NEW DELHI— Delhi becomes eerie when it loses power. With the prime minister having shifted camp to a hospital in Bombay, Delhi has become a city of echoes. The Prime Minister’s Office is the heart as well as the solar plexus of the city; it is only fair to note that the brain of the government is a collective entity, and spread glutinously a cross many corridors.
But with the PMO this is a hollow city and government is a shadow play. Even a Cabinet meeting, presided over by Home Minister L.K. Advani, was only a cursory exercise in semantics, a signal toward some notional hierarchy that has very little value when the moment of decision arrives.
Congress prime ministers also used to nominate a “Cabinet presider” in their absence, which permitted the nominee to preen around for a little before his spread feathers got clipped by the likes of R.K. Dhawan (kings employ barbers).
Ministers who have any real work either wait for the prime minister to return, or take a flight if the matter is urgent. This, for instance, is what External Affairs Minister Jaswant Singh did on Friday when he was in the process of finalizing a date for the Musharraf visit to Delhi; he flew down to Bombay to consult the boss.
Democracy does not believe in any parallel order; the only serious difference with royalty is that the people are given the absolute right to overthrow a king by reasonably peaceful means. It is as simple as that. Or, if you are Number 2, as complicated as that. In the absence of power, even gossip becomes pale.
For a change Delhi, usually in love with its own voice, is hearing what others have to say. Its two ears are cocked in two directions. One is toward the PMO camp in Bombay, and the other is toward Islamabad, particularly now that Chief Executive Gen. Pervez Musharraf has said that he is coming to change history.
The arrival of history always tends to make me nervous. Most mortals are simply not equipped to handle anything so momentous as history; ordinary life is difficult enough. Leaders who stare at history so often lose the plot. We shall leave aside E.H. Carr, who wrote a full book in answer to the question What is History? And discovered, like a good academic, that there was no consensus.
Even for less complicated minds history asks too many questions, most of them from history. Is history terminal? Does it begin somewhere, does it have a destination, and are there stops in between for rest, recreation and refueling? Is history made by decisions or is it a process?
Am I being impertinent because all I have to do is write a column while more serious people in Delhi have to serve the nation? Or, sometimes, two nations?
Gen. Musharraf has already established a reputation in India. Indians do not consider him to be right on every thing, far from that; but they do think he is forthright on everything. This last word is important. Indian and Pakistani politicians have not hesitated to be forthright about each other; they have been more circumspect about their own failings.
Gen. Musharraf has built up credibility by his candor, during interviews with media and at public meetings, by his candor about the damage that fundamentalist organizations do by their excesses. No one has described Pakistan’s Jamaat-e-Islami as pithily as him. The general called the chief of Pakistan’s Jamaat a lunatic. I can’t see the Amir (chief) of India’s Jamaat-e-Islami queuing up to meet the general in July.
Such straight talk must be raising more than a quiver of concern among the more ardent jihadis who want permanent war between India and Pakistan over Kashmir rather than a settlement. Perhaps the general meant that he wanted to change facts rather than change history. That would be a more acceptable goal. The danger of raising the profile of the coming summit is that anything less than a dramatic finale will be considered a letdown.
Failure and success, particularly on a matter as volatile and sensitive as Indo-Pak relations, are comparative realities. We all know that good intentions are not good enough. We also know that time has not melted the Kashmir dispute; instead, between the two nations more than a hundred thousand crores are spent each year on the cost of confrontation.
How many schools, roads and hospitals would that build from Bihar to Baluchistan? This is only the cost of the operational defense infrastructure. Add the cost of lost benefits from trade, and you would need a mathematician with special interest in algebra rather than arithmetic to calculate the true figure.
What is sadder is that Kashmir has affected both countries in more fundamental ways, less perhaps with us than with Pakistan. Kashmir has corroded the credibility of our democracy, (how many elections there can be called genuine?) And Kashmir has become the excuse for the militarization of Pakistan, which in turn makes democracy impossible to sustain in Pakistan.
Since Delhi has moved to Bombay it was inevitable that work would drag one to the temporary capital of India. The patter started against the windows of the descending jet. All fortnight the skies have been pregnant across Bombay and the Deccan with this year’s monsoon. The water has now burst in Bombay. The sea has the heave and roll of a discotheque.
When a wave on a high slaps against the wall of the sea front at Worli, a silver arc of water leaps into the air and lands on the opposite side of the road, an instant roof of water. It rains in bursts, in intense patches, and the breeze from the sea whips the rain midair or as it lands on black asphalt.
All umbrellas become like the one held helplessly by Raj Kapoor in “Shree 420,” inverted under the onslaught. The monsoon also stresses the fact that Bombay is all hill; at other times the stream of traffic seems to create a flat level impression.
But now the edges of the roads become streams going downhill. The new flyovers are hill upon hills. Under their broad swathe is a new shelter for the pedestrian, cool and comfortable. The color of the sky does not change no matter how many days it rains, and it could continue like this for a week. It almost never lightens to the familiar blue. The trees that have competed against cement in this urban jungle come alive as they feast in this overhead bath.
Bombay residents love the rain, no matter how much chaos it creates in their lives. You might think that living next to the sea they would be passe about water. But rain is something else. It is a body-healer and a mind-refresher.
Incidentally wet clothes look sexy only in Bombay-made movies, not in Bombay real life. The talk here too is of Musharraf, but the context is different. Bombay’s solution in the Indo-Pak problem is specific: if a thousand Pakistanis developed a vested interest in trade with India they would lead the way to peace via SAPTA (South Asian Preferential Trade Agreement) and SAFTA (South Asian Free Trade Agreement).
Let us make money together and live happily ever after. Health, wealth and send politics to the Arabian Sea. Rain is no deterrent to PM. When they talk of pouring buckets they know exactly what they are saying. By the time I reached the gates of Breach Candy Hospital the patter of rain was interspersed with the thud of special delivery as some circle of cloud 20,000 feet above unleashed a blob. The roads surged with water. Thank God Bombay is hills; the flood moved. The stream of people and VIPs come to show their affection for a convalescing Atal Behari Vajpayee was undiminished.
At the gates of the hospital the security was courteous inconscious contrast to the weather.
Last question. Is too much being expected out of the July talks? History “has been used.” History is a demanding mistress; who can live up easily to her expectations? What is certain is that there is a palpable thrill racing through both countries at the prospect of a glimmer of hope.
Right. Just the prospect of a glimmer. No more, for now. Two men of declared sincerity have decided to give dialogue a chance. They do not need an education in snares, pitfalls, problems, traps and betrayal. How would I define success?
One: After two days the open mind with which the talks began had not been closed by old or new rules.
Two: The language of communication between the two countries began to change. Instead of demand and supply we began to talk of common purpose amidst separate identity.
Three: If at the end of the visit the Musharraf and Vajpayee announced a structure for dialogue across a wide clutch of issues from Kashmir to trade to Bollywood.
Four: If during the two days they could find space for the culture and communication beyond the limitations of the government.
Five: If they could announce that they were going to meet again, in September in Karachi. Why September? Because there is a Test match with India in Karachi then. Cricket is one common fest between the two nations. More than two decades ago India and Pakistan broke ice through cricket at just such a Test match at Karachi.
Vajpayee was finance minister of India then, Advani was information and broadcasting minister. Advani used the thaw to go home to Karachi and visit the school where he had studied. It is time he went again.
