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COMMENTARY
India's foreign policy
malaise
By B Raman
The
statements made by Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee during his recent two-day visit to
Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) have
given rise to considerable speculation on their
significance and implications. Did they amount to a new
initiative by India to break the logjam in bilateral
relations with Pakistan? If so, was the initiative well
considered and timely? What will be the impact of the
statements on India's relations with the United States,
and the internal situation in J&K?
Most
analysts have interpreted the statements as containing a
significant message of goodwill addressed to Pakistan
and, consequently, there is an all-around expectation of
a forward movement in attempts to bring the two
countries back to the negotiating table after the
failure of the previous bid for a bilateral accord at
Agra, India, in 2001.
Vajpayee's statement on
the first day of his visit contained two significant
omissions, which were interpreted by optimists as
deliberate. First, there was no reference to India's
usual condition of stoppage of cross-border terrorism
and winding-up of the anti-India terrorist
infrastructure in Pakistan for the resumption of the
bilateral dialogue. Second, he was silent on the
massacre of 24 Hindu civilians by the Pakistani
terrorist organization, the Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET), at
Nadimarg in J&K on March 24.
A careful
reading of the statement would indicate that the
message, if any, contained in it was probably addressed
more to Washington than to Islamabad. The unwise
rhetoric indulged in by some members of his government
after Nadimarg comparing Pakistan to Iraq and speaking
of India's right of a preemptive strike against Pakistan
had caused unhappiness and concern in Washington and
injected some malaise into Indo-US ties, which had until
then been showing signs of improvement. The unhappiness
was aggravated by the government's decision, apparently
in a fit of pique over the failure of the United States
to make Pakistan stop the use of terrorism against
India, to go along with the demand of the opposition
parties to pass a resolution in parliament deploring the
US-UK military action in Iraq and calling for the
withdrawal of their troops from there.
The
unhappiness over the volte face in the
government's stand on the Iraq issue was not confined to
Washington alone. Large sections of the community of
Indian origin in the United States, too, were disturbed
by the unwise rhetoric and there was apparently pressure
on the government from this community, which exercises
some influence on its policies, to make amends in order
to repair any damage to Indo-US ties.
It was,
most probably, with this purpose in view that the prime
minister made his statement on the first day in order to
reassure the US of his government's good intentions
toward Pakistan, its willingness for dialogue and its
anxiety to tone down the negative impact of the rhetoric
indulged in by some of his ministers after Nadimarg. The
loose formulations in the premier's statement without
any reference to the terrorism issue and without the
expected condemnation of the Nadimarg massacre had an
electrifying effect not only in Pakistan, but also among
those sections of the Indian people who have been
opposed to a hardline stance against Pakistan.
The loose formulations were seen as deliberate
and as indicative of Vajpayee's desire to give another
try to his attempts for an improvement in relations with
Pakistan. The absence of any reference to the terrorism
issue was interpreted as amounting to a decision to drop
this as a condition for a resumption of bilateral
dialogue. Apparently disturbed by the misperceptions of
a change in India's stand caused by his statement, the
prime minister referred to the Nadimarg massacre on the
second day and reiterated India's stand that the
resumption of the dialogue would be dependent on
satisfaction on the stoppage of terrorism
issue.
Despite this, the hopes evoked by his
loose formulations of the first day have not been
totally dissipated. Even his statements in the two
houses of the Indian parliament after his return to New
Delhi from Srinagar reiterating India's conditions for a
dialogue have not dampened hopes of a possible
rethinking on Indo-Pakistani relations.
This
episode, the full denouement of which is still to be
seen, is indicative of the unprofessional and somewhat
erratic manner in which Indo-Pakistani relations have
been handled by the present Indian government ever since
it came to power in 1998. This erratic handling,
characterized by wild swings between an unsustainable
hardline political approach and an unwise softline
operational stance, has resulted in the government being
seen as too soft toward Pakistan by large sections of
domestic public opinion, and as too fixated by large
sections of international opinion.
The overall
impression is that on the issue of Indo-Pakistani
relations, as on many other issues having nothing to do
with Pakistan, the Indian government has no
well-thought-out strategy. What one has been witnessing
since 1998 is a series of tactical moves depending on
the circumstances and moods of the moment, without any
attempt to reach a national consensus on the medium- and
long-term strategies and correlating the tactics to this
strategy.
The pre-1996 governments headed by the
late Indira Gandhi, Rajiv Gandhi, V P Singh,
Chandrasekhar and Narasimha Rao did have a strategy,
however imperfect, for dealing with Pakistan. Hitting
Pakistan hard operationally in order to make its use of
terrorism against India prohibitively expensive, without
discarding the search for a political accommodation on
various issues, including the future of J&K, were
the cornerstones of this strategy.
In pursuit of
this strategy, India exercised its right of active
defense against Pakistan-sponsored terrorism in an
appropriate manner. At the same time, the leaders of
these governments never fought shy of interacting with
their Pakistani counterparts bilaterally or on
multilateral occasions, cultivated a wide network of
personal friendships at different levels of Pakistan's
civil society, and encouraged meetings between senior
bureaucrats of the two countries to discuss matters of
common concern that did not call for a political
handling. Such interactions and meetings, which were
held regularly even in the worst days of bilateral
tensions, enabled leaders and bureaucrats to get to know
one another in flesh and blood, instead of only through
the media and the secret-source reports of their
intelligence agencies.
As examples of such
interactions and meetings, one could cite Rajiv Gandhi's
visits to Islamabad during the first tenure (1988-90) of
Benazir Bhutto as the Pakistani prime minister after
rejecting the advice of his intelligence community not
to go there; the meeting of Chandrasekhar with Nawaz
Sharif at Male during the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit of December 1990;
the three meetings of Rao with Sharif at Davos, Jakarta
and Harare on the margins of international conferences;
the visit of then Pakistani president Farooq Leghari to
India in 1995 to attend a SAARC summit; the bi-annual
meetings of the home secretaries of the two countries,
accompanied by their senior intelligence officers,
during the tenure of Rajiv Gandhi to discuss border
security problems; the annual meetings of the
narcotics-control officials of the two countries to
discuss cooperative action in dealing with narcotics
smuggling; and the three unpublicized meetings between
the chiefs of India's Research & Analysis Wing
(R&AW), the external intelligence agency, and
Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) - two under
Rajiv Gandhi and one under Chandrasekhar - to discuss,
away from the glare of publicity, complaints of
interference in each other's internal affairs and
possible solutions to the Siachen Glacier territorial
issue.
This two-pronged policy of effective
exercise of the right of active defense against
terrorism and keeping the various channels of
communication alive and active in order not to let go
any opportunity for political accommodation produced
results in bringing terrorism in Punjab under control by
1995 and in not letting terrorism in J&K irreparably
damage the search for a political accommodation. Another
characteristic feature of this strategy was to keep
bilateral and multilateral relations separate and not to
let bilateral relations come in the way of the evolution
of the SAARC as an effective organization for South
Asian cooperation and development.
The
governments that held office in New Delhi between 1996
and 1998 introduced one major change in the strategy.
They discarded India's exercise of the right of active
defense against Pakistani state-sponsored terrorism
against India. However, they pursued the search for a
political accommodation as vigorously as the previous
governments through regular interactions and meetings at
the political, bureaucratic and non-governmental levels.
When the present government assumed office in
1998, it was widely expected that it would revive the
pre-1997 policy of vigorously exercising India's right
of active defense against terrorism originating from
Pakistani territory. Surprisingly, these expectations
were belied. It was apparently afraid that it might fall
foul of the US if it did so. While the pre-1997
hard-hitting operational approach has thus remained
discarded, some other changes introduced by the present
government have proved counter-productive.
The
first was the total abandonment of the various lines of
communications at the bureaucratic levels built up over
the years. As a result, the senior bureaucrats of the
two countries hardly know each other. Bilateral
interactions, when activated (Lahore in 1999 and Agra in
2001), have remained largely confined to senior
political levels. Failures of meetings at the experts
level to produce significant results do not have the
same negative impact on bilateral relations as failures
of high-profile, ill-prepared political summits. The
second change was the linking of the bilateral and
multilateral components of the relations. This has
resulted in the development of SAARC and various
regional projects, such as those for a gas pipeline from
Iran to India via Pakistan and oil and gas pipelines
from Turkmenistan to India via Afghanistan and Pakistan,
becoming hostages to intractable bilateral issues.
The present coalition government led by the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces some intrinsic
problems in evolving a workable medium- and long-term
strategy on Indo-Pakistani relations. Despite its
hardline rhetoric, its knowledge and expertise on
Pakistan are not comparable to those of the previous
governments, which were headed either by Congress (I)
leaders or political leaders with long years of
association with Congress (I). Since Congress (I) was in
the forefront of the independence struggle and its
leaders had actively interacted with their counterparts
in various political formations in the Pakistan of today
before 1947, they had a deep understanding of the
complexities and driving urges of the Pakistani society.
Their accumulated knowledge and experience and their
network of personal friendships in Pakistan imparted a
much-needed balance to their policies. Indira Gandhi,
Rajiv Gandhi, Narasimha Rao and I K Gujral were often
better informed about Pakistan and its reflexes than
even their intelligence agencies and Foreign Office.
This cannot be said to be true of the present
government. Its leaders hardly have any personal
friendships or worthwhile contacts across the border. As
a result, their perceptions are often influenced unduly
by what they read in the media and what their
intelligence agencies tell them, without much scope for
correctives through independent contacts. Moreover, the
fact that the BJP still has at many levels Hindus who
had undergone the worst sufferings at the hands of
Muslims during the pre-partition riots or their
descendents comes in the way of a more balanced
evolution of a medium- and long-term strategy. The
community of Indian origin in the United States
exercises much greater influence on the policies of the
BJP than on those of any other political formation. And
finally there is an ingrained reluctance to consult
other political parties that understand Pakistan and its
leaders better on various policy options. It is
difficult to understand and analyze this reluctance.
In order to prevent another major political
failure on the Indo-Pakistan front and a weakening of
India's counter-terrorism drive as a result of a false
initiative, it would be necessary for the government to
take the following steps before embarking on any
high-profile initiative that might end in an ultimate
fiasco:
Set up an Eminent Persons Group on Indo-Pakistani
relations consisting of all previous prime ministers in
order to profit from their knowledge and experience in
dealing with Pakistan and evolving a suitable medium-
and long-term strategy.
Revive the various channels of bureaucratic and
experts-level communications on issues such as border
security problems, narcotics control and nuclear
confidence-building measures.
Revive the unpublicized interactions between the
R&AW and the ISI. Even in the worst of times, the
R&AW and its Chinese counterpart kept in touch with
each other at the instance of the political leaderships
of the two countries, and this played an important role
in Rajiv Gandhi's successful visit to China in 1988 and
the subsequent improvement in bilateral relations.
Encourage the leaders of the Congress (I) and other
political formations to revive their network of personal
friendships across the border and do not fight shy of
profiting from them.
Revive the past policy of a vigorous exercise of the
right of active defense against Pakistan-sponsored
terrorism in order to make it clear to Pakistan that
India's keenness for a political accommodation would not
come in the way of a hard-hitting operational approach
so long as it uses terrorism as a strategic weapon
against India.
De-link the multilateral component from the
bilateral one and do not hesitate to move forward on the
various projects of regional interest.
Do not allow a hardline operational approach toward
Pakistan and the terrorist groups sponsored by it to
inhibit a more flexible and accommodating approach
toward indigenous organizations.
Keep actively interacting with the United States for
neutralizing the terrorist infrastructure in Pakistani
territory and for the restoration of genuine democracy
in Pakistan.
Do not allow the desire for better relations with
Pakistan to inhibit a vigorous projection of the
involvement of Pakistan's military and intelligence
agencies with terrorist groups of various hues.
B Raman is additional secretary
(retired), Cabinet Secretariat, government of India, and
currently director, Institute for Topical Studies,
Chennai; former member of the National Security Advisory
Board of the Government of India. E-Mail: corde@vsnl.com. He
was also head of the counter-terrorism division of the
Research & Analysis Wing, India's external
intelligence agency, from 1988 to August 1994.
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