Thaindian News

By Smita Prakash

New Delhi, Apr.10 (ANI): While the Indian cricket team was on its way to defeating the Pakistan team in the World Cup semi-final at Mohali, we apparently agreed to an India-Pakistan dialogue that would be “comprehensive and (run) in an uninterrupted manner”.

The Indian Foreign Secretary, Nirupama Rao, in a TV interview, later explained that the dialogue now had moved beyond the composite mode and was in a new phase of uninterruptibility.

She added: “We are inscribing the pages of history here. I think it is too early to say that we have opened a new chapter. I do not want to get stuck in rhetoric or language of that nature. I think we are making a serious and sincere effort to reduce divergence, differences in our relationship and to build convergence.”

All that is fine — build bridges we must, and reduce mistrust too. But to promise to do it in an uninterrupted manner, is admitting that it was a mistake on India’s part to have stopped the interaction after the Mumbai terrorist attacks of 26/11.

It is also tantamount to accepting that whatever be the future provocation from Pakistan — either by non state actors, or by state-supported non-state actors or, by state actors themselves — India will continue to do business with Pakistan, irrespective of the situation on ground and mood of the nation.

By agreeing to the terminology of ‘uninterruptibility’, we have willy-nilly agreed to the Pakistani argument that they didn’t plan 26/11, and, India’s act of calling off the Composite Dialogue then, was at best, a mistake, and at worst, a knee jerk reaction. It weakens India’s long-standing case against terror emanating from Pakistani soil.

Furthermore, it just makes the frothing in the mouth that we did post-26/11 seem so immature. The dozens of press conferences where our foreign office mandarins took such great pains to make us hacks ‘understand’ why it was impossible to have a dialogue as we couldn’t trust Pakistan because the country was being obtuse at most times and deceiving in others, seem so frivolous in hindsight.

Even then, everybody was aware that the Prime Minister’s heart was not in the decision to suspend the talks. But, he was probably nudged into it seeing the outpouring of public anger.

That the peace process with Pakistan is propelled by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), and the Prime Minister in particular, is the worst kept secret in Delhi, confirmed, if you would like, by the cables released by Wikileaks.

Dr. Singh had once announced that it was his dream to have “breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul.” It is a lofty dream that Prime Ministers’ before Dr. Singh have too had dreams that were never realized due to the obduracy of bureaucracies in both countries and the imaginative scripting of a proxy war by the military brass in Rawalpindi, a war that has never ended. No, not even today.

Not to forget, then there is the 800-pound elephant in the room during the India-Pak talks, called Kashmir. There is no meeting of minds on that issue, and it is unlikely that there will be any in the near future. Can we just wish it away and proceed on other matters?

India would like to move on other pending issues, but certainly not Pakistan. Statements every week from various politicians in Pakistan indicate that there is no softening in stance on Kashmir and that no talks with India are acceptable to its polity unless they centre on the “azadi of maqbooza (held) Kashmir.” India, has of course, abandoned talking about Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

More damagingly, Pakistan seems bent upon wily-nily equating the 26/11 investigations to the Samjhauta blast investigations. That it is preposterous to even think so, is of course lost on Pakistan.

The pitfall of having unstructured dialogues like the one at Mohali or at Sharm-el-Sheikh, is that it is open to wild and adventurous interpretations.

A Pakistani commentator, Malik Ashraf, writes: “Pakistan is now in a better position to confront its Indian interlocutors with the evidence regarding the Indian hand in the insurgency in Balochistan and urge them to show their sincerity for normalization of relations with Pakistan by backing off from this sinister undertaking in line with the Mohali spirit.”

Another argument that is gaining popularity among commentators in Pakistan is - you have had one Mumbai, we have had several of them…we are victims of terrorism too. That Mumbai was orchestrated from Pakistani soil and none of Pakistan’s terror incidents originate from India, is an argument India has not bothered to put forward forcefully. It is thus naive to assume that Pakistani negotiators would consider that while both India and Pakistan may be “victims of terror”, India, unlike Pakistan, is a victim of terror facilitated, promoted, and directed by Pakistani agencies.

If one were to give the benefit of doubt to the Indian negotiators, the ‘uninterrupted dialogue’ that began in Mohali could be just good optics. Serious hard-nosed negotiations are probably on the agenda where only our national interest will govern our talks. These negotiations would warrant the deployment of all diplomatic tools by our side. If it means interruptions, so be it. That is a part and parcel of diplomacy. Why tie their hands behind the back with the pronouncements of unconditional uninterruptibility then?

Even the Americans interrupted their relationship with Pakistan during the Raymond Davis saga, and they are close allies and strategic partners. In contrast, India and Pakistan are merely estranged neighbours — Pakistan hasn’t given us MFN (most favoured nation) status even in trade! (ANI)