Beyond the Lines: An Autobiography by Kuldip Nayar

Author:Kuldip Nayar [Nayar, Kuldip]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9788174369109
Publisher: Lotus Collection
Published: 2012-10-15T07:00:00+00:00

10

The Shimla Conference

As soon as the Bangladesh war ended I sent a request for an interview through the Swiss embassy to the then Pakistan President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. We had no diplomatic relations at the time. When I arrived at Lahore airport I was put back in a flight to Kabul as the immigration authorities had no information about my visit. At that time, I met Salman Haider, India’s ambassador at Kabul, who was subsequently my deputy in London.

I took the opportunity to visit the Frontier Gandhi, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, in the one-room tenement in which he lived. He was squatting on a charpai when I bowed to say salaam. The room was bare, a kurta and salwaar hung on a string drawn from one wall to the other. A few earthen vessels with a chulah lay in a corner. I told to myself that here was an individual who could have occupied any position in India but had preferred to stay in Afghanistan because his struggle for Pakhtoonistan was not over. (Nearly thirty years later, his grandson, Asfandyar Wali Khan, elder son of Wali Khan who led the Awami National Party, had the NWFP renamed Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa.)

Ghaffar Khan was bitter about Jawaharlal Nehru who, he said, had promised to fight for Pakhtoonistan. ‘Are you people banias who calculate all the time about the gain and loss in what you do?’ he asked rhetorically. I remained silent. After a pause, he asked me whether it was true that many Muslims had been killed in Gujarat (in the communal riots of 1970). I told him it was. He sorrowfully remarked that their assessment was that once Independence was won and the British left, communal violence would be a thing of the past. ‘But Gujarat is the land of Gandhi,’ he added, looking disillusioned and helpless. A few days later I crossed into Pakistan through Peshawar.

After Pakistan’s central government had moved from Karachi to Islamabad, a city founded by Gen. Ayub Khan, who had the area aerially sprayed with seedlings to provide a green cover, and indeed the city was deliciously green. I spent the morning at Rawalpindi Club with local journalists. They were all critical of India for its role in the creation of Bangladesh but did not sound unhappy at having lost it. One journalist said in Punjabi – most of them were Punjabis – that they had had a taste of living with the Bengalis and that India was welcome to do so.

Aware that the loss of Bangladesh represented a humiliation for Pakistan, I teased them with the question: Were we, the two Punjabs, to get together, what would happen? Pat was the reply: Were that to happen we would conquer the entire subcontinent.

Before meeting Bhutto, I had fixed an appointment with Gen. Ayub Khan. A well-built Ayub was clad in a bush shirt and trousers and looked the picture of health. He was however a broken man because he had been forced to resign his position as president of Pakistan by what he described as ‘Bhutto’s tricks’.

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