India and Pakistan may be closer to picking up the thread of dialogue earlier than either side had imagined, since the so-called “surgical strikes” across the Line of Control in September 2016, with Rajya Sabha MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar’s private member’s Bill intending to declare Pakistan a “terrorist state” now being firmly put in cold storage.
The fascinating back story of the climb down on Chandrasekhar’s bill is proof that the Narendra Modi government is willing to play all sides – and abandoning a hardline tack if it believes it has outlived its purpose – with equal alacrity.
Post-Uri Retribution
Conversations with several people in government and in the BJP have revealed that Rajeev Chandrasekhar – who willingly endorses the government’s views, perspectives and decision-making especially on the security-defence-foreign affairs spectrum, even though he is an independently elected MP – was “actively encouraged” to pursue the passage of his private member’s Bill declaring Pakistan a “terrorist state” after he introduced it.
Chandrasekhar had spoken loudly in favour of Prime Minister Modi’s decision to conduct “surgical strikes” across the LoC in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir – in which several LeT operatives, as well as Pakistan Army jawans were allegedly killed – and even pushed for a parliamentary resolution on the subject.
The Declaration of Countries as Sponsor of Terrorism Bill, 2016, subsequently moved by Chandrasekhar, "seeks to call out states like Pakistan that continue to associate, promote, patronise and sponsor terrorism against our nation", and provides for snapping all economic and trade relations with that country.
In the wake of the Uri attack, the government wanted to expand its arsenal of retribution. There was much discussion about India needing to stem the flow of the Indus waters and that of its tributaries as they flowed into Pakistan, the lower riparian state, on using trade as an instrument of anger and of reducing people-to-people relations to a trickle.
The Prime Minister, it was said, wanted to respond to informal international criticism that while India wanted the world to come down heavily on India – what was it doing itself on that score?
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Back-Channel Talks with Pakistan
A private member’s Bill seeking to declare Pakistan a “terrorist state” was perfect. Rajeev Chandrasekhar was seen as close enough to the BJP, and yet ‘Independent’ enough to be dissociated from it, if the need arose.
I have introduced a Bill which is now property of the Rajya Sabha. The debate in the House around the Bill will continue, and the government will have the opportunity to respond to my views and those of other MPs during the debate in Parliament.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP (when asked why he had introduced this Bill)
Pakistan’s history and track record of fostering terrorism and terrorists is long and indeed distinguishable and incontrovertible…It is time that we stop running to other countries to declare Pakistan a terror state, stood up, and did this job ourselves.Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Rajya Sabha MP (while moving the Bill on 3 February)
Denying Chandrasekhar fruition, it now seems, is also part of a plot that Modi’s aides, including National Security Advisor Ajit Doval, have been crafting for some time. It is believed that back-channel talks between Doval and his Pakistani counterpart in Pakistan, Nasser Khan Janjua, have been intermittently ongoing despite some dark days in 2016 – whether the Pathankot and Uri attacks or the surgical strikes.
Volte-Face on Chandrasekhar’s Bill
And now the Home Ministry is believed to have informed the Rajya Sabha Secretariat that when the Bill comes up for debate in the post-Budget session next month, the Treasury benches “will not be able to support it.”
It has told the Rajya Sabha Secretariat that the Bill will be opposed because it doesn’t want to “jeopardise” international relations, namely with Pakistan.
Chandrasekhar, it is believed, has also been informally told that the government is going to take an about-turn in this matter.
It is unclear whether the Rajya Sabha MP is crestfallen or not, with the government deciding to pull the rug from under his feet. Diplomatic sources confirmed several of them were “taken aback” when they saw Chandrasekhar’s Bill and wanted to know what had led to him to do take this unusual step.
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Will Pakistan Drop ‘Good vs Bad Terrorist’ Analogy?
The truth is that Delhi has been waiting for its back-channel contacts to bear fruit. The first signal came with the arrest of Lashkar-e-Toiba founder and the mastermind of the Mumbai attacks Hafiz Saeed some days ago.
On Tuesday, Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif – the same man who had threatened to nuke India after the “surgical strikes” – told the Munich Security Conference that home-grown terrorism was bad for Pakistan, in the light of the large number of people, including women and children, killed at the Sehwan Sharif shrine blast.
It is not clear whether the Sehwan Sharif attack has fully persuaded the Pakistani establishment – read the Pakistan army and ISI intelligence agency – to drop the distinction between the “good jihadi” and the “bad jihadi.” Pakistan Army Chief Qamar Javed Bajwa has promised that the attackers will not go unpunished – Sehwan Sharif is perhaps Pakistan’s most egalitarian Sufi shrine – and more than a hundred terrorists have been killed in the last few days since the attack.
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India Likely to Resume Talks with Pakistan
Meanwhile, the government began to signal its own encouragement to Pakistan. The decision to send four writers to the Karachi Literature Festival, at government cost, had certainly been taken before the Uri attacks – but significantly, the government refused to go back on its decision after Uri.
India’s High Commissioner to Pakistan Gautam Bambawale explained the decision by saying he wanted to reach out to a different audience when he spoke at its inaugural ceremony and reminded Pakistan that it continued to sponsor “good” and “bad” terrorists.
Bambawale followed up by meeting Shahbaz Sharif, the Chief Minister of Pakistani Punjab (and Nawaz Sharif’s brother), to congratulate him on Hafiz Saeed’s arrest.
It is likely that Delhi is waiting for further action by the Pakistani government, especially against Hafiz Saeed on the Mumbai attacks case, before it declares victory and resumes dialogue with Islamabad.
The unspoken acknowledgement by both sides is that the ascension of Donald Trump as US President has pushed the Pakistani establishment to move against its own terrorist leaders. Nawaz Sharif, waiting in the wings to seize an opportunity to push back against terrorism at home and against India, is encouraging his own army and intelligence to take a tough stand.
Significantly, the fact that Chandrasekhar has been told by the BJP to now keep a low profile on his own Bill also confirms the belief that Delhi is giving Nawaz Sharif a long rope because it wants him to succeed on the path he has undertaken.
It seems that it is only a matter of time before India resumes talks with Pakistan.
(The writer is a journalist based in New Delhi and writes on the overlap between domestic politics and foreign affairs. She can be reached @jomalhotra. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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