The Hindu Business Line : Terror infrastructure in Pakistan

Candlelight vigils at the Wagah border, and sentimental reminiscing about common culture and values cannot dilute the fact that the military establishment in Pakistan and the ISI are using the fundamentalist organisations and the terror infrastructure to undermine the very basis of a united, secular and pluralistic India. Sadly, little effort is made to educate public opinion in India about these realities, says G. Parthasarathy.

DURING THEIR recent visit to Pakistan, Members of Parliament warmly embraced and shook hands with the President of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q) Chaudhuri Shujaat Hussain who was Interior (Home) Minister in the Nawaz Sharif Government.

Mr Shujaat broke ranks with Mr Sharif and spearheaded the movement to establish the PML (Q), with due encouragement and support from Gen Pervez Musharraf and the ISI. Mr Shujaat was a front-runner for the post of Prime Minister in the Musharraf dispensation, but had to settle for his cousin Chaudhuri Parvez Elahi being appointed the Chief Minister of Punjab, while he became the leader of the PML (Q). Mr Shujaat is now one of Gen Musharraf's closest political cronies.

Even as our Parliamentarians were bending over backwards to meet Mr Shujaat, he had some interesting things to say about relations with India. He proclaimed: "Running buses, trains and exchange of cultural delegations between the two countries cannot buy peace without a resolution of the core issue of Kashmir.

Peace in this region can be achieved only when the core issue (of Kashmir) is resolved to the satisfaction of the wishes of the Kashmiri people".

Put bluntly, Mr Shujaat was disowning the Shimla Agreement that requires all issues including Kashmir to be resolved peacefully and bilaterally, and threatening recourse to war if Pakistan's ambitions on Kashmir were not fulfilled. All this was happening when our Parliamentarians led by Mr. Laloo Prasad Yadav were talking about the need to "demolish the wall of hatred".

There is little doubt that hardly any of our Parliamentarians knew about the backgrounds of their interlocutors. If they had done their homework properly, they would have known that Mr Shujaat and his family have been part of a network in Pakistan, backed by the ISI, that has been the very epicentre of efforts to fan separatism and terrorism in Punjab. Both Mr Shujaat and his late father, Chaudhuri Zahoor Elahi, were part of this network set up by Gen Zia-ul-Haq. Incidentally, Islamabad's moves to fan Sikh separatism in Punjab picked up momentum shortly after the 1978 visit to Pakistan of the then External Affairs Minister, Mr. Atal Bihari Vajpayee.

Virtually all-important separatist Sikh leaders from abroad like Jagjit Singh Chauhan and Ganga Singh Dhillon enjoyed the personal hospitality of the family of Chaudhuri Zahoor Elahi during their visits to Pakistan.

Even today, this Pakistani infrastructure of terrorism plays host to wanted terrorists from Punjab linked to organisations such as the Babbar Khalsa International and the International Sikh Youth Federation that were involved in the assassination of former Punjab Chief Minister Beant Singh.

This infrastructure extends to ISI cells in Pakistani missions abroad that incite persons running gurdwaras to keep alive the call for "Khalistan".

At a recent meeting that I had with a group of prominent Pakistanis in a South Asian capital, a close associate of Gen Musharraf bluntly remarked that if India believed that it could ignore differences with Pakistan and move ahead economically, his country would have no difficulty in taking steps to retard Indian economic progress.

A few years ago a former Director-General of the ISI remarked to me that Pakistan would see to it that the Jehad in Kashmir would draw support from Muslims all across India. This was in response to my assertion that Muslims in India were proud of the secular ethos of their country.

It is important to bear these factors in mind while assessing the challenge that Pakistani policies pose to India. Pakistani ideologues, especially in their Punjabi dominated armed forces establishment, believe that they are the true inheritors of the Mughal throne in Delhi.

Like the Mughals, their concept of "Hindustan" ends with the Vindhya mountains. A former ISI chief actually told me that he did not regard me to be "Hindustani" because my hometown Chennai was south of the Vindhyas!!

Terrorist acts like bomb blasts in Mumbai, the attack on the Red Fort and Parliament in Delhi and on the Akshardham Temple in Gujarat have to be seen and understood in the context of this Pakistani mindset.

Assertions by Gen Musharraf and his sidekick, Gen Aziz Khan, that low-intensity conflict and tensions with India will continue even if the Kashmir issue is resolved merely reflect this mindset. They strongly believe that India must be weakened and divided and its secular and pluralistic ethos undermined at all costs.

The 1993 Bombay blasts were personally approved by then Prime Minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, and executed by his fundamentalist ISI Chief Gen Javed Nasir, who now heads the so-called Pakistan Gurudwara Prabhandak Committee (PGPC).

The main function of the PGPC is to incite Sikh pilgrims from India visiting their holy shrines in Nankana Sahib and elsewhere in Pakistan.

Less than a week after the Lahore Summit, Gen Javed Nasir was spreading a message of poison and hatred against India and Hindus to a group of Sikh pilgrims visiting the holy shrine of Nankana Sahib. Gen Javed Nasir belongs to a fundamentalist group called the Tablighi Jamat that is patronised by the Sharif family. Sectarian groups such as the Tablighi Jamat and the Ahle Hadis are used to spread fundamentalism and separatism in Muslim minorities abroad, including in India.

Fundamentalist outfits such as the SIMI that was founded in 1977 have close links with these Pakistani sectarian organisations. Saudi Arabia serves as a convenient and hospitable venue for such activities. What the military establishment in Pakistan is today engaged in is nothing short of an attempt to undermine the very basis of a united, secular and pluralistic India.

This is not an effort that can be diluted by candlelight vigils at the Wagah border, or sentimental reminiscing about our common culture and values. Sadly, very little effort is made to educate public opinion in India about these realities.

We are instead fed with daily diets about how one or another "peace initiative" is about to bring instant success, merely because of sentimental outpourings over the surgery of Baby Noor, or the witticisms and profound wisdom of some of our Parliamentarians and journalists visiting Pakistan and interacting with the likes of Mr Shujaat.

The relationship with Pakistan will normalise only when its people are made to realise that their military establishment is leading the country to ruin and disaster. That effort will require consistency and sense of national will and purpose, even while keeping the doors to contacts and dialogue open. Pakistan will spare no effort to undermine India in every possible manner. But we would do well to remember that it was able to exploit the situation in Punjab only after political parties in Punjab espoused and adopted policies that sought to promote separatism and exclusionism

The Pakistani effort to undermine communal harmony in Punjab failed because of the bonds of Hindu-Sikh unity and brotherhood. Pakistan exploited the disaffection in Kashmir following what many young Kashmiri politicians believed were flawed elections in 1987 and the abject surrender of the V. P. Singh Government to extortionist demands by Kashmiri terrorists in December 1989.

Pakistan exploited communal tensions in India in 1993 and after the Gujarat communal carnage last year to incite and assist disaffected Indians to resort to terrorism. It is true that there is no justification whatsoever for resort to terrorism. But is it not time for our political parties to vow not to repeat their past mistakes and follies?

(The author is a former High Commissioner to Pakistan.)

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