Another exercise at OIC

It meets generally once a year and passes several resolutions, one of them religiously against Israel. The matter ends there. The thread is picked up again from where it was left off. The same exercise is gone over ritualistically.

The OIC may talk big but it lacks cohesion and purpose. Internal contradictions have also weakened it. Members tend to divide themselves into two parts: one, the Arab world and the other, Asian Muslims. The Arab world is the defining people. It has money. Mecca and Medina, the two holy cities of Muslims, are located in Saudi Arabia. The Islam practised reflects conservatism but with benign disposition. It treats the minorities well.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

Still the increasing fundamentalism in countries like Pakistan, Indonesia and Bangladesh is beginning to tilt the balance in favour of Asian Muslims. Their approach is aggressive. It appeals to the restive youth which feels increasingly frustrated. The impression is that the Arab ways, although well-oiled, have not been able to get the Muslims even a recognition, much less their "due place" in the world.

Malaysia represents a milder version of fundamentalism. But it leads the Asian Muslims. That explains why Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad made a furious statement that "a few Jews ruled the world by controlling the world's major powers." Although he withdrew the remark, he showed the grit.

Pakistan, which enjoys a lot of importance for being the only Muslim country to have the bomb, seems to influence the OIC thinking from behind the scenes. The resolution on Kashmir shows Islamabad's clout. There is nothing new in the demand for the right of self-determination to the Kashmiris, a plebiscite or an inquiry into violations of human rights. Even the phrasing of the resolution is no different from the press notes that the Pakistan Foreign Office issues from time to time. But Islamabad's success is that it had the OIC endorse its stand word by word.

So far the discussion on Kashmir at the OIC has been a formality. The question has been revived whenever Pakistan or some other member on its behalf has pressed for it. For example, Iran did so in 1990. The Egyptian ambassador in London, Mohammad I Shekar, told me -- I was then India's envoy to Great Britain _ that Iran had exerted the maximum pressure on the OIC. In fact, Teheran had then cancelled the visit of then Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral to Iran to show its solidarity with Pakistan on Kashmir. Iraq was the only Muslim country which sided with India at that time.

The OIC resolution on Kashmir is not so disconcerting as is the fact that it is one-sided. What seems to have worked is the propaganda that India has jettisoned the Palestine cause and gone over to the Israel side. Only time will tell how effective is the OIC resolution. But it does indicate the failure of New Delhi's Foreign Office and its diplomats posted in Muslim countries. They could not muster even one vote in their favour.

Nonetheless, it is comical that the OIC should demand the right for self-determination. There is hardly any member-country that follows the democratic system. Pakistan, which reportedly sponsored the resolution, is headed by a President who insists on wearing an achkan over the khaki. Strange, there are no second thoughts on his part or his supporters in the army despite the mounting unrest against the rule of the armed forces.

The response was a meeting of corps commanders at Islamabad the other day to reaffirm that General Pervez Musharraf's election as President through the referendum was final and that there was no need to seek endorsement from the current parliament which had been boycotting it. The meeting also decided that Musharraf was under no obligation to announce the date of his retirement as chief of the army staff. The khaki brand of democracy is the real democracy for the military junta. As regards a plebiscite, it is an old hat. True, at the time of integration of Jammu and Kashmir with

India, Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru promised to ascertain the wishes of the people in the state once things returned to normalcy. Pakistan was to carry out its part of obligations: one, to allow the Kashmir on the Pakistan side to join Jammu and Kashmir; two, to let India administer the entire state with a limited armed forces till conditions were favourable for a plebiscite.

Islamabad has not even bothered to fulfil those obligations. Nor has it allowed normalcy to return to the state. The new wave of killings in Kashmir, no doubt a desperate attempt to defeat people's desire for peace, is a direct result of militants pushed by Pakistan into the valley recently.

Indeed, the wishes of people were determined at last year's election when foreign observers considered it free and fair. Many elections have been bogus but the one in 1977 came in for praise from all. After sweeping the polls at that time, the then chief minister Sheikh Abdullah said that the vote reaffirmed the state's integration with India.

Even otherwise, a plebiscite is not the way out in Kashmir. Over the years, the state has been contaminated by communal elements, both Muslims and Hindus. It has also got divided regionally. The Hindu-majority Jammu, Buddhist-majority Ladakh and the Muslim-majority valley have gone apart. Pakistan's demand is to hold a plebiscite in the valley. Assuming such an election is held, it will turn the whole place into a communal cauldron. The experience in the past is not a happy one. A plebiscite in the pro-Congress northwestern province soon after the creation of Pakistan was reduced to a battle between the Quran and the Gita.

One section of the Hurriyat, led by Syed Ali Shah Geelani, the only Kashmiri leader invited to the OIC meeting -- thanks to Pakistan -- has been communalising the atmosphere in the valley, diluting the secular ethos of the Kashmiriyat. Any plebiscite held in the valley will only stoke the fires of parochialism and give the handle to extremists.

With a population of 120 to 130 million Muslims, India cannot risk a plebiscite in the valley. Shaky secular polity can be destroyed in the process. In fact, it was the sectarian thinking on the part of the OIC which made New Delhi quit. India was once its member because of its large Muslim population. But it withdrew when the OIC meeting at Rabat in 1969 asked Indian delegation leader Fakhruddin Ali Amed to abstain from the meeting after Pakistan's then military ruler Yahya Khan threatened to walk out if India attended it. A military ruler had his say over a democratic India's representative.

That was the time when a large scale Hindu-Muslim riots took place in Gujarat. New Delhi condemned the incident vehemently but realised that the OIC was not the place for an objective stand. It has stayed out since.

Kuldip Nayar is an eminent Indian columnist.