Dr. Singh’s Pakistan Policy: An Assessment

Statecraft

HAPPYMON JACOB

Addressing a press conference in New Delhi two days ago, the Indian Prime Minister, in response to whether India and Pakistan were on the verge of signing a historic deal on Kashmir, said “I have tried to improve relations with all our neighbours to the best of my ability and on one time it appeared that important breakthrough was in sight…Events in Pakistan for example that General Pervez Musharraf (former President) had to make way for a different set up. I think that led to the process not moving further....”. Though it might look like a statement that does not say much, those who were following the Indo-Pak negotiations from 2004 to 2007 would certainly realize that Dr. Singh is talking about the missed opportunity to finalise a political deal on Kashmir, one that had supporters in both capitals and Kashmir. More so, consider the fact that Dr. Singh has a habit of understating everything, and indeed his press conference was full of understatements!

I can feel a sense of loss in the PM’s words, rightly so. Manmohan Singh could have gone down in the history of India for having achieved yet another historic task (apart from finalizing the Indo-US nuclear deal which now seems to be facing a lot of hurdles) had he shown the courage to make that trip to Islamabad to finalsie the Kashmir deal with Musharraff in 2007. Dr. Singh was too risk-averse to take that giant leap of faith (even under reasonable circumstances) to end the conflict over Kashmir. He certainly was/is not a courageous political leader (well, for that matter, he is not even a political leader): radical decisions can only be made by leaders with courage and conviction.  

But for a man who showed exceptional grit in negotiating and finalizing the nuclear deal with the United States, thereby initiating India’s integration into the international nuclear order ending the country’s nuclear isolationism, Dr. Singh did not show any determination in ending the Kashmir conflict with Pakistan. Perhaps he was not convinced about it or his advisors were scared that Pakistan would do a ‘Shimla’ by reneging on the promise once Musharraff went out of power in Pakistan. But all indications to this day show that such a reversal would not have happened for Pakistan continues to await an honorable exit route from Kashmir. Many people in India may or may not accept this argument but this, to my mind, is simply the reality. It is also possible that Dr. Singh was not in a position to focus his administration’s energies on the Kashmir deal which unlike the nuclear deal would have had much more political repercussions at home. After all, Pakistan is India’s favorite enemy of all times. But history will judge Dr. Singh unfavourably for we love and respect leaders who can make strong decisions (no, there is no veiled reference to Narendra Modi here!) and we hate weaklings. So if the chroniclers of the UPA government point out one fault in Dr. Singh, it would be lack of courage. 

In short, Dr. Singh was unwilling to do anything radical that could have potentially transformed the India-Pakistan rivalry. But he skillfully managed a number of unpleasant situations by not letting things go out of control unlike the previous regime headed by Vajpayee. Many in India think that Dr. Singh’s pussy-footed policy towards Pakistan was unwise and that not responding to Pakistan with resolve was the biggest shortcoming of Dr. Singh’s Pakistan policy. But not letting the relationship with Pakistan boil over was his single biggest achievement, in my opinion. I start with the assumption that an aggressive policy towards Pakistan would not have led India anywhere other than prompting the international community to re-hyphenate India and Pakistan and thereby consider India to be another irresponsible power in the region. Handling Pakistan and the relationship with it takes diplomacy of a higher kind, and Dr. Singh’s government partly exhibited that by refusing to employ aggression to deal with Islamabad. Where he failed was in not showing the courage to employ such diplomacy to its fullest. 

In other words, UPA’s foreign policy, while it did not take us to war, was a celebration of the status quo. Dr. Singh often did not have the backing of his leader Sonia Gandhi and that of the Congress Party, a party that has historically exhibited an unimaginative Pakistan policy, to translate his visions into reality. He did enunciate a number of visions capped by his articulation that he was in favour of making the borders in Kashmir irrelevant. But when the time came for ‘making the borders irrelevant’, he did not want to put his head on the block. 

He also did not have the courage to deliver on increasing the trade with Pakistan despite this being an issue that is positively looked at by a lot of Indians and Pakistanis. Dr. Singh’s government could not put in place a robust system of crisis prevention measures, in the form of CBMs, to ensure that crises situations between India and Pakistan do not escalate to major standoffs. What about other issues such as Sir Creek and Siachen? The Indian and Pakistani interlocutors, track-1 and track-2, kept saying that these are really low hanging fruits, ready to be plucked. But even on those issues there has been no progress in the 10 years of Dr. Singh’s rule. Apart from all the other reasons that I have pointed out earlier in the article, I think his inability achieve anything substantive with Pakistan also came from the fact that he simply did not visit Pakistan despite multiple invitations from Islamabad. 
As Dr. Singh said in his Press conference two days ago, history might judge him kindly for he made sure that India did not get into any disastrous situations with Pakistan, but for now we have to say that doing so was not enough. He should have done better things given the ten years that he had to better the Indo-Pak relationship.

(SOurce: Greater Kashmir. January 5, 2013. URL: http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/2014/Jan/5/dr-singh-s-pakistan-policy-an-assessment-7.asp)