PAKISTAN: After Gov’t Change in India, Concerns Rise on Dialogue

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Commentary - By M B Naqvi

KARACHI, Pakistan, May 17 2004 (IPS) - Reactions in Pakistan to neighbouring India’s change of government to a Congress party-dominated one from that led by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) vary from disappointment and anxiety, to a warm enough welcome.

Islamabad’s ruling elites believed that under outgoing Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s leadership, there was the likelihood of a faster progress in the U.S.-brokered India-Pakistan peace process.

Under Congress, they fear, the process may have to be reoriented and, at any rate, the speed of reaching various agreements in the eight negotiating committees-to-be is not likely to be faster.

There is no doubt that the new set of rulers will take stock of things before they embark on negotiations with an impatient government under President Gen Pervez Musharraf. Above all else, the new Indian leaders will review and re-evaluate their own position vis-a-vis the U.S. government before taking any major initiatives.

Doubtless few expect any discontinuity in India’s Strategic Partnership with the United States. But changes of nuance seem likely – the Congress leadership may not be as gung-ho in espousing all enthusiasm with Washington as the BJP was.

Before India turns to Pakistan, it will need to review and renew the terms of its strategic relationship with the United States in relation to the Middle East, Central Asia, China, Russia, North Korea and South-east Asia.

To be sure, the U.S. government will want to build on the existing level of military-to-military cooperation with India, including the joint patrolling of seas ranging from the Persian Gulf to Straits of Malacca. But the situation in Iraq and Israeli-Palestinian conflict may create differences.

These are important considerations for New Delhi, and the nature and level of Indo-U.S. cooperation might be the determining influence on how will India negotiate with Pakistan.

The new Indian government has to determine the nature of relations with Pakistan as well as formulate precise stances on the various disputes with it.

Some in the Pakistani government are genuinely concerned about what for them is the hegemonistic tendency of many Indians to take other South Asians for granted. But in the background of long-running rivalry with India, fuelled by Kashmir dispute, Indo-Pakistan relations are especially prickly.

The Kashmir dispute has spawned the oldest cold war, older than the East-West one that began only in 1946 and ended in 1991; this one is still going strong.

Pakistan under Musharraf’s rule is extra impatient for the start of serious negotiations on the subject. Islamabad was all keyed up in January when Vajpayee visited Islamabad and set off the peace process.

Islamabad somehow expected the BJP to win power easily and this was to set the stage for a historic resolution of a difficult dispute.

But Vajpayee badly miscalculated on the polls when he advanced them by five months.

Power slipped out of the BJP’s grasp after the Indian voter proved a master of his or her own ideas. Voters did not buy ‘Hindutva’ (pro-Hindu ideology) or the ‘India Shining’ slogan. If Musharraf had developed any special understanding with Vajpayee, well, it has dried up on the vine.

From the perspective of the Congress leadership, Kashmir is a distraction that normally requires the warding off of Pakistan’s importunities. Islamabad wants a radical change in Kashmir’s constitutional status, but no one in India is ready for that.

Any solution to the Kashmir dispute will require a change of heart and mind in both New Delhi and Islamabad.

Earlier on, Pakistan’s overall stand could be summed up as "nothing but Kashmir" – meaning no improvement in trade or cultural ties with India was acceptable until the Kashmir issue was resolved to its satisfaction.

This froze India-Pakistan relations and hobbled the regional grouping called the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation. Ties have not been normal between Pakistan and India since the 1965 war. Two whole generations have grown up that do not know each other.

A breakthrough of sorts took place earlier this year when India agreed to resume talks, including on Kashmir, with a truculent Pakistan, in accordance with a 1997 structured dialogue scheme.

For long, India had implied that the situation was "anything but Kashmir". In between 1997 and 2004, no dialogue could take place because of the vicissitudes of an armed resistance movement in Kashmir and the 11 nuclear test explosions in 1998.

Vajpayee made a brave effort in early 1999 when he rode a bus to Lahore and showed his commitment to improving ties with Pakistan. But before the ink was dry on the Lahore Declaration, the Pakistan Army started operations in Kargil, an undeclared war between the two rivals.

A peace of sorts was arranged by the United States in July that year. After a freeze of two years, India invited Musharraf to a failed summit in Agra but the freeze was deepened by an armed attack on Indian parliament in December 2001. India threatened war. A year-long eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation ensued.

The U.S. government did virtual firefighting in 2002 and in October, the two sides began to disengage. Vajpayee again offered a ‘hand of friendship’ in April 2003. The sequel was the Jan. 6, 2004 India-Pakistan summit. After that Indian elections ensued.

The question now is: What next?

There is an issue that brooks no delay: the menacing presence of two rival nuclear deterrents, sitting almost cheek by jowl.

Major nuclear powers are mighty worried that any mistake, miscalculation, accident, negligence, misreading of a radar screen or of opponent’s actions or movements can set off a nuclear holocaust in populous South Asia.

Led by the U.S. government, the world is urging a Nuclear Restraint Regime from both India and Pakistan. These are an elaborate set of confidence-building measures, designed to improve communication between the estranged military commanders.

Thanks to Pakistan’s extraordinary emphasis on – and the centrality of – Kashmir, it appears that the U.S. government had prepared the ground for these talks by persuading both sides to tackle the Kashmir issue head on and sort it out one way or another.

It was Vajpayee’s Delhi which was directly in the loop. This month’s change of government was in nobody’s reckoning. The question is: Would Sonia Gandhi’s Congress go down the path that Vajpayee and BJP has taken?

The Congress party carries a lot of luggage from the past.

On the one hand, its politics showed two faces of the communal question: secular inside India and a stern one vis-a-vis Pakistan. Congress is more fiercely independent in the anti-colonial tradition. It was also loath to befriending dictators, while Pakistanis have lived under the shadows of bayonets.

Right now, Congress spokesmen are busy reassuring Pakistan and the U.S. government that they will carry on from where Vajpayee left off. But what precisely these words mean will be known after a few weeks of the new government ‘s formation.