The road to peace between any two nations locked in a longstanding dispute is always bumpy. Yet, no road is perhaps bumpier than the one connecting India and Pakistan. The two South Asian siblings have so much in common, and yet are unable to overcome the bitter and bloody legacy of the Partition in 1947 and the problems subsequently created.
For peacemakers on both sides of the border, their efforts have seemed Sisyphean, doomed to be forever futile. Like the ancient Greek king whose punishment for his misdeeds condemned him to endlessly roll a heavy stone up a mountain, they too have found that the nearer they reach the summit of their efforts, the more predictably the stone trundles down, requiring them to start their mission all over again.
How many summit meetings have taken place, beginning with the Nehru-Liaquat Pact in 1950? How many official bilateral meetings and unofficial Track 1.5 and Track 2 parleys have been conducted? How many nicely-worded agreements, joint statements and peace declarations have been issued? The number is difficult to count. However, genuine peacemakers do not give up. For, if they do, they are not peacemakers at all.
Perhaps learning this important lesson of history, prime ministers Narendra Modi and Nawaz Sharif, at their bilateral meeting in Ufa, Russia, on July 10, have together exclaimed:
"Dum Laga ke Haisha!" A highly unsatisfactory translation of this colourful colloquial, widely understood in both India and Pakistan, would be: Give it all your energy, one more time.
The two had shown a highly-promising personal chemistry when Modi, in a globally-lauded gesture, invited Sharif (along with other heads of state or government from SAARC countries) to attend his swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi on May 26 last year. Yet, in just three months, the stone of peace diplomacy rolled disappointingly down again when India suddenly called off secretary-level talks because of some Hurriyat leaders' meeting with Pakistan's high commissioner, Abdul Basit, in New Delhi. It was an ill-conceived and knee-jerk decision that put a big question mark on the future of Indo-Pak dialogue.
Both Modi and Sharif deserve credit for breaking the deadlock in Ufa, when they met on the sidelines of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) summit. It was not a perfunctory photo-op meeting, meant just to have a face-saving handshake like the one at the SAARC summit in Kathmandu in November last year. Surprising one and all, the Prime Ministers not only talked well beyond the pre-announced time but also produced a weighty joint statement. They "condemned terrorism in
all its forms and agreed to cooperate with each other to eliminate this menace from South Asia." Cynics might ask: What's new in this?
This is what's new. Condemnation of terrorism in all its forms means Pakistan has addressed a key Indian concern - Islamabad cannot distinguish between "bad terrorists" who target the Pakistani state and its people, and "good terrorists" who spare Pakistan but target India. This commitment is further reinforced by the declaration about the two governments' willingness to eliminate, through mutual cooperation, the menace of terrorism from "South Asia" as a whole.
This latter formulation has major implications. It means that Pakistan, which unfortunately allowed itself to become an epicentre of global terrorism and Islamist extremism, stands committed to the fight against terrorism emanating from its soil and directed at India. This commitment was of course the highlight of the joint statement issued after the meeting between Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf, when the two had a bilateral meeting on the sidelines of the SAARC summit in Islamabad in 2004. However, the Modi-Sharif agreement goes two crucial steps further. Firstly, the reference to "South Asia" means Pakistan has also indirectly agreed to help stop terrorism in Afghanistan, a member of SAARC. Islamabad is currently hosting peace talks between ISI-supported Taliban, who often operate out of Pakistan, and officials of the Afghan government.
Secondly, the agreement explicitly mentions Pakistan's commitment to cooperate in expediting the trial in the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks case. This is surely a reassuring new development. Also, implicit in the agreement about mutual cooperation to fight terrorism is the recognition that terrorism, in all its forms, is a
common threat to both India and Pakistan. We in India have so far been hesitant and reluctant to accept that Pakistan too is a victim of terrorism, even though we readily - and rightly - blame it for perpetrating terrorism aimed at us. On their part, Pakistan's rulers were earlier unwilling to acknowledge that the menace of Islamist terrorism they had engendered was bleeding their own country. However, this is slowly changing. In December 2014, Pakistan's Chief of the Army Staff, Gen Raheel Sharif, candidly stated that his country's current enemy "lives within us and looks like us". After all, nearly 50,000 people, mostly Pakistani Muslims, have been killed in terrorist attacks inside Pakistan in the past 12 years.
The Modi-Sharif agreement casts two responsibilities on India, too. The Indian government cannot turn a blind eye to acts of terrorism suspected to have been perpetrated by some Muslim-hating Hindutva extremists. Secondly, even though Kashmir, an emotive issue with Pakistan, is not mentioned in the agreement, the reference to it is clear when the two leaders have expressed their willingness "to discuss all outstanding issues". Therefore, the Modi government will have to soon make its views known on how it wants to address the issue of Kashmir vis-a-vis Pakistan. Contrary to what many BJP supporters think, India cannot plausibly maintain that Kashmir is only an internal issue, and that it does not concern Pakistan. As per the Shimla Agreement of 1972, the final settlement on Kashmir is yet to take place, albeit within a bilateral Indo-Pak framework.
One thing is certain. By resuming the stalled dialogue process with Pakistan, Modi has pleasantly surprised his critics, and unpleasantly surprised those of his jingoistic admirers who believe that the only to deal with Pakistan is "to teach them a lesson". With this sensible decision, one can hope he will have far more substantive bilateral talks when he visits Pakistan next year to attend the SAARC summit.
This deliberate choice of moderation on the part of Modi in dealing with Pakistan places him in the league of other sincere and passionate peacemakers in India - Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Lal Krishna Advani, Dr Manmohan Singh. True, they did not succeed in their endeavours. Indeed, Advani had to pay a heavy price because of his peacemaking efforts when he, as president of the BJP, went to Pakistan in 2005. Dr Singh had made much headway in his parleys with Pakistani leaders, especially on the contentious issue of Kashmir. Unfortunately for him, the 2008 terror attack on Mumbai derailed this important project.
The most determined peacemaking effort was made by Vajpayee. Even before he completed his first year in office, he undertook his courageous bus yatra to Lahore in February 1999. And notwithstanding Pakistan's betrayal in Kargil, he invited Musharraf to summit talks in Agra in July 2001. The talks failed, but he persisted in his efforts to normalise relations with Pakistan - guided by his belief that India and Pakistan must learn to live in peace because, as he famously said, "We can change history, but not geography". A historic outcome of his endeavour was the Vajpayee-Musharraf joint statement in 2004.
Modi seems to be following Vajpayee's footsteps. On normalising the internal situation in Jammu & Kashmir, he has reiterated the first BJP prime minister's wise policy of promoting "Insaaniyat (humanism), Kashmiriyat (syncretic Hindu-Muslim ethos of Kashmir) and Jamhooriyat (democracy)". His green signal to the innovative experiment of a BJP-PDP government in J&K has helped strengthen democracy in the state.
Similarly, Narendra Atal Bihari Modi should be bold and innovative in pursuit of a principled breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations. Unlike his predecessors, he has the requisite parliamentary mandate to pursue this noble goal.
(The writer was an aide to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Comments are welcome at sudheenkulkarni@gmail.com)Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this article are the personal opinions of the author. The facts and opinions appearing in the article do not reflect the views of NDTV and NDTV does not assume any responsibility or liability for the same.