New Delhi
16 October 2013
16 October 2013
The Prime Minister of India met with his Pakistan
counterpart on the margins of the 68th session of the United Nations General
Assembly in New York on 29 September 2013, defying public sentiment and in
spite of an overwhelming body of evidence of Pakistan’s complicity in allowing
its territory to be used for mounting terrorist attacks against India and
Indian interests, at home and abroad alike. The discourse leading up to the
meeting was dominated by whether the talks should at all be held in the
immediate backdrop of the 26 September 2013 twin terror attacks in the Indian
state of Jammu and Kashmir in which Indian soldiers, police personnel and
civilians were killed. It was not an isolated incident: In January this year an
Indian soldier was beheaded at the Line of Control (LoC) with Pakistan; in
August five more Indian soldiers were killed; and, in between, several more
such killings and infiltrations were reported. As it became known later, the
Indian Army was engaged in an operation to repulse an attempt from the Pakistan
Occupied Kashmir (PoK) to push a tranche of infiltrators across the Line of
Control even as the two premiers shook hands and posed for the cameras. It took
the army a fortnight to successfully conclude the anti-infiltration operation.
If the government dithered on calling Pakistan’s bluff, the army chief made it
eminently clear to anyone who would care to listen that it is impossible for
terrorists to carry out any activity along the LoC without the knowledge of the
Pakistani Army.
By the Indian government’s own admission, the expectations
from the New York talks had to be toned down given the terror arm which is
still active in the Indian subcontinent. And as it predictably turned out,
there was not much to show by way of outcomes except for the two sides deciding
to task their respective Directors-General of Military Operations (DGMOs) to
meet for suggesting effective means to restore the ceasefire. Even that looks
remote now. The two DGMOs last met in 1999 although they speak fairly
regularly. The New York meeting could at best be described as a photo-op. If
anything, it once again reaffirmed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s, and by
extension his government’s, adamantly consistent but questionable position on
talks with Pakistan. After the 26 November 2008 Mumbai attacks, too, he had
similarly disregarded public opinion to first meet with the then President of
Pakistan at Yekaterinburg in Russia on the margins of the Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) summit, and later with the then Prime Minister of Pakistan
at the Red Sea resort of Sharm-el-Sheikh in Egypt on the sidelines of the
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) summit. It was at Sharm-el-Sheikh that Prime
Minister Manmohan Singh and his team agreed to a joint statement with Pakistan
that said: “Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue
Process and these should not be bracketed”. Also, in another first, Balochistan
was allowed to creep into the text of an India - Pakistan joint statement.
Pakistan has since conveniently used the bogey of Indian involvement in
stirring up trouble in Balochistan as a stock response to India’s assertions of
a Pakistani hand in fomenting unrest in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir.
All of which begs the question: Talks to what end, and at
what cost? Is the life of an Indian – be it a soldier or a civilian — so cheap
that talks with Pakistan should continue at any cost and in spite of a spate of
terrorist attacks, as evidenced most recently in the twin terror attacks in the
Samba and Kathua sectors of Jammu and Kashmir? How many more brave Indian
soldiers should be killed in cowardly terrorist attacks before the
decision-making apparatuses of the government proactively seek out the
military’s views? How many more families should lose their loved ones at the
hands of the terrorists and their masters outside our borders before the
government of the day begins to pay heed to the sentiments of the common man
whom it claims to represent? Why are no visible attempts being made to restore
the delicate civil-military balance and to uphold the dignity and morale of the
soldier? Instead, what we are witnessing today is a government that is playing
with fire and it needs to stop now. External Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid
has since clarified that while the two Prime Ministers met in New York the
stage has not been reached where the two sides have indicated any dates,
timeline or perspective on resuming the dialogue. And with a post-2014
Afghanistan looming large on the horizon it is anyone’s guess as to how much
time and effort Pakistan, given its proclivities, will be willing to spare
and/or invest in preserving the incremental peace dividends and insulating the
bilateral relationship from external influences.
What the discerning stakeholders in India today need be
understand is that this government’s blind faith in dialogue with Pakistan has
not disproved those who have little or no faith in talks under the present
circumstances. The history of India – Pakistan bilateral engagement over the
past decade and more is replete with an unending series of terrorist attacks
interspersed with peace talks, an overwhelming majority of which were held in
third countries on the margins of multilateral summits. The New York meeting is
but one in a long list of bilateral engagements starting with the 2006 NAM
summit at Havana in Cuba, the 2008 Asia –Europe Meeting (ASEM) at Beijing in
China, the 2008 United Nations General Assembly session in New York, the 2009
SCO summit at Yekaterinburg in Russia, the 2009 NAM summit at Sharm-el-Sheikh
and the 2010 SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) summit at
Thimphu in Bhutan. Add to it former Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s
visit to New Delhi in 2005 and former Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza
Gilani’s visit to Mohali in 2011 for watching cricket or the private visits by
Pakistani heads of state/government to Ajmer and you have a veritably
uninterrupted dialogue that can be traced further back to Lahore, 1999; Agra,
2001; and Islamabad, 2004. Importantly, these bilateral engagements have
survived multiple terrorist attacks and conflicts dating back to Kargil and
Kandahar in 1999, Parliament in 2001, Mumbai train bombings of 2006 and the
26/11 terrorist attacks again in Mumbai, in 2008. But what has come of the
talks so far? Are we any closer to a breakthrough than we were before? Have
terrorist attacks diminished appreciably? Unfortunately, after every terrorist
attack the government of the day mouths platitudes and employs boilerplate
language such as ‘It cannot be business as usual’ or ‘Patience is not
inexhaustible’ only to go back on them at the first available opportunity! This
government has tied itself in knots over its Pakistan policy but it has only
itself to blame for it. Its inability to think out of the box has exposed its
bankruptcy of ideas on how to deal with an increasingly intransigent neighbour.
And Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s personal quest for a lasting legacy insofar
as Pakistan is concerned has only further compounded an already intractable
conundrum.
The government needs to remove its blinkers and begin to
appreciate that terrorism and talks cannot go hand in hand. It is imperative
that the government shows zero tolerance to terrorism, takes strong steps to
prevent terror attacks and imposes costs on the perpetrators of terrorism. Most
importantly, the government must heed public opinion. The time has come for the
government to start calling Pakistan’s bluff, to act firmly and decisively and
if that involves putting a moratorium on future talks with Pakistan at the
highest level, “so be it.” Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has used this specific
language before, albeit to a domestic audience in the run up to the India –
United States nuclear cooperation agreement in his first term in office when
the Left parties parted ways with the UPA; there is no reason why in the
instant context Pakistan cannot be told “So be it”; that India will be free to
pursue its course of action if Pakistan does not intend to reciprocate peace
overtures; and that consequences will follow if it does not give satisfaction
to India on what India considers to be its core interests. Saying no to talks
now is not the same as saying no to talks ever and it certainly need not
necessarily mean or come to represent an escalation of tensions. A range of
other equally effective options is available to the government of the day to
execute its Pakistan policy and these must be explored. Above all, the
government must forge the broadest possible national consensus on the way
forward for a détente with Pakistan.
