Holding your breath on an India-Pak encounter

THE visit of External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar to Pakistan to participate in the October 15-16 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is unlikely to have a thawing effect on the 10-year freeze in bilateral relations.

This much the minister has made clear, ruling out any bilateral agenda. “The visit will be for a multilateral event. I'm not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations. I'm going there to be a good member of the SCO,” he said.

Jaishankar's statement is almost identical to that of then foreign minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari in May 2023, before he arrived in Goa for the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers meeting: “My decision to attend this meeting illustrates Pakistan's strong commitment to the charter of the SCO…during my visit, which is focused exclusively on the SCO, I look forward to constructive discussions with my counterparts from friendly countries.”

Nonetheless, bilateral drama is written into the script of every India-Pakistan encounter, or even a non-encounter.

That was how it was in Goa, where Zardari and Jaishankar managed to have a showdown without exchanging a single bilateral word. It may be the same in Islamabad.

Jaishankar claimed the other day that he is a “civil and courteous person, and will behave accordingly.” That was possibly self-deprecatory humour.

He is no Diljit Dosanjh who won Pakistani hearts the other day by calling up Pakistani singer Hania Aamir on stage during his Europe tour. The galleries back home would be terribly put out if Jaishankar returns without his signature-style tough talk against Pakistan, this time on Pakistani soil.

After all, this is what India-Pakistan diplomacy has been reduced to, not just now, but over several years — a performance for domestic audiences defined by the need to demonstrate toughness toward the other, even in body language. So, Jaishankar's “namaste” to the Pakistan minister in Goa last year got approving media coverage, as “Jaishankar gives the cold shoulder to Zardari.”

India and Pakistan are now at a point where even if they want to sit across a table and talk to each other publicly, they cannot do so for fear of enraging domestic constituencies.

This is a logjam that can be broken only with statesmanship and political will. A back-channel process between the two NSAs in 2016-2017, and another the UAE claimed it had mediated in 2020-21 shows a willingness to speak.

When the process makes progress, as in February 2021 when the two armies reaffirmed their commitment to the two-decade-old ceasefire on the Line of Control, things freeze up again, because then the process must be made public.

The lessons of the past are not helpful. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's visit in 2004 came after several years of back-channel contacts and a massive shift in relations between the US and Pakistan after 9/11.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh continued the engagement that began then, but India-Pakistan ties have never recovered from the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi's outreach lasted only a week, from his Christmas Day stopover in Lahore on his way back to Delhi, to the Jaish e-Mohammed (JeM) attack on Pathankot.

Today, the dynamic has changed from what it was even 10 years ago. Jaishankar will arrive in Islamabad after the successful holding of an election in the post-August 5, 2019 truncated Jammu & Kashmir. In Kashmir, the victory of the National Conference (NC) is viewed as a verdict against Delhi and the changes the Modi government wrought on August 5, 2019. But the NC knows, and has said as much, that in running the government, a confrontation with the Centre is not the way forward.

From Delhi's point of view, Pakistan's internal turmoil is a further disincentive for engagement. Who to talk to in Pakistan — the civilian government or the army — was a question even in normal times. But now, General Asim Munir, the embattled army chief, is in the midst of a self-inflicted do-or-die battle with not just the untameable and ever-growing popularity of the jailed Imran Khan, but also sections within his own force.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and his brother, Prime Minister Emeritus Nawaz Sharif, once thought of as the most likely of the Pakistani political class to make a paradigm shift in relations with India, are now beholden to Munir for their survival.

The Beijing-Islamabad relationship, the increasingly communal lens in India on ties with Pakistan plus Delhi's demand for a review of the Indus Waters Treaty further complicate the relationship.

For his part, Munir has not spoken his mind on India. What Delhi can see and feel is that the Pakistan army's preoccupations, including with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and its Afghan Taliban patrons, the resurgence in Baloch militancy — with Chinese nationals in their crosshairs — have not led to the quietening of groups like the JeM and Lashkar-e-Toiba. A shadowy group, the so-called 'People's Force Against Fascism', has owned the regular attacks in Jammu since 2021, but Indian security agencies link it to the LeT and JeM.

Delhi believes it can handle the costs of cross-border terrorism and leave ties in deep freeze. But flip the script for a moment. Imagine that Jaishankar is taking with him the message, like Vajpayee in 2004, that Modi has accepted Pakistan's invitation to attend the SAARC summit it has been waiting to host since 2016.

India's unquiet quitting of SAARC due to tensions with Pakistan is one reason why it faces so much resentment from smaller countries in the neighbourhood. When India laments the growing influence of China in the region, it needs to recognise its own role in letting the region go.

A revival of SAARC would put the energy back into India's neighbourhood policy and earn it the goodwill of neighbours. It would certainly put some pressure on Pakistan to conduct itself responsibly.

The revival of SAARC may or may not resolve the differences between India and Pakistan, but it will provide bilateral engagement opportunities, normalise interactions in multilateral fora and make them less of a circus than they are now.

Bonus: An India engaged with Pakistan may help Prime Minister Modi to be taken more seriously by the world in his efforts to stop the war between Ukraine and Russia — and give that peace initiative greater heft.