Natwar Singh’s recent reference to India-China and India-Pakistan relations was very interesting even as it was bound to attract objections from Islamabad.  In stating that the India-China model of dispute resolution could serve as the model for India-Pakistan dispute resolution, Natwar Singh is partly right and partly innovative in his interpretation.  As the Pakistani diplomats are not innocents in not sensing the implications of this comparison, they promptly questioned the      analogy. 

The point is Singh’s analogy is appropriate in regard to procedural and instrumental devices that diplomatic negotiations over tangled and complex matters resort to.  However, on critical core issues, the Indian External Affairs minister is rather wide off the mark. 

Adherence to bilateralism as the sole basis for negotiations, evolving an agenda in which not only the core issue but other less divisive issue like, economic ties, people-to-people contacts and other confidence building measures are included in the agenda are the common diplomatic devices.  Especially, in the case of long-persisting disputes, which escalated to armed conflicts, agendas for dispute resolution efforts are deliberately crafted to permit some forward movement in negotiations.  Otherwise tackling directly the hardened bones of contention could often end up in embarrassing failure or worse in recrudescence of hostile postures. In a sense, the renowned strategic thinker Basil Hart’s characterization of ‘strategy’ as “the indirect way”, also applies to the strategy of diplomatic negotiation. It is in this aspect of dispute resolution that one finds congruence in the India-China and India-Pakistan dispute resolution processes.

But when the core contents of the two disputes are brought into the picture, there is a perceptible difference. It may be true that both the disputes are more or less territorial disputes; even so, at a deeper level there are significant variations.  Prominent among these are two points.

First, the India-China boundary dispute has its origins in the controversy relating to the India-Tibet boundary demarcation and the veracity of the McMahon Line in the northeastern marsh lands of India.  The Kashmir dispute, on the other hand, centers not so much around a boundary demarcation but on the more sensitive criterion of popular choice immediately following the partition of India. This is to an extent highlighted by the fact that the UN had recommended a plebiscite there albeit with some conditions, which were integrally related to Pakistan’s illegal involvement in the invasion of Kashmir. Pakistan’s defiance of those conditions has indeed rendered the plebiscite formula irrelevant. From India’s point of view, the circumstances squarely warrant the invocation of doctrine of rebus sic stantibus (when circumstances change obligations change) over the plebiscite formula.  Even so, the gravamaa of Pakistan’s case rests on the allegation of India’s denial of the wishes of the majority of Kashmiri people.  That Pakistan no longer insists on a plebiscite after half a century does not essentially alter the basic perceptions. Thus, while the dispute with China is in essence a boundary dispute, the dispute with Pakistan is very much less so.

The second difference, though closely linked with the first is conceptually different.  For, even when the two disputes to which India is a common party are regarded as territorial, one can still see a variation in the nature of contestation of the territorial claims by the parties.  In the case of the dispute with China, it is India that alleges Chinese occupation of Indian territory and demanding China’s evacuation. On the contrary, in Kashmir’s case, it is Pakistan that alleges Indian occupation to start with. It is, of course, true that India’s claim can only be sustained on the of the former ruler’s accession, a case partly weakened by India’s own earlier promises of securing a people’s mandate.  India itself has conceded that there is a dispute over Kashmir to be settled.

Broadly, on the basis of the above reading of the situation, India is in the role of a party demanding a change in the status-quo vis-à-vis the dispute with China; in the case of the Kashmir dispute, however, India is a status-quo seeking party with Pakistan demanding a change in the situation. 

This type of role-playing of state actors as those essentially holding on to the status-quo and those seeking change, is an important feature in international disputes.  India dons one role in one dispute and another role in the second dispute.

No doubt, we are only talking of ‘models’ for the sake of conceptual analysis and ‘models’ can never be exact replicas of actual behaviour patterns of individuals or states.  Yet, the point is that models are put forward to indicate the broad contour in the shape and dimensions of complex situations as also to ‘infer’ new situations. Now that the Indian minister himself chose to advertise the model of dispute-resolution in the context of India-China and India Pakistan disputes, a debate on the comparison and contrast of the models of the disputes themselves becomes relevant.