When Indian Foreign, Minister Sushma Swaraj, visited Pakistan recently amid feverish media speculation whether she will come due to the unfriendly nature of the ties between the two neighbouring countries, hopes were immediately raised as even a small breakthrough in their relations is considered something significant.

Though Swaraj tried to downplay the importance of her visit in the context of New Delhi’s relations with Islamabad by arguing that she had specifically come to attend the Heart of Asia Conference that focused on Afghanistan, her presence in Islamabad and high-profile meetings with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Foreign Affairs Advisor, Sartaj Aziz, managed to keep up the momentum.

That momentum was generated earlier by the brief chat between Sharif and Indian Premier Narendra Modi on the sidelines of the climate change conference in Paris and the subsequent, surprise meeting at the neutral venue of Bangkok, involving their respective national security advisors and foreign secretaries.

By the time Swaraj, reputed as one of the firebrand Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders known for her tough posture towards Pakistan, departed for home, the two sides had agreed to revive their long-suspended dialogue even though the process was given a new name.

Renaming the dormant composite dialogue process as comprehensive bilateral dialogue was apparently an attempt by India’s ruling BJP to show that it was starting a new process instead of reviving the old one after having resisted talks with Pakistan, except on the issue of terrorism and until the acceptance of its demand for bringing to justice those accused of involvement in the November 2008 Mumbai carnage.

Even if the BJP took an aggressive line against Pakistan to win provincial elections in Bihar and elsewhere by appealing to the Hindutva voters, it didn’t work. It is true Modi-led India backtracked from its original stance and agreed to unrestricted talks on all contentious issues, including Kashmir, far more important was the fact that Islamabad and New Delhi were ready to talk again following the first visit by an Indian foreign minister to Pakistan since 2012.

This was the latest agreement between the South Asian neighbours in their bid to put their uncertain relationship on a more stable footing. It was another occasion for the almost 1.5 billion people inhabiting the subcontinent to feel hopeful about the future and less concerned about a war between the two nuclear-armed countries. However, there is also the realisation that the relationship could go wrong at the next hurdle or in case of another major terrorist attack in India like the one in Mumbai seven years ago.

The fragility of the Indo-Pakistan relations could be gauged from the fact that they couldn’t agree on resuming their cricketing ties despite reaching an agreement to start the comprehensive bilateral dialogue. This is despite the fact that most of the cricketers and people on both sides of the border want the keenly-awaited cricket match to begin sooner rather than later. Such is the unpredictable nature of the relationship that an already agreed cricket contest, offering fun and enjoyment to the people, was cancelled due to politics.

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It isn’t easy to keep count of the various agreements in different areas that Islamabad and New Delhi have concluded over the years. The major agreements are easy to remember as these ended wars and aimed at preventing future outbreak of hostilities. Falling in this category is the Tashkent agreement signed by President Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri in January 1966 through the good offices of Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin of the Soviet Union to withdraw their troops to pre-August 1965 lines prior to their 17-day September war and restore diplomatic relations.

Also important was the Simla Agreement signed in 1972 by Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to end their conflict, resolve disputes through peaceful means and designate the ceasefire line as the Line of Control (LoC) in Jammu and Kashmir that neither side will seek to alter unilaterally.

The Lahore Declaration signed by prime ministers Nawaz Sharif and Atal Bihari Vajpayee during the latter’s bus visit to Lahore in 1999 was the first major agreement reached since the Simla Agreement and led to a number of confidence-building measures that were undone not long after General Pervez Musharraf’s misadventure in Kargil.

Also significant was the ceasefire agreement of November 2003 along the LoC, the international border and the Siachen Glacier when Musharraf was ruling Pakistan and BJP’s Vajpayee was the prime minister of India. This was the first and most comprehensive ceasefire agreement between the two countries and is still holding. In fact, even during the recent cross-border shelling between the two sides on their working boundary, there was a broad consensus that the tenets of the 2003 ceasefire agreement should be followed.

The 2003 ceasefire accord set the stage for a more productive South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit in Islamabad in January 2004 where the decision was taken to undertake the composite dialogue process. It is interesting to note that the recent breakthrough in the India-Pakistan relations has set the stage for a useful SAARC summit in Islamabad in 2016 as Prime Minister Modi, too, will be coming to Pakistan on his first visit to attend the event.

The Indus Waters Treaty brokered by the World Bank and signed by President Ayub Khan and Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru in Karachi in September 1960 has stood the test of time and remained intact despite wars. It has served the people of India and Pakistan well and shown the way for more such agreements to make use of shared resources. Experts have warned against renegotiating it despite some of its imperfections due to modern challenges because reaching a consensus on an emotive issue like water in this age of hostility would be almost impossible.

Earlier in 1988, the two countries reached an agreement not to attack each other’s nuclear assets. In 1991, agreements were signed on providing advance notification of military exercises, manoeuvres and troops movements. This was also meant to prevent airspace violations and establish over-flight rules.

A joint declaration in 1989, prohibiting the use of chemical weapons, was signed in New Delhi. The 2006 agreement between Musharraf and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to establish a joint institutional anti-terrorism mechanism was also important, but distrust prevented its implementation.

Over the years, a number of technical agreements were concluded for redressal of trade grievances, mutual recognition and customs cooperation, opening of banks’ branches and investing in each other’s country, but implementation was hampered due to a host of factors. Plans to export Indian electricity and gas to Pakistan fell by the wayside.

However, certain agreements are intact and working despite slowing down at times of crises. The Samjhauta Express train between the two countries is running even though it was bombed in February 2007 near New Delhi, killing more than 60 Pakistani passengers, the cross-LoC trade has been disrupted but not scrapped and the bus service linking Muzaffarabad and Srinagar has continued despite occasional suspension.

Sports links are invariably revived after every episode of crisis in India-Pakistan relationship and politicians and human rights activists, trade and business leaders, poets and writers, journalists and artistes meet on almost a regular basis. Track II dialogues are frequently held between opinion-makers. Indian movies are screened in Pakistani cinemas and Pakistani TV dramas are shown on a dedicated channel in India. Pakistani artistes and singers have found work and fame in India and Indian actors and actresses have a huge fan following in Pakistan.

There is now almost no support for going to war with each other. The constituency for peace has grown. The fact that many agreements on trade, culture and people-to-people contacts are in place and working should serve as a basis for exploring further opportunities in these and other fields.