Why Modi Government Engaged Pakistan in Secrecy
Prime Minister Narendra Modi & his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif meeting in Paris
The outcome of the Bangkok NSA-level
talks underscores that Pakistan has got exactly what it wanted -- talks
at different levels, talks on Kashmir, talks on mutual concerns
regarding terrorism, talks on ceasefire on the border. What if any has
been India’s gains remains unexplained, says Ambassador M K Bhadra
kumar.
There can be no two opinions that the resumption of talks between India
and Pakistan is always a welcome development. India’s obdurate stance on
dialogue had become unsustainable.
The Indian stance on talks with Pakistan, which was forcefully
articulated by none other than External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj
in August in a memorable press conference in Delhi, had completely
collapsed.
However, if the Indian public tends to see the meeting between the
national security advisors of the two countries that took place in
Bangkok on Sunday as a grand betrayal, the government can only blame
itself.
The government made no effort to take the public into confidence
following the 167-second meeting between the two prime ministers in
Paris over a week ago to put across the point of view that a pressing
need has arisen to re-engage Pakistan.
At a minimum, Delhi could have avoided the shroud of secrecy beneath the
four-hour long engagement in Bangkok yesterday in a “candid,
constructive and constructive atmosphere”. It is all too funny for
words.
What explains the need for such cloak-and-dagger Kissinger-style
diplomacy? Was it to cover up the dramatic U-turn in the government’s
Pakistan policy?
One would like to believe that Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself had a
profound rethink and decided that it is in the national interest to
resume the dialogue with Pakistan.
But, then, the spin being given to the Bangkok meeting by government
sources is dripping with sophistry. It is pathetic to hear the spin that
while the Kashmir issue came up during the Bangkok meeting, it was only
about the ‘law and order’ part of the issue and not the ‘political
part’.
The public expects and deserves a credible explanation. To be sure, the
government can make a convincing case to explain to the public that a
fundamental rethink in the country’s Pakistan policy has become
necessary and unavoidable.
Any number of convincing reasons can be advanced to explain why India
will be far better off without carrying the Albatross of the Kashmir
issue, without the border tensions, without having to live under the
shadow of terrorism.
The emergent new Cold War tensions and a strong likelihood of South Asia
becoming a major theatre where big-power rivalries play out; the
fragile regional security scenario; the spectre of the Islamic State
haunting the region; the Afghan endgame; the imperatives of regional
cooperation for India as an emerging power -- all these are compelling
reasons why India ought to remain engaged with Pakistan in the present
fluid climate of regional and international politics.
The country knows that a reintegration of the Taliban with the
mainstream Afghan national life is what the international community
demands today. On the other hand, it also knows that Pakistan today
cannot pose any real threat to India and is focused largely on its own
internal problems.
Clearly, our ‘containment strategy’ against Pakistan has not worked.
Indian diplomacy has failed to isolate Pakistan in the world community.
On the contrary, Pakistan has successfully projected itself as a
reasonable interlocutor, open to dialogue with India without
pre-conditions to resolve differences peacefully through discussions,
and has been far more optimal than India in the pursuit of a
multi-vector foreign policy, which is attuned to the multipolar world.
In sum, what India needs is indeed a leap of faith in its Pakistan
policy so that an uninterruptible engagement with that country becomes
possible.
Modi is likely to visit Pakistan in November next year. Sufficient
ground can be covered in the 11-month period ahead so that Modi’s
Pakistan visit becomes a landmark event in the history and politics of
the subcontinent.
Of course, it is a daunting challenge to resolve the longstanding
differences with Pakistan unless there is a national consensus behind
it. The best hope, therefore, is that Modi has girded up his loins
to marginalize the “hawks” in his own camp, and in a chastened mood
after the crushing defeat in the Bihar state elections, proposes to turn
a new leaf.
But, then, things are not as simple as they might seem. The point is,
the Modi government is entrapped in its own legacy. The majority opinion
in the country favors normalisation with Pakistan, while it is the
government’s “natural allies” who are clamouring for Hindu rashtra,
Akhand Bharat, annexation of the Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir and the
Northern Areas and such other bizarre ideas.
Unless these “natural allies” are reined in, it becomes problematic for
the Modi government to pursue a consistent policy aimed at normalisation
of India’s relations with Pakistan.
All in all, the secretive air about the scheduling of the Bangkok
meeting and the laboured explanations since being given to it engender
the uneasy feeling that the government remains a prisoner of its
hardline constituency of militant nationalism.
In the absence of any rational explanation, the only conclusion one can
draw is that the government may be acting under international pressure
-- plainly put, Modi may have caved in under pressure from the US and
simply going through the motions of engagement with Pakistan.
However, the great difficulty with such an explanation is that if it is
indeed the case, the government is once again lurching toward an
engagement with Pakistan without a coherent agenda or ‘big picture’ in
view.
The danger here is that such on-again, off-again engagements with an
adversarial power like Pakistan cannot have a happy ending. This fresh
splurge in “constructive engagement” of Pakistan without a coherent
agenda and a big picture in mind -- and simply to please Barack Obama or
David Cameron -- can prove a costly misadventure, because, make no
mistake, Islamabad knows precisely what it wants and it has not budged
an inch from the position it took in August.
The widespread feeling in Pakistan is that normalisation with India will
have to wait for the post-Modi era. If anything, Pakistan’s position
has only hardened since August.
According to the grapevine, Islamabad plainly ignored Modi’s repeated
overtures in September for a meeting with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif,
before finally condescending to the 167-second meeting and the handshake
in Paris -- and that, too, only after the visits by Prime Minister
Sharif and army chief Gen Raheel Sharif to the US, which shored up
American support for Pakistan’s core concerns such as talks with India
on Kashmir, “strategic balance” in South Asia, “mutual concerns” with
India regarding terrorism, peace and tranquility on the border, etc.
The outcome of the Bangkok talks underscores that Pakistan has got
exactly what it wanted -- talks at different levels, talks on Kashmir,
talks on mutual concerns regarding terrorism, talks on ceasefire on the
border. What if any has been India’s gains remains unexplained.
Someone in the government should throw light on this area of darkness.
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