Asia’s ‘Surge’: Blossoming India-Pakistan Trade
Here is a lesson that President George W. Bush & Co can learn from India and Pakistan…a lesson in diplomacy!
While in public lot of hot words are aired by the two neighbouring Asian countries, but behind the scenes a lot is happening which is making history.
After over 50 years of bitterness and wars, the borders between India and Pakistan are gradually opening up (despite terrorists making forays across the demarcation line between the two countries).
One of the most significant contribution of President Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is to encourage trade between Pakistan and India.
“Bilateral trade swelled from $235.74 million in 2001-02 to more than $1 billion last fiscal year,” reports The Economic Times.
Says Raees Ashraf Tar Mohammad, a member of the Pakistan Grocers Association: ‘Businessmen of India and Pakistan now trade almost 2,000 items in more than 25 categories.’
” ‘This has built mutual confidence and communication between businessmen. We book orders on telephone or fax and the rest of the formalities follow. In the last 10 years or so not a single dispute was reported,’ Pakistan’s Daily Times quoted him as saying Tuesday.
“Pakistan’s exports to India have increased from less than $50 million in 2001-02 to about $300 million in 2005-06.
“Simultaneously, Indian exports to Pakistan too surged from $186.52 million to $802 million, up from 1.8 percent to 2.8 percent Pakistan’s global imports.’
Meanwhile India and Pakistan are set to go ahead with the tri-nation pipeline that will bring Iranian gas to their shores, says The Pakistan Times.
“The $7 billion tri-nation pipeline project is opposed by the US as it fears the funds from the pipeline may be used by Tehran to fund its allegedly clandestine nuclear weapons programme…”
So here’s a lesson! Mr Bush you have to learn to live with terrorism. Fight terrorism by all means…but with your head/heart and not just your legs and arms!!!
To read my earlier post on “India Pakistan will have Open Borders…in Five Years” please click here…
And for the US policy perspective pl click here…
11 Responses to “Asia’s ‘Surge’: Blossoming India-Pakistan Trade”
An example of free enterprise doing good.
How very bitterly ironic.
But maybe it shows a path.
I wonder if we are smart enough to understand there are much better paths than the one we are on.
Amazing what common cause can do.
A billion bucks! That ought to buy a samosa or two!
I must say, this is the best news yet. Gives me faith in the prospect of peace. Common greed can conquer many things. Should it lead to lasting peace then so be it. It can be honed into a more appropriate exchange later with regulation and tax, but for now, it is apparently “common ground”.
What are the major import-export commodities Swaraaj? I’m curious.
By Swaraaj Chauhan
After over 50 years of bitterness and wars, the borders between India and Pakistan are gradually opening up (despite terrorists making forays across the demarcation line between the two countries
and then he concludes …
So here’s a lesson! Mr Bush you have to learn to live with terrorism. Fight terrorism by all means…but with your head/heart and not just your legs and arms!!!
To compare the war on terrorism between Muslim extremists and the US with that of India and Pakistan is ridiculous to say the least. India and Pakistan share a history and culture that is far less in conflict than what exists between The West and her enemies.
All lessons are not universally applicable. In this case I will pass on the notion that having a few incursions across our borders from people who wish to kill us is a good thing.
Stick with the cultures you understand best Swaraaj . I have no desire to exchange the culture and ideals of the US for that of India or Pakistan .
Ah HA!
Swaraaj has cast his hook and caught one! Play him well and your belly will swell in joy and satisfaction. lol
Germany`s biggest trading partner before the war was France. Trade and buisness don`t necessarily lead to peace if a nations leaders WANT to go to war.
Profbacon- Yes but those were the common European. Unable to differentiate between pompous pride and the plumb bob of national interests.
Common cause and it’s bedfellow common sense.
FWIW – I appreciate your thoughtful, and well thought out, comments Swaraaj… Thank you.
Wrong as usual. WW3, islomofacist, blah blah blah. Exaggerations from the start from Cheney’s shadow government. Some guy we set up to terrorize the Soviets turned on its master over the corrupt Saudi be-headers. Keeps the moral cowards in America in fear. Get over it already, everybody else has.
Sure there is a bigger threat from Ussama and fanboys now, but that wound is entirely self inflicted. I got news for you tools, Ussama doesn’t need to set up in Iraq as he is doing just fine in the 50% of Afghanistan and 30% of Pakistan where he hangs out. Iraq is just a good place to bleed us out, thanks for playing.
I always thought the most likely nuclear conflict in the near term was these India and Pakistan.
Even ratcheting down that boiling pot 1 degree is good news.
[...] Behind-the-scene parleys have yielded dramatic results in bringing down terrorist killings and improved the trade between India and Pakistan.To read my earlier post please click here… [...]
AZADI-SWARAJ
I write as a son of the Great Subcontinent, born in 1949 of Indian parents, yet raised as a patriot of pre-partitioned India. I write as a simple civilian.
I write to express a deep and painful YEARNING. I yearn for re-unification.
I scream out against a cruel apartheid imposed upon me by British Imperialism, and currently perpetuated by our Khaki-Sahibs, the people who now “govern†our severed sub-continent, and keep us apart with constant poisoning propaganda.
Islam means peace, the brotherhood of humanity. Sanatana Dharma, commonly referred to as Hinduism, professes peace, the brotherhood of humanity.
Partition is essentially Apartheid based, in our case, upon religion and sanctioned by national boundaries. Most perniciously, it is exploited by Imperialism with the sale of arms to each of us to kill the other, while the Imperialist gloats all the way to the bank!
Our wars are sins of fratricide; every drop of blood spilled in our “wars” has been the blood of brothers, MY BROTHERS. Hai Bhagvan! Hai Allah!
Ironically, the British who dominated us, who sucked the blood of our fore-fathers dry, did so by constantly dividing us, by pitting us against each other; Hindu vs. Muslim. Jinnahji wanted us to live in mutual brotherly harmony; Gandhiji wanted us to live united. The British took our Satyagraha and turned it against us, severing us right through our heart, tearing apart both the Punjab and the Bengal, the strongest parts of the Motherland. Mountbatten presided over the genocide of partition, smirking in sadistic delight at the horrors of displaced millions who, racked by a complete FEAR of the unknown, turned against each other, because the real culprit, the Angrezi Sahib was nowhere to be seen along that festering scar they call a “borderâ€.
This fear and the memory of those horrors hold our frail boundaries aloft. Scratch lightly under the surface, and you hear gushing Indian and Pakistani emotion, with painfully sad memories about how we lived inter-dependently together for centuries, as brothers with very similar humanitarian faiths.
Ironically now, it is the British Broadcasting Corporation, in its current praise-worthy focus on India and Pakistan, that brings home to each of us on both sides of the border, the real contemporary life of today’s Indians, of today’s Pakistanis. We are offered real glimpses into new “nations†where we are forbidden to enter. And, hey there’s an unforeseen side-effect of globalization; we see that we all want the same thing, we all want peace, prosperity for our fellow citizens!
Re-unification?
How painful that I can never go Pakistan, because I am Indian! Yet, when I meet Pakistanis abroad, I am drawn to them, as they are to me, by a filial bond. Beautiful, warm, caring brothers, MY BROTHERS!
In our First War of Independence in 1857, Hindu-Muslim unity presented a formidable force, the threat of expulsion for the British from India. When Emperor Edward visited India he stated “I see no reason why Hindus and Muslims should live so peaceably side by side”. Thereupon, they set about dividing the Bengal, dividing Hindu against Muslim.
His words were cast in bronze and the plaque adorned the side of the pedestal of his equestrian statue outside the Jehangir Art Gallery in Bombay. We called it simply, “Kala Godda”. It has since been removed.
Do we know this?
Why not?
As a simple civilian I will continue yearning, and reminding ourselves that our real enemy is the Angrezi-Murdha.
Our ancestors thought the British would never leave India. The British thought they would never leave India. I believe real independence awaits me. I call it re-unification.
Am I alone?
Signed,
Azadi-Swaraj.
Dealing in any way with the timely subject of the RE-UNIFICATION of the Great Sub-continent meets with its tiresome opposition by way of inevitable, time-worn clichés from people who have yet to permit themselves to “think outside the proverbial boxâ€. To hear then, from kindred spirits about our common aspirations and aims, helps to stoke the flames of passion that lead to our eventual betterment; our true Azadi, our true Swaraj — our Reunification.
My sense is that we, the zealots of the cause, need to do everything supportive to keep our spirits afloat, both for self and for each other. Partition / Apartheid and its perpetuators namely, Anglo-American Imperialism and our own present day “national governors†have their well-worn, tiresome party-line of propaganda to satisfy their self-serving, immediate material gains.
My opinion is that, in order to keep ourselves encouraged, we who are committed to the Re-unification of the Great Subcontinent need to alter our own perceptions and to reframe the seeming “opposition†of those who belittle our noble aspirations for our peoples.
My method of altering my perception of those who pessimistically oppose us is to do the following:
1. Recognize that the elite of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan have no interest in humanitarian issues of social activism, such as our Reunification. Capitalism and Consumerism are based upon one’s blinding oneself to the needs of those among us who are less fortunate. Immediate material well-being, a priori, disassociates itself from notions of general betterment. The “progress†we are making in the Great Subcontinent is no more than the rejection, the polarization and the estrangement of our poor – the majority nonetheless, upon whom we prey, just as colonials prey upon the colonized. They, our elite, are not to be counted upon, with the rare exception of those who are enlightened by true personal education.
2. Recognize that true change in the Great Sub-continent has swelled up from the ranks. Gandhiji exercised his ability to empathize with the down-trodden. He knew their power all too well, and so doffed his suit for a dhoti instead, both literally and psychologically, in his identification with the oppressed; the untouchable, the widow, women. Currently, our disenfranchised peasants grow increasingly restless and it is indeed they who are most receptive to notions of our greater good.
3. Read extensively about our history; that written by the sons of the soil as opposed to our history written by the British, or extensions of the colonial agenda which is designed to keep us apart. A famous and reputed contemporary Indologist, who happens ironically to be British; Roger Ballard an enlightened, objective and humanitarian anthropologist at the University of London, writes about our fluid religious identities in [pre-partitioned] 19th. century India and the historical expression of communal commonalities and interdependence in his article “Panth, Kismet, Dharm te Qaum: continuity and change in four dimensions of Punjabi religion†published in Singh and Thadi (eds.) Punjabi Identity in a Global Context Delhi. OUP 199.
Even earlier, in the 16th century, it was the Muslims of Bijapur who offered refuge to the fleeing Hindus of Goa, during the brutal Portuguese Catholic Inquisition. Historical research documented by the Portuguese tell us that the Muslim Sultanate of Bijapur offered land to Goan Hindu refugees, and built Mandirs, under Muslim patronage, to house their sacred murthis.
It was the Portuguese in India who bequeathed to the British the ploy of playing up and fracturing natural fault-lines in our society, religious communalism being one possibility. The British took this and ran with it, and we today live out the consequences: Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. Any predator of the Great Sub-continent knows full well the formula for the immediate exploitation of our beloved peoples, communal divisiveness. We know this as well; we need now to act upon buttressing this weakness, to safeguard our dignity, our lives, our true Azadi, our true Swaraj.
We need the Re-unification of Bangladesh, India and Pakistan.
What then do I conclude from the foregoing insights?
A. That the Reunification of the Great Sub-continent will eventuate from the soul of the regular citizen, not from the ones whose sense of privilege stands to be imperilled by any change to the current status quo, and
B. That our peoples are predisposed to communal inter-dependence, to plurality, and we will move toward it with growing momentum. Forums like this one are examples of venues that will create the intellectual impetus needed for our Azadi, for our Swaraj.
Tere Bhai,
Azadi-Swaraj