DANGERS OF BURIED STORIES - Forgetting history may harm India’s insight into the present

By Swapan Dasgupta

The extent to which India as a nation lacks a sense of history was driven home to me recently by an account of the Bangladesh Government’s commemoration of the liberation war of 1971.

Anxious to honour those Indians who had contributed the emergence of Bangladesh as an independent nation four decades ago, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina organised a series of events in Dhaka over the past two years. Since most of those who contributed, either publicly or under a cover of anonymity, to the liberation struggle had died, Bangladesh graciously invited their family members to accept the awards on their behalf. Predictably, since most of the non-Bangladeshis who played a role in ensuring the defeat of the brutal Pakistani regime between March and December of 1971 were Indians, the authorities in Dhaka were compelled to seek the assistance of the Government of India to locate the individuals or their families.

According to the officials in Bangladesh handling the commemoration, there was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in Delhi over Sheikh Hasina’s gracious gesture. In particular, Bangladeshi officials were stumped over the complete blank that greeted their inquiries of two individuals. One was an Indian Foreign Service officer managing the Pakistan desk in South Block, the only non-military Indian official present at the surrender of the Pakistan army in Dacca; and the other was a more shadowy figure, the right-hand man of R&AW chief R.N. Kao, operating from Calcutta. Inquiries about the first gentleman produced no results from the Ministry of External Affairs and the intelligence community in Delhi were unaware of the existence of one of the early stalwarts of R&AW.

At one level, the entire episode reeked of official indifference to anything that was not in the normal line of duty. Far more important, it seems to me, was the confirmation of a huge lacuna in ‘official’ India: the complete absence of institutional memory. The collapse of East Pakistan and the formation of Bangladesh was one of the most important chapters of India’s post-Independence history. It continues to define Pakistan’s attitude towards India and, as such, has a direct contemporary bearing. Yet, it is astonishing that absolutely no organised attempt is made to disseminate the history of that crisis to a new generation of diplomats who will be managing India’s relations with its neighbours in the future. This wilful disregard of history can be contrasted to the exacting importance the Pakistan Foreign Service and, for that matter, the Pakistani military establishment attaches to learning the lessons of its greatest national humiliation.

The publication of Gary J. Bass’s eminently readable The Blood Telegram: India’s Secret War in East Pakistan is as good an occasion as any to revisit the events of 1971. Based almost entirely on official US Government documents, the White House tapes pertaining to the presidency of Richard Nixon and the papers of Indira Gandhi’s Principal Secretary P.N. Haksar and the then Foreign Secretary T.N. Kaul, the book provides a gripping insight into the calculations of policy makers in Washington D.C, New Delhi and Islamabad. Although much of the narrative now belongs to the realms of history, there are important strands that have a direct bearing on the contemporary relations between India and Pakistan.

Bass’s most crucial revelation is one that was well known in official circles in India but was quite consciously hidden from public view and, consequently, is insufficiently factored in contemporary Indian assessments of Pakistan. The Pakistan army’s crackdown in erstwhile East Pakistan began as an offensive against Bangladeshi nationalism and the Awami League. This involved murderous action against students, political activists and the paramilitary forces staffed by Bengali speakers. However, once the Pakistan army entrenched itself in the towns it initiated a parallel campaign of ethnic cleansing of the minority Hindu population. So much so that by the time the Indian army began its military offensive against Pakistan in December 1971, nearly 80 per cent of the 8.5 million refugees who were camped in India were Hindus.

This attempt to ‘purify’ Pakistan of non-Muslims was well known to both India and the West, particularly the US. On July 19, 1971, Henry Kissinger, President Richard Nixon’s amoral Secretary of State, had remarked that President Yahya Khan of Pakistan had loved the cloak and dagger arrangements surrounding his ‘secret’ visit to China, adding: “Yahya hasn’t had such fun since the last Hindu massacre.”

The remark may have been characteristically tasteless—and the White House tapes resonate with Nixon and Kissinger outdoing each other in showering profanities on Indians and Bengalis—but it indicates that the viciously sectarian character of the Pakistan military regime was well known. It is a different matter that India deliberately underplayed the denominational details of the refugee problem to avoid any diversion from the fact that the crisis had stemmed from a Bengali uprising against Pakistani domination. However, in allowing the real story to remain buried for more than 40 years, India lost sight of a larger reality. It also glossed over the fact that Pakistan was not normal. A state that couldn’t countenance any deviation from its Islamic identity and, in fact, was fanatical enough to lose more than half the country on this count, cannot be judged by the accepted standards of international statecraft.

What emerges from the Nixon-Kissinger private exchanges is that Pakistan’s foremost ally was clear in its mind that Yahya had embarked on a path of self-destruction. Pakistan, they knew, couldn’t win a war against India in the East. At various point they even tried telling this to the “big, honourable, stupid man” that was the Pakistani President. However, as Kissinger was to confess later, Yahya “was oblivious to his perils and unprepared to face necessities. He and his colleagues did not feel India was planning war; if so, they were convinced that they would win. When I asked tactfully as I could about the Indian advantage in numbers and equipment, Yahya and his colleagues answered with bravado about the historic superiority of Moslem fighters.”

Ayub Khan too had believes that one Pakistani soldier was equal in worth to 20 Hindu fighters. This was the basis of his war to occupy Kashmir and even reach Delhi in 1965. In both 1965 and 1971, Pakistan failed to live up its exalted self-esteem. Yet the belief in its superior national character has never waned. There is a big section of the Pakistan establishment that believes that the country was “betrayed” in all its wars against India. Consequently, the belief that unflinching Islamic nationalism is the only way to realise Pakistan’s manifest destiny (in Kashmir or elsewhere) is deep-rooted and widespread.

For India this implies permanent danger on the frontiers. The threat is doubled by Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine that is premised on the understanding that the adversary in India is somehow a sub-human whose elimination is also a religious duty.

Beginning with Indira Gandhi and P.N. Haksar who felt that Pakistan must be allowed to recover from Dacca debacle with an iota of self-respect, to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh whose perception of the Pakistani national character is coloured by pre-Partition nostalgia, India has tried its best to couch neighbourly relations with civility and the lure of good economics. After each disappointment, India has tried to begin afresh, believing that pragmatism will mark every new generation in Pakistan. Each time history has hit back. 

In dealing with Pakistan, India cannot eschew institutional memory. We may have changed, become more cosmopolitan, more global and more post-national. Across the Radcliffe Line, however, the mindset of 1971 is alive and dreaming of revenge. 

The Telegraph, October 25, 2013

Time to let go of a bigger line of control?

By Swapan Dasgupta

For once it is difficult to blame the media for getting into a tizzy over events on the Line of Control. If enemy action resulted in the killing of five Indian soldiers, the matter cannot be shrugged off with the lament that ‘these things happen’. Nor can we be so heartless as to suggest, as a silly minister in Bihar did, that men in uniform have to be prepared for the ultimate sacrifice. No doubt the incident will be forgotten by the time Parliament re-convenes on Monday and shifts its gaze elsewhere, but the anger at a truculent neighbour will persist.

What will add to the hurt is the realisation that the those who have been entrusted with national security view human lives as a statistic in the larger game of ‘nuanced’ and ‘calibrated’ diplomacy. The national outrage that led to Defence Minister A.K. Antony modifying his initial statement about ‘men in Pakistani army uniform’ was not another example of sloppy drafting—recall how the Sharm-el-Sheikh joint statement of 2009 was similarly explained.  When it comes to Pakistan (and, for that matter, China) the ruling establishment is guilty of political and diplomatic cringe.

Whether this stems from the cultural inferiority of those who continue to believe that life begins and ends in Lahore or from the dissimulative skills of time-servers adept in telling political leaders what they want to hear is for historians to ascertain. The point is that Indian foreign policy has yet to come to terms with a curious question: how do you make peace with a neighbour whose sense of nationhood is centred on an enduring hatred of India? If this was merely a civilizational tussle, India could have lived with this dilemma. Unfortunately, the problem has extended to armed conflict: the “war of a thousand cuts” is a doctrinal facet of Pakistan which will not go away whether Zia-ul-Haq, Pervez Musharraf, Benazir Bhutto or Nawaz Sharif rules in Islamabad.

For just too long India has been clutching at straws, trying its best to strengthen the ‘good’ Pakistani vis-à-vis the ‘bad’ guys in the seminaries and cantonments. There is no harm in giving a helping hand to those Pakistanis disturbed by the country’s drift away from Jinnah’s political exclusivism. If collective appreciation of cricket, Bollywood and Manto could ensure that outstanding boundary disputes are left to another generation, India can encourage many more Pakistani writers and artists to attend literary festivals and mushairas. In pure economic terms, it makes more sense to dish out junkets to starry-eyed, American-educated, Pakistani women journalists who are active on twitter than re-equip entire artillery divisions with expensive military hardware. There is also little harm in allowing Pakistani traders to develop a stake in the Indian market because commerce has the ability to temper aggressive designs.

The problem, unfortunately, is far larger and many times more sinister. What Indian foreign policy seems to be underplaying is that the Pakistan of our imagination doesn’t really correspond with the Pakistan of 2013. The mismatch has been evident for some time, even when Zia-ul-Haq charmed the Delhi elite with presents of carpets and onyx ashtrays. But we have pretended otherwise.

Pakistan’s strategic doctrine rests on the belief that a weakened and, hopefully, fragmented India is in its national interest. This conviction was born after the General Niazi’s humiliating surrender in Dacca in 1971, was reinforced following the Kargil war of 1999, the collapse of the Taliban in Afghanistan in 2002 and the global hype over India’s economic achievements.

These setbacks have, however, not derailed the larger strategy. Pakistan successfully harassed India with the Khalistani movement, the insurgency in Kashmir and by nurturing terrorism. Today, it is sensing the re-conquest of Afghanistan and is emboldened by the religious radicalism in the Arab world. It also detects openings from a weak and fractured government in Delhi.

It is too late in the day to inject cement into the spine of the present Indian dispensation. This government seems a passing show. The time has come for India to ask a question that goes beyond the Prime Minister’s overdue visit to his ancestral village in Pakistan. Is a united Pakistan any longer in India’s larger national interest? The answer will suggest long-term strategies.

Sunday Times of India, August 11, 2013 

Pakistan provocative, India squeamish

By Swapan Dasgupta

There were two template reactions within India to the killing and mutilation of two jawans by Pakistani troops along the Line of Control last week.

First, apart from an influential minusculity that is disproportionately represented in the media and among the power elite of Lutyens’ Delhi, few Indians were surprised by this latest example of Pakistani butchery. They, in fact, saw the decapitation of a slain Indian army jawan as just another instalment in a saga that began with the monstrous genocide in East Pakistan in 1971 and became the new normal with the Pakistan army’s emergence as the operational hub of insurgency and terrorism throughout South Asia.  

I think it is wrong to refer to Pakistani perfidy. With Islamabad’s sponsorship of the war of a thousand cuts, the Kargil war, attack on Parliament, blasts in numerous Indian cities and the 26/11 massacre in Mumbai, the shedding of Indian blood has become an addiction to the Pakistan Establishment. Its nationhood, it would seem, depends on its ability to cause grief across its borders. Those who believe that Pakistan will somehow change are hallucinating. For them, it is a case of ‘Daman ki asha’.

The second predictable response was from the Indian Government. Since its election in 2004, the Congress-led UPA Government has proceeded on the principle that India is obliged to seek the normalisation of relations through “uninterrupted and uninterruptable” engagement, come what may. True, the ferocity of public indignation forced it to put a halt to the process in the aftermath of 26/11 but that was treated as an unfortunate aberration. Like the Panchshila doctrine that beguiled Jawaharlal Nehru into lowering India’s guard against China, the Manmohan Singh Government has reposed all its faith in the spirit of the Sharm-el-Sheikh.

In practice this has meant that every Pakistani provocation (barring the 26/11 attack) has been met with hand-wringing squeamishness. It has almost appeared that the victim is embarrassed by the brazenness and audacity of the perpetrators of crimes against itself. This seems to be the precise meaning of the “nuanced” and “calibrated” responses that South Block has forever promised. No wonder the Pakistan High Commissioner was caught on TV with both a smile and a smirk when he entered South Block last Wednesday. It was as if he knew that the diplomatic rebuke was a meaningless ritual New Delhi had to undertake to placate an angry public.  

The charade doesn’t end here. There are the odd occasions—as was the case last week when TV channels competed with the social media to wave the flag and express indignation over the killings and mutilations—when it becomes impossible to fob off the sense of outrage. In those times, ministers take turn to assure the nation that the sacrifices of the martyrs will not go in vain and that a “fitting response” awaits the blackguards in Pakistan. The calculation is that the dust will soon settle, the media focus will shift elsewhere and then it will be business as usual.

This is not to suggest that that our ministers aren’t patriotic or that people who have been entrusted with providing a holistic view of national security are disciples of the late but unlamented Neville Chamberlain—the British Prime Minister who believed that the best way to maintain peace was to concede everything to the adversary (and even pretend that the enemy was actually a friend). Yes, India’s decision-makers are fully aware that no belligerent action can be taken casually because we are, after all, dealing with a nuclear power. They are also aware that unilateral action risks internationalising a bilateral problem—something that Pakistan craves for.

Yet, behind these legitimate constraints is a far more acute problem about which India chooses to be in denial: New Delhi’s institutional awareness of the cross-currents in Pakistan is imperfect and its capacity for punitive action (that is, at the same time, deniable) is almost zero. In plain language this means that there is no worthwhile Indian network inside Pakistan, either for intelligence gathering or for covert action. Whatever little we know is courtesy friendly third countries.

This was not always so and there was a time (at least till the end of the 1980s) when India’s decision-makers knew exactly what was going on inside both civilian politics and the cantonments. The descent into ignorance came sometime between 1997 and 1998 when, in an act of monumental folly, the I.K. Gujral administration wound up the networks—some of which dated back to pre-Independence days. This dissolution was more than a casual administrative order. It even resulted in the betrayal and physical elimination of deeply embedded ‘assets’. Predictably, Pakistan did not reciprocate India’s unilateral genuflection at the altar of asymmetry. Its ability to cause pain to India is unimpaired. But the damage this early variant of Aman ki asha diplomacy did to India’s strategic interests is incalculable.

In the past week, India has been witness to an important phenomenon: public opinion is far ahead of the Government and the official strategic community in pressing for a robust defence of national interests. The Government’s passivity is based on a meek acceptance of the country’s strategic constraints; public impatience is centred on the belief that India can’t afford to be a permanent punching bag. One day, hopefully, public opinion will begin to shape government policy. Until then the country can merely grieve and fume in frustration. 

Sunday Pioneer, January 13, 2013

A dish best served cold

By Swapan Dasgupta

Last Wednesday, Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control, fired on an Indian army patrol and killed two jawans. They then subjected the bodies to “barbaric and inhuman mutilation”—an act that revived memories of the brutal killing of Captain Saurabh Kalia and the mutilation of his body during the Kargil war.

Not unnaturally, this provocative act has outraged public opinion and nullified the contrived, gush-gush diplomacy of recent months. No foreign policy can work in defiance of the popular mood and, for the moment, attempts to ‘normalise’ India-Pakistan relations are destined to be in deep freeze. However, before emotive calls for retribution unsettle matters further, it is instructive to travel down a by-lane of history.

History is rarely the great healer but its reading can often help understand contemporary events a shade better.

In Return of a King, a thoroughly researched and gripping account of the First Afghan War of 1839-42, popular historian William Dalrymple has vividly described the unspeakable horrors of two military expeditions across the Khyber and Bolan Passes. A passage relating to the return journey through the Khyber Pass of the ‘army of retribution’ in November 1842 stands out: “The following day, (Neville) Chamberlain and John Nicholson cork-screwed down the path just below Ali Masjid, accompanied by the chaplain Allen. Turning a sharp corner the three found the road thickly strewn with the bodies of their colleagues from whom they had parted the previous afternoon. The entire party had been trapped and overwhelmed by an Afridi ambush. Now their remains were ‘lying here and there, stripped and mangled, some already devoured by dogs and birds of prey…’ Among the dead was Nicholson’s younger brother. His body was stark naked, and hacked to pieces. In accordance with Afridi custom, Alexander had his genitalia cut off and stuffed in his mouth.”

Nor was this bestial conduct reserved for the feringhee ‘dogs’, it was extended to the ‘kaffir’ sepoys of the British-Indian army. Indeed, for many of the Afghan tribes participating in the jehad, the Sikhs were a particular enemy on account of Maharaja Ranjit Singh’s occupation of Peshawar and Kashmir which the Afghans saw as belonging to them.

As opposed to the rah-rah histories of the imperial age, Dalrymple has proffered an alternative ‘Black Armband’ view of a past British encounter with Afghanistan. Written with a sharp eye on the West’s grim predicament in the war against a Pakistan-backed Taliban, its message is unequivocal: the pacification of the tribal badlands along the Durand Line is a hopeless project.

To an India confronted with an unending conflict along the LoC with an enemy that believes it has a legitimate claim on the Kashmir Valley, this history may sound ominous. But it need not be so.  

First, there are clear lessons in allowing a grand strategic vision—in the 19^th century it was the fear of Russia encroaching on India from the North—to determine diplomatic and military options. Mercifully, today’s governing elite in India lacks any vision, strategic or otherwise. Foreign policy tends to be either ad hoc or governed by mushy sentimentalism, neither of which (mercifully) are conducive to adventurism.

Secondly, approaching Afghanistan with a ‘strategic’ baggage, British officials allowed themselves to be swayed by dodgy intelligence reports that reinforced pre-existing convictions. Other ground reports which didn’t fit into a grand design were wilfully ignored, with disastrous consequences. The implication is obvious: no policy is workable without a credible intelligence network which, alas, is not a Government of India priority.

Finally, the disaster which overtook the Army of the Indus was a consequence of the failure to comprehend the complexities of Afghan society and, most important, its value systems. The British made a grave error in judging Afghans through a European prism, a mistake subsequently rectified by the work of the Political Department. Independent India has, unfortunately, frittered away this institutional understanding of local societies with different moral orbits. Policy is often made in a sociological void.

In sum, India needs a prolonged period of capacity building before it can substitute angry frustration with meaningful action to hit the enemy where it really hurts. Do we have the foresight and will to do what it takes? 

Sunday Times of India, January 13, 2013

Policy is foreign to Government

By Swapan Dasgupta

At a time when the governance of the country is in total disarray, foreign policy is the least of India’s national preoccupations. Yet, thanks to a blundering government that has lost its balance, India has committed one astonishing blunder and may be on the verge of another diplomatic boo-boo.

The first, predictably, centres on Pakistan, a country which is internally beleaguered and externally short of credibility and friends (barring China). Last week, in an astonishing show of cynicism, the Union Home Secretary accused forces in Pakistan of disseminating fraudulent and inflammatory propaganda aimed at inciting communal troubles in India. The purpose was charmingly blunt: to suggest that the tensions all over India flowing from the troubles in Assam’s Kokrajhar district were the creation of the proverbial ‘foreign hand’.

It is no one’s contention that forces in Pakistan, both official and non-official, are not inimical to India. For a very long time, official thinking across the Radcliffe Line has salivated over the likelihood of an eventual break-up of India. The war of a thousand cuts that General Zia-ul Haq launched in the early-1980s was aimed at encouraging every separatist trend in India, be it in Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab or the North-east. Since 1993, Pakistan has also been hyper-active in fermenting Islamist terrorism and its role in the Mumbai attack of 2008 has been extremely well documented. Even to this day, the promoters of the notorious Lashkar-e-Tayiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed are allowed a free run within Pakistan to disseminate their hateful anti-India message.

That certain Pakistani websites run by extremist elements (with or without official backing) did their bit to promote and nurture a sense of Muslim victimhood over events in Assam and Myanmar isn’t in any doubt. Some jihadi elements within India also echoed these themes in their websites.

However, it is one thing to be alert to the dangers of cyber disinformation. It is a completely different matter for the Centre to argue that the mobs in Mumbai, Lucknow and Allahabad were instigated by Pakistan.

The argument that otherwise good Muslims were cynically misled by dark forces may be good for TV chat shows. The problem arises when the Government starts touting this as the official explanation. Naturally Pakistan has demanded proof. And never mind supplying evidence that would leave Islamabad squirming in embarrassment, the Home Ministry has failed to satisfy colleagues in the Ministry of External Affairs. Indeed, India’s diplomats are themselves shamefaced over this ham-handed bid to pin the responsibility for our internal failings on Pakistan. Apart from everything else, this amateurish buck-passing has ended up putting needless question marks over the credibility of the evidence on Pakistan’s culpability in the Mumbai attacks. If there was a well-directed self-goal, this was it.

The Government, it would seem, is so caught up with obfuscation that it can’t tell its rear from its elbow. This week, the Prime Minister is going to take a break from ‘coalgate’ and other domestic headaches and travel to Teheran for a completely useless Non-Aligned Movement summit. I am no kill-joy and would not like to deprive junketeers of the opportunity of buying Persian carpets at bargain prices. Yet, there is a compelling case for the PM to cite domestic preoccupations and despatch External Affairs Minister S.M. Krishna to shake hands with President Ahmadinejad and other representatives of the Iranian theocracy.

That India and Iran has deep ‘civilizational ties’ is a cliché that often rivals the ritual boasts of us being a 5,000-year-old civilisation. No doubt both contain grains of truth which are supplemented by material interests. India still needs Iranian oil and needs Iran for an overland access to Afghanistan. The strategic importance of both should not be underestimated. If he doesn’t, it will be shameful. (END)

At the same time, there are some features of the Indo-Iran bilateral relationship that could do with some clarification. The most important of these is the question of Iranian involvement in international terrorism.

It is understandable, though not morally defensible, that India chooses to look the other way (and at times even condone), Iran’s activities in Lebanon, Syria and Israel. As a country that has a glorious track record of preachiness, India has chosen to keep remarkably silent about Ahmadinejad’s repeated threats to wipe out Israel from the face of the earth—the latest one being his Quds Day address on August 17. But why has India chosen to be silent when Iran exports its terror to New Delhi?

The Delhi Police, after an uncharacteristically unpublicised inquiry, has gathered enough evidence to indicate that three Iranian nationals, along with one Indian, were involved in the explosion that left an Israeli diplomat seriously injured in February this year. Despite the evidence linking the Delhi bombing with the Bangkok bombing where Iranian nationals were also involved, Teheran has chosen to brazen it out, in the understanding that India is powerless to do anything.

The issue is not merely that Iran must not be allowed to export its terror, but that India must make it clear that it will not countenance any physical harm to the representative of a friendly country—which is what Israel unquestionably is.

For too long, India has allowed its policy to be guided by spurious sectarian concerns. If the Prime Minister does go to Teheran at this inopportune moment, the least we can expect is for him to tell Ahmadinejad to lay off.  

Sunday Pioneer, August 26, 2012

The war of poses

By Swapan Dasgupta

In the world of Punjabi humour, Nattha Singh and Prem Singh may well be the same thing (or Singh), but it was a cruel joke that Islamabad inflicted last Tuesday night when it clarified that Sarabjit Singh had in fact been mistaken for Surjeet Singh. The sheer insensitivity of this wilful mix-up apart, the incident, however, served to confirm once again—as if further confirmation was needed—that when it comes to the bilateral relationship with India, the last word doesn’t belong to either the President or the Prime Minister.

This unfortunate reminder of the quirks of Pakistani democracy is, however, timely. For the past year or so, an influential section of India’s foreign policy establishment has made the strengthening of Islamabad’s civilian government one of its main objectives. More than that, they readily believed that the war-like situation along the Durand Line and growing frostiness in US-Pakistan relations had actually helped tilt the balance against the military. Last Tuesday’s midnight clarification should help to inject a much-needed dose of realism into the official Indian perception of Pakistan.

President Asif Ali Zardari may indeed be a jolly fellow, a man who genuinely believes that cross-border trade is better than costly trench warfare. Unfortunately, neither he nor the well-meaning cosmopolitan set that frequently travel to India to preach aman ki asha, count for too much in Pakistan’s power equations. True, a military establishment that has been shown to be quite helpless against the repeated violations of Pakistan’s sovereignty by US Special Forces, isn’t quite what it was in the heydays of General Zia-ul Haq and General Pervez Musharraf. It has shown itself to be quite ragged round the edges. Yet, in a country replete with multiple power centres—that include the US-hating, India-loathing Islamist radicals—the cantonments still have a nominal upper hand. And when the military combines with the Islamists—as they did on the Sarabjit Singh issue—they become all-powerful.

This is a fundamental truth that India has been trying to impress upon world leaders from the day Osama bin Laden’s suicide bombers destroyed the twin towers in New York and attacked the Pentagon in September 2001. Last May, after the Abbottabad operation confirmed the presence of Osama in the heart of the Pakistan military establishment, the US has come round to the view that what India and, for that matter, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, have been saying for so long is right. It is now recognised in Washington that far from being a part of the solution, Pakistan is central to the problem.

When President Barack Obama assumed power in 2008, there was nervousness in New Delhi that the cosy relationship established with President George W. Bush would be unsettled. Indeed, some of Obama’s early utterances triggered concern in India over the future direction of US policy in the region. Today, all those misgivings have been dispelled—at least as far as Pakistan is concerned. If President Bush, despite his long-term commitment to a rising India, was still willing to give Pakistan an extraordinary amount of leeway, President Obama has shown himself to be completely exasperated with Pakistan. The sheer ferocity of the drone attacks is, for all practical purposes, tantamount to a US declaration of war against Pakistan.

What has been witnessed in the past couple of years is the unravelling of a US-Pakistan alliance that had been forged in the early days of the Cold War. Having been made suckers for long, the US attitude towards Pakistan is distinctly vengeful. Washington, it would seem, is out to punish the Pakistan military for its duplicity and treachery. The quiet role played by the US in nudging Saudi Arabia to extradite Zabiuddin Ansari, alias Abu Jundal, to India earlier this week, would suggest that the pusillanimity evident in the A.Q. Khan controversy may be a thing of the past. The US now wants Pakistan’s dirty linen to be exposed to the world—even if that involves admitting the earlier gullibility of the State Department and CIA.

Even if it is bad form to gloat over the misfortunes of a neighbour, India can afford to take a we-told-you-so attitude. Yet, it is inexplicable that a section of the Indian establishment seems to be deeply embarrassed at Pakistan’s embarrassment. Having an independent foreign policy is always a noble goal. Keeping an arm’s length from the US and other NATO forces has earned India tremendous goodwill and secured some leverage in Afghanistan. Is there now an attempt to tell a worried Islamabad that India will keep its distance from the US-Pakistan divorce proceedings? That India will do its bit to prevent Pakistan from being engulfed in a siege mentality?

Obviously there is. Why else did the Cabinet Committee on Security feel obliged to repudiate yet another attempt to secure the demilitarisation of Siachen? What explains the concern in South Block that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s anxiety to visit Pakistan before 2014 with some grand gesture of reconciliation may result in some foreign policy missteps?

Fortunately for India, the scope for unilateral action on the part of a beleaguered Government is very limited. The UPA Government no longer has the capacity to take bold initiatives. Pragmatism should deem that India should confine itself to modest, baby steps in its Pakistan policy. Bold initiatives necessitate a Pakistan at peace with itself. That, tragically, is a distant hope.  

Asian Age/ Deccan Chronicle, June 29, 2012