With reference to the article "Pakistan's India Problem and Vice Versa" (21 Nov., 1999), by Chandan Mitra, it does not diagnose the malady correctly and, what is worse, pronounces it as incurable. No doubt, an average Indian and Pakistani, despite all their familiar similarities, look at each other with suspicion while they both wallow in self-righteousness. No doubt Pakistan, 50 years after its birth, is still wandering in quest of its identity. No doubt for 50 long years, India and Pakistan have fought with each other or lived in uneasy peace. Yet 50 years of separation is too short a period as compared to 5000 years of unity. So the compulsions of history, geography and culture, no less of economics and national, regional and international interests as developing states are bound to assert themselves in the long run.

Chandra Mitra's proposition of a 'historic civilizational conflict between Islam and Hinduism' is questionable. The interaction of Islam and Hinduism on the soil of the Sub-continent produced a cultural synthesis - in literature, mysticism, fine arts and architecture and a common way of life which gave us Urdu, Ghazal, Hindustani Music and Mughal Miniatures, not to speak of the Taj Mahal. No thesis of civilizational conflict can explain them away, or the composite culture which is the common heritage of the people of the Sub-continent. Chandan Mitra reiterates this false thesis to justify his notion of perpetual hostility. Little does he realise that his thesis serves to justify the creation of Pakistan and, what is worse, condemns the Indian State to a permanent 'civil war' between the Hindus and the Muslims who are both Indians.

To understand Pakistan and the diplomatic and military games it plays, one has to go back to the political evolution which culminated in partition and independence.  Pakistan was seen as a solution to India's communal problem; creation of Pakistan merely internationalised it. Quest for parity was their war cry. It remains Pakistan's quest to this day. Partition was seen by the Muslims of the Sub-continent as the antidote to religious and cultural submergence. Having experienced Muslim invasions from the west the Hindus were equally apprehensive of the restoration of Muslim rule with 'foreign' Muslim assistance. Their mutual fears proved to be the psychological barrier to national integration and the result was Partition.

Pakistan and India have intensified their mental block which expresses itself primarily in the conflict over the state of J&K. But Pakistan should appreciate that it is no match for India and India should not show off its inherent superiority.

The economic fall-outs of a settlement of the J&K problem are so enormous and so much in keeping with the real interest of the people of the Sub-continent that all of us should exert ourselves to find a workable compromise. I do not agree with Chandra Mitra that even if Kashmir problem is resolved, Pakistan will·pick up another bone of contention! Even the Pakistani establishment will find it difficult to invent a 'Kashmir' to maintain the atmosphere of hostility in Pakistan. Neither will the Hindutva hawks in India find it possible to sell their wares.

The Muslim world has not launched a Jihad against India. So there is no question of Pakistan being in its 'forefront', as Chandan Mitra graphically describes. If Pakistan uses a religious diction for its territorial dispute with India, it does so to mobilise its people and gain the sympathy of the Muslim World, which it has demonstrably failed to get over the last 50 years.

I think that a compromise agreement over J&K llowing Pakistan to keep the NA and the Punjabi-speaking region, integrating Ladakh and Jammu with India and establishing an internally autonomous region in the Kashmiri-speaking Valley, under the joint control of the two, will generate an avalanche of friendly, good neighbourly, brotherly cooperation, not dnly between the people of India and Pakistan but among all the peoples of  the Sub-continent and release their energies to achieve their due place in the world. If they continue to be consumed by distrust, suspicion and hostility, substracting from rather than adding to each other, the Sub-continent cannot be one of the poles of the multipolar world in the 21st century