Arun Shourie on handling Pakistan
On August 18, 2014, India called off foreign secretary level talks with Pakistan which were scheduled to be held on August 25 in Islamabad. The talks were called off in the wake of Kashmiri separatist leaders being invited to meet Pakistan’s High Commissioner Abdul Basit. This created lot of buzz in the national as well international media. Arun Shourie in his book “We must have no price” has dedicated an entire chapter to India having only a choice between Diplomacy and War when it came to Pakistan.
Mr. Shourie states that every time there is a change in the leadership in Pakistan the advocated in the Rajya Sabha use the well-tested argument: “Don’t you see, whenever there has been democracy in Pakistan, relations with India have been better? If we don’t reach out, these leaders will weaken. The Army will be back, and relations with India will worsen once again.” He states that India has only two options to deal with Pakistan which are Diplomacy and War. He adds that “I believe the current leadership understands that …”, can’t be the basis of policy with Pakistan as it has been able to use a third option against India for 30 years. The third option being terrorism as Pakistan has built the requisite capacities and we have not.
He further states that Diplomacy for India is going from one capital to the next requesting others to do our work for us. Sadly things don’t end at that for India and as no sane person wants to go to war, the only option India has is dialogue. Pakistan on its part has shown that it will not fulfil the pledge it had made of not allowing the territory under its control to be used for terrorism against India, thus India recommences dialogue, confident that the next assault will make us forget the last one.
Mr. Shourie also brings to the notice that the Vajpayee-Musharraf Declaration had carefully chosen the words: Pakistan shall not allow the territory “under its control” to be used for terrorist attacks against India. This was replaced with “its territory” by former PM Manmohan Singh. This he said meant two things – 1. India recognises Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) as Pakistani territory. 2. Pakistan can use POK for terrorist attacks against India.
This Mr. Shourie said was not a case of bad drafting as pointed by the former PM Manmohan Singh but it was the indefensible concession which he has made for Pakistan. He says that this was all done to suit the conductor the US. This he said was because the US was dependent on Pakistan to curb the terrorists along its Afghan border and thus was delivering to Pakistan what our neighbour has not been able to get on its own.
The recent move by Prime Minister Narendra Modi suggests that he may have taken heed to what the renowned author, politician and the former economist with the World Bank had writren on Pakistan. The Modi government showed that like the past governments his government will not treat meetings between Hurriyat leaders and Pakistani government officials as non-events. Modi government made it clear that what was acceptable to the previous governments including the previous NDA government. This move meant that finally India made it clear to Pakistan that it will respond in appropriate manner if more red lines are breached by Pakistan.
Source http://www.niticentral.com/2014/10/23/arun-shourie-pakistan-diplomacy-war-241827.html
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