Regional connectivity was the lofty theme at the SAARC Summit in New Delhi last year. To underscore its importance, Southasia's summiteers flagged off a car rally that would touch base with all member states. Cars were even transported to Sri Lanka by ship, in order to keep the commitment. Suppose that the rally was to be held this year, in the midst of the raging oil crisis. Would it still make sense to the summiteers, if it ever did in 2007, or would they risk becoming a laughingstock with their people?
Without meaning to heighten the irony in any way, a well-meaning cyclist set off at about the same time from a Sufi shrine in India for a similar one in Pakistan, on a one-man peace mission. The hapless rider was inevitably stranded at the Wagah border: Islamabad had turned down his visa plea. Come hail or high water, the peacenik was not going to be allowed to alter the India-Pakistan arrangement. Of the other lessons that flowed from the cyclist's ordeal, the loudest was that fuel-guzzling jalopies flagged off by SAARC heads of state and other dignitaries had a better chance of traversing Southasia's volatile borders than did an eco-friendly cyclist – still more so if he were a dreamer of peace, and that too in the mystical mould.
As Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Rohitha Bogollagama hopped between Southasian capitals recently, handing out official invitations to the Colombo SAARC Summit slated for August, he was keen not to reheat moth-eaten clichés of the previous summits. So, the main theme this time round, he told me during a brief stopover in Calcutta, would be about people. "Partnership for the betterment of the people," said Bogollagama, would be the clarion call of the upcoming summit. How would that alter the unequal tussle in Southasia between the cyclist and the car racers? Which more fully represented 'the people' – the universally acclaimed classic of Italian director Vittorio de Sica, rooted in poverty and hope, or Henry Ford's futurist vision, which has fuelled a perpetual global crisis, crowned by lacerating wars?
Urge versus desire
Neither physical nor intellectual connectivity were issues when ancient India cradled some of the great religions, and boasted an advanced scientific temper. It was large-hearted then, sharing an amazing largesse with the far corners of the world. However, by the time the Afghan chronicler al-Beruni visited India during the 10th century, he observed with sadness that the country's fabled scientific inquiry, architecture and other accoutrements of a formidable civilisation had become laced with a "haughty and foolishly vain" regard of others. Allama Iqbal's famous words – Saare jahaa'n se achha, Hindosta'n hamaara (My India is greater than any other place in the world) – became a national marching song for India, whether its neighbours liked it or not.