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Demolish the myth

The skirmish in Kargil has served one purpose. It has showed up the real difference between India and Pakistan. The difference in the way we see each other.

While we both talk about peace, Pakistan is always ready for war even though it is clever enough to know that it can never win one. Why? Why should a nation be ready for a war when it knows it cannot win it? The reason is simple. Pakistan has grown up on a self-sustained myth that it is a strong, powerful, absolutely unified, military nation with a single religion that binds it together. It also believes that by chalu PR and clever misrepresentation of facts, it can persuade some of the stupider Western nations to back its military misadventures. As for us, they see India as this large, confused, politically unmanageable and flabby neighbour too busy trying to cope with democracy to know how to keep its squabbling castes and communities together. In their lexicon, we are a soft target. A Billy Bunter of sorts.

That is why they laugh every time we stretch out our hand of friendship. But they are smart enough not to show their disdain openly. Instead, they make all these vague, conciliatory noises that mislead us (and the world) into believing that they are serious about peace while actually, behind our back, they keep fomenting trouble whenever, wherever they can. For fighting India is the only way that Pakistan can stay alive. That is what binds them, not Islam. That is what keeps their politicians in power, gets them cash and weapons, sustains their feeble economy. If there was no war with India, open or secret, there would be no Pakistan as we know it. You will have a nation poorer than Bangladesh, where every ethnic group will be fighting for freedom and the entire military and political elite, which is so rich and powerful today, will be either behind bars or living in exile with their millions of dollars stolen from the state exchequer and the people of Pakistan.

In other words, if there was no conflict over Kashmir, Pakistan would have to invent another reason to go to war with India. The demonology would be, otherwise, incomplete. For they cannot afford to give their people what we do. Freedom. This freedom has taught us many things. Which is why Indians all over the world are doing so well. We are the richest community in the US, in UK and god knows where else while Pakistan languishes at the bottom of every economic table, looking like a sad basket case.

For us, however, Pakistan serves a very useful purpose. It reminds us of all the mistakes we could have made over the past 52 years and did not. We could have murdered democracy like they did. We could have allowed the armed forces to run away with absolute power. We could have driven our economy into the ground and lived on foreign charity like they have done for decades. We could have spent more money on arms and made instant millionaires of our army top brass. Yes, we could have easily replicated Pakistan and become a caricature of a nation. No better than Idi Amin's Uganda.

It is to Pakistan's terrific credit that they have been able to sustain the myth for so long. You have to applaud their savvy PR, their trendy marketing in international forums. So much so that the world speaks in the same breath about India and Pakistan, as if they are comparable nations. Every fact, every statistic actually shows otherwise. It is like pitting a midget pom with an attitude against a huge, sloppy, good-natured Big Dane who hates getting into a scrap. But so clever is the positioning that even we sometimes pit ourselves against Pakistan as an equal rival.

Our rivalries in hockey and cricket have also added to the myth making. Every time Pakistan wins against India, that victory acquires a special emotive edge. Defeat is also used, equally smartly, to arouse the people and whip up their sense of self-esteem. Meanwhile, their economy is in a shambles. The poor have become infinitely poorer and human rights is a term they have not heard. The tragedy of the people of Pakistan, who live in such awesome poverty and backwardness without any hope in sight, is that our intellectual elite still believes, like idiots, that it is possible to have a decent, responsible relationship with their rulers. And so does the West.

No such relationship is possible. For five decades now, Pakistan has been ruled by a bunch of ruthless, corrupt thugs who have enriched themselves at the cost of the nation through lies, threats, organised crime. They have used the absence of democracy, the gullibility of the Western powers, the suppression of human rights, and the naivete of our political leadership to dig their heels in. They will never let go of this power unless we expose to the world what Pakistan really is.

The career diplomats who represent our case before the world are a bunch of fatheads who love to be seen as fashionable liberals in the capitals of the Western world. They are not going to speak the language of truth for you and me and India. They have no intention of showing up Pakistan for what it is. For they would then lose their jobs, their relevance, the raison d'etre of their existence.

That is how Pakistan gets away. Its showman diplomats have done extraordinary work to sustain regime after regime steeped in corruption and crime. Its poets and musicians and cricketers have distinguished themselves in distracting the world from the ugly reality of Pakistan. While its politicians, one after the other, have spoken with a forked tongue. To make monkeys out of us and those silly Yanks who have pumped in billions of dollars into a theocratic, military state that promotes, encourages and funds terrorism while keeping its own people hungry and poor. All in the name of maintaining the balance of power on this subcontinent.

What balance of power? You cannot pump steroids into a snarling rat and expect it to grow into a Royal Bengal tiger. You cannot arm a midget nation led by a bunch of ugly goons and expect it to become the Salvation Army. Pakistan can never be a democracy. It can never countervail India. It will always remain a cheap, tinpot dictatorship masquerading as a modern nation.

It is time we figured out (and so did the West) that Pakistan is our creation. We have, each of us in our own way, contributed to the myth. The West (and particularly the United States) by pitching it against India and pumping in huge amounts of dollars and arms to shore up a nation that first needed a democratic political system and basic human rights in place. We made the same mistake. By seeing them as an equal and stretching out our hand of friendship, assuming that they also wanted peace and goodwill. They never did. Peace and goodwill cannot sustain Pakistan. Only hate, war and belligerence can.

It is time we, therefore, gave up all attempts at conciliation and dealt with the crisis as we would deal with any other thug. There is nothing special about Pakistan. If your next door neighbour walked into your flat, killed your son, shot your father and tried to grab a room, what would you do? Let us do exactly that. Let us also give them one extra hard slap for gouging out the eyes and chopping off the genitals of our soldiers. Let us not get carried away and allow such perversity to distort our own response. Remember, only the weak and mentally depraved do things like this. It is a sign of their own frustrations.

A fight with Pakistan does not deserve the title of war. For a nation of our size, our might, it will just be a skirmish. Foolish as they may be, the generals of Pakistan are unlikely to be suicidal enough to use nukes. They have too much stashed away in the Swiss banks to want to risk their lives. So we need not lose our sleep nor our souls over such a conflict. That is unfortunately what we have done for so long, and thus created such a big song and dance over Kashmir. There is no question of delaying the election or forming a national government. We are not fighting China or the United States. We are fighting Pakistan. Let us get our perspectives right in the first place.

Let us swat them hard, keep international opinion on our side, and get on with the task of nation building. For India is about to enter a brave new millennium and there is no time to lose sleep over this buzzing nuisance.

Pritish Nandy

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