No early thaw in Indo-Pak ties

No early thaw in Indo-Pak ties

FPJ BureauUpdated: Wednesday, May 29, 2019, 04:25 AM IST
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Photo by NARINDER NANU / AFP |

It will be wrong to assume that the Kartarpur corridor, the link between Gurdwara Darbar Sahib in Pakistan and Dera Baba Nanak in Gurdaspur, will lead to an opening between Islamabad and New Delhi. It is sensible to keep politics and diplomacy out of the goodwill gesture of facilitating Sikh devotees to travel to the final resting place of Guru Nanak Dev, the founder of the faith, in Pakistan, from Dera Baba Nanak in Punjab’s Gurdaspur.

Pakistan might be desperate to exploit the grant of a long-pending demand of Sikhs for an early resumption of the Indo-Pak dialogue but India does not seem to have any such desire, at least not at this juncture. Therefore, reports in the media that Pakistan is considering inviting Prime Minister Modi for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit should be taken with more than a pinch of salt. Neither timing nor the current state of relations between India and Pakistan seem propitious for the resumption of Saarc summitry.

A spokesman of Pakistan’s Foreign Office told journalists, including some who had gone from India on the occasion of the formal foundation-laying ceremony of the Kartarpur Corridor, that an invite to Modi for the proposed summit was being actively considered. Pakistan as the current chair of the Saarc was to have hosted the summit in Islamabad in 2016, but India called it off following the ISI terrorist attack on the Uri military camp. Otherwise too, the timing may not be appropriate for the meeting of the heads of government of eight South Asian countries. Bangladesh is set to elect a new government next month. India is in the midst of an election season of its own, with the on-going State elections soon set to pave way for the Lok Sabha election next year.

Besides, the Rawalpindi GHQ has done nothing to persuade India to change its no-dialogue stand either by prosecuting the main conspirators of the 26/11 attack or by closing the tap of jihadi terror in Kashmir. Talking to Pakistan when it continues to export terror can serve no purpose. Given that Pakistan’s perfidious conduct has at long last made America, its long-time patron and financier, deny it any more aid until it stops backing the Taliban terror in Afghanistan against the multinational forces led by the NATO, underlines the inherently barbarian nature of the Pakistan State.

India can no longer countenance doing business with a State whose official policy is to export terror, often through what it calls non-State actors. In short, despite the trial balloon floated by the Pak Foreign Office it is certain that there shall be no Saarc summit in Pakistan in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, it is disgraceful that a minister in the Amarinder Singh Government in Punjab should defy the national consensus and utter things which do not sit well either with the State or the central government. The loud-mouthed television joker, Navjot Singh Sidhu craves for personal publicity, exploiting the developments around the Kartarpur corridor. He had controversially visited Pakistan at the time of the installation of the ISI puppet, Imran Khan, as prime minister, even though far better cricketers such as Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev had politely decline the invitation.

Again, this week he went ahead and went to Lahore despite the explicit wishes of Chief Minister Singh and a lack of sanction from the Ministry of External Affairs. Sidhu claimed that he was going in his personal capacity, though it is hard to distinguish between personal and official, especially when the hosts seek him out because he is a minster and his presence might help sow seeds of discord within the Indian establishment. The unhappiness of the Punjab chief minister is shared by the BJP which took strong objection to some of the remarks the former cricketer made on the Pakistan soil against the Indian prime minister.

But the best way to deal with the grandiloquent Sidhu is not to take him seriously; instead he and his antics are best ignored. He is a disgrace when he opens his mouth. Like when he called for the woman mayor of Indore to be beaten while campaigning for the Congress Party a few days ago. Pakistan is welcome to consider him as a ‘big catch’.

Editorial

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