We have to draw some hard lessons from the latest drama in India-Pakistan relations.
If we do not, we will continue being beset with unmet expectations, unrequited gestures and a thousand cuts.
Let us accept normal relations with Pakistan will elude reality in the foreseeable future. Pakistan cannot structurally make genuine peace with India.
The military dominates the Pakistani state and because it is deeply hostile towards India it will always impede bilateral ties
It has over the years become even more of an ideological state than when born.
Islam now increasingly influences its politics and social trends are towards more conservatism.
The military dominates the Pakistani state and because it is deeply hostile towards India it will always impede bilateral ties.
While at the political, commercial and cultural levels exchanges take place between us, at the military level they are absent, apart from local commanders on both sides of the LOC in J&K staging occasional flag meetings and the DGMOs speaking periodically on the phone.
These contacts are in the context of managing hostility, not ending it.
Terrorism
It is remarkable that, unlike during the Cold War when the two superpowers, despite their global confrontation, could engage each other at the military level, the Indian and Pakistani armed forces have no formal contact with each other.
If the most powerful element in Pakistan’s polity does not want to make peace with India, then peace will not come our way.
The Islamisation of Pakistan will make reconciliation more remote. The basis of Pakistan’s creation was Islam.
The Hindu-Muslim religious divide that partitioned India will deepen if Pakistan becomes more “Muslim” in its ethos.
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The history that is taught there does not recognise a common past and makes the idea of a shared future much more difficult to embrace.
With religious radicalism spreading across the Islamic world, the environment is becoming conducive for more extremism in Pakistan.
This will create even more barriers between India and Pakistan instead of breaking them down. Pakistan is unique in using terrorism as an instrument of state policy.
Other countries are accused of involvement in terrorist attacks abroad but there is no parallel between the scale of such activity imputed to these countries and Pakistan.
In its terrorist affiliations, Pakistan conducts itself like a radical movement, not a responsible member of the international system.
For years their army has nurtured jihadi groups as a strategic reserve for use against India.
This political legitimisation of terrorism externally has today boomeranged against Pakistan internally.
But it still believes it can combat internal terrorism directed at the Pakistani state and its institutions, and simultaneously support terrorism directed at Afghanistan and India.
Domestic terrorism has given Pakistan an alibi to deny links with terrorism targeting its neighbours. More than that, the country has become insensitive to the iniquity of using terrorism as a policy tool.
Pakistan sheltered Bin Laden, a motley group of terrorists from various countries operate from its lawless regions, it is plagued with sectarian killings locally and masterminds of terrorism like Hafiz Saeed with bounties on their head are politically cosseted.
The situation is now such Pakistan is unwilling to accept any remonstration from India on terrorism, our accusations irritate them as if we are conjuring up imaginary complaints, and to absolve themselves of any guilt they raise the Samjhauta Express case.
In this scenario, Pakistan will never try those responsible for the Mumbai carnage or curb the jihadi groups targeting India.
Consequently, they will never accept our position that terrorism is the central issue to be addressed.
Our position that talks and terror cannot go together is, therefore, not taken by Pakistan seriously.
Islamism
We must also recognise the civil society in Pakistan is not in a position to change the course of India-Pakistan relations.
That many amongst them decry the country’s lurch towards Islamism and acknowledge the baleful role of the armed forces and the security agencies in the country’s polity may impress us, but the realities on the ground remain unaffected.
To think that by strengthening these elements we will be able to secure our interests better is to clutch at straws.
In reality, the only way to “strengthen” them is to make concessions that would satisfy the armed forces and the religious forces.
This would imply that what the “deep state” of Pakistan cannot obtain from us by recourse to armed conflict and terrorism it would secure through the “peace constituency.”
Even if this were not a planned “good-cop bad-cop” situation, in effect we get trapped into one.
Reality
In Pakistan there are individuals who support a solution to India-Pakistan problems on an equitable basis, but even in their case the shutters in their minds close down when Kashmir is discussed.
They too cannot move away from Pakistan’s fundamentalist position on the issue and blame India for its rigidity.
On terrorism, they purvey the standard line that Pakistan itself being the biggest victim of this affliction, it cannot be accused of supporting terrorism anywhere.
In line with Pakistan’s hardcore agenda, they raise the issue of water despite the Indus Waters Treaty and India’s strict adherence to its provisions, which then casts doubt whether the “peace constituency” is essentially a “moderate” visage of a Janusfaced Pakistan.
In any case, the value of a “peace constituency” in a dubiously democratic country should be discounted.
The Pakistani “deep state” will not allow the economic agenda with India to move too far out of alignment with the political agenda.
The $10 to $20 billion of trade figure bandied about is another instance of hope outdistancing reality by many miles.
The writer is a former Foreign Secretary
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