Why did India and Pakistan agree for summit level talks in February 1999 immediately after the nuclear tests in 1998? Why did Pakistan decide to bury the Lahore summit on the Kargil heights in summer 1999? Why did India decide to invite General Musharraf, considered as the brain behind Kargil, to Agra? Why did India decide to escalate the conflict by mobilizing its troops all through 2002? And now, why has India decided to give peace a chance despite no signs of Pakistan taking any effective steps to stop cross border terrorism? An analysis of Indo-Pak relations since 1998 is nothing but a chronicle of political chaos at the bilateral level.

The basic problem is that India and Pakistan are caught in a web over Kashmir which both believe they cannot lose; but the hard fact is that neither can win. KS Bajpai (“Untangling India and Pakistan,” Foreign Affairs, May-June 2003, Vol.82, No.3 pp.112-27) describes this web succinctly: “India hopes to contain and ultimately defeat outside militancy by using its superior military might-so far without crossing into Pakistan. Pakistan for its part feels it can force India into negotiations aimed at giving up Kashmir persisting in its low-cost instigation of violence.”

No doubt the policies of successive governments has hardened their respective public opinion over Kashmir. Domestically, one would agree with Bajpai that though it would be “difficult for a Pakistani leader to be seen as slackening in the struggle for Kashmir, it is no less difficult for an Indian leader to be seen as slackening in the struggle against terrorism.”

It is no doubt difficult, but is it impossible? Why was there such a rousing welcome to General Musharraf when he came for the Agra summit? One should not forget the euphoria created inside Pakistan when Vajpayee visited Lahore in 1999. People in both countries yearn for peace and surveys carried out in both countries reveal that Kashmir is ranked far below other problems. With proper preparation at the national level, both inside and outside their respective Parliaments, an agreement could be reached by the political elite and conveyed to the common man in the streets.

On the bilateral dilemma, Bajpai says, “Pakistan is seeking a drastic change in the status quo, whereas India sees the sanctification of the status quo as the maximum concession it can make.” Here lies the crux of all the problems between India and Pakistan, which will also prove crucial for the current round of peace negotiations. Maintenance of status quo is what India would be finally willing to give as a maximum concession to Pakistan. In other words, India’s maximum concession would be to convert the LoC into an international border. Bajpai writes, “hard as it is for the Pakistanis to accept, can there be any real answer except that what they have been fighting for is no longer feasible?”

It is nothing but a day dream that Pakistan would agree to such a solution, as they have already been in possession of what India is willing to concede. However, Bajpai feels, “two major changes in India’s present position” would “add up to a demonstrably significant concession.” The first is India stepping back from its insistence on stopping of cross-border terrorism as a precondition for political negotiations and second, “India should openly accept the United States as a facilitator of serious Indo-Pakistani dialogue, something that Pakistan has long sought and India has long opposed.” While Vajpayee has already stepped back from the first, the second needs to be probed further.

One would agree with Bajpai that “the US involvement in the conflict has been an indisputable fact and indeed lately a useful one.” Especially since the Kargil War, the US has been insisting on maintaining the status quo, but how much support would it receive in Pakistan for such an effort? The Clinton-Sharif Agreement in June 1999 was considered a sell-out to US interests and Sharif’s fall can be traced to that agreement. Besides, inside Pakistan today there exists a deep animosity towards the US; the political growth of the MMA is its manifestation. If any Pakistani government, democratic or military or both, agrees to such a US facilitated effort to maintain the status quo, it would increase the support base of rightist parties and fundamentalist forces inside Pakistan. In that case this internal pressure would negate any external pressure on Pakistan and force it to revert back to its old Kashmir policy. If one looks at the post-September 11 developments, one would understand the American limitations in pressurizing Pakistan over Kashmir. So even if Pakistan due to external pressure agrees for the maintenance of status quo, there is no guarantee that it would live by its concession to India that it would not abet cross border terrorism.

Then what is the way out? What option does India have? A better strategy will actually be a negative one that focuses on ‘containing militancy,’ which Bajpai feels has not yielded adequate results for India. He believes that “for India’s containment approach to succeed there must be a new arrangement between New Delhi and the Kashmiri people that would address the dissatisfactions that facilitated the growth of militancy.” India has failed to implement the second aspect of this approach, viz., to turn the Kashmiris away from militancy. Instead of dealing with the environment politically through sincere and systematic efforts, New Delhi has been involved in managing the situation by ad hoc manipulation.

Contain Militancy, Coalesce Kashmir and Coerce Pakistan, not militarily, but politically should be the strategy that India should adopt.