English Quiz for UIIC AO 2016 – Set 3

Things have got so bad between
India and Pakistan that when they talk peace it looks like war. Their prime
ministers were to address the 65th annual session of the United Nations General
Assembly (UNGA) in New York and then meet on the sidelines. One day Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif made some illadvised, bellicose, Kashmir-related remarks
against India in his speech at the UNGA. On the following day Prime Minister
Manmohan Singh lashed out at Pakistan in his speech. Before they met the next
day Sharif reportedly called Singh a “village hag” (sic) off the
record and put paid to whatever diplomatic gains he had counted on. After that,
the meeting could not be one-on-one.

Back home, the Indo-Pak media war
was savage, sharpened by BJP leader Narendra Modi’s explosive reaction to the
“village hag” remark. One channel pitted the notoriously visceral
Pakistani politician Sheikh Rashid Ahmed against Hindu and Muslim Indians,
scoring brownie points while anchors lost their neutral cool. The New York
meeting achieved nothing except a vague agreement on sorting out the recent
Line of Control incidents through armies that hate each other. Pakistan’s
reference to Indian terrorism in Balochistan was correct but not comparable to
India’s globally accepted designation of Pakistan as the epicentre of
terrorism, threatening the world, including the US, the EU, India, Russia and
China, to say nothing of the Central Asian states, which cower before the Uzbek terrorists trained in Pakistan.

Manmohan Singh’s reaction to an
act of terrorism in Jammu on the eve of his meeting with Sharif was brave and
statesmanlike, given the negative press he has at home and the populist
atmospherics of the coming elections in India. He said he would not be deterred by terrorism while talking
peace with Pakistan. While in New York, he met President Barack Obama – who
could not find time for his Pakistani counterpart – and agreed to meet Sharif,
with caveats against pinning high
hopes on the meeting. Sharif’s reference to Kashmir at the UNGA was aimed more
at audiences at home than at India. He also expressed Pakistan’s newfound
plaint about the “unjust” global system created by a flawed UN and
called, unrealistically, for reforms in the world body. At home, right-wing TV
anchors and newspaper reporters were pleased that “he spoke softly but
gave a harsh message”. Some were put off because he was not
“fiery” enough, meaning that he lacked in denunciatory “Chavizmo” or the parading of a poor man’s
useless tumescence in global
politics.

Ace anchor Kamran Khan gave the
familiar, but repeatedly defeated, spin to the Jammu attack on Indian police
and military troops: “The attacks inflicted a heavy loss to the Indian
army and police and also revived the assertion that no effort for peace between
Pakistan and India could bear fruit until the Kashmir issue was resolved.”
Sharif was toeing the Foreign Office line, which has traditionally toed the
Pakistan army line, built on the frozen geopolitical position on India as a
permanent enemy opposed to the very existence of Pakistan. The last bit is
supported by the textbook brainwash in the schools of Pakistan, particularly
Punjab, currently ruled by Sharif’s rightwing PML(N). His plaint about Kashmir not finding place on the roster of issues at
the UN was purely for home consumption, because the 1972 Indo-Pak Simla
Agreement had forever assigned it to bilateral dialogue. Pakistan had – wrongly
– tried to move the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against India for the
1999 shooting down of a surveillance aircraft. The ICJ, while asserting that it
had no jurisdiction over the matter, gratuitously advised Pakistan to abide by
the 1972 change of status of all disputes.