Sarah Khan
Pakistan and India share a long history of broken promises, false
hopes and suspended peace dialogues. Since 1947, occasionally leaders of India
signed peace agreements on Pakistan’s proposals but none of these agreements
could bring peace among the two neighbours due to extremist ideology followed
by Hindus. Whenever Pakistani leaders took a step forward towards peace, it was
responded with cold shoulder from Indian side. On few odd occasions when Indian
political government agreed to resolve outstanding issues, the process was
sabotaged by hardliners of RSS by stage managing terrorist incidents on Indian
or Pakistani soil.
Tashkent Decalaration was signed between India and Pakistan on 10
January 1966. The peace agreement was moderated by the former Soviet Union
after India and Pakistan engaged in war in 1965. The meeting began on January
4, 1966, and was chaired by then USSR premier Alexei Kosygin with then
president Ayub Khan from Pakistan and Indian Prime Minister Lal Bahdur Shastri.
It was all shattered into pieces years later when the India instigated Mukti
Bahini’s in East Pakistan and waged war against Pakistan in 1971, leading to
the accession of East Pakistan and along the way ignoring the pledges made in Tashkent
declaration.
After war of 1971, Pakistan
again sought to lay down the principles that should govern their future
relations with India. Simla Agreement envisaged steps to be taken
for further normalization of bilateral relations. Most importantly, it bound
the two countries "to settle their differences by peaceful means through
bilateral negotiations". In 1972, Bhutto several times, invited Indira
Gandhi to visit Pakistan. Indira Gandhi insisted that, as the agreement
required, all disputes should be settled bilaterally; but only to add that the
Kashmir question was already settled. Pakistani foreign minister Sahibzada
Yaqub Khan said on June 3, 1986, that neither country had proposed a discussion
on Kashmir in pursuance of the pact. Pakistan’s first formal proposal for a
meeting “to initiate negotiations on the settlement of Jammu and Kashmir in
terms of Article 6 of the Simla Agreement” was made in a letter which
prime minister Nawaz Sharif wrote on July 14, 1992 to prime minister Narsimha
Rao after militancy had erupted in Kashmir. Simla was violated by India as it
militarily occupied the Siachen Glacier in the early 1980's. The
"agreement" did not last.
In 1993, the US Assistant Secretary of State, Robin Raphel said:
“It is a simple fact that the Simla Agreement has not been very effective up to
this point … it’s fine to discuss the Kashmir dispute under the Simla accord,
but it needs to happen and it hasn’t thus far. Therefore ... it has not been
very effective” — 20 years after it was concluded, an eloquent comment on its
irrelevance to a solution.
The agreed text of the Agra Declaration of July 16,
2001, on which the Vajpayee government backed out, did not make even a ritual
obeisance to the Simla pact either in the preamble or in the text proper. The
pact was now history. The provisions on restoration of the status quo before
the war were worked out. The rest fell by the wayside.
In the early hours of
February 19, 2007, sixty-eight people, mostly Pakistani civilians were killed
and scores more injured in a terrorist attack on Samjotha . India’s National
Investigation Agency had concluded that Swami Aseemanand was the mastermind
behind the blasts. Aseemanand’s confessional statement points towards
involvement of government agencies and serving military officers in this
incident. In a bid to cover-up the matter, investigation on this gory incident
has been slowed down and all main culprits, including Swami Aseemanand, are on
bail. Whenever Pakistan takes up this matter with India, instead of giving an
explanation, India shows attitude and starts crying about Mumbai incident. Sole
survivor out of the attackers of Mumbai incident, Ajmal Kasab, was hanged in an
indecent haste that has hampered the ongoing investigations in to the Mumbai
attacks.
Interestingly, one of
the Indian home ministry official, had submitted an affidavit in Indian court
stating that the Mumbai attack and an earlier attack on Indian parliament were
false flag operations planned and conducted by the Indian intelligence agencies
to garner support for enacting tougher anti-terror laws. Later, under duress,
he withdrew the affidavit. According to Times of India, RVS Mani, who as home
ministry under-secretary signed the affidavits submitted in court had said that
Satish Verma, until recently a part of the Central Bureau of Investigation-SIT
probe team, told him that both the 2001 attack on Indian parliament and the
2008 Mumbai attacks were set up “with the objective of strengthening the
counter-terror legislation
In May 2014, Pakistan PM
Nawaz Sharif again took initiative by attending inauguration ceremony of Narenders
Modi as PM of India. Both sides agreed to resume Secretary level talks.
Bilateral talks at the foreign secretary level between India and Pakistan were
shelved following a rendezvous between the Pakistani high commissioner in India
and the leaders of the Hurriyat Conference, a Kashmiri separatist group. The
Indian government delivered a message of “its
either us or them” to the Pakistani side and the high commissioner’s
actions have effectively erased any positive momentum in the fragile bilateral
relationship. Since then Pakistani and Indian Prime Ministers have met in Ufa
and Paris at the sidelines of climate change summit. Most recently Indian PM
paid a surprise visit to Pakistan on 25th December on wedding
ceremony of Pakistani PM grand daughter. This all was being interpreted as a
positive step towards “Comprehensive Dialogue” but on 2nd January Indian extremist RSS stage managed an attack on Indian
airbase near Pakistani border and again impeded the dialogue process which was
scheduled to be held on 15th January this year. The upcoming Indian
trajectory is clear: no matter what Pakistan does to stem terrorism, Pakistan’s
effort to end terrorism would have to meet Indian evaluation standards, and
naturally it won’t. Hence, no dialogue. And to talk to India, Pakistan must
forget about Hurryiat Conference leadership, Kashmir and water issues; also
stop talking about bringing to book the perpetrators of bombing of Pakistani
train Samjhauta express.
Preconditioning the
dialogue with favourable environment to India is a non-starter. Dialogues are
initiated to make the environment favourable. Apparently India has taken a
decision to freeze dialogue with Pakistan for a decade or so—barring occasional
photo-ops to divert international pressures. Pakistan should not go overboard
in commencing dialogue with India, unless India rationalizes its overall
approach toward Pakistan. Keeping in view the prevailing Indian mindset,
Pakistan should watch out its tendency of hurling unilateral concessions to
India. It must be conveyed to India and international community that
Pakistan is committed to a result-oriented, sustainable and meaningful dialogue
with India to address all issues of mutual concern including the core issue of
Jammu and Kashmir. India’s new trend of focusing on the issue of terrorism only
is a dangerous strategy; it implies that India no longer wants to have a
meaningful dialogue with Pakistan.
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