There is peace of a sort between India and China as well as between India and China as well as between India and Pakistan but there are times when the peace sounds so phony. Feathers were ruffled in India in mid- November when the Chinese Ambassador in New Delhi laid his country's claim to all of Arunachal Pradesh, drawing a sharp response from India which said that the Himalayan state is very much an integral part of India. The differences between India and Pakistan persist, no matter how many times peace talks are held between their chosen representatives. Siachen has been and continues to be a major contentious issue.

The positions of all three countries are deeply entrenched. It may take some time for Sino-Indian disagreements to be sorted out, but isn't there any way to resolve our problems with our immediate neighbour, especially in regard to Siachen? The problem originally sprang because of the region remaining undemarcated when a mutually agreed cease-fire line was first negotiated in Kashmir. Indian troops had quickly to move into Siachen essentially as a preemptive move, way back in 1984, to keep Pakistani troops out. The move may have been clever, but it has cost India a great deal both in men and money.

The cost to the Indian exchequer is around Rs 3 crore to Rs 5 crore a day no small amount. And because of the terrible weather conditions the temperature could fall to as low as minus fifty degrees Celsius over 600 Indian soldiers have died. So where do we go from here? One suggestion that has so far been made is that both India and Pakistan can demarcate a mutually agreed zone of peace along the Siachen glacier. Well put. What is preventing such an understanding is a total lack of trust in Islamabad, especially after what happened in Kargil.

Pakistan is a suspect nation. So the question arises: what is it that needs to be done to remove suspicion? Does the media in both countries have any role to play? Yes, says a leading Pakistani journalist, Najam Sethi, editor-in-chief of two leading Pakistani papers, Daily Times and Friday Times and it is somewhat surprising that his views have long remained unnoticed. Sethi originally expressed them in a convocation address to Asian College of Journalism in Chennai last year but they remain relevant just as importantly now.

According to Sethi, the press in both countries has been for a long time reinforcing age-old prejudices, fuelling hostilities and creating obstacles in the process of conflict resolution and negotiated settlement and in the process become "part of the problem rather than the solution".

Sethi has a solution to this particular problem. He says: "A focussed and free dialogue between the two independent media has thus become a necessary, though not sufficient, condition for the peaceful resolution of disputes between the two countries".

Sethi's argument is that, for a host of reasons "the new generations in both countries, especially the middle classes are less obsessed about war and less burdened with the baggage of partition than their predecessors" and further that "the media explosion in the last five years has also added a new dimension to conflict-articulation, management and resolution".

He has a point there. But it is not that Sethi is unaware of the fact that the people on both sides of the border are still somewhat convinced of the "evil-country-nextdoor- that-you-cannot-trust" thesis.

Pakistan's thesis is simple and it is apparently noticeable in the country's textbooks for students. It is: "India is inhabited by Hindus who were and remain opposed to the creation of Pakistan; the Hindu religion is inferior and inimical to Islam; the Hindu leadership in India dismembered Pakistan in 1971 and will, not miss another opportunity if it should arise in the future".

And, as Sethi himself sees it, the Indian thesis is: "Pakistan has been and remains an agent of biggest enemies elsewhere (USA, China) and wants to destroy India's pluralist society; the rise of fundamentalist- Taliban type Islam which seeks to create an Islamic arc from Turkey to India threatens India's secularist integrity".

It is Sethi's firm belief that the English press in India communicates with South Block where foreign policy is formulated and that "the big journalists, some of them experts formerly working in government, guide and mould policy". This is a questionable statement.

Journalists in the English media are largely pretty free, even if Sethi asserts that "there is a much better established mechanism of officially briefing the press in India than in Pakistan".

Even granting that Sethi is more or less accurate, it is not the past that we must constantly hark back to, but the future of the well-being of the entire Indian sub-continent's approximately 1.6 billion people. How does one go about repairing the existing mind-sets in India and its neighboring countries?

Sethi has some sound solutions to offer. One is that there should be more frequent visits of Indian journalists to Pakistan and vice versa. Sethi says quite frankly that "Pakistani journalists visiting India feel that the prejudice and suspicion among their Indian counterparts is too palpable to ignore". Ergo, he feels that the process of mutual exchange of visits will be more effective among younger journalists than among the old who see negative attitudes have become doctrines to be defended even in the face of hard facts".

Further more says Sethi, while English is the universal medium of dialogue among adversaries, in the case of India and Pakistan, Urdu and Hindi are closely interlinked and a dialogue can easily take place in them and if a dent is made in this sector "the results could be far-reaching".

Really? Is the media all that powerful? And especially in India, is the influence of the Hindi-speaking people all that powerful as to dominate policy-making? No matter. What is important is the essence of Sethi's thinking which is that there should be a continuing interchange of views between the Indian and Pakistani journalists to remove the vistas of mutual suspicion prevailing in their minds.

"Much confidence building can be done via this powerful media" asserts Sethi.Perhaps he is right. He wants the Indian media to open offices in Islamabad, Karachi and Lahore, invite Pakistan print and electronic journalists for dialogues with counterparts in India to air their views and encourage "dissident" Indian and Pakistani journalists who do not always share their respective state's point of view on Indo-Pakistani relations to share their thoughts. Noble ideas, but who will bell this cat?

Courtesy: www.samachar.com