Were the February 25 Foreign Secretary level talks, between India and Pakistan, in New Delhi, an essay in futility? Has something rather-anything been achieved by either party? Have the nuclear haves gravitated a centimetre towards each other after the confabulations? Has either of the two disputants returned home more informed and enlightened after the event? Is there, if not, any ray of hope or any way-out?
GENESIS
It would not be inappropriate, at least for the starters, to recall that the conflict between the two close neighbours started with the accession of Kashmir to India. The moment Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, Kashmir became an inalienable part of Bharat. The UN Resolution however speaks of a plebiscite to resolve the dispute fully. The late Shaikh Muhmmad Abdullah was the tallest leader of the State at that time. To the aristocratic Mr. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the Shaikh was a “rotten egg”. He sent an undersecretary-level bureaucrat for talks with regard to accession with Pakistan. The Shaikh, understandably, took it as a humiliation of first order, as he represented at least 86 per cent population of the State. The rest is history.
QUESTIONS
The questions to be pondered over now, at least at non-political level are: how many quintals of human blood has been drained both by India and Pakistan on the issue? How many widows and orphans have been added to the families of the disputants? What price the Kashmiris have paid for the only crime that they were born in the problem State?
Also think of the money that, in foreign exchange, has been spent on the purchase of the killing machines by both the countries.
Both India and Pakistan would have been educated had that money been spent upon education. So was possible in the health sector. So was, and is, possible in the business and commerce sectors.
But! Yet!
Coming to the brass stacks, from the very beginning, the disputants had been insisting upon their respective standpoints – India would confine itself to terror from across the border while Pakistan would underscore the necessity of a comprehensive, structured dialogue, sheet-anchored upon Kashmir.
ALMOST FREE
The 3-hour long interaction between the two delegations was almost-free from acrimony. Both sides listened to each other with patience. Both sides insisted upon their known, respective positions. Both sides refused to budge an inch from their declared points and parameters. They parted company in almost good grace and promised to each other “we will meet again” which in diplomatic jargon means the talks have failed. But in the evening, the chief guest, the Pakistan Foreign Secretary, in his too-long Press conference, happened to create a feeling of attempting at grandstanding coupled with scoring brownie points.
TERSE REJOINDER
New Delhi, touched to the quick, shot back in a terse rejoinder: It is the firm conviction of the Indian Government that it must not shut the door on dialogue. It was, however, not desperate either to continue talks with Pakistan.
To put the whole thing into its perspective, the real provocation came from Mr. Salman Bashir when he, in his press meet, said: the dossiers given by India so far, detailing the role of Jama’at-ud-Dawa chief Hafiz Saeed and others responsible for the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, were more like “literature” than “evidence” in the legal sense. He also noted that Pakistan did not like to be “lectured” or surmonised on terrorism as it was a victim in its own right.
Mr. Bashir said Islamabad had photographic evidence of India’s involvement in instigation to terrorists against Pakistan.
Describing the charge as “propaganda” New Delhi went to the extent of asserting that “for talks with the democratic government, Islamabad gets briefing from the GHO or the Pakistan Army Headquarters.
FRESH NEWS
The latest news is not that the Indian Foreign Secretary Ms. Nirupama Rao handed over three dossiers to her Pakistani counterpart. The fresh news is that the Track-2 diplomacy has, in the meantime, been revived. Soon Mr. Riyaz Muhammad Khan, a former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan and Mr. Satinder Lamba, Dr. Manmohan Singh’s Special Envoy, would meet and have talks on the problem. It is fair to recall that this quiet, back channel had proved productive during Mr. Musharraf’s regime. Then, Mr. Lamba and Mr. Tariq Azeez had several meetings in other countries, in which besides Kashmir, Siachin and Sir Creek were also discussed. Therefore, feel the observers, the next Indo-Pak discourse will not begin from the scratch.