Rules Of The New Game

Can India do business with a hawkish Pakistan? Or will Khan signal detente?

- Raj Chengappa

Every victor in a political election soon realises that once he or she occupies the seat of power, responsibility takes precedence over rhetoric. Imran Khan had to do that almost instantly. On the stump, he had mocked his arch-rival, Nawaz Sharif, for reaching out to Prime Minister Narendra Modi when he was in power, with the slogan—“Modi ka jo yaar hai, woh gaddar hai” (He who is a friend of Modi is a traitor). A week later, when the election results showed that his party, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), was in a position to form the government, Khan’s tone was more conciliatory, promising that if Modi took one step towards improving relations between the two countries, he would take two. When Modi graciously called Khan on July 30 to wish him well, they both hoped that they could begin a new innings together in India-Pakistan relations.

The good thing for Khan is that when it comes to improving ties with India, expectations are extremely low. So even the smallest steps he takes to move things forward will make a splash. That’s because Sharif, who promised so much when he was elected as the prime minister for the third time in 2013, delivered very little beyond handshakes and hugs. Instead of an upswing, relations between the two countries touched a new nadir in the past three years. The formal dialogue process never got going, tensions ran high over Pakistan stoking the volatile situation in Kashmir, the 2003 ceasefire agreement on the Line of Control (LoC) is as good as dead, after repeated violations— indeed in September 2016 India famously resorted to surgical strikes to warn Pakistan to end cross-border terrorism after a series of provocative terror attacks.