New Delhi?s peace process with Islamabad has begun to run into an unexpected obstacle: the gathering movement for the restoration of democracy in Pakistan. Two recent developments confirm this turn of events. The first was the comment of the former Pakistan Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, on NDTV?s Walk the Talk, that his party would strongly oppose any agreement that India might arrive at with President Pervez Musharraf on the resolution of the Kashmir question.
Questioning Musharraf?s political legitimacy and, more importantly, his survival at the top amidst the current turmoil in Pakistan, Sharif is cautioning India against doing a Kashmir deal with the army. Although she has not spoken on the subject, the other exiled prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, may not think any differently about the Indo-Pak peace process. Bhutto and Sharif would not want Musharraf to leverage the transformation of relations with India to domestic political advantage.
Although negotiations on Kashmir are at an advanced stage, the peace process has clearly come under the shadow of Pakistan?s current political crisis. As Musharraf struggles to reassert his primacy, New Delhi is aware that the peace talks must take the back stage for the moment.
That brings us to the other recent pointer to the new tension between peace process and the democratic movement in Pakistan. Last week, Dawn newspaper in Pakistan reported that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had offered to visit Islamabad in late March. Dawn also said that this could have allowed Musharraf to join the SAARC summit in New Delhi in early April.
Two high-level political visits in quick succession could have clearly injected some fresh momentum to the Indo-Pak peace process. According to Dawn, Islamabad was reluctant to host the Indian prime minister at this moment. Musharraf?s action against Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry in mid-March has triggered a popular movement for rule of law in Pakistan and made it impossible for the Indian prime minister to consider an early visit to Islamabad.
Although the Indian High Commission in Pakistan has denied that India was looking at end-March dates for a visit by Dr Singh, anyone familiar with the much personalised nature of Indo-Pak diplomacy and the long record of missed opportunities would not be surprised if there was an element of truth to the Dawn report.
It serves no purpose today to debate whether a visit by the Indian prime minister to Pakistan during 2005-6 could have generated a breakthrough in bilateral relations. The immediate problem for India is to find ways to deal with the current crisis in Pakistan and its potential consequences.
Until now India has chosen to scrupulously stay away from the gathering political storm in Pakistan. On his way from the G8 summit in Germany, the prime minister clearly stated that India would not interfere in the internal developments in Pakistan and that New Delhi would deal with whoever rules Pakistan.
That sentiment is indeed appropriate in a diplomatic sense. But it does not address India?s problems with the deepening crisis in Pakistan. At the first cut it appears that the peace process is more important for India than the internal political orientation of Pakistan.
If crisis blows away soon and Musharraf reasserts its authority, all those who have politically invested in the general, including Washington and New Delhi who have departed from tradition to back the same horse in Pakistan for the first time, would breathe easy and go back to business as usual.
With the political dust refusing to settle down in Pakistan, the relationship between peace and democracy is getting a little more complex. If he hangs on to office against popular will, Musharraf is bound to lose his value for India as a credible interlocutor. On the other hand, if Musharraf?s ouster is followed by greater instability in Pakistan, India might have no one to negotiate with in Islamabad.
India is fully conscious of the fact that it cannot ? and should not even try to ? influence Pakistan?s internal dynamics. What it can and must do is insulate the peace process from Pakistan?s current flux. That would demand a broad-based Indian engagement with the full spectrum of Pakistan?s political class. Above all, it would call for a sustained outreach to Pakistan?s Punjabi establishment.
That West Punjab is the motor of Pakistan?s politics has become even more significant at the present juncture. If the province had not rallied so vigorously behind Chaudhry?s campaign for rule of law, the judicial crisis would have faded away in no time.
West Punjab, which has emerged as the new champion of Pakistan?s political modernisation, is also the principal barrier against the spread of the Taliban?s influence east of the Indus. Punjab?s syncretic culture and the self-interest of its elite in ending radical excesses of the kind we have recently seen from Islamabad?s Lal Masjid are indeed valuable guarantee for the survival of a moderate Pakistan.
India knows that no agreement on Kashmir will stick without the imprimatur of the army, which dominates all other institutions, and the endorsement of West Punjab that is the political heart of Pakistan. Nawaz Sharif is only underlining the fact that these two great Pakistani forces are now at odds.
Nawaz Sharif is also reminding New Delhi that the road to South Asian reconciliation runs through Lahore and not just the army headquarters in Rawalpindi. It is a message that India must recognise and respond to.
The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Singapore