The Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao's assertion that disengaging Pakistan in the wake of Mumbai attacks was wrong tends to suggest that truth about Pakistan's clean hands is gradually catching up with New Delhi. Ever since that event in 2008, no senior Indian official of her status had openly conceded the futility of predicating resumption of bilateral dialogue on condition that Pakistan should accept responsibility for the attack.
That after her intensive interlocution with her counterpart in Islamabad last month she has done so it's indeed brave on her part - may be in line with tradition of stating facts that often lace a swan song which her interview with CNN-IBN seems to be as she retires shortly.
Not that she didn't confront hostile questions - a given when the Indian media is discussing Pakistan - but she stood her ground and stoutly defended the rationale for the resumption of bilateral talks. Disputing the perception that she was too "generous" in the talks, Secretary Rao insisted "you cannot create profit and loss statement when it comes to relations between India and Pakistan ...it makes sense to engage". Without question her position as stated by her in the interview militates against her former colleague former home secretary G.K. Pillai's. Pillai had alleged that Pakistan's non-co-operative mode in Mumbai attack trial had literally sabotaged the foreign ministers' talks. "Well, it depends on how you look at it," she replied when asked to compare the two.
Well it would be unrealistic to think that just one statement of an Indian official and that too from someone who is about to retire from her position, can turn out to be a game changer in relations between Pakistan and India, especially when Nirupama kept looking over her shoulder to check if she had not gone too far from her government's stated positions on various issues and disputes with Pakistan.
Her argument was, therefore, quite expectedly a mixture of fact and fiction. So when asked what made her think that Pakistan's 'attitude towards tackling terrorism' had changed, her reply was "I think the prism through which they (Pakistanis) see this issue has definitely been altered". And then she narrated how she found her Pakistani counterpart talking about the need to tackle issues of non-state elements, safe havens and fake currency. That kind of realisation on the part of Pakistani officials she said is "concrete development" that justifies more talks. That she described Pakistan's standard positions on various aspects of international terrorism as something new and therefore an exciting opportunity it would suffice to say that it was her rationale upholding her optimism about the future of bilateral relationship. Otherwise, Pakistan's stance remains unchanged on the issues and disputes with its eastern neighbour. And if New Delhi has begun looking afresh at it, it indeed is a welcome change. It's our hope more such voices from across the border would be heard in days to come.
Why the Indian foreign secretary on the eve of her retirement after an illustrious diplomatic career should be rejecting her government's stand on Mumbai attacks and justify the imperative of engaging Pakistan? Her reply to the question was a question: "Did that approach (of not talking) yield too many dividends?" So she is quite right in asserting that re-engagement is the only realistic approach to bridge the yawning trust deficit between the two sides. Given that a mindset of perpetual hostility against Pakistan has come to obtain over time in India and the kind of rationale Secretary Nirupama has offered is rare.
But things are expected to change in consonance with emerging realities in South Asia and beyond. For one, the myth that India is clear of locally-fomented terrorism has been laid to eternal rest now with court indicting Hindu extremists of Samjhota Express carnage. Then, the political leadership in India too, as elsewhere in the region, is fast losing its lustre as corruption-free and fully committed to public welfare and that seems to be surrendering the initiative to the bureaucrats to act independently. Will that happen we would know later this month when the foreign minister-level talks take place in New Delhi.
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