Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has finally accepted India's invite to attend the swearing-in ceremony of premier-elect Narendra Modi. According to the programme received from India, the prime minister will have a bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Modi on the morning of May 27. The Prime Minister would also call on the India's President Pranab Mukherjee, before he returns to Pakistan in the afternoon of May 27. The Foreign Office spokesperson Tasnim Aslam said: "Obviously, issues related to the disputes; Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek, water and others will be discussed when leaders of Pakistan and India meet. Also, trade, economic relations, transnational crime, terrorism and people to people contact can come up for discussion." The Prime Minister's decision has been welcomed by many political leaders including Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah, Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F) chief Maulana Fazlur Rehman and PTI's Makhdoom Javed Hashmi. India's main opposition Baharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has also welcomed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's decision to attend swearing-in ceremony.
To go or not to go, the puzzling question had been on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's table for quite some time, though the Foreign Office expected of him to positively respond to New Delhi's invitation to join other Saarc leaders at Modi's oath-taking ceremony. The burden of advice was said to be in favour of saying 'yes', not succumbing to a tit-for-tat mindset because the then Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh had declined to be present at his swearing-in ceremony last year. Prime Minister Sharif was the first foreign dignitary to greet the new Indian premier-elect, in fact even before the final results were announced, making known his wish to move out of the sticking grooves of lasting hostility and break fresh ground. That the Modi invitation is a mere formality, or a 'coronation darbar' in Delhi as someone would like to put it, hopefully it's not. At his two oath-taking functions, in 2004 and 2009, Manmohan Singh had not invited his Saarc counterparts, as his foreign minister Salman Khurshid dubbed the ceremonies as a 'local event'. The perception then was that Manmohan Singh feared a Shiv Sena-led backlash in case the Pakistani leadership was invited. He was also scared of the Indian military establishment who made him swallow his pride but refusing to honour his commitment to pull back forces from Siachen. 'The Accidental Prime Minister', as Dr Singh's one-time media advisor would like to classify him, had 'failed to take charge, surrendering his authority to Sonia Gandhi in an increasingly dysfunctional arrangement'. But Narendra Modi suffers no such hiccups; his victory is unprecedented and Shiv Sena and the genre are in his pocket, although the mother of his party - RSS - has been holding demonstrations against his invitation to Nawaz Sharif. Going by his utterly negative utterances against the Pakistani leadership including Nawaz Sharif during his electoral campaign one would tend to think the invitation was a wrong delivery. But he had then also sharply criticised Bangladesh accusing Sheikh Hasina government of conniving with the influx of illegal Bangladeshi immigrants into Assam and Bengal. The invitations have been delivered at the right places, opening a window to let in a waft of fresh air and see things beyond the contentious horizons. Modi appears to be anxious to be different as prime minister than what he was as chief minister and BJP candidate for India's top slot. His landslide electoral victory and proven pragmatism rightly then encourage his out-of-the-box thinking, his invitation to Saarc leaders being the example. Unless his invitations turn out to be mere one-upmanship - the apprehension cannot be ruled out - Modi appears to be moving on from his Hindutva-based election victory to meet his next commitment of developing and growing Indian economy, for which constructive engagement with regional stakeholders is an undeniable imperative. And for that to happen Nawaz Sharif is the man he should get in touch with.
In a nutshell, Narendra Modi had lobbed the ball in Pakistan's court, and Islamabad had got to play it taking it as an opportunity to promote its own national interest. A shift from status quo ante, even if at present it cannot be a quantum jump in terms of a breakthrough, is what suits Pakistan more than India. Narendra Modi may not be a very deep-thinking person as his predecessor and party elder Atal Behari Vajpayee but the fact remains that if an opportunity ever emerged to turn the page on the bitter past it was when the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was at the helms in New Delhi. It's not surprising then that the Kashmiris in Occupied Kashmir across the political board have welcomed Modi's gesture of inviting the prime minister of Pakistan. After all it's the Kashmiris' cause that Pakistan has been fighting all these years and decades. In spite of his party's total electoral rout chief minister Omar Abdullah believes Modi's invitation to Pakistan prime minister can prove to be the 'beginning of sustained talk' between the two countries; the PDP's Mehbooba Mufti has termed it a 'positive beginning' and the Hurriyat Conference chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said invitation to Nawaz Sharif 'an encouraging message and good beginning'. This alone was a sufficient reason for the Nawaz Sharif government to respond positively to the invitation.
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