Arab News
RAJEEV SHARMA
It is often said in context of India-Pakistan bilateral relations that most stunning and boldest peace initiatives by India have been taken only when the rightist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is in power, as it is now.
Consider the example of the BJP stalwart and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee who, just a year after India’s nuclear tests and Pakistan’s immediate response in more than equal measure, led a bus expedition to Lahore on a peace mission.
Ten years after the Vajpayee-led BJP was trounced in Indian general elections and the Congress party suddenly came out of the wilderness to form government in 2004, the wheel has come full circle in context of India-Pakistan ties as Narendra Modi led the BJP to a never-before electoral victory.
Sure enough, Modi, the new BJP patriarch and the sole decision-maker of the party unlike all his predecessors who governed the BJP collectively, set India on course of yet another proactive engagement with Pakistan and embarked on a peace mission in ways never tried by any Indian politician before.
First, Modi stumped Indians and Pakistanis alike, and sure enough the world too, by his out-of-the-box thinking and outreach to Pakistan when he invited India’s neighbors, including Pakistan, for his swearing in on May 26, 2014. After a week of suspense, Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif accepted Modi’s invite and attended his swearing-in ceremony.
Sharif’s India visit nearly two years ago generated a lot of bonhomie as the two sides reached out to each other with a shawl-and-saree diplomacy, using the gifts of these commodities as potent diplomatic symbolism.
On Dec. 25, 2015, Modi surprised everyone by diverting his special plane from Kabul to Lahore on an unscheduled visit to Pakistan — something that had never happened before in the history of bilateral relations of the two nuclear-armed adversaries.
But a week later Pathankot happened — an audacious terror attack on the Indian airbase, which lasted four days. Everybody presumed this was the end of Modi’s peace initiative with Pakistan.
But Modi stumped all once again and sought to convert this challenge into an opportunity. He came up with an out-of-the-box diplomatic initiative yet again and allowed a Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to visit India and also allowed the JIT to visit the Pathankot military base. The JIT included an official from the Pakistani intelligence agency, the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI).
This decision of Modi triggered a political storm in India. The opposition, particularly the Congress party, hauled the Modi government over coals for allowing this major concession to Pakistan. The social media too lampooned the Modi government for this act of generosity and remarked that it was not unlike George Bush inviting Osama bin Laden to come to the United States and investigate the bombing of the Twin Towers in New York!
Die-hard BJP supporters and Modi fans gave this a patriotic spin and said that by inviting the JIT to investigate the Pathankot terror attack, Modi had actually smartly disarmed and silenced the critics of his Pakistan policy. They argued that with this gesture Modi had acquired a statesman-like image before the international community and put an added pressure on Pakistan to reciprocate.
While the Pathankot issue was being hotly debated in India, Pakistani envoy in India Abdul Basit came up with an unusually aggressive remark last week, unilaterally characterizing the India-Pakistan peace process as “suspended.”
Interestingly, the Pakistani foreign office distanced itself from Basit’s hawkish remark hours later and said the process of arranging foreign secretary-level talks between the two sides was very much on.
Phew! This is as crazy as it can get in the India-Pakistan well-known theater of the absurd.
Days later Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif telephoned Modi, ostensibly to express grief over the temple tragedy in Kerala in which over 110 people were killed when fireworks went awry. But Sharif’s outreach to Modi constituted an important diplomatic symbolism and conveyed Pakistan’s desire to normalize relations with India.
India-Pakistan relations are at a delicate stage. The US-led international community has stepped up pressure on the two sides to resume talks. If the peace talks were to derail now, there is little chance that the process would be back on rails in near future.
Time is at a premium. Much would depend on what the official version of the JIT’s report says, though the Pakistani media has been full of sources-based reports saying that the JIT hasn’t found an iota of evidence proving Pakistani hand in the Pathankot terror attack.
Besides, India expects a reciprocal visit to Pakistan by an Indian JIT.
Clearly, the two sides are on the precipice of a make-or-break moment. It’s time for the two countries’ leadership to show restraint and accommodate each other. But it is easier said than done.