Having spent the past three years assiduously — and till now successfully — building up a new relationship with the United States, India is far from happy at the re-emergence of close strategic ties between America and its rival, Pakistan. It fears that in order to keep Pakistan on board, the pressure will be on it to make concessions on Kashmir.
US Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to Delhi, following on that to Islamabad, will have done nothing to reassure the Indian government on that count. His statement that the Kashmir dispute is central to Indo-Pakistani ties and that there has to a solution based on mutual respect and a "desire to accommodate the aspirations of the Kashmiri people" is precisely the language that Delhi did not want to hear coming out of Washington.
India instinctively bristles when any foreign government merely mentions Kashmir. When former UK Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, accompanying Queen Elizabeth on a state visit to India three years ago, offered to mediate between Delhi and Islamabad on the issue, the Indian government reacted with fury, accusing him of interfering in internal affairs. But, irritated though it demonstrably was at Powell’s comments, it cannot treat the US’ chief foreign affairs official as it treated the UK’s — certainly not now, just when it hoped to seal a new strategic alliance by presenting itself to Washington as a fellow victim of terrorism, and pitching Pakistan into the role of terror monger for aiding and abetting Kashmiri militants.
That was the original expectation when, following of World Trade Center destruction, it rushed to be one of the first governments to condemn what had happened and make common cause with the US. There is no question that it was a condemnation grounded in genuine horror, but there was also a large helping of expediency attached. Nor was it coincidence that just as Powell arrived, peace on the Line of Control dividing Kashmir was shattered by an Indian offensive against Kashmiri militants, in the process attacking 11 Pakistani positions on the other side. Worried over Washington’s realignment with Pakistan, the aim was to impress upon the US Secretary of State that not only is India doing its bit to counter terrorism, but that Pakistan is a perpetrator of it.
Worldwide, there are winners and losers in the massive diplomatic realignment that has taken place since Sept. 11. Russia is an obvious winner, China another. In the Middle East, Israel is the obvious loser and the Palestinians on the verge of possibly being a winner. So too in South Asia. The US is not going to say or do anything on the Kashmir issue that could jeopardize its revived tactical alliance with Pakistan. Delhi may draw a grain or two of comfort from Powell’s declaration that Washington’s campaign is against "all terrorism" whether in New York and Washington on Sept. 11 or in Srinagar on Oct. 1, and by his signing a treaty on the exchange of information on terrorists.
But India’s plans for a strategic realignment have been thrown into confusion. There can be no doubt that of the two countries visited by Powell, Pakistan has come off much the better.
