The death of Indo-Pak dialogue

India has no desire to engage with Pakistan on positive issues, it's a one-issue engagement and that one issue stands currently resolved in our favour

A few years ago, for a short period, I was part of the Track Two circuit. This was (from India’s side), a group of politicians, journalists, civil society members and diplomats and (from Pakistan’s side) politicians, retired soldiers, diplomats and journalists. 

We met to explore how our governments could be talking more regularly and because our engagement was informal, we could be open. Most Business Standard readers will have not visited Pakistan and so I will try and reveal that strange country as best I can along with an inside look at the Track Two process. 

The first thing to say is that since this government, led by Narendra Modi, has come to power in India, the Track Two process is dead. There are two reasons for this. First that no BJP politician or BJP-minded journalist wants to visit or engage with Pakistan. They fear being branded inside their group as having become soft. In the absence of participation from that single most important and influential group in India’s polity, the Hindutva lobby, there is no point to the process. 

Second, dialogue is dead because India doesn’t really need anything from Pakistan. This may seem strange to someone who has been fed our litany of complaints on cross-border terrorism. But the fact is that cross-border terrorism is pretty much finished, as those who have seen the data know. From a high of 4,507 deaths in violence in Jammu and Kashmir in 2001, the number has fallen each year since to below 200 in the last few years. Meaning fatalities are at 5 per cent of what they were at peak. There are several reasons for this, which we need not go into, but the important aspect is this: what we want Pakistan to do — “end violence from cross-border terrorism” — it seems to have already done to large extent.

India, and particularly this government, has no desire to engage with Pakistan on positive issues like trade and culture. It is a one-issue engagement and given that the one issue stands currently resolved in our favour, there is no point to engagement. 

The last couple of times I visited, the political leaders in the delegation were both from Congress: Mani Shankar Aiyar and Salman Khurshid, who have of course no say in how India engages with Pakistan. The other side was led by Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri and Sherry Rahman, and those who know Pakistan’s politics will understand what sort of heft they carry. 

On the Pakistan side, there is greater intent because many Pakistanis believe that normalising relations with India will defang the extremism that is hurting their country. And it will also reduce the army’s hold on the civilian government. What is interesting is the attitude of Pakistan’s retired soldiers, whose views on terrorism may in brief be described as follows: asymmetrical warfare is legitimate against military targets; militancy is popular with Kashmiris; there are limits to which the state can act against actors that have become deeply entrenched; and militancy has hurt Pakistan more than it has India particularly in the last decade and half.  

No BJP politician or BJP-minded journalist wants to visit or engage with Pakistan. They fear being branded inside their group as having become soft

The last bit is true as the data shows, though India will say that this is self-inflicted and that is a fact. When I first went to Pakistan, there was almost no internal terrorism there, though Karachi was of course always violent since the 1980s for social and political reasons. It will surprise readers to learn that I know nobody from Karachi (and I know dozens of people) who has not been mugged at least once, and one individual 12 times, at gunpoint. 

However, a few years after 9/11 things changed for the worse across the nation. Today, their literature festivals look like gatherings of world leaders, such is the security. Three layers of X-rays and scores of men with assault rifles. The narrative in their media also began to change soon after, and the army, which was praised for its mischief in terrorism, was now being valorised for taking on the same groups that it had helped create.

If we look at the issue with nuance, and the truth is that most of the world looks at it this way, it becomes clear that while Pakistan is in a mess of its own making, it is trying to undo it, even if at a much slower pace than the world wants it to. Any movement on relations with them must be accompanied by an acknowledgment on this, but of course there is no chance we will do this, for reasons I have already laid out. 

Let me end with two small stories about one particular Track Two engagement in Islamabad. The host was the aforementioned Kasuri, a former foreign minister and a feudal lord. He and Aiyar took the head of the table while before them, facing each other, sat the Indian and Pakistani delegations. Aiyar made some brief opening remarks and then promptly fell asleep, mouth agape. He had left his microphone on (as the light on it showed). His aggressive, regular snoring offered a sort of background score to the proceedings till a kind Pakistani got up and walked over to Aiyar, to switch off the microphone. 

After a couple of hours of back and forth from the delegation, the morning’s proceedings were complete. At this point someone nudged Aiyar awake. Opening his eyes, he punched his microphone on and delivered, most inexplicably, a brilliant summation of the proceedings. It must have been the many years in diplomacy, no doubt, that led him to anticipate what is usually said at such meetings.

The problem of India-Pakistan talks can be encapsulated through a story also concerning Aiyar. Once, after the two day session was over, the sides were engaged over the wording of the resolution. The reporters were waiting for the statement and getting anxious, if not angry, at being made to wait while we haggled over some point or the other. 

When the Pakistanis expressed their frustration to Aiyar, he said: “I have absolutely no difficulty concluding something with you. It is producing an agreement among the Indians that is my problem.”