Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his foreign minister Sushma Swaraj have engaged with 94 countries in first 10 months of Bharatiya Janata Party’s government. This rate of engagement with foreign leaders may be nothing much for the developed world, but it is definitely a trailblazer in South Asian context and shows how proactive the Modi government has been in foreign policy matters. One of the 94 countries that the Modi government has engaged with is Pakistan.
The world is well aware of the tempestuous relationship between the two South Asian neighbors who have fought four wars since their independence from the British in August 1947. Incidentally, the last one was the Kargil War of 1999 by when both India and Pakistan had become declared nuclear weapon states, though the two nations’ armed forces were not pitted directly against each other in this war.
Pakistan throws up the biggest diplomatic challenge for the Modi government. The next summit of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) is to take place in Pakistan next year, though no dates have been worked out as yet.
This is an ideal opportunity for both India and Pakistan to sink their differences. No SAARC summit can be a success unless both India and Pakistan are in unison for pushing the developmental agenda despite their acute differences bilaterally.
But this is easier said than done. Virtually every SAARC summit gets bogged down by India-Pakistan differences. This is the reason why SAARC has failed to take off even after nearly 30 years of its existence.
Being the host country for the next SAARC summit Pakistan would naturally want the event to be a big success. India too would be keen on putting the development agenda on an upward trajectory in keeping with several ambitious SAARC projects that Modi has unveiled in past 10 months.
Preparation for that will have to begin from now on. It is time for the two nuclear-armed adversaries to have a cooling off period and the two democratically elected prime ministers, Modi and Nawaz Sharif, need to build on convergences and minimize divergences.
In fact a few green shoots are noticeable on the India-Pakistan peace tree. On Pakistan Day on March 23, the Modi government sent its junior foreign minister Gen. V.K. Singh to attend the reception at Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi. This was despite the fact that the Modi government was well aware that Kashmiri separatist leaders would be attending the reception in large numbers. It was a positive reach-out signal to Pakistan from the Modi government considering the fact that Gen. Singh is the former chief of the Indian Army.
More recently, the BJP held its National Executive Committee meeting in southern Indian city of Bengaluru on April 3-4 where for the first time it passed a separate resolution on foreign policy. On Pakistan, the resolution said, “We have laid out a clear policy for building peaceful and friendly relations with Pakistan, predicated on an end to terrorism … All outstanding issues with Pakistan can be resolved through bilateral dialogue in an atmosphere free from terror and violence.”
The BJP resolution also made it clear that terror and talks cannot go together, a stand that all previous Indian governments too have consistently held. “There can be no compromise with terrorism. There can’t be any duplicity toward a problem that has become a regional crisis and is fast becoming an international nightmare,” the resolution said.
Besides, the BJP has started discussing internally the possibility of Modi undertaking a bilateral visit to Pakistan. This move is being explored within the closed doors at the party level and the consultation process may take months before it is formally brought before the government.
But for that to happen, a few prerequisites are essential from the Indian point of view. These relate to the terror issue and the situation on the International Border and the Line of Control.
But whether the knife falls down on the melon or the other way round, it is inevitably the melon that is cut into pieces. The melon in this context is the people of India and Pakistan.
Though the BJP government has hauled the previous Congress-led government over coal, called the 10 years of Manmohan Singh government as the “lost decade” and accused the Congress government of pursuing ham-handed diplomacy vis-à-vis Pakistan, it remains to be seen what brilliant out-of-the-box ideas the Modi government comes up with in improving relations with Pakistan. Next few weeks should bring out greater clarity in this context.
