The covert bridge

These are unusually tense times for India-Pakistan relations. Not ideal by a long shot for a social get together in the cool hills of Murree between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and his Indian industrialist friend Sajjan Jindal.

But it is definitely the most ideal time for breaking the logjam that has marred the relations between the two nuclear-armed neighbours so much so that no one in his right mind seems prepared to rule out the possibility of a war breaking out between the two states.

Jindal is known to be a good friend of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi as well. Already there were reports emanating from the Indian side that Modi was likely to initiate conciliatory moves to repair bilateral relations soon after the Uttar Pradesh state elections were over.

True enough soon after the BJP had formed its government in UP Modi sent his friend Jindal to Pakistan with a reconciliatory message the content of which the two governments perhaps wish to keep under wraps for the time being or perhaps the two want to keep their negotiations a secret until some kind of an accord is reached between them on how best to resume official talks.



That is perhaps why Maryam Nawaz seems to be trying hard to give a social spin to the Murree meeting on Wednesday between PM Sharif and Jindal. And the Foreign Office, in reply to a question, as expected under the circumstances, stated that it was unaware of any such meeting.

Meanwhile, a resolution was submitted by Mian Mehmood Rasheed in the Punjab Assembly which demanded that the meeting’s agenda and discussion be made public. The mainstream opposition parties have already started playing politics with the PM-Jindal meeting. The media on its part are also going to town politicising the meeting in question. Between the two, the political parties and the media the meeting has been turned into a political football attributing to the PM all kinds of ulterior motives. This is only understandable because for all intents and purposes it appears as if the country since the Panama verdict has entered the election mode which though is more than a year away.



Not that the PPP and the PTI do not desire normalisation of relations with India without compromising on our position on various bilateral issues that need resolution. But since the two seem to have launched their respective election campaigns they perhaps believe that it is fair to make political use of any issue that would bring the sitting government under pressure.

To get a fair idea about the significance of the PM-Jindal meeting in Murree, one needs to recall Indian journalist Burkha Dutt’s account of Jindal’s role in playing the conduit between the two PMs in her book The Unquiet Land. According to her, SJ was the ‘unexpected conduit’ that had kept Modi and Sharif ‘connected even when things got difficult.’ The PMs had ‘agreed after their first meeting in New Delhi where Sharif had gone to attend Modi’s inauguration that it could be useful to talk informally through a mutual acquaintance they both felt comfortable with’(Pp247).



Jindal, according to Ms Dutt, was more like a covert bridge that connected them (the two PMs) if either wanted to reach out to the other side without protocol or publicity. When the two PMs were in Kathmandu to attend the 18^th Saarc summit (Nov 2014) Jindal was asked to discreetly reach out to his ‘friend’ across the border. Subsequently the two prime ministers were able to meet quietly in the privacy of Jindal’s hotel room in Nepal for an hour.

“Elections in the sensitive state of Jammu and Kashmir were just a month away and Modi explained that while he was keen to find ways to reopen some formal channels, circumstances did not permit him to do so immediately. Sharif in turn, told him about the constrictions imposed on him by the security establishment … Both agreed they needed some more time and greater political space to move forward publicly.” (The Unquiet Land—Pp 249-250)

Published in The Express Tribune, April 29^th, 2017.

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