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India and Pakistan have been finally admitted into the China dominated six-nation grouping Shanghai Cooperation Organization. The two South-Asian neighbours are going to be the seventh and eighth members of the SCO after China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Modi met the other world leaders including the Chinese president Xi Jinping and Kazakhstan President Nursultan Nazarbayev and he also had some brief talk with Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif, a development that has created a faint hope that the two nations might yet again start talking. The SCO thus was yet another opportunity for the two countries to make yet another shot at re-engagement. And that too when there is still an opportunity to pursue a dialogue before the next year’s national election in Pakistan followed by the one in India in the year after. So, if the dialogue doesn’t start now, the window for it will soon close and there would be hardly any possibility for it in the next two years.  The last one and half years have seen the two countries drift apart. New Delhi has made the dialogue decisively conditional on Pakistan acting against terror.

And Islamabad , on the other hand, boosted by the indigenous nature of the current unrest in Valley has chosen to advertise its traditional case on Kashmir . For once, the country doesn’t feel defensive about its alleged hand in fomenting trouble in the state. The predominantly popular sources of the current agitation in the state have made it difficult to accuse Islamabad of a role. But while this has introduced some minor shift in the standard narrative on Kashmir, the situation in no way has become less complex. India and Pakistan have again positioned themselves rigidly on the opposite sides of the divide, ratcheting up their old rhetoric on the state. Pakistan has also returned to its historical stand on the dispute, making the UN resolutions as the bedrock for the Kashmir solution. This is a far cry from the former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf’s radically flexible position on the settlement of the state. His four point proposals which envisaged a Kashmir solution without any radical geographical modifications and New Delhi’s gradual warming up to the ideas have all but vanished from the discourse. UN resolutions are back in vogue

There has been an out and out drift in their relationship and it is time both countries make a renewed effort to bring back trust in their engagement and seek accommodation of each other’s concerns and sensitivities. Only such an approach holds hope of a positive outcome. Peace in the region needs the two countries to step up to this challenge without outside pressure. And Kashmir as a major bone of contention will need to be tackled head on.

There is also a widening difference over the agenda with Pakistan seeking a return to the Composite Dialogue Process and meaningful discussion on Kashmir. India, on the other hand, wants a thrust on terrorism. India also wants a demonstrative action against the perpetrators of the Mumbai attack as a pre-requisite for expanding the scope of the dialogue. With this serious difference of opinion persisting on a range of issues, the fate of a possible fresh round of engagement looks predictable. Now the challenge for the two countries is to not only carry the talks process forward and protect it from the usual treacherous turns in their relationship but also to take steps to bridge their differences on the talks agenda itself.  Ever since Musharraf exited from  the scene, both countries have struggled to get back to productive dialogue. There has been an out and out drift in their relationship and it is time both countries make a renewed effort to bring back trust in their engagement and seek accommodation of each other’s concerns and sensitivities. Only such an approach holds hope of a positive outcome. Peace in the region needs the two countries to step up to this challenge without outside pressure. And Kashmir as a major bone of contention will need to be tackled head on.

If not a direct dialogue, this makes it incumbent for the two countries to first make serious efforts, preferably through back channels, to accommodate each other’s positions and thereby reduce some trust deficit. And this effort has to be guided by the realization that ultimately India and Pakistan will have to solve their own problems themselves for a truly peaceful sub-continent. Only a dialogue held after this preliminary confidence building exercise can be hoped to lead us towards a positive outcome.

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