P
akistan may have little hope for peace with India but a settlement with New Delhi will help remove the jihad culture ravaging the country, writes veteran journalist M J Akbar in his new book.
In "Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan", published by HarperCollins India, Akbar embarks on a historical whodunit to trace the journey of an idea, and the events, people, circumstances and mindset that divided India.
The investigation spans a thousand years, and an extraordinary cast: visionaries, opportunists, statesmen, tyrants, plunderers, generals, and an unusual collection of theologians, beginning with Shah Waliullah who created a 'theory of distance' to protect 'Islamic identity' from Hindus and Hinduism.
"There might be little hope for peace with India, given the fundamental divergence on Kashmir, but a settlement with India will help excise the jihad culture ravaging Pakistan," says Akbar.
According to the writer, it is comparatively easier for India to come to terms with Pakistan.
"Economic growth and dreams of becoming a part of the first world have begun to dominate the Indian mind. The Indian middle class has begun to appreciate a simple reality: social violence and economic growth cannot coexist. Liberalization has had an impact on lifestyle and attitudes.
"The culture of consumerism has been quickly adopted by the young, while entertainment television is a mirror of sexual liberation and the fusion of Western mores with Indian sentiment."
He says that the most remarkable aspect of this change was that "even terrorism, often exported from Pakistan, and wearing an 'Islamic' label, did not feed a backlash in the form of Hindu-Muslim riots, even after the venomous terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008."
Akbar feels India is content being a status quo-ist power, determined to preserve its current geography, without serious claims even on territory it believes it has lost to China along the Himalayas and to Pakistan in Kashmir.