Opinion Mani Shankar Aiyar writes: The Satinder Lambah way to becoming a ‘Viswaguru’

The two of them hailed from what were arguably the two most influential Hindu families in what became Pakistan in 1947. So prominent were their forebears that it gave them easy access to almost everyone who mattered in the Frontier and Punjab, besides their quickly making friends with immigrants into Pakistan like Nawaz Sharif and his wife, Kulsoom. These links helped lubricate his path into the highest corridors of political and military power, as well as opened the doors to doyens of social and cultural life like the educationist, Syed Babar Ali, and artistic geniuses like Sadequain.

The high point in his path-breaking career was when he and his Pakistani counterpart evolved on the back channel, away from the public eye, a “four-point” formula for a breakthrough in the logjam over Kashmir. They were instrumental in establishing that the two countries are entirely capable of mutually working out ways of managing even “core” issues, which, for Pakistan, means Kashmir, and, for India, means ending cross-border terrorism (largely related to Kashmir), provided only that a sincere attempt is initiated and carried through to the point of agreement, however long that might take. That the cup was dashed from their lips by domestic political developments in Pakistan which pitted the highest levels of the judiciary against the Pakistan President (and had nothing to do with the back channel) only means that Fate has to be on the side of the negotiators for the outcome to be crowned with visible success. The lesson to learn is that the answer lies in uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue, not uninterrupted distancing from mutual engagement and uninterruptible hostility, as is being fostered now.

Lambah elegantly lays out the conditions required for such negotiations to succeed. First and foremost, the top leadership and their key colleagues in the cabinet (in India’s case) and the army (in Pakistan’s case) must be fully on board. “Political leaders’ statements set the direction and act like guidelines”.

Second, the back-channel negotiators must be in frequent touch with the leaders on every comma and semi-colon. “Between 2005 and 2007, my diary recalls that I had sixty-eight meetings with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh”. On the Pakistan side, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri’s massive tome, “Neither a Hawk nor a Dove”, details the intensive briefings he gave everyone who counted on the feedback he received from Pakistan’s negotiator, Tariq Aziz, a confidant of the president, both in the civilian establishment as well as the armed forces and the intelligence community. As Lambah remarks, “… it is both expedient and essential to keep the Pakistan army on board while engaging with Pakistan”. Thus was a national consensus built in both countries to sustain the negotiating process.

Third, red lines need to be clearly drawn and mutually accepted. At the same time, goals, aims and objectives must be set with no ambiguity. Also, the agenda needs to be fully set out and agreed upon before substantive negotiations begin.

Fourth, “engagement has to be all-encompassing. Economic, commercial, and technological content, which are known to act as force multipliers, have to be accordingly built into it.” At the same time, open, official engagement channels on a wide variety of issues, especially people-to-people contacts, need to be opened up to complement the secret back-channel negotiations on “core” issues.

Fifth, the negotiating process needs to be insulated from divisive domestic politics. Sati Lambah shows how, notwithstanding terrorist disruptions such as the explosions on the Mumbai suburban trains and the Samjhauta Express, Manmohan and Musharraf kept the dialogue going on the back channel. In striking contrast, “today, we are at a point where the process for dialogue, engagement and a broader peace process have never seemed more distant”.
He concludes — and I heartily concur — that “no country’s destiny is immune from its relationships with neighbours”. Drawing on his vast experience in dealing with the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, where he served for a total of six years, and his being an early Indian Ambassador to united Germany, and his intense involvement with Afghanistan when the Taliban was first overthrown, and his being in the first, and most talented mission we sent to Bangladesh in the immediate aftermath of Liberation, he sees the “central message” emanating from his life’s “journey” as that of “peace and reconciliation paying dividends in the long run”.

While serving as many as six Indian PMs, all of whom trusted the depth of his understanding and the maturity of his judgement on Pakistan, he sets out with clarity the roller coaster trajectory of India-Pak relations over 75 years, and draws the conclusion that instead of looking at Pakistan “principally through the prism of religion”, and enmeshing hostilities “in domestic politics”, which only revive “painful memories of Partition”, we must not be deflected from “continually seeking a path to healing, however difficult and arduous it might seem”.

The highest tribute the nation can pay to his memory and the immense contribution he made to overcoming the traumas of the past would be to resume a “sustained” process of dialogue with Pakistan to convert the “near solution” he arrived at into lasting agreement on peace and tranquility between us “distant neighbours”. That, combined with a similar process of constructive engagement with China, alone would transform our position in the world. Without that, dreams of becoming the “Viswaguru” will remain empty fantasy.

The writer is a former Union minister