When Manmohan Singh explains his government’s policy towards Pakistan to Parliament on Wednesday, the worst thing he can do is to disown, downplay, retract or resile from the joint statement he issued with Pakistani Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani in Sharm-el-Sheikh on July 17.
So irrational and poisonous has the Indian debate on the joint statement become that the government is today under enormous psychological pressure to declare Sharm-el-Sheikh a mistake. The Congress party is tongue-tied and a junior Minister for External Affairs unwisely sought refuge in the irrelevant plea that the text the Prime Minister had agreed to is not a legal document. The implication is clear: Sharm-el-Sheikh may be a sell-out, but the sale deed is not legally binding so don’t worry.
What the opposition’s noise and government’s poor salesmanship have done is reinforce the idea that the current Indian policy of not talking to Pakistan — in place since the Mumbai terrorist attacks of November 2008 — is working fine and that there is no need for any change or adjustment. This is unfortunate. For, in the run up to Sharm-el-Sheikh, Dr. Singh was bold enough to recognise the policy had already yielded the most it could. And that it was time to prepare the ground for change.
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1:04 AM
Moderate Islamist here
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