Why India is holding its tongue

discussed within a framework to be established by the two foreign secretaries (they are expected to meet in Islamabad again next month). The handshake in Male, while focusing on the need to keep the conversation going, also recognised that both sides must stop hostile propaganda against each other.

Almost as if he hadn’t heard, Pakistan Foreign Minister Capt. Gohar Ayub Khan quickly broke the ground rules. In Male, he charged that the Indian security forces must “get out” of Kashmir. In Washington this week, he raved, “the Kashmiris want freedom, and inshallah, they will have it.”

Both times, New Delhi held its tongue. Prime Minister Gujral told the press in the Maldives: “I will only listen to what the Pakistani Prime Minister tells me.” If Gohar Ayub and friends, the message went, insisted on publicly unloading anti-Indian vitriol off their delicate chests, then that really was Islamabad’s problem.

Sources in Pakistan confirm that Nawaz Sharif remains keen that the dialogue is not tampered with by extra-constitutional elements. Having clipped the wings of the establishment on the Eighth Amendment and maintaining effective control over the legislature, Sharif is nevertheless aware that the Army keeps alive independent channels of policy on issues it sees as key to Pakistan’s security — nuclear, Kashmir and Afghanistan. All three issues are linked to India.

Gohar Ayub’s appointment as foreign minister must be seen in this perspective: a former Army officer, trained at Sandhurst and son of the more famous Ayub Khan (President of Pakistan when the war against India was lost in 1965), Gohar is a representative of the Army in Sharif’s Cabinet.

Pakistan’s collective war memory of humiliation and his personal remembrances seem to have merged in the man, say analysts. They remember his utterances when he visited India in 1993, as speaker of Pakistan’s Legislative Assembly : “India is a third-rate country,” “Indians are proud of their Ambassador car which a Pakistani garbage-heap would be insulted to keep”, etc.

The sources in Islamabad contrast this with Sharif’s own remarks about India. They point to Gujral’s statement in Male (about listening only to what the Pakistani Prime Minister tells him), and ask if it implies that Sharif has abstained from raising Kashmir in similar unprintable language. They say the Pakistani prime minister in conversations with Gujral has, instead, focused on common areas of interest: trade and economic cooperation; on reducing the defence budget; poverty alleviation and how both governments will be judged by their people on the measure of better living standards; on the futility of war and how the fact of thousands of men having been killed on both sides has not given advantage to either side.

New Delhi, having dealt with Benazir Bhutto’s `Kashmir or else’ formulation these recent years, is said to be in the mood for giving the benefit of doubt to Nawaz Sharif. Despite Gohar Ayub, South Block senses that 50 years into independence and partition the time may, perhaps, be ripe for both sides to sit together and tackle the layers of mistrust, prejudice, hatred that have accumulated over the decades. Let the Kashmir problem be decided over the next 15 or 20 or 25 years if that is what it takes, the feeling goes. India must do its bit towards strengthening historic opportunities.

A core worry in the furthest recesses of the mind remains barely articulated: in the name of seizing historic opportunities, India must refrain from making any private deals with anybody, because secret deals have the unnerving habit of not surviving even that person’s lifetime. Look what men of history like Nehru did with Chou en-Lai: not only did China systematically breach the Himalayan frontier which was supposed to have been the strategic divide between Beijing and New Delhi’s spheres of influence, the people of India were completely startled by the invasion that followed in 1962. The psychological scar that resulted has never completely healed.

With history looking over their shoulders, the prime minister and his men set out for Male. They knew the meeting with Nawaz Sharif would set the tone of the future dialogue. As it turned out, there were no real surprises. It was as if a `pre-cooked meal’ had been served up to the two prime ministers, an observer said, adding that the microwave would now be kept ready for the second round of talks that begin soon.

The talks themselves will enable both sides to take the crucial decision of setting up joint working groups on all outstanding issues. Contrary to what Islamabad has put out to its press, no working group on Kashmir or any other subject has been set up yet. Predictably, the Pakistanis will focus their energies on this subject. The Indians might agree with some alacrity, especially if all other subjects are taken up as well: cross-border terrorism, ending the proxy war, human rights abuses in the valley, Sir Creek, Tulbul barrage, trade and economic cooperation, greater people-to-people contact, science & technology, nuclear issues, cultural matters, etc. The attempt will be made to reconcile divergent positions by providing a platform for both sides to air their differences.

If the exercise results in what one analyst called the “bureaucratisation of the Kashmir issue,” then the success rate of the dialogue is bound to go up. With both prime ministers having given the green signal for talks, officials are likely now to set about forming task forces, working committees, sub-groups, etc, to discuss all the issues on the anvil. The whole, as it were, will be broken down into many parts for the best minds of both countries to deal with.

One more thing: the Indians will accept that Kashmir is a dispute, has been since 1947, and was the subject of the Shimla agreement in 1972. But having fought — and finally won — the war against Pakistani-inspired terrorism for seven long years in the Kashmir Valley, public opinion will overwhelmingly demand that Islamabad stop interfering on this side of the Line of Control. Much remains to be done between the Centre and Srinagar, but that is an internal exercise. Let Pakistan stop the moral, physical and economic aid it has been giving to terrorists in the valley.

Whatever happens, the Indian side is confident that it has largely won even the international battle condemning human rights abuses in Kashmir. As the nation moves on the track of economic liberalisation and foreign investors enhance their stakes, analysts point out that Kashmir will slowly lose its focal importance. The Gohar Ayub Khan’s of the world won’t matter.

That is why, they add, India is today turning the other cheek to Pakistan.