BackThe return of peace at any cost with Pakistan
Sooner or later, all Indian prime ministers return to the negotiating table
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The terrorist attack in Dinanagar in Punjab on Monday was a rare occurrence of such violence in a state where the guns fell silent nearly 24 years ago. Gurdaspur district was once notorious as a hotbed of Khalistani terrorists. But preliminary investigation in this case shows the terrorists were from Pakistan and, so far, there is no evidence of a Khalistani angle to the atrocity. This has not been lost on the Narendra Modi government. Within two days of the event, reports suggest that there will be no going back on bilateral talks between India and Pakistan. The “Ufa spirit", so to speak, persists and the agreement arrived at between Prime Minister Modi and Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif in Russia seems to be holding for now.
This is not surprising. One can call this India’s sagacity in pursuing peace or some kind of reversion to a default position, but the truth is that sooner or later, all Indian leaders return to the negotiating table with their Pakistani counterpart.
Ideally, Pakistan should be held responsible for any aggression emanating from its soil, be it terrorism or ceasefire violations by its army. At the moment, it pleads helplessness in controlling terrorists in its territory. This is a poor excuse, but one that has been bought by successive governments in India. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government is the latest in this line of governments.
Why this is the default Indian position is not hard to discern. A mix of geographic reality and institutional legacies restricts what any government can do. At one level, it is a simple matter of geography. To use a cliché: one can choose one’s friends, but one can’t choose neighbours. Like or dislike, one has to deal with Pakistan. This is a constant in policymaking with respect to any of our neighbours in South Asia.
The other variable is institutional. This is made of strategic vision (what should India do with Pakistan?) and negotiating strategies (should there be a constant application of “heat" on Islamabad or does that become counterproductive after a while). On this front, too, the dice is loaded in favour of a “peace at any cost" attitude.
Given this matrix, the two equilibria are either to ignore any aggression by Pakistan or simply respond to any violation by it with an appropriate level of hostile attention. The former approach characterized the Congress: it did not matter whether a bunch of terrorists mowed down 175 persons in Mumbai or whether the international border in Jammu and Kashmir lit up from artillery fire. In both cases, the Manmohan Singh government chose to pursue talks, albeit with a hiatus after a terrorist attack. The BJP, in contrast, was expected to be less restrained and, to an extent, it engaged in a tit-for-tat response for a while. Not any more.
The BJP’s approach now seems to be undergoing some kind of “fine-tuning". A distinction seems to have been made between attacks by terrorists (now fashionably called non-state actors by Islamabad) and ceasefire violations by its armed forces. The Modi government is now fine with the former type of violation. While publicly, the government has said that India’s honour will not be bartered—home minister Rajnath Singh said as much—but sooner or later, this tooth-combed policy will collapse. Either the BJP will revert to its original position, or what it does will become indistinguishable from what the Congress did during 2004-14.
This is self-defeating. The claim that the hands of an elected government in Pakistan needs to be supported and that terrorist attacks are calculated to derail peace talks is the same as peace at any cost idea. Why should India bear terrorist attacks to bolster the hands of an elected government in Pakistan? Even the most plausible answer is fantastic: that in the long run, a civilian government can deliver lasting peace only if its hands are strengthened and it has the ability to keep the army at bay. India should not be thinking for Pakistan. History and experience show that has never worked.
The BJP, the party considered to have a different outlook, is proving to be not very different from the Congress. The two factors mentioned earlier—geography and institutional inertia—are now hitting the BJP with a vengeance. The truth is that Indian political parties are too engrossed in domestic affairs to spend time and think hard about Pakistan. The last time a leader devoted some energy and attention to this problem was Indira Gandh iin 1971, and she also reacted only after the massive refugee influx from East Pakistan forced her to act.
Has the Narendra Modi government also bought the “peace at all costs" argument? Tell us at views@livemint.com
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