As relations between India and Pakistan improve, the diplomatic and political challenges for India will get tougher rather than easier. In many ways, the strategic conduct of Pakistan over the last few years, for all the horrendous human costs, was a diplomatic godsend for India. It certainly diluted whatever little pro-Pakistan sentiment existed within the Valley and shrunk the space for political movements within Kashmir.But the fact that India’s credibility in Kashmir had come to depend so much on Pakistan’s decreasing credibility as a State suggests that India now has its political work cut out for it. Structurally speaking, India has seldom faced up to the difficult question: What are we going to offer Pakistan?To be fair, if India has had difficulty thinking of what it would offer, Pakistan has had difficulty articulating what it would be satisfied with, short of wresting Kashmir. It is in this context that the two ideas being floated: a settlement on Siachen and a possible eastward movement of the Line of Control acquire their importance. Is this the sort of thing that would allow Pakistan to walk away from negotiations with a face-saving formula, while not compromising any of our important interests? Or is it merely a tactical offer, a prelude to escalating demands? No one knows for sure, but this seems like the place to start. The political challenge for India will be to build a domestic political consensus on the extent of concessions we can live with. Given the recent memories of Kargil, this is not going to be easy. But we cannot avoid asking what a credible offer to Pakistan would look like.How much political latitude will Manmohan Singh be given, within his own party and outside, for credible concessions to Pakistan? On relations with Pakistan, our politicians are averse to the slightest risk. The difficulty is this. While many politicians concede that it is desirable to open up trade routes and bus services as quickly as possible, the threat of terrorism has not abated entirely. No one wants to be held responsible for an attack that might come. And if that attack comes in the course of giving concessions, all hell will break loose. Imagine ceding territory, even barren ice, at the same time as violent incidents are taking place.The only way around this problem is a political consensus on two things. First, recognition that there might be a threshold of insurgent activity that we will have to tolerate and stay the course for peace. Otherwise, we will never be able to break the vicious circle we are in, and South Asia will forever remain hostage to small mercenaries. Second, there will have to be an across-the-board political consensus on the need to create a credible offer for Pakistan, whether on Siachen or moving the LoC eastward. The difference between a politician and statesman is that politicians manage within the parameters of a status quo; statesmen extend the horizons of the possible. Manmohan Singh will have to be a statesman by taking risks, Vajpayee will have to act like one by ensuring that his party does not exploit those risks.The second political challenge is, of course, inside Kashmir itself. While there is something of a fragile peace in the Valley, the long-term challenges of politically securing Kashmir remain daunting. If we can talk to Pakistan, there is no reason why we should exclude any factions of the Hurriyat from talks. But talks with political factions in Kashmir have the same difficulty that talks with Pakistan do: The Indian Government is never sure what it can offer, and the political factions are never sure what they want. India needs to come up with a strategy to ensure that Kashmir’s elites acquire a long-term stake in relations with India. And it will need some gestures to show that it is willing to think like a State that has enormous confidence in its own democratic traditions, rather than a State whose horizons have been narrowed by a siege mentality. It is possible that reducing troop levels in Kashmir might be such a gesture. But if Pakistani support for insurgency drops, the task of repairing the fabric of political and social relations in Kashmir will become more of a political challenge. We will no longer be able to hide behind the facade of combating terrorism.The current conjunction is unique: a ruler in Pakistan whose credibility at the moment depends on acting like a statesman, a civil society in Pakistan that has seen the costs terrorism has inflicted on Pakistan, a Prime Minister in India whose own instincts are towards peace, and Vajpayee, who might want to salvage his reputation by doing something good. Kashmir internally has something of a political process in place, and India is thinking energetically towards creating a new regional architecture within which all kinds of sovereignty bargains and arrangements might become possible.But all this can vanish rather swiftly: Musharraf’s incentives may change if he comes out empty-handed from this exchange, an improving economy in Pakistan may simply make the pressure for settlement less urgent; the political process in Kashmir may grind to a halt; the Congress may become more risk-averse, and on the issue of Pakistan, Vajpayee’s outlook was all that stood between the BJP and insanity. No State likes to hear that it ought to give concessions, but politically, the ball is now in India’s court.The writer is President, Centre for Policy Research
