I read with interest M.J. Akbar’s diatribe (‘What Mr Aiyar won’t say’, November 20). Barbs aside, the main point of his argument is that I was wrong, indeed sinning, in pointing to Prime Minister Narendra Modi as the principal obstacle to the search for accommodation with Pakistan.
All the reasons Akbar adduces for shying away from dialogue with Pakistan were present on May 26, 2014, when Modi invited Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif to his swearing-in. It was agreed then that the two governments would initiate discussions at the foreign secretary level. No conditions were attached. The Hurriyat was not even mentioned.
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The initiative collapsed when the Indian government peremptorily ordered the Pakistan high commissioner not to consult the Hurriyat in advance of the foreign secretaries’ meeting. Such meetings had been par for the course for nearly two decades. They had done little good to the Pakistanis, and no harm to India. As such, it was a unilateral conditionality suddenly imposed on Pakistan at the last minute. If Modi regarded this as a key precondition, surely he should have taken it up with Sharif at their first meeting — or at least conveyed it well in advance through diplomatic channels.
When the Pakistanis were abruptly and very publicly ordered at the last minute not to talk to the Hurriyat, it predictably resulted in them calling off the talks, rather than bending to the bullying of the Indian side. Respecting sovereignty is the essence of bilateral diplomatic engagement. That is not Modi’s way. Stamped all over the abrupt disruption was Modi’s personal imprimatur.
Then the two PMs met at Ufa. There was no prior preparation. It was a last-minute decision by Modi to once again demonstrate his iron personal control over foreign policy. There was no prior preparation to sort out ticklish issues like the Hurriyat roadblock. Inevitably, that led to the NSA talks being scheduled, then called off. We remain where we were.
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Modi has put our country in the position of not talking to Pakistan if it talks to the Hurriyat. Pakistan has thus been cornered into the position of saying it will not talk to us if it cannot talk to the Hurriyat. The catch 22 is complete. Neither side can move. Modi is uniquely responsible for this, as it is he who has broken with past precedent and set a precondition that cannot be fulfilled.
Why, then, is it wrong to conclude that the talks cannot go forward so long as Modi remains PM? And since Modi as PM cannot be changed for the next four years, it is reasonable to believe that no progress is possible for at least four years, till the 2019 election determines whether the team that moved the dialogue further than ever before during the Manmohan Singh-Pervez Musharraf period will be returned to office.
It is disingenuous to say, as Akbar does, that no one knows what progress was made on the backchannel. Our representative, Ambassador Satinder Lambah, has gone on record in his speech in Srinagar on May 13, 2014, which succinctly sets out exactly how far the talks had progressed on a framework for a settlement of the vexed Kashmir issue, how much had been achieved, and what are the matters still to be brought to a conclusion. In the immediate past, the Pakistan foreign minister at the time, Khurshid Kasuri, has published his massive 800-page memoirs that go into excruciating detail on every step of the dialogue process, both on the backchannel and in public view.
For the BJP government, every detail of the backchannel talks is available in the files and archives left behind for their edification by the previous government. All Modi needs to do is get us back to the point we had reached, and then move forward. But after nearly 18 months, it is clear that is not his intention.
Is there any possibility that Modi would so change his character as to acknowledge the good work done by his predecessor? If not, what hope is there of a substantive, constructive, meaningful re-engagement with Pakistan over the years that remain of the Modi government?
As for the completely irrelevant question of why Manmohan Singh did not once in 10 years go to Pakistan, that is because, quite unlike Modi, Manmohan Singh did not personalise foreign policy, but institutionalised it. He believed in meeting his Pakistani counterparts after proper preparation of the road to the summit by his sherpas, his personal Tenzing being Lambah. When Lambah had taken matters to an appropriate point, Manmohan Singh did, in fact, schedule a visit to Islamabad at the end of March 2007, but was thwarted by Musharraf getting entangled with his judiciary at the beginning of that month.
With distressing agility, Akbar has quickly adopted the vocabulary of his new masters. He accuses us of being the “voice of appeasement”. To desire constructive engagement with Pakistan is not appeasement. To believe that such constructive engagement is not possible while the BJP continues in office is to realistically assess the baleful record of the last 18 months. That is what Mr Akbar won’t say.
