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ACHA is an non-profit, non-political organization, which is dedicated to promote peace and harmony among South Asians regardless of where they live. Current Board Members are Pritam Rohila (President), Jagdish Grewal (Secretary), Dr. Abdul Qayum (Treasurer), Dr. Kanak R. Ravel, Gulzar Ahmed, Ishvar Patel and Susheela Hoefer. Dharam Yadav is the Honorary Financial Advisor. For more information about ACHA and comments about ACHA Bulletin, please contact us at by telephone at 503-362- 4635, or 503-658-4715, or by email at pritamr@open.org, or visit our Web Page at http://ecumene.org/ACHA/ACHA.htm . The Web Page is maintained by Dr. Ingrid H. Shafer in Ecumene.Org, an Internet Domain she has dedicated to interreligious dialogue and global peace.
This Bulletin is being relayed as a part of ACHA's South Asian community service program. Currently, it is being sent out every other Wednesday to about 400 individuals in Africa, Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, Pakistan, U.K., and USA. Please let us know (pritamr@open.org), if you want to have your name removed from our email distribution list. Also, please let us know if someone should be added to the list. Comments, letters to editor, and short articles are also welcome and can be sent to the same address. ACHA BULLETIN 3/10/99 Special Issue: India - Pakistan relationships II (Next issue due on 4/7/99 -- NOTE: the next issue is delayed until Dr. Rohila recovers from an eye injury.)
Feature Tidbits about the Sahrief-Vajpayee Summit at Lahore
Did You Know Holidays Arts & Entertainment Other Events Books Travel GREETINGS
* I promote harmony wherever I am (From Daily Word, March 9, 1999)
I nurture harmonious feelings by doing my best not to react in anger but to respond with love. I think before I speak and always remember God's golden rule of treating others as I want to be treated, which is with love and compassion. All people are God's people, and I give to others the love and respect that every child of God is worthy of receiving. *Conference on business opportunities and resources for South Asians and in South Asia on 4/18/99 in Portland, OR ACHA has scheduled a conference on the above theme from 1 to 5 p.m., on Sunday, April 18, 1999, in Psychology Auditorium at Reed College, Portland, OR. The admission to the conference is free. The Conference is open to public, although South Asians (people originating from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka) will be the main focus. The objectives of the conference are as follows:
Speakers from such government agencies as U.S. Small Business Administration, and Oregon Economic Development Department, and such private organizations as Portland Chamber of Commerce, Small Business Development Centers, Service Corps of Retired Executive, and the Oregon Entrepreneurs Forum are being invited to tell participants about the assistance they provide to business people. Finally, a few local South Asian business persons will talk about how they started their businesses, the difficulties they had to encounter, and the way the dealt with those difficulties.. For more information please contact Dr. Pritam Rohila by phone at 503-362-4635, by Fax at 503- 364-4888, or by email pritamr@open.org * South Asian Cultural Resource Center (SACRC) We have just finished a survey of South Asians living in Portland-Vancouver area. The objective was to ascertain what cultural resources existed in the community and what additional resources people needed. Here is a mission statement for SACRC. It is based on the work done by Dr. Khalid Khan, Jagdish Grewal, Dr. Jolly Rehman, and Sushila Hoefer. It was adopted bt ACHA Board in their meeting held in Salem, OR on 3/7/1999. The South Asian Cultural Resource Center (SACRC) shall promote peace and harmony among the people of South Asia living in Portland metropolitan area by bringing them together in an all inclusive environment of mutual respect, learning and understanding. "It will accomplish this goal by capitalizing on the strengths of the local and regional South Asian community in terms of its diversity, professional and business skills, and its heritage. SACRC will provide the following services for the regional community:
In order to save time for other ACHA activities and projects, we are forced to reduce the frequency this Bulletin to once a month. Starting in April, we will usually get the Bulletin out on the first Wednesday of each month. However, from time to time, we may produce special editions. If you like what we do, we would appreciate your support. You can help us by becoming our member, or by making a donation to us. Please do not hesitate to contact us, if you can support us in any other way. To become a member or to donate, please provide the following information
and mail it with a check made out to ACHA, to ASSOCIATION FOR COMMUNAL
HARMONY, 831 Lancaster Drive NE, Suite 214, Salem, OR 97301.
3. TELEPHONE Nos:
Current dues are as follows: Individual $10, Couple $20, Family $25, DONOR $100, Patron $500, Benefactor $1,000. ACHA year is from January 1 through December 31. Membership of ACHA is open to adults of any nationality, religion, or ethnic background, who (1) Dedicate themselves to its objectives, and its mission; (2) Agree to follow the ACHA Declaration of Commitment in their day to day conduct; (3) Complete ACHA Membership Application; and (4) Pay annual dues. ACHA is a non-profit, non-political, secular organization, which is open to all and is dedicated to promote peace and communal harmony among South Asians where they may live. For more information please visit our Web Page at http://ecumene.org/ACHA/ACHA.htm> or contact us by email at <pritamr@open.org>. * February 4, New Delhi, India: The United Nations will observe year
2000 as the year of "culture of peace", announced UNESCO director general
Federico Mayor. "We can't rewrite the past, we can
* February 23, Maharashtra, India: If Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharief decides to visit India Shiv Sena will not protest, said Maharashtra Chief Minister Narayan Rane has said. * February 26, New Delhi, India: "India and Pakistan were born of the
same wound; we talk the same language and we don't need interpreters to
convey to each other what we are doing," remarked external affairs minister
Jaswant Singh in the Rajya Sabha today. He added that it is now for the
two countries to see that "the dialogue does not run aground due to inaction".
Also, he announced that the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan will
meet in Colombo in the middle of the next month on the sidelines of a conference
of the South Asian Association for Regional Co-operation to discuss all
subjects of mutual concern, including nuclear issues.
* March 3, Amritsar, Punjab, India: A hockey team from a Lahore college, which was in Jalandhar for a tournament, participated in kar seva (community service) at Durgianan gurdwara. They remarked Amritsar was no different from Lahore. * March 3, Assam, India: Chandra Prasad of the Bodo Sahitya Sabha announced at an annual session that the state's tradition never favored violence. He asked the insurgent outfits (the United Liberation Front of Asom, the National Democratic Front of Bodoland and the Bodoland Liberation Front) to help improve the condition of the strife-torn state. "We must try to attain greatness by confronting the problem and injustice facing us in a non-violent and democratic manner," he said. He also urged litterateurs to restore the age-old amity among people through their work. "We must try to create an environment of creativity by our deeds," he said. BSS President Bineswar Brahma urged both the state and the union governments, political parties, struggling organizations and insurgent groups to settle the Bodo problem through negotiation. Meanwhile, the Manab Adhikar Sangram Samittee, a non-government human rights organization has, for the first time, criticized the ULFA for killing and harassing people. Some people have pledged not to give shelter and 'taxes' to militant groups. * March 4, New Delhi, India: Swami Adhokshjanand Tirtha, shankaracharya of Puri and head of one of the five main religious seats of Hindus in the country, today lashed out at the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, and the Bajrang Dal for "misleading" people in the name of religion and "trying to stifle the voice of genuine saints". Addressing a press conference here, the shankaracharya said the "so-called self-made saviors of Hinduism" have tried to pressurize the "genuine saints" to toe their line. But the "genuine saints" have and will resist all such attempts, he said. He said he has been on a yatra (tour) of the entire country for the last two and a half years to spread the message of love and brotherhood. So far he has traveled to the north-eastern states and Maharashtra. He is leaving for Bhutan tomorrow and will go to Punjab thereafter. The shankaracharya said he had also visited the Kashmir valley in July 1998 and met leaders of the All-Parties Hurriyat Conference. He declined to disclose what transpired at the meeting, but blamed the politicians for forcing the youth to take to militancy. * March 5, Jammu & Kashmir, India: Since last year, as a part of Indian army's Operation Jyoti, its various battalions stationed in Jammu & Kashmir have been sponsoring school-children, aged 11 to 17 years, from the troubled valley, on tours around India. The groups of 25 to 30 children, each accompanied by a few of their teachers, have been taken so far to Delhi, Agra, Ajmer, Jaipur, and on one trip, even as far as Bombay and Goa. "The idea," says army spokesperson Colonel Shruti Kant, "is to tell these children that they belong to India, and their country is much larger than just their valley." It is apparent that they are enjoying themselves. Even the more sober and dignified amongst them display their excitement in an almost na ve way as they describe the tall buildings, old monuments, posh cars, and everything else that they have seen. "The most exciting thing on this trip for me was the train journey from Jammu to Delhi," gushes 16-year-old Aijaz Ahmed Khan. "It was amazing how much of the countryside we were able to see." "I was really happy when I was chosen for this trip," says Sheikh Mohammed Iqbal, an enthusiastic 15-year-old. "I had only seen India on a map before. Now I have seen it with my own eyes." In Jammu, the boys were taken to see a Hindi film, something most of them said they had never seen in a cinema hall. Over the years, all cinema halls in Kashmir have been destroyed by the militants, or converted into army bunkers. In Delhi, the students (all Muslim) have seen the Red Fort, Purana Qila, the Secretariat buildings, and the national museums. Some of them were surprised to see Jama Masjid standing, as stories circulating in Kashmir had told of how "Hindustanis had razed the mosque to the ground". For Mudassar, who is only 11 years old, it was the people in Delhi that amazed him. "They all look so different," he says self-consciously, wondering at their darker skins. "We have met people from so many different religions." They now look forward to their next stop, Agra. All of them have heard of the Taj Mahal and seen pictures of it, and they are naturally keen to see it. "It was built by our ancestors, the Mughals," explains one 16-year-old proudly. Little Shahid Rasool, 10, the youngest of the group, has another reason for wanting to go to the Taj. Shyly, he says, "My mother in Wawarkhan village [Kupwara district] said she doesn't think she will ever get to see the Taj. So I want to buy her a small replica of it." Their next stop will be Ajmer, and a visit to the famous dargah (tomb) there. For any child who knows little beyond his mountains, fields and orchards on one side, and gunfire, grenades and army patrols on the other, the trip around India is obviously a novel experience, and these wide-eyed youngsters from Kashmir are no exception. They are enchanted by everything that they have been able to see, especially as it has been made possible by the very men they had been taught to fear. The army has in the past set up "goodwill camps" in various villages, where free medical aid, veterinary aid, and reconstruction of school buildings, places of worship, etc, which had been destroyed, were undertaken. * March 5, Colombo, Sri Lanka: A 17-member goodwill motoring expedition, led by veteran film personality Sunil Dutt, today set off from here on a 15,000-km journey to inspire people of South Asia to live in friendship, unity and with better understanding for each other. Sri Lanka's Justice and Constitutional Affairs Minister G L Peiris flagged off the "hands across the borders" expedition at a function attended by Indian High Commissioner Shivshankar Menon and several distinguished guests. This team consisting of people from Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Nepal, and Sri Lanka will travel in five jeeps, driving over 15,000 km through all these countries and Pakistan, in three months during the three-month journey, the expedition members will address 1,500 meetings at the village, block and district levels and meet millions of people. It is expected to return to New Delhi by June 4. The expedition is being co-ordinated in Sri Lanka by Sarvodaya movement leader A T Ariyaratne with assistance from the government and the Indian High Commission. During the week-long march in Sri Lanka, it will cover Anuradhapura, Kandy, Nuwara Eliyayala, and Galle and leave for India on March 12. Ariyaratne said the peace march reminded him of the message brought by King Ashoka from India centuries ago. In tune with that, the team will light a lamp under the sacred Bodhi tree in Anuradhapura. Dutt said though his march might not stop a stop a war, he hoped it could help make people less belligerent. The youth have tremendous potential to build anything and they could lead us into a millennium without violence, he added. Team leader Akhil Bakshi said, the expedition hopes to make people understand the importance of love and brotherhood. "We have already wasted 50 precious years merely making weapons for self-protection. Making an impassioned plea to the heads of regional countries, Bakshi said a reduction of five per cent in military spending could provide succor to millions of poor people suffering from malnutrition, poverty and other illness. He hoped the close of the millennium will begin a new era of peace for mankind in the region. The expedition has brought a goodwill message from Indian Prime Minister A B Vajpayee to be conveyed to Sri Lankan President Chandrika Kumaratunga. The team members would call on her on March 10. A public reception has also been organised in honour of the expedition members on the same day. * March 9, Ashkhaba, Turkmenistan: Taliban officials and representatives of the Afghan opposition arrived here on Tuesday for extended peace talks, Turkmenistan's foreign ministry said. The high-level talks are scheduled to start on Wednesday and last up to four days, twice as long as the previous talks the two sides held here in early February, a foreign ministry spokesman said. "By itself, it's a positive thing that they are talking to each other," one diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP. Ashkhabad is keen for Afghanistan's warring factions to reach an agreement so they can begin building a natural gas export pipeline through Afghanistan to Pakistan. Tidbits about the Sahrief-Vajpayee Summit at Lahore (Collected from various news sources including India West, India Abroad, India Today, and Rediff on the NeT) *"India and Pakistan: Highway to harmony" said one banner welcoming prime minister Vajpayee's arrival at Amritsar airport. *School children and folk dancers in colorful clothes, lined up along the streets of Amritsar as prime minister Vajpayee left for the 23-mile journey to India-Pak border. Hundreds of banners and festoons were strung along the road. * A gate at the Wagah border carries a sign advertising a Pakistani bank on one side, and a sign saying "India, the world's biggest democracy" on the other side. * "I never really thought I would hear that (Indian) anthem on my soil,
at least not in my lifetime," said a Pakistani TV commentator. Many
journalists and officials had tears in their eyes as the two prime ministers
stood besides each other in an elegant pavilion to hear their national
anthems.
* "A prosperous and stable Pakistan is in India's interest," wrote prime minister Vajpayee in the guest book at the Minar which marks the 1940 resolution moved by Quaid-i-Azam Jinnah calling for the creation of Pakistan. * Prime minister Vajpayee's family shopped at Pace, the huge shopping complex owned by Imran Khan. Grand daughter Niharika picked up a marble Zamzama for grandpa. * "His saying is my goal," remarked prime minister Sharief recalling that Quaid-i-Azam had wanted India and Pakistan to have the same relationship as the United States and Canada. * About two dozen students and a few teachers from Islamabad's Quaid-i-Azam University, on February demonstrated in heart of the city to show support for the peace initiative between India and Pakistan. "In peace is our security" read one of the placards. "Vajpayee-Nawaz meeting crucial need of the hour," said another. * The Pakistan government sacked the entire top police and administrative officials of Lahore late on February 24 for their alleged "failure" to prevent fundamentalists from demonstrating during prime minister Vajpayee's historic visit there the previous weekend. * Prime minister Sharief was emotionally moved when he accepted, from chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, the soil of his native village Jati Umran, in Indian Punjab. The chief minister, who had accompanied prime minister Vajpayee, also handed him an invitation from the residents of Jati Umran to visit the village. * "The atmosphere there is like our Punjab," said chief minister Parkash
Singh Badal after visiting Lahore. He said he was moved when he visited
Guruwara Dera Sahib and the s amadhi of Sikh Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
* "If Canada and U.S. can live peacefully, why can't we?" remarked the veteran Indian film actor, Dev Anand, when asked if Indo-Pak ties would improve in the near future. A graduate of Lahore Government College, Dev Anand had accompanied prime minister Vajpayee on the latter's visit to Lahore. * "For generations to come people from my family will mention that I was the driver the bus in which the Indian prime minister went to Pakistan," said Shabi Hasnain Zaidi, who drove the Delhi Transport Corporation bus from Delhi and Lahore. He was ordered not drive at more than 40 kilometers an hour. But, due toe the late arrival of prime minister Vajpayee, he ended up driving 80 kilometers an hour. * A viewers' gallery at Wagah joint check-post would be constructed so that the ' retreat ceremony' could be witnessed by local people and tourists visiting this post. Deputy commissioner Narinderjit Singh said today that Union Home Minister L K Advani will lay the foundation stone of this gallery on March 6 at a public function, to be presided over by Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal. * The entire region will benefit immeasurably from the implementation of the Lahore Declaration through accelerated economic growth, social progress and cultural development," said Sri Lankan president Chandrika Kumaratunga in a message to the prime ministers of India and Pakistan. * "I welcome the historic meeting and the move to ease tension in the region," remarked Bangladeshi prime minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, about the Lahore summit. * British government wished the ongoing dialog between India and Pakistan"every success." * "The commitment to peace in the region shown by the two leaders during the summit becomes more important when our region faces a threat of an arms race," read an editorial comment in the Rising Nepal. * "Vajpayee and Sharif have shown that a strong political will can solve any problem," said the Nepali newspaper The Himalayan Times. * Australian newspaper, the Weekend Australian called the India-Pak summit "the most welcome engagement" between the two countries since the 1972 Shimla agreement. * Will the bus usher in
a new era? by Kuldip Nayar (From Dawn 2/27/99)
It is the same border on which we have lighted candles since the 50th anniversary of India's independence, although people from the other side have not reciprocated so far. It is the same border, which I crossed after partition in 1947. And I recall how we stopped at the no-man's land to make way for people coming from the other side. They were Muslims, we the Hindus and the Sikhs. None spoke - neither they nor we. But we understood each other; it was a spontaneous kinship. Both had seen murder and worse; both had been broken on the rack of history. We were refugees. As the bus carrying Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and some of us rolled over to the Pakistan side, I felt a new beginning had been made. Whether we were making history or not, we were conscious that it was in the making. Could we be path-breakers? The border bristling with fear and distrust has become chastened. The police that always adopted a martial posture looked like sentinels standing at attention. Something had changed. It seemed as if the peoples of the subcontinent, without giving up their separate identities, would work together for the common good. Would the bus be ushering in an era beyond their dreams - the faith to which I have clung in the sea of hostility and hatred that has for long engulfed the subcontinent? Vajpayee's speech in Hindustani at the civic reception in Lahore held hope. It was the highest point of his 24-hour stay. He spoke from the heart, as Pakistan foreign minister Sartaj Aziz put it. Vajpayee did not hide the feeling that he had been against partition. Many in his entourage did not want him to visit the Minar-e-Pakistan, built to commemorate the memory of March 23, 1940, when the resolution for the formation of Pakistan was endorsed at Lahore. He not only admitted the pressure exerted on him not to visit the place but also declared that he wanted to allay the fears of those who believed that India had not accepted Pakistan. He announced that the integrity of Pakistan was sine qua non for India's unity. Vajpayee was at his best, poetic in expression and lofty in thoughts. He assured the Pakistanis that the "outstanding problem of Kashmir" would be resolved peacefully. What he said implied that it was a dispute, which must be settled - something which even liberal Pakistanis have been wanting New Delhi to say. Surely, the Pakistanis were not serious when they linked Vajpayee's visit to a solution on Kashmir. They deluded themselves if they believed that the 51-year-old problem could be sorted out in 24 hours. It will take time. That Vajpayee has described more than once Jammu and Kashmir as a problem shows how far he has travelled from his earlier stand that J and K is an integral part of India. It means he is talking in terms of give and take. I am glad that Nawaz Sharif said more or less the same thing while declaring that the "traditional stand" on outstanding problems would have to be changed. I was surprised over a proposal by Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Nawaz, brother of Pakistan Prime Minister, to Parkash Singh Badal, Chief Minister of India's Punjab. Shahbaz suggested that India could take Jammu and give Kashmir to Pakistan. The hardcore Pakistanis had made this suggestion. The reason why it is not acceptable to New Delhi is the thinking it delineates on communal lines. India is a pluralistic society. It cannot accept the thesis that the Muslim-majority Kashmir should go to the Islamic state of Pakistan and the Hindu-majority Jammu to the Hindu-majority India. This will give a fatal blow to the policy of secularism that India upholds. Some other formula has to be worked out, which includes the say of Kashmiris. Both countries have suffered enough from partition on the basis of religion. For them to go back to the days of religious divide is to invite disaster. Islamabad has disappointed me by not reciprocating New Delhi's offer of no-first use of nuclear weapons. The argument that they give equality to Pakistan, which is weaker in conventional weapon war, is fallacious. The bomb has, in fact, ruled out wars between India and Pakistan. Can Islamabad use it on India without exposing itself to the consequences of the fallout? Even if Pakistan could not afford to have a no-first-use pact because of domestic compulsions, it could have had a no-war pact. This would not have jeopardised its defence in any way. Had Vajpayee and Sharif signed such a pact a sense of relief would have swept across the subcontinent. The two countries could have then been able to cut their military expenditure and divert funds to education, health and hunger, the vision to which they referred during their speeches. Maybe, they will work towards that now in the days to come. The core problem is trust and confidence, not Kashmir. That has to be built first. One way to begin it is to look at the history books. And this cannot be done until they are rewritten and a biased approach to problems is changed. The two prime ministers can do that because one represents the party of Hindus and the other that of Muslims, the two should (not?) forget to lift restrictions on newspapers and books of one country entering the other. More contacts between the peoples will help. But without free flow of information, contacts begin to languish. Maybe, foreign ministers will rectify the lapses - whatever the two prime ministers have failed to identify. With all its deficiencies, the Lahore declaration has opened up many avenues for cooperation and amity. Once again there is an opportunity for the two countries to generate goodwill, which will help them solve all outstanding problems. But if the atmosphere built by Vajpayee's visit and Nawaz Sharif's generous approach is allowed to be dissipated, events will meander to the same old situation. Even if there is no conflict, there will be no settlement, even if no hostility, no harmony and, even if there is no war, there will be no peace. Both countries would have missed the bus. * Chance and circumstance: Making of a summit by Sunil Adam (from India West 2/26/99) History is not an event, but a process. And the Lahore summit between prime ministers Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Atal Behari Vajpayee of India has begun that process which can have a significant bearing on how Pakistan and India navigate their destinies in the nuclear age. The import of the summit lies not in what has been and what has not been accomplished there, but in that it took place at all, and in the manner it had materialized. Looking back at less than a month ago, it is incredible to think that no one in Islamabad or New Delhi had even contemplated an India- Pakistan summit, that too on Pakistan soil. Putting together everything that goes into the making of a summit in a fortnight is a logistical, protocol and security nightmare. Officials on both side of the Wagah border deserve to be complimented for pulling it off. Of course, the bureaucrats on both sides would have been very happy to resist, if their attitude towards normalization of relations over the past five decades is any indication. But, this time, resistance, if any, would have been futile. The leadership on both sides of the divide was determined to liberate themselves from the bondage of traditional hostility. But it was not as though their good intentions were entirely premeditated. It is said that great things have a small beginnings - and in this context, unusual origins. The most important catalyst was a well- timed interview of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif with the editor of the Indian Express, Shekhar Gupta - an old foreign policy hand. Gupta also belongs to the breed of Indian journalists who shy away from being the mouthpieces for officials seeking to systematically nurture and perpetuate hostility against Pakistan through the national media. In what can be termed as an extraordinary interview, Gupta virtually egged on Prime Minister Sharif to give language to what was clearly his transparent determination to initiate reconciliation with India. In fact, the interview tends itself to the interpretation that Gupta virtually extracted Sharif's invitation to Vajpayee. This is not to suggest that Sharif did not mean what he said. On the contrary, the Pakistani prime minister has been consistently seeking to change the traditional anti-India orientation of his country's politics. He was obviously encouraged by the fact that his Muslim league party won the last national election despite the fact that he did not use either India or Kashmir in particular as a campaign platform. Even in the face of provocation of the Bharatiya Janta Party-led government in the form of nuclear test and the mindless jingoism that followed, Sharif has been measured in his responses, in both real terms and rhetoric. The circumstances which culminated in Vajpaee's positive and prompt response to the summit call, to, are equally interesting. After months of Shiv Sena's fire and brimstone against Pakistan's cricket tour of India and its effort to lumpenize a gentlemen's game, which coincided with the extremist Hindu hate against Christians, highlighted in the burning of a missionary and his two children last month, there obtained a groundswell of popular concern at the atmosphere of intolerance prevailing in the country. A backlash of this was seen in the standing ovation that cricket fans in a Chennai stadium gave the Pakistani team when they won the first Test against favorites India. This gallant gesture seemed to at once purge the unconscious national guilt of being mute spectators for sectarianism and negative nationalism that have seemingly overtaken the nation over the past nine months. And Vajpayee, besieged as he was by extremism of the Sangh Parivar, the cussedness of his allies, and the vitriolic media attacks on his government, seized upon the opportunity provided by Sharif's invitation, and willingly became a party to the national euphoria of inclusiveness generated by the unwitting Chennai crowds. And a gratified nation, which does not necessarily identify Vajpayee with the extremist sections that he heads, has given him an unqualified mandate to pursue peace with the neighbor. Interestingly, India and Pakistan are at such a historical juncture
that if this cordial entente did not happen by accident, it would have
to be invented.
India and Pakistan today are also object of international ridicule and isolation, what with their preoccupation with weapons f mass destruction wholly disproportionate to their needs and reach. The sanctions continue to have a crippling effect on the two economies, even if one can cope with them more than the other. In other words, the two countries had to sober up in hurry if only to reassure the international community that they are not going to nuke themselves to the ice age in an era of global warming - ecological and diplomatic. The summit, therefore, has been choreographed for both domestic and international consumption. Even if the hammering out of concrete agreements on contentious issues, including strategic competition and Kashmir, and de-escalation of hostilities on the ground will take a very long time, the summit has set the tenor and tone for negotiations. There could be many who would want to derail the historic process started by the two statesmen. Then again, history of the late 20th century has sown that once a will to peace is displayed, it gain a momentum of its own. * Economics for peace: Will the bus usher in a new era? by Haris Gazdar (From Dawn 2/27/99) The question of war and peace is, above all else, a moral and ethical issue. I would assert that war, or the organized deployment of violence by one group against another, is morally repulsive to human society in general. It is not for any other reason that ethical systems need to be constructed for justifying the conduct of war. Even in a world of universal rights and values that we are supposed to be experiencing today, there is often an elaborate ethical subtext to the political and juridical arguments for war. For example, the ongoing American and British military campaign against Iraq is routinely explained publicly as the result of Iraq's supposed non-compliance with United Nations resolutions. The portrayal of the victims of this war as devious, fanatical, xenophobic and terroristic, however, is the essential subtext which allows the application of different ethical standards to the lives of Iraqis. Pakistanis had their own fairly elaborate demonology which was as important as, if not more so than, legalistic arguments about national sovereignty in enabling the state to perpetrate untold savagery on Bengali follow-citizens. Different ethical rules were deemed to apply to people who were supposedly of dubious faith and inferior racial stock. The need for putting ethical distance between oneself and one's supposed enemy merely highlights the moral inadmissibility of war under 'normal' conditions. While the moral case for the peaceful resolution of conflict between nations and states is over- whelming in its own right, it is often (though not always) possible to find support for peace on the supposedly amoral territory of economic interest. We find ourselves in a situation in Pakistan where the economic case for peace, conflict resolution, demilitarization, and good neighbourliness is as over-whelming as the moral one. The deployment of economic arguments for peace is not meant to detract in any way from the fundamental position of the moral argument. It is meant to buttress the moral case. For peace-mongers real politik can be an unpredictable beast, but they might as well make good use of situations where this beast is pulling in their direction. The link between militarism and economic disaster is firmly established in popular opinion in this country. Within a matter of a few days the nuclear tests helped to focus on this issue more effectively than a pacifist campaign would have done in years. The imposition of international sanctions, and emergency measures by the government such as the freezing of foreign currency accounts simply confirmed a wider proposition: in Pakistan militarism and war-mongering are simply incompatible with the goal of sustainable economic development. In fact, at the risk of sticking one's neck out, a stronger proposition can be put forward: there is hardly any significant grouping within the civil economy that will not benefit from the establishment of peaceful and neighbourly (even friendly) relations in the region. In my opinion, there are three fundamental structural features of Pakistan's economic geography that account for the incompatibility between militarism and sustainable economic development. Firstly, maintaining a war-like posture vis-a-vis India means locking oneself into a conflict in which one's adversary has all the advantages - strategic depth, and wider economic and industrial bases. The clearest manifestation of this phenomenon are the respective public finance burdens of defence spending on the two countries. Of course, as pointed out by the late Dr Mahbub-ul-Haq, the burden of
military spending is unacceptably high in both countries. But while India's
economy and her political institutions absorb the impact of this burden,
Pakistan is sent teetering on the brink of financial collapse. Both India
and Pakistan are poor countries, and in terms of per capita income India
is poorer than Pakistan. Strategic parity is not achieved, however, on
the basis of neat indicators such as per capita income. It is the absolute
size of the Indian economy which is the fundamental, structural and decisive
factor which renders unviable any attempt at establishing war-like strategic
parity.
The country's location cries out for it to become a haven of peace and good neighbourliness, and a factor for stability. Despite grandiose claims, it is clear to anyone that Pakistan does not enjoy good relations with its immediate neighbours, or with potential economic partners in Central Asia. Thirdly, in today's world of globalization the maintenance of bilateral autarky is a profoundly unrealistic ambition. For good or bad, successive governments have nailed their economic colours on the liberalisation mast. Formally speaking, both Pakistan and India have signed up to various international treaties (specifically the WTO), which demand the opening up of economic borders. They have much to gain, also, from evolving collective positions on issues such as intellectual property rights (vide the basmati rice issue) in the international arena. Moreover, unrecorded and informal cross-border or third country
transactions imply that these states are actually incapable of maintaining
bilateral autarky by fiat. It is quite clear, for example, that Pakistan
cannot even determine procurement prices for its foodgrains without keeping
an eye on prices across the borders in India and Afghanistan. This has
serious implications for food security and food-related poverty alleviation
policy that a government might want to pursue.
Economists being economists ask the million-dollar question: if the
advantages of peace are so overwhelming then why do we not have more of
it? A simple answer is that while peace and good
The implication is quite clear: despite their overwhelming numerical majority, peace-mongers would have to work harder for their views to be taken seriously. They will have to assert that their stand is not inconsistent with national sovereignty, state security or religious faith. In fact peace-building is essential for safeguarding the interests of sovereignty, security and the faithful. Fundamental and structural features of Pakistan's economic geography dictate this. Peace-mongers will need to seek out and consolidate peace lobbies among various interest groups. (The author is one of the convenors of a working group at the Pakistan Peace Conference, being held in Karachi on 27-28 February.) * Breaking Barriers by Swapan Dasgupta and Harinder Baweja in Lahore with Ramesh Vinayak at Wagah (From India Today 3/1/99) It took exactly 30 seconds for the deep golden luxury coach to roll across the two iron gates at Wagah that mark Sir Cyril Radcliffe's line, the divide between the two Punjabs and the border between India and Pakistan. Before the 100 or so schoolchildren waving the tricolour flags could break into an applause and before the colourfully-attired bhangra dancers could get into their stride, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee was in Pakistan on February 20 shaking Prime Nawaz Sharif's hand. In 30 seconds Vajpayee crossed a time zone and gained 30 minutes. For the two countries, however, the gain was more tangible. India and Pakistan, which nine months ago seemed to be on the verge of triggering a nuclear arms race in South Asia, had crossed a time warp. Instead of barking at each other, they were embracing each other. The artillery, far from targeting each other, was letting off a 21-gun salute. It was, as Vajpayee said in his arrival statement, a "defining moment". A moment that could, given time, patience, statesmanship and a little bitof luck, go down in history as an event comparable to Richard Nixon's flight to China and Anwar Sadat's embrace of Menachem Begin. The carnival atmosphere at Wagah -- separating what a luminous sign declared was "India the largest democracy on the earth" from the "other" -- was redolent with emotion and symbolism. The Pakistan Rangers and Indian Border Security Force coordinated their stomping of boots and yanking of gates, the bhangra dancers swayed in the two-metre no-man's-land after the Pakistani band had burst into an incongruous rendering of Cherry Paint and facing up to 39 TV cameras and 300 journalists filmstar Dev Anand quite forgot this was a prime ministerial visit not a preview of another Des Pardes. Vajpayee brought shawls for Begum Sharif and topped it up with a collection of laser discs of old Hindi films, including Mughal-e-Azam and Pakeezah. He even brought his daughter Namita dressed in a resplendent Orissa silk sari, son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya and grandaughter Niharika. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal brought a bagful of high-yielding wheat seeds and the villagers of Jati Umra, in India's Punjab, offered special prayers for the success of the visit. It was heady, so heady that the 22-member Eminent Persons' Group (EPG), mostly Punjabi and Urdu speaking, on the inaugural Delhi-Lahore bus quite overlooked the downed shutters of traders observing a hartal called by the Jamaat-e-Islami. "We will not let Vajpayee walk the streets of Lahore," Jamaat chief Qazi Hussain Ahmad had warned. He nearly succeeded when his rampaging cadres smashed cars outside Lahore Fort, delayed the state banquet for Vajpayee by two hours and prevented ambassadors of nearly 20 countries from attending the function. Not that the two prime ministers were impervious to the minefields in the path of a grand rapprochement. Vajpayee's itinerary was carefully planned to strike the right note in both countries. If the visit to the samadhi of Maharaja Ranjit Singh -- whose kingdom, Rajiv Gandhi once reminded Khalistanis, was run from Lahore -- touched Sikhs back home, far more audacious was the morning visit to the 60-metre high Eiffel Tower-clone Minar-e-Pakistan. It was from that spot in 1940 that Fazlul Huq, with Mohammed Ali Jinnah by his side, moved the Pakistan Resolution at the All India Muslim League session. That was the end of united India. Now, a prime minister nurtured on a diet of Akhand Bharat was openly disavowing irredentism. Little wonder then that there is a feeling in the ruling Muslim League that an enduring settlement with India can only happen under a BJP regime. Of course, there were limits to easing the burden of history. A planned visit to the Badshahi mosque built by Aurangzeb near Lahore Fort was shot down by the Indian side for two reasons. First because there was a hint that some Pakistanis would project it as Vajpayee's way of atoning for the Babri Masjid destruction. Second because that particular mosque has disconcerting associations for a section of the Sangh Parivar. It was a small irritant that was easily glossed over in the euphoria of the moment. Sharif left no stone unturned to shower hospitality and demonstrate his sincerity. He got the three military chiefs to call on the visitor despite objections from some hotheads and even acknowledged, somewhat belatedly, the advisability of a Vajpayee meeting with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. Departing from convention for the second time -- the first occasion was during a visit by the crown prince of Saudi Arabia -- the venue of the state banquet for Vajpayee was also shifted from the Governor's House -- where he was a state guest -- to Lahore Fort. Having remarked to Sharif on the previous occasion they met in New York, "aap ki cheeni khate hain, bahut meethi hai (I have tasted your sugar, it's very sweet)", he responded to the gesture with characteristic syrupiness. He even welcomed, in recognition of the host's compulsions, "sustained discussions on all outstanding issues, including Jammu and Kashmir". It could hardly have been otherwise. For Vajpayee and his 16-member delegation the bus journey to Pakistan was a win-win affair. At one level he ingratiated himself with the votaries of Track-II diplomacy who went gush-gush over the delights of being in Lahore. That the EPG was included at the last minute following a special request from the Pakistani side last Tuesday is a matter of detail. But there was something more tangible. Vajpayee returned with a bagful of nuclear confidence-building measures (CBM), negotiated by Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra in the wee hours before the bus journey, that should impress upon a nervous West that India and Pakistan aren't going to start a nuclear war either by accident or design. Even if India couldn't accede to a formal agreement on a bilateral moratorium -- because there is a giant called China lurking across the Himalayas -- the two sides readily agreed to take each other into confidence on military exercises and further missile tests. Vajpayee and Sharif have laid the foundations of a common strategic restraint doctrine. This will have enormous bearing on India's continuing negotiations with the US. Actually, Sharif and Vajpayee have adroitly succeeded in confusing the world's supercop. There is no doubt Washington put pressure on both sides to jaw-jaw their way into some understanding. But the magnitude of the offensive was sharply different. Says Friday Times editor Najam Sethi: "Sharif's compulsions are 70 per cent US, Vajpayee's is 30 per cent." Under the circumstances, Sharif has probably won himself a small respite from the West and can proceed with a little more reassurance on an economic bail-out package, whereas Vajpayee can afford to show a little more muscle in future CTBT negotiations. Says a senior Indian official:"The Americans won't be unhappy, but they won't be happy either. We've tacitly undermined their emerging third-party status." Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, for whom Sahrif had a special handshake at Wagah, said as much before proceeding for Pakistan."We don't need interpreters. We speak the same language." American pressure is, however, just one of Sharif's worries. The more immediate problem is sugar-coating a grudging realisation that the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir isn't going to change in the immediate future. India and Pakistan may continue talking till the cows come home but azadi remains as much of a pipedream now as it was before Vajpayee crossed Wagah. Even if the Hurriyat Conference leadership is assured by Pakistani High Commissioner in Delhi Ashraf Jehangir Qazi that nothing really has changed. Sharif, for example, encouraged Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz to suggest in the course of official briefings preceding the visit that "settlement of the Kashmir issue will be accorded the highest priority". Raising the "core" issue like a mantra is actually Sharif's way of ingratiating himself with both the army and the wider political establishment. Despite a more compliant chief, the army hasn't fully got over the humiliation of General Jehangir Karamat's resignation and the dismissal of the naval chief for corruption. Says a senior journalist: "The Jamaat has the tacit support of the army. It is the street-fighting wing of the Pakistani establishment." That, in a sense, is half of Sharif's problems. He won the February 1997 election promising to improve relations with India. But to achieve that he has had to wage a dogged battle to put civilian authority on top. It doesn't help matters that he is confronted with a sharply divided establishment. Unlike Benazir who ensured that every contentious placard and banner on Kashmir was hidden from view when Rajiv came calling in 1988, Sharif is more inhibited. The pillars of Pakistani society may not like the crudeness of the Jamaat's methods or its exaggerated religious rhetoric but there is some endorsement of its limited agenda. The hawks in Pakistan have, for example, pretty successfully sold the pup that the Pokhran tests were a flop and that India will test again. Then there is also a belief in Pakistan that missile technology actually favours them over India and thatVajpayee's visit stems from a devious Brahmanical ploy to nullify that advantage. It is in the face of these formidable hurdles that cricket diplomacy has worked wonders. Bal Thackeray's climbdown in the face of Vajpayee's insistence that the tour must proceed and the standing ovation Wasim Akram's men received in Chennai have put Indo-Pakistan relations on a new high. The bottle throwing in Calcutta did inject a sour note but, overall, Vajpayee has emerged as the great new hope -- the poet whose collection Jang na hone denge in Urdu was released with some fanfare last Friday. Says former Pakistan foreign secretary Tanvir Ahmad Khan: "Thackeray by taking a harsher position immediately made Vajpayee seem moderate and liberal. He released the anger that was locked up after L.K. Advani's hot pursuit statement last May after the nuclear tests." For most Pakistanis, apart from the voluble set around the bazaars, Thackeray is the Indian counterpart of Jamaat's Ahmad. The juxtaposition serves a valuable end. The initial suspicions of a BJPGovernment that reached hysterical heights last may have disappeared. What has replaced it is high, unreal expectations of the type that greeted Lahore's very own I.K. Gujral's unexpected elevation as prime minister in 1997. Says Information Minister Mushahid Hussain, "Vajpayee has shown more moral courage than Gujral." In coming to the city of Kim with just the right mix of celebrities he certainly has. This has made him popular and the popularity is bound to rub off domestically. For the moment, Sharif is also riding the crest of a changed mood. Kashmir has not been forgotten, as the innumerable JKLF placards dotting Lahore testify. Nor has Vajpayee forgotten ISI-inspired terrorism. Although reciprocating Sharif's hospitality, he has put the Home Ministry's white paper on hold. But these issues are no longer seen as insurmountable vetos. In the rarefied atmosphere of Aitchison College -- a sprawling public school where they offer A levels and the prep school principal is a true blue Briton -- the talk is of the school cricket team visiting India again. The Aitchison boys represent the new generation, the generation for whom India is a neighbouring country but not their country. Just like Lahore is a city for those whose grandparents left their properties and made the painful trudge to the refugee camps in 1947. It's another generation united by a common go-getting attitude. They belong to a self-confident India and Pakistan who have transcended history and hate. In his own tentative way, Sharif captured the moment. Says his information minister: "India should consider itself lucky that Sharif is not a run-of-the-mill politician." He may not be but he has to fight run-of-the-mill political battles. Just likeVajpayee has to in order to survive as prime minister of a fragile coalition. Now beleaguered at home, both prime ministers have reached out to the other. "We have," the Viceroy Lord Curzon wrote a century ago, "blundered into some of our greatest triumphs." As iron gates of the Wagah border closed on the bus, this is a thought that must have been engaging the minds of the new architects of a new beginning. * From Breakdown to Detente & Entente Cordiale by Harinder Baweja in Pakistan and Raj Chengappa-with Manoj Joshi and Shahzeb Jilani (From India Today, 3/1/99) I walk down the same street
The ride took less than an hour. But from Pokhran to Chagai and thence
to Wagah, Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif, his fellow traveller, had traversed
an incredible distance. Especially in a relationship
So why has the spring of '99 brought so much warmth and good cheer in a 50-year relationship where drought and hostility was the norm? More importantly, will the bonhomie last? To be cynical would be safe. After all, when President Zia-ul-Haq flew into Delhi in 1987 he got a similar reception for his version of cricket diplomacy. And the following year, after Zia died in an air crash, prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Rajiv Gandhi again held out the promise of change. At that time too the summit meeting in Islamabad was hailed as a "historic" one. But after the first flush, which saw the signing of an agreement not to attack each other's nuclear facilities, the hardliners in Pakistan struck back and the relationship went into deep freeze again. Nor have the events of the past eight months following the Pokhran and Chagai nuclear tests held out much promise. When Sharif and Vajpayee first met at the SAARC Summit in Colombo last July, the talks broke down within hours,with Sharif terming it a "zero meeting". The second encounter in New York last September, held in the backdrop of the UN Assembly, saw both of them signal a detente and a resumption of talks. However, when the foreign secretary-level talks resumed a month later in Islamabad, it turned out to be a desultory affair. Both sides talked at each other rather than to each other, especially on Kashmir. Nothing unusual here in what was always termed as the dialogue of the deaf. In November when the two sides met again to discuss freeing items of trade, they were still hard of hearing. Instead of hundreds of items planned, Pakistan whittled the list down to a disappointing 18. Miffed, Indian diplomats thought it wasn't worth the expense to fly so many officials down for so little. By the end of the year, even cricket diplomacy between the two countries appeared to be floundering with the Shiv Sena trying to bury the short-lived detente in the holes its vandals had dug up on the Ferozeshah Kotla pitch in Delhi. Yet, the deep undercurrents of change had begun unnoticed in those nine months. The impetus may have been given when the earth shook with multiple atomic explosions in the subcontinent. In many cities Pakistanis danced deliriously on the streets at what they hailed as a befitting reply to India's tests. As Zafar Ahmad, a shopkeeper in Lahore puts it, "We felt we were finally equal." That sense of parity also brought with it a responsibility for the two new overtly nuclear powers. Now was the time to act with maturity and move quickly to build up a series of confidence measures to ease the hair-trigger situation. Initially the hardliners did their chest-beating act and for a while the two leaders were prisoners of their domestic compulsions. But Sharif and Vajpayee are also concerned over the terrible prospect of a nuclear war. Being the heads of government, they decided to do something about it. That meant taking charge of the talks directly. As Pakistan Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz points out, "Officials follow the brief, but politicians changed the brief." And if there are two leaders who can make a decisive difference to Indo-Pakistan relations without their motives being suspect, they are Vajpayee and Sharif. Both have validated their country's nuclear prowess so nobody can accuse them of away their nation's security. And Vajpayee represents a party, the BJP, which has always been hawkish towards Pakistan. A lot of hard-headed calculations went into the bus diplomacy. If Sharif moved away from Pakistan's demand for a third-party negotiation, meaning the US, there was a rider. When questioned persistently on whether Pakistan had finally given in to the Indian position of Kashmir being a bilateral dispute, Aziz let it slip, saying," We have to exhaust the bilateral process before we can go back to the international community saying 'we tried'. If in three to six months we find that India is not being flexible we can seek mediation again." Sharif and Aziz seemed to be working to a pre-planned strategy. While Aziz reiterated Kashmir was the core issue, he consistently reminded everyone of Vajpayee's statement at the G-15 summit in Jamaica last week in which he acknowledged that Kashmir was a crucial issue in determining the "content and contours" of the relations between the two countries. Aware of the domestic pressure that could build up once the euphoria died down, Aziz said, "Bus and cricket diplomacy are all very well but the Pakistani public opinion cannot indefinitely sustain a dialogue that does not record substantive progress on the core issue of Kashmir." In short, Sharif and Aziz were also building an escape route for Pakistan and themselves if the talks began to flounder. With the militant Jamaat-e-Islami already breathing down his neck, Sharif is also aware of the forces against rapprochement. There are no dearth of sceptics about the latest initiative. Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, while welcoming the talks, reiterated that progress on Kashmir is still the key. In Islamabad, Lt-General (retd) Hamid Gul , former chief of the ISI, dubbed the trip a gimmick, saying, "There can be no moving away from the UN resolutions on Kashmir. That is the bottom line." Meanwhile, Vajpayee realised that it was important for India to show its willingness to go more than half the distance to continue a dialogue with Pakistan despite rebuffs. He also brought in a crucial difference -- he was willing to move quickly on India's promises. As Jaswant Singh puts it: "The difference that we began to make as compared to governments in the past was between pronouncements and implementation. We have implemented." The bus from Delhi to Lahore was a symbolic start. Before that India had begun to sweeten the relationship. Faced with a shortage of sugar, the Government cleared imports worth Rs 387 crore from Pakistan. Allegations by Pakistani politicians that the mills belonged to Sharif's family were to another area that had been talked of for years -- purchasing power from Pakistan. Hectic negotiations were started between power ministry officials from both sides. Initially the proposal was for 2,000 MW, but there was a technical hitch. Although the frequency of power distribution is similar, the Indian grid is subject to wild fluctuations. Which meant that connectivity with Pakistan power plants would be a hurdle as the wires would frequently burn down. So the figure was quickly scaled down to 500 MW and then 300 MW, made feasible by setting up an isolating sub-station that would make the transfer of power compatible. Talks are now on to arrive at a proper tariff. So even while official-level talks were floundering, Vajpayee kept them moving on different fronts. His threat to dismiss the Maharashtra Government if the Shiv Sena continued to create trouble over the Pakistan cricket tour showed how determined he was to keep the dialogue going. Given the excellent personal rapport they enjoy, and with Singh formally joining as external affairs minister in December, the two were able to move quickly on vital foreign-policy issues. It also brought an end to the confusion created by the host of dissonant voices dabbling in foreign affairs. When Sharif made the offer to Vajpayee to take the bus to Lahore, it was Singh, without consulting his MEA (Ministry of External Affairs) officials, who called up the prime minister in Jamaica and told him to agree. Result: India seized the diplomatic initiative. If the Vajpayee-Sharif summit diplomacy is expected to go far, it is because the circumstances under which they meet are vastly different from the Benazir-Rajiv tryst. Benazir was a prisoner of the triumvirate that usually ruled Pakistan -- the president, the army and the ISI -- and was unable to adopt an independent stance. In the past year, Sharif has not only tamed the presidency, he has put the army in its place and also won a major battle with the judiciary. In doing so, he has emerged as the most powerful prime minister in Pakistan's history. Also, unlike in the late '80s when Kashmir was spinning out of control, a decade later India has reasserted its ability to rule the state. There is an elected government in Kashmir and the army's role has been considerably reduced. Pakistan finds it no longer gets the international mileage for crying hoarse about Kashmir. So Sharif needs to get his country out of the no-win corner on Kashmir without appearing to compromise on its basic stand: an uphill task. There is another major factor that is driving Sharif's bus: Pakistan's failing economy. The IMF bailed him out by reinstating the extended fund facility programme worth $1.6 billion. Pakistan's external debt today stands at $32 billion. Exports continue to be low. The fiscal deficit is ballooning. And the escalating prices are beginning to make the common man restless. The businessman in him makes Sharif realise that he has got to get the economy quickly back on the rails. One way is to cut down on defence expenditure -- and descalating tensions with India could help him push through such cuts. That is an imperative that drives Vajpayee too. Apart from defence cuts, the two countries realise that they must make a move on signing the CTBT, a precondition of the US for fully lifting economic sanctions and also to demonstrate to the world that they are responsible nuclear powers. If either side is seen as giving in to US pressure, domestic political parties would nuke any such plan. But if they project it as a move to bring lasting peace within the region and as a goal they reached themselves, it has a much better chance of flying. They also sense that there may be popular support for such an entente cordiale between the two countries. Yet, the road to detente is a long and winding one. Unless the two countries
are able to put Kashmir on the backburner for a while the goodwill may
be short-lived. As for trade, which offers the best platform to put relations
on an even keel, the hawks in Pakistan want to calibrate it with progress
on Kashmir. Sharif will have to use his business skills to break the deadlock.
* February 10, Khatmandu, Nepal: A World Bank report projected 1998-99 growth rate of 4.0 percent in Nepal. Probably referring to the change of six government in just over 6 years, the report noted the stifling effect on the country's economy of political instability. * February 15, Dhaka, Bangladesh: "So we have no prospect of peace at the advent of the 21stcentury,"a senior government official said in obvious reference to the "booming culture" of strikes and political intolerance in the country. Industrial production and exports take the heat of hartals, but natural disasters, which affect agriculture, are more devastating to the economy, according to Muzaffar Ahmed, a professor of economics at Dhaka University. Agriculture constitutes one-third of the country's GDP, he pointed out. March 6, Srinagar, Jammu & Kashmir, India: In a significant numismatic discovery, 1,450 copper coins belonging to the Sultanate period of Kashmir have been recovered at Barthana Qamarwari in downtown Srinagar, according to Archaeology and Museums Deputy Director M H Makhdomi. The coins are round and bear the name and title of the issuers. The coins carry the mint name 'Zarbi Kashmir' (currency of Kashmir) in crude Arabic letters. About 25 coins have the names of five sultans of Kashmir -- Zain-ul-Abiden, Hassan Shah, Mohammad Shah, Fateh Shah and Ali Shah -- and were minted between 1420 AD and 1579 AD. * Islamic Market Index was launched by Dow Jones Company was launched recently. A Shari'ah Supervisory Board of Islamic scholars will keep track of 600 stocks, from 30 countries, with a total market capitalization of about $7.5 trillion, for their compliance to Shari'ah laws. * India exports a cargo load of red roses weighing about 300 tons during the Valentine season, according to the Indian Floriculture Association president Karuthuri Ramakrishna of Bangalore. * Over 50 per cent of children in six Indian cities below the age of 12 have more than the acceptable amount of lead in their blood, according to the findings of the world's largest-ever (and India's first) such study. The findings were released on the first day of the three-day international conference on prevention of lead poisoning, organized by The George Foundation, a voluntary non-profit organization. Bombay tops the list of those affected by lead poisoning in the under 12 age group. It recorded 61.86 per cent, followed by Madras (60.54 per cent), Calcutta (55.78 per cent), Delhi (54.10 per cent) and Bangalore (39.94 per cent). "International studies have shown as much as 5.8 decline in IQ levels for every 10 mg/dl increase of lead in blood levels,'' Dr Abraham George, a US-based NRI and trustee of The George Foundation, told reporters. One of the major source of lead poisoning was found to be the vehicular exhaust fumes. Another possible source of lead, particularly in the urban environment, was drinking water because it comes through pipeline. .* Even though Indian immigration declined from 1996 to 1997, India remained in the top 5 countries as a source of immigrants to the USA in 1997. 38,071 persona from India were legally admitted to USA from October 1, 1996 till September 30, 1997. * India has entered the debt trap. In the new Indian budget as much as 27% of the total expenditure of Rs. 2.83 trillion is earmarked for repayment of interest on existing loans, as against the total borrowing of 25% in the next fiscal year. * India produced 2.10 million kg of organic tea in 1998, out of a global output of 2.40 million kg, according to the country's Tea Board chairman, S.S. Ahuja. About 80% of the organic tea, produced in 20 gardens in India, is exported to Europe and Japan. * India will be among the countries worst-hit water shortage, according to Washington, D.C. based World Watch Institute. The extraction of water from aquifers in India exceed recharge by a factor of two or more. Therefore, freshwater aquifers there are pulled down 1-3 meters every year. Farmers in Gujarat, for example, are digging their irrigation wells 1.5 meters deeper every year * India has become the world's largest processor of diamonds, both in
terms of value and volume, according to Gems and Jewelry Export promotion
Council chairman P.S. Pandya. Also, India is the world's largest exporter
of finished diamonds with a global market share of 81 percent.
HOLIDAYS: March 17 St. Patrick's Day, 18 Gudi Padava, Ugadi, Cheti Chand, 25 Rama Navmi, 28 Palm Sunday, 29 Eid-ul-Zuha/ Mahavir Jayanti, 31 Passover/ Hanuman Jayanti, April 2 Good Friday, 4 Easter *Since February 22, New Delhi, India: SONAR BANGLADESH, an exhibition of paintings by artists from Bangladesh at Art Today, A-1, Hamilton House, Connaught Place * March 12 & 13, Portland, OR, USA: THE SECRETS OF SINGBONGA, a Kalakendra presentation of an original puppet dramatic production by Tears of Joy Theater Company of a folk tale of the Mundas of Northeastern India, at 7:30 p.m. on 3/12, and 2 and 7:30 p.m. on 3/13, at Winningstad Theater of Portland Center for the Performing Arts (PCPA), 1111 SW Broadway. Tickets from PCPA, FASTIXX, and Music Millenium. More info from <www.kalakendra.org>. * March 13, Cambridge, MA, USA: WOMEN, PEACE & ENVIRONMENT a celebration of the International Women's Day by the Forum of Progressive Artists featuring a dance choreographed by Aparna Sindhoor at 6:30 pm and 8:15 pm at the Dance Complex at 536 Mass. Ave (near Central Square "T" Stop). Tickets at $10 in advance, $12 at the door. Part of the proceeds will go to Samata for a battered women's shelter in Mysore, India. More info from <fopa2000@yahoo.com>. * March 20, Fremont, CA, USA: CHETI CHAND celebration by Sindhi Association of Bay Area featuring Sindhi songs by Krishin Alimchandani of Toronto and Premila Bhatia from Chicago, at 6 p.m., at Fremont Hindu Temple. More info from 510-490-6056 & 650-948-1987. * March 20, Oakland, CA, USA: JUGALBANDI featuring Pandit Hari Prasad Chaurasia on flute and Pandit Shiv Sharma on santoor, and invocation on sitar by Ustad Habib Khan at 7:30 p.m., at Calvin Simons Theater, Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center. Tickts from $15-$50 from BASS outlets. More info from 415-433-0600 & 925-736-7410. *March 20 & 21, Santa Clara, CA, USA: THE POWER OF SATURN, a classical dance production based on the mythological story of Nala and Damayanti, presented by Abhinaya Dance co., at 7:30 p.m. on 3/20, and 4 p.m. on 3/21, at Louis B. Mayer Theater, University of Santa Clara. Tickets at $10 to $40. More info from 408-246-1160. *March 28, Lahore, Pakistan: ODISSI dance performance by the famous Indian exponent Madhavi Mudgal at the invitation from Sanjam Nagar Institute of Philosophy & Art. This will be the first performance of this dance form in Pakistan. *April 10, Portland, OR, USA: JHANKAR, a presentation, organized by Gujarati Samaj, of popular Indian movie songs by a well known music group from Seattle at 5:00 p.m., at Madison High School, 2735 NE 82nd Ave. Tickets for non-members at $7 per person and $20 per family Indian grocery stores. More info from 503-985-3263, 360-834-0397 or 503-399-0905. * April 17, Seattle WA, USA: BAISAKHI & HOLI FESTIVALS, featuring folk (including Bhangra) and classical dances including some by Rangeela Dance Group of Vancouver BC, is being organized by India Arts & Heritage Society at 7:30 pm at Shoreline Center Auditorium, 18560 1st Ave NE. Tickets at $6/person. More info from 253-520-3130, 206-364-4448, or 425-823-6435. * Till September 26, Washington, D.C., USA: BEHIND THE HIMALAYAS, an exhibition of water- colors by the Australian artist Robert Powell of the architecture in the remote Mustang region of Nepal at the Smithsonian's Arthur M. Sackler Gallery. More info from <www.si.edu/asia>. * Every Sunday, New Delhi, India: FOOD BAZAAR AND MUSIC, organized by the New Delhi Muncipal Council in the open in a traffic free inner circle road at the central park at Connaught Place starts at 12:30 p.m., with cultural events starting at 6:30 p.m. hours. * March 13, New York, NY, USA: CONNECTING WITH AMERICA, an open forum dialogue to examine issues facing, and the unique role of, South Asian American Women in society, at Asia Society, 1:30-5:00 pm. The guest of honor will be Mrs. Shashi Tripathi from the Consulate General of India. More info from <aiwaemail@aol.com> * March 13, Los Angeles, CA, USA: AYURVEDA AND YOGA: MEDICINE IN ANCIENT INDIA, a UCLA Navin & Pratima Doshi Chair in Indian History conference, from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Ay Faulty Center, UCLA. More info from sardesai@ucla.edu. *March 16, Salem, OR, USA: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE INDUS VALLEY CIVILIZATION: CEMETERY EXCAVATIONS AT BRONZE AGE HARAPPA by the University of Oregon anthropology professor John Lukacs at 7:30 p.m. in Paulus Lecture Hall, Rook 201, Willamette University Law School. More info from Salem Society of the Archaeological Institute of America at 370-6250. * March 17-19, Atlanta, GA, USA: ANNUAL CONVENTION & EXHIBITION of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association (AAHOA) at Georgia World Conference Center. More info from 404-816-5759. * Till May 2, Stony Brook, NY, USA: INDIA: ON THE THRESHOLD OF FREEDOM, an exhibition of black and photos from a private collection about life in India during the 193s3, 40's and 50's, on the 5th floor of State University of New York's Melville Library. More info from <http:// www.Sunysb.edu/indstudy>. * Timeless The Art Book Studio has opened at 46 Housing Society, South Extension, Part I, New Delhi (Phones: 011-4632903, 4690513, Fax: 011-4610576. It offers only art books on India, art, craft, carpets, archaeology, interior decor, gardening, landscape gardens, sculpture, photography, fashion, paintings and history in a well furnished, two storey art studio. Unusual books and museum catalogues from all over the world are available. * Nepal Study Tour offered by the University of Idaho next summer (5/15-6/14/999) including lectures on Nepali Culture, Hinduism, Early Buddhism, and Mahayana Buddhism, interspersed with site visits to many of Nepal's cultural and spiritual shrines, including Lumbini Grove, the birthplace of Buddha, and ending with a five-day trek in the Himalayas. The program fee of $3600 includes tuition, fees, excursions, accommodations, most meals, and round-trip airfare from Los Angeles-Bangkok-Kathmandu. Apply before March 15. More info from <ngier@uidaho.edu>. * New flights
Washington DC from New Delhi (via Amsterdam) on Northwest New York to Tirupathi by Indian Airlines
Enquiries: 022-6156633. Departure: 022-6156433
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