A road to nowhere

It had to happen but it happened earlier than some would have predicted, after Nawaz Sharif’s visit to New Delhi for the inauguration of the Narendra Modi government in May. The surprise invitation to Sharif had led some to hope that perhaps it would be indeed be a new beginning in India-Pakistan relations. But that was not to be. Indian Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh was scheduled to travel to Islamabad for talks with her Pakistani counterpart Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry on August 25, the first meeting at this level since September 2012. But India decided to call off these talks with Pakistan soon after Pakistan High Commissioner in India Abdul Basit met Kashmiri separatist leaders. 

The Indian response was sharp, conveying to Pakistan that its “continued efforts to interfere in India’s internal affairs were unacceptable.” Arguing that the Pakistani High Commissioner did not interfere in India’s internal affairs, the Pakistan Foreign Office retorted that Kashmir was not part of India. It went on to underline that “Pakistan is not subservient to India” and is “a legitimate stakeholder in the Jammu and Kashmir dispute.” 

Welcoming the decision to cancel the talks, the BJP said that “though India wants good relations with its neighbours, it will not tolerate any interference in its internal affairs by anyone.” The opposition Congress Party has flayed the government for its knee-jerk reaction, suggesting the government has "completely walked itself into a corner" on the Pakistan policy. The political parties in Kashmir have expressed their unhappiness over the development, terming it unfortunate. Pro-independence leader Yasin Malik said that by closing the option of a peaceful resolution, the Centre was pushing the youth towards militancy.

If we remove the bluster, there is nothing new in what is happening. Lest we get carried away, after a few months, India and Pakistan would again be preparing for talks. So if talks are the real issue, actually there is nothing to worry. But if the world is looking for something concrete to happen in India-Pakistan ties, then this is a road to nowhere. 
It can be considered the biggest strategic failure of Indian diplomacy that, even after more than six decades, India has not found a way to neutralise the malevolence of a neighbour one-eighth its size. Business as usual has never been an option for India and yet India’s Pakistan policy in recent years has struggled to move beyond cultural exchanges and cross-border trade. Pakistan has continued to train its guns at India and drain India's diplomatic capital and military strength and India has continued to debate whether Pakistani musicians should be allowed to enter India. The contrast between Pakistan's clear strategic priority and India's magnificently short-sighted approach will continue to exact its toll on India unless India makes it a priority to think outside the box on Pakistan. 

Though the UPA government’s spin doctors would have us believe that then Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh was thinking in grand strategic terms when he tried to reach out to Pakistan a number of times, the reality was that his government had realized that it had no other option but to talk to Pakistan. India’s strategic space had dramatically shrunk over the last few years. New Delhi believed that it would be best served by coordinating its counter-terror strategy with the US and as such it needed to reach out to Islamabad. So even though there was no public appetite for talks with Pakistan, when none of Indian demands after the 26/11 Mumbai attack had been addressed, India ended up engaging Pakistan to deflect international pressure. 

But Pakistan and especially its real power centre, its military, had no real incentives to enter into a serious dialogue with India. Given India’s enormous economic, military, and geographical advantages, Pakistan has relied on non-conventional means to limit India’s influence and power. It pursued nuclear weapons in order to prevent India from using its overwhelming conventional military superiority, thereby levelling the playing field.  Under the nuclear umbrella, Pakistan has used terrorism as a major instrument of its foreign policy, especially in Jammu and Kashmir which Pakistan has coveted since 1947.

Significant sections of Pakistani military and intelligence services continue to see themselves in a permanent state of conflict with India and have little incentive to moderate their behaviour as a continuing conflict with India is the raison d’etre of their pre-eminent position in the Pakistani society. At a time when Pakistan’s Islamic identity is under siege because of its cooperation with the US on the ‘war on terror’ and the rise of Islamist extremism challenging the writ of the Pakistani State, the need to define itself in opposition to India remains even stronger. 

Pakistan has a revisionist agenda and would like to change the status-quo in Kashmir while India would like the very opposite. India hopes that the negotiations with Pakistan would ratify the existing territorial status quo in Kashmir.  India’s premise largely has been that the peace process will persuade Pakistan to cease supporting and sending extremists into India and start building good neighbourly ties. Pakistan, in contrast, has viewed the process as a means to nudge India to make progress on Kashmir, a euphemism for Indian concessions. It is obvious that India would not give up its control over the Kashmir valley. Just as India has had difficulty thinking of what it would offer, Pakistan also has had a hard time articulating what it would be satisfied with, short of wresting Kashmir.

The debate in India on Pakistan has long ceased to be substantive. The choice that India has, is not between talking and sulking. Just as Pakistan has continued to manage the façade of talks with India even as its support for separatism and extremism in India continues unabated, India should continue to talk even as it needs to unleash other arrows in its quiver to manage Pakistan. The very manner in which Pakistan defines its identity makes it almost impossible that India will ever be able to find a modus vivendi with its neighbour. New Delhi and the world should be ready to face this hard reality. Otherwise, the charade of an Indo-Pak peace process will continue to disappoint one and all.

The author teaches at King's College, London