Not by Musharraf alone

For now, the UPA government has deferred the foreign secretary level talks that were scheduled for last week while suggesting that India is not pulling out of the peace process. This ambivalence, however, cannot be sustained for too long. In developing a credible policy towards Pakistan, India must come to terms with a number of realities.

For one, developing a long-term strategy towards Pakistan is more important than the prospect of the two foreign secretaries meeting in Dhaka next week and picking up the threads of the bilateral conversation.

For far too long India has tied itself into knots over the appropriate relationship between terrorism and talks with Pakistan. After every major incident of terrorism, India goes into a sulk and suspends talks. Only to go back to the table after a decent interval. Each time, India has been reminded of that simple lesson of diplomacy: it is easy to stomp out of the room than walking back in. India cannot treat talks with Pakistan as an 8216;on-again, off-again8217; affair.

The second and painful reality is that the post-9/11 box that had been constructed around President Pervez Musharraf is beginning to weaken. To be sure, the international community, gathered in St Petersburg last week, strongly condemned cross-border terrorism against India. But New Delhi would be unwise to expect that such verbal support would inevitably translate into effective pressure on Pakistan.

The Western agenda with Pakistan is already overloaded with the developments on the Pak-Afghan border. The US and the international community, which have troops deployed in defence of Afghanistan8217;s stability, face a difficult dilemma in dealing with Musharraf. They need Musharraf8217;s cooperation in dealing with the sources of terrorism in Pakistan and cannot dump him for the fear of consequences which could lead to a situation worse than at present.

Meanwhile, the imperatives of Musharraf8217;s political survival at home have increasingly clashed with his proclaimed commitment to combat the sources of terrorism.

Third, while what the West can do might be limited, India will continue to need international pressures to contain the sources of terrorism inside Pakistan.

But how we generate those pressures will have to be different from the past. Both at the end of December 2001 and in the middle of May 2002, the US and UK jumped into the Indo-Pak conflict to prevent it from escalating to the nuclear level and forced Musharraf to make promises on stopping cross-border terrorism. But India will find it hard to threaten a full-scale war every time its presumed threshold to tolerance is breached, as it was in Mumbai.

Fourth, an India that merely blames Pakistan for all the terror attacks on the nation and avoids engagement will soon find itself as a 8220;repondeur8221; rather than a 8220;demandeur8221; on the regional agenda. There is no reason why India would want to go back on the defensive vis-a-vis Pakistan.

Fifth, if India re-activates the dialogue with Pakistan, it might as well pursue it vigorously. Over the last one year, the UPA government has lost some valuable time and space in the engagement with Pakistan. It has often allowed bureaucratic pressures to dictate the pace of talks with Pakistan and delay the settlement of at least some of the issues on the agenda.

Sixth, India be under no illusion about the presumed relationship between the resolution of the Jammu and Kashmir question and an end to terrorism. For groups like Lashkar-e-Toiba, Kashmir is only an incidental cause. Their more fundamental goal is to create many Pakistans in India.

That violence might not come to an end even after we sort out Kashmir should not be a reason to stop talking on the subject. In the dialogue on Kashmir over the last couple of years, India has successfully generated focus on PoK and the absence of political rights there. Having thrown wide open the template of negotiations on Kashmir, India needs to exploit the new framework to the hilt.

Seventh, a renewed dialogue with Pakistan, that will be informed by a longer-range strategy, needs a serious face-to-face conversation between General Musharraf and Dr Singh. If he needs to regain the higher diplomatic ground, Dr Singh must pick up the courage to set an early date to visit Pakistan. He could then take up the General8217;s offer to cooperate on terrorism.

Finally, as it renews talks with Pakistan, India should look for a broader engagement with all the political forces next door. Dealing with the full political spectrum is an important element in India8217;s necessary planning for an uncertain post-Musharraf future as well as inevitable structural change in Pakistan.

Cynics will scoff at the talk of democracy in Pakistan. But change is inevitable in Pakistan. If the King of Nepal, for long revered as the incarnation of Lord Vishnu himself, can be forced to back off, there is no reason to believe that army rule in Pakistan is divinely sanctioned. The question is not whether Pakistan forever will be under the thumb of its armed forces. It is whether India has the political will to encourage a democratic transformation in Pakistan.

At a time when the two leading political parties in Pakistan, the PPP and the Muslim League, are launching an agitation for restoration of democracy, India has no reason to keep quiet. Like all the other friends of Pakistan, India too must insist on an electoral process that is at once 8220;legitimate8221;, in terms of first principles, and 8220;free and fair8221; in terms of the process.

New Delhi needs to invite Pakistan8217;s exiled leaders 8212; Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif 8212; to visit India. It also needs to engage such leaders as Qazi Hussain Ahmad, head of the Jamaat-e-Islami. These are very small steps for India. But they could set the tone for a more assertive Indian policy towards Pakistan that will benefit the peoples of both the countries.

If India has to delink the peace process from cross-border violence, it might as well go for broke.