The Golden Bilateral?

Exactly two years ago, almost to date, on a sunny afternoon just like this one, I saw Prime Minister Vajpayee lounging in his garden, sippin...

Exactly two years ago, almost to date, on a sunny afternoon just like this one, I saw Prime Minister Vajpayee lounging in his garden, sipping soup and contemplating possibilities of war even as peacocks cavorted around the trees in the manner of Hindi film stars in a romantic duet. The peacocks, the garden and the soup are still there, but he now weighs prospects of peace. To say that the change in two years has been phenomenal is to state the obvious. The interesting thing is, how even his problematic interlocutor of Agra is playing ball.

For the so-called liberal lot in the intellectual/analyst community the answer is simple. Both India and Pakistan, in their limited world-view, are only following the advice of George Bush. But this is as simplistic as it is unfair. Both nations have large populations, which have tasted varying degrees of democracy and thereby have to deal with a factor called public opinion. If the dramatic momentum of the past six months was to be only attributed to foreign prodding, how come it is creating such a popular buzz in both countries?

Much of the speculation now is over whether Vajpayee and Musharraf will meet in Islamabad. Odds are, they will. But what a far cry this is from the last multilateral summit they attended at Almaty, June 2002 where they did not even shake hands, even avoided eye contact. Through most of last year, we stood muzzle-to-muzzle, closer to war than ever since December 1971. Now we are talking peace and confidence-building measures at a pace not seen even in the run-up to the Lahore bus ride or the Agra summit. On his way to Agra, Musharraf said nothing conciliatory except something like, let8217;s find a negotiated settlement for Kashmir, the core, and the only material issue while the rest could be tackled en passant. Today he is giving up his insistence on UN resolutions, meeting India halfway, and his establishment is speaking of a composite dialogue.

The fact is, our own intellectual class does us a great deal of disservice by seeing any positive movement as being foreign inspired. I can say it on good authority 8212; and verified on all sides 8212; that Vajpayee8217;s April initiative in Srinagar took not just the Pakistanis but also the Americans entirely by surprise. Check with the entire community of strategic analysts and they will tell you how they were besieged by calls from US and European diplomats on the day of that initiative to figure out what exactly was going on. If they had indeed initiated and guided that move they wouldn8217;t have been so genuinely surprised 8212; and confused. I was woken up late that night by an old India hand in Washington 8212; probably when people came into work that morning there 8212; and asked, please, please tell me, how do I make sense of India to my colleagues? Just what is going on?

Weeks later, a very senior diplomat even asked me how does one explain this 8220;magisterial8221; control that 8220;your prime minister has over your public opinion, taking it to war one day, to peace another?8221; Then he elaborated: he decided to go to Lahore and it was as if all of India was riding the bus with him. He was betrayed in Kargil, so all of India, instead of blaming him, felt betrayed and joined the war with him. Then he decided to make peace again in Agra, and public opinion was again with him. After the Parliament attack he nearly took you to war again, and you were all with him. He is now making another dramatic shift to the peace-lane and nobody is asking him what is going on. The diplomat said he is only explaining to people back home that if the Pakistanis did not respond properly now, and that if another Kargil-like betrayal came, the same gentleman would, 8220;by another twist of his palm8221;, signal the end of the peace overture, and his countrymen would be quite willing to go to war alongside him again. It is probable now that that message has been understood in Pakistan as well.

It is no secret that Vajpayee the prime minister has had an abiding commitment to peace with Pakistan. His motivations are driven by his philosophical belief as well as from his understanding of India8217;s supreme national interest. A final solution is obviously distant. But even a movement towards peace with Pakistan works wonderfully not just for the region8217;s economy but also for the prevailing feel-good mood. He and his senior colleagues also understand that the key to good Hindu-Muslim relations in India is peace with Pakistan. It has the potential then of changing the political discourse in India, of redefining the whole secular versus Hindu right agenda. If an Islamist Pakistan is no longer seen as a permanent enemy, a clear and present danger forever, it no longer feeds Hindu suspicion and Muslim insecurity in India.

Besides all this, Vajpayee is too shrewd not to understand that prospects of peace with Pakistan are good electoral politics. It would dovetail nicely into his feel-good agenda of development and prosperity in the 2004 elections. You can8217;t go to the polls riding the India Shining slogan and yet be talking about cross-border terrorism and threats to national security at the same time. In December 1984, Rajiv Gandhi swept an election with scary barbed-wire advertisements that played on the post-Bluestar, post-Indira assassination insecurities. Imagine what would be the impact of a Vajpayee campaign next year that talked of lifting the barbed wires instead, clearing the mine-fields?

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History of India-Pakistan relations is smudged with reputations of optimists. But if you look at the possible reasons why Musharraf has responded the way he has done so far, you have to risk optimism again. The results of the assembly elections in India could have signalled to him that Vajpayee is probably in for another term. So hopes of any weak, temporary, Third Front-like formulation coming into power look unreal. Similarly, after Saddam8217;s capture it seems even more likely that Bush will get a second term, and with his attention so focused on the Islamic world he is bound to look at Pakistan more closely once there is some respite from Iraq. Both these changes 8212; only to signal continuity 8212; will happen in late 2004, almost exactly when some of his more difficult generals, including Aziz, retire and pressure on him to democratise further, even give up the army chief8217;s post, will increase. His responses so far indicate a realistic appreciation of this situation.

It is useful, meanwhile, to recall the Musharrafisms that blighted Agra. Then he was annoyed at the mention of the term 8220;cross-border terrorism8221;. 9/11 changed all of that. He tried to define terror in Kashmir as an indigenous freedom movement in which civilian casualties were only collateral damage. The 13/12 Parliament attack destroyed that notion. He harped on the UN resolutions then. Now he is offering to forget those and return to the spirit of the Simla Agreement, and even if he does not say so in as many words, we understand. There is no guarantee there won8217;t be another betrayal. There are no guarantees in situations that involve so much complexity, emotion, history, prejudice, distrust. But the setting, the run-up, is better than it was for Lahore and Agra. What is even better, expectations are much lower, much less dramatic this time. Because the only thing you can say with certainty, even if the peace process moves on, is that it will be a very long haul.

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In Shekhar Gupta8217;s last column, 8216;New voter, no sops8217; IE, December 13, the last sentence of the penultimate paragraph should have read: 8220;If a Congress-led coalition does not formulate that cabinet, it would look like such a hopeless team.8221; The error is regretted.