 "Prime Minister Narendra Modi shakes hands with his Pakistani Counterpart Nawaz Sharif during a meeting at UFA in Russia")
Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweeted Friday afternoon that he would drop by in Lahore on his way back to Delhi from Kabul to wish Sharif a happy birthday, leaving people on both sides of the border flabbergasted.
The meeting between Sharif and Modi, in the former's hometown, will also be the biggest vote of confidence that there could have been from a democratically elected leader of India to the civilian leadership of Pakistan.
In visiting Lahore, Modi will become the first Indian PM since Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 2004 to visit the neighbouring country during their tenure. Manmohan Singh had wanted to visit Gah, his birthplace in Pakistan, but couldn't during his ten-year long tenure. In 2007, Singh said he dreamt of a time when people could have their breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul. "That is how my forefathers lives. That is how I want our grandchildren to live," he said.
Modi, it would seem, would accomplish something similar today. He was in Kabul in the morning to inaugurate that country's new parliament building that India has helped construct, and will drop by in Lahore for a late lunch with Sharif and will be in Delhi for the dinner. Beyond the optics, Modi's visit also underlines both his friendship that he seems to have struck with Sharif ever since he invited the Pakistan PM for his swearing in on May 26, 2014 but also his ability to show immense bravery to visit Lahore despite the security concerns.
The two had sat down, side by side, for 120-seconds of what had seemed a very animated discussion on the sidelines of the Paris climate change talks on December 1. Before that Sharif and Externbal Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj had held long informal talks, in Urdu and Punjabi, during the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting, or CHOGM, in Malta in end-November. These two meetings had soon resulted in the two National Security Advisers meeting in Bangkok on December 6, and then Swaraj visiting Islamabad where she held talks with her counterpart Sartaj Aziz and the two announced the resumption of the India-Pakistan comprehensive bilateral dialogue.
Today, Modi tweeted that he spoke to Sharif over telephone and greeted him on his birthday. "Looking forward to meeting Sharif in Lahore today afternoon when I will drop by on my way back to Delhi," Modi tweeted, proving yet again his ability to think out of the box as far as diplomacy is concerned. Significantly, the meeting will take place in Lahore and not Pakistan's capital Islamabad, which indicates that it is an informal meeting that sends out a message to people in both countries that Modi and Sharif enjoy an excellent rapport, which could imbue even their respective armed forces and diplomats with a positive approach towards resolving some of the issues.
Modi, say those who know him, isn't just chasing Vajpayee's legacy when it comes to India-Pakistan relations but also, as he put it quite plainly during his Dhaka visit last year, a Nobel Prize for Peace. In Dhaka, Modi had said that Bangladesh PM Sheikh Hasina and he would have been conferred the Nobel for resolving the India-Bangladesh land boundary and other issues if the two were leaders of countries in some other part of the world. Modi is also slated to visit Islamabad to attend the SAARC Summit in 2016.
The history of India-Pakistan relations, however, suggests that disaster awaits whenever leaderships of the two countries exhibit extraordinary bonhomie.
India-Pakistan peace talks: A brief timeline
- February 1999: Vajpayee and Sharif issue Lahore declaration after the Indian PM travels to Lahore in a bus
- May 1999: Kargil conflict, Sharif later blamed Pervez Musharraf and other generals for the coup
- 2001: Agra Summit between Vajpayee and Pakistan President Musharraf fails
- 2004: Vajpayee attends SAARC Summit in Islamabad, two neighbours begin their 'composite dialogue'
- 2008: Composite dialogue collapses after Mumbai terror attacks
- 2009: PM Manmohan Singh criticized for Sharm-el Sheikh declaration
- 2011: India-Pakistan decide to resume 'comprehensive dialogue' but its stalled after tensions on the border a year later
- 2014: Sharif attends Modi's swearing in ceremony
- August 2014: Foreign secretary level meeting cancelled over Pakistan's insistence on meeting Hurriyat leaders
- July 2015: Modi and Sharif meet in Ufa, Russia, and agree that two NSAs should meet
- August 2015: NSA level meeting cancelled on Hurriyat issue
- end-November 2015: Swaraj meets Sharif in Malta on the sidelines of CHOGM
- December 1: Modi-Sharif meet in Paris on the sidelines of climate change talks
- December 6: two NSAs meet in Bangkok
- December 8-9 : Swaraj and Sartaj Aziz announce in Islamabad the resumption of comprehensive bilateral dialogue
