On and off India-Pakistan talks

Inder Malhotra

Feb 19 2015 

AFTER the abrupt cancellation of the Foreign Secretary-level talks between India and Pakistan, scheduled in August, there was some criticism of New Delhi even though Pakistan’s brazen violations of the cease-fire along both the Line of Control and the international border with Jammu and Kashmir were continuing. And earlier this week there was applause when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the new Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar would be going to Pakistan as part of his “SAARC yatra” though Islamabad would not be his first destination. As has been widely reported, this was preceded by much behind-the-scenes activity. Mr Modi had written a highly sympathetic letter to his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, after the savage terrorist attack on an Army school in Peshawar. The two Prime Ministers had also talked privately at the “SAARC retreat” restricted to leaders only near Kathmandu. National Security Adviser Ajit Doval had visited the Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi and the Pakistani High Commissioner, Abdul Basit, had met Mr Jaishankar. Soon after this meeting, Mr Basit had also received Hurriyat leaders from Kashmir — something that was the principal reason for the cancellation of the August meeting of the two foreign secretaries.

It is no secret that these developments were influenced by two major factors. First, President Barack Obama, who accepted Mr Modi’s invitation to be the chief guest on Republic Day, privately advised his host to resume the dialogue with Pakistan. The United States has a keen interest in securing Pakistan’s cooperation in its withdrawal from Afghanistan. American officials make no bones about their policy of maintaining friendship with both India and Pakistan. This is so in spite of the fact that in balancing the military and economic might of an over-assertive China India alone can play a major role. China’s “all-weather friend” would not or, indeed just cannot, even if it wanted to.

As is his wont, Mr Modi used the India-Pakistan cricket match for the World Cup to talk to Mr Sharif and leaders of other cricket-playing South Asian countries to wish them all the best. Cricket, he remarked, promoted “connectivity” at the people-to-people level. However, what actually happened as soon as the match was over in Australia was shocking beyond words. At Adelaide the deeply disappointed Pakistani fans went on the rampage to beat up all and sundry even inside bars and restaurants, not just jubilant Indian fans. What happened within Pakistan was a lot worse, as Washington Post has reported. Like Indians, all Pakistanis were also glued to their TV sets. As Pakistan lost, scores of TV sets were smashed by their angry owners to show their hatred for India. So great was their fury that none of them paused to ponder that given the precarious state of Pakistan’s economy, they might not be able to buy a new TV set. In any case, as the founder of Jang newspaper, Khalil Rahman, famously said once, Pakistani cricketers treat a cricket field as a “battleground” and a battlefield as a “playground”. 

This reminds me of something even more revealing that happened way back in the early 1980s. Pakistan’s suave and respected Foreign Minister at that time, Nawabzada Yaqub Ali Khan, a retired Lieutenant-General, was visiting New Delhi and, as always, invited some of us for a background briefing. The nuclear issue was on top of the agenda. But one senior journalist said that he wanted to discuss something “non-sexy”. Pakistan was at that time suffering from an acute shortage of food while India had plenty of wheat to spare. The questioner asked the Sahibzada: “Instead of importing wheat from the USA, Argentina and Australia, why don't you take it from us? From Amritsar it will get to Lahore in just over an hour”. The Sahibzada replied: “I must be candid and tell you that our people don’t like to eat Indian food”. 

Thanks to my stars, I have covered most of the critically important summits and negotiations with Pakistan, beginning with the Nehru-Liaquat Pact signed in Delhi in April 1950. This was one meeting which did produce some result. The two Prime Ministers managed to avoid a very destructive general war between the two countries so soon after the first Kashmir War (1947-48). It was not easy to reach the agreement. The two sides remained engaged for a whole week. The first ten draft agreements were rejected by one side or the other. Only the eleventh one was accepted. Even so, fresh tension erupted between the two neighbours only a few months later. 

After the traumatic border war with China in the high Himalayas, India came under high Anglo-American pressure to settle the Kashmir problem. Six rounds of talks between Swaran Singh and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto lasted as many months but collapsed because Bhutto demanded that the entire Kashmir, except for Kathua, be handed to Pakistan. After the 1965 war between India and Pakistan, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and Field Marshal Ayub Khan of Pakistan met in Tashkent, then a part of the Soviet Union, and signed the Tashkent Declaration largely because of mediatory efforts by the Soviet Prime Minister, Alexi Kosygin. Even so the much-hyped Tashkent spirit evaporated fast.

Nearly seven months after the liberation of Bangladesh in a war in which India had won a strategic victory under Indira Gandhi’s leadership, she and Bhutto met at Simla to usher in a lasting peace between the two neighbours. It is far from clear why this country’s most hard-headed Prime Minister trusted Bhutto’s verbal assurance that he would gradually convert the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir into a permanent border between India and Pakistan. Being a customer as slippery as an eel, he was almost certain to renege on his solemn promise.

Despite all this, it is perhaps unnecessary to say no to discussions with Pakistan, except in situations like 26/11, for terrorism and talks cannot go together. However, as the saying goes, better jaw, jaw than bang, bang.