Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s surprise stopover at Lahore is of a piece with his government’s blow-hot-blow-cold approach to Pakistan.
The sudden diplomatic turnaround by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Pakistan has come as a pleasant surprise to foreign policy analysts. Most commentators have welcomed the belated move by the Indian Prime Minister to kick-start the stalled dialogue process between the two countries once again. The government has claimed it was an impromptu visit to Lahore on Christmas Day following Modi’s phone call to his Pakistani counterpart to wish him on his birthday. Modi had been scheduled to return to Delhi from Moscow via Kabul. Many commentators in India and Pakistan, however, are of the opinion that the Prime Ministers’ meeting was a carefully choreographed one. All the same, for the record, it is the first visit by an Indian Prime Minister to Pakistan in about 12 years. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh was keen on visiting Islamabad at the end his tenure, but the rhetoric coming from the Opposition benches, dominated by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), scuttled his plans.
The Congress, in particular, was critical of Modi’s “unannounced and unprecedented” Lahore visit. Congress leaders point out that it is the first time in 67 years that an Indian Prime Minister has made an unannounced visit to a neighbouring state and that he came back without getting any of the assurances he had been demanding from Pakistan. The Left parties welcomed the visit but sought more meaningful and substantive measures to improve bilateral relations instead of the cosmetic touches that have been provided so far by the Modi government.
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