In 1970, Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who subsequently became the US Ambassador to India, was embroiled in a fierce controversy over a private memo on race relations he wrote to President Nixon. At a time when race riots and Black activism was the stuff of liberal angst, Moynihan proffered an interesting piece of advice: "The time may have come when the issue of race could benefit from a period of 'benign neglect'. The subject has been too much talked about. The forum has been too much taken over to hysterics, paranoids and boodlers on all sides. We may need a period in which Negro progress continues and racial rhetoric fades."

It is instructive to read Moynihan's brutal indictment of over-concern in the context of developments in our western neighbourhood. For the past week, the media and strategic community have gone berserk dissecting post-election developments in Pakistan. The fate of President Musharraf, the future of US-Pakistan relations, the course of Islamist mobilisation in the NWFP and, of course, the complexities of the military's relationship with the political class, nothing has escaped the scrutiny of the Pak-obsessed classes. I even heard a lovely story about an anchor asking his producer on the studio microphone if Dera Ghazi Khan was in the PML-N or PML-Q.

In an abstract sort of way it is fine to be burdened by an information overload. It would be charming if the kerfuffle surrounding the almost-rigged election was treated with the same rigour that classicists once reserved for the minutiae of the 18-day battle of Kurukshetra.

The problem, unfortunately, is not one of scholastic self-indulgence. There are a lot of people in important positions in India who believe and want to believe that the vote in Pakistan will make a difference. It's a "new dawn" gushed one writer. It is a different matter that they also believed that Musharraf's modernisation programme would make a difference; that Benazir Bhutto's tragic assassination would make a difference; and that candles on the Wagah border actually make a difference. When it comes to Pakistan, it's the philosophy of Zsa Zsa Gabor that is at play: The triumph of hope over experience.

Why, a bewildered Nawaz Sharif asked an Indian "friend of Pakistan", were Indians so fascinated with Musharraf? It was a legitimate question founded on a wrong premise. The common Indian was never bowled over by the precocious General. Narendra Modi won an election in 2002 taunting "Mian Musharraf" and there was genuine public support when Atal Bihari Vajpayee ordered full mobilisation along the border after the 2001 attack on Parliament. Those who were fascinated by Musharraf were the same ones who were fascinated by Sharif before him, by Benazir before him, by General Zia before her and by Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto before him.

In his memoirs, Chronicles of Wasted Time, Malcolm Muggeridge wrote: "It was part of Hitler's weird genius... to be able to persuade a lost bourgeoisie and its treasonable clerks in attendance that he intended them no ill. Stalin performed a similar feat with a lost intelligentsia." Islamabad's most striking international achievement was in making Pakistan the foremost obsession of a "lost bourgeoisie", a "lost intelligentsia" and their "treasonable clerks". The origins of Pakistan lay in India's domestic politics and despite it going its separate way, the phenomenon persisted for some time. Pakistan abandoned its original idea of being the "homeland" of all Indian Muslims some 50 years ago. After the 1971 war, it lost its place as an inspiration for the ghettoised sections that still dreamt of restoring Muslim hegemony over India. By the 1990s, Pakistan ceased to be a domestic issue, except in Jammu & Kashmir. Today, no one, not even Balasaheb Thackeray, complains about crackers in the ghettos celebrating a Pakistan victory in cricket. The Muslim community (except, perhaps, in Hyderabad) has gone into denial over its unequivocal pre-1947 support for the movement for Pakistan.

In a political sense, this is encouraging -- although it doesn't detract from a new threat posed by radical, pan-Islamic ideologies.

What is not encouraging is the persistence with which both hardened secularists and Hindu nationalists link the "Muslim question" in India to Pakistan. There is an unstated belief in both quarters that Indo-Pak bonhomie is inextricably linked to the evolution of the Indian Muslim. In blunt language it implies that Indian Muslims will develop an emotional stake in Indian nationalism once the Pakistani State increases its comfort level with India. Just as India's Sri Lanka policy is forever hamstrung by opinion within Tamil Nadu, our policy towards Pakistan is never completely devoid of sectarian considerations. The weight of sectarian inputs has, ironically, grown since the 1990s with the emergence of Track-II diplomacy, the "relatives" network and Muslim tactical voting. Being nice to Pakistan has become a badge of respectability-despite the empirical evidence that it is Pakistan-bashing which wins votes.

A problem with this approach is its asymmetry. Even a perfunctory reading of Pakistan's history suggests that democracy is ephemeral and that the military is the only enduring institution. If civilian rule is to persist, it must function with a set of rules relating to the "national interest" laid down by the military. Unfortunately, enduring peace and conviviality with India is pretty low down in its list of priorities. Indeed, after Sharif's troubled existence after Vajpayee's bus ride to Lahore in 1999, it is unlikely that any elected Government is going to stir up that hornet's nest in a tearing hurry -- not Sharif and certainly not the vulnerable Asif Zardari. Before it can meaningfully engage with India, Pakistan has to sort itself out. Given the turbulence in the Islamic world, that will take generations.

For an economically resurgent India, the alternative to benign indifference is the dejection of unrequited love.

Courtesy: www.dailypioneer.com, February 24, 2008