Indo-Pak Relations Archives - Lokmarg

Indo-Pak Relations to Remain Strained

By Asad Mirza 12th May 2023

Coming soon after the recent Shanghai Cooperation Council’s (SCO) Defence Ministers’ Summit in New Delhi, India last week hosted the Foreign Ministers of the SCO at Goa. The common thread between these two summits was the tough posturing by India against its two neighbours Pakistan and China.

At the Goa meeting, India’s External Affairs Minister, S Jaishankar, revealed that India had twice called out China and Pakistan at the summit for violating India’s sovereignty through their connectivity projects. The statement was made in response to a question on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which runs through Indian territory currently under Pakistan’s illegal occupation.

Earlier, India had sort of reprimanded the Chinese Defence Minister at the New Delhi meeting, on the issue of the stalled talks over the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

India’s critique of Pakistan

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was in Goa to represent Pakistan at the SCO-CFM. A visit, which happened after a 12 years gap. The last Pakistani foreign minister to visit India was Hina Rabbani Khar, when she met her Indian counterpart SM Krishna in Delhi in 2011.

However, what soured the atmosphere this time in Goa, was references made by Zardari over Kashmir and Pakistan being a victim of terrorism itself. Though he also called for reviving the stalled talks.

India, in a strongly worded response to Pakistan’s overtures for talks, said victims of terrorism do not sit together with perpetrators of terrorism to discuss terror.

Rebutting each of the points made by Zardari, EAM S Jaishankar said he (Zardari) was “a promoter, justifier and spokesperson for a terrorism industry which is the mainstay of Pakistan. The tough Indian response came after the news of death of five Indian Army soldiers in a terrorist attack near the Line of Control (LoC) on Friday, Jaishankar said Bilawal’s suggestion to sit together and talk was “hypocritical” and said India was feeling “outraged” by the incident.

India’s stand on China

Jaishankar had a similar position on China whose readout on the bilateral between him and its Foreign Minister described the situation on the boundary as stable. Jaishankar said that, there is an abnormal position in the border areas. We have to take the disengagement process forward. I have made it very clear. India-China relations will not be normal if peace and tranquillity in the border areas is disturbed. This message was on the same lines as delivered by the Indian defence minister to his Chinese counterpart, a fortnight ago.

Responding to Zardari’s diatribe, Jaishankar said Bilawal’s opposition to a G-20 meeting to be held in Kashmir had no basis since Pakistan was not even a member of that grouping. On Bilawal’s opening address at the SCO conference where he said the issue of terrorism should not be used to score diplomatic points, the minister said: “We are not scoring diplomatic points. We are exposing Pakistan. As a victim of terrorism, we are authorised to do so. We have put up with it. It speaks so much about the mindset of that country.”

He asked Pakistan to “smell the coffee” regarding its grouse about the abrogation of Article 370 as a violation of international agreements. “370 is history. Sooner the people realise it, the better.” Jaishankar said.

Indian response to CPEC

EAM Jaishankar also took an exception at the mention of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) at the SCO meeting, both by Pakistan and China. And rightly so, as SCO is a multilateral forum, not a bilateral one and further India’s adversarial stand on the CPEC has been very clear from the beginning, as it passed through the PoK. India has consistently opposed the Belt and Road Initiative and CPEC, as these projects violate India’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.

Jaishankar very clearly stated that connectivity is good for progress, but connectivity cannot violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of nations.

Bilawal’s overture

On his part Bilawal Bhutto Zardari blamed India’s Kashmir policy for the “frozen peace” between India and Pakistan. The India-Pakistan relationship soured significantly after India announced the withdrawal of special powers from Jammu and Kashmir and the division of the state into two union territories in August 2019.

India has always maintained that it wants regular neighbourly ties with Pakistan while emphasising that the onus is on Islamabad to create a safe environment for such an engagement.

The tough Indian response to both Pakistan and China, mainly stems from its exhaustion with its neighbours, who in spite of several Indian initiatives to better relations, prefer to stick with their age-old stands on the contentious issues, preferring not to respond positively to any Indian efforts in this regard.

The SCO meet also showed yet again that body language speaks volumes in geopolitics and diplomacy. The distance between the two foreign ministers while posing for photographs was noticeably gaping. However, the cold Indian demeanour, a departure from customary diplomatic niceties, and continuing with its old parroting by the Pakistani minister were more targeted at their respective domestic audiences.

The Indian leadership in view of the forthcoming elections in Karnataka wanted to be seen as acting tough, while the Pakistani minister wanted to showcase his ability to rake-up old issues in the backdrop of the economic woes of Pakistan. But overall this posturing does not augurs well for friendly relations between the neighbours in the foreseeable future.

Asad Mirza is a senior political commentator based in New Delhi. He can be contacted at www.asadmirza.in

Why Peace Remains Elusive In Indo-Pak Relations

By Mahendra Ved 1st October 2022

On Shaheed Bhagat Singh’s 115^th birth anniversary last week, his life and death for an undivided India’s freedom, and that he is revered on both sides of the India-Pakistan divide were recalled. But save such sentiments shared by minuscule sections, little is left to work on building good-neighbourly relations.

One people for centuries, they became two adversarial ‘sides’ 75 years ago. Separation resolved nothing; it only deepened the crevices. Unwilling to forget the past, and unable to deal with the present, they are trapped in a cul-de-sac and unable to move forward to that goal.

The sad thing is that once you begin exploring prospects of improving the perennially tense relations, you run into innumerable obstacles and imponderables.

As one sees Pakistan posturing for peaceful ties in diplomatic forums, this is yet another moment. Everyone knows that the current government has neither the mandate nor the pull with the military, to smoke the peace pipe. The all-powerful force where the buck stops is clueless about how to resolve the problems it created by playing favourites, and has conceded space to the squabbling politicians.

Aware that this is the neighbour’s weak moment, India is simply not interested. That has long been its stance. For every Pakistani salvo on Kashmir, India returns the terrorism charge. To every charge of the ‘Hindutva’ campaign, India points to the ill-treatment of Pakistan’s minorities. India’s undeclared goal is to make hay while the sun is not shining on the neighbour.

Social media talks of a contrast. The 4,500-year old drainage system of Mohen Jo Daro in the Indus Valley efficiently disposed of the rain and flood waters when a third of Pakistan was under water. But three Chinese companies gather and dispose of garbage in modern-day Karachi, nicknamed ‘Venice of Sewage’.

What about the flooding of Mumbai, Delhi, Chennai, and other Indian cities? Actually, we are sailing in the same boat that is stuck in sewage. Climate change is hurting both, but they are bogged down in old, divisive issues, unable to discuss such common threats and address them jointly.

Amidst constant diplomatic wrangling, there’s a déjà vu. Like it did in the 1980s, India has protested the $450 million US dole to Pakistan for the “sustainment and support” of the F-16 combat aircraft. It did not work then and it is unlikely to work now.

The sale in that Cold War era was meant to shore up Pakistan’s defences against India. That fig leaf is not available in the radically changed geopolitical situation. Instead, Washington now insists that the aircraft are meant for counter-terrorism. India’s S Jaishankar said: “At the end of the day, for someone to say I am doing it because it is for counterterrorism when you are talking of an aircraft of the capability of an F-16, everyone knows where they are deployed, what is its use, what is its capability. You are not fooling anybody by saying these things.”

Does Anthony Blinken really believe what he says? With changed equations, India sees itself as a bigger US ally, but the latter has always drawn the line at the India-Pakistan border. India is an ally against China only in East and Southeast Asia. That is unlikely to change since the US continues to woo Pakistan to keep it away from China.

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Diplomacy can be brazen. Both India and Pakistan must now await its subtle strokes. Like earlier American administrations, particularly the Democratic one, Biden also wants India and Pakistan to talk. But the two are in no mood. In anticipation of this, like two boxers in the ring hitting out before the bell rings, there was no ‘adaab’ from Shehbaz Sharif, nor an extended hand from Narendra Modi at the recent Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit. Unsurprisingly, while the two committed themselves to peace, the Kashmir-versus-terrorism drill also played out at the UN General Assembly.

India’s approach has unanimity – the political opposition is afraid to even utter the word Pakistan for fear of annoying the ultra-nationalists. Pakistan’s stance is also well-calibrated. Shehbaz listed Kashmir as the Number One issue — he can’t afford to miss. His brother Nawaz suffered when he skipped it at Sharm el-Sheikh in 2009.

Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari told a French TV network that India had not helped in fighting floods, “nor was there any expectation.” Surely, Modi telephoned Shehbaz to empathize but did not offer any help the way India does to countries far and near that are hit by natural calamities.

Doubly assuming that the offer was made and Pakistan accepted, it would have caused controversies. Modi would have been accused of feeding the ‘enemy’. Shehbaz had to be careful. Damned for having ‘surrendered’ to a “Hindutva driven” India, he would have gifted a missile to Imran Khan, who wants a snap poll, whatever happens to Pakistan. He has added ‘war’ to his set of issues that would not deter his campaign. War against whom?

There are always “fringe elements” thriving with official or tacit support from the powerful. Amidst global appeals for help and inviting the likes of UN Secretary-General and Angelina Jolie, tomatoes imported from Iran were destroyed by Sunni militants, in full public view, because they were ‘Shia’ produce.

Like ‘fringe’ elements in India shouting “go to Pakistan” to anyone they disagree with, the India angle is strong in Pakistan as well. Imran Khan – and he is not a “fringe element” – playing to the political gallery, has accused the Sharifs of trying to reach “a secret understanding” with India to “promote their business interest.”

Khan and Pakistan’s elite with farming backgrounds do not appreciate this, but there is something about the Sharifs that Indians find easier to work with. The Lahore summit and the unscheduled Modi visit at a Sharif event in 2015 indicate this.

How does one talk trade when that word is anathema? Pakistan Army chief General Javed Bajwa does not say it anymore. In March 2021, he stirred a debate by stressing geo-economics. Among other things, the “Bajwa Doctrine” recommended restoring peace within by putting down various internal insurgencies, reviving economic growth, and reconciling with the neighbours. Analysts thought this was a radical change in the Pakistan Army’s stance. Taking the cue, the commerce ministry decided to resume trade with India.

But the Khan Government annulled it. Sections of the business community saw a win-win situation in bilateral trade, even working to Pakistan’s advantage. But they have been ignored. Nobody in Pakistan has bothered to explain why the “Bajwa Doctrine” was junked, and India couldn’t care less.

Last but not the least, both have electoral compulsions – there will always be. Politicians on both sides indulge in this profitable pastime in the name of democracy, despite Covid, calamities, and constraints on the economy. And ‘war’, if you note Imran Khan’s resolve.

One of Pakistan’s most perceptive writers, F S Aijazuddin, writes: “… the funeral of the late Queen Elizabeth II has caused many to marvel at the plans made for it years in advance. That is not unusual. Pakistani politicians, too, have been planning each other’s funerals for years.” Isn’t it the same, across South Asia?

The writer can be reached at mahendraved07@gmail.com

Weather Reports: The New Frontier Of Indo-Pak war

By Dr. Krishnendra Meena 20th May 2020

People listen to weather reports to plan their days or weeks for chores such as when to put out clothes to dry, go out etc. Perhaps the weather man never thought that weather reports can be weaponized. It is India which lobbed the first weather report bomb starting the weather report wars with Pakistan.

The strategy thought out in the secret meeting rooms of the Indian strategic defence cabals is to make a virtual claim on Pakistan Occupied Kashmir as called in India, or Azad Kashmir as named by Pakistan. ‘Doordarshan’ is under instruction to pretend that POK is Indian. It is to give the daily weather reports for all of Kashmir including POK but call it simply Kashmir.

Not to be outwitted, Pakistan retaliated with the same. They are now giving weather reports for all of Kashmir, including Jammu and Ladakh, as if they were all part of Pakistan. It is all about visual representation of territory.

Visual representations of territory have played a significant role in the national imagination of people. Nations and states have reinforced such representations through school textbooks, maps, documents, decrees and legal instruments. In the age of mass media, internet and related proliferation of information, any news can become a source of confrontation between states.

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The Indian official television broadcaster, Doordarshan, has adopted a new media offensive now for over a week. Weather bulletins on Doordarshan and All India Radio have started featuring weather forecasts of Mirpur, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit-Baltistan area of Kashmir over which Pakistan has territorial control and India claims the territory. In a reaction to this, Pakistan has carried weather reports of the Indian side of Kashmir on its official television channels.

Notably, Indian broadcasts follow the bifurcation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) into two Union Territories (Jammu and Kashmir and Ladakh) under the Jammu and Kashmir Reorganization Act, 2019 in August 2019. In the same month, India had already revoked Article 370 of Indian Constitution which accorded special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, and involved special provisions for the residents of J&K. Pakistan at that point had raised the issue at the United Nations without much success. India is now unravelling its grand design and making people imagine POK as if it is part of India.

Geopolitically, this is a well-known strategy of claiming territory with the approach of place-naming and place-making and establishing a norm through repeated usage of suitable nomenclature that the place belongs to us. Examples abound of creation of a sense of belonging by such means by India’s erstwhile colonizers, the British. Historically the British were an important factor in the current territorial dispute at India’s northern expanse as to who the territory belongs to.

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An important task of the state is to invoke a territorial image of the state and familiarize the larger population with it. School textbooks and official maps play this role effectively to make its territory and places legible for the state population. Place-making often involves creation of new activities, economic or otherwise at a particular location. In this case, the weather forecasts is one such activity, with which not only the Indian State but the people can also identify.

As critical geographical as it may sound today to investigate the British colonialist and imperial exercises, it is instructive that such methods of place-naming and place-making have existed even in ancient Indian texts like Puranas, the Epics and related texts. The geographical references to seven dwipas, including Jambu Dwipa cover the whole Eurasian expanse in detail with Mount Meru (The Pamir) as the centre of the Eurasian continent. The description stretches to as far as the Mediterranean and the Eastern coast of Africa.

Furthermore, there is astonishing detail about the orientation of the Himalayas and the adjacent mountain ranges. The river systems originating from the present-day Tibet are explained in detail with the directions of the flow of rivers. The “Puranas” include, the origin of the universe and the earth, the oceans and continents, mountain systems of the world, regions and their people and astronomical geography” (Ali, 1966). However such detailed descriptions were never laden with the ideas of capture or control of territory but only for the sake of geographical knowledge.

Within this literature, the expanse of Bharatvarsa is mentioned in detail on numerous occasions. This fact of geographical unity of the subcontinent remained unchanged and unchallenged until the moment of partition in 1947. The partition in 1947 essentially created a rupture in the regional, human and physical geography of the Indian sub-continent into two separate states of India and Pakistan. Perhaps, it is this longer geo-historical imagination that takes precedence over recent history since partition when the weather reports are broadcast on the national television channels.

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The territorial claims in Kashmir are now becoming more visible and perhaps a beginning of a new geopolitical imagination of post 1947 India is being given shape and root.

Since 2014, the Indian government’s approach under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been quite assertive on the issue of Kashmir and related terrorism emanating from Pakistan. The response to acts of terrorism has been more in terms of military action at the Line of Control, But for the first time a nuanced approach to visually construct that represents the whole Kashmir as Indian, has been adopted.

Reports indicate that Mr. Ajit Doval, the National Security Advisor who is also an intelligence expert on Pakistan, has been instrumental in developing and implementing this strategy of weather forecasting of the larger territory of Kashmir and thereby indicating that it is Indian. On the other hand, reactions of the international community may only become evident when real world diplomacy resumes after the end of the global shutdown due to the CoVID19 pandemic. Until then, the otherwise innocuous weather report, produced by non-political meteorologists, has become the new political battle ground between India and Pakistan.

Dr Krishnendra Meena is Assistant Professor and teaches at School of International studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi