On Wednesday, Chief Minister Mehbooba Mufti urged Pakistan to respond positively to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call for a joint fight against the common enemy of poverty and disease. She also called on the two countries to go back to the times of Atal Bihari Vajpayee when peace prevailed on the borders and “both the countries moved closer to each other on the path of friendship”. Earlier, PM Modi in an interview to a television channel had made some right noises on relations with the neighbours. He had said that India’s foreign policy does not revolve around Pakistan and that New Delhi was not working to isolate any nation. He made a strong pitch for South Asian nations to join hands to take on poverty. “If we fight together, we will win faster,” Modi said. But such talk has made little redeeming difference to the state of affairs. The past week has witnessed one of the most intense cross-LoC firing in the past three years leading to killing of thirteen people, six of them soldiers and seven civilians. Both sides have suffered the heavy loss of life of the soldiers and the civilians and the consequent displacement of the thousands of the people living close to the border. Similarly, the violence in Kashmir has shown no signs of abatement. The statements emanating from the senior political and the military leadership in India too have, in no way, been reconcilatory in nature. While the home minister Rajnath Singh has bragged about India’s capacity to cross the border and punish the enemy on its own soil, the Army chief General Bipin Rawat has talked of calling Pakistan’s nuclear bluff. This talk has only vitiated the environment, rendering the chances of dialogue further bleak.
Even though amid this belligerent talk the NSAs of the two countries met at Bangkok, this has not pushed the neighbours towards a renewed engagement. In 2015, soon after the NSAs meeting in Bangkok, PM Modi had landed up unannounced in Lahore at the house of the then Pakistan PM Nawaz Sharif. Dialogue was resumed in right earnest only to be cut short by the attack on Pathankot airbase. Ever since the relations between the two countries have plunged to one low after another, as the recent border stand-off has yet again underlined.
Prime Minister Modi in his last one and a half year in power will certainly contribute to the peace by instituting a meaningful dialogue process with Pakistan that looks to the larger process of settlement of long running issues rather than getting bogged down by the electoral politics of the day and the machinations of a section of television media out to make a TRP killing on continuing bilateral acrimony. It is great to fight poverty and disease but that can hardly happen if the underlying issues that stoke the conflict linger on.