Sharm el-Sheikh and appeasement: a lesson in history

O tempora! O mores! Were that Cicero were alive today to witness the depths India is plumbing in self-deception, we might hear the opening words of his famous oration.

Leader after leader of the world’s biggest democracy is standing up to be counted with words that can only be described as desperation wrapped in dementia inside dyslexia.

“We have nothing to hide”; “We are an open book”. And, the day after Manmohan Singh delivered a courageous defence of the joint statement that has brought him so much vexation, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee made a speech in parliament that excoriated all the doubters.

And then Mukherjee said something that would make students of history blanch:

“Everybody knew that before the Second World War when Chamberlain entered into the Munich Pact, that it is not going to succeed, but it was considered necessary because they thought that the last effort should be made to save the world from the impending Second World War. This is the lesson of diplomacy, which we should not forget. Pakistan is going to exist and our relationship with Pakistan has not been cordial from the very beginning. But keeping the communication channel open does not mean it is conceding or surrendering on any particular point. Foreign policy is the extension of the national interest in the context of the external situation and atmosphere.”

Dear, dear Pranabda. He was barely three years old when Neville Chamberlain gifted Hitler the Sudetenland, the border area in Czechoslovakia where Germans were in a majority.

Chamberlain told his people he had averted war. He was proud of his appeasement and believed he had given Hitler what seemed to be his “reasonable” demand. After all, the same year (1938) Time magazine voted Hitler the Man of the Year.

Mukherjee can be forgiven for not remembering Chamberlain’s words: “However much we may sympathise with a small nation confronted by a big and powerful neighbour … If we have to fight, it must be on larger issues than that. I am myself a man of peace to the depths of my soul; armed conflict between nations is a nightmare to me... War is a fearful thing, and we must be very clear before we embark on it, that it is really the great issues that are at stake.” (emphasis mine)

Ringing words. And ringing words were what Prime Minister Singh delivered in parliament on July 29. “I say with strength and conviction that dialogue and engagement is the best way forward,” he said. And later, “Let me say that in the affairs of two neighbours we should recall what President Reagan once said – trust but verify. There is no other way unless we go to war.”

Let us refresh our memories on what the Sharm el-Sheikh joint statement said. "Action on terrorism should not be linked to the Composite Dialogue process and these should not be bracketed. Prime Minister Singh said that India was ready to discuss all issues with Pakistan, including all outstanding issues," the communique said. Bracketed? All issues ... including all outstanding issues?

That bit of “bad drafting”, as Foreign Secretary Shiv Shankar Menon so helpfully put it, was followed by a wan ruling party damning the prime minister with ten days of silence and then a pallid statement earlier this week that left it to him to hoist himself out of trouble.

The opposition outcry was led by the Bharatiya Janata Party, and what a glorious example they set! Atal Behari Vajpayee's peace-making bus trip to Lahore in early 1999 was followed by the Kargil war, which Pervez Musharraf now proudly says forced India to discuss Kashmir (ergo, "all outstanding issues" above).

I well remember the ignominy of shepherd boys noticing that all the commanding heights along the Srinagar-Leh highway had been quietly occupied by heavily-armed Pakistani "irregulars". (Ten years ago the Pakistanis had not learnt phrases like "non-state actors"). And Musharraf, who gave India a bloody nose, is today gleefully owning up to the Northern Light Infantry, battalions of which had been set up specifically to stage the Kargil attack. In fact, Musharraf’s smug boasts drowned out whatever few efforts were made to track down the families of the Indian soldiers who died in the Kargil war.

Anybody reporting on Kargil in 1999 knows that the Pakistanis agreed to end their "aggressive patrolling" -- another piece of doublespeak from Musharraf -- only after U.S. President Bill Clinton twisted Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif's arm in Washington.

The sub-text in 1999 was the West’s fear that India and Pakistan would unleash their newly-acquired nuclear weapons on one another. The spectre of a subcontinental Armageddon has only grown over the past decade. “There are uncertainties on the horizon, and I cannot predict the future in dealing with neighbours, two nuclear powers,” Manmohan Singh told parliament, referring to Pakistan and China.

Five months after Kargil, Pakistan-nurtured “freedom fighters” again put India’s broken nose into splints with the hijack of Indian Airlines Flight 814 to Kandahar. We watched the humiliating spectacle of our foreign minister escorting terrorist leaders to the Afghan city to be swapped with the Indian hostages.

Nothing daunted, Vajpayee invited Musharraf to the Agra summit in July 2001 – an event that the Pakistanis turned to their own advantage with what can only be described as “muscular diplomacy”. Five months later, terrorists staged the attack on India’s parliament.

Again and again, Pakistan has extended its fist to India’s palm. And Musharraf, the man who taught his Indian interlocutors the fencer’s art of feint and thrust and parry and lunge, is now feted and wooed by Indian talk-show hosts and conference organisers who proclaim him the only man who cracked down on terrorism and wished for peace with his “big and powerful neighbour” (see Chamberlain above).

The travesty is that Musharraf did underwrite secret talks between his emissaries and Indian envoys that brought the neighbours within sight of a tantalising Kashmir solution, a formula that would render the 740-kilometre Line of Control redundant. But Musharraf’s own overweening ego brought about his downfall, and the secret talks now hang like a chimera over the blood and smoke of the Mumbai attacks.

Manmohan Singh made an admirable speech on Wednesday. It was a good speech from a man of peace. But the genteel negotiators of Delhi’s South Block must contend with the stomp and swagger of the denizens of Rawalpindi’s Army HQ. And the ever-hopeful Indians need to remember what Canada’s Lester Pearson said a long time ago: “Diplomacy is letting someone else have your way.” Not the other way round.

(This column appeared in Khaleej Times on August 1, 2009)