There has been much discussion over the past few days on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s journey to Pakistan for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit. After Pakistan invited the Indian PM to a meeting in August, the discussions got underway. To put an end to all the conjecture, it has been revealed that S Jaishankar, the External Affairs Minister, will be the only representative of India at the summit.
Even still, the rumors continue to swirl, with some even speculating that Jaishankar’s visit heralds an imminent thaw in relations between the two nations. According to a number of media reports, this will mark the first visit to Pakistan by an Indian foreign minister in the previous nine years. The last person to visit Pakistan for the Heart of Asia conference was the late Sushma Swaraj, who served as the country’s minister of external affairs in 2015. The state of Pakistan is largely to responsible for the dramatic decline in the two nations’ ties since then, as it has continued to tacitly support terrorists who oppose India.
It’s interesting to note that the minister himself felt compelled to address the matter on record because of several stories suggesting that Jaishankar’s visit may improve relations between them. He clarified that he is only on this visit to attend the SCO summit and not to talk about India’s bilateral relations with Pakistan when answering questions at an event. Actually, during this visit, no bilateral engagement is planned at all. His comments make it very evident that there is nothing more to be taken into consideration because the Indian government is merely carrying out a long-standing practice of sending its foreign minister to the summit of heads of state, where Pakistan just so happens to be the chosen location.
There is nothing new in what Jaishankar reiterated in reaction to the reports of a thaw between India and Pakistan. The Modi administration has had a constant stance on Pakistan over the past ten years, particularly since the boycott of the 2016 SAARC meeting that was planned to take place in the nation following a terror attack in Uri.
Since then, Pakistan’s support for anti-Indian terrorism has been associated with any attempts at regional cooperation. The current government has stated repeatedly that until there is a “atmosphere free of terror,” no progress in bilateral relations or regional integration is possible. This has caused a sense of standstill in India-Pakistan ties in addition to an impasse in SAARC. Nevertheless, the Modi administration is not giving up on its goal of regionally isolating Pakistan and drawing attention to its dubious past as a state sponsor of terrorism in a number of international fora.
In fact, the past ten years have been very important in correcting India’s foreign policy’s “Pakistan fixation.” India’s foreign policy has been imbued with pragmatism since the conclusion of the Cold War and the country’s adoption of economic reforms. The government looks forward to courting diverse partners for mutual benefit. Naturally, India’s relations with China and Pakistan were normalized as a result. However, Pakistan misinterpreted India’s offer of amicable relations as an indication of its weakness, turning that same pragmatism into a major mistake.
This was particularly clear under the administrations of Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, whose plans for a stable Indian subcontinent predicated on a cooperative relationship between India and Pakistan were met with increased violence by Pakistani officials. If the Vajpayee years seen the infiltration of Kargil and the ensuing conflict, the Manmohan years witnessed the 26/11 attack, in which terrorists from Pakistan broke into India’s marine security.
Despite this, liberal-minded Indian officials, particularly Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, held the view that long-term peace between the two nations could only be achieved through mutual economic interdependence. He failed to consider that the Pakistani military held the lion’s share of economic ownership and that it would never consent to the desecuritization of trade connections with India in order to advance its own business interests. The Modi government’s realization that the Indian foreign policy was beset by a “let’s make peace with Pakistan” dilemma after taking office was nothing short of a miracle.
One of its initial actions was raising the stakes in India’s global interactions by attempting to forge tighter ties with superpowers like France, Russia, and the United States. After that, it turned its focus to China, another superpower, and countered its ascent with a number of measures after aggression on the border of the Himalayas had begun. All this was strongly supported by India’s own economic ascent, where the country has now become the fifth largest economy in the world by nominal GDP.
After the current regime critically examined its place in the globe, it evaluated Pakistan’s role in its overarching plan. Up until now, Pakistan had become a duller version of itself, plagued by a plethora of economic issues, extreme poverty, and a fractured political system due to the several separatist movements that were taking place within the nation. In fact, two Chinese nationals have died in a terror strike that occurred at the Karachi airport in their Sindh region even as I write. Baloch separatists have claimed responsibility for the attack; they are just one of the numerous issues that the Pakistani administration is now dealing with.
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In such a case, Pakistan ceases to be India’s neighbor with whom it must have stronger and more stable relations in order to fulfill its aspirations to become a major power. It has turned into that neighbor that ought to have enough issues to keep its authorities occupied; if not, they would incite further unrest in India. The main worry right now is that neighbor as well—what if it collapses from the inside out? After all, given that we share a border spanning three thousand kilometers across a large expanse of territory, a rising India would have to expend precious energy managing a refugee crisis.
Over the past ten years, there has been a significant shift in the calculations that had governed the India-Pakistan relationship. While India’s economy has soared, Pakistan’s geopolitical decisions have turned it into a terror hotspot and a Chinese vassal state that depends on outside assistance to maintain its economy.
When Indian intellectual elites urge the current leadership to take an interest in Pakistan, it sounds not only absurd but even comical. The good news is that the current Indian administration is aware of the dubious intentions of Pakistani officials.
The nation’s political leaders just seek to capitalize on the geopolitical benefit of being India’s immediate neighbor; they have no interest in a peaceful resolution. If they exploited it to extract advantages from the Americans in order to restrict India during the Cold War, they have discovered a comparable benefactor in China at this time.
Fascinatingly, India has also shifted the focus of its foreign policy by realizing that China, not Pakistan, poses a more serious threat to its standing as a rising power. India joined the Shanghai Cooperation Organization as a result, helped along by its close friend Russia. The SCO as a whole gives India’s international outreach more wings. In order to compete with China’s Belt and Road initiative, it has here sincerely attempted to increase commerce with the Eurasian region and provide alternative connectivity proposals.
However, this is all wasted on those who, when it comes to foreign policy, only consider Pakistan. Even with the progress India has made in the past ten years, there is still a lobby calling for stronger ties with Pakistan. This lobby would not alter its methods since it appears that they are driven by an ideological or professional need to appease China or Pakistan. However, the general public has to be aware that peace talks with Pakistan are now off the hook.
The only sensible course of action for India is to handle any potential repercussions from that nation’s eventual collapse and facilitate its own ascent on more amicable terms. That is precisely what India is doing. It is currently waiting for the massive terror industry in Pakistan to implode due to internal pressure.
