by Meena Menon
MEENA MENON
Reporting Pakistan
PENGUIN BOOKS
Contents
Preface
1. Oh, for a Visa!
2. Islamabad, Unreal City
3. On Being a Foreign Correspondent
4. Covering Terrorism
5. Shooting the Messenger
6. No Lines of Control
7. Civilian versus Military
8. Reviving a Left-of-centre Politics and Other Stories
9. Bilateral Ties
10. Voice for Missing Balochis
Epilogue
Notes
Select Bibliography
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
Copyright
This book is for Ravi, the sunshine in my life
Preface
Of the Many Pakistans and Borders
The border is a fearsome thing God wot!
—With apologies to Thomas Edward Brown
On one side of the ‘border’ was a cluster of shanties, and on the other, a hillock with ramshackle huts. A man in dark glasses, a Shiv Sainik, trying to be well meaning, pointed to the hillock, warning me not to go there. That is Pakistan, the mosques are full of bombs and guns, he said. Even before crossing the Wagah border, I was already there! That was the first of the many Pakistans I was to discover in Mumbai, miles away from the partitioned country. It was a few years before the demolition of the Babri Masjid on 6 December 1992, the first time I was at the ‘border’. There were riots in Jogeshwari East, a suburb of Mumbai which has a long record of communal violence. I thought the man was joking; I had been to the other side of the ‘border’ and families were mourning their dead and injured. He looked shocked when I questioned him. He had meant it kindly, for my safety. Pakistan was synonymous with any large Muslim pocket and, in Jogeshwari, the scene of some of the worst violence during the December 1992–93 riots in Bombay (it was renamed Mumbai in 1995), the ‘border’ was very well defined early on. Hindus and Muslims knew their geographical limits and stuck to them. The divide was sharpened after the riots when the few ‘mixed’ settlements emptied out. The devastating floods of 2005 in the city brought the communities together and Hindus and Muslims are now working to understand each other and overcome the past.
Behrampada, a slum outside Bandra station, in Mumbai, had a nefarious reputation and no one had ventured inside, not even to help the injured people during the communal riots of 1992–93. It was after an NGO went in and found people unable to get medical help and saw destroyed houses that the truth about this large Muslim pocket, which even today has Hindu families, came out into the open. In Mira Road, in Thane district on the outskirts of Mumbai, which many riot affected chose as their new home after the 1992–93 violence, the ‘border’ begins as soon as you step out of the suburban railway station. A large road divides the Hindu and Muslim sections of the suburb, and there are apartment buildings where only Hindus or Muslims or their subsects can stay. Muslims are not welcome everywhere, an estate agent told me. It is the builders who decide the convenience of religious groupings. Brokers brazenly advertise their anti-Muslim feelings here and in Mumbai. Another central suburb, Kurla, has a large Muslim population and once while waiting for a function, I asked a vendor where I could get something to eat. Don’t go ahead, he warned, it’s Pakistan. When I looked puzzled, he said it’s full of Muslims, you won’t get anything to eat there that you like.
An electricity bill was delivered to a locality—Chhota Pakistan—in Nalasopara (in Palghar district, originally called Tanda Pada); predictably, it did have a large Muslim population.1 (The area was often referred to as Chhota Pakistan by the local electric utility office but inexplicably it was legitimized as a postal address in the bill.) In April 2013, I was invited to the power-loom town of Malegaon in north Maharashtra to speak on the media and Muslims. During the discussion on stereotypes, one of the journalists gave an example of shoddy reporting that in a way involved Pakistan. A Pakistani girl was reported to be among the over thirty killed in the bomb blasts in Malegaon in September 2006. Though journalists covering the blasts had found that she was from Islamabad, a mohalla in Malegaon, no correction was issued. They were proud that during Partition, ‘not a single person from Malegaon [had] left for Pakistan’. Yet Malegaon, with all its history of fighting for Independence, and educational institutions, is labelled a terror hotspot. In reality, it is even more victimized. All nine men arrested for the same 2006 bomb blasts near the Malegaon mosque were acquitted after a decade in April 2016. There is an unshakeable belief that terror is perpetrated by Muslims alone, so the revelation that those from the majority community were involved in the blasts took a while to digest. All terrorists are Muslims but all Muslims may not be terrorists was a popular refrain of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). After he heard that I was going to Islamabad, one of my friends from Malegaon jokingly said that he hoped it was to the place across the border.
*
Even before the line creating the two new countries was drawn by the Boundary Commissions headed by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, the subcontinent had convulsed with hate-filled violence and distrust. The spidery tentacles of the new border went right into people’s hearts and minds, and stayed there. It became the line we drew inside us, separating the other. Pakistan became at once something dreadful and unpleasant, and travelling in Gujarat just after the Godhra train burning in 2002, my driver, a Muslim, asked me if it was true that all Muslims would be dropped at the border and asked to go to Pakistan. He refused to believe that it wouldn’t happen. If an Indian says something that is remotely in favour of Muslims or against the so-called patriotic or nationalist notions of being Indian or ‘anti-national’, a chorus will start, ‘Go to Pakistan’, ‘Send him or her to Pakistan’, and so on. The legion of ‘traitors and anti-nationalists’ who have been summarily dispatched to Pakistan is constantly expanding. Pakistan is a repository of people traitorous to India and the enemy is clearly defined.
The border is like a Lego block—you can place it anywhere and create division; we don’t seem to cross it easily and we don’t need visas certainly but we never jump the fence for fear of finding out the truth. So the Shiv Sainik who warned me about the bombs hadn’t actually been there, or the vendor who warned me not to go ahead wasn’t sure himself, but they had an idea of Pakistan. There is an unshakeable feeling in the minds of many people that it must be a rotten place, anti-Indian, full of bearded men wanting to blow themselves up, and with guns and ammunition stored in mosques, burqa-clad women, and people straining at the leash to attack India. Pakistan, far from being the Land of the Pure, gives the opposite impression in India. The little pockets of ‘Pakistan’ that we have symbolize those fears. And the war and proxy war with India over Kashmir and terrorism have only made things worse. Terrorism is inextricably linked with Pakistan, and shadows all moves for peace. In Bombay the 1992–93 communal riots became the basis for ‘revenge’ in the form of twelve serial bombings on 12 March 1993. For the first time, terror came home to a city, already devastated by a prolonged orgy of violence. After the Babri Masjid was demolished on 6 December 1992, rioting started in Bombay that evening, and the violence escalated to claim nearly 1000 lives in the next two months, and injured many more. The bloodletting was capped by the first terror attack on Bombay. The perpetrators of the twelve bombings that day—Dawood Ibrahim and his henchman, Tiger Memon, along with his family, among others—were all in Pakistan, something that Memon’s brother, Yakub, confirmed when he returned to India in 1994. Yakub and 100 others were convicted, and he was among the eleven sentenced to death for financing the operation, for instance, by providing tickets to the men to be sent for arms training in Pakistan.2 Yakub’s testimony nailed the
suspicion about Pakistan’s involvement in the serial blasts which had already been publicized by India’s Home Minister S.B. Chavan in Parliament in April 1993.3 The charge sheet filed in November 1993 in the case mentioned that some of the accused had gone to Pakistan for training.
*
When I came to the city in 1975, it was called Bombay. Its name would change twenty years later when the Shiv Sena–Bharatiya Janata Party government won the elections for the first time riding on the wave of Hindutva euphoria after the Babri Masjid was demolished in 1992. By then, I had already reported on two major events that would strip Bombay of its cosmopolitan façade—the communal riots of 1992–93 and the serial bomb blasts of 12 March 1993.4 After 1993, Bombay was under attack repeatedly, culminating in the 26 November 2008 strike. Each bombing intensified the animosity towards Muslims and Pakistan, but few will acknowledge that the ground for division and ghettoization was also paved well before that in the form of divisive and sectarian politics. The mini Pakistans or Muslim ghettos are no-go areas for many, and the stereotyped distancing is reinforced by suspicion.
The last terror attack on 26 November 2008 was a defining moment for Mumbai. The city which never slept was catatonic after ten highly trained armed men created havoc in posh South Mumbai. Everyone was baying for blood and demanding the public execution of Ajmal Kasab, the sole gunman caught alive by the police. Anti-Pakistan sentiment reached an all-time high. I was relieved to hear the strong condemnation of 26/11 when I visited the Karachi Press Club three years after the attack, and heartened by the sympathy and protest.
There is a tendency by many to view Pakistan’s war and proxy war over Kashmir as disparate from the political context in which it is happening. That the Kashmiris’ right to self-determination is the crux of the matter slips into the background; and in the cacophony of jingoism, with each country asserting ownership over Kashmir, its people are forgotten. Yet politicians who find it so easy to say that ‘restraint’ becomes difficult in the face of this constant provocation from Pakistan make no attempt to resolve the problem.
It is always easier to simply blame ‘the enemy’ than to separate the elements perpetrating such monstrous attacks from ordinary people in the other country who, for the most part, don’t endorse them. Families who have lost their loved ones to terrorism or wars cannot understand the calls for friendship between the two countries. After 26/11 in the clamour for the public execution of Kasab, there were few dissenting voices. Between war and terrorism on the one hand, and calls for friendship or peace on the other, lies an unforgiving chasm. That sense of belonging because we were once undivided quickly changes to bloodthirsty revenge after repeated bombings or attacks. The weary discussion on the state and non-state actors leads to blurred lines of blame.
The stereotype of a Muslim as a back-stabber is transferred to a Muslim nation. After the Kargil intrusion was detected in 1999, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee is reported to have told General Pervez Musharraf, ‘You have stabbed us in the back!’5 In an interview to journalist and editor Raj Chengappa during his exile in Saudi Arabia in February 2013, Nawaz Sharif used this phrase to describe what his own army chief of staff had done to him.6 Coming on the heels of Vajpayee’s historic bus trip, it seemed like a monumental deception by the Pakistan Army. So Pakistan in our hearts is not a neighbour but a huge blot.
As The Hindu’s correspondent in Islamabad, I had to contend not only with the Pakistani establishment but also my readers back home, many of whom had set ideas about Pakistanis and also on what I should be writing about. But amazingly, I got very favourable responses to most of my stories, including my last piece. There was only one bitter critic of my stories who said he was happy that I was kicked out and even called it poetic justice since my stories favoured Pakistan. He was the only one I replied to—after many months. I wrote to him saying he had a warped mind. Others were resentful I hadn’t written much about Hindu persecution in Pakistan. This armchair carping notwithstanding, those who visit the country are pleasantly surprised. An Indian business delegation to Islamabad was relieved to find Dunkin’ Donuts, a spanking highway between Lahore and the capital, and women wearing jeans and also driving, instead of cowering at home, shrouded in a burqa. Even the IT parks were a revelation for them.
We persist in our desire for peace and friendship, however big or small the constituency may be, even as hostilities continue on the Line of Control (LoC) and on the icy peaks. Kashmir is still the prize for both countries and there can be little doubt that we are enemies. But I was surprised at the reactions when I moderated a discussion in Mumbai on Christophe Jaffrelot’s new book on Pakistan, The Pakistan Paradox,7 in 2015. During question time, an Indian gentleman asked why India could not do more to help Pakistan instead of the reverse. There are good feelings on a person-to-person level, disregarding the hype and propaganda, and there is an understanding that the state and the people function on different levels.
Most people were amazed that I came back home in one piece and asked me in hushed tones: How was it to live there? Not everyone in Pakistan was carrying a bazooka, I said, and yes, they seemed quite normal to me, just like us. Though the usually safe capital had its shock moments and terror did surface, with suicide bombings at the district court near my house, and a blast in a marketplace, apart from other incidents, the capital was largely spared the regularity and intensity of sectarian killings.
Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels and we in India and Pakistan invoke it to our detriment. The ‘borders’ and Pakistans in India are a reflection of that misplaced sentiment. Student leaders from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) in Delhi were charged with sedition because of a meeting held on Kashmir and on the hanging of Afzal Guru where some people allegedly shouted anti-India slogans. Over decades, the few rational voices in our countries who can take the debate to a sane level where solutions, instead of the blame game, can triumph have been drowned out by a hawkish narrative.
I make no claim to being an expert on Pakistan, and this book is about my experiences as a journalist in Islamabad. I was curious about the country and how things worked there since it is often opinion and not facts that dominate our relations. As eminent educationalist Professor Krishna Kumar points out, ‘Both countries tend to rely on retired diplomats and journalists when they need information about the other. It is usually not knowledge that is sought; opinion suffices to keep the machinery of tension working.’8 We have little scholarship or expertise on each other, though this book is not an attempt to fill those gaps. While there are many similarities between India and Pakistan, comparisons, though inescapable, are odious as we know. As sinister plots, spy games and terrorism continue, cloaked by attempts at bonhomie, the stories there centre on life, about ordinary Pakistanis and are not always about firing on the LoC or the Taliban, brinkmanship and the mud-slinging which has become a national sport in the two countries. The minute you write something about Pakistan as an Indian it is presumed both in Pakistan (and India) that you are passing some kind of judgement or there is a hidden agenda, though there are exceptions to this. There will be statements along the lines of ‘why is an Indian writing this?’ Or there is a feeling that ‘it’s the same in India too, so it evens out’ (and we are equally—if not more—prickly in India). The danger of harping on similarities is that often one ends up in a nostalgic rut. Covering Pakistan doesn’t imply doing stories only on peace moves or trashing the country. At every point you are painfully conscious that you are an Indian and treading on eggshells, and can at any moment overstep hidden limits. Is it possible to criticize Pakistan without it being misunderstood as an anti-Pakistan tirade or a Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) operation? There were surprises, disappointments and red lines. As a journalist, what mattered was that it was a rare opportunity for an Indian to live in Islamabad, with all its attendant pleasures and a few discomforts, and report on events at close quarters.
1
Oh, for a Visa!
Till the ear
ly 1990s, The Hindu, the Times of India, Hindustan Times, All India Radio and the Press Trust of India had correspondents in Pakistan. That was when two journalists from the Times of India and Hindustan Times were sent back and the visa was whittled down to three cities from the all-country multiple-entry visas. In the end, only the Press Trust of India and The Hindu were permitted to have correspondents in Pakistan. The Press Trust of India’s Snehesh Alex Philip and I were expelled in 2014, but the Press Trust of India’s coverage continues as it has stringers in most cities in Pakistan.
After months of waiting for a visa, it finally came through suddenly—and one for my husband as well—in record time with just one visit to the Pakistan high commission in New Delhi. My husband had to give a written undertaking that he would not indulge in any journalistic activity there. I had left New Delhi when the high commission officials called to ask me if I wanted a visa for my husband so that he could travel with me. They allowed my dear friend Preeti Mehra to collect and deliver the passport and papers. I was already charmed! All rules could be bent if they so desired. When I met the officials for the first time, they were pleasant enough and the high commission office had a beautiful exterior, the minarets and small tile work adding an exotic touch. I was asked about my views on the Pakistan General Elections in 2014 which had just been held. I had followed it on Twitter and in the news. It was an exciting election even if I was far away, and they also wanted to know about the books I had written. It seemed like friendly banter but there was a seriousness to it.
It would be an understatement to say that Pakistan is a coveted posting for all journalists; it is also an undeniably challenging country to live in, write and report on. For an Indian, there will always be the overhanging baggage of Partition, and the cloud of hostility and suspicion has not diminished over the years. An American foreign correspondent who arrived at the same time as I did in Islamabad, complained that she merely had a three-city visa. I was astounded—here I was stuck in one city and she was complaining about three whole cities. She later told me that her visa had been extended to the entire country except for some restricted areas. Increasingly though, Americans are not in favour for various reasons, and more so after the war against terror. The New York Times’s Islamabad bureau chief, Declan Walsh, was given a seventy-two-hour notice to leave the country in the middle of the night in May 2013. Despite the highest interventions, Walsh has not been allowed back.
