Chapter Sixteen

When General Pervez Musharraf arrived in India, he spoke, to begin with, in such a manner that it appeared that he had come to India with the intention of reconciliation. For instance, in a speech at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi, he said that no military solution of the Kashmir conflict was possible. Similarly, at a press conference in Agra, he spoke about ‘acceptance of reality’. He also said that he had come to India with an open mind. Yet, later, without entering into any realistic reconciliation, he returned to Pakistan. As far as I can gauge, General Musharraf apprehended fierce emotional reaction on the part of the Pakistani public, and that is why he could not enter into any reconciliation with India and returned home. According to one commentator, ‘General Pervez Musharraf knew that the emotionally-charged people of Pakistan, who cannot tolerate defeat by India even on the cricket pitch, would definitely not tolerate political defeat by India in Kashmir.’ The Pakistani President must have known that if he entered into a compromise with India on Kashmir, the Pakistani public would have considered it their political defeat and he would have become the target of their ire. But, on the other hand, not compromising and reconciling with India on Kashmir would have only further worsened Pakistan’s woeful economic conditions, which would have led to the Pakistani public becoming even more disillusioned with General Musharraf. In such a situation, the Pakistani President had to choose between two evils, one of which would ruin his political career. It was for him to decide which of the two was a lesser evil, and then choose it over the greater evil. In my opinion, accepting the Indian position on Kashmir would have been opting for the ‘lesser evil’ from the point of view of Pakistan, because it would have been tantamount simply to Pakistan acknowledging something that it had already lost. In return for this, Pakistan would have been rewarded with the opening of doors of progress that have so far been closed