Manish Tewari: ‘Third-party mediation in India-Pakistan conflict has been a reality since 1990s, whether you like it or not’

IE: A ceasefire between India and Pakistan is in place. What is your reading of the current situation?

Manish Tewari: I think it is important that we start from the beginning. The provocation was General Asim Munir’s two-nation theory speech. What happened subsequently was a manifestation of that provocation in the form of the massacre/execution of 25 tourists after identifying them by faith. It would have been very obvious to Pakistan that this provocation would not go unanswered.

The moment there is an escalation in the context of India and Pakistan, which are two de facto nuclear weapon states, it is bound to be an international concern. Therefore, the back-channelling that happened between May 7 and May 10 was inevitable.

If you were to rewind to whenever there has been a flashpoint in the India-Pakistan dynamic, there has been back-channelling or third-party mediation. You can use whichever terminology gives you a more respectable fig leaf. In 1990, you had the Robert Gates mission when Pakistan started flashing the nuclear word. During Kargil in 1999, there was back-channelling. Nawaz Sharif landed up at the White House uninvited and unannounced. Subsequently, there was a ceasefire between India and Pakistan on India’s terms.

In 2001-02, in the middle of mobilisation for Operation Parakram, when the Kaluchak massacre took place, where the families of armed forces personnel were slaughtered by Pakistani terrorists, there again was very active back-channelling led by the US. In 2008, when the 26/11 attacks took place, there must have been back-channelling to try and see that things remain under a modicum of restraint. The same thing happened in 2016 with the Uri surgical strikes.

The difference between the back-channelling that used to take place earlier and 2019 and 2025 is that earlier it was quiet. The people who were trying to temper down the situation would not publicly claim credit for it. The difference now is that President Donald Trump has claimed credit upfront. In 2019, at a press conference in Hanoi, when his summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un failed, he announced that there was good news from India and that India and Pakistan were going to pull back. The same thing happened on Saturday. So, whether you like it or not, third-party mediation, notwithstanding the Simla Agreement, is a reality. You may not want to accept this reality, but this is a reality.

IE: What is the difference this time?

Manish Tewari: It is a widely held belief, erroneous or otherwise, that even in the ceasefire agreement of 2021 between India and Pakistan, the UAE took an active interest. Reports emerged back then, and I think even very senior officials in the UAE went on record at the time saying that they played a role in the entire ceasefire dynamic.

Therefore, what was the track between January 1, 1948, and 1972? It was the United Nations Security Council and its resolutions. Things changed after the Simla pact in 1972, and you injected bilateralism into the dispute resolution mechanism. But if you look at the trajectory, I think from 1972 to 1990, you held the spirit of bilateralism that was intrinsic to the Simla agreement.

After things deteriorated in Jammu & Kashmir from 1990 onwards, back-channelling or ostensible third-party mediation became a reality. Now, you may want to obfuscate it, you may not want to publicly admit it, for all the right reasons, because it goes against the grain of the Simla Agreement. That’s a choice that you have, but the reality, fortunately or unfortunately, is totally different.

Coming to US Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s statement, this formulation was there even in the 2021 ceasefire agreement that the two DGMOs had announced. It said the two DGMOs agreed to ‘address each other’s core issues and concerns which have the propensity to disturb peace and lead to violence’. So this formulation was there even in the joint statement of 2021. What is interesting about the statement Rubio put out is that there seems to be an ostensible hyphenation between ceasefire and talks on a broad range of issues at a neutral site. So this neutral site is the added dimension if you want to build on to 2021 agreement itself.

This is what the government needs to explain. What is the understanding or otherwise that has been or has not been arrived at between India, Pakistan, and their interlocutors that led to Rubio putting out this formulation?

IE: President Trump said he was going to “increase trade substantially with both these great nations”. He added, “Additionally, I will work with you both to see if, after a thousand years, a solution can be arrived at concerning Kashmir.”

Manish Tewari: First of all, somebody seriously needs to tell President Trump about the fact that Pakistan’s illegal occupation of Kashmir is not 1,000 years old. It is 78 years old. We first need to get the facts straight. But given that President Trump has put out this statement, the government needs to clarify to Parliament and the people what the basis is for these assertions. Is it American unilateralism that we are seeing at play here? Or, are there any explicit or implicit non-formal understandings that have been arrived at, which form the basis of these quixotic assertions?

IE: Over the years, India has been able to get the world to dehyphenate it with Pakistan. What will happen to that now?

Manish Tewari: It has been the consistent endeavour of every Indian government that there has to be a de-hyphenation between India and Pakistan. To be very fair, after the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, with the dismemberment of Pakistan, that hyphenation, which was there because of the legacy of Partition, started to blur.

That hyphenation came back in 1990 when Pakistan started using the N-word in the context of Jammu and Kashmir. Post economic liberalisation and the rapid economic advancement we made, we were able to push the de-hyphenation aggressively across different administrations. But the fact remains that whenever there is a crisis between India and Pakistan, given the nuclear dynamic, the hyphenation comes back. It is unfortunate realism that when two states that possess weapons of mass destruction reach a flash point, or start moving towards it, you have people talking to both sides.

Having said that, what is important is whether Pakistan has given any commitment to dismantle the terror infrastructure. The entire rationale for this coercive deterrence that we are trying to establish is that there should not be a repeat of Pakistan-sponsored terror activity.

So, ceasefire notwithstanding, what are the concrete assurances about dismantling that terror infrastructure? Presuming, even if India and Pakistan have decided to talk on a broad range of issues, which was also the formulation in the 2021 ceasefire joint statement, the condition precedent to that must be that Pakistan has to stop exporting terror to India and across the region.

IE: The government has been saying that talks and terror cannot go together.

Manish Tewari: See, that’s the fundamental bottom line. There is a position taken by the current government post-Uri in 2016 that terror and talks cannot go hand in hand. So, are there verifiable assurances given by Pakistan about dismantling the terror infrastructure responsible for this proxy war going back 45 years?

Secondly, what about all those people who are taking refuge in Pakistan, who are indicted in various terrorist crimes in India? In the 26/11 case, there is a concurrent trial in Pakistan that has gone nowhere since 2008.

IE: Did the ceasefire announcement surprise you? Some Congress leaders believe the government frittered away an advantage.

Manish Tewari: Absolutely not. Between India and Pakistan, based upon the doctrine of realism, once you are on an escalatory spiral, there are no institutional off-ramps. So, the question is that did you want to escalate it to a point where things would have then achieved a momentum of their own? I don’t think that is a desirable strategic objective. Having carried out the punitive strikes, de-escalation became a sine qua non.

Ultimately, there are limits to conventional deterrence against the depredations of semi-state actors. It is not only India, but every country in the world that is subjected to unrelenting terror that becomes an instrument of state policy for another nation or its neighbour to confront this dilemma. How do you draw that line in the sand?

India’s resolve that it would see another terrorist attack sponsored by Pakistan as an act of war is an attempt to draw that line, which is not the easiest thing to do when confronted with an irrational and erratic neighbour. In terms of pure deterrence theory, it is important to find the right equilibrium between escalation and de-escalation.

IE: Congress leaders, including yourself, remembered Indira Gandhi after the ceasefire was announced.

Manish Tewari: Mrs Indira Gandhi falls in a different league of political leaders. She redrew the political map of South Asia by creating Bangladesh. She integrated Sikkim into India without firing a shot. A year before that, she carried out India’s first nuclear test in the teeth of virulent and sustained opposition from the Western bloc. She had the conviction of courage to walk the talk.

However, the strategic reality since the mid-70s has changed very dramatically. So, decisions relating to strategic and military policy have to be made based on the given reality today.