Neocon vs old con

Put any given Indian into a room with a westerner and chances are within 15 minutes he will be kicking and screaming about Pakistan. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee and President George Bush famously shared a table at St Petersburg this summer. What did they talk about? Food, the weather and, of course, Pakistan.

The Indian Foreign Office complains day in and day out about Washington8217;s 8220;hyphenated8221; perception of India, of seeing India only in relation to Pakistani and not in its own right. Yet each time India is called upon to think out of the box, it cries off, citing 8212; what else 8212; Pakistan.

Actually why blame the Foreign Office alone. There is something of a cultural consensus in New Delhi to keep India8217;s engagement of the world hostage to its relationship with Pakistan.

One can think of no other power or even quasi-power capital that is so fixated upon a twerp neighbour. Pre-9/11 Washington being consumed by Mexico was a diplomatic joke; from India it appeared so endearingly familiar. Nevertheless it is difficult to contemplate Dick Cheney or Colin Powell or any of the US administration8217;s Big Daddies interrogating visitors with a 8220;But what about cross-border infiltration in San Ysidro?8221;

If you8217;re not into the Punjabi brotherhood melodrama and not a sharp practitioner of bucolic secularism 8212; Laloo8217;s feet may be inching towards Lahore but he has half an eye on sectional votes in Bihar, damn the consequences 8212; this Pakistan business will bore you. It8217;s tiresome, dreary and just so repetitive.

The same names, same track II regulars, same candlelight sermons on the border, same maudlin memories of pre-Partition Lahore, same emotionalism, same disconnection from overriding domestic mood: Pakistan is not so much a country as an industry, run for and by the initiated.

Yet the ability of Pako-phile Indians to delude themselves into believing that peace is never far away 8212; even if the next peace conference invitation is nearer 8212; is alarming. It unnecessarily confuses what should be a clear-cut, cold, realpolitik-driven approach to Pakistan.

A recent example would be illustrative. Three weeks ago, Maulana Fazlur Rahman came to India. With characteristic over- generosity, just about everybody who mattered met him. The Maulana made the right noises, famously suggesting the LoC be formalised into the international border. Then, smiling and hugging fellow Deobandis, he left, leaving behind a trail of mystified Indians trying to figure out why he was here in the first place.

New Delhi8217;s familiar Wagah watchers needed no time for considered assessment. The Maulana had seen the light, they declared, almost as if this were Nixon coming to China. It was bound to happen: did he not represent a religio-political school that had opposed the two-nation theory?

You could argue that about the only relevant hardliners who opposed Partition did so because they saw it as interrupting a 1,200-year-old Islamisation project running across the subcontinent. You may as well have been barking at the moon. It may be history but, in today8217;s New Delhi, it8217;s not conventional wisdom.

So why did the Maulana say his conciliatory piece, make the sort of statements that had the Lahore Alumni Association dancing with joy in his host country? The logical conclusion would be that he 8212; and his fellow travellers in Pakistan 8212; perceive America as the more immediate threat.

America8217;s presence in Afghanistan means Islamabad can8217;t control Kabul. The Pashtun passions that have been unleashed threaten to completely destroy Islamabad8217;s hold over not just the NWFP but even areas of Baluchistan. While the jihad junta sorts this little problem out, it wants India to give it breathing space.

In its right mind, India wouldn8217;t even consider the offer. New Delhi8217;s waffling circuit is, however, not the appropriate exposition of India8217;s right mind. An argument that sees a temporary Indo-Pakistani truce to check American expansionism as a historical successor to Hindu-Muslim unity against the British empire is not just flawed, it is downright dangerous. In effect, India is being asked to choose between America and Pakistan, between the neocon man and, simply, the conman.

Whatever its angularities, America8217;s gradual reshaping of the Middle East cannot but enhance India8217;s security. It is axiomatic that this project will some day march into Pakistan. Perhaps it is already there and New Delhi doesn8217;t want to recognise it, maybe because neocon America8217;s time table for South Asia doesn8217;t match middle India8217;s.

So is the current round of CBMs 8212; 8220;confidence building measures8221;, though chicken butter masala would do just as well 8212; between New Delhi and Lahore anything more than adversity on a busman8217;s holiday? The answer is obvious. Whether you8217;re on that DTC bus or not, remember, peace is not about being driven up the Shalimar Garden path.