India can't terrify Pakistanis by shelling homes, killing innocents: Mani Shankar

A former Indian minister and diplomat and member of the Rajya Sabha, Mani Shankar Aiyar, has warned Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi about his thunders that Indian guns will do the talking and pointed out that if losing half their country in 1971 and leaving 90,000 prisoners of war in Indian hands has not dimmed Pakistan's zeal to protect itself, big words from our end are not going to make them grovel at Modi's feet.
In a talk show over an Indian TV channel, the former diplomat said Pakistan was a sovereign nation, it made its own assessment of the threats to its security and the kind of talk they have heard in recent days from our governmental chiefs only persuaded them that they were right in regarding India as the biggest threat to their security.
He strongly criticised Defence Minister Arun Jaitley thumping of his chest and proclaiming that "we have given the 'Pakis' a jaw-breaking reply and told him that the Pakistanis are still there - with their jaw quite intact and a nuclear arsenal nestling in their pockets". He questioned whether retaliatory fire is a BJP innovation or is it that we have ceased being peace-loving and become a war-mongering nation?
Mani Shankar Aiyar said the idea that India has terrified the Pakistanis into submission by shelling a few homes and killing a few soldiers and several innocents might be a myth that washes here but it is far, far from the truth. "The danger is that we will forget the limits that divide peace from war."
"This Indian act marginalizes the sane voices across the border and brings Pakistanis of all hues and colours together in the defence of their homeland. The language of the 'Akhara' is not the language of statesmen. And war is not a continuation of diplomacy by other means; it is a confession of the breakdown of diplomacy," he told the people who are running the affairs of the BJP government in New Delhi.
He told the BJP leadership that Dr Manmohan Singh showed, especially during the first three years of his government, how much could be achieved by talking to Pakistan instead of shooting at them. "Even Kashmir was tackled on the back-channel. It was agreed that territories could not be changed nor populations exchanged. What was needed was fostering exchanges of all kinds between Kashmiris on both sides of the LoC - the restoration of Kashmiriyat by fostering exchanges between people, relatives, friends, media, goods and services across the LoC in a two-way traffic," he said.
He said Pakistan has repeatedly - even with the change of regime in India - shown that it is ready to talk with India. "It is we who are stalling the dialogue. But as the history of the last 20 years has shown, proxy war in Kashmir did not come in the way of Vajpayee's bus journey to the Shaheed Minar (Minar-e-Pakistan) in Lahore; Kargil and the Parliament attack did not stop the invitation to Musharraf to come to Agra; nor did it prevent Vajpayee from going to Lahore to sign a joint declaration that presaged the resumption of dialogue. 26/11 certainly threw the spanner in the works but was not enough to forestall the invitation to Nawaz Sharif to the forecourt of Rashtrapati Bhawan. So, a 'munh tor jawab' is for domestic consumption, a pathetic attempt at proving the breadth of the prime minister's chest."
He said the bigger danger was that overblown rhetoric could tips the subcontinent over the precipice. The parallels between the events that sparked WWI and the contemporary India-Pakistan situation are striking. "Let us remind ourselves that it was the Father of the Nation who taught us that 'taking an eye for an eye would leave the whole world blind'. Shanti! Shanti! Shanti! (peace)," Mani Shankar concluded.