Warmth in Pak

It’s been more than a week since my wife and I returned from a five-day visit to Pakistan, but images and impressions of the trip are still vivid in the memory. Rather than attempt a comprehensive analysis of relations with that country — which should probably wait my next book! — I’d like to offer readers a few personal observations from my visit.

The most striking thing about being an Indian in Pakistan is the warmth of the welcome one receives. We were bowled over by the kindness and hospitality extended to us by all — from the hosts, most of whom we had never met before, who offered us elaborate meals in impressive company, to the paanwallah who refused to take money from us and ran after us with tissues to ensure his succulent concoctions did not drip onto our clothes. The eminent Pakistani designers Amir and Huma Adnan, learning of our visit, sent us outfits that fit us perfectly even though we had never been measured for them. The editors Najam Sethi and Jugnu Mohsin, facing death threats that have sent them into temporary exile and turned their Lahore home into a fortified camp, insisted on offering us dinner with friends there. The liberal columnist Marvi Sirmed threw us a party on the eve of her teenage daughter’s birthday and showered us with gifts of traditional handicrafts; Nestle chairman Syed Yawar Ali arranged a tourist guide to show us Lahore on either side of a magnificent lunch with the city’s who’s who; the educational philanthropist Aziz Jamal and the rockstar Salman Ahmed flew up from Karachi just to spend time with us. An official of the Punjab chief minister’s media cell took us on a midnight drive to the Anarkali area and discussed politics over steaming cups of salty Kashmiri pink tea. My Fletcher classmate Tehseen Sayed, on leave from the World Bank in Nepal, and her daughter Raniya introduced my wife Sunanda to the delights of shopping in Islamabad. Former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, fresh from his entry into Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, and his wife Mehriene not only organised a dinner to welcome us but, on learning we would be in transit for several hours at the airport on our way back to India, came to the airport to take us home for a family brunch. No doubt some Pakistani visitors have similar stories to tell of their Indian experiences, but for us, given that we were relative strangers and that many of my views (notably in this newspaper) have not been palatable to the Pakistani establishment, all this was truly overwhelming. To me the one attribute of Pakistan that charms utterly is the graciousness of their hospitality to people from what is still considered an “enemy country”. One leaves feeling that these are kinfolk with whom misunderstandings are possible to overcome.
Certainly there was little evidence of overt hostility to India; in dozens of conversations with a wide and impressive cross-section of the Pakistani elite, including those I met under the auspices of the Jinnah Institute, which had invited me to the country, I encountered reasonableness and keenness to pursue dialogue. Yes, there are competing narratives of our shared history, and a general disinclination to see virtue in India’s professions of peace, or to believe us when we say we have no desire to destabilise Pakistan. But most of the Pakistanis I encountered — and no, I didn’t spend much time with the frothing-at-the-mouth fundamentalists we see on Internet clips doing the rounds from Pakistani television — were seriously interested in the prospects of peace with India. There were lively discussions on the prospect of Pakistan granting India the Most Favoured Nation trading status that we had already accorded them in 1996, acknowledgement that India’s unilateral gesture was never mentioned in the Pakistani debates on the subject, but scepticism about our “non-tariff barriers” that ensured a trade imbalance in India’s favour. Many were looking forward to the expected visit of a CII delegation in February; its cancellation, in light of the recent political standoff in Pakistan, is a great pity.
At the same time I did not abandon my view that the principal problem between our two countries remains the military’s dominance of Pakistani politics and their desire to continue to justify their grossly disproportionate share of Pakistan’s national resources. One of the great paradoxes of India-Pakistan relations is that when the military are unchallengeably in power and do not feel threatened domestically, they are New Delhi’s best partners for peace, but when they conceal their power behind an elected civilian government, they are unwilling to allow the civilians to go too far towards establishing a peace that could undermine the military’s authority. The current, somewhat fitful progress towards resumed peace talks between our countries remains vulnerable, both to a military veto and also to the military’s militant protégés whose attacks on Indian interests the ISI has (at the very least) condoned in the past. That no significant new attack has occurred recently is the one saving grace that allows India to persist with its endeavours for peace.
While the standoff between the government and the Supreme Court had only just begun to unfold when I was there, the Zardari regime seemed far from secure. I was also struck by the extent to which a large majority of those we met seemed to support, or at any rate to expect, the ascension to power of Imran Khan. While there was no doubting his charisma (and his track record in establishing the country’s leading cancer hospital), Imran’s political prospects had never been taken very seriously, since his party had never won more than a seat or two in the National Assembly. But the widespread disillusionment with the two major political parties and their leaders, and the sense that Imran offered an alternative that might be worth trying, has resulted in a major groundswell of popular support, particularly among the young (70 per cent of Pakistan’s population is under 30). This has resulted in mainstream politicians from the establishment parties joining him in droves, a development that enhances his political credibility while somewhat diluting the innocence of his appeal. It is suggested that the military establishment has partly connived in ensuring the large crowds he has been able to muster in Lahore and Karachi. I did not meet him on this trip (he was taking time off to be with his sons who were visiting from London) but I urge Indian leaders to take him very seriously. All the indications are that Imran Khan could be the man to deal with in Islamabad when 2013 rolls around. More on Pakistan’s internal politics in my next
column.

The writer is a member of Parliament from Thiruvananthapuram