The Modi government is heartened by Imran Khan’s early, positive remarks on the need to build a real relationship with India.
New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s letter to his Pakistani counterpart Imran Khan offering “constructive and meaningful engagement” is aimed at a meeting between external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and her newly installed counterpart Shah Mahmood Qureshi on the margins of the UN General Assembly meet in September-end.
Significantly, Modi’s decision to re-engage with Pakistan, in the last few months before general elections are held, is meant to signal that just like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, he is also a man of peace.
Swaraj’s meeting with Qureshi in New York will be key in determining whether both sides should start a structured, comprehensive dialogue, or not.
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Modi’s trusted officials say they are heartened by Khan’s early, positive remarks on the need to build a real relationship with India. Especially, the Indian side has noted that in Khan’s maiden speech after he was sworn in, there was no reference to Kashmir and its ‘core’ dispute status.
Ironically, the contents of Modi’s letter offering engagement with Pakistan became public around the same time the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was slamming Congress leader Navjot Singh Sidhu for talking to and embracing Pakistan army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa at Khan’s swearing-in ceremony.
Man of peace
Essentially, Modi’s missive to Khan is a low-risk gambit, political in nature. It is aimed at the audience at home and abroad.
First, Modi is painting himself as the legitimate inheritor of the Vajpayee legacy. By offering engagement with Pakistan, he is signalling that just like the former PM, he is ready to make peace with a recalcitrant neighbour.
Second, the PM is making this gesture weeks before he meets the foreign and defence ministers of the US, Mike Pompeo and James Mattis respectively, when they come to New Delhi for their 2+2 structured dialogue with Indian counterparts, Swaraj and Nirmala Sitharaman.
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Modi is signalling to the international community — read the US, China and Russia, with each of whom Pakistan has a significant relationship — that he is the one, the man of peace, who has time and again offered dialogue to Pakistan, even as India has to constantly suffer terrorist attacks from Pakistan.
Modi’s trusted officials point out that he went to Lahore in 2015 to meet Nawaz Sharif and attend his granddaughter’s meeting, in what was obviously a carefully choreographed day-long event. For example, the 2015 flight to Lahore and the 10-minute Pakistan Air Force helicopter ride from Lahore to Raiwind, in which he placed himself in the hands of the Pakistanis — just like Vajpayee had done — was rewarded with a strike in Pathankot.
Third, remember that the Modi government wanted to keep the Khan letter secret, except it was unintentionally leaked to the Pakistani media by the newly sworn-in Pakistan foreign minister.
Most importantly, the BJP did not want it to be known to its own Pakistan-critical audience that it was, once again, engaging with the neighbouring country.
By keeping the letter secret, New Delhi would have hoped to play it both ways: If the Swaraj-Qureshi meeting in New York went off well, further engagement could follow.
For the moment, though, officials say they are hoping that the Khan government will respond to the Modi initiative.
The last few years have been a particularly sterile patch. Not engaging with Pakistan – no matter how fruitless previous dialogues may have ultimately proved to be – is not a policy, appears more like the absence of one. 2. It would be good if the bilateral relationship was not made the subject matter of politicking, with trolls and captive media adding to the din.