NEW DELHI: The bristling repartees between the home ministers of India and Pakistan on Thursday were shredded out of shape by the media on both sides. However, the fact is that the visit to Islamabad by Home Minister Rajnath Singh may have prepared grounds for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the Saarc summit in Pakistan later this year, Indian analysts said on Saturday.

“Why did India send Rajnath Singh and not a junior minister or even a civil servant instead? After all, the Bangladesh home minister didn’t go, in keeping with a pattern of difficulty in Dhaka-Islamabad relations,” wrote Ashok Malik, a political analyst seen as sympathetic to the Modi establishment.

He offered two reasons for the visit. “First, there was little to gain by giving Pakistan a reason to plant headlines alleging India had conspired to lead a boycott of an innocent multilateral meeting on Pakistani territory ... Rajnath Singh’s visit also sets the stage for Prime Minister Modi’s participation at the Saarc summit later this year. Unless there is a major ‘incident’ in the intervening period, Modi is likely to make that trip and his home minister has in a sense laid the ground for him.”

The Hindu offered similar comments in an editorial. “As the dust starts to settle after the controversies surrounding Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s visit to Pakistan, a sense of proportion is urgently needed — and given how easily minor observations about protocol can snowball into diplomatic spats, the sooner this happens the better it would be for India’s national interest as well as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.”

Saying that Mr Singh’s decision to finally show up for the Saarc interior ministers’ meet in Islamabad was wise, The Hindu editorial noted that “India, as the largest country in South Asia, has a stake in its viability. And for all the hostility in India-Pakistan rhetoric, which is basically aimed at domestic politics in the two countries in the backdrop of the protests in Kashmir, his visit underlined the attempt to separate the Saarc ministerial [meeting] from bilateral relations with the hosts.”

The comments appeared to fairly describe the eventful visit as it unfolded. Mr Singh warmly thanked the hosts for the hospitality in his speech but avoided a bilateral opportunity of a gracious handshake with his Pakistani counterpart. There is a precedent that could have saved the day for Pakistan. Remember that Gen Pervez Musharraf walked up to then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to grab his hands at the Saarc’s Kathmandu summit. The Pakistani leader won warm applause for his move to break the ice at tense moment.

As things stand, the paper wrote: “Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Islamabad for the Saarc summit in November, and the temptation to headline-hunt by sending a junior minister in Mr Singh’s place was thankfully resisted.”

It is, therefore, unfortunate, that on his return to Delhi, Mr Singh played to a domestic constituency, keen on highlighting Pakistani snubs, by acknowledging in the Rajya Sabha on Friday reports of a “media blackout” during his visit.

The Hindu slammed the home minister’s explanation about returning to India without attending the lunch hosted by the Pakistani government because their minister gave it a miss. Mr Singh said he did not go to Pakistan to have lunch.

“This may, of course, be read variously, as a rebuff or as an indication that the lunch was immaterial to the larger purpose of the visit. But by not embedding his remarks, which included an aside on India’s tradition of hospitality, in a more nuanced roadmap for Saarc cooperation, the minister has unnecessarily given play to pointless nitpicking. This tendency of matching Pakistani provocation with Indian retort is not always necessary.”

Published in Dawn, August 7th, 2016