Modi\'s surprise visit to Lahore

Nearly two weeks have passed since Narendra Modi's dramatic visit to Lahore for meeting Nawaz Sharif. So far, one outcome of the visit has been the decision that the Foreign Secretaries of the two countries would meet in Islamabad on January 15. That could be just a meeting to gloss over the outstanding issues in the bilateral relations because Indo-Pak relations are at present in a dire predicament.
Kashmir, which is the bone of contention over which the two neighbours fought two wars, is still as intractable as ever. The possibility of more wars has receded because since the last time the two countries fought war in 1971 both have acquired nuclear weapons that have acted as deterrents. Yet in their borders in the north, both the countries remain heavily armed in the Line of Control (LOC) where the threat of another war is ever present. In fact, during the Kargil War in 1999, the two countries had come perilously close to a nuclear war.
Most analysts have dismissed stories that were given to the media by aides of the Prime Ministers that the Lahore visit was undertaken on the spur of a moment following Narendra Modi's phone call to greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday. The November 2008 terrorist attack in Mumbai that had killed 164 had pushed Indo-Pak relations to a new nadir. India, despite Pakistan's denial, has been adamant that the ISI had a hand in the Mumbai terrorist attack and the one on the Indian parliament in 2001. These terrorist attacks in India only added to the intractable Kashmir problem to push Indo-Pak relations into the cold storage.
Thus, during the entire two terms of the Congress between 2004 and 2014, there was no bilateral summit between India and Pakistan. A new element has emerged to make Indo-Pak relations, even more, complicated. India has stepped into Afghanistan, overtly to assist the government there in nation-building following the withdrawal of US-allied troops. In 2015, India invested US$ 2.0 billion in the country. In fact, Narendra Modi was in Kabul (from where he flew to Lahore) to open the parliament building that has been constructed with Indian assistance. India's decision to enter Afghanistan is, of course, more to do with pressuring Pakistan than nation-building there because Pakistan considers Afghanistan as its backyard and it has become critical for it to have a firm handle there for its own security.
Narendra Modi's dramatic visit has thus taken place at a time when the environment for talks has been far from being congenial but the need for it is urgent for different reasons to the two countries. Pakistan has been eagerly expecting talks with India to reduce its fears of Indian presence in Afghanistan and insurgencies in Baluchistan that it believes are being encouraged by India. Pakistan has also been seeking bilateral talks to reduce tension and troops from LOC (Line of Control) and allow it to engage with India for result-oriented negotiations. Pakistan has further been seeking talks with India to pursue the demands of its business sector to pursue bilateral trade with India.
For India, the need for talks has been more for the sake of its Prime Minister and domestic politics. The BJP has lost a number of important state elections in recent times, in particular in Bihar and Delhi. Analysts have concluded from these defeats that the BJP has wasted its huge mandate earned in the 2014 elections and that the party is on the decline. A great deal of responsibility for the BJP's decline has been placed on Narendra Modi - his style of politics and his inexperience. He has thus been seeking talks with his Pakistani counterpart to divert attention from these defeats and his declining popularity believing that the drama with which he planned his visit would help him to revive his and BJP's receding acceptance in India.
Therefore, Nawaz Sharif had sought the talks keeping Pakistan's interests in mind while Narendra Modi, more with his own and BJP's. There have been some pressures on the Indian Prime Minister from the West and the Saudis. In Pakistan, all political parties and its media have thus warmly welcomed the Narendra Modi-Nawaz Sharif meeting. In India, the visit has been received differently with the Congress calling it a 'joke'. Senior Congress leader Anand Sharma termed Narendra Modi's approach as 'frivolous, unpredictable and marked by fits, starts and abrupt U-turns' and that the BJP government was 'foolishly' thinking the visit was a 'masterstroke.' Other parties blamed the Prime Minister for trivialising extremely serious diplomacy concerning the country's interests.
Whether Pakistan's expectations from the Lahore summit would be fulfilled would, of course, depend on what happens as the follow-up to the Summit. The meeting of the Foreign Secretaries on January 15 could give some hints. However, given the apparent reasons why Narendra Modi undertook the visit, it is very unlikely that the visit and the talks would bring about much change in Indo-Pak bilateral relations which are at the dire straits at the moment. In fact, Modi has not been able to convince his countrymen that the visit was undertaken with India's interests in mind. Nevertheless, the fact that the leaders of the two nuclear powers are talking again after 12 years has to be considered a positive development.
Rest of South Asia followed the visit from quite a different angle. There has been increasing apprehensions in the region with rising Hindu fundamentalism since Narendra Modi came to power. The Hindu fundamentalist RSS that was kept at arms length when BJP was last in power under Atal Bihari Vajpayee now has a major role in Modi's government. The demand to ban cow slaughter and anti-Muslim fanaticism in its wake have made deep dents in India's secular claims. The SAARC spirit with which Narendra Modi wanted to launch his current term by inviting all SAARC leaders to attend his inauguration and in pursuit of which he later visited the SAARC capitals is now a matter of the past.  
India's relations with Nepal have hit its lowest depth ever. Sri Lanka rejected India's offer to build the 23km bridge to link its North East with Tamil Nadu, a project that has basis in the mythological Hanuman Bridge. In rejecting the proposed bridge, claims have been made in Sri Lanka that the bridge was an Indian ploy to 'annex' the country. In Bangladesh, notwithstanding the fact that relations at government level are good, at the level of the people, India has never been more unpopular where the same fear as in Sri Lanka exists. In fact, going by the Indian Home Minister's most recent call to seal the Bangladesh-Assam border with his earlier call to ban the export of cow to Bangladesh, it appears that the BJP government is playing the Hindu fundamentalist card against Bangladesh for domestic reasons.
Pakistan's denial of the genocide it committed in Bangladesh has established its untrustworthiness to other South Asian countries. And the nature of problems in Indo-Pak relations is so deep and complex that little is expected to come out from Narendra Modi's visit. Nevertheless, the visit and the discussion over it in rest of South Asia have exposed that Narendra Modi too has taken India in the opposite direction from the SAARC spirit which, he said, would be one of the guiding spirits of his tenure. Calls from BJP for Akhand Bharat have caused widespread apprehensions in the smaller SAARC countries. It is time for Narendra Modi to pay attention to these developments instead of histrionics with Pakistan that are not going to improve bilateral relations until South Asia, as a region, is ready for positive changes where India's role has thus far been questionable.
Postscript: RSS has already called for cancellation of the Foreign Secretary-level talks over the latest terrorist attack at Pathankot Air Force station, a part of Indian Air Forces' Western Command on January 02 in which 3 Indian security forces personnel were killed.

The writer is a retired Ambassador.
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