PM's pakistan visit

Prime minister has again stumped his opposition with his political tactics and idiosyncrasies. His stopover visit to Pakistan has been acclaimed and criticized equally across the country.

His fan army is positioning this visit as a show of increasing trust and bonhomie between Indian prime minister and his counterpart Mr. Nawaz Sharif. They claim this meeting as a new beginning and thaw in India-Pak relationship. It is seen as an effort to delink such occasional visits from routine outcome-focused approach.

On the other hand opposition both in India as well as Pakistan is portraying this visit as pre-planned meeting. According to inner sources, this meeting was facilitated by Business tycoon Sajjan Jindal who had played pivotal role in earlier Dhaka meeting of two NSA's.

Whether we can term this visit as successful or failure depends on the purpose of the visit. From the official brief, Visit was impromptu without any specific agenda. So government can claim this as continuation of Atal-Sharif friendship. But a larger question looms over such visit which is "Could India Pakistan visits be actually de-linked from their outcome?". Can we really ignore the pre-history of India-Pak relations in such visit? Can we move away so abruptly from Kashmir or state facilitated terrorism to warmth and personal friendships?

I remember Sushama Swaraj gave a rhetorical speech to media when one Indian soldier was beheaded by some unknown sources from Pakistan. She exhorted to get ten heads in revenge of one Indian head. All the heat generated by rightist BJP around India-Pak relations seems so superficial now.

Till recently, BJP suspended talks with Pakistan over Pak ambassador's meeting with Hurriyat leaders. But suddenly Modi has gained this new-found wisdom and he is ready to forget all of blood stained history revolving around Pakistan and thinks talks are the best solution to India-Pak issue. This reflects that Modi is missing an institutional understanding of the issue.

If he had understood nature of India-Pak relations then either he would not have suspended talks earlier or he would have refrained from such unplanned fruitless visits. His move shows whimsical individual oriented nature of Indian foreign policy.

If the visit had no purpose then wouldn't it be better utilization of time, had Modi visited Akhlaq's home in Dadri. Why waste huge public resources on such fanfare and selfie campaign with world leaders who stabs in your back? If the visit had any purpose then what is the result in terms of 8+2 agenda of India and Pakistan. These open questions ought to be answered.

History is evident that India Pakistan relationship passes through a cycle of talk and violence. Often talks reach to near resolution of Kashmir but a sudden terrorist attack with involvement of state element from Pakistan derail the whole peace process. Talk are suspended. Then they start talking about talks. Slowly they engage in talks. In parallel, violence starts. Talks and violence go hand in hand. After a breaking point, talks are suspended and only violence prevail. Once both are exhausted with violence then again they start talking about talks.

The moral of story is Pakistan is not as democratic as India. While democratic institution keep pushing for talks and engagement, simultaneously, military institution like ISI promotes violence. That's why it is often remarked that road to Islamabad goes through Rawalpindi (Military headquarter).

A recent trend witnessed in India is political use of Pakistan bashing for hiding internal policy failure. This was a tested technique in Pakistan. However recent Bihar election showed that national leaders used reference of Pakistan to turn away the attention from government failure in meeting people's expectation.

Time will tell, what Modi has in store for us. He is full load of promises. but very little has happened on the ground. Or even if it has happened, very little is communicated to the people. I wish, Modi shows some commitment and character in dealing with Pak issue rather than becoming agent of RSS or other Hindu groups. He has the persona to take this relationship into unchartered territories but India-Pak issue is much more complex than he seem to imagine.