By M H Ahssan
New Delhi must not allow the hysteria of the Indian chattering classes — indulging in war-mongering against Pakistan since the Mumbai terror strikes — to overwhelm its diplomacy.
More so now after Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has reiterated to US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice that Islamabad would take “strong action against any Pakistani elements found involved in the Mumbai attack”.
New Delhi should, however, realise such apparent show of solidarity by Washington cannot be any substitute for direct engagement with the democratically-elected leadership of Pakistan. It should share concrete evidence with Islamabad directly.
It must also check the propensity of a section of its officialdom to deliberately leak premature probe findings to the media in a bid to score a few ‘patriotic’ brownie points. Most important, the Indian government must have the patience to wait for Islamabad to act once evidence has been provided to it.
It would be dangerously delusional on New Delhi’s part to think that a sovereign state such as Pakistan would respond exactly how India wants it to. Such impatience could escalate the current crisis into a full-blown Indo-Pak military conflict.
That would give the Islamists just what they want — much-needed respite from the heat they face from Pakistani forces which would be relocated to the Indian border. Worse, it would help pro-Islamist elements within the Pakistani military-intelligence establishment to gain lost ground.
Most disturbing, an Indian attack on Pakistan would compel the liberal sections of that country’s population to close ranks with Islamists. The problem in Pakistan is that the legitimacy its legislative leadership commands is rather scarce. The stranglehold the traditional elite has had on the socio-political process and national institutions has rendered them inequitable.
Islamist fundamentalism has, in such circumstances, stepped in to give marginal sections of the country some chimera of agency. But the Indian political class would need a new vision if it is to grasp this regional predicament in its totality. This vision must, instead of making an ideological fetish out of national sovereignty, envisage fundamentalist terror as something that threatens the modern social continuum of south Asia, not just India.
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