Perks of being normal

A dinner table conversation about the Nobel Prize-winning conundrum called India-Pakistan provoked a think — Is there a way out of this frozen turbulence?
To establish a “new normal” between India and Pakistan, the first question that India should ask itself is: Do we gain anything by normalising relations with Pakistan? The second query is: What does normalisation mean for India? The third is, what is it that India is prepared to do or even give to achieve this objective?
What does India gain by establishing a “new normal” with Pakistan? If you take a long lens view of Asia from Turkey in the west and Japan in the east, you discern three historical choke points on the continent: Israel-Palestine, India-Pakistan and North-South Korea.

Though myriad other conflicts are also festering in Asia, what is unique about these antagonisms is that they have a nuclear dimension to them. Israel’s de facto nuclear weapon state status is troublesome for West Asia. The opacity of the Indo-Pakistani nuclear programme has its own implications for South Asia, while the erratic regime in North Korea is a toxic dynamic for north and northeast Asia.

Put together, these three historical choke points have been responsible for institutionalising “big power” presence in the region. There is, of course, an equally cogent argument — that these conflicts have been deliberately nurtured by the neo-imperialists to legitimise their presence in Asia. All the more reason that Asians should unplug these choke points.

The peculiarity of the Indo-Pak hostility is that since South Asia lies at the junction of west, central and east Asia, it inhibits the various regions from actualising their full potential. While regional groupings like the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) in West Asia, Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) in Southeast Asia, Eurasian Economic Community (EurAsEC) in Central Asia and a host of other bewildering acronyms have taken off, the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) has proven to be a virtual non-starter. Other South Asian nations exasperated by the Indo-Pak asphyxiation of this grouping are now seeking bilateral space within this multilateral arrangement.

South Asia is the extended land bridge that can connect the various regions of Asia to each other and act as an economic multiplier. Regrettably, its corrosive geo-politics — from Afghanistan right up to Myanmar — acts as an inhibitor for other regions to enter into seamless cooperation. Thus, from a pan-Asian perspective, the India-Pakistan stand off in the heart of South Asia could not have more portentous portents.

Notwithstanding the traumatic past, and perhaps because of it, normalisation, i.e. bridging the divide between people on both sides of the Indo-Pak border, would bring a semblance of emotional equilibrium to the Indian subcontinent. And it could also, perhaps, divert a substantial portion of Rs 3,95,796 crore budgeted for defence and another Rs 62,124 crore allocated for internal security in the 2015-16 fiscal in India alone, towards more productive purposes. The Prime Minister of India would also not be compelled to buy warplanes on the hop.

Every country that has aspirations of becoming a great power needs space for consolidation — a relatively calm period of time when it can focus on surmounting its internal challenges. For that a peaceful periphery is a prerequisite.

A classic example being the transition of China from the Mao Zedong to the Deng Xiaoping era when the latter ordained that China requires 30 years of peace to develop. In pursuit of this philosophy, China settled all its land boundary disputes except with India and Bhutan. Though six of its maritime disputes are still outstanding, they are more about hydrocarbons in the waters around China subterfuged as territorial issues. It, therefore, is in India’s interest to establish the “new normal” with Pakistan. India owes it to Asia, too.

What does normalisation mean from India’s perspective. Substantively it means only one thing: Export of terror by Pakistan into India must stop. Given that Pakistan has large ungoverned spaces where militant Islam is nurtured, what is the guarantee that even if the Pakistani establishment were to eschew terror as an instrument of state policy, attacks against India would cease? And if they do not, what then would be India’s response to Pakistan?

This is not an insurmountable issue. India and Pakistan could put into place protocols and mechanisms to deal with terror if it is indeed conveyed through deeds that the Pakistani establishment has finally realised the perils of nurturing snakes in their backyard. They have created mayhem in Pakistan also. What that “deed” should be that win’s India’s confidence is for the Pakistani leadership to figure out.

If the Pakistani establishment were to continue its policy of bleeding India with a thousand cuts, would it still make sense for India to have a relationship with Pakistan? Are there any positive spin offs of absorbing terror attacks emanating from Pakistan and still continuing to talk, trade and have people to people contact? No argument to support this preposition manifests.

What then is India prepared to give in return to Pakistan for this normalisation? What is that we are prepared to put on the table to ensure an end to terror? Is there a grand gesture that India can make, one that could transcend the corrosiveness of the past six decades and open up vistas for a new future? Yes.

First, Pakistan has to be consciously made a non-issue in India’s domestic discourse. A debate on probable solutions is imperative in the public discourse for credibility, but not the high-decibel nuclear wars fought on TV by ostensibly inebriated warmongers on both sides and mediated by unwitting slaves to the tyranny of television ratings. Closet consultations are condemned as perfidy by hawks.

And second, it requires two Prime Ministers and a general armed with the conviction that it is their manifest destiny to liberate both nations from the servitude of history, notwithstanding the obstacles and the possibility that it may render them one-term Gorbachevs. Resolution of conflicts involves audacity to make concessions, including territorial swaps by both sides. Status quoists do not build futures. You cannot invest in the rhetoric of war and pray for peace.

The writer is a lawyer and a former Union minister. The views expressed are personal. Twitter handle @manishtewari