India Upholds the Redline

Beyond the opti­mistic reas­sur­ances of ‘vision doc­u­ments’ and ‘joint state­ments’, and mul­ti­ple pho­to-ops for the wide eyed imag­i­na­tion of world peace, what have talks with Pak­istan ever achieved?

‘His­toric’ agree­ments as his­to­ry remem­bers them have either come after India has defeat­ed Pak­istan in mil­i­tary engage­ments or are imme­di­ate­ly fol­lowed by con­flict, cease­fire vio­la­tions, even ter­ror. The sta­tus quo has remained the same, as Kash­mir con­tin­ues to be the cor­ner­stone of Pakistan’s for­eign pol­i­cy with regards to India. This is the root of why there has been no major head­way in eco­nom­ic and cul­tur­al ties, even as it is evi­dent how both sides can sig­nif­i­cant­ly ben­e­fit from them.

It was no sur­prise that Nation­al Secu­ri­ty Advi­sor lev­el talks were can­celled recent­ly. In fact, in the news­room we were won­der­ing which side will can­cel the dia­logue first. Pak­istan even­tu­al­ly blinked first
say­ing it want­ed to dis­cuss Kash­mir, even though the Ufa agree­ment had placed ter­ror on the agen­da. Pak­istan even protest­ed against India’s objec­tion to engage sep­a­ratist lead­ers as stake­hold­ers in the
bilat­er­al dia­logue. India stuck to its guns, uphold­ing the prece­dent set in 2014 when the for­eign sec­re­tary lev­el talks were can­celled after the Pak­istan High Com­mis­sion­er met sep­a­ratist lead­ers in Del­hi.

This recent­ly estab­lished red­line favours Indi­a’s posi­tion. As com­pared to pre­vi­ous admin­is­tra­tions, the Cen­tre is active­ly try­ing to counter Pakistan’s attempts to legit­imise the posi­tion of the Hur­riy­at as stake­hold­ers in the bilat­er­al dia­logue – estab­lish­ing that Kash­mir can only be dis­cussed by the elect­ed gov­ern­ments of both sides.

Pak­istan’s engage­ment with the Hur­riy­at is a pres­tige issue by which they attempt to keep the Kash­mir case alive. The media tends to do Pak­istan a favour by going crazy over engage­ments with a thin­ning herd of sep­a­ratists, even though we keep telling our­selves that they do not rep­re­sent the peo­ple of Kash­mir, and don’t even have the abil­i­ty to win a street cor­ner elec­tion.

Indi­a’s biggest vic­to­ry against Pak­istan has been the main­te­nance of democ­ra­cy in Jam­mu and Kash­mir, bring­ing the elec­torate in line with the nation­al polit­i­cal main­stream. Every suc­cess­ful elec­tion time and
again is a vic­to­ry against the polit­i­cal nar­ra­tive of Pak­istan, weak­en­ing its case of a ‘right’ over the region. The Hur­riy­at is Pak­istan’s last bas­tion of an already dwin­dling sup­port base in the val­ley, which sus­tains itself on the ‘oxy­gen’ of pub­lic­i­ty. The Modi gov­ern­men­t’s aim is to cor­ner them and de-legit­imise their posi­tion in the val­ley both polit­i­cal­ly and diplo­mat­i­cal­ly. After sidelin­ing sep­a­ratists in the elec­tion are­na, the Modi gov­ern­ment is now active­ly estab­lish­ing that diplo­mat­ic engage­ment between Pak­istan and the Hur­riy­at, is a chal­lenge to Indi­a’s sov­er­eign­ty, which can derail any seri­ous bilat­er­al dia­logue between India and Pak­istan.

On the Kash­mir issue, Pak­istan is iso­lat­ed in the inter­na­tion­al are­na and can­not devel­op pres­sure on India through diplo­mat­ic levers. With ter­ror strikes and cease­fire vio­la­tions con­tin­u­ing despite the
‘peace­ful inten­tions’ of Pak­istan, the Modi gov­ern­ment needs to main­tain a tough stance, dis­tance itself from the last 10 years of ‘can­dy floss diplo­ma­cy’ to reset the rules of engage­ment on Indi­a’s
terms.