Author: M J Akbar
Publication: The Times of India
Date: February 28, 2010
URL: http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/TheSiegeWithin/entry/how-india-lost-the-plot
Delhi lost its own plot one day before foreign secretaries Nirupama Rao and
Salman Bashir sat down at Hyderabad House to reopen the dialogue between India
and Pakistan.
Salman Bashir came to Delhi for two sets of
talks, not one. The Government of India was the second half of his agenda.
The first, and from his perspective the more important, part was the resumption
of dialogue between Islamabad and secessionist elements in Jammu and Kashmir,
Hurriyat leaders and the more extreme Syed Ali Shah Geelani.
Bashir did not want to talk to Omar or Farooq
Abdullah, Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, Mehbooba Mufti or Ghulam Nabi Azad, who represent
parties that have won a substantial number of seats in the assembly. He wanted
to hear what Geelani said, that there was a storm brewing in the Valley. Bashir
reassured Geelani that Pakistan had not abandoned its dream of altering the
map of India.
These pre-arranged meetings were held with
the consent of the Government of India. If the Indian government had wanted
to prevent them, Hurriyat leaders and Geelani would not have been able to
catch the flight from Srinagar to Delhi. Precedence - the fact that we have
enabled such meetings before - is not the point.
India stopped the ongoing dialogue in unusual
circumstances, after the terrorist invasion of Mumbai. Delhi offered a resumption
of talks, but with one condition, that they would focus on terrorism; and
issues like Kashmir (part of the composite dialogue) would be taken up only
after Pakistan had provided satisfaction that it had acted against known terrorists
and instigators of Mumbai, like Hafiz Saeed.
If that was going to be our focus, if that
was the agenda we had set, why did we permit the meetings between Pakistan
and Hurriyat-Geelani? We could have explained that Pakistan could talk to
the Kashmiri leaders on the Indian soil the next time around, if there was
a next time; on February 25, it would only be about terrorism.
When we did not, Pakistan inferred that it
was business as usual, and that our position on terrorism was rhetoric meant
for domestic consumption. Pakistan voiced such an inference when Salman Bashir
briefed the media, saying that Kashmir had been discussed "extensively"
and suggesting that India had returned to the negotiating table because of
international pressure.
It was, he implied with that little smile
on either corner of his mouth, a diplomatic triumph for Pakistan.
Perhaps, the time has come for India to demand reciprocal rights. It would
be interesting if Nirupama Rao insists that during her next visit to Islamabad
(she has received an invitation) on meeting insurgents from Balochistan -
assuming that they are either alive or outside jail.
Let us be clear about one reality: Salman
Bashir could have returned without undue damage to his professional health
if talks with Rao had been sabotaged before they started, but he might have
had to take a flight to some other country if he had returned without meeting
Hurriyat and Geelani. Kashmir is the heart and head of Pakistan's policy towards
India.
There is insufficient recognition, certainly
among Indians and possibly within the Indian government, of the fact that
Pakistan's policy has hardened after the Mumbai terrorist onslaught, rather
than softened. Pervez Musharraf's "close-to-a-solution" is now denied
as mere waffle, since nothing was put in writing.
Mumbai is not cause for mea culpa, but reason
for accusation: India deserves what it got because it holds Kashmir "illegally".
In such a narrative, Hafiz Saeed becomes the daring maverick who brought Kashmir
back to the centrestage as the "core" issue (a term Salman Bashir
used repeatedly, as was his brief).
India and Pakistan might agree, therefore,
that terrorism is an evil, but they have totally divergent definitions of
who constitutes a terrorist. Salman Bashir can agree on terrorism without
blinking an eyelid, and moan about thousands dead in his own country - but
they died from Taliban bullets and bombs, not from a Hafiz Saeed gun. India's
terrorist is Pakistan's freedom fighter.
As Bashir coolly explained in Delhi, Hafiz
Saeed was within his democratic rights when, at his Lahore rally, he told
followers armed with Kalasnikovs that one Mumbai was not enough. The Pakistan
army would have opened artillery fire if the Taliban had dared to hold a similar
public meeting in Peshawar.
Rao, who was firm enough during the talks,
made one serious mistake. She forgot a basic law of Indo-Pak diplomacy. She
left the last word to Salman Bashir. Her hurry to brief the media was inexplicable;
it was Bashir who had to go take a flight out of Delhi. She could have waited.
We lost the plot both before and after the talks.
