Proceed with caution

It cannot be gainsaid that for the sake of the prosperity of both countries, and the region, India and Pakistan should find ways of making peace with each other. This necessity requires that the two continue to talk to each other. Jihadi groups in Pakistan oppose reconciliation and by staging periodic attacks in India they obstruct progress. It is argued that these groups should not be able to exercise a veto on the dialogue process and that in its absence the peace constituency in Pakistan gets weakened. A sustained dialogue is therefore considered essential to isolate those in Pakistan that thrive on tensions with India. The argument is made that India, as the bigger and more powerful country, should go the extra length as it has much more to lose as a rising power from continuing confrontation than its failing neighbour. India has also to diplomatically manage traditional pressure from the US and others not to cut off dialogue with Pakistan. The best way then to reduce external interference in India-Pakistan relations, it is felt, is to take initiatives ourselves to keep Pakistan engaged. For all these reasons the option of rejecting talks with Pakistan until it meets its terrorism-related obligations is not considered viable beyond a point. 

All these arguments have been offered by our policy makers, either publicly or through background briefings, to justify resuming talks with Pakistan. But are these arguments solid enough? The view that the terrorists should not have a veto over the peace process is based on the fallacy that India and Pakistan are both victims of terrorism, that Pakistani agencies are not involved in promoting terrorism against India, and that Pakistan is sincere in acting against local anti-Indian jihadi groups. Adhering to this position after Mumbai exhibits barren thinking. India has repeatedly shown its readiness to engage Pakistan in a productive dialogue, but Pakistan wants to retain terrorism as a pressure point to extract concessions from us. We need not be defensive about suspending the composite dialogue after Mumbai without redressal from Pakistan. Our reasonable demands are pitched at the minimum. Buckling in the face of Pakistani obduracy will only expose us to more mayhem. 

We err in thinking that Pakistan reasons about us the way we do about them. If this were so, Pakistan would not have become a jihadi terrorist failing state. The decision makers in Pakistan would see our statesmanlike search for peace as weakness and lack of options. India cannot enlarge the constituency of peace in Pakistan without concessions on Kashmir. If this constituency cannot alter civil-military relations within Pakistan, to expect it to change India-Pakistan equations against military will is wishful thinking. This constituency has been unable to deal constructively even with the post-Mumbai conduct of the Pakistani civilian government. We exaggerate India’s responsibility as the bigger and more powerful country to make peaceful overtures to Pakistan. Indeed, Pakistan rejects this disparity, as its obsession with parity with India demonstrates. Moreover, if this should be the accepted logic in inter-state relations, then the US as the strongest global power should axe its policy on peaceful overtures to all its adversaries. Why don’t we demand such conduct from China towards us?

US pressure on us to resume dialogue is a product of our weakness rather than any superior American argument, not only because the US itself has spurned a political dialogue with North Korea, Cuba and Iran for several decades, but also because it has traditionally bolstered Pakistan’s capacity to confront us. The US wants to reduce post-Mumbai tensions so that the Pakistan military can be pressed to combat more robustly the extremists threatening the American position in Afghanistan.  It is also to meet Pakistan’s political demand for continued US entanglement in India-Pakistan differences, which it sees as favourable to its interests. But, forcing Pakistan to address India-related terrorism issues is not on the US agenda, as shown by president Obama’s latest pronouncements on India-Pakistan relations that omit any reference to this central problem. Taking the initiative to talk to Pakistan ourselves does not preclude external interference as Pakistan does not believe in bilateralism and will always seek intervention of third parties directly or indirectly.

We are unable to separate the philosophy of a dialogue from its hard, practical aspects. We have resumed the dialogue even as Pakistan remains uncooperative. Our admission that we have no choice but to talk will not make Pakistan more pliant. It sees our retreat as a diplomatic victory. President Zardari’s decision to avoid meeting our prime minister in Egypt seems an early unanticipated harvest of our initiative. We want to start clapping when the other side has not yet unclenched its fist.

The writer is a former Indian foreign secretary