The way diplomacy is conducted between India and Pakistan is reminiscent of the attitude of city dwellers to the garbage-filled environment around them. They don’t mind a bit of filth in the neighbourhood but they definitely draw the line against any symbol of such filth. Indo-Pak relationship is, at its core, fraught with hostility. But every effort is made to deny its existence by going after symbols of bonhomie. The analogy may appear somewhat strained. But let me explain.

Perception and reality

The city pages of newspapers are full of public complaints about the poor state of garbage removal. But no one talks about the poor state of garbage accumulation. True, the conservancy staff must clear garbage often enough. But equally, garbage must not be strewn around all over for want of bins. Strangely, however, people aren’t demanding of their municipal corporations that they provide the neighbourhood with enough bins. Why is this so? It is simple.

No one wants a bin in front of their house. Rather they would like it to be located discreetly away from their line of sight. More often than not, this results in bins being located strategically in street corners where the house skirts a street on one side, with the entrance facing another street that is at ninety degrees to it. Folks residing in houses that are directly opposite to the bin are consoled by the fact that it is not on their side of the street but across. Equally, the residents of the house by whose side wall the bin is now placed can pretend that the bin doesn’t exist as it is away from their line of sight.

Everyone is happy, except for the fact that there simply aren’t enough of them to accommodate all of the garbage that the neighbourhood generates. The reason is quite simple. Even by the standards of haphazard town planning that Indian cities are prone to, the layouts are simply not zigzag enough to ensure that the front elevation of every house is 90 degree to that of a house right next to it. So, there are fewer bins and garbage strewn all around. The moral of the story is that the average urban Indian does not object to filth per se but he definitely draws the line on symbols of filth that a garbage bin undoubtedly is. It is as though its mere presence in front of his house is an affront to his sensibilities but if, in its absence, garbage piles up in front, that is okay too.

And so it is with Indian diplomacy towards Pakistan. We can live with the overwhelming evidence of the average Pakistani hostility towards India. If you think this is an exaggeration, you only need to look at successive surveys by Pew Research on public attitudes of Pakistanis. India ranks a close second to the US as the country that Pakistanis feel most threatened by. It can be nobody’s case that the US is the darling of the Pakistani masses. So India is up there with the US. But any frigidity in bilateral relations that is a direct outcome of such hostility prompts the Indian Government to want to do something about it. True, the ardour is temporarily dulled on occasions such as when a dozen Pakistanis decide to do something about the Indian threat by letting off a burst of machine gun fire against commuters rushing to their homes in Mumbai as happened four years ago. But the official Indian establishment is quick to regroup and go about ensuring that the world doesn’t see the two countries anything but behaving in the chummiest of terms. Out goes the signal to the Board of Control for Cricket in India to invite the Pakistani cricket team.

The way the Government looks at it is that not having cricket contacts with Pakistan is an eyesore that is the metaphorical equivalent of a garbage bin right in front of our gate. It is quite likely that Indians feel the same way about Pakistanis as they do towards Indians. Certainly if Mani Shankar Aiyar is to be believed, there is a thriving industry of hate (towards Pakistan) in India. But that is another story.

False bonhomie

The standard argument for maintaining a façade of civility is that one can choose one’s friends but not neighbours. Fair enough. But the conceptual leap from that to the notion that it should be possible to borrow from a neighbour, who hates the sight of you, a thousand rupees (to see you through to the end of the month) by the simple expedient of greeting him with a ‘good morning’ every time you run into him on the staircase, is a big one. The Indian Government is guilty of falling into that trap and feels genuinely shocked that its show of goodwill is not being reciprocated. The beheading of an Indian soldier guarding the borders and the official reaction from the Indian side is yet another classic example of seeing things with rose-tinted glasses.

India started by saying that there will be a strong riposte. Even the Prime Minister said that it cannot be business as usual after what has happened unless the Pakistani Government does something about it.

But the official response from Pakistan over the last few days can be described as thus: Firstly, there was no killing. If he was killed at all it was probably an act of fratricide. Even if he was not killed by a fellow Indian jawan he was certainly not beheaded. If he was beheaded then it was certainly not by a Pakistani army regular but some ‘non-state’ actor. The Indian army too had beheaded so many Pakistanis in the past and yet the latter hadn’t made a fuss. In any case, the United Nations, which has solved so many bilateral disputes in the past, is the best agency to go into the whole thing.

As a final concession to reasonableness, the Government of Pakistan has now said if India is still not satisfied, the Director-Generals of military operations of the two countries must meet and diffuse the tension. India seems satisfied and as if on cue, its Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid has now said beheading or not, talks must go on.

Let’s sum up then. Cricket tours have not helped reduce tensions. MFN trade regimes have not built new bridges; ditto with track II diplomacy and the less said about ‘composite dialogues’, the better. There is a fundamental disconnect that needs to be addressed rather than fret about the absence of symbols of bonhomie between nations. In the end it is a case of doing something about the filth in the neighbourhood rather than feeling happy that the garbage bins are located elsewhere.

So, here is an alternative. Let India and Pakistan talk about having common history books for use in schools across both countries. It doesn’t have to be India’s version of history or the Pakistani one. Let the kids in both countries read both perspectives on modern and ancient history of this region. It may not get the Prime Ministers of the two countries a Nobel Prize for Peace in their lifetimes. But there is a possibility of a genuine change of heart that, in time, can bring about peace between the two nations.

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