How India-Pakistan talks spring an evolved Modi and a spirited Sharif

The Russians may have once gifted a rapprochement to India and Pakistan. Forty years after the truce in Tashkent - which, incidentally, is now the capital of a new country called Uzbekistan - the Russian city of Ufa was the scene of an unusual roadmap of engagement between the two hostile neighbours today, surprisingly brokered by none other than Prime Ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif.

But if there is one hero in this just-resumed dialogue process, it is Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Last year in May, Sharif had disregarded his own powerful army to come to Delhi to participate in the swearing-in ceremony of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a veritable democratic conqueror of Delhi. He was coming to India to share in the joy of the new prime minister and his broad, beaming smiles reflected that anticipation.

Today in Ufa, in an austere room with no view, the faces of both leaders were much more subdued. But after their hour-long meeting, which overshot the expected time frame by half an hour, it was clear that Nawaz Sharif had again gambled his position and prestige by agreeing to give India voice samples of the terrorists who had allegedly masterminded the Mumbai 2008 attacks, including that of the infamous Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi.

Simultaneously, Prime Minister Narendra Modi seems to have considerably evolved from his own position in August 2014 when he cancelled the bilateral foreign secretary-level talks on a whim, because the Pakistan high commissioner to Delhi Abdul Basit had invited the Hurriyat leader Shabbir Shah to tea and presumably a little bit of sympathy on the eve of those talks.

Over the last year, as Modi has travelled the world and made friends with Barack Obama, Tony Abbott, David Cameron and Vladimir Putin, he has also realised that he cannot be a world leader like them unless he takes responsibility for his own region. That includes Pakistan, a difficult neighbour at the worst of times.

You can change your friends and your relatives, but you can't change your neighbours, Modi seems to have finally understood. As for Nawaz Sharif, he seems to have realised that as a democratically-elected leader of Pakistan he must take responsibility for ending terror that emanates from Pakistan and is directed at India.

If India wants the end of terror and a peaceful border - so that its citizens and its economy can develop without outside hindrance - then it has to take steps to shore up a Pakistan prime minister who is constantly being diminished by his own army chief. The battle for power inside Pakistan must be permanently won by a civilian leader - not a man in khaki. Whether Nawaz Sharif is the perfect interlocutor or not, he is certainly Delhi's best bet.

So in a room in the Russian city of Ufa, the capital of Bashkortostan province, the leaders of India and Pakistan seemed to have decided to test the presumption of history, as well as each other's mettle. A five-point roadmap to re-engagement was literally jointly read out today by the two foreign secretaries, S Jaishankar and Aizaz Ahmed Chaudhry - each read half the statement, the Pakistani civil servant going first.

The roadmap is interesting because it is structured, although it is not the beginning of a formal dialogue. Each step constitutes both a promise fulfilled as well as a commitment for the future, with every subsequent step building on the previous one.

For example, the first step commits both sides to release fishermen and their boats in each other's custody over the next 15 days. That will be followed by a meeting of the head of the BSF and Pakistan Rangers, so that both sides can figure out how to keep the border quiet, as well as a meeting between the director-general of Military Operations (DGMO) - both army officers. If the DGMO meeting becomes orchestrated and regular - so far they only have a hotline between them, which they can dial every Tuesday - the Indian and Pakistani army officers will be meeting in a structured environment for the first time. The national security advisors of both countries will also meet in Delhi - another first.

As trust begets trust, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will participate in the SAARC summit to be held in Pakistan in 2016. Somewhere in between, Islamabad will have given Lakhvi's voice samples to Delhi.

If Pakistan actually hands over Lakhvi's voice sample, allowing India to match it with its own recordings of the VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), it would have made real headway in helping India reach some real conclusions over the worst terror attack in its history.

Fact is, the Pakistani establishment - read, the Pakistan army and its intelligence agency the ISI - has all these years resisted helping India on the matter of the Mumbai trials. None other than the former Pakistani national security advisor Mahmud Durrani lost his job in 2009 when he confirmed Pakistan media reports that Ajmal Kasab was a Pakistani citizen; he was summarily sacked, although he has been a former general.

By committing to giving Lakhvi's voice samples to India, a much weaker Nawaz Sharif - significantly weakened after his several battles with Musharraf, his own judiciary, opposition leaders like Imran Khan, clerics imported from Canada like Tahir-ul Qadri - has agreed to play what must amount to one of the most important gambles of his political life. He has agreed to reach out and shake the extended hand of Narendra Modi.

As Hamid Mir, director (news and current affairs) of the powerful Geo News channel in Pakistan, told India Today TV this morning, "Nawaz Sharif felt betrayed after the Indian prime minister cancelled the foreign secretary level talks last August."

Since that cancellation in August 2014, the winter crept into the bilateral relationship and Nawaz Sharif withdrew further into his shell. Modi tried to reach out to him over several occasions - commiserating with him over the horrific Peshawar attacks in December 2014, sending foreign secretary S Jaishankar to Islamabad as part of his SAARC yatra in February 2015 and even allowing cricket ties to resume, albeit the India-Pakistan matches will be held in the UAE in December - but nothing worked.

Then on July 3, Jaishankar called his counterpart in Islamabad and requested for a meeting when the two principal leaders would meet in Ufa. According to Hamid Mir, Nawaz Sharif got his cabinet together before he left for Russia to get their views on what he should do.

Play tit-for-tat, they told him. If Modi's kind, reciprocate. If he isn't, then play tough.

It seems as if both sides met each other, halfway, giving each other, the people of both their countries as well as the world their commitment to improve ties during this holy month of Ramzan. With Eid around the corner, perhaps it's time to celebrate.