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The Modi government has been diplomatically polite and is in no haste to reach out to Pakistan for bilateral talks yet.

On the face of it, Pakistan's elected Prime Minister Imran Khan seems to be doubling down on pushing for restarting an engagement process with India. Over the last few weeks, the signals being sent from across the Radcliffe line are all dripping with the desire for a dialogue with India. In his latest missive, Imran Khan has claimed that “Pakistan follows a policy of peaceful neighbourhood” and has called for “working for durable peace and stability in South Asia and the peaceful resolution of all outstanding issues, including the Jammu and Kashmir dispute”.

The Modi government has so far resisted the temptation of biting the bait. Unlike the past, when newly elected governments would show unseemly haste, even alacrity, in reaching out to Pakistan, this time the Modi government has played it cool. It has been diplomatically polite and correct in responding to messages from Pakistan, but at the same time has also shown a sort of aloofness and detachment that is refreshingly different from the past.

Despite speculations among the usual suspects in Delhi who bend over backwards to insert Pakistan into everything, a calculated snub was administered when no invitation was sent to Islamabad for the swearing-in ceremony of season 2 of the Modi government. This was followed up by the new External Affairs Minister Dr S. Jaishankar making it clear that while India continues to follow a ‘neighbourhood first’ policy, the focus of this policy has shifted from being about SAARC to being about BIMSTEC. And then, the MEA spokesman ended the kite-flying about a possible meeting between the Prime Minister’s of India and Pakistan at Bishkek on the sidelines of the SCO summit meeting by making it clear that “no bilateral meeting had been set up or organised”.

 The Modi government appears quite resolute about sticking to India’s declared policy that talks and terror cannot go together. But it would be wrong to construe from this that diplomatic niceties will be dispensed. This means that in Bishkek if the two Prime Ministers come face to face, they will exchange pleasantries and perhaps even shake hands. It is also possible that they might have what in diplomatic parlance is called a ‘pull-aside’ and talk something more serious than just the weather. But it seems that such a meeting will be used more for laying down red-lines, and making clear that if Pakistan indeed practises what is professes – peaceful neighbourhood and all that – then it must demonstrate it on the ground.

Without some kind of prior actions on issues of concern to India – an essential prerequisite for judging Pakistan's intentions – to re-engage Pakistan merely on the basis of empty verbiage would be a blunder. Of course, India has for long been a past master in committing such blunders with Pakistan, getting taken in by Pakistan's forked tongue and falling prey to Pakistan's double-speak and double-game. Hopefully, Modi having been repeatedly stabbed in the back in the first three years of his season 1 in government, will not get fooled again. Post the surgical strikes in 2016, the Pakistan policy of the Modi government has undergone a dramatic transformation. The turn-the-other-cheek policy that Modi’s predecessors followed now appears to be history. The new policy, although still a work-in-progress, is more realistic, robust, rounded and retaliatory instead of being reconciliatory and remonstrative as it was in the past.

And yet, there is the nagging sense that the government might just throw the dice once again to see if something can be worked out with Pakistan. A hint of this came in a story filed by someone enjoying the reputation of being the unofficial spin doctor of the PMO in which it is indicated that under international pressure, Pakistan is starting to take some action against terror groups. Normally such a story is nothing more than a regurgitation of stuff that has been appearing in the Pakistani press for weeks, much of it aimed at softening the international public opinion by trying to signal that Pakistan is acting against the terrorists it has nurtured for decades. Aside of the fact that this is a trick Pakistan has done to death, it is the prominence given to the story that raises eyebrows because it seems this time the effort is to soften the Indian public opinion to some kind of engagement with the Pakistanis.

If indeed this is the case, then it would tantamount to once again buying Pakistani snake-oil. The fact is that whatever little action has been taken against the jihad factory inside Pakistan is not because of a change of heart, much less a change in its jihad-driven policy, but because of international pressure, including FATF. Add to this the parlous state of the Pakistan economy which is going to find funding the confrontation with India difficult for the foreseeable future. The bottom-line is that until now, there is not a single indication that Pakistan is genuinely sincere in wanting peace with India. The mention of the K word – Kashmir – in Imran’s letter is enough of a marker that nothing has changed.

Imran’s overtures are nothing more than a smokescreen to disguise Pakistan's perfidy, to buy time and create some space for Pakistan which finds itself against a wall. There is no reason for India to throw a lifeline to an enemy, certainly not until the enemy gives India satisfaction on its demands.

This commentary originally appeared in Mail Today.

Sushant Sareen (ORF)
14 June 2019

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