Our India Agenda by tanvir a khan DAWN

may 24th, 2012 CE
at the end of the day, pakistan is clear about its goal: kashmir as entitlement.

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From: sanjeev nayyar

The Pakis are in a economic mess hence the need for making peace with India and improving trade relations. The author asks India to forget 26/11/ amongst others.

Cat out of the bag in the last few paras ‘A settlement of Jammu and Kashmir, however, remains indispensable to the quest for permanent peace.’. Some things never change.

http://dawn.com/2012/05/22/our-indian-agenda/

MY last column (May 8) in this paper talked about the vicious cycle of untoward events and entrenched negotiating postures blocking progress in the direction of genuine rapprochement between India and Pakistan.

I felt that by contextualising negotiating habits I would show history as their true and transient provenance; that, history need not be deterministic and that statesmen have often changed its course with visionary paradigm shifts.

Admittedly, opinions differ on both sides of the divide if the time for subcontinental reconciliation has come. Nevertheless, some positive trends are clearly discernible. Pakistan has a vociferous minority that clings to the post-1947 iron curtain with the same arguments as employed during the initial stages of nation-formation and state-building.

On the other hand, it is certain that Musharraf’s Kargil incursion was the last of its kind; the army has travelled far in grasping regional and global strategic realities and more importantly, the non-military dynamics of the social and economic sectors.

In India, unfortunately, the doctrine of a limited war under a nuclear overhang has not been finally abandoned. Even there, the sheer futility of huge military confrontations in 1986 (Operation Brasstacks), 1990 (Kashmir uprising) and 2001-2002 (terrorist attack on Indian parliament) is convincing decision-makers that the prevailing strategic stalemate cannot be easily overturned.
It is also true that some Indian hawks, in an exact replica of the Cold War, reduce it to a numbers game and wait for a tipping point when India would militarily prevail.

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Pakistan should energise the discussion on mutual strategic restraint. Given the Indian preoccupation with China, an across-the-board regime is impossible but considerable mutual assurance is achievable. India is now globally recognised as amongst the top military spenders. The more menacing the Indian posture towards Pakistan, the greater would be Pakistan’s counter-action to fortify its ‘minimum deterrence’; it has already waded into the domain of ‘tactical nuclear weapons’. There should be no let-up in efforts to make Indian leaders aware of the perils of the growing militarisation of Indian policy towards Pakistan just when the Pakistan Army was signalling support for a détente.

Notwithstanding inflexible negotiating habits, progress in many areas is possible as neither side now insists on any core issue: Kashmir from Pakistan, and Mumbai and overland transit to Afghanistan from India, being a pre-condition for it. A settlement of Jammu and Kashmir, however, remains indispensable to the quest for permanent peace. It may take time for ideas for a solution acceptable to India, Pakistan and the people of Kashmir to gain traction. Kashmir remains the worst example of India treating ambition as entitlement.

Nevertheless, the resumed dialogue should be nudged towards renunciation of violence by all concerned, progressive demilitarisation, retrenchment of laws incompatible with freedom and dignity, strengthening of Kashmiri state institutions and devolution of power to them from the centre, and freedom of trade — intra-Kashmir and with India and Pakistan. Progress in each and every sub-theme will make it easier to proceed to the grand finale some day.

The write is a former foreign secretary.

Warm Regards
sanjeev nayyar
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