Bending over backwards in Kathmandu?

If there had been a Saarc summit five months ago, the prospects of a meeting between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and India’s rockstar leader, Prime Minister Narendra Modi would have been positively mouth-watering.
India and Pakistan have been in desperate need of visionary and politically courageous leadership in bilateral relations for decades. The memory of the 1998 Lahore summit between Atal Behari Vajpayee and PM Sharif lingers like a soft, teasing, momentary embrace, at least for Pakistani doves. Here we are almost seventeen years later, still waiting for consummation.
Five months ago, the lingering hope of that Vajpayee moment tugged persuasively at our imaginations. PM Modi was freshly anointed and had all the political capital in the world to spend. Here in Pakistan, PM Sharif was merrily snoozing along, undisturbed by anything remotely resembling the sleeplessness caused to him by Imran Khan and his incessant protests.
Five months ago, a Saarcsummit in Kathmandu would have offered all kinds of poignant asymmetry. Particularly because of what happened in Kathmandu, not in 1998, between two democratically elected prime ministers, but a bit later on, in January 2002.
Do you remember it? ‘The Handshake’. It was when Kargil War architect General Pervez Musharraf made nice with Vajpayee at the 2002 Saarc summit in Kathmandu. The most eloquent paean to that dramatic performance came from Indian journalist Jawed Naqvi, who wrote this in response:
“In a command performance laced with humility, eloquence, fair play and a firm resolve to seek peace with dignity, President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday forced Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee to rise and shake hands with him, a move that many believe could help deter the two countries from their untenable logic of war.”
When it comes to India, Pakistanis have consistently been teased more with dramatic performances than with substance. The latest drama that dreamy-eyed Pakistani optimists are secretly hoping for is a grand gesture by PM Sharif that matches the ‘command performance’ of Gen Musharraf in 2002. I know this because I am one such optimist. In the last five months, however, I find my optimism increasingly fanciful, and decreasingly fruitful. It may be time to get real about India though, because while Pakistan demonstrates a broadly corrective trajectory in its foreign policy, India’s PM Modi and his people are hardened realists and they are playing hardball.
First, the facts. India is bigger, economically more dynamic, geopolitically more robust, militarily more secure, and internally more coherent than any of its neighbours. India has an assertive and highly educated middle class that seethes with ambition and existential anger about India’s role in the world, not just in the last 67 years, but more broadly since the Mughals ruled over Mother India. This anger has been farmed productively by third generation Hindu extremists (a la RSS and BJP), in partnership with big business in India, to produce an intimidating combination of competence and swagger. India enjoys this swagger not just on its own shores but also through its massive, incredibly wealthy and influential diaspora. Bottom line? India is already a regional behemoth, and its role in the world is going to keep growing.
Pakistan has myriad problems, but it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a helpless state. Pakistan can choose to engage India in a number of ways. The choices we make will have consequences for us.
Using violence, either of the formal state-sanctioned type, or the informal, non-state type, will almost assuredly isolate us further from the international community. It will most definitely diminish our economic prospects. This is why all kinds of violence against India must be eschewed. The infrastructure of violent extremists that exists in Pakistan must be wholly and relentlessly dismantled, with rehabilitation for those that have been exploited, and long prison terms for those that have misused Pakistani freedom to harm Pakistan’s national interests. We must be unsparing in this pursuit and learn to recognise that all violent actors outside of uniform are in fact ‘bad’. The only ‘good’ instrument of violence in a civilised society is the taxpayer-funded soldier and policeman.
Eschewing violence does not mean Pakistan should sit idly while being attacked. Indian aggression on the border, and India-sponsored terror within our territory should be exposed and countered robustly. To do this, Pakistan needs a well-stocked, well-trained, well-rested military and intelligence capability. This is challenging in an environment of IMF loans and lackadaisical economic growth. This means Pakistan needs to grow economically, fast, and hard.
To grow, Pakistan needs to increase its exports. Above all other instruments, exports are the vehicle through which growth becomes inevitable. This demands a range of factors to come together harmoniously – none of which are being prevented by anything India does or can do. We need more electricity, better governance, less elitism, more robust domestic financial markets. Not having these things isn’t a RAW conspiracy. It is our internal ineptitude.
The most obvious trade partners Pakistan can have are its large and small neighbours. India is the largest among them. From Shaan masalas to Gul Ahmed Textiles, Pakistani products can be the rage in India and around the world – but this requires trade deals and enabling frameworks.
Pakistani leaders, from former President Asif Zardari, to Maulana Fazlur Rehman, to Altaf Hussain, to Imran Khan and especially PM Sharif all understand this – which is why, save some disgruntled car manufacturers and old-fashioned hyper-nationalists, there is no debate on the issue of trade with India. This is also why India has been off the radar of Pakistani politicians as a political issue for almost two decades. Pakistan realises it must have normal relations with India.
Unfortunately, India also realises this. The dithering leaders of Congress knew many things, but could do nothing. The BJP is different. Knowing what it knows, it has now decided, in concert with the hawks that populate both India’s civilian bureaucracy and the Indian army, that it is time to move the goalposts in South Asia. For years, Pakistan has clumsily, but consistently tried to find a way to ‘normalise’ the relationship. The Musharraf four-point formula, Sharif’s repeated signals to big business in India, Zardari’s multipronged outreach to New Delhi all kept trying to do the same thing: get headway for normalisation.
Two things happened concurrent to these efforts. One, Pakistan allowed India to have the mistaken impression that Occupied Kashmir was a non-issue. Second, non-state violent actors and their terrorist attacks on the Indian parliament (2001) and on Mumbai (2008) allowed India to redefine the relationship in the context of ‘terrorism’.
PM Modi is now attempting to unilaterally alter the relationship, taking Pakistan’s relationship with the Hurriyet conference off the table. In doing so, he knows full well, that he is helping weaken Pakistani democrats. If PM Sharif agrees to this, he will be savagely attacked at home – and whatever glimmer of hope exists for normalisation will be extinguished. Best of all, PM Modi will be able to pretend that this was all a product of the civil-military discord in Pakistan. He has acted with incredible precision.
Pakistan’s response to PM Modi’s destructive approach to Pakistan must not be a continuation of the last decade or more of clumsiness. India is purposefully setting the bar for normalisation impossibly high. Instead of bending over backwards to shake PM Modi’s hand, it is time for PM Sharif to play hard to get.
If the Indians respond with cold nonchalance, well, that will be a continuation of what we have now: status quo. If India responds with renewed interest in the relationship, then of course, that’s what’s best for Pakistan and South Asia anyway. The only course of action for PM Sharif in Kathmandu is stoic firmness. Not heart-warming dramatics. The only advice he needs in Kathmandu? Don’t bend over backwards to shake that hand.
The writer is an analyst and commentator.