Modi must back off. Let Indian bureaucrats handle ties with Pakistan

Just after hundred odd days, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's peace initiative with Pakistan has collapsed. Towards the fag end of his media interaction at New Delhi's Foreign Correspondent Club, Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit made an explosive statement: "I would say the dialogue is suspended...There is no meeting scheduled between the foreign secretaries...Let's see if we are able to commence the dialogue process."

It was evident that Basit had come with the intention to do some blunt speaking because his opening gambit made his intentions clear. After his (im)polite courtesies when he uttered homilies like "Pakistan wants to have a normal and peaceful relationship with India" but that "there is no shortcut to achieving a lasting peace. Nor does cherry-picking work"; Basit said what his military bosses wanted him to stress: "Let's be realistic. It is the Jammu & Kashmir dispute that is the root cause of mutual distrust and other bilateral issues. Therefore, it's fair and just resolution, as per the aspirations of the people of Jammu & Kashmir, is imperative. Attempts to put it on the back burner will be counterproductive."

In a matter of a few seconds, the High Commissioner smashed to smithereens all gains from Modi's dramatic stopover in Lahore in December 2015. Those who thought that the setback due to the Pathankot attack had been surmounted and put behind are mistaken in their belief. Since the turn-of-the-year attack on the Indian Air Force Station in Pathankot, the Indo-Pak peace process was more illusory than realistic. Basit's statement just states the obvious that the Indian side did not have the gumption to say.

New Delhi did not wish to accept that the revived dialogue process - with the fancy new name of Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue - is all but over. Modi did not wish to accept the death of his dream of smoking a peace pipe with his Pakistani counterpart because of the heavy investments he made into the process. After the multiple assertions of Basit on April 7, Modi is left with little option but to mentally decide that it may not be possible for him to visit Pakistan again later this year for the nineteenth SAARC Summit. Given that Islamabad's forked tongue was evident while Basit buried the Lahore initiative - and the agreement hammered out by Sushma Sawaraj and Sartaj Aziz a fortnight before Modi's dramatic stopover - the Pakistan foreign office was sending out contradictory signals on the peace process, New Delhi should either display no anxiety over the death of talks or extract a hefty price for agreeing to its resumption.

The compensation, to start with, must be an immediate recall of Basit. For the sake of his image as a strongman, Modi has no option but to agree to talk further with Pakistan only if Islamabad withdraws its High Commissioner and replaces him. Even after that, the urgency should be Pakistan's and not India's. After all, Islamabad has to host the SAARC Summit which cannot take place unless all heads of governments participate. Modi must consider that he has already fulfilled one ambition of most Indian leaders - to serenade on the streets of Lahore. Any subsequent visit must not in any way show Indian over-eagerness.

The problem with Modi is that he has a bit of Vajpayee in him especially when dealing with Pakistan. To understand this, it is important to recall the fundamental errors of the latter. Readers would like to recall that a few months after Pokhran II put the peace initiative, painfully kickstarted by the IK Gujaral regime, into a limbo; Vajpayee unilaterally announced the Lahore Yatra. The visit in February 1999 was fashioned in a dramatic manner with media and celebrities in tow. Within weeks, bonhomie between the two nations was in shambles as it transpired that even as Vajpayee was driving down the streets of Lahore, Pakistan Army was stealthily creeping into Indian Territory in the Kargil sector.

The armed conflict ended with India securing its positions yet Pakistan still continued to allow anti-India activities from its soil. The hijacking of IC-814 and continued cross border terrorist activity in Kashmir did not prevent Vajpayee to make another attempt to invite General Pervez Musharraf for the Agra Summit. The story has been repeated endlessly and with the same error from the Indian side - leaders wish to hold a high-profile Summit without adequate preparations. Modi's dramatic halt at Lahore was not preceded by ground level preparations and that was his undoing.

From all evidences, it appears that a chastened lot of officers of India and Pakistan were working quietly to bring the talks back on track after Pathankot. Both New Delhi and Islamabad through their foreign offices were assessing the mood of the other without closing the door on resuming dialogue. Basit's intervention is clearly an attempt from a section in Pakistan which does not believe in normalising ties with India. Just as Modi has to contend with a hardline view in India which calls for extremes against Pakistan, a lobby exists on the other side of the border which sees its survival on continued hostility against India.

Modi can serve his cause best by putting the agenda of mending ties with Pakistan on the back burner and allow the bureaucracies of the two counties to resolve contentious issues. But in all further conversations, New Delhi must tell its counterparts that they need to rein in loose cannons like Basit. Regardless of people like him serving the actual bosses of Pakistan!