'Mischievous And Shallow'

The Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIFRAS) has always expected well researched articles fromOutlook. But an opinion article published in your Outlook online on April 4,HiddenPersuaders, written by B. Raman is mischievous not to mention the shallow opinion made-up by the author.

The Policy Institute for Religion and State (PIFRAS) in Washington is not a "Christian" organization asB. Raman wants the readers to believe. The Institute has many distinguished people in its Board including the people of faith from Hindu, Islamic, Jewish and Christian walks of life. PIFRAS is a non-religious and non-partisan institute that studies existing relationships between various religious groups and governments in many countries including the countries in West Asia and South Asia, in pursuit ofhelp creating sustainable democracies. In the past, PIFRAS has organized many conferences and seminars on issues relating to public policy and political matters in South Asia, Afghanistan and recently also on Iraq.

It looks like B. Raman has conveniently left out important facts about our efforts in South Asia while writing his article.

PIFRAS is not new to the discussion about South Asia. 

Among other things, PIFRAS has been engaged in building understanding and goodwill between India and Pakistan. The Executive Director of the Institute, John Prabhudoss lead a first ever, historic joint delegation of Indian and Pakistani expatriates from US, UK and Canada last winter. The joint delegation visited both Pakistan and India spending almost one week in each country.B. Raman gathered the information about the delegation’s visit to Pakistan but has conveniently left out the India part of the visit. 

While in Pakistan, the joint delegation met Prime Minister Shoukat Aziz, other political leaders from ruling and opposition parties, NGOs and peace activists. In our meeting with the Prime Minister, among many other issues we brought up for discussion, we also suggested that Pakistan should consider releasing Indian fishermen held captive in Pakistani prisons. We suggested that it would be a goodwill gesture towards India. We encouraged Pakistani leadership to find innovative ways to keep continuing the dialogue with India. We also stressed that the divided families across the border, should be freely allowed to meet each other at least during family events and festivals. (64 fishermen were released from Pakistani prisons three days later on Jan 4th). 

The Joint Delegation then crossed over to India through Wagha. The delegation met Indian leaders including the Home Minister of India, the Chairperson of the UPA, and many NGOs in Delhi. (Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was pre-occupied with the Tsunami relief and thus could not meet with the joint delegation). Then the joint delegation visited Jammu to meet with the leaders of the state government as well as displaced Kashmiri Pundits in their camps. It is sad to see thatB. Raman’s article deliberately leaves out the delegation’s visit to India to give a very distorted and unbalanced idea about PIFRAS to your readers.

It is important to remember that this joint delegation lead by John Prabhudoss was the first ever such delegation of the expatriate community to visit both countries - just for the purpose of building peace and goodwill. It was a part of a larger vision of people like the veteran Gandhian leader Nirmala Deshpande and others who are in the forefront of promoting people to people contact as an effective way to ease hostilities between India and Pakistan.

Further it is also very unfortunate that your distinguished writer wrongly suggested thatJohn Prabhudoss was somehow involved in creating Kashmir Forum in the US Congress. It is a mischievous imagination motivated for unknown reasons. Partial, ill-informed knowledge is dangerous. If at all anything is true,John Prabhudoss has been urging the US Congress to create a South Asia Caucus in the US Congress. India Caucus has been very effective in certain areas in the past. Because India caucus was occasionally misused by some diehard anti-Pakistanis in the US, some Pakistanis have succeeded in help forming a Pakistan Caucus to counter it. Unfortunately these two caucuses are now used by both Indians and Pakistanis at times as a launching pad for verbal attacks on each other. 

John Prabhudoss has been arguing that since the issues that confront all nations in South Asia, such as healthcare, education, natural resources, economic development and national security are interlinked and inter-dependent, it only makes better sense to have a common and constructive platform such as a South Asia Caucus that could be used for helping the overall development of the region rather than, as a platform that could be used for partisan politics. Smaller countries like Nepal, Srilanka and Bangladesh could also be benefited if there is a South Asia Caucus as those countries may not have the resources and political strength to form their own caucuses. Development of India while her neighbors are lagging far behind in any of the above areas would create its own problems in the region. 

PIFRAS has also been cautioning US from getting involved on Kashmir issue since it would not help the situation on the ground for various reasons.B. Raman’s findings are baseless and intentional in this regard.

Further, B. Raman portrays a distorted image of the Institute’s work in Iraq.The Institute was not just helping the Christians of Iraq as B. Raman suggests. Rather it was engaged in interfaith dialogue between Christians and Muslims there. It also met various tribal, religious and political leaders of all faiths and ethnicity to encourage them to engage in public dialogue that could help prevent the country from sinking further into chaos. 

After our first visit to Baghdad on a humanitarian fact finding mission, the Institute realized the need to actively get involved there instead of holding just seminars and conferences in Washington on issues relating to religion and politics.

The Institute also realized that the exposure of general Iraqi population to new technologies, developments in healthcare industry, self governance, different political philosophies as well as exposure to various international issues were very limited due to number of reasons. So, a leadership course on democracy and self governance called the ‘Art of Governance Program’ was devised by our Institute for the benefit of potential home grown Iraqi leaders. 

Soon after, we realized that our plan could not be implemented, without the approval and cooperation of the Iraqi Administration at that time – the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). So, our Baghdad office met with people from Iraqi groups and people who were running the country, namely the CPA, to facilitate the implementation of our proposal. 

As the security situation deteriorated, PIFRAS sought permission from the US lead Coalition Provisional Authority to move the office into a protected area, called the Green Zone, from where number of international NGOs also operate. (The office was later abandoned as the ‘Art of Governance Program’ had to be suspended by our Institute due to security and other reasons.) 

We take serious exception to B. Raman’s portrayal of PIFRAS’s work in Iraq and in South Asia.It is unfortunate that your news organization would publish such an ill founded article focused on sensationalism.  

The author’s assumptions that the Institute used the Pentagon, Vice-President Cheney and the neo-conservatives in the US Administration, to block Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s visit is silly, imaginary and laughable. One must know that it does not take the intervention of either the Pentagon or the office of the Vice President to deal with a state level functionary in India.

It is regrettable that Outlook published such an article that seems to have been written with ulterior motives and distorted facts.

S. Sunita is with the Policy Institute for Religion and State, Washington, DC,USA.