Early Times Report
JAMMU, Dec 1: Former National Security Advisor MK Narayanan has virtually contested the New Delhi's Pakistan policy and said time has come for it to "define the nature and scope of its conflict with Pakistan". "We should do so before it defines us and perpetuates the India-Pakistan hyphenation," he has said.
He has said in the past, Indian Prime Ministers, like Prime Minister Narendra Modi, had reached out to their Pakistani counterparts, hoping to find a solution to problems that eluded their diplomats, and added that the Indian side at times had been over-generous (the Simla Agreement in 1972 between Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistan Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, for example). Such initiatives were hailed when made, but reviled in the absence of any real progress, he asserted, and very rightly. The Pakistani side has been more consistent, using such occasions to extract maximum benefits for itself, with little 'give' on their part and yet, India has persisted on this path, he has further said. "Both Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee were recent practitioners of this art of the possible," he remarked.
The upshot of his whole argument is like this: "The debris of successive setbacks: Lahore(1999) and Agra (2001); Shimla and Sharm-el-Sheikh (2009), as well as more recent initiatives, have not quite dampened enthusiasm on our part for diplomatic negotiations at the very highest levels. On assuming office, Mr. Modi energised this kind of 'top-down' diplomacy and himself took the lead. His example was followed at the level of the Foreign Minister, National Security Adviser and the Foreign Secretary. All this only underscored the calibrated approach that India had followed for many years - balancing diplomatic moves with an occasional retaliatory step, even if the policy did not produce results".
Reflecting on Pakistan and its policy towards India, MK Narayanan said: "Given the way Pakistan is structured, anyone negotiating a peace deal with India runs the risk of committing hara-kiri. At the same time, since peace is not at hand, any kind of a compromise on India's part - even a kind of grudging compromise - needs to be ruled out. Pakistan, for its part, would be only too happy to continue with its current 'zero-sum' approach, but India should not fall into this trap. Pakistan's military, identified by one and all as the most pervasive anti-India elemental force in Pakistan, remains opposed to any understanding with India - perhaps even on Pakistan's terms - as that would remove a key rationale for it to remain the dominant element in the country's affairs. With regard to foreign policy and national security affairs, the Pakistan Army has only recently tightened its grip. General Raheel Sharif's exit as Chief of the Army Staff and replacement by General Qamar Javed Bajwa does not presage any shift in policy".
Indeed, MK Narayanan has catalogued the strengths and weaknesses of Indian foreign policy vis-à-vis Pakistan. His assessment, formulations and assertions on Pakistan are correct when considered in the light of what Pakistan did to India after 1947.
The fact that Narayanan, who served as NSA to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, reflected on the foreign policy of India towards Pakistan as it followed during the regime of Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee, Manmohan Singh and is now being followed under the Narendra Modi's rule does suggest that he is not biased and that what he said and suggested is in the larger national interest. India cannot ignore the fact that Pakistan wants to annex Jammu & Kashmir at any cost and Nation cannot afford to let Jammu & Kashmir go out of India. Jammu & Kashmir is India's neck and if Pakistan succeeds in cut the India's neck, the whole country would break into smithereens. |
