Not an India-Pakistan Problem

The cancellation of Foreign Secretary-level talks has little to with the peace process between the two countries and everything to do with the domestic compulsions and calculations of Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad and Narendra Modi in New Delhi

India’s cancellation of Foreign Secretary level talks with Pakistan, after Islamabad’s envoy in New Delhi met with Kashmiri separatists despite Government opposition, has led to much concern over how the larger peace process between the two countries will now unravel. Some commentators have cheered the move as a strong step taken by a purposeful Government — they say it’s a welcome break from the spineless foreign policy pursued by the UPA in particular and past regimes in general. After all, which legitimate state power will tolerate a foreign Government courting separatist leaders on its territory?

Besides, in the present case, Foreign Secretary Sujatha Singh had personally conveyed to the Pakistani High Commissioner in New Delhi, Abdul Basit, the Government of India’s opposition to his meeting with separatist leaders. She had given him a clear choice: Either you talk to us or you to talk to them. Once the High Commissioner hosted Shabir Shah on Monday (he also held talks with Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Umar Farooq on Tuesday), the Government had no choice but to call off the August 25 meeting. Had it not done so, Pakistan would have assumed that it was bluffing, which this Government clearly wasn’t .

On the other side of the debate are commentators who believe that the decision to call off the talks exposes Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s diplomatic inexperience. Meetings between Kashmiri separatists and Pakistani diplomats and politicians have been the norm for several years now but, while some administrations in New Delhi facilitated such interactions and others merely tolerated it, none has thrown such a tantrum. The nay-sayers also point out that New Delhi’s reaction has once again brought Kashmir to the forefront of the India-Pakistan bilateral, thereby damaging the peace process template that has been in use since 1997. They fear that letting irritants play up in this fashion, will take both countries back to a time when there were no talks at all because New Delhi and Islamabad couldn't get past Kashmir. 

And then there are others who have opined that in the larger scale of things, one cancelled meeting between Foreign Secretaries is no big deal, and this episode should push the Modi Government to re-imagine India’s Pakistan policy, which, for all practical purposes is non-existent. Ask yourself: Does New Delhi have a plan of action with regard to Pakistan that will lead to some sort of a convergence of interests for both parties? Agreed, Pakistan will have to contribute its fair share but what is India’s gameplan anyway? As of now, not a whole lot.

Each of the above narratives has its own pros and con; however, they all have one thing in common — viewing the recent developments through a foreign policy prism. Now, while there are, of course, key foreign policy elements in this, this latest crisis is, first and foremost, of a domestic nature. This is true for both India and Pakistan and their respective responses to the situation.

The Pakistani side of the story should be fairly obvious to just about anyone watching the news that’s coming in from Islamabad. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s Government is effectively under siege. Opposition leader Imran Khan and the maverick Canadian cleric Tahirul Qadri have led thousands of their supporters onto the national capital, where they have been parked for days, demanding the resignation of Mr Sharif. Mr Khan has charged the Prime Minister with electoral fraud and claimed, a whole year after Mr Sharif was sworn into office with an overwhelming majority, that he does not have the mandate to govern.

Irrespective of the substance in Mr Khan’s charges, his so-called protest movement, fuelled by a romanticised idea of a revolution, is by far the most significant political challenge to the Sharif Government. While it is unlikely that Mr Khan will bring about a regime change on his own, the situation may take a turn for the worse if the military, which up until now has been watching the show from the sidelines, steps into the fray. Against this backdrop, Mr Sharif naturally wants the Army on his side. In other words, he will not pick a fight with the Army on a foreign policy issue at this time, least of all on one that is as close to the hearts of the generals in Rawalpindi as the Kashmir dispute. If anything, now is when he allows the Army even more leeway on such issues — as the provocative cross-border firing along the Line of Control (which, incidentally, became fewer since the talks were called off) stands proof. 

From the Indian point of view, the ongoing turbulence in Pakistan is, of course, reason enough to be sceptical of the possibility for any meaningful dialogue. But the Government’s strong stance on the separatist issue is a message primarily aimed at the domestic constituency in Jammu & Kashmir. The State goes to the poll in about three months time, and Mr Modi has to ensure a free and fair election. Polls in the State are a contentious affair, given the separatists’ vociferous and violent opposition to the democratic exercise which they see as an ‘imposition’ of Indian statehood. However, since former Prime Ministers Manmohan Singh and Atal Bihari Vajpayee had managed to conduct the elections without an ensuing bloodbath, Mr Modi cannot allow the separatists to disrupt the election (as they surely will try, doubly hard) under his watch.

Moreover, Mr Modi also has his eyes on the State Legislature. The Bharatiya Janata Party did remarkably well in Jammu & Kashmir in the Lok Sabha election early this year — it won three of the State’s six parliamentary seats in Udhampur, Ladakh and Jammu (where a relatively junior BJP leader, Mr Jitendra Singh, defeated veteran Congress leader, UPA Union Minister and former State Chief Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad by a veritable margin of 60,000 votes).

Together, these Lok Sabha seats add up to 41 Assembly seats. If the BJP can add three more seats to its kitty, it will have a simple majority in the State Legislature and will be able to form the Government in Jammu & Kashmir for the first time in its history. Named ‘Mission 44+’, the BJP’s electoral strategy was launched with much fanfare last month by president Amit Shah who himself is on a winning high having delivered Uttar Pradesh, where the party had almost no presence for decades, during the Lok Sabha election. There is a solid chance that he will win Jammu & Kashmir for the BJP as well (more so, since the other traditional political players in the State, such as the Congress and the National Conference are in tatters). For now, it makes complete sense for Mr Modi to focus on this project, which is a low hanging fruit.

As for the peace talks, they can always be resumed at a later date when both parties agree to the ground rules of the game, and when, in general, the political environment is more conducive for play. Anyway, not a whole lot was expected from the August 25 meeting.

(This article was published in the op-ed section of The Pioneer on August 21, 2014) 

Fresh Winds May Blow Soon

Manmohan Singh and the Government he has only nominally led have frittered away the robust Vajpayee legacy in foreign affairs. If the BJP comes to power with Narendra Modi as Prime Minister, it could bring tectonic, positive changes in the country’s international relations

 In recent weeks, at least two prominent Indian commentators have opined that if Mr Narendra Modi becomes Prime Minister, as is widely expected, his biggest impact will be felt not so much on India’s economic policy but its foreign policy agenda. On April 9, soon after the BJP released its election manifesto, Firstpost editor R Jagannathan observed, “If Modi were to become PM, foreign and security policy could be in for another churn”, and go through a “sea change”. The same day, C Raja Mohan, one of the country’s most respected journalists and foreign policy analysts, wrote in The Indian Express that the “vagueness” in the BJP manifesto should allow Mr Modi “considerable freedom to put his own stamp on India’s foreign policy”. 

The focus on Mr Modi in the foreign policy sphere is interesting, given that the BJP’s prime ministerial candidate does not have a particularly active profile in this regard. Almost all his time as a senior politician has been spent in Gujarat and he has no experience with the processes that guide India’s engagement with the world. To the casual observer, he may, therefore, seem like an untested hand in foreign policy matters, and more so since Mr Modi has focussed only limited attention on the subject during his election campaign. This is not unusual since  foreign policy is hardly a talking point during elections.

But even as Mr Modi holds the cards close to him in this case, comparisons with Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee have already begun. The last BJP Prime Minister, Mr Vajpayee is credited with taking India’s foreign policy to new highs — he tested nuclear weapons that initially led to international sanctions but eventually brought India nuclear legitimacy; he significantly improved the country’s relations with Pakistan despite the process being disrupted by the Kargil conflict; the joint declaration with China that he signed during his landmark trip to the Middle Kingdom in 2003 still forms the basic framework for border dispute talks; and, finally, it was under his leadership that New Delhi shrugged off its Cold War inhibitions and vitalised ties with the US. Indeed, when Mr Vajpayee demitted the Prime Minister’s Office, he left his successor a rich legacy of global engagement.

Unfortunately, Mr Manmohan Singh and the Government he only nominally led frittered away that legacy in this past decade. As the BJP manifesto notes, “The Congress-led UPA has failed to establish enduring friendly and cooperative relations with India’s neighbours. India’s relations with traditional allies have turned cold. India and its neighbours have drifted apart”. In response, the BJP has vowed to “build a strong, self-reliant and self-confident India” that will “regain its rightful place in the comity of nations”.

This has been interpreted by many as indicative of a “muscular” foreign policy under Mr Modi, although what exactly that means is unclear. What can be expected though is that, if Mr Modi takes up the top job, he will be a strong and decisive leader and craft a foreign policy that furthers the country’s “best national interests” (to use a phrase from the manifesto). 

Similarly, analysts have also been talking about what the BJP means when it says that it will “create a web of allies to mutually further our interests”. Does this mean India may shed its non-alignment policies under Mr Modi? This is highly unlikely. In recent years, India has forged a series of strategic partnerships with different countries while still holding onto its strategic autonomy. There is no reason to believe that a Modi-led Government will stray from that path. However, one can expect a greater emphasis on India’s role as an Asian power — particularly in the strengthening of relations with Japan, China and, to a lesser extent, Singapore and South Korea. 

India’s relations with Japan are already on the upswing and will get another big push if Mr Modi comes to power. Japan has been doing a lot of business with Mr Modi’s Gujarat and those experiences will be carried forward to the national level. Also, Mr Modi has a close personal relationship with Mr Shinzo Abe, the staunchly pro-India Prime Minister of Japan. In 2007, during his first term as Prime Minister, Mr Abe gave a warm welcome to Mr Modi in Tokyo; when Mr Modi returned to Japan in 2012, Mr Abe was in the Opposition, but the duo still met; months later in December that year, when Mr Abe returned to power, Mr Modi personally called to congratulate — a noticeable event given that Mr Modi was not a national leader.  Moreover, both men are portrayed as nationalists focussed on the country’s economic resurgence which makes their partnership almost natural.  

As regards China, alarmists have already raised red flags about Mr Modi’s comments, made in Arunachal Pradesh, on protecting India’s territorial integrity. They have been quick to assume that this means India may take on a provocative stance against China, which it can ill-afford, even though the Chinese themselves dismissed the statements as catering to domestic concerns during an election campaign. Also, there is reason enough to assume that under his leadership, India’s relations with China will realise their full potential, especially in trade. Mr Modi has travelled to China four times already and, in 2011, was received in the Great Hall of the People, a landmark event largely ignored by the Indian media.  

The BJP manifesto also says, “Instead of being led by Big Power interests, we will engage proactively on our own with countries in the neighbourhood and beyond.” This again has been interpreted as a snub to the West, particularly the US which finds no mention in the manifesto. But before reading too much into it, let’s not forget that no other country is individually named in the manifesto. Also, given Mr Modi’s reputation as a realist politician, one can be reasonably sure that he will not allow relations between the two countries to deteriorate on his watch. If anything, given Mr Modi’s emphasis on economic ties, one can expect a significant strengthening of trade relations between the two countries which have plateaued in recent years. However, the US’s earlier insult of Mr Modi will remain in the backdrop — so do not be surprised if he drops by Tehran on his way to Washington, DC.

Finally, there has been a lot of hullabaloo over the BJP’s promise to design an “independent strategic nuclear programme” by updating the current doctrine in keeping with the challenges of time. This was being widely seen as the party’s code for junking the ‘no first use’ principle; and Modi-baiters conveniently used this to fuel fears of ‘war-mongering’ by the man commonly described as a ‘Hindu nationalist strongman’ — no matter that there is consensus across India’s strategic community that the NFU needs to be revisited at the earliest.

Their bubble of vacuous commentary burst as soon as BJP president Rajnath Singh put to rest all speculation about the NFU being revised. It remains unclear why Mr Singh made such a definitive statement; the nuclear doctrine is not a major electoral plank — but it is hoped that, if Mr Modi comes to power, he will update India’s nuclear policy, as promised in his party manifesto.

(This op-ed was published in The Pioneer on April 17, 2014)