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Business News/ Opinion / Online-views/  Outside in | Lines on a map? Time to unleash South Asian energies
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Outside in | Lines on a map? Time to unleash South Asian energies

Modi must resist the temptation of viewing South Asia through the history and prism of India-Pakistan ties

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. Photo: PTIPremium
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (left) and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif. Photo: PTI

Ex-prime minister Manmohan Singh, a soft-spoken man of few words, has left little behind by way of quotable quotes. But two remarks stand out, and both have to do with his view of South Asia—perhaps appropriately for a man who was born in Goh, in what is now Pakistan.

The first quote comes from a visionary statement Singh made at a public rally in Amritsar in 2006, a year after holding peace talks with Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf, one of those extroverts whose company seemed to stimulate the economist-prime minister.

Speaking in Punjabi, Manmohan Singh said, “...borders cannot be redrawn but we can work towards making them irrelevant—towards making them just lines on a map. People on both sides of the LOC (line of control) should be able to move more freely and trade with one another. I also envisage a situation where the two parts of Jammu and Kashmir can, with the active encouragement of the governments of India and Pakistan, work out cooperative, consultative mechanisms so as to maximize the gains of cooperation in solving problems of social and economic development of the region."

The following, according to Sanjaya Baru, the prime minister’s then media advisor, are the steps listed in the Manmohan-Musharraf formula:

Step 1. Make LOC a line on a map by freeing up cross-LOC travel and trade. In effect, life for people of Kashmir would return to the pre-Partition era, as if there was no border. 2. Strengthen local self-government on both sides, so people elect their own government, if necessary under international supervision. 3. Joint or cooperative institutions under Kashmiri leaders take charge of all matters of common interest, except foreign policy and defence. 4: Agreed withdrawal of troops on both sides.

There were other important building blocks of peace discussed by Musharraf and Singh. In October 2010, Musharraf, sitting in his plush west London flat, talked to me about some areas where he and Singh had worked out solutions, including Sir Creek, a 96-km strip of water sandwiched between the marshes of the Rann of Kutch, and Siachen Glacier.

“Both the navies in my time have carried out joint survey of the creek and its extension into the EEZ (exclusive economic zone) into the sea. So we know the exact conflict area—why can’t we solve it? You can declare it as a no-go area for both sides not to enter, or you could say this is a joint holding for joint explorations to be carried out," he said.

“I was ready for any solution."

On Kashmir, his words resonated Singh’s optimism. The two men had worked out, he said, “some parameters of graduated demilitarization, giving of maximum self-governance, and thirdly an over-watch mechanism involving India, Pakistan and Kashmiris."

“There was good agreement."

Narendra Modi, Singh’s successor, took a stunning decision by inviting the leaders of all South Asian nations, plus Mauritius, to his swearing-in ceremony this week. But the broader significance of the event is in danger of being swallowed up by Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s dramatic last-minute decision to accept the invitation.

There’s an interesting history—and long may it remain dumped in history’s dustbin—to relations between the trio of Modi, Singh and Sharif. After a meeting with Singh in New York last year. Sharif reportedly likened the Indian leader to a “dehati aurat" (Hindi/Urdu for village woman), seeking the services of a third person (the US in this case) to help resolve a local dispute.

Modi immediately jumped to the defence of his political rival. “How dare you (Sharif) address my nation’s prime minister as a village woman? There cannot be a bigger insult of the Indian prime minister," he told a rally in New Delhi. “We can fight with him (Singh) over policies, but we will not tolerate this. This nation of 1.2 billion will not tolerate its prime minister’s insult."

A year on, there are many more grown up things for the two leaders to talk about, and trade is set to top the agenda of bilateral ties in the Modi years. But Modi must resist the temptation of viewing South Asia through the history and prism of India-Pakistan ties. The other nations of the region—Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal and Sri Lanka—all need Modi’s attention, although provocations such as terrorism can test any leader’s resolve.

India and all of the above nations have one common challenge more than anything else to try and overcome—their endemic, deep and persistent poverty.

It exists across what the Nepali journalist and writer Kanak Mani Dixit, the publisher of the South Asian magazine Himal, calls the “arc of poverty"—all countries and states running from Bangladesh to Sindh and Baluchistan, except the National Capital Region of Delhi, Punjab, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.

Dixit told me, “If Modi’s interest in South Asia isn’t just a matter of momentary bravado, then the trigger of cross-border commerce and connectivity through roads, tourism and visas can lead to progress. Also, commercial rationalization will help lift areas of South Asia. Otherwise, bhai-bhai-ism (brotherhood) will evaporate with the first crisis."

Modi should look West, too. Europe has just had its latest round of elections to its Strasbourg-based Parliament. In spite of the unsettling rise of the anti-European Right wing, it remains a continent whose 28 member-nations, for the most part, are open to each other’s citizens. Just as Singh told an audience of industrialists in 2007: “I dream of a day when, while retaining our respective national identities, one can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. That is how my forefathers lived. That is how I want my grandchildren to live."

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Published: 30 May 2014, 06:25 PM IST
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