Uncivil neighbours

Many angry words have been said about the entirely avoidable controversy of discourtesy to Moneeza Hashmi, daughter of the famed poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz, by the Indian authorities. For those versed about the rough edges in Indo-Pak ties, ill-treatment to a visitor from the other country is hardly news when their diplomats are given the treatment despite the Geneva Convention's theoretical cover of immunity. Most of the time, an unlucky visitor is given the `treatment' because of a misplaced sense of duty to `reciprocate' in equal measure an ill-treatment to their own national. Perhaps, the unlucky Moneeza was one such victim of a draw of straws. 

Otherwise, as legions of Indians are well aware, Faiz Ahmed Faiz was the proponent of a global village, howsoever idealistic that may sound. Moneeza and her sister Saleema, as was Faiz's wife Alys, were drafted early on in Faiz's utopian project of a socialist, liberal and pacifist world. This pitted them permanently against the Pakistani military, its suspicions stoked by a failed conspiracy plot engineered by Faiz. People such as these must never be allowed to come into the cross-fire of inter-state relations. In fact, Moneeza has been too frequent and welcome a visitor to India for the security agencies to be unaware of this aspect. That is why the only logical explanation for the ill-treatment to her could be the tit-for-tat that regularly occurs between the security agencies of both countries.

For, it is non-partisans like Moneeza who come in useful when both countries try to reach out to each other. The incident has led to demands for an investigation into the episode. It may seem trivial to set up a probe for denial of a hotel room to a Pakistani national. But currently both countries are relying on their pacifists and the peaceniks to test the waters before breaking bread at the governmental level. A probe will also set to rest doubts about crossed signals, if any, among the multiple agencies of the Indian state at a time when the Modi Government has made rebuilding of bridges in its near neighbourhood a major focus of its foreign policy.