Misplaced paranoia

More than a thousand editors and owners of newspapers spread as far apart as Sao Paolo and Sapporo are aware of the new dangers in Kashmir but speak a language entirely different from what we Indians have got so used to in the past. No one, not a solitary soul, doubts for a moment that Pakistan started this mischief.

AtalBehari Vajpayee8217;s Lahore bus ride may sometimes be seen as a political liability, an exercise in woolly-headed diplomacy by key members of his own government and party. Here, internationally, it is evidence that India, particularly under the leader of a Hindu rightwing party, went out on a limb to buy peace with Pakistan. There is a great deal of confusion and bewilderment at what Pakistan did, why it chose so adventurist a path, and why now. The status of Jammu and Kashmir is not the issue at this moment, the behaviour of Pakistan is. It is unlikely that such a mood would have come about without the background of the Lahore bus ride.

If the Pakistanis had hoped that Kargil would bring international focus back on Kashmir in a manner favourable to them, they have miscalculated.On the contrary, Kargil has persuaded the world to focus on the larger question of an unstable India-Pakistan relationship and the more complicated issue of what the international community can do to improve thissituation.

Post-Lahore, Kargil is seen as a grave, deliberate and unilateral provocation. The new international concern is underlined in a joint article in Tuesday8217;s International Herald Tribune by Teresita and Howard Schaffer. Neither of them is unfamiliar with the South Asian situation. Both are retired ambassadors, and now foreign policy scholars, with wide experience in the region.

They call for the international community to get involved now and persuade and pressure not only India and Pakistan, but even China to engage in talks to conclusively freeze the Himalayan borders. Surely, this is nothing India could complain about in substance. But in principle, this is one more step towards the dreaded internationalisation.

Quite similarly, South Asian security expert Stephen P. Cohen8217;s article in The Wall Street Journal, asking for a South Asian peace plan, raised eyebrows in South Block instead of bringing any degree of cheer. Cohen described Pakistan8217;s Kargil adventure as tactically asbrilliant as Pearl Harbor, but strategically as disastrous as that. This obviously upset the Pakistanis a great deal but we Indians only focused on his peace plan8217; as it seemed one more step in the grand conspiracy to internationalise the issue.

And what have we been doing meanwhile? Why have we showed the transcript of the phone conversations between Pakistani generals to several world powers if not to persuade them to lean on Islamabad to withdraw from Kargil? External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh is in Beijing making pretty much the same point.

We rejoice in the repeated signals from Washington, particularly Clinton8217;s letters and phone calls, more or less endorsing our position on the Line of Control. This is a far cry from the holy national outrage when he happened to merely mention the K-word at the UN General Assembly last year. We also celebrate similar statements from the G-8 foreign ministers and the apparently new Chinese mentality, and yet fail to get over our 8220;internationalisation8221;paranoia.

We can8217;t be reaching out to the world in a setting that seems so heavily weighted in our favour and yet be persisting with our door hato ai duniya waalo Hindustan hamara hai mindset. We find, today, that the US is a friendly power and hope to win China8217;s understanding. The West, almost unanimously, and its allies like Japan have already questioned Pakistan8217;s conduct.

There is need for us to build on all this, reach out, engage the world, seek its understanding and forget, for this vital moment, the bogey of internationalisation. No nation and no problem can be isolated today from international attention and there is no need for us to be so desperate to do so when it all seems to be working so favourably for us.

It is vital, therefore, for India to distinguish static fundamentalist positions from sound and prudent foreign policy positions. Confusing one for the other is not clever thinking in the vigorously internationalising post-Kosovo world that is not exactly loaded towards India. Itwas mostly about the human rights situation in Kashmir or Hindu-Muslim relations following the Babri Masjid demolition. But at this moment of grave national crisis, the India-Pakistan relationship seems to have been internationalised a great deal more than in the recent past and yet we seem to have come a long way.

At the massive jamboree of the World Association of Newspapers and World Editors8217; Forum at Zurich this week, it8217;s been easy for a handful of Indian participants to attract attention. With Kosovo settling, the western world is beginning to worry a little about what is going on in Kargil, and thereby in Kashmir. Is it, following the classical Indian approach, something to worry about? Or can we afford at this particular juncture to draw from it a little bit of comfort, and some lessons?

International endorsement of your current position is not like the school-leaving testimonial of a doting headmaster. It always had a double-edge to it and you never know which would face you and when, ascircumstances changed. So the same powers which today scold Pakistan for the provocation could tomorrow turn around and ask both countries to sit down and sort out all their problems, including Kashmir. How would we react then?

Will we then, in a great fit of self-righteous outrage, kick in the shins the same powers whose hands we today kiss in gratitude? You cannot demand internationalisation when it suits you and revert to your shell when it doesn8217;t.

It is an issue our policy-makers, and indeed the opinion-makers, must address and sort out now, when the going is good.