As the cricket-crazy subcontinent works itself up for the World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, prime minister Narendra Modi seems to have picked up the threads of his “SAARC initiative” with a twist of cricket diplomacy calling up his counterparts of those nations in the grouping which are playing the tournament.
A part of the initiative is the olive branch he appears to have extended to Pakistan prime minister Nawaz Sharif. In the midst of cricket talks, Modi is reported to have told his Pakistan counterpart that he would be sending foreign secretary Jaishankar to Islamabad.
Lest this may create confusion in the wake of the public posture Modi government had adopted towards Pakistan, Modi has also spoken to SAARC leaders of other countries playing in the World Cup, including Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina, Sri Lankan president Maithripala Sirisena and Afghanistan president Ashraf Ghani to wish their teams for the tournament. Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit is to be part of a “SAARC yatra”.
The prime minister’s decision to make the phone calls and send the foreign secretary on a “SAARC yatra” is his third subcontinent-focussed foray, beginning with his invitation to all SAARC leaders to attend his swearing-in ceremony last May, and followed by his proposals at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu in November 2014 for greater regional integration.
Asked about Modi’s telephonic conversation with Sharif, his foreign policy adviser Sartaj Aziz has welcomed the Indian foreign secretary’s visit with caution. It is a good start but “whether it will lead to actual resumption of meaningful dialogue remains to be seen and it depends on the talks between the foreign secretaries”.
This is the second time in the past few months that Modi is reaching out to Sharif to break the ice. Soon after the Peshawar army school students’ massacre last December, Modi dialled Sharif to convey India’s heartfelt sympathies. But before the two countries could build on that, the initiative was scuppered when a Pakistan court released Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, the prime accused in the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The fresh volley of recriminations hurled made the move a non-starter.
Modi’s newest initiative to restart the Indo-Pak dialogue process is a result of some sequencing in the past few months. The most important being the successful conduct of the Jammu and Kashmir Assembly elections in December without too much violence or disruption and a high voter turnout.
Another factor was that the two major winners of the J&K polls, the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and the BJP, have finally sorted out differences between them and are slated to form a coalition government by the third week of February. That could strengthen Modi’s hand when he resumes negotiations with Pakistan.
While ceasefire violations by Pakistan along both the Line of Control and the international border continue, with the passes snowed over, infiltration by militants is expected to be minimal till summer. This may help keep tensions down till the two sides work out the modalities for improving relations.
There are other factors, too, that may have prompted Modi to push ahead. After hitting it off with US president Barack Obama and cementing relations with Japan and Russia, Modi heads to China in May for a summit with president Xi Jinping. All this would help him put pressure on Pakistan. It is no coincidence that just before Modi called Sharif, Obama too phoned the Pakistan prime minister and discussed how he saw the developing situation in the region.
However, Modi will have to do quite a bit of tightrope walk to show that this is not a volte-face. His government had earlier raised the bar for resumption of engagements with Pakistan by coming up with a new template: either you talk to us or the Kashmiri separatists. No assurances have come forth from Pakistan that this basic requirement from the Indian government’s point of view will be fulfilled.
Realising that the move can be misinterpreted, the government’s image makers are at pains to underline that Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit will be essentially a part of the “SAARC yatra” and the issue of normalisation of relations between the two nuclear-armed South Asian neighbours would be mere subsidiary. In fact, Jaishankar’s main task during his trip to Islamabad won’t be initiating the stalled bilateral dialogue process. As far as the Modi government is concerned, this would be the least of its concerns.
Ministry of external affairs spokesperson Syed Akbaruddin has given a clear idea of Jaishankar’s mission in Islamabad at his press briefing on February 13. A SAARC satellite, whose utilitisation is available to all South Asian nations, partnership between South Asian universities, medical visas for patients from the region along with their companions, vaccines for children in South Asia, SAARC business travellers’ card are the type of issues that will be on his agenda. In other words, New Delhi will be under no pressure to make Jaishankar’s Pakistan visit a success because he would be embarking on primarily a multilateral agenda. From Pakistan’s perspective, SAARC or SAARC-related issues are hardly of any importance till political relations between Islamabad and New Delhi are resolved.
Despite the attempt to couch the initiative in South Asian terms, there is little doubt that Jaishankar’s visit to Pakistan is an important step forward by the Modi government. As he reviews the state of bilateral relations with the Pakistani officials and political leadership, Jaishankar would want to test the possibilities for instituting a new framework of engagement rather than simply return to status quo ante.
Modi needs to be careful. Pakistan has still not complied with India’s core concerns of ensuring a speedy trial of the Mumbai perpetrators, reining in Hafeez Saeed and the Lashkar-e-Toiba and putting an end to ceasefire violations. Nor is it in a position to do so because just now its major priority is to fight elements within the terror structure created by Pakistan itself for collateral purposes. Modi must be aware that the road to peace with Pakistan is potholed with the failures of his predecessors.
The writer is a former professor of sociology, IIT-Kanpur. Email: upendrasarojsharma@yahoo.com