Amnesic peace pipe with Pakistan

August 19, 2003

The whole Indian nation, it seems, is simply obsessed with 'Peace with Pakistan.' Everybody from the prime minister atop the Red Fort on Independence Day down to edit writers and letter writers talk of that -- as if the objective of peace with Pakistan will miraculously come about by just talking and talking about peace.

Everyone concerned seems struck by amnesia -- amnesia about the pain and agony that Pakistan has inflicted on us all these long years, amnesia about the critical condition to be fulfilled for that peace: the settlement of that issue of Kashmir, Jammu and Kashmir, to Pakistan's satisfaction.

Just one lunch for a delegation of our parliamentarians in Islamabad seems to melt them into syrupy sentimentalism about our malevolent neighbour; just one address to them by Pervez Musharraf in his Presidential palace makes them forget that he was the architect of Kargil, 1999, that killed 474 and injured 1,109 of the very best in the Indian Army.

You'll get an idea of that amnesia if you look at the photograph on the front page of The Hindu of August 13. In that picture, Laloo Prasad Yadav has a look of awe and submissiveness as he holds with two hands the one hand offered by Musharraf dressed in full military gear.

Note the irony of it: the clowning, cunning politician who doesn't hesitate to be bitterly sarcastic about his own country's prime minister, chooses to be reverential to Pakistan's military dictator.

rest of the article is at http://www.rediff.com/news/2003/aug/19arvind.htm

All materials on this website are © 2000-2010

Printer Friendly Format

Search this website

top