NEW DELHI is enacting yet another farce. It is planning to talk to Pakistan once again. Only a few months ago, the Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh rightly said there was nobody in that country with whom purposeful talks could be held.
That Pakistan is in deep mess and that it is only a matter of time that it will fall apart to barbarian warlords of Islamic terror is not the issue. For the last 63 years two generations of Indians have been talking to Pakistan through war and peace. India was forced to wage four bloody wars and in the last two decades on a daily basis Pakistan is waging a proxy war which has unquestionably proved costlier and macabre more than all the four wars put together in human and material terms. The average Indian would like to see Pakistan erased from the world map. Till then he would rather be hatefully indifferent to that rogue state. This is being written not without considering the fact that there is a well-greased, visibly pro-active, articulate and entrenched Pak-lobby in India. That Pakistan takes away more media space than any other event in the country is also the natural consequence of this. There is no prize guessing how lucrative this pastime is for the lobbyists. They clamour, canvass, write columns, hold seminars, write books and hold ‘hoping for peace’ tamashas to create the atmospheric for the so-called dialogue with Pakistan, though they know it too well that nothing can come out of it. There is nothing left to talk with that God forsaken country that we had not talked all these years. Only thing they have to understand and for us to hope is to live and let live. But the savages who got used to sucking the blood of innocent, peace loving human beings will never agree to such simple facts of life. They have become carnivorous, cannibalistic predators. No amount of talk will tame such boors. The best thing India can do is to shut its doors on Pakistan and stop talking about it and earnestly demand of the Pak lobby in India to shut up.
These days when all other arguments have failed to evoke a response these lobbyists have started reminding us that Pakistan is a nuclear state like India. So what? Are they threatening us? And if it is a veiled threat should we be allowed to be nudged in that manner? The proxy war the Pakistanis have imposed on us is inflicting a thousand cuts every day and no war is costlier than that. India’s internal security bill has undergone a gargantuan jump in the last two decades because of this menace. The votaries of talk will say that the defence budget India is spending year after year is because of the Pakistani threat perception. There cannot be a more naïve comment on geopolitical understanding. Even if India has the best of relation with Pakistan as a major economic power and a regional super power India will be spending the same or more on defence. The US, the world leader spends a major share of its budget on defence. Is it because it has a recalcitrant neighbour?
The latest round of talk many say is being initiated under US pressure. At least Pakistanis are claiming so. And when Manmohan Singh does anything out of sync with national sentiments the general perception is that he is not able to withstand pressure. It is India’s misfortune that it has a pliant Prime Minister, notwithstanding its celebrated economic growth and genuine global ambitions. Singh’s infamous capitulation at Sharm el- Sheikh is perhaps being taken to its logical conclusion. As he proceeds, it will do him immense good if he remembers that he is undertaking a misadventure again without taking the nation along.
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