If India has decided to side-step the Kashmir issue in favour of what it considers other pressing matters, such as bilateral trade, and Pakistan wants Kashmir to be elevated in the talks, New Delhi’s foreign policy is going to be tested
Relations between India and Pakistan have taken a dramatic turn from hope to dismay. Unfortunately, this bilateral relationship, whether one likes it or not, has enormous potential to impact negatively on Mr Narendra Modi’s unfolding neighbourhood, China and Afghanistan polices.
After the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which was graciously attended by Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, it was felt that both nations would rise to a new dawn. Three events which have belied this expectation are: Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit’s meeting with Kashmiri separatist leaders in Delhi; increased firing on the line of Control, especially on the 185km Jammu border called the ‘working boundary’ in Pakistan; and unparalleled domestic turmoil in Pakistan which has imbalanced civil-military relations there with the Army chief, General Raheel Sharif, ensconced firmly in the driving seat.
The big takeaway from Mr Basit’s meeting with Kashmiri separatist leaders which led to India cancelling the Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan scheduled for August 25 was that Prime Minister Narendra Modi wants to do a line of Actual Control (with China) on the loC (with Pakistan); a freezing of border resolution. Just as India has accepted that border dispute with China can wait over all betterment of bilateral relations, Mr Modi wants the Kashmir dispute to hold till other less-emotionally charged bilateral disputes are resolved. Therefore, by sticking to the letter of the July 1972 Simla agreement, he has abandoned the spirit of the agreement and the mechanism for the Kashmir resolution.
A good insight on the Simla agreement has been provided by PN Dhar, who headed Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Secretariat and was one of her closest advisers in the 70s, in his book: Indira Gandhi, the Emergency and Indian Democracy. According to Dhar: “The transformation of the ceasefire line into the line of Control was the core of the Indian solution to the Kashmir problem. The de facto line of Control was meant to be graduated to the level of de jure border.” This, of course, was based on Pakistani President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s verbal assurance to the Indian Prime Minister. Dhar writes that, “Bhutto agreed not only to change the ceasefire line into a line of Control, for which he had earlier proposed the term ‘line of peace’, he also agreed that the line would be gradually endowed with the characteristics of an international border.”
As preparation for the next summit meeting between India and Pakistan where verbal understanding reached at Simla was to be formally enunciated, Gandhi felt that ‘the aspirations of valley Muslims need to be satisfied’. The Indira-Abdullah accord was the answer to this issue, where the Kashmiris, represented by Sheikh Abdullah, became stakeholder to the bilateral Kashmir resolution between India and Pakistan.
Since that time, all Governments in India have followed the twin track for a possible Kashmir resolution: Talks with Pakistan and talks within. At the height of the insurgency in the valley, when Hurriyat, a conglomeration of separatist leaders, was formed in May 1993, it willy-nilly came to be regarded by Delhi as a part of internal stakeholders, in addition to the political representatives in Kashmir. Both Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s and Manmohan Singh’s Governments met and interacted, in varying degrees, with moderate Hurriyat leadership. Pakistan has done the same to understand the mood in the valley before any meaningful talks.
By taking exceptional umbrage at Mr Basit’s meeting with the Hurriyat, the Modi Government has signalled a suspension of the Kashmir resolution. India appears to be favouring the unanimous resolution passed in Parliament on February 22, 1994, that the entire State of Jammu & Kashmir is an integral part of India and Pakistan should vacate territory under its occupation. To begin with, the resolution was passed under extraordinary circumstances. Pakistan had, for the first time in 1993, taken the issue of human rights violations in Kashmir by Indian security forces to the United Nations General Assembly. To pre-empt the damage wrought by it, India, under Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao had decided to play the ultra-nationalist card, something that few politicians, cutting across Governments, have believed in. Without exception, all political leaders have understood that converting the loC into an international border as envisaged in the Simla Agreement provided the only viable option.
Take the case of the Vajpayee Government. Strobe Talbott, the then US Deputy Secretary of State in the Clinton Administration, who held 13 rounds of talks with Mr Jaswant Singh after India’s 1988 nuclear tests, writes in his book, Engaging India, “Jaswant Singh mentioned that his Government might consider converting the line of Control, which was based on the 1949 ceasefire line between Pakistan and Indian portions of the territory, into an international border — a significant departure from the long-established BJP position that India should persist in seeking the integration of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.”
Is Mr Modi attempting to go back to the original BJP position, by rough-shodding the spirit of the Simla AgreementIJ If this is correct, it will be difficult times for India-Pakistan relations. The Pakistani Army as the custodian of Pakistan’s India policy will never accept it.
And this shows in the heightened activity on select portions of the loC. The increased firing on the Jammu border, where paramilitaries of both sides have been engaged heavily, is indicative of Pakistan’s calibrated approach. By suggesting a meeting between the two Director General Military Operations, Pakistan (its Army) has yet again signalled the need for operating this communication channel beyond weekly telephonic conversations. The last time the two DGMOs met under the Manmohan Singh Government was a non-event because of New Delhi’s aversion to this bilateral channel. While the two DGMOs interacted freely and positively on a host of tactical issues, India’s External Affairs Ministry wanted the Indian DGMO to avoid meeting hordes of media eager to know the outcome. Only after the DGMO argued that this would be interpreted as a break-down of military to military talks, he was allowed to meet the Press briefly.
The importance of this channel, if needed to be emphasised, is evident from the domestic challenge to the Nawaz Sharif Government. While opinion is divided over the probable backing of the Pakistani Army to the twin onslaught of Mr Imran Khan and Mr Tahir ul-Qadri to Mr Sharif’s civilian Government, all agree (many grudgingly), that the powerful Army alone can help resolve the unprecedented imbroglio. Contours of a new dispensation, where the Army will remain unquestioned on external and security relations by Islamabad, are showing in Pakistan. General Headquarters, Rawalpindi, seems to be moving beyond the formal role in the advisory National Security Council in Pakistan; the Army chief could soon replace the popularly-elected Prime Minister as the chairman of the NSC.
This, for Mr Sharif, would be an ironic event. The last time when he forced his Army chief, General Jehangir Karamat, to resign merely because he sought a formal Army role in the NSC, was followed by his sacking by General Pervez Musharraf. This time, he may well be deposed as chairman of the NSC, which may graduate from an advisory to an executive role.
Once the three events narrated above are read in conjunction, the overall message becomes rather clear: If India indeed has decided to side-step the Kashmir resolution, which Pakistan wants to be elevated in the bilateral talks, it will be testing times for India’s foreign policy.
(The writer is a former Indian Army officer and now Editor, FORCE, a newsmagazine on national security)