It must do introspection

The dynamics of a possibility for dialogue with Pakistan have changed. A giant shift has taken place in India’s approach. Two key features have changed – it is no longer discussion on all outstanding issues including Jammu and Kashmir. It has changed to vacation of Pakistan occupied Kashmir under the illegal occupation of Pakistan.

By now Pakistan should have known that its hostile actions against India would never get it parity with its eastern neighbour at the dialogue table. It is continuing with its policies to bleed India by thousand cuts, and also hopes that India should hold dialogue with it on Kashmir. The dialogue and diplomacy phrase gains relevance only when the hostile actions are ceased, but Pakistan is trying to prove opposite correct.

For long, India has believed that vacation of PoK by Pakistan will lead to realistic solution to Kashmir crisis. There is history and the developments of the past 75 years that have made India to push this case, but the fact remains that for a large part of this era, India was on defensive. It is only in the recent times that India has adopted aggressive stance on the vacation of PoK.

In the broader spectrum in this country, Pakistan is evaluated in two contradictory terms – a nonentity struggling to survive on foreign loans and grants. Pakistan has come to be defined as an epicentre of terrorism because of its cross-border terrorism. Its cross-border terrorism has proved consequential in changing India’s approach.

For nearly four decades, India has been demanding that Pakistan should dismantle its terrorism factories and export of terrorism to India to earn a seat at the dialogue table. This narrative has acquired stringency in the past few years, under the Narendra Modi Government. There are very solid reasons for that. India has not turned its back to Pakistan, it is Pakistan that has made India to do so.  This is admitted even by the foreign policy experts in Pakistan as well.

The most significant and political outreach to Pakistan was made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in December 2015 when he reached Pakistan while coming home from Kabul, Afghanistan. He took a great risk in reaching out to Pakistan with a firm hope and belief that his gesture would lay a foundation for peaceful relationship between India and Pakistan. He was seeking to turn a page in the history of the two nations, despite having been  a witness to a series of betrayals by the neighbouring country in the past – his illustrious predecessor Atal Behari Vajpayee who is often quoted as a leader who walked several  extra miles to reach out to Pakistan – was betrayed. Kargil happened within weeks after Vajpayee took a bus of friendship to Lahore and proclaimed from “Minar-e-Pakistan,”, “Hum jung na hone denge (we will not allow war to take place)”

The wounds of Kargil war are still fresh in the country’s psyche. India lost more than 500 officers and men while recapturing the heights that were clandestinely occupied by Pakistan Apart from the supreme sacrifice that Indian soldiers made in the Himalayan heights in Kargil in the summer of 1999, India suffered a loss of faith in its neighbour. Vajpayee invited President Musharraf  for talks in  July, 2001, and  by  December that year, Pakistan plotted and executed a terror assault on the Indian Parliament  resulting in tense border standoff for almost  next 10 months. Even after these bitter experiences, Vajpayee extended hand of friendship to Pakistan, that too from the soil of Kashmir  and initiated several peace-building measures with the neighbouring country, and President Musharraf  committed that Pakistani soil will not be allowed to be used for terror activities directed against India.

The critical part of the joint statement of PM Vajpayee and President Musharraf signed on January 6, 2004 on the sidelines of SAARC summit in Islamabad, read: “ Prime Minister Vajpayee said that in order to take forward and sustain the dialogue process, violence, hostility and terrorism must be prevented. President Musharraf reassured Prime Minister Vajpayee that he will not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support terrorism in any manner.” The rest is history.

Modi had hoped that his visit to Pakistan in December 2015 would open new areas f cooperation between the two countries and most important part of it was that he expected Pakistan to rollback its terrorism misadventures in India. The opposite happened. In the opening days of January 2016, Pakistan mounted a big terror assault on Indian Air Force station in Pathankot, Punjab. India, for the first time allowed, Pakistani sleuths to join the investigations into the attack. But the result was the same - Pakistan denied its involvement. That was perhaps the turning point in Indian government’s thinking that any dialogue with Pakistan is a fruitless exercise. India gave several opportunities to hit the dialogue table at equals, but Pakistan believed that with armoury and machinery of terrorism it could gain upper hand over India. That mindset persists. Terrorists and terrorism have limited life.

Pakistan engineered its own fall by creating situations that forced India to wash its hands off dialogue with Islamabad. Even today, it is pursuing monstrous terror-driven strategies. On the one hand, Pakistan premier Shehbaz Sharif pleaded for talks with India for resolving all the issues and to embark on path of friendly ties, on the other army chief Gen. Aim Munir not only announced unlimited support to what he called, “Kashmiris engaged in a struggle to achieve right of self-determination” but declared that “Kashmir will become part of Pakistan.”  This is defeating the very purpose of the prospects of dialogue.

In India, the national perception is that with the abrogation of Article 370 (in August 2019), Kashmir problem has been solved, and the only unresolved part is PoK- Pakistan occupied Kashmir. It is articulated not only within the country but at the international forums – a sort of modification over the previous expressions that Jammu and Kashmir is an integral part of the country and it will remain so. Now, it has been added that no power on earth can restore Article 370. The removal of this particular constitutional provision is seen as an act that has changed the whole perception and reality about the land and the place and approach toward Pakistan. This should  make Pakistan do some introspection as to what all it is losing  by continuing the anti-India approach, and what all it stands to gain if the bilateral ties with India are back on track.