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| 13/07/2001 |
| THE SHAPE OF THE TABLE |
BEFORE MUSHARRAF'S VISIT TO AGRA, JULY 1991
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| There are moments in history when the past slips into hibernation and the future stirs hopeful at the scent of an untimely spring. Such a moment is expected to occur in the city of Agra later this month, when as if in a modern re-enactment of a medieval joust, two champions, each representing a battle order of nuclear-armed forces, will confront each other across the negotiating table. The city of Agra, historically associated with royal exiles and royal dead, could become a battlefield of peace, a Kargil turned Kurukshetra where warring cousins search in each other’s eyes for a new truth. |
| No one other than Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee himself could have foreseen that he would oblige President Pervez Musharraf with an invitation for such talks, for no Indian could have harboured fewer reasons in his heart for extending such an invitation. Shri Vajpayee has been a democrat too long, a Foreign Minister too long and a Prime Minister too long to oblige political parvenus. Equally, his memory is long enough to recall the snub at Wagah border by the same military high command that today expects equivalent protocol. He has not allowed himself to forget that, despite the advice of his staff, he visited the Pakistan Day monument at Lahore and tacitly acknowledged at the actuality of the two-nation theory. He has not been allowed by his own people to forget that after he took the bus to Lahore, a consequence was that he then had to send troop carriers to Kargil. |
| What could have brought about such a volte face in the mind of a veteran who thinks and plans in the same way that he walks, slowly, haltingly and with great deliberation?[EXTRACT] |
Publsihed in DAWN 13 July 2001, and reprinted in WHEN BUSH COMES TO SHOVE & OTHER WRITINGS (2006) |
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| 13 July 2001 |
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