There is one thing wrong with this piece of advice to India and Pakistan by Praful Bidwai. On the surface it seems okay, albeit somewhat platitudinous. But it is failure-proof.

The talks might fail, but this advice never will. If the talks fail, it will be because the advice was not “fully followed”, or was not followed “in the right spirit” or Vajpayee was “not really sincere” about the talks. The peaceniks said the same things after the failure of the Agra and Lahore talks, and we can rest assured that the same things will be repeated.

It will never be Pakistan’s fault of course. Or to be precise, Pakistan is the petulant kid brother from which nothing better can be expected. It is upto the elder brother to take the kid’s tantrums in his stride and act with maturity and tact.

This warped way of thinking is not really Bidwai’s fault. Pacifism as a whole is a failure-proof concept. The pacifist’s favourite cliche is that “War has never achieved anything”. This statement is provably untrue. War has solved a lot of problems in the 20th century.

But then, we cannot turn around and ask the pacifist: “Give me an instance where peace has succeeded”, because the demands of pacifism are impossible to fulfill and how much ever you feed the demon of pacifism, it is never enough.

To be a pacifist, a country has to talk of peace while the other country is arming against you. You should not raise a finger while the country is moving its troops towards your borders, because that will only “escalate the situation”. It has to make gestures of friendship even after they enter your borders. Which self-respecting country will do that?

No that was not a rhetorical question. There is an answer. Do you need a hint?

But of course, eventually that country fought back and lost badly. In fighting back, it ensured that the sacred tenets of Pacifism remain unrefuted to this day. In return, it was accused of being the “aggressor” by the Communist Party of India* , because according to the “enemy”, the territory that the countr? occupied was actually that of the said enemy.

If that country had instead welcomed “enemy” troops into its capital, it would have “won without war” wouldn’t it?

After all, that was the advice the father of that nation gave to its former rulers

‘… I want you to fight Nazism without arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them… I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government, should they consider them of any practical use in advancing the object of my appeal.’ (Stanley Wolpert’s Jinnah of Pakistan, pp. 187-188 as cited on page 144 of Chapter I of Constitutional Law of India, Supplement to Third Edition, 1988, written and published by H M Seervai, a giant in the field of constitutional history.)

*which split on this issue – the question was whether to support China or the USSR. India of course never figured