Spring in the Air for India-Pakistan Relations?
By Ambassador Karamatullah K. Ghori
Toronto, Canada

 

Mountains can move, they say, and glaciers may melt. However, most pundits of the long-tangled India-Pakistan relations were prepared to wager their impeccable reputations that such wouldn’t be the case between the two traditional South-Asian rivals.

But that was until this pandemic-ridden year of 2021 saw the dawn of a new—and serious—administration in Washington. With Joe Biden in the White House came a glimmer of hope, not only for sanity taking hold in US policies at home but overseas, too.

The Biden-effect didn’t take long in reaching the shores of South Asia. Its quiet, invisible, impact was soon perceptible and in evidence for pundits to scramble to their drawing boards. This slow-but-sure effect couldn’t have come sooner. The war of words between the two estranged neighbors had been heating up and ratcheting as the Covid-marred 2020 inched to close. There wasn’t just an escalating tone of pox-on-your-house rhetoric but it was coupled with almost daily exchange of fire between the armies from both sides of the 2003 Line of Control (LoC).

So dire was this war of nerves that pundits, not only those of India and Pakistan but international, too, feared it could escalate and slip out of control at any time. The powder was said to be, proverbially, bone-dry and needed just one flicker of a match-light to set it off. With both harboring nuclear arsenals—whose actual numbers none may hazard to guess—even the most diehard of Cassandras shuddered to speculate about its devastating fallout.

But, then, the dark clouds suddenly seemed to be lifting after the Biden administration’s mildly articulated hope that the two South Asian nations would work for ushering in a better climate of peace in their bilateral relations.

The first sign of de-escalation came in mid-February when commanders monitoring the LoC, on both sides of the divide, agreed to abide by the terms of the 2003 agreement and stop testing each other’s nerves. That was some comfort for the civilians living along the LoC, in both Indian and Pakistan-administered halves of Kashmir.

Equally noticeable was a calmer and less-polluted ambience on the media front, especially in India whose news media has been totally taken over by votaries of Modi and his ruling BJP. In a sense, nature seemed to contribute on its own part with the quieting of Indian news media’s principal agent-provocateur, Arnab Goswamy. His arraignment in a number of criminal cases had such a salutary effect in calming the waters and clearing the air off his lunatic rants and bombastic.

However, the Pakistani PM, Imran Khan seized the bull by its horns in his inaugural address to the Islamabad Security Dialogue, on March 17, when he called upon India to make the first move to end the longest spell of frozen relations between the two neighbors. The long winter, it may be recalled, had started with India’s unilateral move, of August 5, 2019. It was, that a reinvigorated Narendra Modi, flushed with victory garnering for him a second term at the head of India, had abrogated those articles of Indian constitution that guaranteed the special status of Indian-Occupied Kashmir (IOK).

Kashmir, for all intents and purposes, is the core issue between India and Pakistan and Modi’s arrogant sundering of IOK’s special status left none in doubt that he wanted to inject greater venom in India’s relations with Pakistan—part of BJP’s Hindutva-driven agenda of a Hindus-only India.

IK’s, on his part, has never left anyone guessing, or in doubt, that he would like to have good and friendly relations with India. None should entertain any misgiving about his sincerity. He’s so well known, in India, for his friendly disposition from the days when he was a cricket-idol to fans there. As leader of Pakistan, IK made a clarion call to India to take one step forward to which Pakistan, on his watch, would respond by taking two steps.

IK’s reiteration of his sincere desire and dream to bring sanity back into India-Pakistan relations was followed, significantly, the next day of the two-day Islamabad Dialogue, when General Qamar Bajwa addressed the moot. He was even more categorical than IK in calling upon both sides to “bury the past and move forward.”

The Pakistani military establishment has been routinely caricatured by power-barons and media-gurus, alike, as the real villain of the piece. Indian pundits—of all stripes—have been taking swipes at the Pakistani brass for muddying the waters and not letting Pakistani political leaders deal freely with India. ISI, in Indian books, is the source of all evil that transpires in any form or format in India. It has never been let off the hook for total responsibility—in Indian eyes—for the mayhem of November 2008 in Mumbai.

General Bajwa, with his candid and unequivocal call to bury the hatchet, has now stolen all the thunder from the sails of his cussed Indian critics. Will they, in the face of, proverbially, a Daniel coming to judgment still target him and his military establishment for stalling peace?

Other signs of a perceptible thaw are in evidence, too. There’s, at this moment, a Pakistani delegation of experts in Delhi, talking to their Indian counterparts to find a common ground of resolution of dispute over the construction of at least three hydro-power plants on rivers that belong to Pakistan under the 1960 Indus Waters Treaty. Under the terms of that treaty, experts of the two countries are required to meet yearly. However, India had suspended this routine since November 2018, when the last of such meetings was held in Lahore.

There are hints, simultaneously, of bilateral diplomatic relations being restored at the ambassadorial level. Pakistan had recalled its High Commissioner from Delhi after the provocative unilateral move, of August5, 2019, by Modi. India followed suit by recalling its envoy from Islamabad. They may, hopefully soon, be returning to their posts. Resumption of trade and of religious pilgrimage may also be on the cards. IK had deftly opened up the route to Pakistan for Sikh pilgrims to their shrines in Pakistan. It was visa-free and became an instant hit with Sikhs, not only in India but from around the world.

So, the mountain is leaking symptoms of moving. But is it all because of Biden leaning on the shoulders of both India and Pakistan?

Well, to an extent, it may be partly true. Nothing suits Washington more than calm waters between India and Pakistan at this time. Biden, obviously, needs fewer headaches elsewhere, most importantly in Afghanistan, where the peace process is in a highly critical and sensitive phase.

Pakistan’s pivotal role in any settlement on Afghanistan couldn’t be more elaborated. Pakistan, on its part, would welcome nothing more salutary than calm on its eastern front with India. Many a pundit may, therefore, err in concluding that this peace offensive on the part of Pakistan’s military and civilian leaderships is nothing more than a tactical move. No, Pakistan should welcome normal relations with India as an asset of perpetual benefit.

One could argue that as far as India is concerned, seeking a thaw with Pakistan at this juncture may be an entirely tactical move, for more than one reason. An obvious point of reference of India’s compulsion to normalize relations with its western neighbor, Pakistan, is its dire situation on the eastern front, with China. The thrashing given to India by the Chinese in Ladakh, last winter, may be the reason for Modi suddenly awakening to the need for normalcy with Pakistan. If nothing else, quiet on the Pakistani front gives India space to focus more intently on its eastern frontier.

At the same time, the months-old Farmers’ agitation should be a factor in forcing India to mend fences with Pakistan. Pakistan could—if it so chooses—turn the screws on India by quietly fueling the fires in the Farmers uprising against Modi’s fascist agrarian policies, in favor of his corporate backers.

Modi and his BJP-Sarkar’s track record doesn’t, quite give any unbiased pundit the assurance that there’s genuine change of heart in Delhi in favor of Pakistan. Modi is far too radically beholden to his RSS agenda to change his spot overnight. His lack of sincerity is leaking from the wording of the letter of felicitation sent by him to his Pakistani counterpart, on the occasion of Pakistan Day, March 23. Nowhere in the letter does he greet the government of Pakistan. Instead, ‘the people of Pakistan’ have been greeted thrice. On top of it, while insisting on India’s desire for “cordial relations with the people of Pakistan” he rubs in the point that for this to happen, “an environment of trust, devoid of terror and hostility is imperative.”

This crafty construct of ‘desire’ blended with ‘terror’ is a typical Indian refrain in regard to Pakistan, regularly painted as a terrorism-sponsoring state in India’s fertile imagination. Cussedness, Modi-style, doesn’t bode well for a healthy and positively progressive climate of peace between the two South Asian nations. India will have to mellow down from its holy-cow posture.

Another requirement is, of course, for it to resile from its cavalier stance on Kashmir. Without India accepting the disputed nature of Kashmir, a lasting peace with Pakistan will remain elusive. It’s Modi’s call to decide what kind of peace and neighborly relations his India would prefer to have with Pakistan. - K_K_ghori@hotmail.com

(The writer is a former ambassador and career diplomat)