In his victory speech, prime minister-designate Imran Khan had reached out to India with a conciliatory message saying "we are ready to improve ties with India. If you take one step forward we will take two steps forward." Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi responded on Monday in a phone call congratulating Khan on his electoral success and expressing the hope that Pakistan and India would work together to "open a new chapter" in bilateral relations. This though is not the first time the two countries' leaders have exchanged friendly gestures. It may be recalled that the then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had gone out of his way to extend a hand of friendship to India. He had attended Modi's oath taking ceremony, met him on the sidelines of a Saarc Summit, invited him to his grand daughter's wedding, and even sent a sari to his mother as goodwill token. Yet despite his show of warmth on a personal level, since Modi came to power in 2014, Pak-India peace dialogue has remained suspended, and tensions along the Line of Control kept rising, frequently erupting into violence causing the loss of scores of civilian as well as military lives on both sides.
The root causes of trouble are several outstanding issues of dispute. But as Khan said in his speech "the unfortunate truth is that Kashmir is the core issue, and the situation in Kashmir." He had called for resolving the issue through negotiations. Although some in the Indian media have tried to give a warped interpretation to his words, what he said is not new. In fact, former Indian prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee who belonged to Modi's own party, the BJP, had recognized the need of resolving Kashmir through dialogue, and almost reached an agreement with the then Pakistan's military ruler General Pervez Musharraf when that effort was foiled by his party hardliners. His Congress Party successor, Dr Manmohan Singh, had also talked of finding an out-of-the-box solution. They surely believed Kashmir needed to be settled for sake of internal and regional peace. The human rights situation in the Valley since has reached a point where three former chief ministers of the state, Farooq Abdullah, Omer Abdullah, and Mehbooba Mufti (she was a BJP coalition partner) as well as a senior BJP leader and its ex-external affair minister, Yashwant Sinha - who led several civil society fact-finding missions to the Valley - have been criticizing New Delhi's "muscular policy in Kashmir" advising dialogue with the Hurriyat Conference leadership as well Pakistan. The UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein have also been expressing grave concern over situation, offering to send a fact-finding mission to Kashmir, which of course, India has rejected.
There are lobbies on both sides that want to keep the pot boiling. Modi himself has made a career out of Pakistan bashing. With the Indian general election less than a year away it remains to be seen if really meant everything he said in the telephonic conversation with Khan. As the leader of the ultra-right Hindu nationalist party, he is in a unique position to resolve all bilateral issues of dispute, including Kashmir. For its part, Pakistan should invite him to its new prime minister's investiture and try and take things forward.
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