The troubled India-Pakistan relationship and the disturbances in the Kashmir Valley following the July 8 killing of Burhan Wani are eliciting some international attention. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon offered his good offices if “requested by both sides, to facilitate dialogue in order to achieve a negotiated settlement”, in his reply to Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif’s letter condemning human rights violations in the Valley and demanding the plebiscite mandated in UNSC Resolution 47 of 1948. While Pakistan habitually ratchets up its Kashmir ditty as the UN General Assembly’s high-level session approaches each September, this year talking to the Pakistanis in Track-2 meetings one senses they perceive an opportunity akin to the one they got in late 1980s when the mishandled elections in Kashmir, combined with the Pakistan-sponsored jihadis’ victory in Afghanistan, enabled them to destabilise Kashmir. But Pakistan may be making some false assumptions, as it has earlier while launching military misadventures against India. First, unlike in the 1990s, the Line of Control is today properly fenced, making it harder to push huge numbers of jihadis across. Second, India’s economic condition and its international standing is now vastly superior. Third, India is led by a strong PM who draws strength from a muscular Pakistan policy.
From the detritus of diplomacy, missed chances, terror-caused interruptions and sudden bonhomie since Narendra Modi assumed office, a doctrine is emerging. His critics dub it as mindless see-sawing while the government insists there is method in the melee. The governments of Prime Ministers Atal Behari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh had similarity in their basic approaches to Pakistan. For them, dialogue was the sole means to resolve outstanding disputes and enhance confidence-building measures. Both found, however, that whenever the dialogue was resumed, either the Pakistan Army itself (as in Kargil) or its puppets (as in the 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament, the Mumbai train bombings and the 26/11 Mumbai attack) derailed the process of the “composite dialogue”. After a hiatus, and Pakistan promising to curb India-specific terror syndicates nurtured by its Army, the dialogue was resumed. It was invariably a victory of hope over experience.
Mr Modi, however, is attempting to break that cycle. On assuming power after a high-decibel campaign, he promised to rewrite how India was run, as indeed the war on terror was conducted. When he invited Saarc leaders to his May 2014 swearing-in, a new dawn of regional cooperation arose. But thereafter tactical mistakes were made. If some new “red lines” are to be introduced, while extending the hand of friendship, they should be laid after quiet diplomacy. Instead, after the Modi-Nawaz meeting of May 2014, it was announced that the two foreign secretaries would meet. It seemed all the ground rules had been agreed upon, but for the government, then just a few hours old, no such preparation was feasible.
Therefore, when the foreign secretary-level talks were called off at the last minute over Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit meeting the Hurriyat leaders, it surprised everyone. Earlier governments too had objected to such meetings, but the dissonance was handled without public acrimony. After that, three other inflexion points for a resumed engagement have been the Ufa meeting of the two Prime Ministers in July 2015, the meeting of the national security advisers in December 2015, and Mr Modi’s completely unexpected halt in Lahore in December 2015, ostensibly for the wedding of Nawaz Sharif’s granddaughter.
But Mr Modi’s Lahore journey was hardly over when a meticulously planned terrorist attack, traceable to Pakistan, was made on the Pathankot airbase in January 2016. The initial Pakistani reaction was, for the first time, of empathy, and not automatic denial. India responded by allowing Pakistan’s Joint Investigation Team to visit the attack site. This was an unprecedented step in counter-terror collaboration. However, the euphoria soon melted when Pakistan sat over the Indian request, agreed to in advance, for India’s NIA team to visit Pakistan. The death of ailing J&K chief minister Mufti Muhammad Sayeed in January 2016, the drift of the state till his daughter Mehbooba finally took office in April and the death of Burhan Wani in July set the stage for the Valley to explode. The alienation had obviously been building up for some time, perhaps since the 2014 floods. It has taken the Union home minister a month and a half to concede that pellet guns, which have caused so much anger in the Valley, must be withdrawn.
The net result is that positions have hardened all around. India obviously resents advice from overseas about stabilising the Valley. Meanwhile, the gloves came off as Mr Modi, in his Independence Day address, pointed at Pakistan’s human rights violations and political skulduggery in Gilgit Baltistan, Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Balochistan. In the process, he also put China on notice that its presence in and economic activity via the disputed parts of Kashmir were questionable. With extremely sensitive elections looming in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh, the latter a must-win for Mr Modi, India-Pakistan relations face turbulent times. But the Modi doctrine is now clear — zero tolerance for terror means zero tolerance; the Hurriyat has no place at the dialogue table as it is a Pakistani puppet, which has never tested its popularity electorally; a more assertive stance on PoK to unsettle Pakistan; and a readiness to confront the Sino-Pak alliance. The question is whether this is again tactical manoeuvring or a real strategic shift. In any case, the priority is to not have red lines over Delhi talking to stakeholders in the Valley, including the Hurriyat. The ultimate riposte to Pakistan would be to win over hearts and minds in Kashmir. Once the people feel the touch of empathy, only then, as Mr Modi has promised, they will get the whiff of freedom.
