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NEW DELHI: With separatists squarely blaming the Congress for the Modi government’s move to call off foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan, the BJP appears to have wrested the initial advantage in poll-bound J&K.
The BJP hopes its stand against the Hurriyat leaders’ meeting with Pakistan high commissioner Abdul Basit before the talks will appeal to its core constituency and translate into electoral gains in Jammu.
This is the first time that the government has taken such a tough stance. In the past it was a routine exercise by Pakistan to hold deliberations with the separatist leadership before any bilateral meeting. The move further reinforced the Modi government’s resolve to break away from the tone set by the Vajpayee regime.
At the same time, the Congress’ hard posturing on the issue has put its state leadership in an awkward position. Congress leaders from Kashmir realise that this “change in stand” could dent their poll prospects in the valley.
This could perhaps be the reason J&K Congress chief Saifuddin Soz had to take a divergent stance from his central leaders on the issue. He said the Centre “should not make pretexts” for calling off such important meetings. “India could have taken up this issue on the margins of bilateral talks.”
Soz was at pains to explain his party colleague Manish Tewari’s statement in which he had questioned the NDA’S silence over the Pakistani envoy’s invitation to separatist leaders for talks before the foreign secretary level meeting in Islamabad on August 25.
“What Tewari said was a reminder to Centre that BJP was criticising the Congress unnecessarily. He never demanded that talks must be called off,” Soz added. On Tuesday, the Congress demanded the Pakistani envoy be sent back.
The Hurriyat Conference, led by Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, attacked the Congress for its stand. “The Congress has once again proved that it was never serious in resolving the Kashmir Issue,” it said in a statement. “Congress folks have chosen to score points by resorting to petty politicking against their contender who made them suffer a humiliating defeat in recent parliamentary elections.” NEW DELHI: Waging peace is way more difficult than waging war in these times of conflict. That explains the Narendra Modi regime’s safer, short-term option of calling off talks with Pakistan.
One views it as a stop-gap stance for coercive diplomacy has a limited shelf life. It cannot sustain with the new-look New Delhi’s broader objective of tranquil borders to take forward its economic agenda.
Celebratory endorsements of the decision to abandon the slated dialogue between foreign secretaries are misleading. Diplomacy has use for even zero sum engagements. They are kept alive to time their curtailment for venting national outrage against extreme provocation.
We took that route after Mumbai’s 26/11 to avoid the collateral damage that accrues from full or limited scale (read Kargil) military hostilities. The Congress-led UPA that was then in power faced ridicule for the restraint it showed; the BJP termed it as ‘soft response’ to a brazen act of terror.
The flip side of it was that not a single shot was fired by troops the NDA massed on the Indo-pak border post the 2001 attack on Parliament. The question to be countenanced now is whether we’d wage a war or go in hot pursuit in the event of a major terror strike from across the border? God forbid that scenario in our ‘nuclear’ sub-continent!
Introspectively speaking, New Delhi would’ve seemed reasonable had it expressed disappointment over the Pak envoy hobnobbing with Hurriyat leaders — besides alluding to Nawaz Sharif problems at home — to defer the FS level engagement till propitious time. That would have kept ajar the doors to a future dialogue.
Making the envoy’s invite to the Hurriyat as the prime reason for discarding talks seemed a trifle churlish. Grudgingly though, such meetings were allowed in the past including the 1998-2004 Vajpayee period.
The fact is that Sharif didn’t meet the Hurriyat leaders when he came for Modi’s inaugural in May. He deflected the flak he faced at home with the argument that his visit was ceremonial; that the Hurriyat’s views would be taken before initiating formal talks.
The hiatus that actually truncated the peace script can