The Hindu Lit for Life 2019 | Why can't India and Pakistan be friends

[Music] a very good morning to all of you and welcome to the final day of the Hindu lit for life 2019 request you to kindly put your Mobile's on silent mode and to not move around during the sessions as it will distract our speakers a gentle reminder that authors will be available for book signings outside the auditorium please do not crowd them as they leave the stage the Hindu lit for life has taken the first steps towards being a zero-waste festival in association with the chennai Caleta rivera as a part of this endeavor we are working to reduce the use of plastic bottles and bags water will be available from bubble tops placed all around and request you to please fill your bottles from these and for shopping please bring your own bags for those of you active on social media do follow us on the Hindu Latifah Life page on Facebook Twitter and Instagram and if you're posting about the festival please use the hashtag LFL two zero one nine we would like to take a minute to thank our 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civilian order honors for public service so Hasani Haider is the diplom editor of the Hindu and writes regularly on foreign policy issues over the course of a 22-year career in journalism she has covered the most challenging stories and conflicts from the subcontinent and Beyond including Pakistan Sri Lanka Libya Lebanon and Syria why can't India and Pakistan be friends please welcome Husain Haqqani and Suhasini Haider [Applause] thank you very much good morning and happy Pongal to everyone thank you so much for making the time this morning for the first session which I can only assure you will be a good fiery start and I hope you do have lots of questions because the one thing Hussein and I have discussed is leaving a lot of time and space for the questions the truth is and we see it now much more because these are issues we talk about as well but it's very hard to be clear-eyed about the country that one lives in yet I think Husain Haqqani who's a former ambassador a politician adviser to several Pakistani leaders you know has managed to be brutally clear about not just Pakistan the land where he grew up but what every country he has dealt with engaged with and lived in the United States where he now lives and even India which he visits frequently so what he says is as much about his personal experiences as it is about this ability to cut through if you like a lot of the a lot of the noise that surrounds us in a world really shorn of permanent heroes in a sense we yearn for heroes and yearn for good leadership he is carved a part that's based on facts on archives conversations only he was privy to through these books between the mosque and military magnificent illusions reimagining Pakistan and India vs. Pakistan why can't we just be friends so we expect no less as he answers this question to begin with you know they used to say this about economics where there was this professor who would we would show up every year and during the exams he would have exactly the same question and when they said how can you ask your students exactly the same question every year he said because the answers change but the question remains the same so if we just start with that first question why can't we just be friends I think that the answer to that has also not changed the reason why we haven't been friends is because after 1947 we have or at least some constituencies within our countries have chosen to see each other not as neighbors not as potential friends but as enemies the process started with a tougher view on the Pakistani side I have pointed it out many many times that the terms of partition left Pakistan with 19 percent of British India's population 17 percent of its economic resources but 33 percent of British India's army so when the only thing going for you is a large army then the first thing you need is an enemy and and and and so that's what unlike other countries other unlike other countries that raise an army proportionate to the size of the threat they face Pakistan ended up creating a threat proportionate to the size of its army so that was on the Pakistani side on the Indian side on the Indian side what happened was that in the beginning there was an attitude of shall we say yeah these I mean Gandhi who was the most generous towards Pakistan and at the time of its creation said this is like a member of a joint family moving out of the joint family home but that's not how India treated Pakistan let's be honest most people in even yesterday I was around here several people kept walking up to me saying you know but why can't we just why can't Pakistan just stop existing kind of why can't be one country again sometimes when a member of the joint family moves out the way to deal with it is to say you know what we are not going to debate why you moved out forever let's just try and have a normal relationship that hasn't always been the case and then more recently because of Pakistan military's desire to perpetuate animosity towards India we got into the cycle of terrorism which has then changed even the softer attitudes in India towards Pakistan so 15 years ago 20 years ago there were a lot of people in India who kind of looked at Pakistan in a pragmatic sense and said okay it exists we're going to be friends let's see how we can be friends Mumbai the images of that have hardened up attitudes here and your own internal politics is now playing into it so there was a time when there was no votes in bashing Pakistan now some people say there are and so that has also contributed so both sides have the responsibility we could be very good neighbors we could be like ironically it was Muhammad Ali Jinnah the founder of Pakistan who when he was asked what would be the relationship between Pakistan and India like he said it should be like the relationship between Canada and the United States the longest border in the world without a military presence open border trade travel largest trading partners just one point that the audience might not know and they will find more such details if they read the book South Asia was the most integrated region in the world in 1947 all the way from Kabul to Rangoon you could travel it was one integrated communication system one integrated banking system one currency etcetera etcetera now it is the least integrated region in the world and that happened as a result of 1947 and our responses to it look sad events happen in history breakups happen but it is what you make up of the breakup and I think that we didn't make a very sort of we didn't respond well to that breakup both sides and that's why we are not friends at the moment in your book so you spoke about these structural problems and in your book there are three or four things that you say happened around 1947 which perhaps one can't just you know just undo one was you actually say there was no plan for the day after they were that the Jinnah didn't really think it through perhaps he didn't think it was going to happen or he just thought things would fall into place how can you have such a huge event one which saw you know hundreds of thousands killed and and out of their homes and the kind of lasting trauma we have seen you have an event like this which is not really planned for before it and yet it so harshly we all I mean we are sitting in India this great subcontinent this great civilization is full of historic examples of doing things without thinking through the consequences and and so and so weeks had exactly that so for example just one example quite often in Pakistan it is said that Kashmir is the bone of contention how did it become a bone of contention here's how there were more than 500 princely states the British had said that the two dominions India and Pakistan will have to negotiate with the with the states that were contiguous to them and depending on the population makeup whether it was more Hindu more Muslim and then they will negotiate with the government's and accede to them well there were more than 500 of these states that were going to be closer to India and the would be Indian government the Communist Party negotiated with all of them except for four had not yet made up their mind Kashmir Hyderabad June June agur and I think one other anyway some some states just four or five on the Pakistani side none had been negotiated with negotiated with so until March 1948 when qalaat was forcibly taken over by the Pakistan Army Pakistan was still dealing with figuring out that these are these different states are they going to come to Pakistan or not there was no process the Muslim League had no plan that they made the decision to make Karachi the capital on an emotional basis because mr. Jinnah was born there it was a small sleepy coastal town you won't even imagine that now but in the 1941 census it was four hundred thousand people all of a sudden a huge government of a huge country was going to be based there they had been a provincial capital for only a few years they didn't have the infrastructure in Pakistani narratives is shown as a great achievement of Pakistan that we had nothing and then we built it but they didn't have to have nothing they could have made Lahore the interim capital which was going to be which was the capital of the Punjab huge Punjab province and then because Punjab was divided therefore there was a lot more space created in the offices there etcetera but they chose not to do it and on the economic side also they had no plan and lastly when Mountbatten suggested that we should have a joint governor-general for a year or two so that the assets between the two countries can be divided mr. Jinnah said no because he wanted British officers to continue as governors etc so he said but Muslims are going to say why isn't a Muslim in charge so I have to be governor-general to reassure them so he became governor-general there was no joint governor-general and ironically if you read the State Bank of Pakistan annual report it still has a provision Pakistan's assets still held by the Reserve Bank of India basically this is money that was not given because the riots broke out Kashmir broke out etcetera and that was withheld and Pakistan still claims that that money is ours I think the government has just clarified that it's not going to so so it took 71 years for you to say that we can't we won't give you the money and it has still not taken us enough time to recognize we're never going to get that money so that was the extent of the lack of planning right there was also this idea perhaps that the borders would stay open and they did so Hosny people don't realize that from 1947 to 1951 you did not need a passport to move between the borders people moved 51 we created the Citizenship Act because a lot of Muslims from specially yupi decided that they are going to find their fortune in Pakistan as many were moving and the people said oh we can't have an open border forever because then the Muslims from India will be coming they didn't realize that about three or four five decades later people in India will start telling India's Muslims who chose to stay on that you know why don't you go to Pakistan so also some others journalists intellectuals later people yeah yeah many people are being told to go to Pakistan the problem is many of us well I am from Pakistan carry a Pakistan passport and I'm still not welcome there and and and and so you can imagine how difficult it would be because the irony is that the one person who did go to Pakistan is the Prime Minister himself yes indeed but but but going back so so there was open borders and 51 then it stopped but until 1965 there was no visa you could still travel without a visa 65 what changed that now the border has become harder and harder 2018 I ran into the Pakistani High Commissioners spouse here at the event and she mentioned very proudly that 60,000 visas have been issued to Pakistanis now if two neighbors who were one country just 71 years ago and in Pakistan there's at least 3 million families including mine who have relatives here close relatives if only 60,000 people coming fifty thousand of them coming for medical treatment is somehow a positive achievement then you can imagine how bad the situation is we really needed open borders but we didn't get them all right is one of the problems and you deal with this and obviously there's 70 years of history that masseter Haqqani has been able to deal with in 168 pages page books so I do urge you to read it but it's one of the problems either the underestimation of the lasting impact of partition I ask you this because in every decade you know we have a habit of trying to blame our leadership of today for being myopic or you know the ISI the deep state in Pakistan trying to wreck ties but in every decade of our relationship there have been major missed opportunities there is a there is a description I think in one book of a car ride that Prime Minister Nehru took along with President I you and this car ride for a went to Murray this was a visit Prime Minister Nehru went for a week to Pakistan unthinkable today for the Prime Minister to do that but he went for a week in order to sign the Indus water record which for everything still lasts so many decades later and they were supposed to on this ride be able to discuss the final contours of the Kashmiri resolution this never happened either their mood was off or whatever so you know the the the history of India and Pakistan seems to be dotted with these what ifs what if Indira Gandhi had had the Simla Accord directly after the 71 war when they were very very you know strong push factors from both sides to resolve what if Cargill had not followed Prime Minister Vajpayee visit to law or what if Pathan coat hadn't followed Prime Minister Modi's visit so do you think there is a sense on both sides that they underestimate the lasting impact I'll tell you it's it's it's actually emotional I have often described an American audience usually the very ill informed audience on international matters and they often ask me once I was asked on NBC television that can you explain the india-pakistan relationship in 30 seconds so I had to really think on my feet so I I turned around and I said well think of a couple that has a bitter divorce and the one who wanted to leave can't forgive the other for not making it easy to leave them and the one who'd left won't forgive them for for not being kinda in the in the breaker and then throwing nuclear weapons in that bitter divorce and so the Americans of course immediately lapped it up because they like the way it was raised but the truth is we've always had this bitter divorce phenomenon each time we have had a logical sort of process of okay this is what we need to do the negotiations take place and one or the other side kind of starts worrying and being suspicious but the two great opportunities one was the I you Carnera moment I remember that very well because I was a school boy at that time and in Pakistan what they used to do is probably still do is that they bring school children out when some foreign dignitaries coming and give you flags of both countries to wave you know so you're so you're a six or seven year old standing with an Indian flag and a Pakistani flag waving maybe that image has stayed in my head and I still want that image to come back someday when we can actually do that but at that time what happened was that I uhand was actually planning to deceive Prime Minister Nehru because he was already planning the 1965 war it was typical deception because what had happened was that Americans had provided Pakistan with this huge military assistance and new Patton tanks had arrived and F's and and the Sabre Jets and Pakistan thought we have a one is to three size difference between the militaries but we have a technical and tactical advantage now that's the problem with having generals in charge I mean I was on a panel with general Robert in Delhi the other day and I said you know what you have a good thing going that civilians make major decisions don't upset that please because the problem is that the military mind is not trained to think beyond locating the enemy and liquidating the enemy so a you can't while he was negotiating was also thinking as a military man and in military terms he was thinking of how he will use the advantage that he will get once he has new tanks and new planes so that that opportunity was lost because of that the 72 opportunity 71 72 opportunity was lost because Indra Gandhi trusted a fellow politician bad move will fiqar Ali Bhutto said to her let's sign this similar Accord and let's keep certain things for the future so that I have some some way of being able to tell my military that I did not completely give in although that was a great moment Pakistan had lost one wing India held prisoners of war and that was the time to say let's have a kind of a final decision about our longer-term relationship and so Shekhar Alberto said I will not be able to do that because politically the military will then say to me that I gave in too much and subsequently of course he was overthrown so as soon as the Allnut came into office he started saying the similar Accord was a Accord under duress so therefore it cannot be the basis of our relationship so that one went then again Kargil another general thinking that he can take military advantage of the peace moves if Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister watched I had been able to move along I think they would have had some yattaman one sing in and we sheriff did actually but again the man wants a Musharraf piece again Musharraf being a military man kept it behind the scenes I'm not that uh positive about it as some people here are because he never went to the people of Pakistan or to the Pakistani military and say it's in our interest to become friends the real thing is that somebody has to convince those people who have been brought up on textbooks in Pakistan that are full of negativity that say that India and Pakistan you know the Hindus and Muslims were two streams that flow next to each other but never overlap there you know we have nothing in common it's like rewriting history and if you have that mindset then the way to change it is by saying but you know what it's in our advantage to have a positive relationship we need it for our economic well-being we need it for our social and and and cultural well-being we have so much in common we have 5,000 years of shared history and only 71 years of partition and if we put it that way then it will be easier to move forward and Musharraf didn't do that I do want to come back to how we rewrite this history together and and try to look for the future but you mentioned at the beginning of what you said about emotions the idea that perhaps it is you know that we have some lasting residual emotions that makes us unable to be friends yet we don't actually feel comfortable with the enemity I want to tell you a story in 2013 there was a lot of anger in India because an Indian prisoner in Pakistan who had been on death row was killed inside prisons Arabs eat sing and I went to cover his funeral the atmosphere was tense there was a lot of anger there was a lot of protests against Pakistan at this village that he came from picky wind in in Punjab which is near the border and it was it was very genuine anger I finished my coverage and then maybe two weeks later went across the border to cover the elections in Pakistan Nawaz Sharif won those elections and when I returned almost in the same areas of Punjab people were holding up board you know science saying come to India you know son of Punjab and all the rest of that and this is exactly the same population so my question and particularly since we have a largely chennai-based audience over here when we talk about this emotion this lasting legacy is this really the thing between India and Pakistan or is it just about the two Punjab's well Curt are poor corridor being opened and being presented in Pakistan as a big step forward shows that it's about Punjab look Pakistan after the loss of East Pakistan and the creation of Bangladesh and the independence of Bangladesh Pakistan is now fully dominated by Punjab but even before that in 1947 the army Pakistan got was largely Punjabi and when job had a disproportionate share in in Pakistan even in the civil services etcetera they were the people who went from here the UPI t'set cetera from the ICS the rest were all from there now the Baloch the Cyndi's and the Pashtuns don't have the same views of relations with India that the Punjabis have had partly because they're members of the family are in the military partly because they are the ones who have been at the forefront of the Wars partly that's where the military heroes are that's where the war heroes are so therefore the jingoism is very much based there on the Indian side also there are all these Punjabis who actually come from families that were very prosperous on the Pakistani side Punjab is the only region where there was virtual ethnic cleansing no Hindus and Sikhs left on the Pakistani side virtually no Muslims except in Malaya quarter I left in on the Indian side the rest of the places there was very little migration I mean every now and then you run into a Muslim in China who says one of my uncle's he was in the civil service so he decided he's going to Pakistan but the rest of our families all here so I often used to joke at one point when I was in government that the best way to have india-pakistan negotiations is for the Pakistani delegation to comprise Indies Baloch Pashtuns maybe an odd word ooh speaking Mahajan and the Indian delegation to be completely comprised of South Indians and maybe an aura or a Bengali but no Punjabis here's what they do when you when you see the Punjabis they meet they also always do this what I call Jaffe poppy you know they already know it well there was a particularly famous hug a few months ago between the Pakistani chief and all these hugs they speak in Punjabi at night if they are sort of you know out of sight of cameras they'll have a scotch together and do Bhangra you know the Pakistani side doesn't want to have scotch in public view because that becomes a religious issue and and they'll do the Bhangra and all that but they will never settle anything whereas whereas the others so for example if you go back in history all the negotiations serious negotiations etc whenever you had a non Punjabi foreign secretary or a foreign minister they were able to negotiate on with the Pakistani side a little bit more realistically because this is a relationship between two countries for God's sake it has to be dealt with that way it can't be like you know sort of based on Oh a sense of loss for the for the Hindu and Sikh Punjabis and a sense of sort of military grandeur on the side of on the other side of Pakistani Punjabis this has to be about two countries look many countries have had difficult relationships in history Germany and France have fought more Germany and France have been around for a long time Pakistan as an idea maybe eight years old as a country 71 years old why do we have to pretend that we have a ancient history of hatred we don't and we don't need to and on the Indian side also there has to be a realization that maybe we can't undo the partition but we can still have a much more integrated region in which we are really neighbours who get along you know you make a very powerful point and yet one could only wish that it was this simple just simply given the history let's look a little bit into the future there is a new government in Pakistan and certainly the Imran Khan government has made the outreaches if you like want to start talks has decided to open the Kartarpur corridor do you think all the factors that have held back India and Pakistan's relations including the structural ones you referred to do you think that this they will hold back all dialog in the future we are now looking at 10 years this year in 2018 we ended 10 years of no real dialogue but before those 10 years we had 46 rounds of meetings at the highest level 46 presidents prime ministers prime ministers Prime Minister's etc and none of the foundational issues have been resolved how I mean look I'm a Pakistani but even I can't find justification for why half aside should remain free the people who puppet perpetrated Mumbai should remain free and still India should feel obligated to talk to the government that does not act against them it and and and so therefore I think that unless there is a major change in conduct in action I don't think this stalemate will end now as far as i'm ron khan is concerned you do know my critique of him i have written about it Imran Khan who was known at Oxford University as in the dim is not a particularly bright person he's a cricket celebrity so I can understand everybody who who likes cricket is Prime Minister we will come we will come to that you know but but even if you love him for cricket the last time he played cricket was in 1992 so that's a long way away and lastly his political career his last push towards power has essentially been maneuvered and manipulated by the Pakistani military so he has won not in a free and fair contest he has won by everybody else's hands being tied behind their back that's that's true of every Pakistan not necessarily that's not true we do have we have had fair political contests that have been one by one side or another in case of Imran Khan the problem is that he is so beholden to the military and the intelligence services that he will never take an initiative that is not completely cleared by them now I should've did and he paid a price for it he was called Modica yar in the election campaign by Imran Khan so very frankly if Nawaz Sharif was Modica yar and therefore he was a kadar or traitor then why would Imran Khan if he becomes Modica yar or the yar of the successor of Modi as Prime Minister if there is one then why will my will that same game and same episode not be repeated I want to stop you right there because this is a this is a conflict we often deal with there are those who say we can't deal with Pakistan because the Army in Pakistan is against better ties with India on the other hand we also say that the Army is the real power in Pakistan we dealt with President Musharraf who was the army chief for close on a decade the fact is what's wrong with having I mean every country has its own structure so if one has to deal with the Pakistani Prime Minister for India it doesn't it make sense just to deal with one who gets also Hosny I am NOT against I'm not against anybody dealing with anybody I am just considering your question all the thing would it be would it result in something positive look we we meet a lot of people pro-forma we just say hello and you know but as long as we know that that is not going to result in romance and then after that marriage then we are realistic now if you are going to think that everybody you know there's that famous or do couplet that those Tata and he her hath Melania wallah that you know everybody who shakes your hand is not going to become your friend if so as long as you have that awareness and that realism then that's fine I'm unfortunately as you said in the beginning to clear-eyed to sort of fall for fluff and I think that any suggestion look I'll tell you five fluff stories after xel-há died and benazir bhutto has elected prime minister the go check it by the way the media line at that time was Rajiv Gandhi benazir bhutto both represent the post partition generation so therefore they will be able to resolve the problems okay didn't happen then watch pi and Nawaz Sharif will be able to resolve the problems because both represent conservative nationalism one represents Muslim nationalism because he is leader of the Muslim League the other one represents Hindu nationalism because he's from the BJP this is the great opportunity didn't happen then Musharraf and Manmohan Singh both sort of you know people who are not from the political world more one is a technocrat the other is a military general and both born in each other's countries etcetera etcetera and therefore more open one wants in his deep heart he wants to go back to Jhelum the other one in his deep heart still wants to go back to Delhi so we will have peace didn't happen then mr. Sardar he comes after Benazir Bhutto's assassination and it said you know what non punjabi leader elected has lost his wife to terrorism wants to deal with terrorism and he did but nothing happened so my point is now it is celebrity cricket celebrity with lots of romance with other cricket players and Bollywood personalities but and he will deliver spent a lot of time in India and but ain't gonna happen because the fact of the matter is the nations come together based on the shared visions and I don't see that vision either in Imran Khan or the willingness on the side of the current Indian leadership to make any moves that will result in a longer-term solution the solution is what I say stop looking at each other as enemies Pakistan has to deliver on the subject of terrorism so that the Indians can actually feel that the animosity has diminished somewhat on the Indian side a a little more generosity of understanding that you know what partition or there is no way you can undo part by a partition with nuclear weapons on both sides a little more realism there stops telling people are your own people your own citizens to go to Pakistan and start dealing with Pakistan as the next-door neighbor that you need to have a positive relationship with as I said it's clear right even when you want him to be hopeful it's not like ambassador I am very hopeful please don't ever say that I am NOT hopeful I only say that hope is basically not a method you have to have you know you can have hope in your heart but your head should always have clarity about how that hope will materialize alright fair enough I I want to turn now to the audience for questions but I do also want to to share a story about the difference between reality and where we see our states at present and just to lighten the atmosphere from all all the pessimism that we've had we very realistically deal with today a few months ago I was in Uzbekistan third country at a Sufi music festival the big performer was supposed to be from Delhi from the Delhi guarana he hadn't come there was a Pakistani group of Kavala who went on stage and they performed at the end of their performance the entire audience was on their feet clapping and when they finished performing the audience started to chant we love India we love India so the the the kaval stood up you know folded his hands and said thank you very much I love India - but I'm Pakistani so perhaps I I loved Pakistan more and you know when you see that kind of a picture in reality you just come back to the question we started with really why can't we so harshly you know even though I'm in the South and not everybody speaks Urdu or Hindi but there's a very famous poem of our poet Fez a mouth Fez revolutionary poet which starts with a couplet and I'll translate it in English for the benefit of those who do not know the language that hunka today Aegina be it Nima Dhara talk about / burning a Aashna kidney melaka talk about we we who have become strangers after sharing so many moments and so much so much time of togetherness I cannot start to speculate how long it would take for us to become acquainted once again could I just see how many people have questions and then we can oh my god there are quite a few so I will ask the leader and just please have questions at the end of it and not very long hello hello hello good morning just hold on there's a gentleman here and then you can go next it was always alleged that the British had a rule if that was true why India and Pakistan after five years of honesty negotiations could have become one country India became fortune 40 47 if their if their idea was such that that bad then why did why did they not become one country just after five years of intense negotiation at least to prove the British wrong that's a very interesting question there was a general hello I actually like like every year there will be so many strikes from the Pakistani from from the Pakistani border and they're attacking the villages and all they're about thirty forty you know and they don't wanna up you know whenever there is a there is a discussion with are now banned all they say when we don't know so there are terrorists there they don't belong to over me you know they don't even one up Kasab right the don't even own up cassava is the denial from Pakistan really at the base of the problem there's a lady at the back over there okay so go ahead go ahead first sir go ahead you don't have to stand up it's do you think the rigidly on the Pakistan side arose out of the Islamization of Pakistan during xel-há regime alright and the lady at the back if I can just give her the mic really take four questions and then we come back for another room hi thank you very much for that discussion I work a little bit in the borders of Rajasthan close to Pakistan and this fear psychosis that's recently been creeping into India I must say with a lot of confidence that it is mostly in the urban areas in rural Rajasthan where people continue to live there isn't that much fear in fact the BSF is comfortably playing cricket all the time what is the sort of fear that exists in Pakistan on the other side do they fear India or do they still see us as friendly faces at least okay so the last question is easiest to answer I think that I think what you have to prepare yourself our understanding is that both countries know very little about each other on a day to day basis when you don't travel to each other and now there was a time I served as Pakistan secretary information and broadcasting side and it signed an agreement which said Indian newspapers will have correspondents in Pakistan Pakistani newspapers will have correspondents in India television channels the same it isn't the situation so there are virtually no Indian journalists reporting from the well as a pending application for a few years or so there's no resident correspondents and you don't really know that much I mean there's a little bit of Bollywood sort of projection of what happens in Pakistan but most of you don't really have a feel for the country and vice versa so that ignorance definitely plays a hand on the Pakistani side I must say that there is a lot more hostility and propaganda starts from the schoolbooks goes on television goes and everything it's a more recent phenomenon in my observation and I may be wrong on the Indian side but now you also have the sort of hysterical you know why are why aren't we doing this that or the other to Pakistan etc and so therefore I'm glad that on the rural side that's not the case I think the Rajasthan border on is on the synth site Cindi villages also so we've had surveys in Pakistan and they indicate that in Balochistan in send in Pashtun WA there is very little negative feeling towards India Punjab slightly stronger and again more an urban phenomenon I call it a contrived animosity a cultivated animosity it's not instinctive it's not like when I meet any of you you meet me you see an enemy in me in fact many of you if you didn't know who I was you would think I was just another dude from the north india and and and that's exactly how it should and and would have been the question that was asked before you about denial I think I am one of the biggest critics of Pakistani denial I've always said that Pakistan should acknowledge what it has done in the past to be able to not do it in the future and and and and and the fact that we deny say for example that there was the what happened in Mumbai was a travesty and that Pakistanis were involved in it that denial in itself carries the seed for suspicion and fear on the Indian side which I see as justified then there was the question about well yeah yeah well I think we re you know reuniting to prove somebody wrong is less important than reuniting because you have shared history and you have shared interest and you have shared concerns but but look we can debate history forever you are these days you are debating everything about history from Iran catalyst to to the modern era so the truth is that the way forward lies in accepting what is and what is is that we unfortunately have a border between us and we have a situation where we are three countries now instead of two in 1947 there were two now there are three but we can still be we can still have a lot of commonality there are many places in the world where there are countries that were created for example almost all of Latin America except Brazil speak Spanish they are kind of united by culture and yet there are many many countries and yet they find common ground and act together there's much that is in common and instead of emphasizing the difference we need to emphasize the commonality we can be multiple countries and yet be a great civilization so I sometimes say to the people when they say to me what you've become very quote unquote pro-indian I said no no no I'm a Pakistani by citizenship but I am an Indian by civilization because there is no power the creation of a new the creation of a new country 71 years ago doesn't mean a new civilization has been born the civilization I am part of is still the Indian civilization and so that's the attitude that might work a little bit better and then there was so so if you read my writings you will find that I argue that general zia heightened everything but Pakistan was already on a slippery slope slope before that in 1949 Pakistan adopted the differences that before Zia Paxson's elite was very westernized and now in non-western eyes more Islamist elite also arose that's the difference otherwise in rhetoric in what we were trying to accomplish even a UConn started teaching you know in our courses I was as as I said a school student then and in our textbooks thoughts were thrown in about how Pakistan was inevitable because the Muslim and the Hindu could never get along etcetera etcetera and and and and and so I think that the the Islamization heightened things but there was a problem that had already started soon after independence in 1948 structure and that is the structural issue here's the structural issue Zia once said actually one of his official said in an interview that if we are not Islamic what are we are we second-rate Indians so it was like an identity thing you know how do you create a Pakistani identity because you know what when I'm meeting dal chawal am i eating Indian doll or am i eating Pakistani dal chawal you know am i if I'm listening to Iraq you know is it an Indian drug or a Pakistani and then when the walls koala's play in Uzbekistan are they doing Cavalli is Amir Khusro Pakistani or is he Indian of course so that has led to this contrived over Islamization otherwise look we had a politician called wali Han who was the son of bacha Han of Han Abdul Ghaffar Khan and he used to say I have been a Pashtun for 5000 years I have been a Muslim for 1400 years and I'm a Pakistani only for 50 years because I'm 50 [Applause] one of the irreconcilable contentions that both the countries have is the border itself where Indians say it is Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and that side they say Indian Occupied Kashmir so now this seems to go on and on and the contention seems to be happening quite a bit on this so how is there a solution to this particular question that's my question okay go ahead all right that's a nice question one is do you feel mr. Jinnah's early death has created some gap between us secondly whether the present Kashmir present Kashmir status can be a permanent border and that can be sold to Pakistan there's one lady with a mic yes madam please in the ball creases with regards to your statement about being Indian in civilization but Pakistani and citizenship but a better part of that civilization is also shared by the side of Pakistan so what would be your answer to to that because if we are going to see it in black and white as an Indian civilization versus a new Pakistan cept you keep repeating that Pakistan is just 71 years old but my question is made much of our culture is shared and much of that culture is from that side of the border so how would you how would you then well I think sir I'm John from Hyderabad I saw your name in the speaker list and booked my tickets to attend this event very kind of you thank you my question is about people-to-people ties internet and particularly YouTube has helped people understand that life lifestyle and culture is not very different from what it is in India on both sides a lot of Indian youtubers have become a big hit in Pakistan and Indians watch Pakistani content as well I see a lot of comments on the YouTube video saying love from Pakistan etc Canada come when the people-to-people ties get very strong mostly help because of the internet and the foreign policy is altered because of it on both sides so my answer to your question is actually a hopeful one I really want that to happen and and I and I think we should make it happen we should make it happen that people should realize the common threads people should realize that look the lady asked me about civilization versus countries Western civilization is one entity but that doesn't mean Belgium is not a separate country from France that doesn't mean Germany is not separate country from the Netherlands that doesn't mean you know Italy is not separate from France Spain and Portugal yet country and civilization are two different things and you have to acknowledge all elements of that civilization as I understood your question an Indian civilization is not a Hindu civilization it's not a Muslim civilization is the civilization of everybody who constitutes India and civilizations evolved so to say that there's a particular date on which the civilization was born civilization is not an individual so you can't say that civilization was born 5,000 years ago and then it hasn't changed since then no it has transformed over the years and 1400 years of Muslims being here has also influenced and vice versa the so so that I think is is interconnected to your question Jonathan and then as far as Kashmir is concerned let me just say that if you want to fight you can find a dozen reasons to fight but if you want to be friends you can find one reason to become friends now as far as the acceptance of the line of control etc and because it's very interesting again I would advise you to read the book but it's a small book I wrote it as a small brook deliberately because long books people get scared this is just about 170 pages less than 170 pretty easy to read and with lots of anecdotes and stories and one of the stories is how many times this suggestion has been made except the line of control with some adjustments in 1963 the biggest offer was made to Pakistan which was 5,400 square miles more territory in Kashmere readjust the line and what is now known as the line of control in those days it was called the ceasefire line let us adjust it a little bit more so that you get a more coherent geographical area and let's settle for it look a negotiation by definition means meeting halfway if I say hundred and you say one then we can settle on 50 but if I say hundred and you say one and we don't agree to anything in between then that's not a negotiation so I think in the end they will have to be a negotiated settlement and that will include this but I have a different vision and my vision is that if India and Pakistan we will have an open border we will have a investment in each other we'll have people travelling freely from from one country to another we'll have Pakistani students studying in your universities and your students studying in Pakistan universities Sikh Pakistani is coming to your medical institutions for treatment and and and surgery and vice versa Pakistani actors working in your movies and Indian actors working in Pakistani movies and people like me not being called a traitor in Pakistan and being hailed here but vice versa moving around then where the line of control is will be irrelevant anyway won't it I have to leave it yeah but I think ambassador Haqqani will be available later as well and please do no I'm sorry we can't we can't take any more quickly hey how can how can people be happy without something being said against the United States so something not being said I am saying I said look as far as the third parties concerned hostility between two can be fanned by somebody else can be facilitated by somebody else it can be financially and militarily supported by somebody else but it can't be fostered by somebody else I think the United States by arming the Pakistani military and providing it resources has probably heightened its own instincts which are which were already there I don't think that it is fair to say that the United States has kept us enemies I think that decision lie lay with us and has always laid as always being with us thank you so much I'll hand over to you

Channel: The Hindu

Views: 225,228

Keywords: The Hindu Lit for Life 2019, LFL 2019, Husain Haqqani, India, Pakistan, Indo-Pak relations

Id: VOF19wHrFyA

Length: 52min 59sec (3179 seconds)

Published: Thu Mar 07 2019