Kashmir cornpromise
Kuldip Nayar
New When five million Hindus crossed into I and an equal number of Muslims into PaPti.; stan in the wake of the subcontinent's Parh tion nearly three decades ago, it was filo"5 that the two countries would settle int°,:i era of peace and mutual benefit. But followed was the darkness of distrust, b° tility and even war. Every few years a Oa of hope would flicker, but do no more th flicker. Now once again the pendulum has swill: towards amity. The two countries ha decided to resume diplomatic relations, .0 and rail links, trade and other ties willii were broken after the Bangladesh warho December 1971. There is no certatY11 054 the pendulum will not swing back WO it has done before.
But what is important about the IndiaPakistan accord this time is that there will be no more shuttling of delegations between India and Pakistan to discuss the agreement itself. Loose ends have been tied securely and all questions thrashed out in detail. All the steps towards normalcy are to be implemented at the same time, so much so that India's Ambassador-designate to Pakistan may well travel by the resumed flight between New Delhi and Islamabad.
Another encouraging factor this time is that there is practically no mention of Kashmir, which acceded to India in 1948 but which Pakistan still claims on the basis of the Muslim majority in the state. The delegations of the two countries hardly discussed the problem. True, Pakistan newspapers and radio continue to say that the Kashmir question 'still remains to be settled'. But the fact that there was no mention of it in the joint statement on the accord shows that probably Islamabad has come to learn to live with the situation. It is quite possible that MsZ. A. Bhutto, Pakistan's Prime Minister, may accept the solution which he proposed to me at Islamabad in 1972.
I asked him if he would accept a Triestetype solution for Kashmir—the Trieste Agreement, signed in 1954, provided for the partitioning of the Free Territory of Trieste between Italy and Yugoslavia along the then existing demarcation line between the two, with minor changes and also guaranteed unhindered travel over the border. Mr Bhutto said: 'I was thinking partly of Trieste.' He refused to say more, except : 'I have given you a peep into my mind. If I say too much or if we go too much into it, here also we have our Jana Sanghites [the communal elements] who will start saying "betrayal" and such things. But what I am telling you in essence is that taking into account this and other world precedents, we can start moving.'
India's reassurance that it honours the 'territorial integrity' of Pakistan may also go a long way to remove the Pakistanis' fear that New Delhi wants to dismember their country. When I met the late Ayub Khan four years ago his first question was: 'When are you conquering this part of Pakistan ?' I found many people who believed that India was not yet reconciled to the creation of Pakistan and that New Delhi would one day gobble it up.
But normalcy with Pakistan does not mean that all will be well in the subcontinent. Since January 1972 there has existed a third country, Bangladesh. New Delhi no longer has the best of relationships with that country, and this creates problems. Only the other day it came to a crisis when a ninetyseven-year-old politician, Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhashani, said that he and his followers would march into India to draw attention to the 'just demand of Bangladesh on the sharing of Ganga waters'. (India has built a barrage at Farakka to divert Ganga waters into the Hooghly to flush Calcutta port to receive larger ships..) The crisis was averted. Dacca took steps to stop the mar
chers. But it has left its scars. The relationship between India and Bangladesh has been further bruised.
The subcontinent, which has crossed a big hurdle of estrangement between India and
Pakistan, is still somewhat uneasy. ProbablY the crux of the problem is lack of faith. It looks as if high walls of fear and distru.st have come between them. The solution lies in demolishing those walls.
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