NEW DELHI: Mediaeval rulers freed slaves to mark auspicious events. Pakistan is releasing 151 Indian fishermen to observe Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s visit to Delhi as a key guest at Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in on Monday.

Other Saarc leaders have been invited, but the Delhi media has focused exclusively on Mr Sharif.

“The irony would be lost on none,” wrote The Hindu. “After criticising caretaker Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for serving biryani to the former Pakistan PM, Mr Modi will now preside over his first banquet in office to which he has invited the Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif.”

Does the welcome relief to the bunch of routinely harassed fishermen presage a larger agenda between the two leaders when they have their first and abruptly conjured bilateral meeting here on Tuesday? If so, neither Mr Sharif nor Mr Modi has given out any clues.

Possibly the most clueless are the Kashmiris. Mr Sharif’s first visit to India as prime minister could turn out to be the only occasion since 1994 when Hurriyat Conference leaders were not invited to meet a high representative from Islamabad on a Delhi visit. Pakistani sources in Delhi felt that the last word on the issue may not have been said.

Moderate Hurriyat chief Mirwaiz Umar Farooq said he expected to watch the developments from Srinagar.

“Kashmiris will be closely watching the developments between India and Pakistan,” he said in a statement. “If we see any signs of a serious and courageous effort to find a solution, Kashmiris will definitely respond with an even greater sense of seriousness and courage.”

Opponents of the meeting have been quicker to articulate their view. Some of them are thought to have tried to subvert the Modi-Sharif meeting with a botched assault on India’s consulate in Herat in Afghanistan. The political will in Delhi was resolute this time and was not going to be waylaid by the detractors.

This was also how former prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee played it, when he ignored the killing of several Hindus in Kashmir on the eve of his visit to Lahore in February 1999. Pakistan’s foreign minister was in Delhi when the Mumbai massacres happened in 2008, indicating the distance that opponents of Indo-Pak peace initiatives can go.

Informed sources in Delhi say Mr Sharif was heading to be the only South Asian invitee at Mr Modi’s swearing-in ceremony, which is already bursting at the seams with an unwieldy list of domestic invitees. Turning the occasion into a Saarc-centric jamboree was an after-thought, a deft move to save Mr Modi possible embarrassment with Hindutva hardliners in his flock.

The Indian Army too chipped in as a road clearing party for the Modi-Sharif talks. On Sunday said there has been no infiltration of militants from across the Line of Control into the valley so far this year though troops were on alert to take on any challenge along the LoC and the hinterland.

“No infiltration has taken place. We are prepared and our counter-infiltration grid is in place. The troops are alert. We are ready to take on any challenge,” General Officer Commanding in chief of Army’s Northern Command Lieutenant General Sanjiv Chachra told reporters in Srinagar.

On another occasion, the Army could have spoilt it for the leaders. It did not play up a recent incident on the LOC where some Pakistanis were accused of laying mines to trap Indian soldiers.

The bafflingly good atmospherics for a seemingly ‘sudden meeting’ between the prime ministers of India and Pakistan will find a chord in a comment by former Bharatiya Janata Party president Nitin Gadkari in May last year. Mr Gadkari revealed that it was the late Reliance chairman Dhirubhai Ambani who met President Bill Clinton in Mumbai in March 2000 and pressed the American leader to get Mr Sharif’s life spared from the military ruler who toppled him. Mr Ambani claimed, according to Mr Gadkari, that Mr Sharif was a close friend. The current chairman of Reliance Group has been among the leading supporters of Mr Modi’s lavish election campaign.

The fishermen will go home happily, but there may be bigger fish to fry between the two countries.

Published in Dawn, May 26th, 2014