NEVER have India-Pakistan relations been so bad for so long. They barely exist today. In a polarised but interdependent world, with the Doomsday Clock tick-tocking towards midnight, this is an unfortunate situation, to put it mildly.

The need for improved relations between these neighbouring nuclear weapons countries, one with the largest population in the world and the other with the fifth largest, should be obvious.

Pakistan, as the smaller of the two countries, has a relatively greater interest in restoring at least a minimum of exchanges and cooperation, and the restoration of informal or indirect discussion on how to address the more serious differences in a mutually acceptable manner.

India, on the contrary, has evinced a more or less complete lack of interest in any substantive interaction with Pakistan. It sees Pakistan as a failing terrorist state with few, if any, options from which it merely needs to protect itself. Accordingly, it sees no point in entering into discussions with such a state.

How can discussions between the two countries be more fruitful?

Even in Track 2 meetings, these attitudes prevent any serious discussions which could feed back into official policies of the two countries towards each other. Discussions, even when friendly and polite, tend to degenerate into accusations and counteraccusations reflecting official, indeed national, attitudes towards each other. They tend to become zero-sum point-scoring, which eventually becomes uninteresting and a waste of time.

The question arises: how can a broader spectrum of people from both countries, including officials, intellectuals, journalists, business people, all kinds of professionals and specialists, cultural representatives, students, tourists, etc, have greater interaction with each other which could, over time, feed positively into political attitudes towards each other?

In the absence of such a process, discussions on any issue, whether Kashmir, terrorism, water issues, treatment of minorities, increasing trade and investment, confidence building measures or other items on the agendas of past dialogues, become infructuous.

So, how can discussions between the two countries be more fruitful? Two conditions need to be met. One, the interlocutors must share an objective which they believe is attainable. And two, the interlocutors should have the capacity to introspect and acknowledge the need to address the concerns of each other.

This is not easy. Recently, when an Indian acquaintance asked how India-Pakistan relations might move forward, I suggested Pakistan might ask itself what it might do to address some Indian concerns, and India needed to similarly ask itself what it might do to address Pakistani concerns. He responded saying India needed to tell Pakistan to forget Kashmir, stop its terrorism, accept it had lost its contest with India, accept India’s dominance in South Asia, and accordingly disband its nuclear arsenal. I suggested he may have articulated India’s goals but did not seem motivated by any desire to address Pakistan’s concerns. Instead, he was likely to elicit a matching response that India refrain from policies of hegemony, interference, assassinations, genocide, etc. That would, of course, end the discussion.

So, can we move beyond such barren exchanges? To the extent that some accusations may be justified, they should be addressed, even unilaterally. Accordingly, can we fashion a substantive statement on some of the outstanding issues between our countries, including those of core concern, along with agreed recommendations which we might refer to our respective governments for consideration?

Given mutual empathy, not just personally, but also as citizens of estranged neighbouring countries which share so much in common, we might begin to make progress towards overcoming the obstacle of a common but turbulent history which has ‘over-shaped’ our attitudes towards each other. Instead, we might allow more room for what we share in common to inform and broaden our attitudes towards each other.

Such conversations will need to be progressively elevated to Track 2, Track 1.5 and official levels. Can we agree that such a process should get started as soon as possible? If so, can we agree on reviving Saarc, which currently is moribund? Can we revive confidence and security building measures which have been agreed upon, implemented, and cancelled or allowed to fall into disuse? Can we, in today’s circumstances, summon the political will, despite the risks, to seriously probe the possibilities for an improvement in relations? Or are countervailing forces just too strong and the will to overcome them just too weak?

A whole new generation of Indians and Pakistanis need to know more about each other and why they feel and think about each other the way they do. They may discover they agree on much more than they thought. Should that happen, addressing each other’s concerns may become much less intractable than it seems today.

With exchanges of all kinds, lobbies for mutual understanding and mutual profit can emerge, especially in bordering regions. Such lobbies are likely to have far more influence than academics, experts and intellectuals in the politics and government decision-making of their countries. Apart from the potential of cross-border trade and other exchanges, Indians and Pakistanis, no matter what the state of their diplomatic relations, remain incorrigibly interested in each other as people — in their art, entertainment and sports.

Coke Studio Pakistan, for example, seems to have more fans in India than in Pakistan. Javelin throwers Arshad Nadeem and Neeraj Chopra momentarily brought our two people closer not just with their outstanding performances in the Paris Olympics, but with their mutual friendship and support — and topping them were their mothers, who described the two champion athletes as their sons.

Unfortunately, politicians and governments of both countries, as well as specific interests, are less large-hearted and are more obstacles than facilitators. This is an initial and understandable given. But people of goodwill, imagination and determination must begin to make a difference if India, Pakistan and South Asia — home to a fourth of humanity — are to move from conflict management to dispute resolution — and collectively help bring about a safer, more prosperous and happier world.

The writer is a former ambassador to the US, India and China, and head of UN missions in Iraq and Sudan. The article is a slightly revised note prepared for a recent meeting of concerned citizens of India and Pakistan.

ashrafjqazi@gmail.com

Published in Dawn, August 27th, 2024