We are still only halfway through the Ramzan period and the old clouds of confusion, indecision and distrust are already creating an impression that the Government’s latest peace move in Kashmir is also headed the way of the earlier ones, the Lahore bus ride or the talks with Hizbul. Both failed because they were launched with not just inadequate preparation but also lack of conviction. There was spectacular gesture, publicity, hype and then sheer fizz. Will that be the case this time as well?When the Vajpayee Government announced the ceasefire, it did not sound as if it had been abruptly knee-jerked into it. The announcement was seen against the background of the Lone-Amanullah family wedding and not merely the lessening of Pakistani rhetoric but also a whole series of relatively conciliatory responses, including the promise of “maximum restraint†along the Line of Control. Then Vajpayee responded again by offering to extend the truce beyond Ramzan and it did seem as if the the two sides were playing out a script which, even if they hadn’t rehearsed, they had shared backstage. But then the spokesmen of the two foreign ministries began to spar again along the usual lines: No tripartite talks, why talks if not tripartite, and so on. This is cause for confusion as well as concern. You cannot blame the mandarins for repeating old lines unless they have been taken into confidence on any fundamental change in policy. There are many indications that some such rethink has taken place in New Delhi. Then, why is it not being reflected in the public posture of our spokesmen? Or are we again walking ourselves into the trap of getting so obsessed with backstage diplomacy as to forget that unless we simultaneously sensitise public opinion to accept a shift from familiar positions, the old ghost will return to haunt us? The reason there has been no progress towards a settlement on Kashmir, and in India-Pakistan relations in general, is the inability of the two sides to get over scriptural injunctions. For India, the great mental block is a bilateralism that, in an odd sense, is external as well as internal. External because we do not want a third party/country to take any part in India-Pakistan negotiations; and internal because even on the limited but significant issue of Kashmir, we would only talk to the Kashmiri people, even if they happen to be based in Pakistan or stoking insurgency from there. How can we solve the Kashmir problem without talking to Pakistan, unless we have the fleet-footedness of holding two parallel “bilateral†dialogues? Bilateralism is now a theology, backed by the national consensus of three decades. Time has now come to question it, junk it as outdated. We tell the world Pakistan is sponsoring insurgency in Kashmir, that most of the underground fighters in the Valley are Pakistanis or jehadisfrom more distant nationalities, but want to confine the dialogue to “indigenous†fighters. Further, we claim that even these “indigenous†groups are no more than Pakistani puppets but we refuse to involve the puppeteer in the talks. This, then, becomes a no-go situation. There is a lot that the Pakistanis have done wrong in Kashmir and there is a lot that is ridiculous with their worldview. But since, for the past two years, we have shown more eagerness for a lasting settlement, the onus is on us to rethink the fundamentals. If we cannot do that, all peace moves, whether the Ramzan ceasefire or the talks with the Hizb or the bus ride, will look like hopeless tokenisms. This kind of half-hearted thrust-and-parry does not mark any substantive departure from the lazy old concept of diplomacy as trench warfare.If you want to break the status quo, if you have a stake in a more stable, focused future so you could leverage your newly discovered economic and technological strengths, you must dare to move from the trenches. Even more important, you have not only to sensitise public opinion but to also take it along. Pushing a radically new Pakistan/Kashmir policy, entirely behind the scenes, entails the same risks vis-a-vis public opinion in India as Nawaz Sharif’s bus diplomacy did with regard to his army, in 1999. Peace, in the background of such a complex and bitter history of discord, can come only in one of three ways. First, you go to war, and win decisively. We won in 1971 but did not get lasting peace. Second, you convince the other side that there is no way it is going to win a future war and thereby it should make pace. The Pakistanis have, by and large, known this since 1971 but are not rational enough to act accordingly. Third, both are convinced that not only will there be no victory for either side but that both will continue to bleed with the status quo. If you want peace you must have the stomach for it. In spite of some good moves lately, neither India nor Pakistan has demonstrated that as yet. It is possible that, as many in South Block suspect, Musharraf seriously fantasises he can wrest Kashmir one day and thereby immortalise himself as the first genuine national hero after Jinnah. He would then go through the token peaceable motions just when a new presidency is being inaugurated in Washington, then blame India for its failure, and shrug helplessly while the ISI turns on the gas as the snow melts after this winter. If that be so, we can call his bluff by thinking creatively. We must, for example, review our real gains if any from our holy commitment to bilateralism. Bilateralism can only work among equals. It can lead to a lasting accord between two nations only if they have stable constitutional systems. We have, in Pakistan, a situation where every ruler comes to power after killing, jailing or denouncing his predecessor and then feels free to rewrite the Constitution, sometimes so creatively as to set up a partyless democracy (Zia), or to call the military dictator chief executive (Musharraf). What kind of bilateralism can you have with a neighbour like that? You can sign what you want with Musharraf but since he, most probably, will be removed through assassination, denunciation or exile the ways dictators tend to go in modern times how can you be so sure his successor would honour his commitments? That is why, if we want peace, if we have the stomach for what it takes to get lasting peace, if we are then willing to make a break from the past, begin by junking this fundamentalist bilateralism. At Shimla, if only Mrs Gandhi had had the foresight to get the world to endorse the accord in some manner, it would have lasted a bit longer than Bhutto’s fake promises. For any other accord to work with Pakistan, you will need international guarantees. Why not do it when the going is good, when the world is with you and when the world is too distracted by economics to pause and help anybody redraw territorial boundaries?
