Why India-Pakistan Joint Peace Appeal By 116 Dignitaries Ignores Crucial History | Opinion

A group of 116 persons from India and Pakistan have addressed a joint letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif asking for the resumption of dialogue and for the two countries to move towards cooperative relations for the good of their peoples. The letter's initiative seems to have been taken by the Centre for Peace and Progress, an Indian organisation.

Among the Indian signatories of the letter are Jammu and Kashmir leaders -- Farooq Abdullah, Mehbooba Mufti and the separatist Mirwaiz Omar Farooq. There are also peaceniks like Mani Shankar Aiyar and a large number of activists. From Pakistan, those who have signed the letter include former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri and former Pakistan High Commissioner to India, Ashraf Jahangir Qazi, as well as persons who desire peace between the two countries.

The intentions of the letter writers may be noble because no one can deny that the normalisation of India-Pakistan relations will greatly benefit the two peoples. The problem, however, lies in the fact that the signatories have ignored the basic reality that it is the Pakistani ruling establishment which has been the cause of hostile ties between the two countries.

Naturally, the Pakistani signatories cannot be expected to accept this truth about their country’s negative policies towards India, but should the Indian signatories have ignored this fact? They surely know that, right from 1947, when Pakistan sent tribal raiders into the then princely state of Jammu and Kashmir to secure its merger with it by force, it is Pakistan that has always sought to use force to achieve its objective of making the Union Territory of J&K a part of Pakistan.

For this purpose, it launched two wars–in 1965 and 1999– and since the beginning of the 1990s, it has calibrated the use of terrorism against India. The activities of its terrorist organisations, like the Lashkar-e-Toiba and the Jaish-e-Mohammed, have led to the loss of thousands of Indian lives and have had an adverse impact on the progress of the UT. The Indian signatories should be asked, as the letter has been made public, if they agree that it is Pakistan which has been responsible for the problems between the two countries.

Even if it is considered that Prime Minister Indira Gandhi made a mistake in signing the Shimla Agreement after India had defeated the Pakistani army, leading to the formation of Bangladesh, it cannot be denied that through the Agreement, she had made a sincere effort to change the path of India-Pakistan ties towards peace and stability.

A quarter of a century later, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee visited Lahore. Not only this, he went to the Minar-e-Pakistan to assure the people of Pakistan that India accepted the reality of the country, even if it regretted the partition of 1947. He went further to note in the visitors' book at the Minar-e-Pakistan that a stable and prosperous Pakistan was in India’s interest.

In response to Vajpayee’s statesmanship, Pakistan launched the Kargil war. Yet again, an Indian Prime Minister made a great move to improve bilateral ties. This time it was Modi. He agreed to revive the comprehensive dialogue. To assure Pakistan of his intentions in December 2015, he went to Lahore on his way back to India from Kabul to meet his then counterpart Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. Ten days later, Pakistan undertook the Pathankot attacks.

This history is being recalled because the Indian signatories to the letter must recognise that India’s stand after the Uri attack of 2016 that terror and talks cannot go together is correct both politically and in international law. Instead of insisting that this principled Indian approach is correct, the Indian signatories have signed a document which does not even mention terror.

If a case is made that the Pakistanis have not insisted that their contention that holding the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT) in abeyance is wrong, then the response to that stand is simple. India has not abrogated IWT but is holding it in abeyance. This is only to drive home the point that Pakistan cannot expect that India will maintain generous treaties while Pakistan continues with its terrorism.

It is therefore regrettable that the Indian signatories agreed that the legitimate security concerns of both countries should be addressed. This is equating the perpetrator with the victim and also asking the victim to take no countermeasures for his security. Can anything be more preposterous than this?

The proposals made in the letter are not new. Most are those that were covered in the India-Pakistan composite dialogue process, which was first agreed by the two countries in September 1997. Rounds of this dialogue during the Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh periods.

They could not move on a sustained basis because of Pakistani terrorist attacks. No Indian government can continue with an interrupted dialogue process after a major Pakistani terrorist attack because Indian public opinion would be outraged if it did so. Hence, the signatories should be aware that all the openings they seek cannot be sustained.

Finally, both the Indian and the Pakistani signatories of the letter are no doubt aware that power in Pakistan lies in the hands of the Pakistani army. The current army chief, who has also become chief of the Defence Forces and has been given the rank of Field Marshal, is very hostile to India. He has sought to revive memories in the Pakistani public about how the country was created on the basis of the two-nation theory.

That theory holds that Hindus and Muslims are separate and antagonistic nations. This means that India and Pakistan, according to the principle on which Pakistan was created, would always be hostile. In this light, the Pakistanis should be asked about their views on the two-nation theory.

(Note: The author is a former Indian diplomat. Views are personal.)