From Shimla to Goa, Pakistan’s bilateralism with India has come a long way. It has nosedived and hit rock bottom in essence. With bad blood and mistrust ruling the roost, it is difficult to imagine any statesmanship role from either of the ruling dispensations. As Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari air-dashed to the southwestern coast of India to attend a multilateral conference, the aura of his grandfather, President Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto’s landmark deal with Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi in 1972 at the picturesque hilltop of Shimla, was making rounds at the back of mind. But this time around, there was neither any warmth nor any fair play in sight. New Delhi had an icy shoulder to the top diplomat in a decade to visit from Islamabad, and callously snubbed him in utter disregard to established norms of hospitality.
This was so because the prisms with which both the states view each other are eloquently from different angles. India is obsessed with bringing up the terrorism bogey and, likewise, Pakistan seems to be fascinated with nothing but the Kashmir dispute. This puts the cart before the horse, and makes the art of striking a deal of convenience next to impossible even over issues of common denominators.
That is the reason no headway has ever been made in any of the composite dialogues between them, and the rational of looking at their ties on a case to case basis by addressing irritants on Siachen, Indus Basin, Wullar Barrage, trade and tourism are non-issues to this day. Last but not least, the perceptional pivot of opting for geo-economics from geopolitics in an earnest endeavour to strike a working relationship between the two states to this day has been a non-starter.
Notwithstanding criticism on Bilawal’s debut official visit to India, it was a right decision. Pakistan took the decisive move by opting to attend the SCO Foreign Ministers’ moot in India, and the fact that it did not buckle behind exigency and politics of hate, is astute leadership.
Bilawal, moreover, despite his limited domain to make strides in India, as the buck of decision-making rests somewhere else and not with the Foreign Office, made a decent and graceful presentation of issues at hand in bilateralism in his Press talks, and left no stone unturned in conveying the indispensable message that Pakistan is eager for a meaningful relationship with India.
To quote him, he was apt as he questioned the writ and veracity of entering into a new agreement with New Delhi, if India is obsessed with striking down international conventions at its jaundiced political whims and wishes.
That was an obvious reference to the BJP-led government’s unilateral and illegal decision of abrogating Article 295 and 35A on August 5, 2019, that previously granted special status to the occupied Jammu & Kashmir under the Indian Constitution.
Pakistan’s demand to rescind the August 5th decision by India is now its stated policy in bilateralism, similar to its resolve that the dispute of Kashmir must be resolved under the UN Resolutions by granting the right of plebiscite to the people of occupied Jammu & Kashmir. The ousted government of Prime Minister Imran Khan made it a cornerstone of foreign policy, and refused to treat any gesture of commonality with India until the status of IIOJK stands reversed. A close glance at happenings reveals that Pakistan has paid a price for it by sticking to its principled stand.
The overtures of opening up with India were missed as landlocked Afghanistan longed for access to India, in the wake of the exit of US forces from the war-shattered southwest Asian country.
Likewise, former Army Chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa’s doctrine of geo-economics, as stated categorically at the Islamabad Security Dialogue in 2021, wherein he became the first Army Chief to call for promoting bilateralism by keeping aside the Kashmir dispute for another day, became a footnote of history, as there was no meaningful headway.
The onus of rigidity and arrogance squarely lies at India’s doorstep, which believes in a policy of ignoring Pakistan at the cost of undermining regional peace and prosperity. The one-liner outcome is an irrational approach of furthering brinkmanship at the altar of commerce and communication cooperation, in an era when China’s Belt and Road Initiative is eager to further regional amalgamation in a win-win situation.
Let’s take a look at the tangibles of Pakistan and India, as they sharpen their knives over Kashmir. India is one of the fastest-growing economies and is ranked 5th globally. In a span of a decade, it rose itself from 10th position, and its foreign exchange reserves are simmering at around $600 billion. In the next 20 years, India will be a developed state, just fourth in line after the United States, Japan and China in the human development index too. Whereas, Pakistan, which was an Asian Tiger in the 1960s andmade many of the developing states learn how to compute their budgets and fly airlines, is in an existential crisis. It is at the verge of default, and has been a victim of chauvinism and parochialism at the hands of elite capture. With national institutions dwindling to stay afloat, its 225 million populace is groped in a crisis of confidence.
The million-dollar question is: is this how we are going to compete with India at the international fora, and plead a case for Kashmir?
Absolutely not!
It is no surprise, thus, if Pakistan is treated in a letdown manner. It is economic prowess, coupled with human potential that makes a country invincible on the global desk. This is where we lack, and have bruised our national prestige.
It is a fact that the world around us has changed dramatically and drastically. So is the case with India. Delhi is least interested in talking to Pakistan and, apparently, has stopped treating it as a country with which it may have to fight a war any day. Lopsided socio-economic turmoil in Pakistan, coupled with local and foreign indoctrinated conspiracies, we stand weakened to the core.
This is why for the last 15 years, India no longer publicly talks about Kashmir, and believes that it has solved the issue for itself. With Shimla making it a perpetual bilateral affair, Pakistan’s gradual losing of ground is current history.
As Dr. Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, India’s External Affairs Minister, refused to have a piece to camera with a handshake, with his counterpart from Pakistan, he was simply exhibiting India’s paradigm of arrogance It was brinkmanship, indeed, devoid of diplomatic pleasantries. Otherwise, the seasoned diplomat who had served under Natwar Singh cabinet too, is a person of high accolade and decency.
In order to understand the modus operandi of thought process in the Indian Establishment, we need to glimpse through some of the policy perceptions with reference to Pakistan. For the last two decades, India nurses a policy of “teach Pakistan a lesson.” This is at the root-cause of all ills in bilateralism.
The streams of hatred probably were generated from the 1999 Kargil conflict, and the hijacking of Indian Airlines IC 814 to Kandahar Airport on December 31, 1999. Last but not least was the death blow that came in the form of an attack on the Indian Parliament, and the November 2008 carnage in Mumbai.
Pakistan in all these episodes was on the losing streak, as it lost the thrust of an upper hand in Kargil over the table in Washington D.C., as the then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif went pleading for a mercy; and subsequently Islamabad was not at all in a position to make its position clear before the international community on attacks inside India by non-state actors that allegedly originated from Pakistan. The rest is history.
New Delhi, meanwhile, had flexed its diplomatic muscles and opted for a strategic honeymoon with the United States.
It entered into an anti-terror strategic dialogue with the United States in January 2000, immediately after the Kandahar hijacking, and later became a member of QUAD – an extra-territorial military-cum-navigational alliance.
That is not the end of the story: India formally orchestrated overt and covert plans to hit back at Pakistan. The proxies widespread in Pakistan have a linkage with Indian and Afghan intelligence agencies, and there is no surprise in it.
Balochistan and other peripheries of the country, including Karachi, were and are a hotbed of sleeping cells, and the terror fissures are one way or the other fanned by external hands. India has left no stone unturned in exploiting the fault-lines in the ethnic-lingual cum sub nationalist horizons.
Thus, as Pakistan bleeds from within and parochial sentiments rise from all nooks and corners of the country, coupled with a degenerated system of governance, there isn’t much for India to think in terms of attacking or invading it from across the international borders. Our house is literally on fire, and we are playing fiddle. In such a scenario, what diplomatic stride can one expect with India or any other state of the world?
To quote Dr Amarjit Singh, a regular contributor to Indian Defense Review, he wrote in December 2014 that “…a proxy war by Pakistan in two Indian provinces merely affects less than 10% of all Indian provinces, (whereas) a proxy war by India in two Pakistani provinces can affect 40% of Pakistan…”
That is exactly what is going on, and it is an outcome of an inherent policy of inter-state meddling alive and kicking in the establishments of states on both sides of the great divide, and with people becoming its fodder!
No amount of goodwill gestures, or grand trans-regional economic incentives, can work until and unless the historic mistrust is done away with. Former India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval’s “defensive offence” approach is very much in vogue to this day. India has successfully exploited Pakistan’s vulnerabilities: apart from creating fissures in internal security, it has neutralized rather marginalized Pakistan by defeating its policies in Afghanistan. The Taliban 2.0 looking the other way round despite so much of Islamabad’s generosity is a case in point.
Notwithstanding what shade of political dispensation is at the helm of affairs in India, it is ironic that Pakistan is a constant issue in their elections. Whereas, India has never been a policy manifesto to win elections by any of the Pakistani political parties. Rather, after coming into power and to prolong their stay, and in an attempt to ward off internal exigencies owing to mis-governance and corruption, the India card is played from the pulpit with impunity. This is where our internal deterioration as a nation rests along with a perfect policy fiasco.
A cordial and genuine interstate relationship with India is indispensable. Kashmir is a dispute and will remain so for the distant future. It has never been addressed in seven decades of animosity and playing to the gallery. Rather, a section of elite that reigns supreme in the corridors of powers had been a beneficiary, and not Pakistanis or Kashmiris. This paradigm must be undone. The only way out is to lower the rhetoric of nuisance, and start talking silently as two estranged neighbours. The ice will surely melt with the passage of time, as there is a lot of energy in rubbing the shoulders. That is simple human psychology!
