cost may be? But never surrender your spirit nor forsake your statesmanship; never fan the war psychosis as the "madding'' media or myopic chauvinist is wont to do. Belligerency mentality paralyses all normal processes of life in Government and daily business.

All national activities, developmental operations, prevailing prices, availability of essentials, and every other social process may go haywire or get stunned by war apprehension.