That it took three days for Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to accept the Government of India’s invitation to attend the oath-taking ceremony of India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Council of Ministers on Monday, May 26, is less a comment on the state of relations between the two countries and more a reflection of the state of democracy, if that word can at all be used in this context, in what Choudhry Rahmat Ali believed would be the ‘land of the Pure’. Ironically, resistance to the Pakistani Prime Minister attending the ceremony in the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhavan, which senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley has appropriately described as a “celebration of democracy”, along with thousands of others, including leaders from six other SAARC countries, came as much from usual suspects like Jamaat-ud Dawa’s chief terrorist Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, the mastermind behind the 26/11 carnage in Mumbai, as from the Pakistani Army chief General Raheel Sharif, the man hand-picked for the job by none else than Nawaz Sharif. left to himself, his instinctive response would have been to say ‘yes’ immediately. But Pakistan’s Prime Ministers are rarely left to themselves; Nawaz Sharif knows better than to offend Rawalpindi’s men in khaki. The last time he tried to exercise the supremacy of an elected Prime Minister over a nominated Army General (as it should be in any half decent democracy) he found himself locked up at Attock Fort, facing charges of treason punishable with death.
It is, therefore, perfectly understandable that he was abundantly cautious this time, despatching his brother Shahbaz Sharif, Chief Minister of Punjab Province, to secure Gen Raheel Sharif’s approval and ensuring that other men in khaki, especially those in charge of the ISI, do not do unto him what General Pervez Musharraf had done in 1999 for daring to strike out on his own. The promises made for permission to attend the oath-taking ceremony and meet Prime Minister Modi the following morning are not known, just as we do not know the specifics of how he would have mollified Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and assorted jihadis who appear to wield greater clout than the Prime Minister of Pakistan. It could be argued that it’s none of our business to poke our nose into Pakistan’s internal affairs – frankly, it’s entirely Nawaz Sharif’s problem how he copes with naysayers at home. But given the fact that total disengagement is not any option, it is always useful for India to keep abreast with the changing contours of the power game in Pakistan – the Army and Allah are constants; America is the variable third component that makes up the triad that presides over the destiny of our benighted western neighbour.
It could also be argued, and not without reason, that too much importance was attached to exaggerated speculation over whether or not Nawaz Sharif would show up for the oath-taking ceremony till word came through on Saturday that he would be present for the event. The media’s obsessive compulsive disorder of focussing all attention on Pakistan and, by extension, on India-Pakistan relations, is largely to blame for this stupid guessing game. If attendance by foreign Heads of Government invited for the occasion were to be seen as the yardstick to measure the success of a spanking new Prime Minister’s first evening in office, then the presence of the Prime Ministers of Nepal, Mauritius and Bhutan, the Presidents of Afghanistan, Sri lanka and Maldives, and the Speaker of Bangladesh (representing Prime Minister Hasina Wajed who is travelling at the moment), who promptly accepted the invitation, would have been sufficient. Pakistan is one of the eight member-countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation; it is not the most important member, notwithstanding the fact that it is the most cussed of the lot, playing spoilsport and spiking initiatives with no other purpose than to spite India. To obsess about Pakistan, as the media has been doing, is to not only elevate that country to a level way above its station in the region and the world but also belittle and diminish the stature of the other member-countries.
While Narendra Modi has been silent, and rightly so (he does not owe an explanation as yet for his decisions) as to why he chose to include the Heads of Government of SAARC in the list of those invited for Monday’s ceremony, we could make some intelligent guesses. The most obvious would be to suggest that he wants to be seen hitting the ground running, making a grand gesture on the foreign policy front where the ousted Congress-led UPA regime’s failure has been most spectacular. The decade of decay under Manmohan Singh’s tutelage will be remembered for several wounds inflicted on India’s polity, society and economy. Among them is the manner in which he frittered away the advantages bequeathed to him by Atal Bihari Vajpayee on India’s engagement with the world, especially its neighbours. In this past decade we have seen our relations with Nepal and Sri lanka atrophy, our influence over Maldives evaporate and the future of our presence in Afghanistan becoming increasingly uncertain. We just about managed to keep relations with Bangladesh on an even keel although we failed to deliver on agreements and promises that were arguably made without adequate contemplation on their domestic consequences.
What Narendra Modi has done is to signal a tectonic shift in the manner in which South Block has conducted its affairs in the past decade. He has also sent out several messages to several people at home and abroad. The message to bureaucrats in the foreign office is stark: It won’t be business as usual Monday onward; thinking out of the box would be the new rule of the game of engaging with the neighbourhood and beyond. A scrutiny of his early days in office would tell us that Manmohan Singh too wanted to think out of the box. But that thinking turned out to be like his reviving the ‘animal spirit’ of the national economy: A lot of hot air and no substance. Narendra Modi has shown that a Prime Minister can think out of the box without waiting for others to do the thinking. Second, there’s a subtle though eminently discernible message for meddlesome foreign Governments that believe it’s their bounden duty to goad India into engaging with this neighbours and set the terms of that engagement. Narendra Modi has let them know that as Prime Minister he will be setting those terms and would Nosey Parkers please lay-offIJ Third, naysayers at home who have successfully held the Government of India hostage to domestic political compulsions in the framing of its foreign policy have been made aware that the new Prime Minister is no pushover, that he will do precisely what is in India’s interest and not in the interest of narrow parochial politics.
These are still early days, if not hours, of the ‘Modi Sarkar’ elected to office in the world’s largest democracy through a free and fair election. But if the first initiative of Narendra Modi is any indication, then we are indeed in for good times.
(The writer is a Delhi-based senior journalist)