New Delhi:
On the NDTV Dialogues this week, we look at moving beyond the Line of Control, the line of conflict between India and Pakistan.
Below is the full transcript of the discussion with Professor Stephen Cohen, Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Brahma Chellaney and Asif Noorani:
NDTV: Good evening and welcome to The NDTV Dialogues, a conversation of ideas, which move away from strident political positions. On the NDTV Dialogues this evening we look at moving beyond the Line of Control, the line of conflict between India and Pakistan.
Joining me tonight are Professor Stephen Cohen, Dr Sanjaya Baru, Dr Brahma Chellaney and Asif Noorani. Thank you all very much for joining me tonight. Professor Cohen, your new book talks about the fact that the India Pakistan dispute is amongst the world's most complex and sharply disputed rivalries. You talk also of the fact of this being an intractable paired minority conflict in a sense, and in the way forward there are many options but it's very unclear how the next years will unfold.
Given the current context we have seen the hostilities increasing on the line of control, killings of Indian soldiers, the sharp step-up even after the democratically elected Government came into Pakistan. What do you see as possibilities in the future for greater engagement between the two countries?
Stephen Cohen: Well, I think that remains an option and the book discusses at some length the desire to have normal relations. I don't call it peace but normal relations, which would include no shooting and other exchanges and so forth, but I spent, I say 50 years working on the book, two years to write it but 50 years in studying India and Pakistan and I'm cautiously pessimistic. That sums up my attitude.
I don't see this moving forward very quickly or very far. On the other hand, I don't believe that there is going to be a major war. I think nuclear weapons make it possible for India and Pakistan to have a major war. So the military strategists talk about what we talked about with the Soviets, how you fight a limited war.
Well, a limited war in South Asia means you're going to be attacking cities, so I think that war is not ruled out but it's improbable. Peace may be improbable also. So I think we're going to see an oscillation between the normalization process, two steps forward, two steps back, and three steps sideways. I think this is the future for South Asia. It is exactly like the Israeli - Palestinian dispute. One of my colleagues at Brookings negotiates for them. He faces these kinds of problems in that region.
NDTV: Dr Chellaney, you have been much more scathing in recent articles calling the current leadership weak, impotent, directionless and pointing to the crucial factor what you see also as stepped up attacks by both Pakistan and China along Jammu and Kashmir. Did you feel that strategically the leadership has failed in recognizing this or coming up with any viable answers to this?
Brahma Chellaney: I think the policy drift on Pakistan to be fair has been an ongoing affair under successive governments. The foundations of this policy were actually laid by Atal Bihari Vajpayee between 1999 and 2004. His policy on Pakistan changed with every season. There was new policy on Pakistan every winter and every summer. His policy travels through, now let's be clear, through Lahore, Kargil, Kandahar, then we have the attack, then came Agra, then the attack on Parliament and finally it culminated in Islamabad on a second trip to Pakistan as Prime Minister.
It was a roller-coaster ride on Pakistan. He did not have a consistent policy and for example, he had this operation Parakram in 2002, where he put the Indian military on war readiness for 10 long months and the then Navy Chief later described it as the most punishing mistake ever inflicted on Indian Armed Forces. Without achieving any objective he ended that operation.
Now, but for the Vajpayee roller-coaster, Manmohan Singh would not have had the political space to do what he has done. We have had a series of major terrorist attacks under Dr Manmohan Singh. One has to ask the question are we, is our policy worrying about this kind of aggression? Are we presenting India as a weak and tempting target? I thought that one of the lessons we should have learnt from the Mumbai terrorist siege was that we were staring at the bitter harvest of our own mismanagement of the Pakistan policy.
Unfortunately, the same trend has continued. Every new attack is just more of water under the bridge for their government, but that's not a Pakistan policy.
Now being nice with a determined adversary in the hope that it will change its behaviour is not strategy. Under successive governments, India mistook tactics for strategy. It has treated the process of engagement with Pakistan as an end in itself, forgetting the end objective, which is to end cross border terrorism.
NDTV: Dr Baru, is that an achievable objective? Dr Brahma Chellaney points to the fact of how successive governments have failed in having any kind of Pakistan policy. You worked very closely with the Prime Minister in his first term when we had two major steps taken. One was of course the inclusion of Balochistan and a Sharmal el Sheikh statement;
You had the de-linking of dialogue and terrorism, which many attacked the Manmohan Singh government for.
In hindsight, when you look what the current situation is, many attacking the Prime Minister for pursuing what they say is a dream of a personal legacy of trying to establish some kind of peace with Pakistan, something many in the government themselves don't agree with.
Sanjaya Baru: Well, I think that's the easiest argument to dismiss. There is no dream of any personal legacy here. You know people keep saying that Manmohan Singh wants to go to Pakistan because he wants to visit his place of birth in Gah.
I can tell you he has no particularly pleasant memory of his childhood in Gah. It's a godforsaken village. His mother died when he was a baby, his father was never in the village. He was travelling. He lived a very unhappy childhood. It was only when he came away to India as a youth that he lived a normal life. So all these psychological theories are utter nonsense.
I think the important thing to recognize is that both India and Pakistan - I don't actually agree with the analogy of Israel-Palestine - I think India and Pakistan in many ways are a sui generis situation. We are two large countries. Pakistan is among the top 10 countries in the world in terms of population size. We are both nuclear powers. We are both viable sovereign entities. We have to learn to find a way to live together.
There is no option. There is the idea that people say like United States, you should go out and bomb other countries. United States has not bombed any of its neighbours. It goes across the Atlantic Ocean or Pacific and bombs countries very far away from it. Pakistan is next door and any Indian leadership is duty-bound to find solutions. Those solutions may not work. Those solutions may be half solutions. One can criticise them but there is a bounded duty of any Indian political leadership, not just Mr Vajpayee, before him Narasihma Rao tried, before that Rajiv Gandhi tried, Indira Gandhi tried.
You know successive Prime Ministers, successive Prime Ministers have tried and it is an obligation on the part of the Indian Prime Minister to try. You can't criticise him for trying. You can criticise him for not trying enough or for going in the wrong direction or for giving away too much.
One can get in to the details but overall strategy objective of seeking normalisation of relations and Indian Prime Minister has no options. Having said that, I think the important thing that we, in India, should recognise in the political discourse is that neither Pakistan nor India are homogenous entities. There are internal differences. There are internal differences within societies. There are internal differences within governments. I mean you talk about people within the government not agreeing with the Prime Minister. There are people within the Pakistani establishment who don't agree with their leadership. Pervez Musharraf did not have the support of all his Army generals and other political leaders in the initiatives he took, coming to India.
There would be internal differences because all the time everybody is calculating, one, what are the political gains for me if this guy fails? Two, what are the other parts that have to be kept open, in case this part does not work?
So we are dealing with a very complex relationship in which there are multiple actors and you know I agree with Steve, that the two steps forward, one step backward that's the way in which this relationship might move. But every time we take those two steps forward, I think the test of leadership is to see how much you can delay that one step back, or how you deal with that one step back, and the classic example is 26/11.
It was one huge step back after the many steps forward that were taken by Pervez Musharraf and Manmohan Singh between 2004 and 2008. They changed the fundamental premises of the dialogue. The formula that they were discussing about the resolution of the Kashmir issue was a completely new development and that has been put on the table.
I mean successive governments have not been able to take it forward but it lies on the table. Then there was a Mumbai attack and that of course had a huge negative impact and we had tried to slowly walk back from there. This will be the process, in which this dialogue will go, and hopefully at some point in both countries, there is adequate recognition that it is in our individual interest, it's in Pakistan's interest, and it's in India's interest for some kind of modus vivendi between 1.5 billion people of the sub-continent.
NDTV: In fact, on that point between the people, let me bring in Mr Asif Noorani here, well-known Pakistani journalist and author who has focused much more on the cultural ties between India and Pakistan. Mr Noorani, as we discuss and debate really the killings on the Line of Control, what we see is a step-up in violence. Pakistan has also blamed India for stepping up the violence and breaching the ceasefire.
What do the people of Pakistan see this as, because in many ways the people of Pakistan had expectations from Nawaz Sharif, a democratically elected Prime Minister? Many there have talked that this will be a Prime Minister who made all the right noises vis-a-vis the Pakistani Army as well. What are your expectations now of the peace process between India and Pakistan, which is undergoing a severe setback right now?
Asif Noorani: I am here to talk about bringing the two countries, the people together on cultural levels. I don't even support cricket matches because they sort of increase a sense of rivalry. I support all those attempts, which are being made on a smaller scale by people. I am here, I was at Bombay, I am in my birthplace. I am in Poona. I have had a wonderful response from people, the kind of response which, Pakistanis get when they, when the Indians get when they come to Pakistan.
I say since you may laugh at me, these gentlemen who are making thought-provoking comments, I say that music is a great binding force. You may think I am an idealist. Well I prefer to be an idealist rather than a terrorist. So I would say that even the most hardened Pakistani who has ill feeling towards India, the moment he listens to Lata Mangeshkar crooning bekas pe karam kijiye sarkaare madina, his heart melts.
I tell you your artistes when they come to Pakistan, they are given such a warm response and when our artistes come to you, we get such good response. I believe in what your poet Kaifi Azmi said. 'Unka jo kaam hai wo aile siyasat jaane mera paigam mohabbat hai jaha tak pohoche.' So next time, NDTV must get some person who could match your Indian guests in terms of knowledge of politics. I talk about culture. I talk about love. I know the two countries will not come close in my lifetime. I am 71, but if I live till the age of 99, I hope to see that.
Eventually we have no choice, but we have to be together and it is in India's interest that Pakistan becomes strong so that they can control the terrorists on the site, who want to disrupt relations. They want that the Army should move towards eastern border so that they can carry on terrorism acts as often as they want. As it is, it has reached an absolutely difficult and very high level of terrorism that we are facing.
NDTV: Mr Noorani, I think in so many ways your answer sums up why you are the right voice for this debate, because we hope really in the Dialogue to have all kinds of different voices, and that's the perspective which Professor Cohen, you have talked about in the book as well. You have talked about groups which, informal diplomacy in a sense, which propound these ideas, which say look at the commonalities we have, look at the shared ties we have, but how, when it comes down to it, calling the shots, is a completely different elite in a sense.
Stephen Cohen: Oh I wrote the book primarily to educate an American audience, but I really hope that it would provoke a discussion debate such is this in both India and in Pakistan, and I don't see the Americans getting involved in South Asia. I think that's a bad idea. You can do something, but generally a bad idea. But I think that at the heart of the book are two chapters and I think you have here two views, and then Mr Noorani that represent three of the eight or nine different views.
And you have 'hawks' in India who generally talk to each other by insults or by threats, you've 'doves' in India which sit on the border and sing love songs to each other, and in between these, all kinds of people who say, "Well only if you do this, I will do that."
So I think it's a complex relationship. It is parallel to the Arab-Israeli dispute, in the sense that there is a range of parties on both sides and they find it intractable, difficult to reach an agreement, but in the long run, I like India and I like Pakistan and I hope that the process will move ahead. But I think we have to understand the dynamics of the conflict that is, it consists of people who can get together and agree and people who get together and disagree, but the hawks and the doves don't talk to each other in each country, let alone across the border.
I think that is one of the problems. The structure of the conflict is in complicating things are nuclear weapons. I'd agree with Brahma, and I think your views are reported in the book also, that in a sense India should not, should react to these aggressions.
Of course, the Pakistanis have a different version I think, there is of Pakistan being primarily more right than yours. But again when we fought the Soviets, over 40 years in a cold war, we fought it in other countries, sometimes in South Asia. We didn't fight each other directly. We were very careful to avoid direct confrontation because of the nuclear weapons, that changes the nature of the dispute completely and the Arabs and the Israelis don't have that but you have.
Sanjaya Baru: Steve, if you don't mind my interrupting on the issue, the Arabs and Israelis have a fundamental difference. The Arabs don't recognize Israel as a state.
Stephen Cohen: That's true here too.
Sanjaya Baru: No we recognise each other. India recognises Pakistan as a state. Pakistan recognizes India as a state. We have ambassadors in both our countries. We don't have any disputes except the dispute on Kashmir. There is no dispute about the sovereign entity called India and Pakistan.
Brahma Chellaney: There is also another important difference, which is that Israel is the dominant power in that region. Its military force is larger and stronger than the combined military forces of its Arab neighbours. There is no such domination of India in the region despite its size. But going back to your analogy of US-Soviet Union, in the case of India and Pakistan, it's one party, which is suffering repeated acts of terror, being launched by one side against the other. Nuclear weapons situation does not mean that one party should be at the receiving end. That's not what nuclear deterrence is all about.
NDTV: No, but would you agree with Dr Chellaney that this is also an issue of a failure of leadership in India? That that's what the Pakistan Army was looking at capitalising on that, while you may say that Prime Minister Sharif has come in a newly elected mandate, so in a sense he was trying to flex his muscles, the Army may be reacting to him. But there is also a sense within India now, there is a sense of drift; leaderless, we can put it in the words Dr Chellaney used. Do you think that impacts the foreign policy in that sense and in this situation?
Sanjaya Baru: I think the real problem today in India is not as much the drift of leadership or the impotence as you put it, but the fact that economically we are weak. There are other countries which are exploiting the fact of India's economic weakness, and why should strategists in Pakistan who want to give trouble to India not exploit that? They are the not only ones.
The Chinese have become more active along the border in the last few months. The fact is that the Indian economy today is on a weak footing. India needs some time to recoup its resources. We are going in for an election. An election time is always a time when government becomes much more cautious, because you never know how things will work out.
Don't forget that November 26, 2008, after the Mumbai attacks, everybody thought that the response of the Manmohan Singh government was weak-kneed, was impotent and yet the fact is that the way in which the government reacted, and responded to that challenge, went very well down with the Indian people who re-elected the government in May 2009. The Congress came back to the power with a larger number of votes. So I am not sure if that is as important a factor. As a factor, overall India is today on a weaker footing because the economy is in trouble.
NDTV: So you are saying that's also helping, so attacks coming in from all directions. Mr Noorani just to pick up on a slightly different point and something that you mentioned earlier just now. If we watch only television debates, often we would think that the overwhelming mood amongst India right now is that we should declare war on Pakistan immediately, but what you said is very interesting, that you said people have greeted you with great warmth, with desire for better Indo-Pakistan ties. Where do you think the truth actually lies, somewhere in between? What will you think the people of both sides feel when there is extensive coverage of violence, of killings along the Line of Control for both sides?
Asif Noorani: I think number one, just a few minutes back, one of your learned participants drew a parallel with Arab Palestinians in Israel. I say that, fortunately, thank God, the situation between Indians and Pakistanis is not that bad. A friend of mine, the writer in Poona, Saaz Aggarwal, I was talking to her. She went to Pakistan and she felt warmly greeted there. I come here, I feel that the common people, in spite of the fact there is so much of propaganda by the governments and by the media, I say that the people basically are warm and friendly.
In Pakistan, the mood has changed. India is no longer enemy number one. The last power which is considered to be number one, and one point which I have to say here is that common man in India asks me, "wahan tamatar kya dam se milte hai. Gosht kya dam se milte hai?" And the same question, "yahan toh it's very expensive in India." When I go to Pakistan, "wahan ka kya haal hai? Are the people as poor as they are here? Wahan bhi gosht or sabji or aaloo or tamatar itna mehenga hai?" So for God's sake, I tell both Indian and Pakistani politicians with folded hands, for God's sake bring the two people closer. We are the same type of people, we have similar problems, we have the great rich-poor divide, we have corrupt bureaucrats, corrupt politicians and there are so many things, which are common. For God's sake, if we don't come closer now, then when?
NDTV: Or a Hawk, the other bad words sometimes in Indo-Pak relation is a Hawk. Dr Chellaney, often accused of being too hawkish on the views of how India should act.
Brahma Chellaney: What is a hawk? Let Steve define a Hawk. What's a Hawk in the US? And it's very important because it will tell you how we have descended as a nation state. What's a Hawk in the United States?
Stephen Cohen: I don't believe in political analysis on the basis of bird types. I think we've got to deal with the reality of it.
Brahma Chellaney: It's very important for us because she referred to me as a Hawk.
Stephen Cohen: I would, I don't agree with it.
Brahma Chellaney: Let me answer. A Hawk in the US is defined as a person who seeks the use of force pre-emptively against another nation state. Right? That's the definition of a Hawk; that you want the American government to intervene in another country and by employing military force pre-emptively. That's a definition of a Hawk. In India, a Hawk is someone now who merely recommends, who suggests, the government should not turn the other cheek. That's what Hawk is in India and what does it show? That we have descended into a nation that's exceptionally soft as a state, a nation where cheek turners have gained ascendancy, that to every active aggression you turn the other cheek and if you protest, if you say this is not the right policy, in India you will become a Hawk. Really.
NDTV: Do you see...?
Brahma Chellaney: In the US, I was a bleeding heart liberal. In India, I become a Hawk and it's a reflection on India, not a reflection on who is what. It's a reflection of India's descent as a hopelessly soft state, which is willing to turn the other cheek to every active aggression by China or by Pakistan. Can you imagine there is no other large state in the world, which has stomached so many acts of cross border terror without responding even once? Even Atal Bihari Vajpayee, whose rhetoric was really jingoistic and he talked about aar paar ki ladai, and even he had this Operation Parakram, even he did not respond in any way. Now you have to think of any other state in the world, which has stomached so many acts of aggression without responding.
NDTV: Dr Baru, would you describe him as a bleeding heart liberal if you were in America?
Brahma Chellaney: I have never suggested use of force against any country and I am not even suggesting an act of war against Pakistan or even repaying Pakistan in the same coin. I am saying don't turn your other cheek.
Stephen Cohen: What would you do, Brahma about the water problem, which has to involve China and Pakistan, you can't simply involve India. Water flies away from China to India to Pakistan. I mean how would you deal with that?
Brahma Chellaney: If I may answer that, let me just, you know, give you...
Stephen Cohen: Without any use of any force or any threat or any caution what so ever...
Brahma Chellaney: First is, there is any other water treaty in the world which is as generous as the one that India has signed with Pakistan?
Stephen Cohen: Not talking about generosity. What will you do in the future?
Brahma Chellaney: Let's get the facts right first....
Stephen Cohen: I didn't describe the treaty. What will you do in the future? How would you deal with it? You wrote a book about it.
Brahma Chellaney: First let's have the facts right. There's a treaty relationship between India and Pakistan. A treaty of indefinite duration which stands out in a modern world history as the most generous water sharing treaty, under which more than 80 per cent of the waters of the Indus river system are reserved for the downstream country. And even in terms of total quantum of water reserved for Pakistan under the treaty, which 167.5 billion, not million, billion cubic meters of water, there is no other treaty in the world which comes anyway close to it. Just to give you a comparative picture.
NDTV: But it survived, it survived for 40 years.
Brahma Chellaney: Exactly, one minute, just to give you a comparative picture. The amount of water that the US leaves for Mexico under its 1944 US Mexico water sharing treaty is 190th of the Indus water sharing arrangement. So India has already signed on to a treaty of indefinite duration with Pakistan. The issue between China and India is different, because China does not believe in water sharing as concept. Does not have a water sharing treaty with any neighbouring country.
NDTV: But, but Dr Chellaney, when you said that India should not turn the other cheek, what are the options available that you would say to the government?
Sanjaya Baru: Can I interrupt you, come to the options later. First of all, I reject the argument that India always turns the other cheek. The fact is that we have had successive confrontations whether in 1965 or in 1971 or in Kargil, where India did not turn the other cheek, India was able to repay.
So it's not a question of turning the other cheek. Secondly, the question is there any other country in the world is an irrelevant question because I began by saying this evening that this is a sui generis issue. There are the complexities involved in the world, India-Pakistan relationship, are such that is there any act of war that act has immediately wide ranging political consequences and human consequences. We saw that even in the case of Bangladesh, the huge refugee problem that India had to deal with because of that. So it's a sui generis issue and I don't think we are turning the other cheek at all.
I mean I think we have used many instruments in order one, to impose cost on Pakistan and two, to win world opinion in favor of India. The world opinion has fundamentally changed on the issue of Kashmir and on the issue of the bilateral disputes.
On many issues today, world opinion is largely with India, including a country like... China on Kargil did not support Pakistan when the Kargil war happened, so I think you know, our diplomacy has been quite clever. There are times, when because of domestic political reasons, the government is constrained.
And I think this is one of those times where the constraints of the government are more than at other times. But I don't think the Indian response has been one of simply always turning the other cheek and allowing us to be slapped. Cross border terrorism is an issue. I think on the issue of 26/11, it is true that Pakistan has not taken the action it has promised to take, and we have consistently made that point and I think the international opinion favours India on that point.
But I cannot see why that alone should prevent a continuation of conversation between the two governments.
NDTV: In fact two points on that really. One was, of course, the Bush administration and the signing of the nuclear deal with India, which was seen as a major triumph and also the de-hyphenating of India, Pakistan and the whole US policy in that region. Would you see these as triumphs that India would claim rightly?
Stephen Cohen: Definitely, but they only deal with part of the issue and I think one thing that divides discussions about this, and I discuss in the book at some length, is that the India-Pakistan relationship or conflict, conundrum I call it, is complex. It does involve Kashmir, it does involve water, it involves identity, it involves Sir Creek, it involves a whole range of things. It involves terrorism. I agree with you Brahma.
You know if this happened to America from a country we will be in them right away, but the difficulty for India is to take any kind of forceful revenge, including shutting off the water, is that the very people you have described here as irrational and crazy Pakistani military, they're the ones who control the nuclear weapons.
So in a sense you have self deterred yourself. And that's what happened with us, and the Soviets, so we fought our wars elsewhere. It only ended when the Soviets collapsed. And looking ahead at Pakistan's future; the Pakistanis think you are zooming ahead of them and you are, because they're falling back.
What the book does discuss at great length, one of the scenarios, I think the most frightening one, is the collapse of Pakistan and would Pakistan go easily and quietly like the Soviets did? I'm not sure. And that's where the more you think they are demons and the more you think they're irresponsible and irrational, the more danger you have described for yourself.
So that's why conversation is necessary to find out and try to change Pakistan. In a sense, Pakistan has to try to change India, but Pakistan probably has more changing to do than India. I'm not optimistic that it is going to end, except in a couple of mushroom concerts, a quick termination story. In fact the conflict over Afghanistan from an American perspective is in fact the legacy of the Raj.
NDTV: Mr. Noorani just want to bring in what is actually very interesting, is that so far we are more than half way through the show and the Kashmir issue hasn't really come up. Is that still an issue that obsesses the Pakistani people? Or you made that point about people are much more interested in commonalities, how much do onions cost, tomatoes cost, meat costs in both countries, but is Kashmir still as much an integral part of the psyche, or is that now an issue? People think, let's put that aside and let's move on with other issues?
Asif Noorani: I think the interest in Kashmir has lessened considerably. People are very much involved in the problems. Well growing terrorism and there is also increase in the prices, the economic situation that is very important. I mean people, look at people, they go in Karachi, they're caught in traffic jams and when they go home they are not sure whether they will have electricity or not. So now all these things like Kashmir are on the back burner.
I see more or less the same situation is here, well, you may be stronger in the case of power, in the sense of electricity. But look at the person in Bombay, how much problem he has to get home and how early he has to go and how does he pay for his children's fees, how does he pay for all this?
So the problems are common and while answering your question I would say that Kashmir is on the back burner. That may sound as music to your ears I think.
NDTV: I would ask the same question to Dr Brahma Chellaney as well. Is there a sense, do people feel at all within the establishment and perhaps it may not have in this government, but perhaps with the new government, that we can move forward? There had been some headway made in issues on putting Kashmir perhaps on the side and discussing other issues like power, like Pakistan giving India the MFN status.
Do you think those are going to be feasible ways forward, given that many would say that is the Pakistan Army or rogue elements within, who want to keep ratcheting up tension, to actually stop these kind of agreements?
Brahma Chellaney: Well, every right-minded Indian would want peace with Pakistan and the success of Indian governments, having bent backwards to pursue genuine peace building with Pakistan. The Pakistan military establishment has construed Indian efforts as signs of the Indian Republic's weakness. Now we mention the case of MFN. India granted MFN to Pakistan, how many years ago? Years ago.
Pakistan even today refuses to grant India MFN reciprocally. And in fact just a few days ago the Sharif government has said that MFN is not under their current consideration. Now MFN is very elementary thing in today's world. In fact the standard now for a good inter-state economic relationship is a free trade agreement. MFN is something very small. It's a legal obligation of nation states under the WTO Regulations. Here we don't have even have MFN in place and this brings me to the crux of the issue.
Why do we have this problem? It's because of an asymmetry in the India Pakistan dynamics, which is that Pakistan is not a normal nation state. The military establishment is a shadowy super state, the military establishment, the intelligence and the nuclear establishments outside civilian oversight. Now where in the world, other than in a Banana republic, is the military establishment not within the preview of the government in office?
Sanjaya Baru: No that's not the point. The point really is that, is this a static scenario or this is a scenario that has been changing backwards and forwards. I believe that it has been changing backwards and forwards. The relationship between civilian leadership and the military leadership has not been static. I agree with Brahma's basic assertion that the Army continues to dominate the Pakistani state. But it's not a static relationship.
The Army is influenced, in fact has gone down on the ordinary people. The Army's control has not gone down, it is absolutely right. But I think from an Indian perspective we should be sensitive to the inner dynamics of civil society, internal politics and see in what way we can contribute to the democratisation of Pakistani political discourse and to the strengthening of democratic parties and democratic leaders and democratic discourse.
That has to be India's long-term objective, and I mean I am not suggesting like the United States that we go as an Evangelist, a democratic Evangelist imposing democracy on others. But we have an obligation to strengthened democracy in our neighbourhood and I think that is precisely what we have tried to do over the years with some success.
NDTV: Public opinion would let you do that. Will public opinion let you do that, especially because you have to cater to a domestic political constituency as well?
Sanjaya Baru: But it has, public opinion In India has always supported a government that has tried to strengthened democratic forces in its neighbourhood, whether it is in Nepal, whether it is in Myanmar, whether it has been in Sri Lanka more recently. Public opinion in India always supports the government when it goes out and says I want to strengthen a democratic process.
NDTV: In fact, as we just enter the final round of this Dialogue, really looking and I think Mr Noorani made this interesting point earlier, that Pakistan doesn't see India as enemy number one. That's his perspective and of many in Pakistan still. But within India, when former minister George Fernandes made that point that actually India's number one enemy is China, we have seen the increased aggression that you have talked about. You have talked about it as a kind of pincer movement. Do you think that we are not looking enough at the strategic implications of both, of attacks by both?
Brahma Chellaney: Well what's happening now is that because our eastern flank in Arunachal Pradesh is now well guarded, we have deployed additional forces in Tawang Valley especially, the Chinese have decided to squeeze us and trying to squeeze us in Kashmir. They are playing the Kashmir card. For example they have decided to, their new maps on India do not show Indian Jammu and Kashmir as part of India. They are questioning our sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir.
They have shortened; they have borrowed, that they share with India. Officially, they are enlarging their footprint in Pakistani Occupied Kashmir, and in parallel to Pakistani ceasefire violations in Kashmir they have stepped up their incursions into Ladakh. So there is a sort of a concerted attempt by China and Pakistan. But whether they are acting in concert or not, I do not know. Whether there is concerted attempt to squeeze India from two different flanks. So this is a serious situation for India that the fact that first you have Sino-Pak nexus strong as ever. When Nawaz Sharif was in Beijing recently he even made the relationship more flowery. Earlier, it was an 'all weather relationship', then it became 'taller than the mountains' and Nawaz Sharif now calls it 'deeper than the oceans and sweeter than honey'.
NDTV: Well our External Affairs Minister said that he'd want to live in Beijing. So that he can compete with Nawaz Sharif.
Brahma Challaney: Well you know that we have a unique foreign minister, you know, for whom even a 19-kilometre incursion was an acne treatable with an ointment.
NDTV: But China did pull back, the Chinese troops did go back.
Brahma Challaney: I guess the ointment worked right, but we face a difficult challenge on our frontiers. But I think the point that Steve made was about the US role, and I think ideally, US and India should be working together to strengthen civilian institutions in Pakistan. And the Americans and the Pakistani generals are now even working together and are trying to open the Taliban, Afghan Taliban in to some sort of deal.
But the point is that if the US and India were to work together on building, on strengthening civil institutions in Pakistan, we could make a difference. India by itself cannot make a difference. In fact India has to play a very low-key role in Pakistan efforts. To be seen as trying to lend too much of helping hand to the civil government in Pakistan, they could strengthen the hand of military establishment of Pakistan.
Unfortunately, what happened is that military establishment in Pakistan is still not willing to cede some of its part in foreign policy to the new government in Pakistan. I think a great opportunity came in 2008. There was people's revolution in Pakistan. This is an only opportunity that comes to a country at the most once in a generation. There was a people's revolution. A dictator was overthrown after a nine-year rule. A civilian government came in to power in Pakistan and one of its first actions was to place the ISI under the Interior Ministry.
But when Washington didn't come to support the civilian government in Islamabad, within the 24 hours the Generals managed to pressure the government and that order was cancelled. Sharif, it's important to understand, Sharif's background. His name maybe Sharif but he is no sharif. He is a very clever politician who has danced on both sides of the civil-military divide in Pakistan.
He was the military's front man. He was a protege of General Zia who fathered Pakistan's jihad culture. And throughout his career, he has, he had a cozy relationship with the military, you know. It was the military, which actually helped him come to power at first as Chief Minister, and then as Prime Minister, he finally fell foul of the military and the key lesson that he has learnt from his last stint as Prime Minister is not a clash with military establishment. So he has no stomach to try and reclaim foreign policy domain from the military establishment.
NDTV: Let me, I just wanted to get, on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, one of the major achievements, some would say one of the major steps India-Pakistan would be this whole desire for a visit of the Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan. And Pakistan has renewed that invitation time and time again. From UPA-I to UPA-II that seems very unlikely that it's now going to happen. When you look back at the Manmohan Singh tenure, one of course, when you were associated with UPA-I, do you see it as one of the failed opportunities with Pakistan? Do you think that the Prime Minister could have actually done more or was he actually just, in a sense, a victim, as Dr Chellaney said, that India just sits back, is the victim of aggression by Pakistan?
Sanjaya Baru: First of all let's see what happened. We began a dialogue with President Musharraf. In fact it was, as Brahma who correctly said, that the dialogue began in Prime Minister's time. So we picked up a process started by Prime Minister Vajapayee and that process was accelerated. I can tell you that in 2004, sorry 2005 March, when Dr Manmohan Singh decided to invite President Musharraf, many of the things that Brahma has just said about Nawaz Sharif were said about Musharraf.
'He is the original architect of the Kargil war, or this man is an Army General, he is a Machiavellian character. how can you trust him? What dialogue you can have with that guy etc?' But you look at that dialogue process; for four years, 2008 we had a place a formula which has been acknowledged by President Musharraf here in Delhi, in a conference by writers like AG Noorani etc, which many believe would be the real basis for any long term settlement of the Kashmir issue. I think that was a concrete achievement.
The second concrete achievement was Pakistan gave up their demand for a plebiscite in the United Nations and their entire rhetoric at the UN had changed in that period. The problem for us in 2008 or rather problem for Dr Manmohan Singh, was that when the point had arrived for him to take this really forward, it is President Musharraf who came under huge cloud at home, late 2007 I think.
He came under a huge cloud that - the lawyers' strike, the judges strike etc - his government becomes shaky. But very quickly Dr Manmohan Singh began talking with Benazir Bhutto, knowing that she would come to power. Benazir Bhutto was intimately involved in the dialogue that Dr Manmohan Singh had with Mr Pervez Musharraf.
Unfortunately, she was assassinated and the Zardari government proved to be weaker. If Benazir Bhutto had been there, rather than President Zardari, it might have a much stronger government there and much stronger civilian presence there in Pakistan. Things could have been very different. Now President Musharraf is being accused of having killed Benazir Bhutto.
We don't know if that is true of not, but the fact is that that is what halted the process. It is not Manmohan Singh deterring or you know afraid of whatever, it is what happened in Pakistan that halted the process. After 2009, he made a precondition that he would visit Pakistan provided there is a progress on 26/11, and the fact is that there has been no progress and therefore he has not gone.
And I began by saying that this talk about his having some kind of emotional thing, of wanting to visit these places, utter nonsense. I don't think there is any such emotional thing. He will go as the Prime Minister of India on the basis of a national consensus, within India, that the time has come for his visit.
NDTV: So one of the challenges the new government will face as well, let's see what happens if that meeting eventually happens with the Prime Ministers. Well thank you all very much for joining me tonight for this Dialogue, its been wonderful having you, thank you.