External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s touchdown in Islamabad marks a decisive moment in the Narendra Modi government’s Pakistan policy. While she is in Islamabad ostensibly for a conference on Pakistan, it is clear from the flurry of meetings that bilateral engagement is back on track. After 18 months of starts and stops, New Delhi has taken a considered position to re-engage with its most difficult relationship in the neighbourhood, a decision that must be lauded. It is also clear that some lessons have been learnt from the past.
First, the meetings have been held without hype or announcement, with expectations being kept low. Second, after the Paris meetings between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, as well as the Bangkok meeting between the National Security Advisors and Foreign Secretaries of both countries, the joint messaging in Islamabad and Delhi has been kept unified and simple. Finally, both sides have managed well the opposition within their own flanks over the reasons for the re-engagement; very few discordant voices have been heard from the military establishment in Rawalpindi or the BJP’s headquarters and the party’s Sangh Parivar allies, the kind that marked previous engagements.
It is to be hoped that all talks from this point onwards will follow the same path, building from one meeting to the next, until they produce concrete results. A start would be the announcement of a structured set of meetings to be held on a regular basis between officials at different levels that will protect the process from disruptions. Next, it is important that the confidence-building measures already agreed to, on trade and visa liberalisation, are implemented at the earliest. Finally, the way forward on Jammu and Kashmir and terrorism, the two lasting issues between India and Pakistan, must be charted out. This is by no means the first government to attempt to do all of this. Others, including some with more experience, tried and failed.
The Modi government would therefore be well-advised to strike a different path and be more forthcoming, in public, on just why they are meeting and what they hope to achieve. Despite his famous speech on “breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul”, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh didn’t articulate just where his talks with the Pakistan government on Kashmir had led, until it was too late to shape public opinion about them.
Mr. Modi must explain his vision for peace with Pakistan and what has spurred this new round of negotiations, especially since none of the conditions for talks that he and his Cabinet Ministers had spoken of over the past few months has been met. In Pakistan, the way forward should be even clearer: end support to all terror groups, especially those who seek violence against India. While it is hardly possible to put behind the decades of bad blood between the two countries any time soon, it is possible to pause, and to envisage a new chapter in relations.
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