There was a hilarious joke doing the rounds recently of how Laloo Prasad Yadav succeeded in putting the fifty-year-old Kashmir problem to rest, without conceding an inch of territory to Pakistan, including POK! Apparently, all he needed to say during negotiations with Musharraf was, "If you want Kashmir that badly, you can take it on the condition that you agree to take Bihar as well!" Pakistan was so flabbergasted at the thought of getting Bihar that it hurriedly abandoned all claims to Kashmir and the two countries lived happily ever after. At the cost of sounding like a clich้d Indian who just cannot reconcile with the reality of Partition, despite being born 18 years after the event, I feel like going a step further and saying, "Parvez dear, why not take the whole country!"
In other words, forget Partition, forget Kashmir, unify India and Pakistan and take the whole nation, on a platter, to run as President, Prime Minister, or whatever else you like! And then, let's see how fast the training camps, the Mujahideen and the entire imbroglio sorts itself out! I doubt think that he will refuse such a juicy offer, because his hunger for power is no less than his eminent predecessor, Jinnah's. Jinnah set aside secularism only when he realized that he would eventually be overshadowed by the other political heavyweights on the scene once the British left India. Previously quite the content Indian, fighting hard for Independence, our very own debonair, Saville Row clad freedom fighter suddenly decided that Islam had to be saved from the Hindus and went on to don a sherwani and fight for Pakistan! The question that remains unanswered is who the guy really was fighting for? Was it for the Muslims in India or was it quite simply, for himself? If Nehru had also been assassinated along the way and if by some stroke of fate, the contender for premiership had been Jinnah...who knows what might then have transpired in free India and who can guess how this would eventually have impacted global politics. For all you know, Musharraf might just have risen from the ranks to become the legitimate Prime Minister of India today! And just for arguments sake, why would he not want to align with India now if such a situation arose? Heck, we could even change our name to 'Hinpakistan', if that were to be an issue! Supporting America against Afghanistan was certainly not born from any ideological conviction of his! He simply needed to look after his own interests as well as the interests of his people and today he has become the man of the season, despite rude proliferation scares and many a terror trail ending in Pakistan. Moderation has become his new mantra as communalism had become Jinnah's! I won't be surprised if his personal convictions undergo a sea change yet again to suit the need of the hour!