ANGER

Management
 {398}

ANGER
MANAGEMENT
THE TROUBLED DIPLOMATIC
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN
INDIA AND PAKISTAN

AJAY BISARIA
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 For my parents,
Priyamvada and Jagat Narayan Bisaria,
who were witness to Partition,
and had many stories to tell
of the times before and after.
X
 C O N T EN T S

Prologue: The Exit ix

Introduction: A Quest for Identity xvii
SECTION 1: 1947–1957: BUILDING STATES
1. Midnight’s Nations 3
2. Partition Pains 21
3. The Kashmir Conundrum 32
4. Decoupling 43
5. The Formative Fifties 51
SECTION 2: 1957–1967: DICTATORS AND DEMOCRATS
6. The Garrison State 67
7. Dialogues of the Deaf 83
8. A Grab at Kashmir 89
SECTION 3: 1967–1977: A SUBCONTINENT REDRAWN
9. Joi Bangla 111
10. A Second Partition, a Third Country 140
11. Line of Control 154
12. Limping Back 162
SECTION 4: 1977–1987: FIVE BLOODY RIVERS
13. Thawing to Deceive 171
14. Punjab Aflame 178
15. Autumn in Kashmir 192
SECTION 5: 1987–1997: TROUBLE IN PARADISE
16. Exploding Mangoes 203
17. A Thousand Cuts 214
18. Frozen Trust 229
19. Talking of Everything 249
SECTION 6: 1997–2007: NUCLEAR GAMES
20. Strategic Parity 255
21. Heights of Trouble 273
22. Millennial Diplomacy 291
23. The Terror Factor 299
24. A Hand of Friendship 310
25. Essays in Mutual Comprehension 319
26. Down to Semicolons 328
SECTION 7: 2007–2017 KILLING AND CHILLING
27. Revenge of the Snakes 335
28. Massacre in Mumbai 343
29. Diplomatic Doodles 351
30. Delhi Durbar 360
SECTION 8: 2017–2023: TOUGH TALKING
31. Lies, Deceit, and Diplomacy 375
32. Naya Pakistan, Old Tricks 391
33. Pulwama 405
34. Kashmiriyat 433
Conclusion: History’s Ambiguous Lessons 462
Epilogue: A Normal Kashmir 477
Acknowledgements 480
Indian High Commissioners/Ambassadors Posted in Pakistan
from 1947–2020 482
Pakistani High Commissioners/Ambassadors Posted in India
from 1947–2020 482
Indian Prime Ministers & Foreign Ministers from 1947–2023 483
Pakistani Heads of State/ Prime Ministers & Foreign Ministers
from 1947–2023 484
Notes 485
Bibliography 505
Index 507
 PROLOGUE: THE E X I T

I was expelled from Pakistan in 2019.

I had been stationed in Islamabad as India’s high commissioner for
twenty months at that time. It was August, the month that cooled Islamabad,
when evenings turned pleasant, leaves turned golden to drift aimlessly on
sidewalks. To the city’s many expats, it felt more like early fall in Europe
than late summer in Asia.
A gorgeous orange sun dipped into the horizon as I gazed out of
the window of the armoured black BMW driving me to the Islamabad
International Airport, a hurriedly inaugurated new facility, still leaking
from recent rains. I felt short-changed by my unusual diplomatic departure.
No fancy farewell reception preceded it, no series of dinners with special
Balochi meats and Punjabi hospitality, no goodbye speeches, no jhappi-
pappis, no media interviews to summarize my tenure, no witty recalls of
my adventures in Islamabad mansions, not even a hurried shopping trip
to Jinnah Super for mementos. I had a gnawing sense of leaving behind
an unfinished agenda, something I had forgotten to do but could not
quite recall what. It felt more interruption than closure, as if I had been
plucked mid-stride on my way to work on a pleasant, unremarkable day.
I boarded a flight to Abu Dhabi on that breezy, almost autumn evening,
after the unannounced drive on the Srinagar Highway. I wondered if I
would ever return, as I tried to process the events of the past week that
had altered my neat plans for the month and jolted the already troubled
ties between South Asia’s sibling nations.
The diplomatic euphemism for my exit was somewhat kinder than its
characterization by the media—my host country had decided to downgrade
the bilateral relationship with India and hence the post of high commissioner
had become redundant. Therefore, Pakistan would no longer be sending its
designated high commissioner to New Delhi. And could the Indian high
commissioner in Islamabad please leave? The banner headlines were, of
course, gleefully announcing that I had been expelled.
My position was not the only casualty. Pakistan had also announced
a ban on trade with India, potentially inflicting much damage to its
own pharmaceutical and textile industries. These were its first fuming
reactions to the Indian parliament’s decision to revoke Article 370 of the
Constitution, extinguishing the special status of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
and bifurcating it into two union territories.
Even as I quietly boarded the Etihad flight to Abu Dhabi, media vigils
awaited me at Wagah and at Attari, on both sides of the Punjab land—
crossing between the two distrustful neighbours. My impending departure
x ange r m anage m e nt

had become a subject of shrill speculation over the previous three days,
from the moment my marching orders became public. Electronic media
channels on both sides of the border had cameras trained on the crossing’s
large clanging iron gates, expecting me to arrive by road at Wagah, cross
over to Amritsar, and catch the evening flight to Delhi. We had led them
on; a dummy booking in my name had been in place on Air India since
the previous day. The channels were playing up each micro-step of my
exit; the tickers were breathlessly breaking the news, ‘Expelled Indian HC
on way to Wagah’.
It would have been only right to cross back at Wagah. Zero Point,
the white border marker was the parting gift of the British in 1947. It
was where Wagah touched Attari on the Indian side, it was what I had
gingerly stepped over as I walked into Pakistan to kick off my assignment
less than two years earlier.
This was a border point defined by spectacle. As the only road-crossing
between the two countries till 1999, it had a colourful past. It inhabited
popular imagination as a tourist site where a piece of martial theatre had
been performed by two adversarial forces every evening since 1959. Only
an eruption of conflict or some particularly ugly rupture in the relationship
interrupted the proceedings. Pakistan was even fonder of the performance
than its bigger neighbour, having just seven months earlier converted the
return across that border of captured Indian pilot Abhinandan Varthaman
into a televised drama, after an aerial dogfight downed the pilot in Pakistan.
Varthaman’s bloodied, mustachioed face, gloatingly released on WhatsApp
videos, became for India a marker of the Pakistan army’s vulgar machismo;
and when Pakistan was compelled to return him, he was made to cross
over on foot at Wagah, after an achingly long wait into the night.
Going by this batting style, we thought there would be much temptation
to position me for Pakistani television as a chastened Indian diplomat
compelled to return home. Not to be outdone in countering this narrative,
the Indian TV crews were waiting a few hundred metres from Zero Point
to paint me the returning hero.
I disappointed them both with an unglamorous aerial exit.
I left Islamabad with mixed feelings—much lightness and some regret.
I was relieved to exit the surreal bouts of hostility that marked my
professional life, but missed being in the thick of the hard talk, missed being
able to bid farewell to many personal friends and diplomatic colleagues.
X
Five days earlier, as shrill birdsong pierced the dawn on 5 August, hours
before India’s parliament dismantled Article 370, I had walked briskly on
the little lawn within India House in the tony F6 sector of the geometrical
cityscape of Islamabad—a town created in the 1960s, modelled after the
 p rol ogue : t he e x i t xi

ancient city of Taxila next door—with the foreboding that something

dramatic would happen. Yet, I had nary a suspicion that rapidly unfolding
events in the next few hours would precipitate my exit from the country
within the week.
In conversations days earlier, some Western diplomats had alerted me
that Pakistan’s leadership was repeatedly and nervously summoning them,
complaining of India’s military build-up in Kashmir. The American envoy
had suggested to the foreign office mandarins that Pakistan should convey
its strong feelings directly to the Indian high commissioner.
And so, at 6 p.m. on 5 August, I was summoned to Pakistan’s foreign
office. I had conferred with India’s foreign secretary, Vijay Gokhale, before
the meeting, since it was plain what my hosts would say. I was to meet
my primary interlocutor, Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood, with whom I
had struck up a comfortable working relationship; we were on first name
terms. We had candidly discussed some difficult issues in the past during
my visits to India when he was Pakistan’s high commissioner in New Delhi
and also in Islamabad over his past few months as the foreign secretary,
where we had together untied some knots. But this was different. It was
serious. I did not know it then, but it would be my last meeting with
him, and the toughest conversation we were to have.
As I was led into the plush corner room, defined by its oversized
bottle-green chesterfield chairs, I quipped to lighten the mood, ‘Looks like
we’ve kept you busy.’ Mahmood nodded unsmilingly, ‘I wish you hadn’t.’
We shook hands. I hoped to keep the tone friendly; we were, after all,
professionals doing a job. ‘High Commissioner, we have a statement from
the highest levels of our government, which I will read out,’ he began
stiffly. This was clearly not the day for first names. He droned gently
through strong words of outrage at India’s decision, a prepared script
that I assumed would be out in the media minutes after I left his office.
In fact, that statement was to become the party line that would
in subsequent days be repeated as Pakistan’s official narrative at every
conceivable forum and would soon be embellished with harsher, more
abusive words. I was wondering what exclusive message would be delivered
for India in this special démarche I was summoned for. I nodded at the young
second secretary, Vipul Dev, who had accompanied me to this meeting. He
took furious notes. These were not really necessary, given that the text of
Pakistan’s outrage was soon made available to the world:
The Foreign Secretary summoned the Indian high commissioner to the
foreign office and conveyed a strong démarche on the announcements
made and actions taken by the Government of India with regard to
Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IOK) today.
The Foreign Secretary conveyed Pakistan’s unequivocal rejection
xii ange r m anage m e nt

of these illegal actions as they are in breach of international law

and several UN Security Council resolutions. Pakistan’s resolute
condemnation of the unlawful actions aimed at further consolidating
the illegal occupation of Indian Occupied Jammu and Kashmir was
underscored....
The Foreign Secretary called upon India to halt and reverse its
unlawful and destabilizing actions, ensure full compliance with UN
Security Council resolutions, and refrain from any further action that
could entail serious implications.
The Foreign Secretary reiterated that Pakistan will continue to
extend political, diplomatic and moral support to the indigenous
legitimate Kashmiri people’s struggle for realization of their inalienable
right to self-determination.1
This level of rhetoric was pretty much par for the course for India–Pakistan
squabbles. But this time, it was only the take-off point for more to come.
After the foreign secretary had sombrely delivered this tough message in
his elegant corner room, I said I had a few points to make. This seemed to
puzzle my host. A démarche by the foreign office of Pakistan to an Indian
diplomat, howsoever harsh, normally meant you hear out a tirade, mostly
delivered politely, say you’ll pass it on back home, exchange pleasantries on
some unconnected subjects, shake hands and leave. The script that evening
was altered.
I said that while I would, of course, pass on the contents of Pakistan’s
statement to my government, I was under instructions to reject this take
on events and in turn explain India’s position to Pakistan. What had
transpired in our parliament was an internal matter for us—India had
made amendments to its Constitution through due process in its legislature,
and we believed Pakistan had no locus standi in this matter. We presumed
Pakistan had read India’s Constitution, particularly Article 370,2 which
was a temporary and transitional provision that India’s government and
legislature was entitled to change. Due procedure had been followed
in broad daylight after a nationally televised debate. This issue did not
change the status quo on the border; the sanctity of the Line of Control
(LoC) had not been disturbed in any way. Besides, one of the factors
that had complicated the J&K situation for India was Pakistan’s export
of terrorism across the border for over three decades. The last bit was
not strictly part of the script for the occasion, but I had improvised the
talking point, to offer a more rounded appreciation of India’s take on
events.
The foreign secretary, while not surprised by the thrust of my argument,
did appear taken aback by this kind of pushback. He was not about to give
me the last word. He countered that Pakistan completely rejected India’s
 p rol ogue : t he e x i t xiii

posture and went on to explain how cross-border events had nothing to

do with India’s ‘siege’ of Kashmir.
I walked out after a grim handshake. The TV channels were breaking
the story on Pakistan’s démarche even before I ended my five-minute
drive from the imposing Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) building
in Islamabad’s red zone to the Indian high commission in the adjoining
diplomatic enclave. After some consultations with Delhi, we decided not
to publicly share our version of my posture at the meeting that day. In
any case, Pakistan’s démarche did not get much play in the Indian media.
Far too much was going on within the country.
On 7 August, the official outrage crystallized further. In a special session
of Pakistan’s parliament, the mood was of high indignation, often masking
high panic; the decibel levels were matching the anger. Pakistan’s leadership
was floundering for the right response. Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood
Qureshi fulminating in parliament and in media interviews against India’s
agenda to ‘bury the issue of Kashmir’,3 warned that diplomatic ties were
under stress and hinted that the Indian high commissioner might be asked
to leave.
At the high commission, we went on high alert. I asked all diplomats
to stay back in the chancery and work on contingency options. Pakistan
could choose from a menu of angry expressions—snapping diplomatic ties,
closing down the mission, reducing the strength of diplomats by half, or
just expelling the Indian high commissioner. We could all be leaving our
station in the next days, or even hours. Would we need to kick in war
protocols like the destruction of records? Would we need to leave in a
convoy of cars for Amritsar the next day?
In the event, Pakistan decided to exercise the least disruptive choice.
I was given seventy-two hours to leave the country.
The director general for South Asia, Mohammad Faisal, called in Second
Secretary Akhilesh Singh, whom we had hurriedly designated the acting
deputy high commissioner—since the regular deputy, Gaurav Ahluwalia,
was away in India—and passed on Pakistan’s ‘request’ for India to withdraw
its high commissioner.
Pakistan’s spokesman made it public the next morning:
Pursuant to the decision of the National Security Committee
yesterday, the Government of India has been told to withdraw its High
Commissioner to Pakistan. The Indian Government has also been
informed that Pakistan will not be sending its High Commissioner-
designate to India.4
No deadline for India to ‘withdraw’ me was revealed to the media. India’s
response the same day was calm but unusually expansive:
xiv ange r m anage m e nt

We have seen reports that Pakistan has decided to take certain

unilateral actions in respect to its bilateral relations with India. This
includes the downgrading of our diplomatic relations. The intention
behind these measures is obviously to present an alarming picture
to the world of our bilateral ties. The reasons cited by Pakistan
are not supported by facts on the ground. Recent decisions by the
Government and Parliament of India are driven by a commitment to
extend to J&K opportunities for development that were earlier denied
by a temporary provision in the Constitution. Its impact would also
result in the removal of gender and socio-economic discrimination.
It is also expected to result in an upswing of economic activity and
improvement in the livelihood prospects of all people of J&K. It is not
surprising that such developmental initiatives that could address any
disaffection in J&K should be negatively perceived in Pakistan, which
has utilized such sentiments to justify its cross-border terrorism.
The recent developments pertaining to Article 370 are entirely
the internal affair of India. The Constitution of India was, is and will
always be a sovereign matter. Seeking to interfere in that jurisdiction
by invoking an alarmist vision of the region will never succeed.
The Government of India regrets the steps announced by Pakistan
yesterday and would urge that country to review them so that normal
channels for diplomatic communications are preserved.5
Expressing ‘regret’ rather than condemnation was in Indo–Pak diplomatese
a pretty gentle protest. But Pakistan was in no mood for a review. Two
days later, I was headed home.
X
History is replete with stories of diplomats who have met darker fates
than an expulsion. Envoys have been lynched by angry mobs, downed by
assassins’ bullets, beheaded by enemy forces, even eaten in cannibalistic
rituals. But such gory ends to diplomatic assignments have mercifully been
rarer in recent times, since the United Nations and its Vienna Convention
started regulating the behaviour of host countries towards accredited
diplomats.
In several troubled relationships, diplomats have often been the first
casualties when trouble started, easy pickings when angry hosts were
examining more complex policy options. And particularly in the turbulent
history of Indo–Pak ties, diplomats have faced a spectrum of churlish
actions by their hosts: robustly abused in the foreign office, accused of
activities unbecoming of diplomatic status, pilloried in the media, even
harassed and beaten on the streets.
And, of course, expelled.
 p rol ogue : t he e x i t xv

To be sure, such diplomatic downgrades have been as much in evidence

in other troubled diplomatic relationships across the globe, between hostile
neighbours or between major adversarial powers. But the degree of volatility
has perhaps been especially heightened in the case of the two troubled
South Asian neighbours.
When I reflected on my situation, I wondered how many of my
predecessors or counterparts in the seven decades of the tortuous history
of this relationship had faced similar fates.
In the turbulent days leading up to my departure, even as I assured
family back home that I was in no physical danger, I sent reports and
assessments to headquarters on the evolving situation. I called up two
of my predecessors, to get the context straight in my head. The first
was T. C. A. Raghavan my go-to colleague, a historian, and a veritable
encyclopedia on the relationship, who had handled Pakistan multiple times
in his career and written extensively on it. He said he had hoped it would
not come to this, but told me reassuringly that I would still continue to be
the high commissioner to Pakistan, but based in India ‘on temporary duty’.
I then rang up Vijay Nambiar, who had faced a similar fate two
decades ago. I wanted to get some insights from the turn of the century.
He told me cheerily that he had not been removed at Pakistan’s instance,
but withdrawn by India, as a reaction to the terror attack on India’s
parliament in 2001. He had even played some golf before his departure.
Now that was a thought. I could follow this precedent and exit on a
swinging note with a farewell round at the Islamabad Golf Course. But
I decided against this option. I might ruffle feathers on either side of the
border and, worse, overload the already crowded agenda in a seventy-
two-hour notice period.
The last expulsion by Pakistan before mine was not of an ambassador
but of the chargé d’affaires (CdA) at India’s mission in 2003. Sudhir Vyas
had been asked to leave in tit for tat moves, after Pakistan’s CdA (who
later became foreign secretary and caretaker foreign minister in 2023), Jalil
Abbas Jalani, was asked by India to leave, having been caught handing
over cash to Kashmiri separatists.6 The countries had behaved unpredictably
even during wars: in 1971, diplomatic relations had snapped the moment
war was declared and the high commissioner arrested; but in 1947, 1965,
and 1999, diplomatic missions operated with no official bugle sounded on
war. So, I had the dubious distinction of being, technically at least, the
first Indian high commissioner in the history of the relationship to have
actually been expelled by Pakistan.
With my own marching orders in hand, I was curious to discover why
some diplomats had to leave their official perch, and how they reacted
to the imminence of exiting prematurely from their host country. What
caused that departure and what followed it? More importantly, were there
xvi ange r m anage m e nt

any ‘normal’ times in this chequered diplomatic history?

The questions were many. What leads to a diplomat being booted
out by a host country? How bad does the relationship need to get to
reach this pass? Does it go through a familiar and repetitive trajectory?
In other words, are all premature exits the same or do they each have a
unique historical fingerprint attached to them? Each story of diplomatic
exit would capture the dynamics of ties and some of the currents of the
deteriorating relationship. Each expulsion, or recall, marked the end point
of a process of diplomatic engagement getting strained to breaking point.
Sometimes, the diplomatic tiff was only leading up to the next stage in
the escalation ladder, the snapping of diplomatic ties, or armed conflict.
Sometimes the two processes worked in parallel.
And what made for good times in the relationship? Were they only
short aberrations in a turbulent, bitter relationship?
As I pondered all this, I wondered if the story of Indo–Pak diplomacy
might not be told from the point of view of its practitioners, those who
exited early and those who stayed long in the trenches? What sort of
narrative might result if we plucked out the diplomatic players, the footnotes
of history, and placed them centre stage, with the larger events playing
in the background?
Thus was born the idea of this book.
 IN TRODUCTI ON: A QUEST FOR I D E NTI TY

The Partition of 1947 has sometimes been seen as a failure of India’s

pre-independence diplomacy. The departing British had dictated the
terms of their exit to their colonial subjects, driven by their own strategic
interests and from a position of asymmetric strength. The leaders of India’s
freedom struggle had little wiggle room in the negotiations, their own
differences emphasized, widened, and exploited by their wily masters.
They stood accused of rejecting power-sharing arrangements and the loose
confederation the British had proposed in 1946. They lacked the leverage
or experience to extract from the powerful colonials any more favourable
deal than the creation of two hastily carved out successor countries from
the undivided mainland of the subcontinent, each disappointed by borders
suddenly thrust upon them. That it would spawn sustained hostility and
decades of angry, distrustful interaction between them, was a tragic—but
mostly unforeseen—consequence of the seminal partition moment.
In fact, Pakistan’s promoters had insisted that the opposite would
happen. The two-nation theory1 held the implicit promise that the creation
of a separate Muslim country would do away with the acrimony between
the two nations, as delineated by the two major religious faiths of colonial
India. And so, amity would ultimately prevail between the neighbours, since
their new borders would keep them out of each other’s hair.
Across the more than three quarters of a century since then, the
siblings have been unable to overcome the foundational animosity that has
permeated their relationship and have, in fact, added several more layers of
mutual suspicion. In deconstructing this epic subcontinental rivalry, scholars
have teased out complex etiologies, ranging from congenital distrust to
religious schisms to geopolitical imperatives. But looking in the rear-view
mirror of history, the diplomatic ties between India and Pakistan, as indeed
the contours of the broader relationship, appear to be determined by one
overarching factor: Pakistan’s quest for identity. This quest has played out,
most visibly, along two axes of contestation: territory and security. These
ideas of identity, territory, and security have populated scholarship on the
subcontinent and recur in the narrative of this book.
With Independence, national identity had to be redefined and
reimagined in both countries, but Pakistan took on the additional burden
of determining, even inventing, an identity distinct from India’s. The
first Pakistani, in the official narrative, was thus not Pakistan’s founder,
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, but Mir Qasim, the first Muslim to set foot in this
region in 712 ce. In its quest for identity, Pakistan was not just seeking
parity with India, but mostly emphasizing the differences with its larger
xviii ange r m anage m e nt

twin. While the countries continued to share ‘cultural intimacy’, the state-
building process in independent Pakistan stressed the ‘differences’ to gain
legitimacy, and self-worth, for itself—a nation distinct from India. This idea
of Pakistan, premised on irreconcilable differences between Hindus and
Muslims, formed the core of Pakistani nationalism. This notion, in fact,
shaped Pakistan’s foreign and national security policy and thus informed
its diplomacy with India.
In many ways, the two-nation theory was defying the traditional
understanding of nationhood that had been prevalent in the Western
world since the seventeenth century, and reinforced in the twentieth by
the United Nations, a multinational institution created in 1945, just two
years before Partition. The post-colonial Indian nation could have been
constituted according to Western benchmarks: of a community with shared
history, ethnicity, culture, and, of course, territory. But the British had now
effectively endorsed the proposition that religion-based entities, ‘nations’,
could reside in such a state. This was a convenient strategic recourse for
the former colonials, even though clearly at odds with most twentieth
century political beliefs.
Once matters moved from theory to reality, the ‘imagined’ communities
of the Indian and Pakistani nations needed to rapidly define their
postcolonial national identities. While India, like most postcolonial states
of the twentieth century, set out to define and accept, through an intensely
debated Constitution, an identity distinct from that of the colonial British,
Pakistan saw the creation of a national identity as a task of building a
sense of self as the Other of India. For India, the robust debates in the
Constituent Assembly were as much about defining identity as crafting a
Constitution to guide its destiny. Soon, India was on a constitutional path
that embraced a secularism hard to reverse. But Jinnah and his successors
started a process of constructing a new national identity for Pakistan,
rather than tweaking an existing one, based on post-1947 realities. It was
a national identity that would, apart from distancing itself from India’s,
submerge Pakistan’s regional identities: those of Bengalis, Balochis, Sindhis,
Pashtuns, and others. In fact, the non-Punjabi ethnic groups still don’t
accept the imposed construct. The Pashtuns, for instance, say they have been
Muslims for 1,400 years, Pakistani for just seventy-five years, but Pashtun
for 4,000.2 Similarly, the linguistic identity of Bengalis was challenged with
the imposition of Urdu, as the state went about creating a Punjab-centred
identity. A common identity as India’s Other, Pakistan’s security apparatus
hoped, could also serve to keep Pakistan’s provinces united by a common
hostility to India.
Over the years, Pakistan has struggled with this imagined community,
this invented identity. Latter-day allusions to Riyasat-e-Medina as the ideal
welfare state of fourteen centuries ago have pointedly been made in political
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xix

discourse, reinforcing the identity confusion. It serves Pakistan’s leaders not

only to define a new national identity, but also to underscore that their
nation’s imagination of itself is more West Asian than South Asian. When
the greeting Khuda Hafiz is changed to Allah Hafiz, the debate resurfaces
over whether Pakistan’s identity is Muslim or Arab, more akin to Islamic
national identities of the western deserts where the faith originated. Since
Partition, this identity debate has been a source of contestation within
Pakistan as well. It was a religious identity that required Pakistan to insist
it was both a Muslim and an Islamic state. A secular identity was not an
option. As Pakistan’s strongest dictator, General Zia ul-Haq, put it: if we
are not Islamic, we should have stayed in India.3 Some academics have
been harsher on Pakistan, accusing it of claiming nationalism, while in
fact lacking a nation.4
Providing more grist to Pakistan’s internal debate was the political
rise of a Hindu nationalist movement in India, with the proponents of
this movement emphasizing India’s Hindu past, traditions, and customs
as the basis of Indian identity. This slant on Indian identity remained
a politically charged and complex debate in India, with critics arguing
that the movement’s emphasis on Hindu identity and culture undermined
India’s pluralistic values and promoted a narrow worldview. But India’s
internal debates, harking back to a pre-Islamic past, led Pakistan to create
a straw man of a non-secular and majoritarian Hindu civilizational state,
discriminatory towards minority communities, particularly Muslims, and
by extension hostile to Islamic Pakistan. The official Pakistani posture of
stridently calling out any perceived discrimination against Indian Muslims,
not just in the Muslim-majority state of J&K, influenced both the rhetoric
and substance of the relationship.
Minority relations, within both India and Pakistan, have remained
contentious since Independence and continue to be a testing topic for their
diplomacy to this day. The idea of Pakistan was in a sense one aimed at
resolving the fears of a minority in colonial India, a Muslim population
of around 100 million in 1947, forming a fourth of a mainly Hindu
nation. At Pakistan’s creation, with 70 million citizens, an estimated fifth of
them Hindus, a bizarre theory gained ground characterizing the minorities
on both sides of the border as ‘hostage populations’ that would not be
persecuted beyond a point, for fear of reprisals against their counterparts
across the border.5 Minorities would thus become groups that governments
could intimidate, defend, or use as a negotiating tool. This theory did not
retain much traction after the migrations triggered by Partition, but was
occasionally evoked in the discourse of both countries. In subsequent years,
however, India’s constitutional secularism stood in contrast to Pakistan’s
lurch towards theocratism, further frightening the minorities in the Islamic
state.
xx ange r m anage m e nt

IDEOLOGY MATTERS
Pakistan felt obliged to describe a formal ‘ideology’ to define its national
identity. It did so on the basis of the two-nation theory, as also by
redefining its Islamic history and by reimagining the partition moment.
The ideology travelled across the decades, to be frequently revisited and
tweaked, but never abandoned.
Adherence to this national ideology, whether in the form of values,
principles, beliefs, or mythologies, became a highly politicized state-driven
process in Pakistan. Once the army became predominant, the political
reality of the national security driven ‘garrison state’ was established. That
garrison state arrogated to itself the role of being the defender not just
of territory, but also of the ideological frontiers of Pakistan. The dictator
Yahya Khan first used this formulation during his brief, ill-fated reign in the
late 1960s.6 During the civil–military debates in Pakistan in the 1990s, the
civilian prime minister Benazir Bhutto bravely argued that the army should
protect Pakistan’s physical rather than its ideological borders, leaving the
political class to determine ideology. However, military rulers—Ayub Khan
in the 1960s and Zia ul-Haq in the 1980s—immersed Pakistan’s security
state into the business of defining its doctrine, co-opting the religious
right in the process. Even civilian leaders like Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were
compelled, in the 1970s, to use this playbook to consolidate power, making
the state a radical entity intolerant of both its own minorities and of its
non-Islamic neighbour.
For Ayub, Yahya, and Zulfikar, defining a national religion-based
ideology was a tactical necessity; but for Zia, who made the process
irreversible, it stemmed from deep personal religiosity. Even as Zia’s security
state arrogated to itself the role of defending the ideological boundaries
of Pakistan, it stamped out pretences of civilian democracy, as it decreed
civilians incapable of the task of defending ideological frontiers. And it did
so in concert with the religious right, accommodating the jihadi mindset,
hostile to domestic minorities and neighbours.
The ideological debate seeped into Pakistan’s foreign policy and was
applied over the decades most often to India, not only in terms of the rhetoric
but also in the practice of its diplomacy. The strong use of ideological
symbols and vocabulary in political discourse made it harder for Pakistan
to practise a more pragmatic and flexible foreign policy.
The ideology of Islam was reinforced in the 1970s and 1980s, essentially
to provide legitimacy to Pakistan’s leadership. Some scholars have argued
that Pakistan had by the 1980s established an Islamic identity that
transcended the political, economic, and social realms from which ideology
is often drawn. In the persistent public debates within the country, the
argument is often made that a gulf had grown between Jinnah’s idea of
Pakistan and the one his successors shaped in later years.
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xxi

India, meanwhile, was resiliently drawing its identity from its

Constitution, laboriously worked out in its defining years, even though
this identity was periodically challenged by left-wing movements since
the early decades, or by right-wing movements that got greater political
traction from the 1980s onwards. The ideology and the idea of India
has been a robustly contested space for decades. But it has arguably not
had a major influence on the country’s foreign policy. A broad political
consensus evolved in the country: for a secular, realist, and interest-driven
foreign policy. A pragmatic approach to the rest of the world was the
overtly stated and generally observed norm.

LOST TERRITORY
The unrequited quest for territory for Pakistan has been the most painful
aspect of its search for an identity, especially when this clashes with India’s
idea of territory. Beyond the question of who we are, this quest raises
fundamental issues that define nationhood: what belongs to us; where are
the limits of our land and sea borders; how much of the rivers are ours?
For both countries, the borders of Kashmir and the Indus system waters
have been flashpoints of disagreement since the lines were drawn. But other
areas contiguous to their common borders have also produced friction.
The two countries have disputed each other’s claims on land and maritime
borders of the western Indian state of Gujarat, on Bengal in the east till
1971, and also on the waters of Punjab’s Indus River and its tributaries.
Specific negotiations have taken place on contested points like Siachen, Sir
Creek, and Tulbul. Pakistan’s official narrative has consistently promoted
the irredentist notion of a state incomplete without incorporating the
territory of Kashmir. The quest for territory thus became central to a search
for identity, with the slogan ‘Kashmir Banega Pakistan’ or its description
as Pakistan’s jugular vein. A Pakistani writer and diplomat in fact likened
the bilateral relationship to one of a joint family with first cousins, who are
close in every way, till the matter of dividing the family inheritance comes
up.7 One viewpoint has it that if the issue of J&K had been addressed
in the 1960s with the same diplomatic dexterity as the division of the
Indus waters, we would have averted several conflicts of later years. Not
everyone buys this reasoning. To many, the core divergence between India
and Pakistan lies elsewhere, in the mind: in unsettled notions of identity, in
concerns of security.
India’s nationalism tends to be predominantly territorial, rather than
religious, ethnic, or ideological. A territorial construct of Akhand Bharat
(Undivided India) was a strand of thought popular in the run-up to Partition,
partly to counter the move to divide the land. The construct survives to this
day, as a fringe notion that asserts that the expanse of territory of all of
modern-day South Asia is a common civilizational and cultural space and
xxii ange r m anage m e nt

therefore one nation. Defending every inch of independent India’s territory

is often seen as the role not just of the armed forces, but a civic duty of
every Indian. This brand of nationalism is seen as a foundational principle,
with Partition itself seen as an unfair carving out of territory, followed by
wars where Pakistan and then China occupied lands that belonged to India.
To some modern writers, even this is a dangerous form of nationalism
since it could discriminate against those seen as outside the territorial
community, ‘whether they be foreigners, immigrants, or minorities’.8

SECURITY: AN IMAGINED ENEMY

The search for security has been another defining feature of Pakistan’s
national quest. This search drove Pakistan to become a ‘security state’,
also dubbed a garrison state, with an over-securitized foreign policy run
by an unelected security establishment. Pakistan’s institutional paranoia,
its perception of India as its primary existential threat, has been the
underlying factor in many of its interactions, and is indeed the main driver
for the structural primacy of the army within its polity. With four major
conflicts behind them, not just defending, but changing borders became
a key goal for the Pakistani state. Moreover, irredentism on Kashmir, as
noted earlier, became a matter of faith of Pakistan’s foundational ideology.
Pakistan’s search for security has taken several ideological turns. In
a fundamental sense, Pakistan’s struggle to safeguard the security of its
nation state was seen in the initial years as an easier process: privileging
hard power over diplomacy. With military force the instrument of choice,
diplomacy was seen as a less reliable tool. Even in contemporary times,
Pakistan tried to revisit its security paradigms. It defined a new security
policy giving primacy to economic security or to geo-economics. This was
a policy designed to overcome the infirmities of its economy, which, in
turn, limit its political, military, and diplomatic power.
In its pursuit to define its identity with an ideology, in its quest for an
imagined lost territory, in its search for security, Pakistan’s approach has
been to change the territorial status quo as a revisionist power, even while
India has been content to be the status quoist power. Pakistan has over
the decades adopted different means of trying to change the status quo
on Kashmir. The first two decades meant using hard power and military
power, when bilateral and global diplomacy seemed not to be bearing
fruit. This expressed itself in the wars of 1947 and 1965 (reprised also in
1999) when the Pakistani state deployed a civilian cover to seize territory
in Kashmir. Or the proxy war it initiated from 1989 onwards. For India,
the territorial question was only one of the several diplomatic issues that
would come up between unfriendly neighbours.
While territorial ambitions drove the wars between the countries, issues
of security and identity were also at play. In the first quarter century of
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xxiii

their existence, the countries fought three wars. These wars were fought
overtly, when the power differential was not perceived to be large. But
covert warfare became essential for Pakistan from the 1980s when the
differential grew. The next quarter century saw proxy wars in Punjab and
Kashmir. The relationship in the last quarter century has been transacted
under a nuclear umbrella that gave Pakistan a perception of parity; but
from India’s point of view, it also gave the Pakistani state greater gumption
to attempt proxy terrorism.
A thesis that has gained traction within Pakistan’s official narrative is
that while Pakistan’s elections are about tabdeeli (change), Indian political
parties seek popularity at the hustings showcasing hostility with a villainous
neighbour. In the last three decades, it is in fact acts of terrorism, rather
than bilateral ties, that have drawn headlines during Indian elections. Often,
the two become indistinguishable in the Indian electoral discourse.

GLOBAL IMPACTS
Global currents have also had a strong impact on bilateral diplomacy.
In other words, the rest of the world, and particularly the play of the
major powers, has significantly influenced the India–Pakistan relationship.
The British influenced matters in the region during the early years of
Independence. By the mid-1950s, the Americans were seeking partners for
influence in the subcontinent. China played a significant role with its 1960s
strategic defence alliance with Pakistan, driven by the need to contain a
common adversary, India; this intimate Sino–Pak alliance, strengthened
by Pakistan’s abject economic dependence on its northern neighbour,
heightened for India the threat of a ‘combined front’ war.
The Soviet Union and the United States turned the region into a
Cold War battleground in the 1970s; in fact, the four-decade superpower
rivalry overlapped with and impacted the formative years of India–Pakistan
bilateral ties. To many observers, Pakistan’s close alliance with the United
States provided it the confidence to launch two of its three major wars with
India. Pakistan had, in fact, effectively leveraged its geostrategic location
to emphasize its relevance to the major powers. The US Cold War reliance
on Pakistan from the 1950s was followed by it seeking Pakistan’s support
in its war on terror in Afghanistan from 2001. It was critical for Pakistan
to use global geopolitics to its advantage and to seek alliances with the
major powers. It needed to counter the perceived India threat, and to seek
‘geopolitical rents’ to run its economy. When these rents began to dry up
with the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, Pakistan required a
newer strategy to shore up its dysfunctional economy. A preference for
‘geo-economics’, in essence a euphemism for fixing the Pakistani economy,
became the stated goal for establishing a viable state.
xxiv ange r m anage m e nt

DIPLOMATS AND LEADERS

In the tortured history of India–Pakistan ties, the agency of diplomats
has mattered in tweaking the trajectory of the relationship. The early
Indian and Pakistani diplomats, serving in the shadow of a traumatic
Partition, deserve special credit for practising their craft with conviction.
While the decade after independence saw contestation over the territory
of Kashmir, it also saw a state-building process that deployed the nuts
and bolts of diplomacy. Territorial compromises—for instance, defining a
LoC in Kashmir in the aftermath of conflict, or sharing the waters of the
Indus rivers—were the early fruits of the diplomacy. But the countries also
discussed initiatives to resolve more immediate challenges like minority
matters and economic decoupling.
Diplomats were often conflicted about raising minority matters.
Dealing with issues of minority welfare across the border was part of the
initial diplomacy, mostly policy overreach. This approach became cause
for routine reciprocal accusations of anti-minority policies. For Pakistan,
critical commentary on the treatment of Indian minorities was additionally
a tool to assure its citizens that the equivalent Muslim population on the
Indian side was somehow worse off than those within the Pakistani state.
This was especially important after 1971, when the two-nation theory was
effectively jettisoned by the creation of Bangladesh.
Economic issues were discussed at length in the early years, to achieve
a rational decoupling of two nations born of one unit. Later, economic
diplomacy needed to be innovative. Pakistan became wary of Indian efforts
at encouraging trade, because they could dilute the Kashmir ‘cause’. When
India granted most favoured nation (MFN) status to Pakistan in 1996,
Pakistan was placed in a quandary. For India, particularly after the 1990s,
trade with Pakistan was more a confidence-building measure (CBM) than
an element of its global economic policy, given the size of the Indian
economy and its robust relations with the rest of the world. One strand
of discourse within the country suggested that if India could continuously
expand trade with one adversarial neighbour with differing perceptions
on borders (China), could Pakistan not learn from that experience? Trade
could create constituencies for peace and also equities within the system.
However, trade and economic relations could never take off because they
were overcome by sentiment and an instinct of not wanting an adversary
to profit.
Some diplomats became personally associated with major initiatives,
where they could persuade leaders to move in a particular direction. Indian
diplomats dealing with Pakistan’s military dictators persuaded successive
governments to engage in the 1960s and 1980s. In the late 1980s, high
commissioners in both countries were credited with averting nuclear
escalation by engineering cricket diplomacy. In the twenty-first century,
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xxv

Pakistan’s ambassador played a critical role in facilitating a summit meeting

in Agra in 2001, while a backchannel led by an Indian diplomat came
close to a territorial ‘resolution’ in 2007.
The main drivers in the diplomacy between India and Pakistan, however,
have been the leaders of the countries. Still, structural factors that defined
the nature of the two states have also played an important role. For
historians, this has often meant a debate between the ‘great men’ theory and
the ‘historical inevitability’ hypothesis. Pakistani scholar-diplomat Husain
Haqqani has argued that there have been many false dawns in India–
Pakistan relations due to an over-reliance on the great men theory. Duos
of leaders had held great promise of breakthroughs in their times: Zia and
Rajiv, Benazir and Rajiv, Sharif and Gujral, Sharif and Vajpayee, even Sharif
and Modi, seemed to signal new phases of constructive engagement. But
the hopes were belied each time by the structural flaws in the relationship,
the primary one being the dominance in Pakistan’s polity of an army
paranoid about India.
X
A more fundamental question could be raised about interstate
relationships: does diplomacy even matter? Its practitioners have,
through time, tried to elevate diplomacy to the level of an esoteric science,
sometimes even a dark art. When the newly communist China established
its foreign office in 1949, its first diplomat, Foreign Minister Zhou
Enlai, paraphrased the Prussian general and military strategist Carl von
Clausewitz, defining his craft as ‘the continuation of warfare by other
means’. For this brand of warfare, Zhou recruited diplomats to serve as
a ‘civilian army’, a parallel made more real by contemporary Chinese
‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy. In Washington, state department mandarins
and scholars use the acronym DIME (diplomatic, information, military,
and economic) to remind themselves of the ‘instruments that must be
orchestrated in making foreign policy: diplomacy, information, military,
and economic’, with a studied primacy given to diplomacy.9 In the decades
of Cold War diplomacy between the US and the Soviet Union, diplomats
took pride in not allowing a hot war in their territories, with conflicts
confined under the containment paradigm in other theatres and fought
mostly through proxies.
In troubled relationships, diplomats have sometimes found themselves
standing between peace and war, deploying their craft to influence
decisions as also the behaviour of foreign governments and peoples,
through instruments such as dialogue, and negotiations, or other non-
violent measures. The relatively modern Western notion of diplomacy as
a ‘complex art combining relationships, advocacy, inducements, threats,
coercion’, approximates to the classical tools advocated by Chanakya
xxvi ange r m anage m e nt

in the third century bce: saam, daam, dand, bhed (suasion, inducement,
punishment, manipulation). In fact, formal diplomacy, as old as the nation
state,10 is not always the weapon of choice for neighbours; hard power
tactics and covert actions remain options on the table to conquer territories
or to coerce counterparts.
While Indian diplomats were often seen by their Pakistani counterparts
as wily and insincere, Pakistani diplomats of times past were thought of
as urbane and suave, polished by their elite feudal upbringing, playing
a weak hand well, charming the world with better articulation, if not
credible narratives. This seemed to change in the current century, when the
personalities of the diplomats seemed to matter less than the substantive
postures of their countries and leaders.
Another enduring debate in India–Pakistan ties is about the credibility
of the diplomatic actors themselves. Diplomacy in closed rooms sometimes
perpetuates the self-interest of diplomatic elites, excluding impacted groups
like the common people. Political leaders in India have often been pitted
against military elites in Pakistan, as primary negotiators in the relationship.
This asymmetric contest has not always led to the best outcomes.
Some scholars argue that in most societies, power is diffusing away from
states to a much broader range of actors. This has created a ‘diplomatic
deficit’ in the old structures of international relations, when non-state
actors—civil society groups, academics, and private sector leaders—are
excluded from conversations where they could champion positive change.
So, the political, military, and diplomatic elites, a more exclusive club in
Pakistan than in India, need to make space for conversations between civil
societies: youth, academia, think tanks.
Within these constraints, diplomats have played a critical role in both
the formulation and implementation of foreign policy. At several points,
diplomats on either side were able to persuade political leaders to make
choices against their judgement or beyond the confines of their vision and
play along with what the officials were suggesting. Track II diplomacy or
deniable backchannel communication deploying non-diplomats has been
another aspect of bilateral diplomacy. It has often been successful when
public glare can kill initiatives before they can reach any degree of maturity.

A PAINFUL JOURNEY
This book explores the journey of Indo–Pak diplomacy since
Independence, examining the seminal events of each decade, the military
actions, the diplomatic highs and lows. The pattern that emerges is of
attempts at constructive conversations periodically interrupted by conflict
and violence, of several false dawns and dashed hopes.
The first decade was marked by Partition and the war over Kashmir
that broke out soon after. The state-building diplomacy of the decade
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xxvii

saw a pact on minorities and a robust conversation on a ‘no-war’ peace

deal. The second decade saw the beginning of Pakistan’s military rule and
the eruption of the war of 1965 over Kashmir. Yet the high point of the
diplomacy of the time was the Indus Water Treaty that Nehru signed in
1960 with Ayub Khan. The third saw the 1971 war that broke Pakistan
in two, with the creation of Bangladesh. A conference at Simla in 1972
defined the peace-making diplomacy. In the fourth, Punjab came into focus
with a proxy war. The Siachen action of 1984 was another example of
a contest over territory, and a consequence of undefined borders in J&K.
The fifth decade from 1987 saw a proxy war begin in Kashmir, for which
India had little answer. Yet diplomats managed to conjure up a mechanism
of a comprehensive dialogue to address these issues. The sixth decade was
when both countries went nuclear; but Pakistan still tried covert action in
Kashmir in Kargil, under the nuclear umbrella. Proxy terror groups also
became more active under that umbrella, yet diplomacy continued with
Prime Minister Vajpayee’s Lahore visit of 1999, the Agra summit of 2001,
the Islamabad Summit of 2004, and a robust backchannel conversation
that went on till 2007, until the Musharraf dictatorship collapsed. The
seventh decade, starting 2007, was defined by the Mumbai terror attacks
of 2008. A structured dialogue was resumed in the wake of the Mumbai
terrorism, supplementing a continuing backchannel engagement, even as
India’s global diplomacy was stepped up. A new government in India tried
‘swearing in diplomacy’ in 2014, with sincere follow-up conversations;
but in 2016, when terror struck in Uri, India seemed to finally craft an
effective response to sub-conventional warfare. India declared there would
be no talks with terror, keeping diplomacy on a low key from 2016. The
eighth decade, starting 2017, has already seen a terror attack in Pulwama,
India’s air strikes in Balakot and the administrative restructuring of Jammu
and Kashmir: all in a single year, 2019. The relationship plummeted, but
quiet conversations did yield some results, like a ceasefire in early 2021,
and hopes for a modus vivendi even with Pakistan’s apparent economic
collapse.
X
A word about the periodization. Several books on India–Pakistan relations
prefer an organic periodization around major events, like wars and coups
and military rule. I discovered that a periodization in terms of decades after
Independence lent itself to a surprisingly neat way to dwell on the story.
Each decade followed a pattern of defining moments or crises, use of hard
power to deal with these and some efforts at resolution.
xxviii ange r m anage m e nt

Decade Defining Events Military Action Diplomacy

1947–1957 Partition 1947–49 war Nehru–Liaquat
Pact, 1950;
Decoupling
1957–1967 Ayub Khan’s 1965 war Indus Waters
Coup, 1958 Treaty, 1960;
Tashkent
Agreement, 1966
1967–1977 Creation of 1971 war Simla Agreement,
Bangladesh 1972
1977–1987 Punjab terrorism Proxy war in Zia’s visits to
Punjab, 1984; India
Siachen action
1987–1997 Kashmir Proxy war in Composite
terrorism; Kashmir Dialogue
Mumbai serial
blasts, 1993
1997–2007 Nuclear Tests Kargil; Mumbai Lahore, 1999;
1998; Mumbai train attacks Agra, 2001;
train attacks, 2006 Islamabad, 2004;
2006 backchannels
2007–2017 Mumbai Terror Uri Surgical Resumed
Attack, 2008 Strikes, 2016 Dialogue;
Summits; Modi’s
Lahore trip, 2015
2017–2023 Pulwama, 2019; Balakot Strikes, No talks with
Article 370 2019 terror; Ceasefire,
revocation 2021

The diplomatic structures to deal with this troubled relationship have

not evolved significantly. Over seventy-five years and more, twenty-five
Indian heads of mission have served in Pakistan, giving each an average
tenure of three years. They have been based in India’s diplomatic mission
in Karachi from 1947 to 1968 and then in Islamabad. Diplomatic ties were
snapped for five years after the 1971 war, and had remained downgraded
to CdA levels for another five, owing to India’s anger over terror attacks or
Pakistan’s over administrative rearrangements in Kashmir. Both countries
did invest their best diplomatic resources in each other. Pakistan’s twenty-
three heads of mission posted in Delhi have been the most senior members
of Pakistan’s foreign service; several have gone on to become foreign
 int roduct ion: a que s t f o r i d e n t i t y xxix

secretaries or foreign ministers. Pakistan has had its embassy in New

Delhi all along with the consulate in Mumbai that paralleled the Indian
consulate in Karachi operational from 1979 to 1996. High commissioners
were periodically rechristened ambassadors whenever Pakistan quit the
Commonwealth (as it did between 1972 and 1989) or was suspended for a
slide back on democracy (as in 1999, 2007).
X
As stated, Pakistan’s identity crisis has severely impacted its relationship
with India, as have precepts of ideology, territory, and security. At the
same time, global factors have been at play, apart from the choices made
by leaders and, on the margins, the agency exercised by diplomats on the
ground. Over the last three quarters of a century, military actions, violence,
and hostility have been balanced by attempts to stabilize the relationship
through diplomatic innovations and often, peace efforts. These have not
always succeeded, but have been relentlessly attempted by both leaders and
diplomats. The turbulent journey of India–Pakistan diplomacy has seen
more lows than highs, more pessimism than hope.
What follows is a practitioner’s account, one more interpretation of
a relationship much too important for the world not to be examined
periodically from newer perpectives. It mostly represents an Indian view,
with Indian diplomats often providing a vantage to critical events. Other
observers and actors, like Pakistani diplomats and analysts, add their voices
often enough. In this narrative, I have mostly stayed clear of details of
military and covert actions and intelligence operations, fascinating as they
can be, since several shelves in libraries are dedicated to these. The principal
aim of this book is to examine the tempestuous relationship between India
and Pakistan through the lens of diplomacy.
X

A Note on Style
Names of people and places have been spelled as per conventions that were in use at the
time of the events in this narrative.
 SECTION 1

1947–1957: BUILDING STATES

 1

MI DNI GHT’S NATI ONS

S welling with pride, the portly freedom fighter in a Gandhi cap rigged
up a tricoloured cloth onto a makeshift flagpole at the Palace Hotel
in Karachi. It was barely a few hours after South Asia’s seminal moment:
that fateful midnight when a departing colonial empire allowed a fifth
of humanity to take control of its own destiny, that instant when India
shook off two centuries of subjugation, to wake to light and freedom.1
The man hoisting the Indian flag in Pakistan was Sri Prakasa, a Congress
Party activist who had spent the past decades agitating for India’s freedom.
He was now also free India’s first high commissioner to its newly born
neighbour, his hotel room his home country’s embassy, and he its sole
employee. The envoy was also the solitary vocalist that morning of 15
August 1947, as he delivered a rendition of the patriotic Bengali song
‘Vande Mataram’ for his audience of sundry hotel staff and guests. He was
gamely covering for a missing choir of Sindhi girls, scheduled to perform at
this momentous event. When the day’s festivities were done, the eager hotel
management would illuminate the flag that night and every night of his
stay, to humour their first diplomatic guest.
Producing the singing choir had been the responsibility of the envoy’s
fellow Congress leader and comrade of several years, Choithram Gidwani,
who had petulantly rejected the invitation to join the event ‘for freedom
was no freedom for which Sindh had been sacrificed’. Gidwani was
based in Karachi with the imposing title of president of the Provincial
Congress Committee, a post he had held continuously for a quarter
century. Bewildered to find the ground beneath his feet abruptly belong
to a new country, Gidwani was now bitter, in equal measure, about this
pointless Partition and about the end of the road for the Sindh Congress.
He seemed as surprised by the new diplomatic position the Congress
leadership had conjured up in Karachi as he was upset at being overlooked
for it. More fundamentally, Gidwani grasped neither the permanence of the
new boundaries of the two newly-created nations nor their new external
obligations. Since he was available, why would any other Congressman
have any business showing up to represent India? A nonplussed Prakasa
had no good answer. He suggested to his colleague that this query was
best addressed to the party’s president and the designated prime minister
of India, Jawaharlal Nehru.
Like several of his comrades in the Indian National Congress, Prakasa
had been viscerally against the idea of a partition. He hoped that the
4 ange r m anage m e nt

proposal was somehow reversible. He had gone to jail during the Quit
India agitation against British colonialism in 1942 and remained passionate
about fostering communal harmony between Hindus and Muslims. Many
in his host country, however, did not associate that sentiment with the
party to which Prakasa belonged, seeing the Indian National Congress as
a majoritarian Hindu behemoth. Still, a large number of Indian politicians
in late 1947 wished—as their counterparts on the other side of the border
feared—that the two countries would somehow come together again within
months of the departure of the British. Through the next eighteen months
of his tenure, the Indian envoy would go on to make his views annoyingly
clear to his Pakistani hosts.2
It was still unclear at their independence where the border between the
twin nations would appear. But Karachi, the sleepy capital of the Sindh
province, nestling on the Arabian Sea, hometown of Pakistan’s founding
father, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, was quite emphatically the seat of the new
government.
The previous day, Prakasa, as India’s chief representative to the ‘new
sovereign state’—he could still not get himself to call it a separate country—
had attended an independence ceremony in Pakistan’s new constituent and
legislative assembly in Karachi; Lord Louis Mountbatten was in town
on his last day as the last British viceroy to India—to formally transfer
power to the government of the new state of Pakistan and to inaugurate
Jinnah as its first head of state. Jinnah had, of course, chosen to become
Pakistan’s governor general, refusing to cede that role, even temporarily,
to Mountbatten, as the Indian leaders had done. Mountbatten’s schedule,
packed with events that day, determined the timing of the function: he
would do the honours in Pakistan on the eve of the designated Independence
Day, and then rush back to join the midnight ceremony in Delhi. Prakasa
sat sullenly, discomfited by the proceedings at the government house in
Karachi, underwhelmed by the ‘mutually complimentary and felicitous’
speeches by Mountbatten and Jinnah.
In contrast, freedom at midnight in neighbouring India had been greeted
with soaring rhetoric from its first prime minister, Nehru, who spoke
poetically of the soul of a nation long suppressed finding utterance. The
fateful date was chosen by Mountbatten to commemorate the second
anniversary of an event he was proud to have played a role in: the Japanese
surrender to the Allied Forces in World War II. The date met with resistance
from Vedic astrologers who found it inauspicious. Midnight between the
two dates thus became the acceptable compromise, satisfying both the
vanity of the world’s largest, albeit dying, empire and the alignment of
the planets above it.
That it was an auspicious time was one issue the devout on both sides
agreed upon: the month of Ramzan was on. 15 August fell on the privileged
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 5

twenty-seventh ‘night of destiny’, the last Friday of the holy month. Many
in Pakistan saw this as ‘the divine imprint on the birth of Pakistan’ and
would question the cabinet’s decision, in June 1948, to designate 14 August
as the future date for celebrating Pakistan’s Independence Day. The British
parliament’s Indian Independence Act, 1947, of July, they pointed out,
mentioned 15 August as the appointed day of the birth of the two dominions.
Besides, Jinnah and Pakistan’s cabinet had been sworn in on that day. But
Pakistan’s young government wanted to distinguish its identity as well as
birth hour from India’s midnight moment.3
The midnight hour was to become a striking metaphor for India’s
destiny. It was a moment of awakening. Midnight’s children would be
born to a brighter future even though the darkness of the night would
cloak ‘midnight’s furies’ that led to mass communal killings. Even Nehru’s
paean to the joy of freedom was tempered with references to the pain of
Partition, the loss of vast swathes of territory to a sibling nation. Nehru
spoke of a ‘tryst with destiny’ and a pledge taken long years ago at the
Karachi session of the Congress that declared 26 January 1930 as the
purna swaraj or ‘total independence’ day for India. He also spoke of
redeeming that pledge ‘not wholly or in full measure’, which was seen
as a gentle lament about the loss of territory. But Nehru had ended his
midnight poetry with heady hope for the future.
It was this hope that infused the population the next day, as newly freed
citizens of India fervently raised hundreds of saffron, white, and green flags
across the country in a blissful dawn of celebration, to the accompaniment
of passionately sung patriotic songs. India’s envoy in Pakistan plugged into
this heady moment as he raised the revered tricolour in territory that had
ceased to be part of his motherland.
While Pakistan needed urgently to create new state mechanisms to
write its fresh destiny, India had a headstart, with functioning governance
structures vacated by the departing British in Delhi. Nehru had clear ideas
of the mission ahead, the Congress had been preparing for this moment
for decades. India would resolutely be born as a parliamentary democracy,
every one of its adult citizens would be allowed to vote. Nehru would
be his own foreign minister, with a powerful vision of India’s unique role
in the world. He would display a progressive approach to governance in
putting together a cabinet team of ideological rivals, including Law Minister
Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, a leader of the backward castes, and Industry
Minister Syama Prasad Mookerjee of the right-wing Hindu Mahasabha,
apart from the steely home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, a Congress colleague
with views that often diverged from Nehru’s own. These worthies held
mostly conflicting views on dealing with the severed territory of Pakistan.
Meanwhile, the tallest leader of the subcontinent was deeply distraught.
He had marked 15 August with a solemn fast of protest in Calcutta, which
6 ange r m anage m e nt

had seen an orgy of communal violence. To that great soul, Mahatma

Gandhi, the freedom for which he had long struggled, had come at an
unacceptable price. Independence had also meant Partition and heart-
wrenching bloodshed.
Jinnah himself had been in Delhi, before he flew into Karachi on 7
August, barely a week before he was sworn in as the first executive head
of a new nation. He had been caught up in working out the modalities
of Pakistan’s birth: from the boundaries of the new Pakistani state to its
Constituent Assembly to the minutiae of the independence ceremony to
the logistics for the import of the shiny Rolls-Royce he would receive as
a gift from Mountbatten. As he left his home on 10, Aurangzeb Road, in
New Delhi, Jinnah suspected he would never return to India. He had tried
to become the sole spokesman4 of India’s hundred million Muslims, but
although he hadn’t quite achieved that, he had accomplished the incredible
feat of wresting a nation from the departing Raj. Only a few months earlier,
a new Muslim nation had seemed a distant dream and Jinnah had voiced
the fear that he might not live long enough to see Pakistan.5
X
Ten days before the creation of the twin nations, Prakasa, just turned fifty-
seven, was at home in Benares on the banks of the Ganga. He was sorting
through some papers when the phone rang. On the line was Congress
president and prime minister-designate Nehru, requesting him to take over
as India’s high commissioner to a country that, to Prakasa, ‘was being
created by the vivisection of the living body of our dear motherland’6.
Prakasa, whose feelings about this offer were distinctly mixed, conveyed
to Nehru that he would think the offer over and respond in a day. Prakasa
had no indication of this offer a couple of days previously in Delhi, where
he served as member of the Constituent Assembly. He surmised that Nehru
had made his decision just before the phone rang.
Sri Prakasa had been a freedom fighter and Congress Party leader, an
activist for Hindu–Muslim amity with no aspiration for high office. He
pointedly did not wish to be a ‘symbol of the partition’ that he ‘totally
abhorred’. His scholar and theosophist father, Bhagwan Das, was even more
uncomfortable with his son’s assignment; the Partition, acquiesced in by the
Congress leadership, militated against his own life-long goal of communal
harmony. Das was eventually persuaded to bless his son’s assignment, but
Prakasa’s own misgivings persisted about ‘duties and responsibilities to
which I was a total stranger’.7
X
Earlier in the year, the British decision to exit India had been accompanied
by the creation of a partition committee to work out the nuts and bolts
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 7

of the division. After the arrival in Delhi of Mountbatten in March, the

committee evolved into a council in June 1947. The viceroy chaired the
body, with two representatives each for India (Sardar Patel and Rajendra
Prasad) and Pakistan (Liaquat Ali Khan and Abdur Rab Nishtar). Prakasa
had heard that the Partition Council had recommended an early exchange
of high commissioners, as part of a mandate that addressed ‘all matters
connected with the partition’.8 The council faced an array of immediate
decisions that included ‘the final demarcation of boundaries, the division
of the armed forces, division of the staff of the various branches of
government, the division of assets, the jurisdiction of courts, the economic
relations between the two dominions, as well as methods of deciding how
domicile should be determined’.9 The setting up of diplomatic missions was
just one of the many tasks the two countries faced as they decoupled.
Two days after Sri Prakasa received the call from Nehru, the designated
envoy had with trepidation hastened to Delhi, to meet with his mentor.
Nehru saw the hesitation and ‘obvious lack of self-confidence’ of his envoy
pick and offered him a deal: he should represent India at the inauguration
of Pakistan and on his return, take a final call on whether to, in fact,
take up the assignment.
Thus, the newly minted diplomat found himself on a plane to Karachi
on 12 August, three days before either the sending or the receiving country
found an independent place on the world map, and five before they knew
where their borders lay. On landing, he checked into the Palace Hotel
that was to serve for several years as the de facto diplomatic enclave of
Pakistan’s new capital. The Indian diplomat’s arrival was devoid of all
ceremony. Since both countries were to remain in the British Commonwealth
headed by King George VI, no credentials were to be presented to local
leaders. Instead, the envoy carried a formal letter of introduction with
India’s greetings to the designated prime minister of Pakistan, Nawabzada
Liaquat Ali Khan, well-known to Prakasa as a former Muslim League
leader from the United Provinces and the finance minister in India’s interim
government from 1946.
Prakasa had known Nehru and Jinnah, but had been equally familiar
with several other Congress and Muslim League leaders, many now
relocated in Pakistan. He realized that this was why he had been chosen
as India’s first envoy. In a ‘loose informal dress’, Prakasa, met with a
warm reception at the home of Pakistan’s prime minister designate, who
was also to serve as its foreign minister for the first few months of the
Indian envoy’s tenure.10 Liaquat dispensed with formalities and sat his
old acquaintance down for a friendly chat, establishing an easy working
relationship that was to serve them both well.
Prakasa settled down quickly to revive his network of connections with
several key actors in Karachi from times past, working from his office
8 ange r m anage m e nt

in his hotel room where he was himself ‘both secretary and clerk’.11 An
early diplomatic engagement he had was with his British counterpart, also
camping in the same hotel, an experienced diplomat and crafty player of
the geopolitical Great Game, Sir Lawrence Grafftey-Smith. The English
diplomat was later credited with coercing Prime Minister Liaquat Ali to
cancel a trip to Britain’s feared post-war rival, Russia. The exchange between
the envoys, however, was not quite brimming with rare insights into high
strategy. Prakasa’s takeaway was a practical gem of bureaucratic wisdom
that the Englishman imparted: ‘Don’t invite the work; let the work come
to you.’12 A flood of work, complex and challenging, would nevertheless
inundate Sri Prakasa in the months he spent in Karachi. He would spend
much of his tenure dealing with Partition’s pains: migration, refugees,
massacres, bloodshed, as also the complex processes of consolidation of the
two sibling states as they tried to integrate princely dominions and fought
over the territory of the most contested kingdom of them all—Kashmir.
These themes reverberated not just during Prakasa’s brief tenure in Pakistan
and for his successors in the years after Independence, but were to cast
long shadows over Indo–Pak diplomacy of the next several decades.

THE BOUNDARY AWARD

High Commissioner Sri Prakasa returned to India soon after the
independence rituals in Pakistan. His doubts about the assignment were
lessening; the excitement about his job in Karachi was mounting. He had
decided to accept his new mission. He now packed his bags for a longer
stay across the border. By the time he went back to Pakistan at the end
of August, events had moved with bewildering speed: his home and host
country now had a line firmly dividing them. The much-anticipated and
feared boundary award came on 17 August, setting in motion a train of
events that none seemed able to control or even fathom. These events
would reverberate intensely across the decade and beyond, their ripples felt
to this day.
A London judge on his first visit to India, Cyril Radcliffe had created
two Muslim-majority regions in the east and north-west of India, carved
out of Punjab and Bengal. Radcliffe had drawn up borders over six
weeks, despite poor maps, squabbling deputies, and bouts of dysentery.
The boundary award, based on multiple opaque and largely subjective
principles—some determined in secret British confabulations well before
Radcliffe’s arrival—had been announced on 17 August, leaving millions
stranded on the wrong side of the new lines, triggering unforeseen chaos.
Those hastily drawn borders also provided cause for four wars and decades
of aggravating animosity between two neighbours.
Radcliffe’s lines disappointed Jinnah. His was a ‘truncated, moth–eaten
and mutilated’ Pakistan.13 The two Muslim majority provinces of Punjab
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 9

and Bengal, which Jinnah had hoped to acquire in their full glory, were
now carved and divided by a jagged line in blue pencil. The city of Lahore
had fallen within Pakistan while Amritsar and the strategically located
district of Gurdaspur in Punjab remained in India.
Pakistan was now a ‘country divided into two Wings a thousand miles
apart, that fantasic bird of a place, two Wings without a body’ with two
wings, separated by a thousand miles of Indian territory.14 The western
wing consisted of the newly delineated West Punjab (with Lahore as its
capital), merged with the North-West Frontier Province (Peshawar), Sindh
(Karachi), Baluchistan (Quetta), and thirteen undecided princely states. East
Bengal (with Dacca as its capital) now became East Pakistan.
Prakasa had returned to a grimmer reality in Lahore—the former
capital of undivided Punjab, now the Pakistani city just across Radcliffe’s
line. He watched another tragedy unfold as he camped ‘in a small corner’
in a ‘hospitable house full of refugees’,15 with his colleague, deputy high
commissioner for West Punjab, Sampuran Singh, in what used to be the
Punjabi freedom fighter Lala Lajpat Rai’s home. The events of the next
few days would horrify the high commissioner—bloodshed, butchery and
rage would accompany the unplanned movement of vast populations.
X
India’s independence had seemed increasingly inescapable since the end
of World War II, as a devastated Britain emerged from the ravages of
war with a dwindling appetite for empire. Scholars still debate when the
Partition of the country became inevitable, but the definitive declaration
of Pakistan’s impending birth came only in 1947. The exit from India
had been officially announced by Britain’s prime minister Clement Atlee
in February 1947, formalized in June with the Mountbatten Plan, and
then given legal force by the Indian Independence Act, 1947, passed by
the British parliament in July. The Act allowed for the creation of the
‘Dominions of India and Pakistan’ on 15 August and for their immediate
secession from the British Commonwealth. Mountbatten had crunched
the timeline for independence by ten months, advancing the original
target date of 30 June 1948. Imperial fatigue was the likeliest cause. But
the British spun it as a signal of the sincerity of the Raj in departing
India swiftly and as an attempt to stem riots and bloodshed that had
accompanied rising communal tensions since August 1946. Whether this
new timeline in fact averted violence or added to it, is a historical counter-
factual that still engages scholars.
The boundary award was published on 17 August, two days after
Partition, though it was meant to precede it. Mountbatten had hoped to
time the announcement to a few days before Independence. If it came too
early, communal violence could escalate. Too late would mean a chaotic
10 ange r m anage m e nt

Partition. But Radcliffe and his Boundary Commission presented a fait

accompli to the governor general when they eventually got the job done
only after Independence. Mountbatten released the maps two days after
presiding over two Independence events. The impact was worse than he had
feared. Political leaders felt swindled of territory. Jinnah felt his Pakistan
was truncated. People on both sides of the new border felt cheated. Muslims
in Punjab were enraged because they expected Gurdaspur district—now in
India—to have gone to Pakistan because of its ethnic composition—a 51
per cent Muslim majority—but also because the city of Qadian, sacred to
the Ahmadiyya sect, was located there. This would later be seen as ironic,
given that the minority would not be considered Muslim in Pakistan in
the coming years.16 Pakistan perceived another conspiracy in Gurdaspur
being awarded to India: it would enable land access to Kashmir that India
could use to establish a hold on the princely state that had yet to make
up its mind on which way to go.
Many Sikhs were upset that their revered Nankana Sahib—where the
first Sikh guru was born—and Kartarpur Sahib—where he spent his last
days—had been handed over to Pakistan. Sikhs were now being ruthlessly
massacred in western Punjab by bloodthirsty mobs, which included their
own neighbours, often with the aim of stealing property. In eastern Punjab,
angry Sikhs were on the loose, killing Muslims. These Muslims were in turn
trying to escape to West Punjab. Those who succeeded further contributed
to the cycle of retribution and revenge. In the month of August, 15,000
were killed in Punjab alone. Partition’s genocidal violence would eventually
leave more than 1 million dead.17
Several Partition tales reveal the profound uncertainty of those times.
The former capital of the Raj in the east, Calcutta, had remained in India
while the city of Lahore had gone to Pakistan. Radcliffe later revealed
to Indian journalist Kuldip Nayar: ‘I nearly gave you Lahore...but then
I realised that Pakistan would not have any large city. I had already
earmarked Calcutta for India.’18 Lahore had Hindus and Sikhs in the
majority but Radcliffe saw no option because of the paucity of big towns
in Pakistan. Nayar found to his horror that ‘Radcliffe had no fixed rules to
go by when he drew the boundaries between India and Pakistan.’19 Some
scholars question this version, ascribing it to Radcliffe’s fading memory.
The dividing lines of Partition, they argue, had been drawn in London to
suit the British interest of creating a viable state to India’s west, beholden
to Britain; so Radcliffe’s role was perfunctory.20

THE GREAT INDIA GAME

Narendra Singh Sarila was an aide-de-camp (ADC) to Governor General
Mountbatten before he joined the 1948 batch of India’s foreign service and
went on to serve for thirty-seven years as an Indian diplomat. In his book
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 11

on the ‘untold story’ of India’s Partition, Sarila emphasized a thesis that has
since gathered wider support based on archival evidence. He argued that
the Partition of India was firmly connected to the geopolitical ‘Great Game’
that was being played from the nineteenth century, between the British Raj
and the Czarist empire, for control over Central Asia and Afghanistan.
He thus laid the blame for ‘Divide and Quit’ at the door of the departing
British Raj, rather than on either Jinnah or Nehru.
The nineteenth-century Great Game was being played out in Afghanistan
and Central Asia. The British had fought wars in Afghanistan, built railway
networks to the Khyber Pass, and helped the rulers of Kashmir extend their
influence into Chinese Xinjiang: all to keep the areas of India’s western
approaches from slipping into Russian influence.21
Sarila demonstrated the British conviction in the 1940s that if they
withdrew from India, Congress leaders would be unsympathetic to British
military interests. He pointed out that Lord Wavell, who was the viceroy
from 1943 to 1947, was among the first to be persuaded that while the
Congress was unlikely to further British military interests, the Muslim
League would be willing to do so. Hence, if the League were to succeed in
separating India’s strategic north-west from the rest of the country, British
interests would be better served by a military deal with this new state,
particularly in defending the oil wells in the Middle East. As 1946 went by,
Wavell’s point of view became acceptable in British military circles. Nehru’s
oath in the Constituent Assembly to declare India a sovereign independent
republic free from the Commonwealth, reinforced the assessment that a
pliant western splinter state was more in the British interest.
Sarila has argued that midway through World War II, the British
realized that they would have to quit India sooner than later, and in the
process abandon a military base that had served them well for over fifty
years. Their strategic thoughts then turned to closing the gap that would
result in tying up a Commonwealth defence against the Soviet move to
the south, towards the ‘wells of power in the Indian Ocean’.22 To find a
solution, they looked for manoeuvres in India through what was described
by Churchill as ‘opportunism and improvisation’.
Decades later, a brilliant Indian scholar-diplomat, Chandrashekhar
Dasgupta, delved deep into freshly declassified archives to decipher the
colonial strategy of that period and came to similar conclusions as Sarila. He
pointed out that after the Mountbatten Plan on the transfer of power to the
dominions was finalized in June 1947, the British army, navy, and air chiefs
met in July to reiterate that the ‘main and overriding consideration should
be to retain both India and Pakistan within the British Commonwealth,
or at any rate ensure that they will cooperate (militarily) with us’.23 The
British strategic tilt towards Pakistan had become a strong factor in the
India policy now being rolled out: the chiefs of staff concluded that ‘while
12 ange r m anage m e nt

the ideal outcome would be to secure the cooperation of both India and
Pakistan, on the other hand, the area of Pakistan is strategically the most
important in the continent of India and the majority of our strategic
requirements could be met, though with considerably greater difficulty, by
an agreement with Pakistan alone.’24
Based on archival evidence, Dasgupta inferred that ‘by August 1947,
the British authorities had determined that their strategic interests in the
subcontinent lay primarily in Pakistan, though the hopes of a defence treaty
with India as well had not yet been given up. The decisive consideration
was the proximity of airbases in West Pakistan to the Gulf region.’25
While British military officers were warmly welcomed in Pakistan,
their reception in independent India was cooler. Nehru wanted complete
nationalization of the armed forces by June 1948—the date originally
determined for the transfer of power. When the date was abruptly advanced,
the Indian leader had to reluctantly accept the persisting British presence,
even as Partition changed priorities, but he continued to lament the
structural anomaly. ‘It is incongruous for the army of a free country not
to have its own officers in the highest ranks’, he wrote to Mountbatten
in July 1947.26
A crucial meeting of the provisional Joint Defence Council was held
a fortnight before Independence, on 29 July 1947. Chairing the meeting
attended by Jinnah, Liaquat Ali Khan, and Sardar Patel, Mountbatten
remarked that the forces of the two dominions would not fight each
other, since ‘under no circumstances could British officers be ranged on
opposite sides’.27 Later events would suggest that neither Patel nor Jinnah
then fully registered the viceroy’s hint: the British would work against
any national security choices made by the new countries they served if
these choices would endanger their own officers. So, ‘...immediately after
the transfer of power, secret orders were issued by Auchinleck to British
officers, requiring them to “Stand Down” in the event of a conflict between
the two dominions.’28 In other words, if either India or Pakistan were
to attack the other, British officers in both armies were under orders to
sabotage these plans.
A different point of view was also initially in currency, suggesting that
British interest lay in leaving behind a united India. Its primary proponent
was Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, who felt that a united Indian Army—
with British, Hindu, Sikh, and Muslim soldiers—could succeed in a united
India and defend its overseas interests. But Lord Wavell’s argument was
winning. He had a long discussion with Churchill in 1945 where he seems to
have persuaded the British prime minister of the advisability of a partition.29
The strategic calculation in the empire’s twilight was simple: Britain’s
true Pakistan policy was to keep a part of its old Indian empire—that
which jutted into Central Asia and lay along Afghanistan, Soviet Russia,
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 13

and China—in the hands of the successor dominion that had promised
defence collaboration. Britain openly supported Pakistan at the UN. In
fact, US telegrams documented Britain’s pro-Pakistani tilt in Kashmir.30
The agreement to partition India was announced in Delhi on 3 June
1947. Krishna Menon, who was then head of the India League in the UK,
wrote a letter to Mountbatten on 14 June, while staying with Nehru in
Delhi, which raised concerns on the British strategy. Did they intend to
use West Pakistan and the princely state of Kashmir, asked the diplomat,
as bases to contain the perceived Soviet desire to expand their influence
in the Indian Ocean, Afghanistan, and the Persian Gulf?31
British internal reports in 1947 were clearly emphasizing that British
strategic interests in the subcontinent should be focused on Pakistan. There
was also some hope that some large princely states may remain independent
and even provide the right for military aircraft to use bases in Hindustan.
The geopolitics of the period marked the intersection of a nineteenth-
century contest with a twentieth-century dynamic. The post-war compulsions
of the Cold War were still evolving, even as the nineteenth-century
contestations were playing out their endgame. Pakistan was being used
by the British as a bulwark against Russia and the colonial idea of Russia
coveting the jewel in the imperial crown. There was a time right after the
world war ended, when the Great Game and the Cold War overlapped in
the subcontinent, from 1945 to 1947, to provide an additional impulse
for the birth of Pakistan.
Some scholars however argue that the colonial role in Partition is
overstated. After all, the British Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 proposed
keeping India intact as a loose confederation with a centralized defence
and foreign policy. But Partition, whatever its etiology, served British post-
colonial goals well.
The subcontinent was also impacted by the larger geopolitics of a
world emerging from a crippling war. The incipient Cold War after 1945
meant that former world war allies were turning adversaries, and a tired
Britain was passing on the baton to the United States for leading the
emerging post-war West.
The post-war era was geopolitically less complicated for India. The US
had not quite started playing a role in South Asia; it was just beginning
to pick up its Cold War interests from the British. The Cold War strategy
of containment of the USSR was still evolving, even though a US diplomat
George Kennan had sent a long telegram from Moscow in 1946, advising
his government to check the rise of the Soviet Union. Communist China
was defining its relationship with the brotherly communists next door in
the USSR and was still half a century away from its assertive rise. The
only external force of consequence was the departing colonial empire with
residual interests in the region.
14 ange r m anage m e nt

Yet, India decided not to exit the British Commonwealth with

Independence, privileging continuity over anger against colonial oppression.
This showed great sagacity and restraint on the part of India, given the
numerous provocations by the British. For instance, the British had earlier
even refused to grant India ‘dominion’ status, as they had done for Canada.
Consequently, the Indian National Congress had hardened its demand in
1930 for complete independence. By 1947, the unifocal attention of India’s
leadership was on independence, rather than on questioning the colonial
depredations of the past century, the famines, the killings. On the part
of the British, the Commonwealth was being fashioned as a ‘third force’
in a world becoming bipolar. The decolonization project itself was only
a tactical retreat: the British were keen to continue exercising influence
over the strategic affairs of the subcontinent.32 The leaders of India, and
even more those of Pakistan, saw some national interest being furthered
by remaining plugged into Britain-led structures.

PERSUADING PRINCESTAN
Shahryar Khan was thirteen when the princely state of Bhopal, located
deep in India’s belly, decided in 1947 to remain an independent entity.
Shahryar’s grandfather and Bhopal’s ruler, Nawab Hamidullah Khan, kept
his options open. He would merge the state with India only in 1949, when
the writing on the wall was clear. The nawab’s eldest daughter and heir
apparent, fell out with her father over a second marriage and opted for
Pakistan in 1950, going on to settle there with her son. In 1960, when
the nawab passed away, Pakistan’s dictator Ayub Khan offered Begum
Abida Sultan and Shahryar the option to return to Bhopal to claim their
heritage. Both Abida—who had proudly claimed a lineage of women rulers
of Bhopal—and her twenty-six-year-old son, declined. Fate kept Shahryar
Khan away from his royal title, or perhaps a role as an Indian diplomat,
as he joined Pakistan’s Foreign Service and rose to become a cricket- and
peace-loving foreign secretary. Shahryar’s was only one tale of the destinies
of India’s royals taking peculiar and accidental turns after Independence.33
Bhopal’s dilemmas were replicated across the canvas of the subcontinent
in 1947. As the two sibling nations built their states and national identities,
they needed to confront this peculiar territorial challenge: of a third and
more complicated sibling that the departing Raj was leaving behind.
This was ‘Princestan’, a collection of 565 princely states scattered across
the expanse of the empire, imbued now with enough legal agency to
decide which way to go. The princely states had been tied to the East
India Company and later to the British Crown by a complex scheme of
‘subsidiary alliances’, an edifice of indirect rule that created a ‘network
of collaborators’, a motley collection of maharajas and nawabs—Hindu,
Muslim, and Sikh—‘who in return for their allegiance were permitted by
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 15

the British to run their fiefdoms more or less as they chose’.34 With India,
Pakistan, and the princely states being treated with legal equivalence by
most in the departing British establishment, the Balkanization of India
stood as a very real possibility in 1946. It was only the vision and resolve
of India’s leaders, and particularly some deft internal diplomacy by Home
Minister Sardar Patel, which prevented chaos.
Merging the princely states with the Indian state was one of the most
‘structurally monumental tasks’ that India’s administration faced after
Independence. Patel, who engineered this process (assisted by the resourceful
civil servant and secretary in the Ministry of States, V. P. Menon) did most
of the heavy lifting in folding the bulk of Princestan into India. Mountbatten
was quick to grasp and then articulate the reality that while the states
could exercise a choice in theory, ‘geographic compulsions’ implied that
most of them must choose India. This effectively meant that the departing
empire was advising only the states that shared a border with Pakistan to
accede to it. It was one more reason for Jinnah to suspect Mountbatten
of a bias in India’s favour.
A conspiracy theory, which has seen several avatars, suggests that in
the run-up to independence, a ‘vile plan’ was devised by a handful of
powerful princes ‘to join neither India nor Pakistan’. By one account, the
plan was led by the chancellor of the chamber of princes, the nawab of
Bhopal, operating under the patronage of Jinnah and Viceroy Wavell, with
the blessings of Churchill himself. The idea was to create a third dominion
called Princestan where the 565 princely states would stay outside the
ambit of the two free states and retain paramountcy under the aegis of
the departing British. The success of such a malevolent plan would have
made newly independent India unstable and vulnerable. However, three
persons stood in the way of the nefarious British plan to Balkanize India:
Nehru, Mountbatten, and Patel battled the rulers of the princely states
at every twist and turn to foil that cunning plan, even as the process of
decolonization had begun.35
Between May and August 1947, the vast majority of states signed
simple instruments of accession devised by V. P. Menon. The instruments
provided for a princely state’s ruler to accede to the dominion of India
or Pakistan. That meant giving up jurisdiction on three subjects: defence,
external affairs, and communications. These documents derived legal force
from two pieces of British legislation: the Government of India Act, 1935,
that allowed princely rulers to join the ‘Federation of India’; and the
Indian Independence Act, 1947, that provided for British suzerainty over
the princely states to end on 15 August 1947.
Eventually, while most princely states were absorbed readily into
India or—where they were contiguous only to it—into Pakistan, the issue
remained of the aspirations of a few major states: Junagadh, Hyderabad,
16 ange r m anage m e nt

and Kashmir. Holding out also—to a lesser extent—were Kalat in the west
and Sylhet in the east; both would eventually fold into Pakistan. India
had to demonstrate a great deal of resolve and tenacity in consolidating
territories: negotiations with the princes required extraordinary patience
and skill, and a fair degree of guile.
Still, a handful of states held out. Some simply delayed the decision to
watch unfolding developments. For instance, Piploda, a small state in central
India, did not accede until March 1948. The bigger problems arose with
a few states, mostly those that found themselves on the border. Jodhpur
tried to play both suitors, liaising with Pakistan to negotiate better deals
with India. It was finally Junagadh, Hyderabad, and Kashmir that the
two dominions had to negotiate in their early diplomacy. Eventually, each
of these territorial issues saw the use of strong state force to precipitate
outcomes. The trajectory of developments in Kashmir in particular would
haunt the neighbours and poison their ties.

JOSTLING WITH JINNAH

Karachi was not wholly unfamiliar to Sri Prakasa. He had first visited the
city in 1931 as general secretary of the Indian National Congress, to attend
a party session under then president Sardar Patel. This had been a heady
moment for the Congress: the independence movement was celebrating the
political victory of Gandhi’s Dandi March (April 1930) against British salt
laws and the subsequent invitation by the British government to Congress
leaders to come to the Round Table Conferences in London (1930–32).
Just two years earlier, in the 1929 session in Lahore, Nehru, as Congress
president, had declared total independence as the party’s goal. By the time
of Prakasa’s first visit to Karachi, Jinnah had parted ways with the Congress
and now was with the Muslim League, a political formation getting
ideological direction from the radical poet Mohammad Iqbal. Both Lahore
and Karachi were thus closely tied to the freedom movement for India.36
One of the factors that landed Sri Prakasa his diplomatic assignment
in Pakistan was his longstanding association with Jinnah. The two men
had rubbed shoulders for a decade (1935–45) in the central legislative
assembly of British India, a faux parliamentary structure created after
limited franchise elections in 1934 to take the pressure off the Raj from
pesky demands for Indian independence. Jinnah had by then formed an
independent party with Muslim members, which was to merge later into
the Muslim League. Sri Prakasa had been deeply suspicious of Jinnah. He
had seen the Muslim leader change his position from nationalist to ‘rabidly
communal leader’.37 Sri Prakasa claimed in his memoirs that Jinnah was
among those who had a ‘hearty laugh’ in 1935 over a pamphlet that
proposed a separate state of Pakistan,38 when the paper was distributed
to assembly members at its very first session.
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 17

In 1939, after a riot in his native Uttar Pradesh, Sri Prakasa had debated
communal relations with Jinnah. He argued for a syncretic Hindu–Muslim
culture, while Jinnah seemed determined to establish his new state, even
as he assured the future high commissioner that as soon as Pakistan was
established, all possible problems would be immediately solved.39 Jinnah
was by now treating the Congress as a purely Hindu body. He had the
support and even active encouragement of the British. They allowed him
to spread communal poison with impunity while for much less, Prakasa
felt, Hindus were put in jail.
Eight years later, as India’s envoy to Pakistan, Sri Prakasa made no
secret of his ideological differences with his former political colleague, now
the all-powerful leader of his host country. To Prakasa, Jinnah’s ideological
predilection was to view all citizens of the two new countries as generic
‘Indians’, who were simply inhabitants of separate dominions or ‘nations’:
Hindustan and Pakistan.
Prakasa was among the guests at the banquet for Mountbatten in
Karachi on 13 August 1947, when Jinnah, as governor general-designate of
the dominion of Pakistan, espoused his two-nation thesis, of religion defining
nationhood. He referred to the two upcoming countries as Hindustan and
Pakistan and expressed the hope that inhabitants of these countries could
live in peace with one another. Two days earlier, in his 11 August speech to
Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly, Jinnah had famously advocated a secular
Pakistan, when he said that all non-Muslims living in Pakistan should
regard themselves as Pakistani, regardless of race or religion. Prakasa saw
glaring contradictions between Jinnah’s declaration of a progressive vision
and the situation on the ground; he surmised that Jinnah was keen that
the Muslims who had stayed behind in India should regard themselves as
‘Hindustanis’ and not interest themselves too much in Pakistan. In its early
years, Pakistan continued to use for India the terms Hindustan or Bharat.
(Ayub Khan in the 1960s decreed that Pakistanis resume using ‘India’.)
Issues of nationalism and its symbols remained a persistent theme
in Prakasa’s engagement with his hosts. In one conversation, the chief
minister of Sindh, Mohammed Ayub Khuhro, told Prakasa that the Muslim
League had only used the idea of Pakistan as a ‘bargaining chip’ and that
its promoters never really wanted a partition or a separate Pakistan. This
resonated with Prakasa’s own convictions. He had thus heard the thesis two
decades before historian Ayesha Jalal made the argument more coherently.
On another occasion, Prakasa discussed this issue with the founder of
Pakistan himself. As an infirm Jinnah sat on a sofa in Karachi at a reception,
Prakasa got a chance to buttonhole him. Jinnah started the conversation
politely enough. ‘How are you, Mr Sri Prakasa,’ he began. ‘I see you after
a long time.’ They discussed Prakasa’s recent tour of Mohenjo-daro, the
iconic Indus Valley site in Sindh’s Larkana district. The envoy asked the
18 ange r m anage m e nt

head of state why there was an emphasis on calling Pakistan an Islamic

state. When Jinnah insisted he never had personally used the term ‘Islamic’,
Prakasa pointed out that his prime minister, Liaquat Ali, had. Jinnah was
upset: have it out with Liaquat, why quarrel with me? At this point, an
irritated Jinnah ended the chat.
It turned out that Jinnah was right about not having ever deployed
the term Islamic, as Sri Prakasa confirmed from the record with the
Dawn newspaper. He wrote a polite letter to Jinnah explaining his error
in conflating ‘Muslim’ with ‘Islamic’. He never got a response. Prakasa
inferred from this episode that Jinnah wanted Pakistan to be a Muslim
state, not an Islamic one, but was unable to rein in his political successors
in altering the nature of the Pakistan state, remodelling it as an ‘Islamic’
theocratic state.
In fact, the first draft for the new Pakistan came while Jinnah was alive.
Liaquat Ali Khan had brought to Jinnah’s sickbed in Quetta the draft of
an ‘objectives resolution’ for Pakistan that would draw divine authority for
an essentially theocratic nation. This upset Jinnah and, in one telling, he
flung the paper in anger and frustration. The document was nevertheless
used by Liaquat Ali as Pakistan’s guiding light a few months after Jinnah’s
death. For the first time, religion was formally inserted into the charter
for the state of Pakistan. Pakistan’s Constituent Assembly adopted the
resolution on 12 March 1949, and it has since formed part of Pakistan’s
successive constitutions. Jinnah’s Muslim nation would formally become
an Islamic republic in 1956, when the idea of a theocratic Pakistan would
triumph, as promoted by Maulana Maududi, the founder of the Islamic
party, Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI).
Sri Prakasa was convinced that just as Partition was a matter of
‘perpetual sorrow’ for him, Jinnah in his final days also regretted his
decision to create Pakistan. The Indian high commissioner had heard stories
of Colonel Ilahi Baksh, the doctor who attended on Jinnah during the last
phase of his illness in August–September 1948 at Ziarat near Quetta. In
his memoirs, the doctor claimed he heard Jinnah say that he had created
Pakistan but was now convinced he had ‘committed the greatest blunder
of my life’.40 He also claimed he heard Liaquat Ali Khan mutter after
emerging from a sick Jinnah’s room, ‘the old man has now discovered
his mistake’.41 An earlier edition of the doctor’s book was censored and
banned. This claim remains controversial to this day.

PUBLIC MEN AND PERMANENT OFFICIALS

As a freedom fighter and politician, India’s first high commissioner to
Pakistan was innocent of the ways of the bureaucracy his country had
inherited from its erstwhile rulers. Prakasa did not belong to the elite
Indian Civil Service (ICS), which was soon to send some of its members
 m idnight ’ s nat io n s 19

into the diplomatic service for the two new countries. He stood in sharp
contrast to the suave Girija Shankar Bajpai, who was pre-independence
India’s first ‘Agent-General’ to the US and also to the United Nations, the
latter born just two years before India. Bajpai returned to India to head the
foreign office as India’s first secretary general, with PM Nehru retaining the
ministerial portfolio for External Affairs.
The Indian Foreign Service (IFS) had been created in 1946 with an
executive order. It was too new and too stretched to place professional
diplomats in every important post. Bajpai had been tasked by Nehru to
cobble together a professional foreign service for the new nation to claim
its place in the world. Since the IFS had been formally set up by Nehru’s
interim government in 1946, and started recruiting fresh talent from 1948,
the prime minister got personally involved in strengthening this cadre
with a group of envoys from among his friends, relatives, and even the
rulers of princely states. Nehru had at Independence sent his sister, Vijaya
Lakshmi Pandit, as ambassador to Moscow; his friend Krishna Menon
to London; and in 1950, would despatch the eminent historian, Sardar
K. M. Panikkar, to China.
Putting together a diplomatic service to represent a new nation was no
easy task. Bajpai faced the challenges of ignorance about world affairs in
the political system and a strong prejudice against the civil services, seen
as a colonial legacy. Some nationalists were demanding ‘a new approach
and a new type of public servant’. But without ever going as far as Sardar
Patel in willingly relying on the services, Nehru did accept the need for a
foreign service cadre. The first crop of diplomats came by poaching some
150 officers from the ranks of the ICS and allied services. One such ICS
officer was Kewal Singh, later high commissioner of India in Pakistan; he
was among those who received a telegram one day in 1948, asking him
to join the IFS.42
But the ICS was also depleted; a number of its potential recruits had been
pulled in for short spells of military service during World War II. Academia
became the next port of call; a few like P. N. Haksar were recruited from
there, just as a few journalists were picked up. Another natural catchment
for diplomats seemed to be the princely houses of India, where ‘sophisticated
youngsters’43 were available, with bleak princely futures; some six princes
were persuaded to join the diplomatic corps. Some more were recruited
from the national movement and, of course, Nehru picked some from
among his former colleagues in the Congress Party.44
Sri Prakasa seemed to lack the panache of Nehru’s other choices, but
enjoyed his trust. Some scholars have suggested that Nehru erred in picking
Prakasa, someone neither familiar with the nuts and bolts of diplomacy
nor with the big picture of the new geopolitics of the region. He was
not from the ICS, nor was he royalty nor an urban sophisticate. Prakasa
20 ange r m anage m e nt

was in that sense a political appointee. He felt like an outlier in the new
diplomatic service. While he was gone from Pakistan’s capital to Delhi
for his first consultations, the ministry had despatched a high-ranking ICS
officer as his deputy high commissioner (DHC). In his memoirs two decades
later, Prakasa still referred bitterly to this new colleague sprung on him
as his ‘so-called deputy’.45 Such officials, he was convinced, resented his
appointment and were suspicious of ‘public men’. In terms of organizational
hierarchy, apart from a deputy in Karachi, he had one each in Lahore and
in Dacca, all ICS men. Their work ethic did not particularly impress him;
they played bureaucratic games, he was convinced, to trip up their seniors.
After a point, it was clear that the mandarins in Delhi were running
policy, and the high commissioner (HC) had little control over the DHCs
in Lahore and Dacca. His request for copies of their reports was turned
down by headquarters; he felt he did not have a real picture of what
was transpiring in East Bengal or even in West Punjab. He felt bitter that
he was reduced to being a sort of a ‘joint DHC’ in Sindh, for there was
always a joint DHC from the ICS drawing a higher salary than he did.46
He felt that permanent officers could not help ‘having a narrow outlook
and working in accordance with the prescribed routine’, trained as they
were to follow their earlier British masters in ‘donning and doffing their
hats and behaving exactly as their European superiors did’.47
He felt these officers, unlike freedom fighters such as him, had loyally
served the British and had not opposed independence only because it
helped them rise to the positions vacated by the departing colonials. So,
the civil servants were now compelled to serve ‘those very people whom
they were suppressing in the course of the political movement and sending
to jail’. When holders of political office in India were being drawn from
public life, the freedom fighter felt, the Indian officers of the British regime
resented serving under them.48
The high commissioner did complain to the prime minister and even
asked, on one occasion, to be relieved of his office. Nehru assuaged the
feelings of his friend and shared his own grouse: high-ranking ICS officers
thought that the government should be run according to their directions
and he himself had a tough time keeping them in check and getting his
policies implemented. Interestingly, Nehru eventually came to the conclusion
that ambassadors from public life sent to foreign countries had not been
successful.49
 2

PARTI TI ON PAI NS

T he horrors of Partition were staggering in scale. The new borders had

triggered the migration of some 15 million people and the massacre
of at least 1 million. Muslims had constituted a quarter of the 400 million
Indians in 1947, concentrated though they were in colonial India’s north-
west and north-east, in Punjab and Bengal. While the new state of Pakistan
now was home to some 75 million in its two wings, close to 40 million
Muslims chose to stay back in India. Hindus and Sikhs, on the other
hand, were ethnically ‘cleansed’, almost down to the last person, from West
Punjab and the North-West Frontier Province, just as Muslims were killed
in East Punjab. Up to a quarter million Sikhs—a distinctly identifiable
minority—lost their lives at the hands of Muslim marauders in West
Punjab. It was only in interior Sindh and in East Pakistan that a Hindu
community of some significance stayed on, dropping the percentage of
Hindus in the territory that became Pakistan from 15 per cent in the 1941
census to 1.5 per cent in 1951.1 In post-Partition India, of the population
of 330 million, 7 million were Hindu and Sikh refugees who had fled from
Punjab and Bengal.2
With the massacres and migrations, the newly arrived refugees began
giving voice to the trauma inflicted upon them. They would soon dominate
the diplomatic discourse between the two countries, infecting it with the
bitter and bloody legacy of fear and hatred. And anger.
For the new-born Pakistan, the murders and the mass migrations
were an unanticipated shock. For both countries, it rubbished the British
argument that a fast-tracked independence and partition would save lives.
Pakistan was overwhelmed by the refugee crisis, even though Jinnah and
the rulers in Sindh seemed relatively untouched by it. Refugees—and the
burdens they bore—became a major headache for the new state.
Pakistan’s 1951 census would show that about 10 per cent of its
population of 75 million was of refugee origin. The west of the country
was home to about 34 million people and the east some 42 million. More
than 6.5 million Muslims had migrated into Pakistan from India, the bulk
of them between August and November 1947. 4.6 million of these had
evacuated from East Punjab alone.3 The numbers hid the larger story of
unspeakable human tragedy that had begun to poison attitudes in both
countries.
Jinnah had said, six years before Partition, that he was willing to
sacrifice the Muslims in the Muslim-minority provinces of India to create
22 ange r m anage m e nt

a state of Pakistan for those 60 million in the Muslim-majority provinces

of north-west and eastern India.4 In his 11 August 1947 speech, however,
Jinnah had made a distinctly secular assertion; a recent political biography5
confirms it was an opportunist one, not reflecting his larger world view.
While Jinnah was assuring Pakistan’s minorities of protection, he was
perhaps compelled to do so in the face of communal killings threatening
the Pakistan project. Jinnah knew that his new state was not equipped
to manage the influx of up to 35 million Muslim refugees from India.
With the migrations, minority proportions that were a fifth (21 per
cent) of the people in the territory of Pakistan in March 1947 had plunged
to 1.6 per cent by December. But voices had also risen in the first decade
for separate nations: for the Bengalis in the east and for the Majithia
Sikhs6 in West Pakistan.
India did better in preserving its minority proportions. The number of
Muslims stood at about an eighth (12 per cent) of the total at Independence
and continued to remain in that region after decades. (In contemporary
times, both countries have comparable Muslim populations of over 200
million.)
The new Pakistan government was mostly unprepared for the migration
and violence of 1947. The demand for a separate Muslim homeland
had never really been accompanied by any serious one for a transfer of
populations. Besides, some had been lulled into complacence by the bizarre
‘hostage populations’ theory: that large minority populations in both India
and Pakistan could serve as guarantors of communal stability.
Historians have not quite fixed the responsibility for Partition-related
violence because of the complex and controversial manner of its unfolding.
Scholars have debated whether Mountbatten should be at least partially
held culpable for the chaotic Partition process. The West Punjab government
blamed the Sikhs, while the non-Muslims blamed the Muslim national
guards, a quasi-military organization associated with the Muslim League,
for its role in initiating the violence.
The late boundary demarcation added to the chaos. The loss of Nankana
Sahib and Kartarpur Sahib had created great anguish among the Sikhs and
talk began of shahidi jathas (martyrs’ military detachments) that would
seek to reverse the losses. The chaos reached such a height that Master
Tara Singh, Akali leader and chief minister of East Punjab, said he could
not guarantee Muslim refugees safe passage through Amritsar. Refugee
trains laden with corpses were creating cycles of revenge killings. Bouts
of communal violence in East Pakistan had caused a similar, though not
total, exodus of Hindus.
The migration of refugees from Punjab, Bengal, Delhi, and UP to
Pakistan was not the final chapter in the exit of Muslim refugees. The
Indian police action to take over Hyderabad in September 1948 would lead
 part it ion pains 23

to a further influx of Muslim refugees into Pakistan. The 1951 Pakistan

census would record 95,000 refugees from the Deccan state of Hyderabad.
This phenomenon of refugees escaping persecution played into the politics
of both countries, and would get exacerbated at different points of history,
particularly after communal riots and wars, as in 1965 and 1971. Every
bout of communal violence in East Pakistan similarly caused an exodus
of Hindus.7

BORDERS AND BUTCHERY

Scholars have unearthed evidence of more of than 70,000 gruesome
rapes on both sides of the border. Each statistic hid a story of horror,
brutality, and trauma that defined the times. Memories of the pain passed
through generations. Anger was too mild a descriptor of the emotional
upheaval. Madness became the more accepted metaphor for the paroxysms
of violence and revenge. While rage has often accompanied memories of
Partition, they are also dealt with by silences of denial of the unspeakable
horrors that gripped those times.
These stories weighed heavy on the diplomats of the times. The office
of Sampuran Singh, deputy high commissioner in Lahore, was overrun by
both traumatized returnees from across the border and those desperate to
cross over into India. Singh’s problem was mirrored in Delhi at Pakistan’s
high commission.
Yet, these civil servants needed to focus on immediate, more complex
tasks at hand. The early diplomacy between the neighbours needed to be
executed against the backdrop of the greatest mass migration ever. Never
in known history till then had the transfer of so many millions taken
place in such a short period. The civil servants were seeking instructions
from leaders trying to make sense of the chaotic events. Nehru was deeply
disturbed by the unfolding horrors in Punjab. He visited the province
thrice in August 1947, making aerial sorties, spending time at the sites of
communal clashes, talking to angry refugees in camps.8 It hardly occurred
to him that he was effectively negotiating migration with a foreign country.
He visited places on both sides of the border scarred by barbaric acts. For
Sampuran Singh and Sri Prakasa, these were visits by the head of their
home government visiting a country where they were accredited, but they
had the feel of internal tours by Nehru to calm a domestic crisis.
On one occasion, Nehru flew over a convoy of refugees: 10 miles of
‘scared, miserable Muslims’, perhaps a hundred thousand of them, travelling
from Jalandhar to Lahore. The convoy had to pass through Amritsar, where
70,000 agitated refugees from West Punjab had just come in, from the
opposite direction, having seen killings of their kin. The danger loomed of
massacres triggered by intersecting convoys. Nehru suggested bulldozing
a road around the town so that the two convoys would not meet.9 On
24 ange r m anage m e nt

another trip, he crossed into Lahore along with Lady Edwina Mountbatten
to visit a refugee hub, the Lajpat Bhavan in Lahore. He then teamed up
with Pakistan’s Prime Minister Liaquat Ali to tour by air various districts
of East and West Punjab to see the horrors first hand, and attempt to
check them.
High Commissioner Prakasa himself toured the border districts by
road, along with a young major in Pakistan’s army, Ayub Khan—later to
become Pakistan’s military ruler—and Sardar Baldev Singh, India’s first
defence minister. The sights of overcrowded trains and stories of butchery
left a strong imprint on the diplomat. He saw the ‘self-arranged and self-
managed transfer’ of millions of human beings from one side to the other
of the Punjab in August and September 1947. He saw things that would
have made ‘even the devil weep’.10
The communal riots had wrenched Gandhi’s soul. He told Sri Prakasa
only twenty-seven days before his assassination that his lifetime’s labour
had ‘gone down the drain’.11
While politicians on both sides were trying, often jointly, to quell the
communal fires, diplomats and officials needed to start working on more
complex administrative arrangements related to the refugees.

STUCK IN SINDH
Partition was a profoundly perplexing human tragedy for Sri Prakasa, not
only because of the murders and rapes that shocked the world, but also for
the plight of the refugees who survived.
Until 1952, no passports were needed for travel between India and
Pakistan; Muslims from India could easily move back and forth. But the
Indian high commission’s job was to issue travel permits, given the need
to modulate the flow of evacuees. Not too many permits needed to be
issued in Punjab. The riots had ethnically cleansed all Hindus and Sikhs
from western Punjab, just as Muslims in East Punjab had been killed or
had migrated, except from the enclave of Malerkotla. In Sindh, the story
was a little different. Of its 4 million people, about 1.5 million were
Hindus living in urban areas. But there were also about 200,000 relatively
poor Hindus who could not be easily evacuated, since they were in an
inaccessible rural hinterland, mainly in the Tharparkar district.12
Partition had savaged the province of Punjab the most. In Bengal,
leaders on both sides had managed to persuade populations to stay where
they were. But the horrors were now beginning to touch Sindh, where the
high commission was located. A ‘holocaust’ unfolded in January 1948 in
Karachi, with violence against Sindhi Hindus, which hastened their terrified
flight to India. Over a million Sindhis fled in the first half of 1948 and
this exodus continued till 1951, when only about 200,000 remained in
the province.13 Several voyages had to be undertaken by sea, given that
 part it ion pains 25

the land route through the Punjab border had become unviable due to the
violence, while air journeys were expensive and did not allow household
goods to be carried. The high commission had even set up a camp in an
open space in town for people who were coming from the interiors of
Sindh towards Karachi to escape to the new India.
The high commissioner recorded three waves of exodus of the Hindus
of Sindh from Karachi. The first was of Hindu government employees,
the second of Sindhi Hindus, and the third of Muhajirs, settlers who had
escaped from India, but were now changing their minds and returning to
their homes in India. Several of these were the Muslims who had migrated
from Prakasa’s native eastern Uttar Pradesh, only to be rapidly disappointed
by the Pakistan they saw. They clamoured to return to their native lands,
given the hostility in Sindh. Prakasa noted that he did not receive requests
from any Punjabi Muslims for facilitating a return to India. It was mainly
the UP Muslims who had come to Karachi with belied hopes and were
anxious to go back.14
The Hindus with means to return were doing so with increasing urgency.
And the Indian diplomats were willing to help. A group of wealthy Hindus
approached Sri Prakasa in panic one midnight, afraid of being arrested the
next day, pleading for permits to leave by dawn. The high commissioner
did them the favour. He was now armed with stamps and seals at home
to deal with such emergencies.15
The traditional deployment of Hindus and Christians for menial jobs in
Pakistan created a peculiar dynamic of compulsions for its administration.
While Prakasa tried hard to get the Hindu migrant labour from Uttar
Pradesh to return to their homes for their annual leave, or simply because
they wanted to return, the Pakistani authorities invoked the essential services
act to say that ‘labourers, domestic servants of government officers and such
others’ could not go away. This deeply offended the high commissioner. He
took up this sectarian affront with Prime Minister Liaquat Ali, appealing to
his origins in UP. Pakistan’s prime minister shocked the high commissioner
with his reflexive response: who would clean the streets and latrines of
Karachi? An outraged Prakasa reported this remark to Nehru who did
raise this matter with his opposite number, to no avail. Several other fires
were raging. The plight of migrant labour, or casteist slurs against them,
were hardly a priority.
On one occasion, Prakasa privileged a pregnant woman with a permit,
a scarce resource on account of the constraints of transport. The next day,
he was amused to find a large number of allegedly pregnant young women
appealing for early departure. He gave them the benefit of the doubt and
armed them all with exit permits without the mandatory medical exam.
Tension over refugees mounted within the Indian camp. The high
commissioner felt that his second in command had a direct line to Delhi
26 ange r m anage m e nt

and was bypassing him to seek directions from the ministry. Prakasa once
wanted to grant return permits to some Muslim weavers from Benares
who had arrived as refugees in Karachi; but his deputy, driven perhaps
by his resentment of some biased acts of Muslim officers in Delhi, had
consulted headquarters and obtained instructions to overrule the envoy
and refuse the permits.

KEEP THEM THERE!

During his tenure in Pakistan, Prakasa frequently returned to India for
consultations, mainly on the refugee crisis he faced. Mahatma Gandhi, in
one meeting, exhorted Prakasa to try to take care of the Hindus who were
left behind, particularly in the rural areas. A companion of Gandhi, Pandit
Sunderlal, who was working for Hindu–Muslim amity, was concerned that
the Indian diplomat was tasked with removing all Hindus from Pakistan.
‘Do try that they may remain there,’ he pleaded. On another occasion,
Gandhi gave Prakasa an earful on the atrocities in Pakistan against Hindus.
Gandhi himself had been facing mounting criticism for his stout defence
of Muslims in India and his alleged neglect of the plight of the Hindus
being massacred or expelled from Pakistan. The envoy was still smarting
from the Mahatma’s outburst on his way out, unfairly directed at him
he thought, when he bumped into another Congress stalwart, Sardar
Patel, then home minister. Patel similarly addressed Prakasa sharply as a
proxy for Pakistan, ‘in words of biting sarcasm’, causing the envoy ‘deep
anguish’.16
Prakasa immediately rushed to Prime Minister Nehru and offered to
resign. He felt he no longer enjoyed the confidence of Gandhi and Patel.
The month-old high commissioner then learnt a lesson all Indian envoys
to Pakistan since learn at some point or the other: Pakistan policy in India
is driven personally by India’s prime minister and it is best to seek direct
instructions from the PM. Nehru told Prakasa that since he enjoyed his
prime minister’s full confidence, he should proceed to Pakistan without
hesitation. Prakasa did enjoy Nehru’s trust almost through the entire period
of Nehru’s premiership, as he went on to become governor of Assam,
Madras, and Bombay provinces, serving in these high offices until a year
before Nehru’s death.
But on his visits home in the months after Independence, Prakasa was
feeling the heat of the complex refugee crisis that Partition had triggered.
It weighed on his mind even during his last meeting with Gandhi. Prakasa
had returned to Delhi after a trip to Dacca in January 1948 to call on
Gandhi. He wanted to clarify his position since he felt ‘some returning
Hindus of Sindh had poisoned Gandhi’s ears’17. But he could not find time
alone with the Mahatma. Gandhi was assassinated later that month. To
his regret, the high commissioner did not get a chance to make his case.
 part it ion pains 27

FATHERS OF THEIR NATIONS

1948 was a tragic year for both India and Pakistan, as the respective
fathers of their nations passed away, barely a year into Independence.
Mahatma Gandhi, who had remained away from any government role,
fell to an assassin’s bullets just five months after Partition in January 1948,
while Jinnah, Pakistan’s larger than life founder, succumbed to tuberculosis
eight months later. India’s first diplomat in Pakistan recorded the passing
of both from Karachi. He looked at their legacies from a unique vantage
point in his memoirs.
Gandhi and Jinnah had been colleagues in the Congress Party, friendly
at first and rivals later. Jinnah had welcomed Gandhi’s return to India
from South Africa in 1915 and had even been hailed by Gandhi, in a
1916 Congress meeting, as an ‘ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity’. But
Gandhi’s revolutionary new tactics had upset and upstaged Jinnah. When
Jinnah resigned from Gandhi’s Congress in 1920, and joined the Muslim
League a few years later, their paths diverged. But their trajectories still
intersected.
Gandhi had anointed Nehru as his political successor; a strong
relationship of mutual trust had evolved between the two men. Jinnah,
on the other hand, trusted nobody. Liaquat Ali became a political heir
of sorts, but did not enjoy Jinnah’s trust and himself passed away three
years after Independence. Both Gandhi and Jinnah had their dreams only
partially fulfilled. Gandhi’s India came with a Pakistan-sized hole and,
worse, with the pain and horrors of the communal riots. Jinnah got a
moth-eaten version of his imagined homeland, and had to leave behind his
coreligionists in Muslim-minority provinces (with the partition of Muslim-
majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal) like UP and Bihar.
Gandhi was by far the tallest leader the Congress had produced. He
had been president of the Congress in 1924 and had visited Karachi
multiple times. In 1931, some Karachi residents commissioned a bronze
statue of Gandhi and placed it in a prominent city square. The bronze
figure underlined Gandhi’s stature in undivided India.
When Gandhi was murdered in 1948, Sri Prakasa decided to honour
his memory with a ritual dip in the nearest waters. En route to the Arabian
Sea that lapped Karachi’s Clifton Beach, he went barefoot to bow before the
statue prominently positioned near the Sindh High Court, on Cantonment
Road, later called Court Road.18
Gandhi was keen to visit Pakistan after Independence. His agenda
would have included engaging with the traumatized Hindu minority in
Sindh. Sri Prakasa recalls that two Parsi envoys visited Karachi with a
message from Gandhi expressing a desire to meet Jinnah and suggesting
that Gandhi ‘was willing and anxious to come to Karachi’19. But Jinnah’s
resentment of Gandhi had not diminished. These envoys read a clear signal
28 ange r m anage m e nt

from people close to Jinnah that Pakistan’s leader was not prepared to meet
India’s most important leader unless he picked up an equivalent position
in protocol, like that of the governor general of India. Thus, the quest
for parity became an important concern for Pakistan since Independence.
Prakasa felt that at some level, Jinnah envied Gandhi not having taken
a formal position in India. Gandhi’s Parsi friends were still in Karachi,
trying to break the ice with Jinnah’s team, when the shocking news came
of Gandhi’s assassination. ‘Sad and sick at heart, they left for home’.20
Jinnah’s death months later was a turning point for Pakistan. He was
leaving behind an inchoate Pakistan and no real successor to take his
legacy forward. The funeral was a sombre affair in Karachi. While others
were dressed fashionably in black, the Indian high commissioner went, as
an ‘old-fashioned Hindu from Kashi’, in a simple white kurta and dhoti.21
He respectfully circumambulated the body, but later reflected on the irony
that a man as proud as Jinnah who ‘gave the impression to others that
the earth was not good enough for him to tread on’, should also ‘lie thus
stretched on its back’. Jinnah’s daughter, Dina, with her husband, Neville
Wadia, came for the funeral. Jinnah had bequeathed his house in Karachi,
as well as the one in Bombay, to his sister Fatima. The high commissioner
assessed that Jinnah had died an unhappy, lonely man. Pakistan’s founder,
the envoy felt, had perhaps never dreamt that such exoduses would take
place and had ‘evidently hoped for a peaceful division of the country’22.
Pakistan had lost its founder Jinnah much before he could explain
his idea of Pakistan or even work out its details. India in contrast had
a Constituent Assembly furiously at work. The loss of Gandhi and Patel
was not as deeply felt as Jinnah’s in Pakistan, for India had the continuity
and weight of Jawaharlal Nehru for the first sixteen years.

DEBATING PARTITION
Partition’s memories and legacies have remained contested, even after three
quarters of a century, engaging scholars and journalists, often seeping into
the politics of both countries. They are unlikely to be laid to rest even with
the passing of the generation that saw the division of their lands.
Several scholars have suggested that the movement to create Pakistan
that inexorably led to the tragedy of Partition was essentially one led by
the Muslim elites in India’s Muslim-minority provinces (UP, Bihar, Bombay),
driven by an impulse to compensate for the loss of power and to counter
the prospect of being governed by a brute Hindu majority once the British
left. Some key ideologues and influencers of the day drove the process:
it required, one analyst argued, ‘a Syed Ahmed Khan to plant the seeds,
an Iqbal to imagine and especially a Jinnah to grasp the opportunity to
convert the Muslim insecurity at having lost an empire into the demand
for a separate homeland.’23
 part it ion pains 29

Thus, Partition became South Asia’s major turning point in the twentieth
century and a lightning rod for debates on a range of issues like identity,
territory, security, nationalism, minority rights, and migration. Some saw it
as an answer to past wrongs and others as a cause of the crises it caused,
from riots to wars to nuclear weapons to minority fears. It also became
a continuing debate in the diplomatic discourse between the two nations,
on whether the unfinished agenda of Partition had to be addressed before
any other meaningful conversation could take place.
State-driven narratives of Partition in Pakistan for decades extolled
Jinnah as the masterful planner of the immaculate conception of Pakistan,
until a Pakistani historian challenged the received wisdom a couple of
decades later. In her influential academic work, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah,
the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Pakistan’s best-known
historian, Ayesha Jalal, argued in 1985 that Jinnah had used Pakistan in
the 1940s as a bargaining chip to get a better deal in the share of power
for the Muslims of India, for whom he had become the ‘sole spokesman’.
In this argument, Partition was more the responsibility of Nehru and the
Congress leadership, too ambitious to accept the last British attempt at unity
that Jinnah was willing to go along with: a loose confederation proposed
by the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946. For the Congress, this narrative
suggested, Bengal and Punjab were politically crucial: these undivided
Muslim-majority states would have thrown up the most seats for the Lok
Sabha. Thus, in any voting along communal lines, these provinces would
have dwarfed the role of the Congress Party in an undivided democratic
India. So, Partition was politically the preferred outcome for the Congress
Party, as it was for Jinnah, even though what he got was a ‘moth–eaten’
avatar of the Pakistan he dreamt up.
Jalal’s fresh take on the birth of the nation challenged not just the
dominant narrative—of Jinnah having conceptualized Pakistan perfectly—
but also implicitly questioned the two-nation theory—of religion as
Pakistan’s sole raison d’être—that Zia’s Pakistan was trying to reinforce
in the 1980s. Jalal’s argument was strengthened by pointing to the birth
of Bangladesh in 1971, which had struck a decisive blow to the two-
nation thesis.
This interpretation also challenged histories written till then, mostly
driven by the study of the causes of Partition. In Jalal’s telling, Partition
was neither the only possible outcome being negotiated in the run-up to
Independence, nor even its most likely result. Jalal’s persuasive thesis itself
became the dominant orthodoxy, until newer narratives challenged it three
decades later. Recent scholarship24 suggests that while Jalal’s theory was a
startling one at that point, it did not tell the entire story of the Pakistan
movement, which in fact predated Jinnah’s demand articulated in March
1940. This scholarship bases itself on a reading of documents from across
30 ange r m anage m e nt

India to point out that Jinnah knew exactly what he was fighting for, did
so with tenacity, but did not live long enough to follow up with a coherent
vision for Pakistan’s future.25
The Partition process was chaotic. It set in motion a train of events,
pointed out scholar Yasmin Khan, unforeseen by every single person who
had advocated and argued for the division.26 Khan argued that the fledgling
countries had to undertake the complex governmental business of teasing
out two new states, with full administrative and military apparatus, at
a time of social uncertainty, loss of trained manpower and paucity of
resources. Moreover, their diplomatic capacity of dealing with each other
had not quite evolved.
While the Kashmir issue is often cited as the cause of several
foundational problems, it was Partition that caused many of the ongoing
conflicts in South Asia, not least because it was the ‘source of the suspicions
and national myths that are deeply rooted in the definition of one state
against the other’.27 But not all of South Asia’s current problems can
be laid at the feet of Partition. Events have moved on from 1947 and
difficulties created by the Radcliffe Line ‘instead of being salved by the
balm of diplomacy, have become running sores’.28
The interest in the Partition moment continues to animate the work
of newer generations of scholars. Among, looking at Partition from fresher
angles is a Pakistani granddaughter of a Partition survivor Anam Zakaria,
who argued that memories of Partition have often been repackaged through
state narratives; rather than slowly dissipating, these memories have only
hardened over the years. On the Indian side, Aanchal Malhotra, another
granddaughter of Partition refugees, has derived insights from the physical
objects and memories of Partition.
And so the scholarly29 as well as political debate30 rages to this day,
with no clear judgement on the why of Partition. But while Partition was
the original sin, it was by no means the only one that spawned the flawed
diplomacy of the next seventy-five years and more.
In the early days of the formation of the two countries and their
interaction with each other, there were many different turns that events
could have taken. These what ifs, these counterfactuals of history, engage
scholars and politicians to this day. Surely, having Mountbatten as India’s
first governor general and allowing British army generals to continue was a
flawed choice. If India’s objective was to retain every bit of territory of the
Himalayan princely state, Kashmir, then a homespun head of state would
have served India better. Had Pakistan not made the grave misjudgement
of encouraging a tribal invasion in 1947, Kashmir may have remained
an independent country, another Himalayan nation to the north of India,
like Nepal and Bhutan, to be wooed or suppressed not just by India and
Pakistan, but also by China. If Nehru had chosen to be governor general,
 part it ion pains 31

Indian generals could have ensured that Pakistani troops were beaten back
into their own territory in 1948 and India perhaps would have never
needed to make any reference to the UN.
Or going further to pre-Independence choices, would the death toll
have been greater if the British had left with no Partition, leaving the
Indians—Hindus and Muslims and Sikhs—to sort out their differences and
negotiate the evolution of the new nation? A future high commissioner
to Pakistan landed at the doorstep of the last viceroy to find some of the
answers. Kewal Singh, then posted as deputy high commissioner in London,
used the opportunity of his posting to meet with Mountbatten and ask
him the questions that had troubled most observers of Partition and its
aftermath. Why did Mountbatten advance the date of Partition to 1947?
Mountbatten replied that in his assessment the point of no return had
been reached in March 1947 after which the butchery had to be prevented.
He had hoped that the army would remain united for another year to
prevent any conflict. He had expected to be the common governor general
for a year for both dominions, to settle matters amicably, but Jinnah had
been adamant and wanted sovereign Pakistan to have her own army; and
himself wanted to be governor general.31
What is unquestionable is that if the subcontinent had not been
partitioned, it might have been possible to avoid four Indo–Pak conflicts,
and even perhaps the 1962 Sino–India clash. The what ifs of history can
be endlessly fascinating, but historical actors of the times need to grapple
with contemporary realities. One such reality in 1947 was a beautiful
valley in the lap of the Himalaya that would present the most vexing
challenge for the sibling nations.
 3

THE KASHMI R CONUN D RUM

L ess than a week after Partition, Colonel Akbar Khan, director of

weapons and equipment at the Pakistan Army headquarters in
Rawalpindi, started planning an ingress into Kashmir, to pre-empt its
accession to India.1 Khan and his band of military strategists had good
reason to be proactive. Soon after the boundary commission had carved
up Punjab and Bengal, unfairly in their view, the Pakistan Army was
looking to merge Kashmir with Pakistan to compensate for lost territory
and consolidate the new nation. The Pakistan Army had just inherited
Rawalpindi—the largest garrison town of the British in the subcontinent—
established to defend the sensitive north-western periphery of the empire.
Holding a third of the military assets of the British Indian Army, Pakistan’s
army was disproportionately large, compared to Pakistan’s population of
about a sixth of British India.2
Colonel Khan was seeing worrying signs. Maharaja Hari Singh, Dogra
ruler of the princely state of Kashmir, was professing neutrality but appeared
to favour India. His vision of retaining Kashmir, as a ‘Switzerland of
the East’ with a doctrine of ‘positive neutrality’, might not withstand,
Pakistani military officers feared, a militarily powerful India. Gandhi and
Mountbatten had already visited the maharaja in Srinagar in the summer
of 1947, from all accounts, to persuade him to join India. This would
not only endanger Pakistan’s borders, but also its nascent ideology; the
foundational two-nation theory would itself be challenged, given that the
Hindu king’s subjects mostly followed the Muslim faith.
It would thus be critical to force the hand of Kashmir’s ruler to change
the balance of power and geography in Pakistan’s favour. This idea would
quickly translate into the top secret ‘Operation Gulmarg’, a tribal invasion
of Kashmir. Akbar Khan knew the territory well. He had already been
involved in providing arms to demobilized soldiers of World War II, in the
Poonch region on the western fringes of the princely state, to foment a
rebellion against the maharaja and build momentum for the accession to
Pakistan. The scheme now was to mobilize some 20,000 Pashtun tribesmen
from the north-west and launch them into Kashmir by October.3
But these audacious plans needed to be hidden from the British officers
commanding the Pakistan Army. They were soon approved, bypassing the
white military commanders, by Prime Minister Liaquat Ali—to whom
Akbar Khan reported as military adviser—and almost certainly by Jinnah
himself. Pakistan’s army was thus all set to implement a brazen battle plan
 t he kas hm ir conun d ru m 33

for a foreign invasion, within seventy days of Independence, keeping its

own army chief in the dark.4
The tribal invaders, guided by ‘experienced military men’, equipped with
modern arms, carried in a fleet of 300 trucks, and driven by a lust for
loot and rape, swarmed into the princely state on 21 October. They could
well have succeeded in capturing the princely state’s capital, Srinagar, had
they not been distracted by an orgy of pillage. The raiders first captured
Muzaffarabad, near the border of the princely state, terrorizing local Hindus
and Sikhs. They then rapidly advanced towards the heart of the valley,
capturing Baramulla, a major town to the north of the valley. They were
20 miles by road from Srinagar on 24 October, with hardly any resistance
from the forces of the princely state, when the maharaja sent an SOS to
Delhi, asking for forces. Governor General Mountbatten effectively vetoed
the idea of sending forces from the Indian dominion to defend Kashmir,
without first securing the accession of the state to India. Without that
document, India would be invading foreign territory.
On 26 October, the maharaja was woken up in Jammu, where he
had fled for safety from Srinagar, to sign the accession agreement that
State Secretary Menon flew down from Delhi with. On 27 October, even
as Governor General Mountbatten formally signed off on the document,
Indian Army troops were airlifted to Srinagar, where they were welcomed
by Sheikh Abdullah’s National Conference leaders and soon engaged the
raiders on the outskirts of the capital. Thus began the first Kashmir war
between India and Pakistan.
By 14 November, Indian troops had retaken Baramulla and Uri and
driven the raiders to the peripheries of the valley, as winter set in. What
prevented Indian troops from pursuing the raiders to the border, to have
them vacate a third of the state that they still occupied? Both military and
political factors were at play. The transitional British structures played a
major role in preventing that outcome.
Akbar Khan was proud of his military ingenuity. But his memoirs
suggest he did not quite imagine he was setting a precedent. He could
not have foreseen that he was creating a template for Pakistan’s military
tactics in the next decades that would eventually visit tragedy not just
on its neighbours, but its own citizens as well. The unfolding events in
Kashmir were also driven by the larger strategic calculations and tactical
manoeuvres of the departing British Raj.

STAND STILL AND STAND DOWN

The slow state-building process in India had given the colonial empire
much residual influence in the free dominions. As India and Pakistan
struggled to consolidate their security systems, as we have seen, British
officers continued to helm their armed forces. India had moreover
34 ange r m anage m e nt

entrusted to its British head of state a critical executive role of presiding

over the defence committee of the cabinet, effectively giving him a veto
on military decisions. Pakistan had a freer military hand, with Jinnah as
governor general, and only British officers, not a head of state, to be kept
out of the loop when necessary.
The British had engineered ‘standstill’ agreements at Independence, that
obliged India, Pakistan, and the princely states not to upset the status quo.
They provided that all the administrative arrangements would continue
unaltered until new arrangements were put in place by 1948. Akbar Khan’s
adventure in Kashmir had clearly violated this standstill agreement between
Pakistan and Kashmir.
Worse, well before the Kashmir crisis erupted, Field Marshal Auchinleck
had, as noted, issued secret ‘stand down’ instructions to British commanders
in the Indian and Pakistani armed forces. Nehru and Patel were not
aware of these instructions issued on 30 September,5 but it had become
abundantly clear to them they could not rely on the British officers, who
were taking orders from London, rather than from the Indian government.
More importantly, Mountbatten, on the strength of his military experience,
now chaired a vitally important cabinet committee that could not be easily
bypassed for any major military choices.
These factors played a crucial role in staying India’s hand during the
Kashmir crisis. Auchinleck’s instructions were reinforced by London, when
the British cabinet decided on the issue on 13 October, a week before the
raiders landed in Kashmir. Prime Minister Attlee conveyed his approval of
the stand down instructions in a telegram to Auchinleck on 15 October.
The reinforced instructions had a major impact on decisions and the course
of events in Kashmir at the end of the month.
Crucially, Mountbatten ensured that India did not extend operations
up to the Pakistan border in the Poonch and Mirpur districts in November
1947. He even sabotaged his own government’s plans for creating a ‘cordon
sanitaire’ along the border through aerial action against the raiders of
Kashmir. ‘He foiled his government’s instructions for preparing contingency
plans for a counter-strike across the Pakistani border, while prevailing upon
Nehru to take the Kashmir issue to the UN.’6
In India’s first war, Mountbatten was not just a figurehead but in fact
the executive head of India’s military decision-making. He was party to
the secret order for a stand-down, clearly an act of betrayal by the British.
Political morality would have required Mountbatten to resign his post
rather than work against the interest of the government he was serving.
But those were extraordinary times.
When tensions arose over Junagadh, Mountbatten and Army
Commander-in-chief General Rob Lockhart did their best to restrain India
from taking the military route. Lockhart’s role was particularly egregious
 t he kas hm ir conun d ru m 35

in the case of Kashmir. He had refrained, on Auchinleck’s advice, from

implementing the Indian government’s order to send military supplies to
the maharaja. Likewise, he did not share the indication he received from
his counterparts across the border about the movement of armed tribesmen
into Kashmir. India’s leaders had to jump through other hoops to exercise
their security choices: they needed to satisfy Mountbatten’s insistent demand
that they secure the maharaja’s accession before giving him military help
with an airlift to counter that invasion from Pakistan.7
In his multiple contortions to balance competing interests, the governor
general tried to slip into another role: of becoming a mediator between India
and Pakistan. These were times before concepts like ‘conflict of interest’
came into vogue. ‘This must be the only case in the annals of diplomacy
where a holder of the highest office in the country has attempted mediation
between that country and another,’ observes Dasgupta.8 Mountbatten had
little doubt that the tribal invasion was a deliberate proxy attack mounted
by Pakistan on a territory that had acceded to India. Yet, the governor
general did his utmost to prevent India from extending military operations
up to Jammu and Kashmir’s border with Pakistan. Dasgupta argues that
thanks to this British betrayal, India could not summon the speed, secrecy,
and surprise, essential elements of an effective military response. And soon,
international intervention pre-empted the option of Indian troops going
across the Kashmir border.9
The archives point to several more layers of British misdemeanour.
London was aware of the invasion plan, as Pakistan’s acting army chief,
General Douglas Gracey, stated categorically. The evidence also suggests
that the British foreign secretary Noel Baker had, without consulting the
cabinet, given the nod for the Pakistani move into Kashmir.10 Most Indian
scholars see this as an act of colonial perfidy. Ironically, Pakistani writers,
with equal rancour, tend to lay the blame for their military failure in
Kashmir at the British doorstep. On 27 October, Jinnah had ordered General
Gracey to send regular troops to counter the Indian action, but Gracey
refused, and instead asked for approval from the supreme commander of
all British forces, Auchinleck, in New Delhi.11
Dasgupta credibly argues that India’s contingency planning for a
counter-attack across the Pakistani border could not have been executed
without the ‘Indianization’ of the military leadership. This plan would be
put in place only five years after Pakistan’s attack in Kashmir. In August
1952, Nehru could inform parliament that ‘any further aggression or attack
or military operations in regard to Kashmir, if such takes place on the
other side, that would mean all-out war not in Kashmir only but elsewhere
too’. This was the policy that was finally implemented in 1965.12
36 ange r m anage m e nt

JUNAGADH SIDESHOW
The stand-down instructions had been first tested in a princely state in
India’s west. The eccentric nawab of Junagadh, famous for his 800 pet
dogs, unexpectedly announced on 15 August 1947 that he was acceding
to Pakistan. Adding layers of complexity to the situation was the fact
that the Muslim nawab’s subjects were mostly Hindu and that Junagadh
was surrounded by neighbours who had acceded to India. To make
matters more convoluted, the nawab claimed overlordship of both these
neighbours now in India: the princely states of Babariawad and Mangrol.
The nawab’s decision to accede to Pakistan was met with a bewildered
silence from the new nation he had decided to throw in his lot with. On
21 August, V. P. Menon wrote formally to the Pakistan high commissioner
in Delhi, asking for an indication of Karachi’s policy on Junagadh’s
proclamation of accession. Since the state was not geographically contiguous
to Pakistan and a large majority of its population was non-Muslim, wrote
the civil servant, it was important to ascertain the views of Junagadh’s
people on accession. The high commission in Delhi did not respond to
this ticklish issue, nor did Karachi. On 12 September, Nehru followed
up with a telegram to Pakistan conveying India’s readiness to accept the
verdict of the people of Junagadh. The message was carried personally to
Karachi by Mountbatten’s chief of staff, Lord Ismay.
A suspicious Pakistan played for time. In a sloppy opening diplomatic
gambit, Pakistan’s foreign office refused to take cognizance of India’s
telegram on the grounds that ‘it bore no number or signature to show
that its issue had been authorised’. On 13 September, nearly a month after
the nawab’s offer, Pakistan finally conveyed that it accepted Junagadh’s
accession.
This left the British in a peculiar quandary. Armed action by India in
Junagadh now looked inevitable. But Mountbatten, as head of one British
dominion, could not acquiesce in action that could lead to war with the
adjacent dominion. Mountbatten did his best to dissuade Nehru and Patel
from armed action, but the show of force became inescapable by the end
of September.
Mountbatten even suggested lodging a complaint with the nascent
United Nations against Junagadh, questioning its act of aggression in the
Kathiawar region. Patel and Nehru rejected the proposal. Patel sagely
observed that possession was nine-tenths of the law and he would in no
circumstances lower India’s position by going to any court as a plaintiff.
Nehru proposed on 30 September to India’s Defence Committee that the
matter should be decided by a referendum or plebiscite of the people
concerned. He added that ‘we shall accept the result of the referendum
whatever it may be, as it is a desire that a decision should be made in
accordance with the wishes of the people concerned’. The implications
 t he kas hm ir conun d ru m 37

were clear for the remaining major princely states whose fate was under
negotiation: a referendum in the Muslim-majority Kashmir was expected
to favour Pakistan while one in Hindu-majority Hyderabad would tilt in
favour of India.13
This was a dramatic new initiative and Pakistan’s prime minister
heard of it soon enough. When Liaquat Ali happened to visit Delhi on
30 September for a meeting of the Joint Defence Council, Mountbatten
engineered a conversation between the two prime ministers. Nehru declared
India’s faith in a strong democratic principle that the will of the people
should be ascertained in all difficult cases and that India would always be
willing to abide by a ‘decision obtained by a general election, plebiscite
or referendum conducted in a fair and impartial manner’. Mountbatten
intervened to emphasize ‘that this policy would apply not only to Junagadh
but also to any other state’. Mountbatten later recalled that Liaquat’s eyes
sparkled, ‘he was, no doubt, thinking of Kashmir’.14
Significantly, Liaquat Ali did not respond then to Mountbatten’s offer,
possibly because he wanted to consult Jinnah. Pakistan’s archives have
never been opened to provide this answer on why Pakistan chose to ignore
the Indian offer of settling all cases of disputed accession by a reference
to the will of the people, a principle that would have helped its case for
Kashmir. Pakistan chose instead to ‘insist on the ruler’s prerogative in
the case of Junagadh and Hyderabad, while, in the case of Kashmir, she
made secret preparations to obtain a decision by the force of arms’.15 The
mirror opposite of Pakistan’s preference suited India: going by the ruler’s
discretion in Kashmir, but factoring in popular sentiment in Junagadh and
Hyderabad, two states that in any case had no land borders with Pakistan.
Just as the first moves were being made on the crisis in Kashmir, the
Junagadh affair was reaching its endgame. By 27 October, the nawab
had already fled to Karachi, taking with him the entire cash balances
of the treasury and most of his beloved dogs. On 1 November, Indian
civil administrators, accompanied by a small armed force, took over the
administration of both Babariawad and Mangrol. On 8 November, the
Indian government accepted the administration of Junagadh after the
dewan, Sir Shah Nawaz Bhutto, father of the future leader of Pakistan,
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, saw the writing on the wall and requested the Indian
government to take over.

GILGIT BALTISTAN
Another sideshow to the central Kashmir drama was being played out in
the northern mountains of the Himalayan state. The maharaja’s accession
to India implied that the high Himalayan territory of Gilgit Baltistan would
also integrate into India. But this move did not suit British interests. An
effective coup was mounted by a British officer of the Gilgit Scouts, to
38 ange r m anage m e nt

prevent this outcome. While Indian writers have seen this as a conspiracy
or worse, another example of British perfidy, Pakistani commentators have
portrayed it as a popularly backed rebellion.
The revolution in Gilgit took place on the night of 31 October 1947.
Gilgit, together with Baltistan, Hansa, and Nagar, formed the ‘northern
areas’ of the princely state of J&K. Major William Brown, the maharaja’s
commander of the Gilgit Scouts, positioned by the British on 1 August 1947
when they handed over the ‘Gilgit agency’ to the maharaja, ‘mutinied’ on
1 November 1947, overthrowing the maharaja’s governor of the region,
Brigadier Ghansara Singh. Brown had secretly invited his Pakistani friends
in, even before the bloodless coup. The Pakistani political agent arrived on
cue on 16 November to take over the administration of Gilgit. The Scouts
also managed to subsequently capture Dras and Kargil in the Ladakh region
and cut off Indian communications to Leh. Only in the autumn of 1948
did India manage to recapture all of the Kargil district, leaving Baltistan
under Gilgit control. Military historians underline these events as the tactical
genesis of the Kargil conflict of 1999 that we will encounter in Chapter 6.

THE HYDERABAD ACCESSION

Even as the countries were at war in Kashmir, another large princely
state was still holding out a year after Independence. To Patel and Nehru,
Hyderabad’s integration into India was non-negotiable. After a Pakistan
had been carved out in the west and one in the east, India did not want
yet another one in its heart. The preparations for the use of force were
on. Indian and Pakistani diplomats of the day were already scrambling
for overseas weapons for the ongoing war effort in Kashmir. Pakistani
trade commissioners were asked to get arms from France and Germany,
playing off one European against the other. In the fog of that war, a
conflict entrepreneur called Sidney Cotton got involved in transporting
weapons from Europe via Pakistan into Hyderabad, supporting the pro-
nizam militia of Razakars.
The endgame in Hyderabad came relatively rapidly with ‘police action’
while India and Pakistan were technically at war over Kashmir. Under
the fiction of civilian action, it was in fact military action at play with
‘Operation Polo’, involving an army division backed by air power. The
action compelled the eccentric nizam to abandon his ambitious hope of
running an independent enclave deep within India. When Hyderabad was
finally liberated on 16 September 1948, Cotton escaped to Pakistan taking
several Razakars along. In the bloody aftermath of the liberation, up to
40,000 were killed as the Razakars resisted the army and civilian militants.
To calm matters, Nehru even considered making the nizam an ambassador
overseas, but was advised that the former ruler’s miserly habits and odd
sartorial choices would not make him an ideal diplomat. He was instead
 t he kas hm ir conun d ru m 39

made governor, a non-executive head of the province. From a strategic

perspective, the integration of Hyderabad was India’s ‘first successful
attempt at coercion’.16

A CASE FOR THE UN

Sri Prakasa in Karachi was not in any way involved in negotiating the
Kashmir situation; it seemed a crisis far away from Pakistan’s capital.
He had little feedback or briefings on the diplomatic and military
developments that were taking place. The war seemed like his prime
minister’s job, even though it was being fought with the country he was
accredited to. But like all worthy envoys, he had his personal, if completely
naive, take on the imbroglio and weighed in on how the issue could be
resolved. Exasperated by Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession and dismayed by
the violence, the high commissioner advocated a simple solution: hand over
the territory to Pakistan. He shared this view with Mountbatten when he
called on him in New Delhi. The governor general relayed the sentiment to
Nehru in a meeting on 25 November 1947. An alarmed Nehru dashed off
a letter to Prakasa the same afternoon:
I was amazed to learn from Mountbatten that you hinted at Kashmir
being handed over to Pakistan for the sake of peace all round. If we
did anything of the kind our government would not last many days
and there would be no peace at all anywhere in India. Probably it
would lead to war with Pakistan because of public opinion here and of
war-like elements coming in control of our policy. We cannot and we
will not leave Kashmir to its fate.... All of us realize that this Kashmir
venture is no easy matter. We did not undertake it light heartedly
and we are not pursuing it with any easy confidence. We know the
difficulties perhaps more than you do. Nevertheless, we are going to go
through it and it is desirable that you should make this perfectly clear
in your private talks whenever this question arises.17
This was an extraordinary but perhaps richly deserved reprimand from the
prime minister to his maverick envoy.
With the lull in the fighting in the winter of 1947, the Kashmir dispute
went to the United Nations. As we have seen, Mountbatten had been
pushing Nehru to make a reference to the UN to end the conflict. He
finally had his way, when, on 1 January 1948, India filed a complaint
with the Security Council against Pakistan, under Article 35 of Chapter
6 of the UN Charter. It asked the council to call upon Pakistan to stop
giving assistance to the invaders. On 5 January 1948, the UN announced
the imminent formation of a plebiscite administration.
The day India complained to the UN, it also acquired a new British
commander-in-chief, General Roy Bucher, who followed the glorious
40 ange r m anage m e nt

tradition of his predecessor, General Lockhart, in deceiving India’s civilian

leaders. Bucher reached a private understanding with his counterpart in
Pakistan, General Gracey, to turn a blind eye to the induction of Pakistan
regulars into parts of J&K, in return for an informal truce between the
dominions. Bucher informed his Pakistani colleagues of his military plans,
promising not to move beyond certain positions. He even offered to send
a covert signal to Rawalpindi if the Indian government changed his plan.18
With a war still in progress on the borders in the summer of 1948,
Sri Prakasa got a chance to visit the Kashmir Valley, at the invitation of
his friend, the prime minister of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah. The Sheikh
had himself been appointed to his role as prime minister of the emergency
administration of Kashmir in March 1948. Prakasa was in Delhi and
made his trip to Kashmir to get a sense of the mood in the valley. Sheikh
Abdullah seemed confident of popular support and shared his conviction
with the envoy that if he got two more years ‘you may have your plebiscite
or anything else, the whole lot of the people will go for India and no one
will think of Pakistan then’.19
That assertion was never tested. By the last week of December 1948,
the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) succeeded
in laying down the basis of a ceasefire agreement. British high commissioner
in Delhi, Sir Archibald Nye, through Bucher, approached Nehru with the
suggestion of an immediate ceasefire in anticipation of the formal adoption
of the UNCIP resolution. With Nehru’s approval, Bucher conveyed the
offer to Gracey who accepted it on behalf of Pakistan. At midnight of
31 December 1948, the ceasefire between the two dominions came into
force, thus ending the first India–Pakistan war.
When the UNCIP arrived in Karachi in 1949, to work out the
implementation of the ceasefire, Sri Prakasa felt that both India and
Pakistan were displeased by its ‘slow and ponderous proceedings’. In fact,
an asymmetry was developing in the way the two countries treated the
UNCIP: Pakistan was welcoming the group as a saviour while India was
increasingly sceptical of its role. The UN resolutions of 1948 (Nos. 39
and 47) detailed by the UNCIP in August 1948 laid out a contentious
three-step sequential process that included the withdrawal of Pakistani
nationals from western J&K, demilitarization and eventually, a plebiscite.
With Pakistan’s refusal to remove its nationals, matters were deadlocked
on the first step. The ministry in Delhi had asked the high commission
not to deal with the UNCIP. However, the envoy ignored the instruction
and received the secretary of the commission in his office. He was also
testing his own brand of diplomacy for Kashmir.
He dreamt up a three-point formula: common citizenship; freedom
of movement between the two states; and a neutral Kashmir under the
guarantee of the surrounding powers, viz., Afghanistan, Russia, China,
 t he kas hm ir conun d ru m 41

Pakistan, and India. Expectedly, this formula did not find many takers in
Delhi. In fact, Prakasa advocated this solution yet again in his memoirs in
1965, revealing that it annoyed Nehru whenever he proffered this unsolicited
peace plan. But the envoy saw no other way forward, even as he, in later
years, ruled out Kashmir going to Pakistan. This scheme—or the part
advocating free mobility of people between the countries—resembled the
four-point formula ascribed to Musharraf, which would be discussed on
a backchannel forty years later, as we shall see in Chapter 6.20
Sri Prakasa wondered, in his innocence, why his country was treating
the marauders of Kashmir as Pakistan’s regular forces. He found no reason
to disbelieve Pakistan’s UN representative (and later foreign minister)
Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, who eloquently claimed that Pakistan had
nothing to do with the tribal invaders. The war at the border went on for
more than a year, through two seasons in 1947 and 1948, until the sides
ceased fire. Clearly, Prakasa was not willing to admit, even to himself, that
he was not aware of much that was taking place at the borders, where
other actors, military and political, were playing complex games.
On 29 July, Indian and Pakistani representatives formally signed, under
the supervision of the UNCIP, a ‘Karachi Agreement’. This established a
ceasefire line, 830 kilometres long, from Jammu to the map coordinates
NJ98432 near the Siachen Glacier. The line would later morph into the
Line of Control. By 1950, Jammu and Kashmir was in India’s administrative
control, barring a third of its territory to the west and north, now under
Pakistan’s control. But the differences with Pakistan had been referred to
the United Nations. In Pakistan’s subsequent narrative, India had defied
the UN resolutions on Kashmir that required a plebiscite in the contested
territory. The Indian retort was that Pakistan failed to vacate the parts
of J&K in its control, thus violating the first in the sequence of steps
prescribed by the UN for a plebiscite.
Article 370 was in place in the new Indian Constitution giving the state
a temporary special status within the Indian union. (This status would only
be rescinded seven decades later, as we shall see in Section 8.) The politics
within Kashmir was also getting muddied in the 1950s. Sheikh Abdullah,
under increasing suspicion of working towards independence for Kashmir,
had a rift with Nehru in 1953. He was arrested. The Sheikh, all-powerful
in the Srinagar valley, had also fallen out with Maharaja Hari Singh, now
exiled in nearby Jammu. The maharaja’s son, Karan Singh, was made regent
and then the nominal ruler, sardar-e-riyasat. The Sheikh’s arrest was seen
by many as Nehru’s grave and impetuous miscalculation. It would impact
the political destiny of Kashmir over the next few decades.
Global diplomacy on Kashmir had started soon after the conflict. The
United Nations, under the mandate of its resolutions on Kashmir, was
keen to mediate the dispute. It continued to rapidly churn out peace
42 ange r m anage m e nt

proposals through its appointed mediators. In December 1949, a Canadian

general, Andrew McNaughton, came up with several proposals on truce,
demilitarization, and plebiscite. India rejected these. Another mediator,
Owen Dixon, a judge of the Australian High Court, appointed in April
1950, failed to please either country when he recommended a more radical
plan—the partition of Kashmir.
This UN-prodded diplomacy continued through the 1950s. The next
mediator appointed in April 1951 was the American educator and political
activist, Frank Graham, who recommended in 1953 that the best course
would be for the parties to have direct negotiations. Graham was reflecting
a sensibly realistic assessment six years after Partition and four years after
the UN-brokered ceasefire had become effective in Kashmir—the solution
would come either by mutual accommodation or military contest between
the two countries. Hence, since the military solution appeared off the table,
direct negotiations would be the way forward, even if Pakistan chose not
to rule out the second option. Thanks to some efficient diplomacy or sheer
fatigue, both countries decided to give direct talks a go.
The events in Kashmir from 1947 to 1949 had created a special
bitterness between the neighbours in their early years, dashing any hope
of building economic and military interdependence. For Pakistan, as the
weaker of the adversaries, the existential threat from India loomed larger
than life, soon seeping into its foundational strategic thought. The priority
of building up the armed forces became an issue initially of survival and
later of convenience, to justify disproportionately large defence expenditure.
Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan underlined this concern in a broadcast
to the nation on 8 October 1948: ‘The defence of the state is a foremost
consideration...and has dominated all other governmental activities. We
will not grudge any amount in the defence over our country.’ Pakistan
thus embarked on the establishment of a ‘political economy of defence’,
diverting resources away from critical nation-building requirements. The
early years (1947–1950) saw up to 70 per cent of the national budget
being allocated for defence.21
This conflict also informed Pakistan’s thinking on the need for outside
alliances. The Americans now appeared a better bet than the fading British,
especially in the light of the US need for regional Cold War allies as part
of the policy of containment towards the Soviet Union and China. When
external US military and economic assistance eventually arrived for Pakistan
in 1954, the strings were firmly attached of membership of regional US-
led alliances—the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) and the
Baghdad Pact.22
 4

DECOUPLI NG

‘T here are no parallels anywhere to the nature of the diplomatic

relations subsisting between India and Pakistan, or to the type of
system evolved for conducting these relations’—concluded a 1948
fortnightly report to headquarters from the deputy high commissioner of
India in Lahore, M. K. Kirpalani.1 The diplomat was referring to tasks
that ‘related not only to defence, or security or intelligence gathering, but
covered rather just about all aspects of life—who lived where, who could
marry whom, where they could travel, what they could own, and how they
could meet their parents.’ Nowhere else in the world, the overwhelmed
diplomat noted, would diplomatic staff ‘be called upon to perform as
many different sets of tasks, as those in the offices of the Indian High
Commission in Karachi and Lahore’.2
Kirpalani’s despatch struck historian Pallavi Raghavan as curious.
Why should an Indian diplomat in Lahore be ‘lamenting the burden of...
administrative responsibilities’ rather than addressing, say, the preparedness
for the war in Kashmir or the bloodshed of Partition? More broadly, why
were diplomats of the time preoccupied with such mundane matters, rather
than being consumed by larger concerns of war and peace and massacres
of their citizens? Were they consciously privileging nation-building over
ideology, pragmatism over emotion? Were they drawing solace from the
minutiae of daily diplomacy, a defence mechanism to block out a bloody
past, to keep animosity at bay?
Kirpalani’s predecessor in Lahore, Deputy High Commissioner Sampuran
Singh, as we have seen, had been swamped in 1947 by refugees. One
thousand eight hundred kilometres to the east of Lahore, across central
India’s expanse, in Dacca, India’s representatives were initially spared a
refugee crisis, but were soon tackling a similar set of issues in eastern
Pakistan. B. K. Acharya, India’s deputy high commissioner in Dacca from
1952 to 1956, was cabling his trauma to Delhi as he started his tenure.
The challenge was whether to prioritize refugee issues above all else. Or
to deal simultaneously with a portfolio of equally pressing problems, while
ensuring that conflict did not break out again.
In Delhi and in Calcutta, Pakistan’s diplomats had no easier task as
they dealt with the partition and war. Pakistan’s first envoy in Delhi, Zahid
Hussain,3 an economist who spent six months in India before going on
to found the central bank of Pakistan, was inundated with similar issues.
Hussain, and his successors in the 1950s, were being repeatedly summoned
44 ange r m anage m e nt

by the Indian government to discuss problems of refugees and minorities.

Matters of war and peace and border disputes were no doubt addressed
as well, but not, apparently, with as much immediacy. Informed by the
experience of 1947–48, India was pushing the idea of a ‘no-war pact’ in
its early diplomacy. Pakistan would push back for primacy being given
to territorial disputes. In 1950, when India’s first secretary general of the
Ministry of External Affairs (MEA), Sir Girija Shankar Bajpai, summoned
the Pakistani high commissioner in Delhi to discuss a ‘No War declaration’,
the diplomat replied that ‘existing disputes relating to Kashmir, Junagadh,
the canal waters, and evacuee property ought to be settled first’. But he
promised to explore the matter further with his government.4
These newly minted diplomats of two newly born nations were
addressing common themes of state-building, in the backdrop of a tangle
of other complications arising from the disruptions of Partition—murder,
mayhem, ethnic cleansing, and a war in the Himalaya. In the beginning,
it did seem that there was no clear way forward.

MANAGING MINORITIES
Towards the end of 1947, the diplomatic lines were still being drawn on
what minority issues would be appropriate for Indian and Pakistani envoys
to raise with their hosts, in the larger context of assertions of sovereignty
and surging nationalism. The decoupling of two independent nations was
an accepted principle but its practice was proving hard. Sri Prakasa fielded
endless complaints from India, of ill treatment of Hindus in Pakistan; and
of similar mistreatment of Muslims in India. The envoy felt it was part of
his mandate to convey concerns to both governments on the (mis)treatment
of minorities. The first Indian and Pakistani envoys were addressing
particularly vexed issues related to minorities that would occupy their
successors, to a lesser or higher degree, across the next decades.
When he heard of Hindus being mistreated in Sindh in late 1947, an
agitated Sri Prakasa had dashed off a diplomatic note to the Pakistani
foreign office, asking for an enquiry into the incident. He received a sharp
response that this was Pakistan’s domestic issue, effectively asking him, the
envoy recalled, not to ‘poke my nose in the affair’. Prakasa wrote back
that he agreed with that constitutional position entirely, but would still
like the Pakistan foreign office never to hesitate to enquire of him about
‘any complaints of mistreatment of Muslims in India’. He would ‘make the
fullest enquiries’ and let them know the facts. The Indian diplomat believed
this deft move calmed his prickly hosts and enabled him to subsequently
discuss minority issues more frequently and frankly with Pakistan’s prime
minister, Liaquat Ali. Prakasa even occupied himself with helping in the
‘negotiation of some marriage alliance between families that had migrated
to Pakistan and others that have remained back in India’. His passion for
 de coup l ing 45

playing matchmaker even earned the envoy a flattering compliment from

his Pakistani counterpart in Delhi, who told Prakasa he was working as
an ambassador for both countries.
Even in the early years, while the countries remained in a state
of war, their diplomats doggedly grappled with the minority question.
They set up two India–Pakistan conferences in 1948, focused primarily
on minority issues: one in Calcutta and the other in Karachi. Finance
Minister Ghulam Mohammad led the Pakistan delegation for the first, Sri
Prakasa accompanying him. At the second conference in Karachi, Foreign
Minister Zafarullah Khan headed the Pakistan team. Prakasa rated both
these conferences as entirely futile, even as he got his first taste of the tough
negotiations between the two countries, where hardened positions frustrated
progress. He felt that both countries only made identical allegations in
tense, infructuous meets.
For Sri Prakasa, while Zafarullah Khan had taken inflexible positions
on minority issues in the foreign ministry and United Nations, even
threatening ‘direct action’ against India for infringement of minority
rights, other interlocutors were proving much more sympathetic. Pakistan’s
Minority Affairs minister, Chaudhry Khaliquzzaman, pitched for more sober
negotiations on minority issues, keeping in mind the interests of India’s
Muslims.
Another dynamic struck India’s high commissioner during the bilateral
negotiations. While on a visit to Delhi, Prakasa saw officials in the Delhi
Secretariat welcoming Pakistani secretaries like long-lost brothers. Watching
the warmth of interaction between officials of both sides, Prakasa wondered
why the country had been partitioned at all. Several of his successors
on both sides of the border observed this paradox of personal warmth
and official hostility, at least in the twentieth century. Cultural intimacy
frequently overcame irreconcilable talking points.

NEGOTIATING STATES
The logjams of the first couple of years of diplomacy had seemed
impossible to break. The early disputes included the control and
occupation of Kashmir, settling the question of control over the Indus
Waters canals, evacuee property, division of assets, and the financial
settlement to be completed between two countries. Indeed, by January
1950, relations between the two were mired in deadlock. The two new
armies had already been in conflict in Kashmir by December 1947. The
question of the accession of Hyderabad had come to a head by September
1948. The evacuee property conferences had largely failed in terms of
securing concrete compensation for either government. Inter-dominion
trade had come to a halt entirely following the currency devaluation crisis
of 1949.5
46 ange r m anage m e nt

But matters turned soon enough. Diplomacy in the 1950s saw better
outcomes, seemingly blocking out the rancour of the first three years. A
factor driving the pragmatism was the fact that the early bilateral diplomacy
was led and even conducted at the apex level. After Independence, both
prime ministers continued to hold the foreign portfolios, dealing primarily
with each other. Pakistan had appointed Zafarullah Khan, a jurist, as
foreign minister in December, while Nehru retained that portfolio in all
seventeen years he was prime minister. Nehru in fact began corresponding
with Liaquat Ali on minority issues soon after Jinnah passed away in 1948.
The Nehru–Liaquat Pact of 1950 was a fruit of these early conversations.
The diplomats then continued to work towards a no-war pact that became
another milestone to reach, as they went about building the new nations.
For India, such a deal was more critical, to quell Pakistan’s temptations
for military revisionism. Conversations also started on resolving water
disputes, to move towards an Indus Water Treaty that was finally cobbled
together in 1960 after nine years of tough negotiations.
The decoupling process had begun soon after Partition. Gandhi himself,
along with Mountbatten, had facilitated the first division of assets in 1947.
The Mahatma’s moral pressure and the governor general’s legal argument
had persuaded a reluctant Indian leadership to transfer to Pakistan 550
million rupees as balance of the partition payments, despite Pakistan’s
aggression in Kashmir. A double taxation avoidance agreement was in
place by December 1947. Discussions started on a no-war pact in 1949,
almost as soon as the ceasefire came into effect at the Kashmir border.
But these were halting steps in an overall climate of hostility. It was
only in the 1950s that the diplomatic processes picked up pace. The initial
frustrating bouts of conversation transitioned soon into more serious
negotiations, ending with concrete outcomes. This made the 1950s a most
productive period of diplomacy, bucking the trend of later decades in terms
of sustained diplomatic efforts and outcomes at all levels. In the 1950s,
Nehru had at least five summit meetings with Pakistani prime ministers
on Kashmir.6 And by the late 1950s, negotiations gathered steam for an
ambitious treaty to divide the Indus waters.
The three key outcomes of the first decade of diplomacy were: the
Nehru–Liaquat Pact of 1950, focused on minority rights mainly in Bengal;
the Indus Waters Treaty that was finally concluded in 1960; and discussions
on a ‘no-war pact’, more optics for the world than substance, but important
for replacing war with talks about peace. The no-war pact, a diplomatic
indulgence, drew from the inter-war pacts of Europe, which followed the
principle of surrendering some sovereignty for peace.7
Some have argued that it was the trauma of Partition that triggered
the cooperation of the early years. The shock should have led to mounting
animosity, but did the opposite. The diplomats went about their jobs with
 de coup l ing 47

greater commitment. Conversely, some attribute the accumulating baggage

of hostility of subsequent decades, to the absence of a trauma comparable
to Partition, that precipitated the constructive diplomacy of the 1950s.
While the diplomatic infrastructure being created included mechanisms for
joint solutions, at least the bureaucratic engagement did ‘arrest the pace
of the slide towards hostility’.8

DISPOSSESSED
A key issue for diplomatic negotiation between the two fledgling nations
was of the abandoned possessions of the refugees. The 15 million displaced
left behind a complex challenge for diplomats—of dealing with abandoned
property—as much as 2.7 million hectares of land, almost the size of
Belgium, was abandoned by Hindus and Sikhs in West Punjab alone, with
1.9 million hectares left behind by Muslims in East Punjab.9 This was later
variously described as ‘evacuee property’ or ‘enemy property’, signalling the
intention of both states and the remote possibility of compensation.
India’s high commissioner had a few property matters of his own
to deal with. After he had spent an initial month at the Palace Hotel in
1947, Sri Prakasa received an offer from Pakistan’s fledgling government
to occupy a half-built house in Karachi, that could double as India’s
embassy and the high commissioner’s residence. Prakasa surmised that
his good friend, Liaquat Ali, would have known that the Indian was a
‘widower of simple tastes’ and would make do with this building for both
his office and residence. He noted wryly that the Saudi ambassador had
been offered four houses in the same neighbourhood, reportedly to house
each of his three wives separately, with the fourth one kept vacant for a
possible addition.
Another man worried about property was Liaquat’s boss, Governor
General Jinnah. In effect the most prominent evacuee with property issues
back in India was the founder of Pakistan himself. Jinnah had not entirely
broken up with his former home in India. His heart, according to Sri
Prakasa, was very much in his two houses in Bombay and Delhi, perhaps
the only bond that held with his old country of residence. When Prakasa
met him on one occasion in Karachi, Jinnah had already successfully
negotiated the sale of the historic Delhi house. Only some minor formalities
remained. The house at 10, Aurangzeb Road, where Partition was decided
upon, went to Jinnah’s friend Ramkrishna Dalmia, who rented it out to the
Dutch ambassador for a princely sum of five thousand rupees a month and
eventually sold it to the Dutch government in 1951 for five lakh rupees.
Jinnah loved his Bombay house even more. He was keen that it be
left untouched after Partition, for his return one day. The pressure was
however mounting on the Indian government to take over that property.
Sri Prakasa got a call from Nehru in 1948 saying that the situation was
48 ange r m anage m e nt

becoming embarrassing for the government and it must requisition the

house. Nehru asked his envoy to check with Jinnah what rent he wanted
for the house and what he planned to do with it. Prakasa sought an
interview and was granted one soon.
Jinnah received the envoy in a sitting room with ‘heaps of files’ around
him. Pakistan’s governor general was taken aback by the Indian prime
minister’s message and ‘almost pleadingly’ said: ‘Sri Prakasa, don’t break
my heart. Tell Jawaharlal not to break my heart. I have built it brick by
brick. Who can live in a house like that? What fine verandahs! It is a
small house fit only for a small European family or a refined Indian prince.
You do not know how I love Bombay. I still look forward to going back
there’. The surprised envoy asked Jinnah if he really wanted to go back
to Bombay and whether he could report this to his prime minister. Jinnah
was emphatic: ‘Yes, you may.’10
Sri Prakasa immediately relayed this conversation to Nehru, who later
also received a letter from Jinnah, repeating his wishes for the house. The
house remained undisturbed, until pressure again built up after a few
months. Nehru instructed Prakasa to say that the house this time must
be requisitioned and Jinnah be asked to specify the rent. Prakasa wrote
to Jinnah, who was by then sick with tuberculosis and recuperating in
the mountain town of Ziarat on the North-West Frontier. The envoy got
a reply saying that Jinnah wanted three thousand rupees a month and
hoped his wishes on the nature of the tenant would be respected. It had
not occurred to Jinnah to ask if the property could be earmarked for a
Pakistani diplomat. The house eventually went to the British deputy high
commissioner. The episode left India’s envoy to wonder if Jinnah’s heart
belonged not in the government house in Karachi but in his house in
Malabar Hill, Bombay.
This extraordinary exchange between the two subcontinental leaders
took place at a time their countries were at war. An envoy was brokering
the price of real estate, not peace between warring forces in the state of
Kashmir. In his telling, Prakasa suggests that Jinnah at some level still
hoped for a scenario where Pakistan’s founder could visit India and stay
in his Bombay house. Other biographers of Jinnah have argued that he
may have just been having a weak moment.11
What this episode does support is the thesis that Jinnah had been so
consumed by his efforts to create Pakistan that he had never got around
to seriously plotting its future. His months in power, beset with a host of
crises of nation-building, aggravated by debilitating disease, made it harder
for him to define a long-term vision for Pakistan, let alone planning its
relations with its largest neighbour. His distrust of India’s leaders, his former
Congress colleagues, was accompanied by an often benign, if simplistic,
vision of India–Pakistan relations, even when the countries were at war.
 de coup l ing 49

On one occasion, he observed to the first US ambassador to Pakistan,

Paul Alling, that India and Pakistan could be like USA and Canada. The
parallels were striking—the two North American countries shared the
longest border either possessed, traded with each other and shared bonds
of history. Besides the US was separated from a non-contiguous wing,
Alaska, by the vast expanse of Canada. The difference of course was that
the expanse between East and West Pakistan belonged to an adversarial
neighbour with a recent history of bitter conflict.
When Jinnah died, his will bestowed Jinnah House to his sister Fatima.
The story continued in the twenty-first century, when Vajpayee first accepted
and then rejected in 2002 the contention of Jinnah’s grandson (Nusli
Wadia) that the house belonged to him. The house was eventually taken
over by the MEA.

SHARING THE SKIES

After the land was divided, the skies had to be split too. Overflights over
each other’s territories became an issue for both countries then and later.
Bans on overflights became accepted instruments of political play and
diplomacy. This was even more so when Pakistan was ‘that country divided
into two Wings without a body’ with an eastern and western wing. In
March 1948, when Jinnah wanted to fly from Karachi to Dacca, to visit the
eastern wing of his new nation, he was keen not to land on Indian territory,
with the countries at war in Kashmir. Prakasa phoned Prime Minister
Nehru and got the overflight authorization. The envoy subsequently signed
an air services agreement on behalf of India in Karachi in June 1948; it
ambitiously envisaged flights by designated airlines of both countries on
multiple routes including Delhi–Karachi and Calcutta–Dacca. Overflights
went smoothly through the 1950s and 1960s and became an issue only in
1971. They then continued to be contested for India’s westward flights over
the territory of Pakistan and Pakistan’s eastward flights to Southeast Asia.

EXPULSIONS
The fine tradition of expelling high commission staff had got off to an
early start, within a year of the setting up of the embassies. In 1948, India
accused four Pakistani air force officers of spying.12 It amused Prakasa that
Pakistan discovered the identical number of officers of identical status on
the Indian side who were doing the ‘self-same work of spying’. Later, when
a second secretary of the Pakistan high commission in Delhi was asked to
leave on allegations of spying—to be subsequently rebranded as ‘conduct
unbecoming of status as a diplomat’—the Pakistan government found an
Indian second secretary in Karachi also to be guilty of a similar offence and
required him to be withdrawn. A robust tradition of expulsions grew, not
quite matching the Cold War dynamic of detection and expulsion of spies
50 ange r m anage m e nt

between the two superpower blocs, but becoming an indicator of the state
of the relationship.

TRADING WITH THE ENEMY

Under the British empire, South Asia was perhaps the most integrated
region in the world. Till 1947, goods and people could transit freely from
Rangoon to Kabul. This changed with Partition. The barriers that came
up make this one of the least economically integrated regions on the
planet over seventy-five years later. The early diplomats kept the economic
decoupling going despite heavy odds—an agreement to avoid double
taxation had been put in place in December 1947 even as a conflict raged
in Kashmir, while the first banking and trade agreements were in place by
June 1949.
The statist economic models of the early days ensured that trade
also pitted economic liberalism against the forces of nationalism. Both
countries were in the grip of nationalist economic fervour that favoured state
intervention rather than the free movements of goods and commodities.13
The early economic arrangements were particularly shaken by a burst
of Pakistani nationalism. Prime Minister Liaquat Ali was completing the
Pakistanization of the armed forces, appointing the future dictator Ayub
Khan in January 1949 to replace the British officer Bucher. In the same vein,
Liaquat in September 1949 refused to join India and other members of the
sterling currency area in devaluing their currencies against the US dollar.
As the Indian rupee plunged in value against Pakistan’s, India retaliated by
ceasing trade, thus ending the effective common market that had existed
between the two dominions since 1947.
While the non-devaluation by Pakistan of the pound sterling created
trouble for India, it had another unforeseen consequence for West Pakistan’s
leaders. The decision impacted strongly on the eastern wing of Pakistan.
The jute trade, tied with India till 1949, suffered a body blow. The resulting
recession in East Pakistan fed into existing political discontent and further
strained relations between the two wings.14 Effectively, in parallel to the
decoupling between the two sovereign nations, the decoupling of the two
wings of Pakistan had also begun soon after Independence.
 5

THE FORMATI VE FI FTI E S

T hree years after Independence, the sibling nations had managed to

survive the disruptions of Partition, refugees, the Kashmir conflict,
and a befuddling start to a decoupling process. Their domestic political
trajectories—as also rapid global realignments—were now influencing
their diplomacy. India had rapidly written its new Constitution, after
its Constituent Assembly robustly debated its expansive provisions,
drawing from the best global experiences in democracy. The 1950
Constitution, envisaging a republic empowering the Indian people with
electoral democracy, became the greatest political venture since the one
in Philadelphia in 1787—as important a victory for freedom as America’s
two centuries earlier.1 Historians have since made persuasive parallels of
the Constitution’s adoption with the American and French revolutions.
The document that would define India’s democracy, itself a gigantic step
for a people previously ‘dedicated largely to irrational means of achieving
otherworldly goals’, established both national ideals and institutional
mechanisms to achieve them.2
Even as the Constitution set India up for a decade of consolidating the
republic, the country was blessed with strong leaders to guide the political
process. The team of Nehru and Patel had given India steady hands at the
wheel in the foundational three years of the new nation. Across the border,
Pakistan had a tougher start, aggravated by the passing of Jinnah barely a
year after Partition. The country still struggled to define its identity, failing
to give itself effective governance structures or a foundational document.
During this period, diplomatic exchanges between the neighbours
intensified despite the deep divide of Kashmir. Sri Prakasa left Karachi
for Assam after eighteen months of his diplomatic innings, to start a
new gubernatorial career. Nehru continued the tradition of Indian high
commissioners arriving in Karachi brandishing pre-Partition connections
with Pakistani leaders. Prakasa was succeeded by Sita Ram, who had been
the president of the provincial UP legislative assembly before Partition,
where Liaquat Ali was his deputy. The third high commissioner, Mohan
Singh Mehta, a well-connected London barrister and incidentally the father
of 1970s foreign secretary Jagat Mehta was personally roped in by Nehru
for the job. The fourth, C. C. Desai, had been a friend at Cambridge of
Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s prime minister during the envoy’s term.
The diplomats faced newer challenges. While the partition of Punjab at
Independence was the biggest crisis faced by the diplomats, civil servants
52 ange r m anage m e nt

and leaders of the day, the other partition in the east had been less bloody.
It had not caused a massacre or mass transfer of populations in 1947,
but was still a problem on a slower fuse. India’s diplomats in Dacca then
had feared a continuing exodus of refugees that would threaten India’s
economy. Three years later, long after the dust had settled on the chaotic
mass migrations in the west, their worst fears were coming true.
Soon after India became a republic in 1950, Sukumar Sen, the chief
secretary of West Bengal, travelled to Dacca for one of his periodic meetings
with his East Pakistani counterpart, Aziz Ahmed. On 10 February, around
mid-morning, while the talks were in progress in the secretariat building,
the Pakistani side sprang a surprise: they paraded a woman in blood-
stained clothes—allegedly a Muslim rape victim from Calcutta.3 This story
was played up in the media, provoking anger and eventually violence—a
bloodbath of revenge against Hindus across East Pakistan.
For B. K. Acharya, India’s deputy high commissioner in Dacca in 1950,
the problem was real and immediate. Soon after the secretariat drama, he
was cabling home blood-curdling stories of Muslim mobs killing Hindus.
In February 1950, Bengal was facing its communal catastrophe much the
way Punjab encountered its holocaust in 1947 and Sindh in 1948. Acharya
was on the frontlines of this challenge, as he reported massacres, rapes,
and the forced expulsion of more than 5 million Hindus by Muslim mobs.
Prime Minister Nehru publicly accused Pakistan of sustained ‘anti-India
and anti-Hindu’ propaganda in East Bengal.4

NEGOTIATING MINORITIES
Eruptions of communal violence in Bengal and Sindh in 1950 engaged
India’s diplomats. Sri Prakasa remained deeply involved in calling out
the violence, provoking Ghulam Muhammad, Pakistan’s minister for
minorities, to remark: ‘Mr. Sri Prakasa looks after the interests of Hindus
in Sind. My government gives him every facility to do so.... Ask him if his
house is not the beehive of lots of people.’5 Pakistan was claiming similar
rights in India. K. Shahbuddin, a member of the Pakistan delegation on
minority matters, contended that his own government had every right to
raise the issue of the treatment of Muslims throughout India, since it was
also ‘a question of principle’, involving both the governments’ concerns
with minority welfare across the border.6
While politicians on both sides were playing up minority politics, the
mandarins were acutely conscious of the pitfalls of this activism. Nehru
himself had not made up his mind as to ‘what the Government of India
could do to assist those who were nationals of Pakistan and were still living
in East Bengal’.7 Subimal Dutt, secretary in India’s Ministry of External
Affairs, advised the first deputy high commissioner at Dacca, Surjit Bose,
that ‘in strict theory, minorities must seek the protection of their government,
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 53

and not of the government of the neighbouring Dominion’. Chief Secretary

Sen pointed out in Calcutta: ‘If we want our High Commissioner or Deputy
High Commissioner to pursue complaints from Hindus in East Bengal, a
similar request from Pakistan is sure to come.’ Too close a relationship
between the minority populations and the diplomatic missions would also
lead to ‘Muslims in India coming to regard the Government of Pakistan
as their protector’ and which would ‘be taken advantage of by Pakistan
and will lead to embarrassing results in actual practice.’ Moreover, the
consequence of such a policy would also require the granting of facilities
to the Pakistan deputy high commissioners to ‘visit all parts of the Indian
Union, since it is their contention that that Muslim migration has been
taking place from all across the Indian Union’.8
Delegations from both countries started meeting in 1950 to negotiate
these pressing minority issues. The failure of the 1948 agreement to quell
anti-minority actions was obvious, so not much hope was pinned on a
fresh understanding. But what was different now was that both Nehru
and Liaquat Ali felt impelled to put out the communal fires in Bengal
and were informed by the experience in Punjab and Sindh. The anger at
atrocities against minorities was manifesting in curious ways—some talk
began of exercising the military option both to visit revenge and to resolve
the minority problem. An alarmed president of India, Rajendra Prasad,
wrote to Nehru on 18 March urging that war be avoided.9
To the surprise of observers, the Nehru–Liaquat Pact was inked in April
1950, despite widely divergent views on the subject of minorities. It was a
strong political signal on the security of minorities. Apart from providing
for safe passage to refugees wishing to return to dispose of property, it
envisaged retrieval of looted property and rescue of abducted women, with
a special focus on Bengal. The document superseded the 1948 pact that
had given greater political weight to structures and mechanisms. What
struck some observers of the day was that while attempting decoupling,
the countries were surrendering some sovereignty. They had endorsed an
entirely new principle: that the representative of India in Pakistan would
have certain responsibilities towards Pakistani Hindus while his Pakistani
counterpart in India would similarly bear some responsibility towards the
Muslims living in India.10
Despite its infirmities, the Nehru–Liaquat Pact did quell the violence
and answer the immediate needs of minorities in the partitioned east. It
also stood the hostage population theory on its head, advocating the need
of mutual ownership of minorities in Bengal, with promises of their welfare
rather than reciprocal threats of harm. But the significance of the pact went
deeper, into issues of identity and nationalism. For Pallavi Raghavan, this
agreement would extend the jurisdiction of their high commissions into
the welfare of minority citizens across the border. To states as notoriously
54 ange r m anage m e nt

prickly about their sovereignty and jurisdiction as India and Pakistan,

the signing of such an agreement by their prime ministers did represent
a significant moment.
The pact was also ‘an example of how, in the aftermath of partition,
the necessity of solidifying the fact of the partition further, could also
enable acts of greater cooperation between both states’.11
The document represented a pragmatic understanding of the reality of
minority politics but was at the same time an awkward, even dangerous,
formulation, compromising sovereignty for dealing with domestic minorities.
Not everyone agreed with the radical provisions of the pact. Syama
Prasad Mookerjee, India’s first minister for Industry and Supply, resigned
from Nehru’s cabinet, questioning the agreement, as also the special status
for Kashmir. He went on to found the Bharatiya Jana Sangh, the predecessor
to the Bharatiya Janata Party, in 1951.

TRUST AND TRADE

Trade between the neighbours appeared essential, despite the animosity,
to replace the internal trade that had prevailed till 1947. By February
1951, as the first trade agreement lapsed, India and Pakistan signed a
more efficient one in Karachi, despite the erosion of trust and Pakistan’s
refusal to devalue its currency. So, the countries agreed that India would
export coal, steel, pig iron, cement, timber, and textiles to Pakistan, and
import from Pakistan jute, cotton, food grains, hides, and skins. The trade
agreement of February 1951 was seen all over the world as a triumph of
economic commonsense over politics. The terms of these agreements were
fractiously negotiated, but were, nonetheless, carried out.12
In later years, trade would be seen both an argument for promoting
peaceful interdependence and building confidence on the one hand and a
ban on it as an instrument for expressing anger, on the other.
Despite these positive developments, Pakistan’s army remained bitter
about its government’s handling of the Kashmir war. The acceptance of UN
mediation and ceasefire was seen as weakness and a squandered opportunity
to capture the valley of Kashmir. On 23 February 1951, rebel officers
led by Major General Akbar Khan, who was smarting from his failed
adventure of 1947, met with leftist revolutionaries like poet Faiz Ahmed
Faiz, to force out the Liaquat government. The failed coup, dubbed the
Rawalpindi Conspiracy, became the first of several such coup attempts in
Pakistan’s history, their success rate climbing from Pakistan’s second decade.
A few months after the failed coup attempt, Liaquat Ali fell to an
assassin’s bullet. This murder mystery would never be solved, but the needle
of suspicion pointed in the direction of the army. Speculation has swirled
since that Liaquat was punished for his attempts to work out a no-war pact
with India.13 The hardliners saw any pact foreclosing the option of military
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 55

action as abandoning the Kashmir cause. With Liaquat’s assassination,

Pakistan’s national politics entered a chaotic period of ‘destruction of
democracy’, during which bureaucrats were increasingly transformed from
the ‘state’s servants to its masters’.14 Liaquat was posthumously seen as the
only other politician who could have taken the baton from Jinnah. But
history would damn Liaquat Ali Khan with faint praise, as a ‘respected if
uncharismatic prime minister, who was to stand head and shoulders above
most of his successors’.15 Pakistan’s fledgling democracy floundered in the
1950s, but in India Nehru remained the unquestioned leader through the
decade.

CHOOSING BETWEEN MOTHERS

India held its first general elections by early 1952. This exciting experiment
was following up on the Constitution that had uniquely empowered India’s
masses with universal franchise. A newly independent country had chosen
to move straight into universal adult franchise, rather than at first reserve
the right to vote to men of property, with the working class and women
granted the right much later.16 Nehru received a resounding mandate from
the people of India to consolidate the new nation.
Across the border, Pakistan’s leaders showed neither the will nor the
vision to hold elections or to give its people a constitution. But they were
trying to catch up with India’s bureaucratic structures. An executive cabinet
decision had given administrative basis to cobble together a diplomatic
service in June 1948. Much of it was improvised by inviting Muslim officers
serving in India, particularly from the ICS, to take charge on an ad hoc
basis. Pakistan’s foreign service was finally created with a formal resolution
in October 1952, five years after the birth of the country. The structure
pretty much mirrored the British and Indian foreign services, and many of
the basic political instincts were similar, emanating from the same DNA.
As a side note to the making of the Pakistani diplomatic corps, it should
be mentioned that not all diplomats in Pakistan were personally convinced
that religion was a sufficient basis for statehood or even for choosing the
state they served. One of them was Ansar Khan, one of Pakistan’s first
diplomats at the UN headquarters in the 1950s. Khan identified more
with India’s view of the world. Indian politician, writer, and former UN
diplomat Shashi Tharoor tells his story.
The positions taken by Indian diplomats at the United Nations, their
leadership in challenging apartheid, Nehru’s role on the Suez crisis,
and the policy of non-alignment, all struck (Khan) as speaking to his
own sensibilities, articulating his own soul...why did he now have
to be Pakistani when every fibre of his moral and intellectual being
rejected the two-nation theory and abhorred what had become of his
56 ange r m anage m e nt

land? ....Ansar Hussain Khan finally received his wish. He surrendered

his Pakistani passport and ....became an Indian. Ansar bhai was living
in retirement in Geneva...when he snapped. He...shot (his wife) dead...
and succumbed himself to a heart attack...to most Indian officials
it was his astonishing choice that defined him; he was always the
Pakistani who switched sides, just as he would always remain, in
Pakistani eyes, the traitor who crossed over to the enemy.17
Ansar Khan’s stark dilemma and his crisis of identity was also Pakistan’s.
But the diplomat made a more wrenching, and ultimately tragic, personal
choice.

JOINT DEFENCE AGAINST WHOM?

The Pakistan Army, under the leadership of General Ayub Khan from
1951, was spoiling for a larger role in the polity as the only efficiently
functioning public institution in Pakistan. In fact, the seeds of Ayub’s
rule were planted in 1953, when the Pakistan Army stepped in to quell
a rebellion in Punjab against the Ahmaddiyas, a sect seen as not being
Muslim enough. The army, it was contended, saved the state from chaos.
The myth these events bred of the infallibility and clinical efficiency of the
army, and it being the only institution in Pakistan that worked had now
taken root.18
Pakistan’s army was watching other curious political developments
that year. Prime Minister Khawaja Nazimuddin was ousted as a result of
internal turmoil, including the anti-Ahmaddiya riots and other incidents,
leaving a leadership vacuum. Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States
got a pleasant surprise soon after, when, on a visit to Karachi, he found
himself elevated as prime minister of his country. Mohammad Ali Bogra,
a Muslim League political activist from East Bengal, had joined Pakistan’s
diplomatic service in 1947, and served as envoy in Burma and Canada
before he was appointed Pakistan’s ambassador to the US. Bogra was an
outsider and political lightweight and therefore acceptable to the powerful
Governor General Ghulam Mohammad. Bogra also happened to be an anti-
communist believer in a strong US relationship for Pakistan. He went about
strengthening the US alliance, earning the appreciation of the secretary of
state John Foster Dulles, President Eisenhower’s aggressive Cold War hound.
At the same time, Dulles was deeply suspicious of Nehru. The feeling
was mutual. The American claim was that Nehru’s fidelity to the concept
of non-alignment was ‘obsolete, immoral and short-sighted’. Nehru did
not take kindly to this interpretation. The US was clearly privileging anti-
communist postures to ones of democratic solidarity, at the height of the
containment policy against communism.19 When he would fall out of favour
in domestic power struggles two years later in August 1955, and had to
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 57

step down as prime minister, Bogra would simply manage a deal to be

appointed again as ambassador to the US, provoking commentators of the
day to dismiss him as more suited to being a diplomat than a politician.
He would later bounce back as Pakistan’s foreign minister in 1962.
But Bogra’s years as prime minister were also years of frenetic diplomacy
between India and Pakistan. He met Nehru thrice in 1953 alone and
would visit India multiple times during his tenure. In the first phase of the
direct negotiations in 1953, Nehru and Bogra met in London on 5 June,
in Karachi on 25 July, and in New Delhi on 16 August. The atmospherics
seemed favourable. Nehru received an ecstatic welcome in Karachi. Bogra,
in turn, got a rousing reception in New Delhi. Badruddin Tyabji, who
accompanied Nehru to Karachi in 1953, called this a golden period of
India–Pakistan relations, which saw an upsurge of emotional longing for
reconciliation and an open conversation on Kashmir.20
Both men talked up their meetings as productive. But Bogra was
aiming for the sky and blamed Nehru for throwing cold water on his
proposal for a ‘joint defence policy’.21 This was a bizarre ambition under
any circumstances—of rival countries emerging from war and a bitter
partition to discuss a joint defence pact or a military alliance. Against
whom? The Russians? The Chinese? Nehru was restrained in not dismissing
this absurd proposal out of hand. He diplomatically pointed out that
such an agreement must be based on a common foreign policy of the
two countries; otherwise, it could easily lead to India being involved in
military pacts contrary to her non-alignment policy.22
Kashmir, still the central contentious issue between the countries, was
seeing dramatic developments in 1953. In June, Syama Prasad Mookerjee
was arrested by the Jammu and Kashmir Police when he tried to cross the
border of the state demanding the abolition of its special status. He was
provisionally diagnosed with a heart attack and shifted to a hospital but
died a day later. A young journalist who accompanied him, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, would return from the border to continue the campaign across the
decades. Nehru had not abandoned a commitment to ‘ascertain the people’s
wishes’, squeezed as he was between the maximalist demands such as those
of Mookerjee—full integration—and Sheikh Abdullah—full autonomy.23 In
July, Nehru was in Karachi, for a visit that involved tough negotiations
on Kashmir. In August, in what was seen as Nehru’s massive error of
judgement, he had Sheikh Abdullah dismissed and arrested. For Pakistan,
Abdullah changed ‘from quisling to poster boy of Kashmir freedom’.24
Much of the bilateral conversation focused on Kashmir. Nehru seemed
to have reluctantly agreed to the demand for a plebiscite in the state.
But differences remained. Pakistan was clearly seeking to challenge India
through an alliance with the US, and Bogra was himself the channel for
the US outreach. Nehru was concerned that the US was no longer neutral,
58 ange r m anage m e nt

its pointed overtures to Pakistan bringing the Cold War to South Asia.
Bogra was unhappy when Nehru suggested a plebiscite administrator from
a small country, instead of Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz of the US.
The superpower play in the region gave Nehru additional reason to walk
out of the plebiscite deal.

A SEAT IN SEATO
In May 1954, Pakistan entered into a military pact with the emerging
superpower and Britain’s closest post-war ally, the US. The ‘Mutual
Defence Agreement’, finalized in Karachi, had been designed by the
Eisenhower regime to pull Pakistan firmly into the American orbit. The US
continued to push a pliable Bogra on defence pacts, as it searched for allies
against the growing threat of communist expansion. Dulles was delighted
at Bogra delivering Pakistan’s concurrence in joining the US in the anti-
communist SEATO alliance in September.
With its entry into a key alliance mirroring the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), Pakistan had walked firmly into the US camp.
It would soon also enter the Baghdad Pact, later rechristened Central
Treaty Organization (CENTO), a UK-and US-designed alliance in West
Asia, another Cold War defence barrier against the Soviets. For Pakistan,
these alliances served to cement its partnership with the West and turn
on the taps for US military and economic aid to counter India. Many
in Pakistan saw the largesse as reward for Prime Minister Liaquat Ali’s
refusal to be seduced by Stalin’s invitation to Moscow and instead show
up in the US in 1950. Pakistan’s moves, later seen as a strategy to ‘extract
geopolitical rents’, was perhaps Pakistan’s original foreign policy blunder
that ‘securitized’ its polity—putting the army into the driving seat—and
put its economy on crutches. The Soviets under Stalin continued to be
suspicious not just of Pakistan as a British proxy, but even of India as a
‘Commonwealth lackey’, rather than a country seeking strategic autonomy
through a Nehruvian vision and the invention of the political idea of
non-alignment.
The Cold War was intensifying and the US was replacing the UK as the
predominant Western global power. Pakistan’s dalliance with the US was
not going down too well with Nehru. On one occasion, Bogra gave away
Pakistan’s internal thinking to a US magazine: ‘US aid might help Pakistan
in solving the Kashmir problem by augmenting her military power’.25 This
outraged Nehru. With the US having now become a party in the India–
Pakistan problem, Nehru hardened his position on Kashmir and demanded
the withdrawal of American personnel from the UN Observer group.
Pakistan’s anti-communist thinking ruled out China as a partner at
this stage. China was not yet an important power and the communist
country was consolidating itself with a stronger embrace of the Soviet
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 59

Union. It had also apparently come closer to Pakistan’s arch-rival India,

through ‘Panchsheel’—the five principles that spoke of non-aggression and
non-interference. These had been emphasized in a joint statement in Delhi
on 18 June 1954 by Nehru and Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in what was
later seen by India as the ‘Panchsheel deception’. Neither side then touched
upon the long, ambiguously-defined boundary between them.26
Within India, Kashmir was being more firmly integrated into the country.
In May 1954, a presidential order effectively curtailed the special status
and statutory autonomy given to Kashmir in 1950. The federal government
now had legislative jurisdiction in a majority of subjects of the Union List,
beyond the three matters—defence, foreign affairs, and communication—
listed in the 1947 Instrument of Accession. This was seen as the ‘beginning
of the end’ of Article 370 of the Constitution that had granted temporary
autonomy to the Muslim-majority state.27
By September, it was apparent that direct negotiations had stalled.
Pakistan’s establishment, empowered by the US, was opposing a peaceful
bilateral settlement on Kashmir, while India was strongly opposing US
military assistance to Pakistan. But the atmospherics again changed abruptly
by the end of October 1954, after political changes in Pakistan led to
the dissolution of the Constituent Assembly and a stronger grip by the
Pakistan Army on the cabinet—General Iskander Mirza became minister
of the interior and General Ayub Khan became the minister of defence.

A SOVIET AFFAIR
This soft coup in Pakistan that catapulted Ayub Khan to the cabinet, and
promised some political coherence within, provided an unexpected boost
to relations with India. It led to a situation that would become unthinkable
from the next decade: India invited Pakistan’s head of state as guest of
honour for its Republic Day military parade in January 1955. Governor
General Ghulam Mohammad of the Dominion of Pakistan responded
enthusiastically and came with his prime minister and two other senior
cabinet ministers in tow. His words at a state banquet seemed to signal the
start of a new era:
I think this dark period of strain has now lasted too long and the
time has now come to end it completely.... Let us put an end to our
disputes. We owe this as a duty to posterity not to leave them a legacy
of misunderstandings and bitterness.28
The dark period would, of course, not end even in the next several decades.
But the visit created enough goodwill to trigger the resumption of direct
talks. These began in May 1955, when Prime Minister Mohammad Ali
Bogra showed up in Delhi again. The leaders seemed to be keen to try
‘new ideas’ and a new approach, implicitly giving up on the old idea of
60 ange r m anage m e nt

a plebiscite in Kashmir. Nehru later revealed that he had even offered his
Pakistani counterpart a permanent and formal division of the state along
the 1949 ceasefire line.29
The fresh diplomatic initiatives came in for international acclaim. The
New York Times commented: ‘Both Pakistan and India were talking about
plans which would be variations of the status quo of a divided state
and would not involve a plebiscite in the entire state.’30 Bogra, in his
enthusiasm, now annoyed his own side when he went further than the
traditional Pakistani position in his public remarks. Speaking of new ideas,
he suggested that either a referendum or elections would be as acceptable as
a plebiscite to Pakistan in ascertaining the wishes of the people of Kashmir.
On his return to Pakistan on 19 May, the prime minister faced blistering
media attacks for his folly. He was compelled to rapidly climb down, as
critics demanded that there should be no more bilateral talks with India.
He was obliged to clarify that the Kashmir issue had not been withdrawn
from the UN. Pakistan’s media played up this about-face—while he had
returned from Delhi satisfied with the results of his meeting with Pandit
Nehru, Mr Muhammad Ali Bogra now says that no satisfactory progress
was made in Delhi.31 In 1955, Nehru’s policy of non-alignment still had
a virtuous glow about it. But India was beginning to show some realism
and flexibility in choosing partners. Watching the moves in South Asia by
its rival, the US, a de-Stalinizing Soviet Union made a friendly overture to
India, the first partnership it was attempting with a ‘third world’ nation.
Prime Minister Nehru travelled to a warm reception in Moscow in June
1955, where Soviet Premier Nikolai Bulganin even proposed ‘suggesting at
a later stage India’s inclusion as the sixth member of the Security Council.’
In a lapse of judgement, Nehru felt this was not a serious possibility and
preferred to wait till mainland China was admitted.32 A few months later,
Bulganin accompanied the first secretary of the Communist Party, Nikita
Khrushchev, on a return visit to India. The duo also spent a weekend in
Srinagar where Khrushchev won over his Indian hosts by stating that the
whole of Kashmir was part of India.33 Khrushchev made it abundantly clear
that the Soviet Union would be a reliable partner, sensitive to India’s core
interests. The USSR supported Indian sovereignty over Kashmir and the
Portuguese coastal enclave of Goa. Multiple Soviet vetoes in the Security
Council in subsequent years gave India a great deal of diplomatic comfort.
India’s growing geopolitical weight based on support from a superpower
was not however matched by economic muscle. It was emerging from the
depredations of empire with a struggling economy, growing moderately at
just over 3 per cent. Nehru had set up an economic experiment of state-
driven growth with the state occupying the commanding heights of the
economy. He had launched the first Five-Year Plan in 1951, focusing on
industrializing the country and building infrastructure in key sectors like
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 61

energy and transportation. Large river dams and power projects like the
Bhakra Nangal were being seen as the ‘temples of modern India’. India
was struggling with poverty and underdevelopment, even while punching
above its weight in global affairs as Nehru took a leadership position in
the developing world. But in October 1956, with the Soviet invasion of
Hungary and India’s silence on the issue, the halo of non-alignment was
dulling and the West was beginning to get disillusioned with Nehru.34

AN INTEGRAL PART
In November 1956, the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir
adopted a resolution making the state an integral part of the Indian union
and accepting the affiliation of the state to India. In a reaction akin to the
one in August 2019, when Article 370 was amended by India, a flustered
Pakistan raised the matter strongly with the United Nations Security
Council (UNSC), protesting this move to reorganize the state internally.
India argued that the UN had failed to settle the question of aggression
by Pakistan and that India’s promise of plebiscite was to the people of
Kashmir and not to the Government of Pakistan. It did not occur to
anyone to try and expel diplomats. On its part, Pakistan finally worked out
its constitution, six years after India’s, to graduate from a British dominion
to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan.
X
In the first decade of Independence, the UN provided the platform for
India and Pakistan to parry over Kashmir. And diplomacy over the ex-
princely state at the UN acquired a life and dynamic of its own. On
23 January 1957, the head of the Indian delegation to the UN, Krishna
Menon, delivered an eight-hour speech in New York, defending India’s
stand on Kashmir. India’s diplomat had scored a point, beating the record
of Pakistan’s foreign minister, Zafarullah Khan, who had famously spoken
on Kashmir for five hours in 1948, soon after India took the matter to
the UN.35 To date, Menon’s speech is the longest ever delivered in the
United Nations, covering five hours of the 762nd meeting of the UN
Security Council on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes
the next day. Between the two parts, India’s star diplomat collapsed from
exhaustion and had to be hospitalized. Menon’s passionate defence of
Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and
led to the Indian press dubbing him the ‘Hero of Kashmir’, a few years
before he became the villain of China for his role as defence minister
during the Chinese aggression of 1962.
The filibuster at the UN was accompanied by Nehru’s moves to
consolidate the federal hold on Kashmir. The Constituent Assembly of
Jammu and Kashmir, now adopted the new Constitution for the state that
62 ange r m anage m e nt

declared it an integral part of the union of India. The final move came
symbolically on India’s seventh Republic Day on 26 January 1957. The
Constituent Assembly then dissolved itself to make way for an elected
legislative assembly.
Menon’s efforts did not prevent the Security Council from passing a
resolution on 24 January, criticizing the resolution passed by the Constituent
Assembly of Kashmir and insisting that the future of the state could be
decided only by plebiscite. This was the last time the Security Council
was to intervene in the Kashmir dispute. Another draft resolution on 14
February was vetoed by the Soviet Union. This was the first Soviet veto,
and was to be followed by several more.
Soon after, the next mediator appointed by the UN, the Swedish
diplomat Gunnar Jarring, visited both India and Pakistan in the spring of
1957, but failed to resolve their differences. He concluded that the changes in
political, economic, and strategic factors surrounding the Kashmir question,
together with the changing pattern of the relations of the major powers
with Pakistan and India, had created a situation where a peaceful plebiscite
could not be held.
Meanwhile India’s second general elections in 1957 reaffirmed its
democratic credentials and the argument that the people of Kashmir were
expressing their views by voting both federally and provincially. Nehru
received a fresh mandate to govern an India he was consolidating. At the
peak of his power, Nehru quipped that Pakistan had one army chief and six
prime ministers in this period while it was the other way round for India.
It was not just Nehru and the leaders of the day that were passionate
about Kashmir and its future. The issue evoked much fervour among Indian
and Pakistani diplomats for the decade, with another military solution
attempted by Pakistan in the next. Both military action and diplomacy
have remained tools on the table ever since.
X
The first decade was also unique for the scale of challenges and the
counter-intuitively constructive responses. The pains of Partition, its
brutal massacres, its teeming refugees, served not just to scar psyches and
poison ties, but also to present huge logistical challenges to the fledgling
nations. The territorial challenge was of integrating the princely states. The
principal problem was the status of Kashmir, over which the sibling nations
had their first war that started a few weeks after Independence and ended
with the ceasefire of 1949.
Though both countries lost their founding fathers, Gandhi and Jinnah,
in 1948, just about within a year of Independence, their trajectories differed.
While Pakistan’s polity floundered, India recovered, with its first prime
minister, Nehru, consolidating the polity and economy, accepting the reality
 t he f orm at ive f ift i e s 63

of Pakistan. Yet, surprisingly, the diplomacy between the countries remained

sincere, professional, and constructive, as the new nations tried to decouple
themselves as independent states and negotiate the minutiae of their new
diplomatic ties, the building of their states.
The first decade was not just setting the basis for the future relationship
between the two young nations. According to Pallavi Raghavan, the period
in fact ‘witnessed the height of the sense of possibility in the capacity
of the state, and the capabilities, responsibilities, and accommodativeness
of its institutions’. The ‘hectic cooperation and dialogue’ of the 1950s
had a deeper significance, Raghavan argues, ‘since that generation had
witnessed the very worst of the traumas of sub-continental politics.’ Yet,
they concluded that the ‘best remedy for the situation called for a series of
detailed negotiations.’36 Both the traumas and the fruit of the negotiations
were passed on to succeeding generations of diplomats.
If Nehru found it tedious to deal with the unimaginative ‘daftaries’
(bureaucrats) of Pakistan in his first decade as PM, dealing with the ‘vardis’
(uniforms) in the next decade would be simpler. But a miscalculation in
the second decade would lead to war and squander many of the surprising
victories of the early years.
 SECTION 2

1957–1967: DICTATORS AND DEMOCRATS

 6

THE GARRI SON S TATE

R ajeshwar Dayal, India’s designated high commissioner to Pakistan, felt

some trepidation as he prepared to present his credentials to General
Ayub Khan, his host country’s first military dictator. He had arrived in an
ornate horse-drawn carriage at the president’s house in Karachi and waited
in the ‘durbar hall’ that reminded Dayal of the Rashtrapati Bhavan back
home in Delhi. It was November 1958, a month after Ayub had dislodged
his country’s president, Iskander Mirza, in a bloodless coup, to crown
himself Pakistan’s head of state. A mythology of clinical, even brutal,
efficiency was being spun around Ayub—here was the strongman Pakistan
needed to pull itself out of a stagnating quagmire spawned by years of
ineffective leadership; here was the man for the moment, the patriot who
headed Pakistan’s only effective functioning institution, the army; here was
the ruthless leader who would remove the scum and arrest the decay for
the good of the people. Pakistan, the argument went, had been done in
by poor rulers in its formative decade, while India had progressed under
statesmen of stature; so finally, here was a Pakistani leader in the second
decade who would usher in an era of better governance.
On 27 October 1958, a few weeks before Dayal landed in Karachi,
President Iskander Mirza had been lounging at home in his dressing gown,
when a delegation of three army generals barged in and calmly instructed
him to dress and leave Pakistan ‘in the interests of the country’. The
shocked president was given just over an hour to pack up and depart.
He and his Iranian wife, Khanum Naheed, were asked to ‘buy their own
airline tickets and pay for their passports’. Mirza was essentially ordered
to surrender his role as Pakistan’s head of state, since his chief martial law
administrator, Ayub Khan, now had his job.1 The president was escorted
out of his home and thence into oblivion, to eventually die in England
in humble exile.
A few months before his own unceremonious exit, Mirza had opined
to the US ambassador in Karachi that only a dictatorship would work in
Pakistan. He had seen himself as that benign dictator when he imposed
martial law on 7 October 1958, after dismissing the last of a succession of
colourless prime ministers—Feroz Khan Noon—abrogating the Constitution
of 1956, dissolving parliament, and appointing his trusted army chief Ayub
Khan as his martial law administrator. Ayub would, of course, go on to
deftly dismiss his boss within three weeks and take more effective control
of power, cementing the martial law that Mirza had proclaimed.
68 ange r m anage m e nt

Ayub’s rise had begun seven years earlier. He had taken over in 1951 as
the first Pakistani army chief, picking up the baton from General Douglas
Gracey, the last Englishman to hold the job. Ayub was elevated as Pakistan’s
defence minister in 1953 in what is now seen as a soft coup. But to Ayub,
he was only leading to fruition a revolution initiated by Pakistan’s ‘last
capable civilian politician’, Iskander Mirza, who had eventually lacked
courage and was ‘too stupid’ to take this revolution to completion2. So,
Ayub had reluctantly stepped in to fulfil Pakistan’s destiny. He recalled in
his memoirs that he was most unhappy making this decision.
I was unhappy for him (Mirza) too. How unfortunate that he could
not be loyal to anybody.... All the politicians had been tried and found
wanting; there was no one else left on the civil side.... Even if Iskander
Mirza had wanted to play straight, he would not have had the courage
to stand up and face the consequences of the reforms which were
being introduced.3

X
Across the border, Nehru had not been impressed by the arrival of a
Pakistani strongman; he dismissed the new political dispensation as
a ‘naked military dictatorship’. To Dayal, an ICS officer who had been
picked up for the foreign service by Nehru, ‘there could hardly have been
a more inauspicious moment for a new envoy to take charge of the Indian
mission in Pakistan’.4
When Dayal landed in Karachi after the coup, he was also continuing the
tradition of Indian high commissioners arriving in Karachi brandishing pre-
Partition connections with Pakistani leaders. Sri Prakasa had known Jinnah
and Liaquat Ali as his political contemporaries in India. His successors—Sita
Ram, Mohan Singh Mehta, and C. C. Desai—had all built on their pre-
Partition connections with Pakistan’s leaders. Dayal was the fifth in this
series of Nehru’s elite picks for Pakistan. While not the first to claim close
acquaintance with Pakistan’s rulers, he was perhaps the one to leverage
the connections most effectively. He saw the challenges in the relationship
as largely a legacy of the Partition. His brief was to take smaller steps
towards reducing the tension, a not unfamiliar mandate for most of his
successors. In his initial assessment
the main problems dividing India and Pakistan were part of the
unfinished business of Partition. These were the undemarcated border,
the division of the waters of the Indus basin, the question of evacuee
property, the settlement of the public debt of undivided India, and the
disposition of the India Office Library in London. There was also the
hardy annual of the Kashmir question, over which wordy battles had
 t he garris on s tat e 69

been fought for years at the United Nations and which was straining
the rhetoric of vituperation on both sides. Overhanging all these
problems, a poisonous psychological atmosphere prevailed, the result
of which was an almost total stoppage of trade, severe restrictions
on travel, and unbridled press propaganda. My instructions from the
Prime Minister, as indeed were my own predilections, were to try
and work towards the reduction of the state of tension between the
two countries and to promote the solution of the more manageable
problems. The question, however, was how and where to start.5
While Dayal was troubled by the prospect of interacting with an untested
military dictator at the helm of a hostile government, another more
immediate concern was also gnawing at him—that Ayub Khan may not
acknowledge their past association. Eighteen years earlier, Ayub and he
had served together in Mathura in the United Provinces: Dayal as a district
official and Khan as a captain in the Indian Army. The envoy was painfully
aware that past associations with Pakistan’s rulers had not empowered any
of his predecessors in transforming bilateral ties.
When it came time to meet with General Ayub Khan, Dayal worked
with Pakistan’s chief of protocol, with schoolboyish diligence, to familiarize
himself with the choreography of the colonial-era credentials ceremony.
The high commissioner and his retinue of embassy officers were to slowly
approach the head of state, bowing every few paces. The president was
to appear with fanfare from the far end and await the envoy, who would
make a formal speech and present his letters of credence. The president
would respond with his own words of welcome and then invite the envoy
to an antechamber for a private audience.
Dayal was in for a surprise. As he entered the hall where the meeting
was to take place, the president advanced rapidly towards the diplomat,
brushing protocol aside, with outstretched hand and broad smile. As the two
men stood, Ayub Khan began an animated conversation with Dayal, making
solicitous enquiries about his family. The envoy awkwardly reminded the
president of the formal agenda and proceeded to step back to deliver
his scripted speech. Ayub hurriedly went through the motions and then
sat Dayal down for a chat. Soon, it was two colleagues swapping news
of common acquaintances and family, not quite envoy and head of state
exchanging curated talking points.
This interaction set the tone for a relationship of easy informality
that continued throughout the tenure of the high commissioner. Dayal
was quite taken in by Ayub’s charm and soon became a strong advocate
for him with Nehru and the Indian establishment. Dayal even managed
to have the president tweak protocol again, this time to join him at the
embassy residence in Karachi for a Republic Day function on 26 January
70 ange r m anage m e nt

1959. A beaming Ayub Khan spent considerable time at the soirée, seated
between the high commissioner and his wife, the easy bonhomie pointedly
on public display. ‘Word quickly spread around’, the diplomat recalled, ‘that
the President and we were close friends of long standing’.6 This opened
several doors for the Indian envoy in Karachi.
The diplomat and the dictator developed a strong personal bond
that deepened when Ayub, in a later private meeting, disarmingly asked
the envoy if he had his trust. Dayal reassured the dictator he did, and
ventured to ask if ‘he too felt the same about me’. They then went on to
candidly discuss the stalemate in bilateral relations. The mutual affirmation
of confidence was to serve Ayub well. Dayal pushed the Indian system
to set up a visit by Ayub to India and then spent considerable effort in
persuading a sceptical Nehru to visit Pakistan.
Dayal was originally scheduled to arrive in Karachi half a year earlier.
The prime minister of Pakistan, Feroz Khan Noon, had even sent him a
warm letter of welcome advising him to come early. But a UN mission
kept the designated envoy away. Those were times when India’s newly-
minted diplomats, mostly ICS officers, played multiple roles, abandoning
bilateral assignments—even critical ones as in Pakistan—to take on lengthy
UN gigs in global hotspots, self-importantly bringing peace to the post-
colonial world.

A NO-WAR PROPOSAL
In April 1959, Pakistan signed a bilateral defence cooperation agreement
with the US, which obliged the superpower to take ‘appropriate action’,
in case of aggression against Pakistan, including through the use of
armed forces. While the interests of the two countries had converged, the
goals were different—the US was deploying Pakistan against communist
adversaries, while Ayub was banking on American backing in dealing with
India.
Pakistan’s status as a US Cold War ally in South Asia had strengthened
steadily after it joined the Western alliances in the mid-1950s. In July
1957, Pakistan’s prime minister Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy, on army
chief Ayub Khan’s prodding, had offered the US a secret intelligence base
at Badaber near Peshawar in north-west Pakistan. This base added to the
growing strategic value of Pakistan for the US; the CIA’s U2 planes could
now keep an easy eye on military preparations in the Soviet Union.
Pakistan could not however play both sides in the Cold War. When
Pakistan’s eager embrace of the US was outed, it angered the Soviet Union.
Moscow was outraged by Pakistan’s decision to allow its territory to be
used for spying on its territory. When it shot down a U2 plane on 7 May
1960 and arrested its pilot Gary Powers, the Soviet Union warned Pakistan
‘not to play with fire’.7 But Ayub had irreversibly hitched his wagon to
 t he garris on s tat e 71

the West. The Americans would go on to operate the base for a decade,
with 1,200 military and technical personnel. The secret facility would lead
to greater confidence in the US in their new ally, located strategically on
the periphery of an enemy empire.
Pakistan, on its part, needed to monetize this growing trust; its fidelity
opened the gates for generous US military and economic aid that had
begun flowing, eventually totting up to $5 billion till 1962. The assistance
would be frequently calibrated in the next decades—increased to reward
good behaviour and, more often, suspended to punish choices not in the
American interest.
Around the time he worked out a defence agreement with the US,
and perhaps at its nudging, in April 1959, Ayub Khan dusted off the old
proposal for a ‘joint defence’ pact with India. When Nehru questioned
the familiar gambit and again asked the obvious question, which he had
asked six years earlier—joint defence against whom—Ayub darkly pointed
north and forecast that in the following five years, South Asia would be
vulnerable to major invasions from that direction. Ayub was hinting at
the dangers from both communist empires—China and the Soviet Union.
A Pakistani diplomat later speculated that Ayub may have been trying to
humour Washington, Pakistan’s new military partner; or genuinely believed
in the communist threat; or was using a tactical gambit to pressure Nehru
into addressing the Kashmir issue, before dealing jointly with an external
threat.8 Pakistan’s new dictator was likely doing all three.
Pakistani concerns about the Chinese seemed genuine enough, even
for Indian observers of the times. In the early stages of Chinese muscle
flexing in 1959, when the Dalai Lama fled to India, some Pakistani leaders
severely criticized the Chinese suppression of the revolt in Tibet, which they
compared to the Soviet action in Hungary in 1956. Chinese claims against
India across the McMahon Line (the boundary between Tibet and British
India as agreed in 1914) had provoked concerns of similar demands China
might register against territory under the occupation of Pakistan.9 In fact,
Ayub Khan’s offer of joint defence with India seemed to have been driven
at least in part by genuine concerns about China’s expansionist policies.
On their part, the Chinese saw, in Ayub’s joint defence proposal, American
designs to create hostility against China in its backyard.
Ayub’s joint defence pact would also have bound both countries not
to go to war. The notion of joint defence was a diplomatic riposte from
Pakistan to the idea of a non-aggression pact that India had been promoting
since the 1950s, to prevent a reprise of the war of 1947–48.
But Nehru had seen through Pakistan’s new game. Ayub reacted
with injured innocence to Nehru’s cynicism about this latest gambit. The
dictator was hurt that India had deliberately misinterpreted and rejected
his proposal by attributing ‘false motives’ to Pakistan. He insisted in
72 ange r m anage m e nt

his memoirs that he was only repeating a proposal made by two of his
predecessors and that
there was nothing sinister in the proposal, nor was I the first one to
have made it. The Quaid-e-Azam (in 1948) thought that it was of vital
importance to Pakistan and India, as independent sovereign States, to
collaborate in a friendly way jointly to defend their frontiers both on
land and sea against any aggression.... In April 1953 Mohammad Ali
Bogra, who was then Prime Minister of Pakistan, declared that, once
outstanding disputes between the two countries had been settled and
a suitable climate created, joint defence of India and Pakistan could be
advantageously considered by the two countries.10
Ayub revealed his central motive when he laid out a grandiose vision of
friendship with the caveat that the prerequisite for such an understanding
was the solution of big problems like Kashmir and the canal waters. Once
these were resolved, the armies of the two countries could disengage
and move to their respective vulnerable frontiers. This would give us the
substance of joint defence; that is, freedom from fear of each other and
freedom to protect our respective frontiers.
He complained that his Indian counterpart Nehru deliberately chose to
misunderstand the proposal and declared in the Lok Sabha on 4 May 1959:
We do not propose to have a military alliance with any country, come
what may.... I am all for settling our troubles with Pakistan and living
normal, friendly and neighborly lives—but we do not want to have
a common defence policy which is almost some kind of a military
alliance—I do not understand against whom people talk about
common defence policies.11
Internally, Ayub was consolidating what would become an eleven-
year tenure that did end Pakistan’s instability of the 1950s, but firmly
established the ‘garrison state’, a permanent structural infirmity in
Pakistan’s polity that would impact India at multiple levels.12
In Indian strategic thinking at that point, the sole challenge for India
in the region was the bilateral confrontation between India and Pakistan,
posing the constant danger of war. A no-war pact, therefore, seemed more
relevant. The proposal for a joint defence agreement in the absence of an
external threat thus seemed unnecessary, if not a political ruse.
Hindsight showed that India had overblown the threat from Pakistan,
just as it had underestimated the one from China. Some observers of
the day disagreed with India’s policy of the times. Surely, India could
have benefited from making common cause with Pakistan against Chinese
aggression. In fact, the argument went, if Jinnah had survived another
five or six years, he may have pursued his vision of a common security
 t he garris on s tat e 73

concept for two sovereign and friendly states. This thesis was supported
by Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s exiled president, who averred that if he were
still Pakistan’s leader, he would have flown to Delhi and assured Nehru
that Pakistan would solidly stand by India in her defence.13 But soon
enough, all of this would cease to matter, when Pakistan would again see
India as its principal adversary. The strategic benefits of embracing India’s
hostile northern neighbour were getting clearer to Ayub.
When he assessed the situation within Pakistan, Dayal shared Ayub’s
contempt for Pakistan’s past leaders. In the envoy’s eyes, Pakistani leaders
of the 1950s were essentially officials, ‘daftaries’ as Nehru had called them,
who leapfrogged over Muslim League politicians to occupy high offices.
They had been a ‘scheming, self-serving’14 lot, Dayal felt, while Ayub,
with his sweeping powers, was a more promising bet for India. Dayal
talked up Ayub’s capacity to deliver better bilateral ties, given the dictator’s
unchallenged power and refreshing pragmatism. The envoy’s assessment
was that ‘whatever may have been the change in Ayub Khan’s perceptions
since his transformation from an Indian patriot during our Mathura days
in 1940 to a Pakistani zealot, he took an encouragingly pragmatic view
of the situation and saw the advantage of coming to political settlements
with India, starting with the more immediate problems.’15
The diplomat made it his mission to mend fences, cabling back upbeat
assessments of the new Pakistan dispensation under Ayub. Buoyed by his
personal access to Pakistan’s dictator, Dayal pushed his home establishment
to accept a visit by Ayub to India. With his briefings and recommendations
back home, Dayal chipped away at his prime minister’s distrust of
Pakistan’s military dictator. Against his original instincts, Nehru, who
had been underwhelmed by the overpromoted civil servants who ruled
Pakistan, had begun to veer towards Dayal’s view that a dictator running
Pakistan might somehow turn out to be a better bet for India, giving more
coherence and stability to Pakistan’s policy. Dayal had begun taking matters
directly to Nehru, bypassing some hardliner foreign ministry colleagues and
particularly staying clear of Defence Minister Krishna Menon, a known
hawk, completely opposed to trusting Pakistan. Ayub Khan finally did stop
by for a transit visit to Delhi in September 1959, which helped clear the
path for Nehru’s own visit to Karachi.
Despite the high-level engagement with India, Pakistan’s dictator was
concerned that his Western benefactors were now beginning to see India as
a more credible bulwark against the other communists, the Chinese, who
were now a decade-old power demonstrating larger global ambitions. US
arms and equipment were also trickling in as military aid to India, albeit
with similar conditions as applied to Pakistan—American weapons were
to be used only to repel Chinese aggression. Pakistan protested initially
but muted its criticism by the end of 1959, when the Sino–Pak alliance
74 ange r m anage m e nt

became a clearer objective for the military regime of Ayub Khan.

In the debate for a no-war pact vis-à-vis a joint defence agreement, it
was now clear to India that Pakistan was still not willing to give up on
its demand of resolving the ‘core’ Kashmir dispute before addressing any
other matter. Many in India believed that Ayub had proposed the carrot
of a no-war pact only to soften up India on the Kashmir issue and on the
division of the river waters. Ayub’s military mind told him that he had only
a small window of opportunity to get the better of Pakistan’s permanent
enemy before the power differential between them became wider, making
India impossible to challenge militarily.16 While Dayal was upbeat about
the positive turn the relationship could take with Nehru’s proposed visit,
he had in his exuberance failed to read the ingrained distrust of India
and the revisionist ideas swirling in Ayub’s shallow mind. These were to
be revealed to the world a few years later when Pakistan attempted a
stealthy military conquest of Kashmir.
In Delhi, Nehru who remained his own foreign minister, also had a
channel of communication open with Pakistan’s high commissioner A. K.
Brohi, a prominent Sindhi politician and lawyer whom Ayub had sent
in February 1960. Brohi, who would go on to become Pakistan’s law
minister, and an ideological adviser to Pakistan’s dictator Zia, was also a
mentor of the famous Sindhi Indian lawyer, Ram Jethmalani. Brohi was
well-connected in the upper reaches of Indian society; in the year he spent
in Delhi, he frequently met Nehru for breakfast, as India’s leader planned
his approach for his visit to Pakistan.17

PARTITIONING THE WATERS

In September 1960, Pakistan and India defied expectations to sign the
Indus Waters Treaty, agreeing to the division of the six rivers that flowed
through the Punjab. In its final shape, the treaty allocated the waters of
the western rivers (Indus, Jhelum, and Chenab) to Pakistan, giving it four-
fifths of the waters of the system. Limited use of the waters of the western
rivers was also permitted to India, which was allocated all the waters
of the eastern rivers (Ravi, Beas, and Sutlej). Since Pakistan had been
receiving water from these eastern rivers till Partition, India agreed to
pay £62 million as compensation to Pakistan, to build replacement canals
from the western rivers. The treaty did not require India to deliver any
specific quantities of water to Pakistan, but the upper riparian country
was obliged to let flow the water of the western rivers to the lower
riparian, after drawing a limited amount for activities like ‘run of the
river’ projects.18
The treaty had been long in the works. It was a culmination of more
than a decade of assiduous technical negotiations. Nehru’s visit to Karachi
to sign the document was seen at once as a path-breaking resolution
 t he garris on s tat e 75

of a vexing water dispute and a lost opportunity to resolve the larger

disagreement on land in Kashmir.
The discussion on the Indus deal had begun soon after Partition, in 1948.
As the countries battled over the land of Kashmir, India had threatened
to cut off water supplies of the canals, since Partition gave it an upper
riparian hold over the rivers winding south into Pakistan. In May 1948,
a water agreement had been finalized, only to be denounced in Pakistan
as one signed under duress. Observers had been troubled by a very real
concern of a water war between the countries.
Pakistan had been disquieted since 1948 by the construction of the
massive Bhakra Dam on the Sutlej, an eastern river that flowed into the
Chenab in Pakistan, before emptying into the Arabian Sea. In 1950, Pakistan
proposed arbitration to deal with the issue of sharing waters, but India did
not agree. In 1951, both governments agreed to involve the World Bank.
The next year, the bank’s president, Eugene Black, had offered his good
offices for a solution of the dispute, which both countries agreed to. By
1954, the World Bank was suggesting dividing the waters into eastern and
western rivers. Eight years of quiet technical negotiations ensued before
the deal was finally struck.
Both sides were unhappy with the eventual shape of the water treaty
of 1960. For many Pakistanis, the treaty was a sell-out to the crafty
Indians. For others, it was a pragmatic arrangement. Ayub Khan recalled
in his memoirs that ‘the only sensible thing to do was to try and get a
settlement, even though it might be second best, because if we did not,
we stood to lose everything...while there was no cause for rejoicing at
the signing of the treaty, there was certainly cause for satisfaction that a
possibly very ugly situation had been averted’.19 Most Pakistani observers
were more optimistic than the president. This was a win-win solution that
would unlock World Bank funding for a ‘decade of development’, cutting
dependence on India. Some out of the box ideas were in play too. Ayub
Khan had generously offered to construct a barrage in the lower sections
of the Indus River to direct water to parched Rajasthan as well as to feed
the Bombay region with Sui natural gas from Balochistan.20
For some in India, it was an overly generous arrangement for an upper
riparian country. For the idealists and some US experts, the treaty missed out
on the optimal development of the Indus basin for hydro-electric projects
(like in the Tennessee valley) that could have benefited both poor nations.
Notwithstanding the critiques, the treaty was largely hailed for decades as
a successful model for dividing river waters between adversarial neighbours.
Pakistan gained funds from the World Bank for the construction of two
large dams (Mangla on the Jhelum and Tarbela on the Indus), apart from
multiple link canals from the western rivers to Pakistan, to replace the
loss due to the diversion of the eastern rivers. Both countries would go
76 ange r m anage m e nt

on to construct hydel projects in the 1970s and 1980s. The treaty also
stood out as a ‘unique achievement of the professional diplomacy of the
1950s’, and one of the ‘innovations of partition’.21
Over decades, the treaty has been tested by tough times in bilateral
ties. The debate periodically crops up in the twenty-first century, on India’s
upper riparian generosity for Pakistan, compared to the absence of any
such sentiment in China for India, where the Brahmaputra waters are
‘weaponized’.22 Each time India encounters terror, or after a meeting
of the Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), the debate is rekindled on
whether to abrogate the Indus treaty. The river waters would continue to
be an emotive issue, with mutual suspicions rising whenever relations hit
a low point, and dispute resolution mechanisms increasingly invoked in
the twenty-first century.
X
Nehru’s 1960 visit was not all about water. It was also about land. While the
talks on dividing the river waters had continued quietly under the auspices
of the World Bank, the negotiations on the Punjab land boundary had
taken on a higher bilateral profile. In September 1958, Nehru had signed
an agreement with Prime Minister Feroze Khan Noon on resolving the
border issue of land enclaves in Bengal. A year later, in 1959, by which time
Ayub Khan was in power, Nehru designated Swaran Singh, a trusted Punjab
hand and then minister for steel in his cabinet, to talk to the dictator’s
nominee: Pakistan’s railway minister, General Khalid Sheikh. Swaran Singh’s
nomination came as a result, at least partially, of the pressure brought to
bear by High Commissioner Dayal. The two men were mandated to discuss
the Punjab boundary. This conversation progressed well during Nehru’s
visit. Dayal felt that it should have been broadened in scope to include the
Gujarat boundary as well. This turned out to be sound, if unheeded, advice
given that this border would become a source of conflict over the Rann of
Kutch in 1965. The most contentious issue of the land border in Kashmir
was gingerly placed in a separate box, given the involvement of the UN and
the bigger chasm in the positions of the two countries.
To the diplomats of the day, Nehru’s visit to Pakistan at the height
of his powers, in September 1960, spelled a great opportunity to come to
terms with Radcliffe’s Line in Punjab. The Indian deputy high commissioner
in Karachi, K. V. Padmanabhan, recalled that the ambitions of the summit
meeting went beyond the division of waters to a hope of delineating
land borders south of Kashmir. He found the discussions remarkably
constructive, helped by the fact that
the leaders of the respective teams were old friends and college mates
from pre-Partition Lahore.... Once these two men [Swaran Singh and
 t he garris on s tat e 77

Khalid Shaikh] established their rapport, they left the details to their
principal advisors: on the Indian side, M. J. Desai, and on the other side
Sikander Ali Baig. Once it was established that the main purpose of the
exercise was to achieve maximum agreement and that neither side was
out to steal an unfair advantage, it was easier to work out a solution. It
was found that neither India nor Pakistan had an overwhelming case
to be made on its stand on a particular dispute. One side gracefully
conceded the other’s claim were valid, and that was that.23
Bizarrely, Dayal took off on a UN mission to the Congo just before
Nehru’s visit to Pakistan in September. The UN secretary general, Dag
Hammarskjöld likely pressed Nehru to release Dayal to be deployed as the
UNSG’s special representative, given that Dayal had helped Hammarskjöld
broker peace in 1958 in Lebanon, and an Indian face was required in the
context of a large Indian peacekeeping contingent managing the sudden
Belgian withdrawal from the Congo. But as the key architect of the Indo–
Pak détente, Dayal would have been expected to be working night and
day to convert a major visit of his prime minister into a success, to tease
out lasting deliverables, and to prevent any mishaps in its conduct. The
high commissioner’s glaring absence was noted by the hosts. Ayub later
bitterly told Dayal that the Indian government considered the Congo more
important than Pakistan.
In the week Nehru spent in Pakistan on the visit, which was largely
pegged to the Indus Waters Treaty, he also discussed a number of other
issues: the Punjab boundary, taxation, customs, evacuee properties, even
defence matters. Kashmir was not formally on the agenda but was clearly
the elephant in the room. It was here that India’s prime minister had
decided to draw a line. Playing on Nehru’s mind was the vast gap in
positions on the Kashmir issue and the errors in judgement he had made
in Kashmir policy after his previous visit to Karachi in 1953. Ayub Khan,
instigated by trusted cabinet minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was ready with
his maximalist position—demanding a plebiscite—while Nehru favoured
going with the status quo with minor adjustments. Nevertheless, Nehru erred
again in not having a full discussion on Kashmir. Arguably, a conversation
between India’s democratic leader, and Pakistan’s military dictator, both
domestically strong, may have averted a war five years later.
Both Ayub and the Indian high commissioner interpreted the deadlock
on Kashmir as the visit’s failure. Dayal was crestfallen when he learnt
of the outcomes of Nehru’s visit. Dayal got a debrief of the ‘Murree
encounter’ from Foreign Minister Manzur Qadir, who sat in the front
seat for the ride where the president and the prime minister drove up
to Murree in an open car. There was ‘no conversation’ between the two
leaders during the hour-long drive. Qadir’s attempts to start a conversation
78 ange r m anage m e nt

were met with ‘deafening silence’. When Qadir probed the president on
the meeting, all that Ayub Khan revealed was that when he tried to open
a conversation about Kashmir, Nehru simply stared out of the window
at the scenery and ‘shut up like a clam’. From that time, Dayal felt, the
‘relations between the two countries, which had been built up brick by
brick, suddenly collapsed in rubble’.24
Dayal realized that his prime minister’s visit was not the crowning
moment of his tenure, as he had hoped it would be. It ended his smooth
run with Ayub’s government, though his social capital remained intact.
He recalled that while attitudes at governmental level began to harden,
‘our personal relations with the President and his family continued to be
cordial enough. Our social relations generally also continued as before.
We took our daily walks, unaccompanied by securitymen, both in Karachi
and in Murree’, he recalled.25
A major factor limiting the success of the Nehru–Ayub summit was
that little preparation preceded it. No active diplomacy or backchannels
were used to leverage the positivity of the Indus treaty and Nehru’s visit
at the crest of his popularity. Everything had been left to the leaders to
sort out at the last moment. The absence of the envoy was perhaps a key
factor in getting it wrong.
Nehru was to eventually meet Ayub five times, but their chemistry
remained inert. Ayub’s attitude was typical of the overreach on Kashmir
that characterized Pakistan’s negotiating posture even decades later in the
times of other dictators.
The conversation during Nehru’s visit did touch on Kashmir in the
context of China. As the deputy high commissioner K. V. Padmanabhan
recalled.
India expressed concern about Chinese activities on the northern
border of Kashmir and emphasised the concern they felt about
a possible threat to Pakistan also from them. Ayub Khan, without
batting an eyelid, shook his head gravely and promised to study the
question with his military advisors. Little did the Indian side suspect
that Pakistan would be handing over to the Chinese sizeable chunks
of the territory in the northern part of Kashmir in return for China’s
support of Pakistan’s claim for the annexation of Jammu and Kashmir.
In fact, all our bilateral discussions and grandiose schemes came to
practically nothing because of Pakistan’s insistence that India should
make substantial concessions with regard to Kashmir. Thereby ended
another chapter in the unfulfilled agenda of cooperation between India
and Pakistan.26
Nehru later confirmed that he discussed the China factor during his visit.
He revealed that in his discussions with Ayub, he shared ‘our confidential
 t he garris on s tat e 79

maps as to where we thought the Chinese were and where we were, and
asked what (the) position of the Chinese was on their side of the border.’
Pakistan’s foreign secretary ‘said he knew nothing about those matters at
all’. 27 Nehru later elaborated: ‘Whatever our differences were on Kashmir,
I thought it would be advantageous to have a uniform policy with regard
to the Chinese aggression....’28

TROUBLE FROM THE NORTH

During this period, the sporadic surface cordiality aside, Pakistan’s hostility
towards India and Ayub’s obsession over Kashmir did not diminish. This
unremitting focus also informed Pakistan’s approach to China and its
diplomacy in Delhi. One note of dissent to Ayub Khan’s policies came
from his high commissioner in India, A. K. Brohi, the popular diplomat
in Delhi’s political and social circles. Brohi abruptly resigned in Delhi in
March 1961, just over a year into his assignment, since he could not
accept the ‘patently wrong’ instructions sent by Ayub. He chose to go
straight to his home in Karachi, rather than debrief the president and
others in Rawalpindi. He genuinely believed that the ‘community of
interests between India and Pakistan and the enormous fund of goodwill
between the two peoples far outweighed the grievances and the irritants so
exaggerated for political reasons’. 29
Soon after Nehru had revealed in India’s parliament his exchanges with
Ayub on China, the bad news came from Peking. On 4 May 1962, Pakistan
and China declared they had decided to hold negotiations to settle their
border dispute along the part of Kashmir in Pakistan’s possession. India
was just beginning then to get the measure of the growing Sino–Pakistan
axis. An exasperated Nehru said: ‘It is very surprising that Pakistan which
is a champion standard-bearer against Communism should now try to
club with China.’30
A couple of months later, Gopalaswami Parthasarathi, often simply
called GP, was posted as India’s ambassador to Pakistan. GP was an unusual
diplomat, with a penchant for landing in history’s hotspots. He had just
finished a trying tenure in China, and would watch in dismay as a Sino–
Indian conflict unfolded in October 1962, just as he began his diplomatic
innings in Karachi. GP did not quite fit the profile of the standard ICS
diplomat of the times. Nehru had handpicked the young journalist writing
for the Press Trust of India (PTI), to catapult him into diplomacy. GP had
turned to journalism from sport, he was a Ranji Trophy level cricketer
for Madras, as also a double university blue in cricket and hockey at
Oxford. He had apprenticed with the The Times of London in the 1930s
and had written for The Hindu in the 1940s, before he became the first
London correspondent for PTI in 1949, churning out incisive commentary
on foreign affairs for an independent India. He returned to Bombay as PTI’s
80 ange r m anage m e nt

chief editor in 1952. He caught Nehru’s eye with his writings, defined by
a clear-eyed analysis of global affairs. He also happened to be the son of
Nehru’s political associate and minister in his first cabinet, N. Gopalaswami
Ayyangar. After his induction into India’s diplomatic service in 1954, the
forty-two-year-old star journalist, then known for his expertise on Southeast
Asia, was sent off to serve initially in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Indonesia.
GP’s next three assignments would propel him to the frontline of India’s
high-voltage diplomatic action of the 1960s. He was sent as ambassador
in China in 1958, where he watched the gathering war clouds and came
away in 1962 feeling betrayed by the Chinese aggression on India. It
was now his turn to spend three years in Pakistan as India’s envoy, from
October 1962, just as the war with China began.
X
India’s Himalayan War of 1962 had been building up for at least five years.
In September 1957, a major turning point had come in India’s relationship
with China, surprising both Nehru and Defence Minister Krishna Menon.
China brazenly announced that it had completed the Aksai Chin Road,
linking two restive parts of its periphery—Sinkiang and Tibet. The road
passed through a hundred miles of Ladakh, in territory that belonged to
India. China was now openly warning India of its strength and hegemony
in Asia. By January 1959, Premier Zhou Enlai informed Nehru that
the McMahon Line was not acceptable as a boundary since no formal
delimitation of the Sino–Indian border had ever taken place. China simply
said that it had not been ready in 1954—when it had signed up for the
principles of good neighbourly Panchsheel—to discuss this question, but
had now decided to take a position. China was further embittered by the
Tibetan rebellion and India’s decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama in
March 1959.31 All these matters came up for discussion when Zhou visited
India in April 1959.
Nehru tried hard to retrieve the situation. In February and again in
April 1960, he met Zhou Enlai in Delhi for some tough discussions on the
boundary. Zhou offered to accept the McMahon line as the boundary in
the eastern sector, abutting India’s north-east, provided India was willing
to pay the price by accepting the Chinese occupation of Ladakh. This was
totally unacceptable to India. Official meetings in 1960 and 1961 produced
no results, while Chinese intrusions into India continued unabated.32 In the
middle of July 1962, Chinese troops launched an attack on the Galwan
Valley in Ladakh. India’s forces repulsed the assault. China watchers would
recall this painful episode six decades later in 2020, when Chinese troops
again moved aggressively forward in Galwan.
Pakistan was watching closely. In its official narrative, the 1962 conflict
was a result of ‘India’s aggression’ against China. To Ayub, both Cold War
 t he garris on s tat e 81

adversaries—the US and USSR—had come together to side with India against

China: Soviet military supplies and the Kennedy administration’s stepped up
economic assistance, in Pakistan’s view, had egged India on to maintain a
‘forward policy’ against China, in order to negotiate the boundary question
from a position of strength. In Pakistan’s perception, India sought military
aid from the US, in letters facilitated by John Kenneth Galbraith, then US
ambassador in India, who had coordinated closely with Nehru.33
On 8 September, the Chinese finally crossed the Thagla Ridge in the
eastern sector, to mount attacks on India. A series of skirmishes led up
to a harsh mountain war from 20 October to 21 November. Chinese
and Indian troops fought bitterly, causing major losses for India both in
the Western Sector of Ladakh and the Eastern Sector of Assam. India’s
humiliating defeat caused an internal political churn, even as Nehru was
personally devastated and politically weakened. Defence Minister Menon
was relieved of his duties.34
The geopolitical currents were also shifting. The war in the high
Himalaya was coming at a time of a great Sino-Soviet split, that itself
got accentuated by this Asian conflict. It was also playing out in the
backdrop of an unfolding Cuban missile crisis that almost brought the
superpowers—the US and the USSR—to nuclear blows.35 The US and Britain
expressed much sympathy for India against the Chinese aggression but did
not actually join the conflict. Nehru wrote to Kennedy on 25 October, at
the height of the crisis. As a result, US arms, mainly infantry weapons,
arrived in India and further supplies were speeded up. In Pakistan’s official
telling, Nehru had in 1962 written ‘a hysterical letter, a silly letter asking
[the] US to bomb China’.36
On 20 December, as the dust settled on the war, US president John F.
Kennedy and British prime minister Harold Wilson announced a decision
to provide military aid of $1.2 million to India. Pakistan’s official version
of events holds US Ambassador Galbraith responsible for this largesse: he
was opting, in Abdul Sattar’s account, for ‘transitory personal success’—he
was trying to win Nehru over for the US ‘since the US believed that India
could successfully compete with China for leadership of Asia.’ It was soon
after India’s devastating war with China, but Galbraith seemed to be ahead
of his times by six decades in assessing the geopolitical future. His view
was echoed in Washington. Months before his assassination, Kennedy would
repeat to Pakistan Ambassador G. Ahmed, on 11 August 1963, that he
wanted Pakistan and India to join in ‘common defence’ against China.37
X
To many observers, a surprise during India’s border war with China in
1962 was that Pakistan let go of the strategic opportunity to jump into the
fray to settle the Kashmir issue in its favour. To his minister Bhutto, this
82 ange r m anage m e nt

was because Ayub Khan was weak and indecisive. Ayub seemed to regret
his decision soon and said so in public. Nehru was shocked by Ayub’s
admission and made his views clear in an interview to a US journalist in
1964. Pakistan’s mentality, Nehru said, was based on ‘fear and hatred’ of
India. That did not make for good policy. ‘Ayub Khan,’ he noted with a
sigh, ‘said he was sorry he did not take advantage of the invasion of India
by China to intervene.’38 It was only three years later that Ayub was to
fully buy into and act upon Bhutto’s advice, with more direct revanchist
aggression.
Pakistani leaders were, in this period, pleading with the US and Britain
to influence India on the Kashmir question, or at least to prevent the use
of Western weapons against Pakistan. The real concern seems to have been
that a growing power differential with India would in the future make it
harder for Pakistan to wrest Kashmir by force.
 7

DI ALOGUES OF THE D E A F

T he chasm between Indian and Pakistani positions on Kashmir had

further widened by 1963. Pakistan was not going to be satisfied with
any adjustment to the ceasefire line that failed to satisfy its claim to large
chunks of the northern state, particularly the valley of Kashmir. India,
on its part, was not about to agree to calling into question the legal
accession to India of the state of J&K. It had ‘ascertained the wishes of the
Kashmiri people’ through provincial elections in 1957 and did not favour
a referendum to second guess that choice. India was now opposing the
idea of a general or regional plebiscite for another reason—the communal
propaganda accompanying such a plebiscite could lead to religious riots,
not just in Kashmir, but all over India and in East Pakistan. The partition
of the valley—proposed by some UN mediators—was also increasingly
unacceptable. The experience of the partition of Punjab and the bloodshed
it entailed was sobering enough. Nehru was arguing that the Kashmir
Valley was a unit, economically and psychologically, and its partition
would ‘create more problems than it would solve’.1
Pakistan was meanwhile trying to strengthen its new external alliance
in exchange for Kashmiri territory. In October 1962, even as India was at
war with China, Pakistan started border talks with the Chinese and soon
decided to give up a strategic chunk of north-eastern Kashmir under its
occupation—the Shaksgam Valley—to China.
Bolstered by the deal with China, Pakistan decided to up the ante
with India on the Kashmir issue. Pakistan’s tendency across the decades
has been to talk to India either when it senses acute weakness or its
opposite—overwhelming strength. The Pakistan army’s tactical instinct
was to gain military advantage on the ‘core’ Kashmir issue when India
was relatively weak or to prevent a dilution of the Kashmir cause when
India was relatively strong. After the war with China, Pakistan felt India
was wounded and incapacitated. This perception was the catalyst for six
rounds of talks (from December 1962 to May 1963) between Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto, Pakistan’s minister for industries, at the time, and Swaran Singh,
India’s minister of railways at the time.
The first meeting in Rawalpindi in December 1962 did not go well. It
was held a day after China and Pakistan had announced their boundary
agreement, seen as illegal by an angry India. Pakistan thought ‘India wasted
much time’ protesting the deal. The talks focused on various plebiscite
options put in place by UN mediators, which India rejected. At the second
84 ange r m anage m e nt

round in New Delhi in January 1963, Pakistan felt India had come up with
a new excuse to reject a plebiscite, viz., that if Kashmiri Muslims voted
in Pakistan’s favour, the Hindus of India would consider this disloyalty. In
Pakistan’s reading, India was proposing a political settlement implying the
partition of Kashmir. The Pakistan side indicated a willingness to consider a
division along the Pir Panjal watershed in northern Jammu, giving Pakistan
a strategic sliver of territory—the districts of Reasi, Mirpur, and Poonch.2
This political settlement idea was further discussed at the third round
in February and the fourth round in March. The Indian side was suggesting
division of the state along the boundary broadly corresponding to the
ceasefire line, with minor adjustments and modifications. Pakistan was
galled that India remained ‘adamant’ on the Kashmir Valley.
On 2 March 1963, Pakistan and China sealed the deal on the Shaksgam
Valley, with foreign minister Chen Yi and industries minister Bhutto signing
on the dotted line. For India, this was an unacceptable trade in territory
that belonged to it. But in Pakistan’s telling, it gave nothing away and in
fact gained moderately from an ‘exchange of territories’.
No progress was achieved in the fifth and sixth rounds of talks in April
and May. The positions were diverging further. In Pakistan’s assessment,
as the danger of a further flare-up on the border with China receded,
Nehru had no incentive to give in to a settlement with Pakistan. Also,
the India–US relationship was entering a new phase after the 1962 war.
From Pakistan’s vantage point, the US was now attempting a Cold War
play, seeking to wean India away from neutrality, from the Soviet orbit
into the embrace of the West.3
The Kashmir talks finally broke down on 16 May 1963. While Nehru
may have been trying to reach some closure on Kashmir as his legacy,
Ayub was playing for time to plan for his attempt at forcing a military
solution. The ‘six round charade’ thus ended with little to show for it.4

MAJOR POWER PLAY

The Sino–Pak deal on Himalayan territory was playing out against the
backdrop of another geopolitical development—the Sino-Soviet split that
began to surface in the 1960s—this would have a major impact on the
subcontinent. China’s hostility towards India and its standoff over issues of
territory with its communist brother, the USSR, meant the Chinese needed
other regional friends—Pakistan was the geo-strategically convenient
candidate. On its part, it was clear to Pakistan following the 1962 war,
which way it should turn; its relationship with China had taken off on a
new trajectory.
A critical foreign policy goal for the Beijing-based People’s Republic
of China (PRC) in the 1950s and 1960s was to be recognized by the
UN, instead of the Taiwan-based Republic of China (ROC) government.
 dial ogue s of t he d e a f 85

In the annual UN motions from 1962, Pakistan voted to grant China a

seat in the United Nations. In return, the Chinese had withdrawn disputed
maps that showed them occupying territory claimed by Pakistan. The two
countries had rapidly concluded border talks begun in October 1962.
Foreign Minister Bhutto dropped a hint in Pakistan’s National Assembly
on 19 July 1963,5 that reshaping Pakistan’s foreign policy would entail a
closer relationship with China.
The shifting sands of relations between major powers had significantly
influenced the course of the war India faced in 1962 and would impact
other gathering conflicts. These were also troubled times for Nehru’s India.
Hobbled by the disastrous war of 1962, Nehru faced a Kashmir on the
boil. In 1963, a holy relic, a hair of the Prophet, went missing from the
Hazratbal Mosque in Srinagar, causing an upheaval in the valley. Though
the relic soon mysteriously reappeared, Pakistan was widely believed to
be behind the mischief. At the very least, it was seen to have drawn the
wrong lesson from the incident—that Kashmir was ripe for an uprising,
all it needed was a nudge from across the border.

A RIPE FRUIT
A few months later, Pakistan appealed to the UN Security Council on the
Kashmir matter, triggering council debates in February, and again in May
1964. It was however blocked from pushing any binding ‘resolutions’ on
the matter by the threat of a veto by the Soviet Union, now solidly behind
India. Pakistan was now ardently wooing China; the country effusively
welcomed Zhou Enlai in Karachi in February 1964. An unkind cut for
Pakistan came later that year, when the US ambassador to the UN, Adlai
Stevenson, told Bhutto to his face that Pakistan was bringing the Kashmir
issue to the Security Council for internal propaganda.6 Seeing a dead end
at the UN, Pakistan was trying to persuade the Chinese to back it for a
military solution.
Events within Kashmir were also moving rapidly. The state was
convulsed by violence and agitation. The release from prison of the lion
of Kashmir, Sheikh Abdullah, in April 1964, had the immediate effect of
quelling the turbulence. It raised hopes that the Sheikh’s uncaging after
eleven long years would alter the situation on the ground. Nehru, now
unwell, seemed to grope for some finality in his lifetime on the Kashmir
matter. He even sent Abdullah to Pakistan to invite Ayub to visit India.
But Nehru died while the Sheikh was still in Pakistan. With that was
extinguished this latest Indian initiative on Pakistan. Nehru’s death, which
engendered a genuine fear of instability in India, also became Pakistan’s
excuse to cancel Ayub’s visit to Delhi.
On the growing Pakistan–China collusion, a young Opposition member,
Atal Bihari Vajpayee, spoke out in India’s parliament in 1964 to play down
86 ange r m anage m e nt

the China threat. He pointed out that the two-front challenge was not an
issue that bothered Nehru:
I remember I once saw him very angry during the days of the Chinese
aggression when our Western friends were trying to prevail upon us to
arrive at some compromise with Pakistan on Kashmir. When he was
told we would have to fight on two fronts if there was no compromise
on the Kashmir problem, he flared up and said we would fight on both
fronts if necessary. He was against negotiating under any pressure.7

X
Once Ayub cancelled his visit, High Commissioner Dayal and other
Ministry of External Affairs mandarins persuaded the new Congress prime
minister, Lal Bahadur Shastri, to visit Pakistan instead. On 12 October
1964, Shastri stopped by in Karachi on a transit visit. The diminutive
Indian prime minister reinforced the impression in Ayub’s and Bhutto’s
minds that they were dealing with a weakened India led by a debilitated
post-Nehru leadership. Ayub had complained to Dayal in 1960 that Nehru
had looked down on him in contempt. He in turn seemed to be repaying
the compliment four years later to Shastri, looking at the soft-spoken
Indian prime minister with matching condescension. K. S. Bajpai, who was
involved in the visit as a young diplomat, later recalled that the summit’s
‘superficial cordiality could not conceal Pakistan’s increasing disdain’.8

A DRY RANN IN KUTCH

Another bizarre twist for Pakistan came when Shastri invited Ayub Khan
as the chief guest to India’s Republic Day parade three months later. In
January 1965, the parade was being held for the first time at Rajpath, the
former Kingsway of imperial times. But Ayub did not show up. He chose
to duck the invitation and sent his agriculture minister instead. The reason
would be clear before the end of the year—Ayub was in the throes of
planning a military solution to the Kashmir issue. India’s move reinforced
his assessment that it was going through a period of weakness.
Ayub was also busy consolidating power at home. He won rigged
presidential elections on 2 January 1965, as the Pakistan Muslim League
(PML) candidate, beating the popular sister of Pakistan’s founder, Fatima
Jinnah. It was a sham election based on limited voting by an electoral
college of ‘basic democrats’ that his 1962 Constitution permitted. He was
facing allegations of widespread rigging, political murders in Karachi, and
a brazen campaign of disinformation against his main rival.
For India, it was time to consolidate the federal hold in Kashmir
and to revisit the initiative that had begun with the release of Sheikh
Abdullah before Nehru’s death. In March 1965, the legislative assembly
 dial ogue s of t he d e a f 87

of Jammu and Kashmir amended the Jammu and Kashmir Constitution

of 1957. The title and post of the ceremonial head of state was abolished
and the state received the post of governor in line with arrangements in
other Indian states. Direct election from the state for the Lok Sabha was
now decreed, replacing the practice of nomination of members by the
state assembly. These moves represented a dilution of the special status of
J&K and further ‘hollowed out’ Article 370 that had conferred the special
status to the state. Article 370 would progressively be eroded across the
decades but would survive in that residual, weakened form till 2019, as
we shall see in Section 8.9 These events again inflamed the valley as well
as Sheikh Abdullah, whose fiery speeches led to him being arrested again
in May 1965. They also strengthened Pakistan’s determination to go to
war over Kashmir.
But Pakistan wanted to first strengthen its global alliances. With the
US ambivalent, Pakistan reached out to both communist neighbours, China
and the Soviet Union. Ayub Khan got a hero’s welcome in March 1965.
This further emboldened him for his upcoming irredentist adventure that
year, where he hoped the Chinese would gang up with Pakistan in an
attempt to wrest Kashmir from India. Ayub also visited the Soviet Union in
April 1965—the first visit of a Pakistani leader to that country. Ayub was
persuaded that the Soviets would not intervene in case of a Pakistani military
confrontation with India, despite growing Indo–Soviet ties. As the weaker
power, Pakistan’s search for alliances was driven by its perception that
India’s conventional military superiority could be countered by Pakistan’s
smart alliances, weapons, and soldiers, apart from the element of surprise.
Pakistan’s strategic thinkers had convinced themselves that their Pathan
soldiers were more martial than their Indian counterparts (‘one Muslim
equals ten Hindu soldiers’) and that a weakened India would not have
the will or resolve to fight Pakistan.
X
A clash in the Rann of Kutch in Gujarat was, in retrospect, a dry run for
the bigger war of 1965. The border in the Kutch had not been delineated
at Partition, and Pakistan decided to test India’s resolve there. Pakistan
had provoked the clashes. But in its official telling, it only reacted to Indian
forces advancing to the north in January 1965 to establish new posts; this
forced Pakistan to send in troops to stop India from resolving the dispute
unilaterally.
As fighting flared in April, and the armies skirmished several times,
India chose not to escalate the hostilities but instead tried diplomacy. On
29 April, Prime Minister Shastri signalled India’s intentions, when he said
it would fight Pakistan at a time and place of its choosing. The former
colonial masters stepped in. A ceasefire arrangement was hammered out on
88 ange r m anage m e nt

1 May, not through negotiations between Indian and Pakistani diplomats,

but by British envoys Sir Morrice James in Islamabad and John Freeman
in New Delhi, leading up to an agreement that was signed finally on 30
June 1965.
The ceasefire pact envisaged resolving the matter bilaterally or through
appeal to a three-member international tribunal. Prime Minister Shastri
welcomed the agreement and renewed the offer of a no-war treaty. But
Pakistan insisted on invoking the tribunal process; it would continue for
three years and 170 sittings in Geneva and its award would come only in
February 1968. This left only a residual matter of the Sir Creek area, the
disputed strip of water in the Rann marshlands. This was an easy enough
dispute to resolve, even though neither side has had the will to close the
matter in the over five decades that have passed since.10
Pakistan’s official account admits that the Kutch affair made Pakistan
overconfident. It also made India ‘want to settle a score’, and proved to
be one more stumble towards a war that came within five months of
the clash. To Ayub, the episode reinforced the assessment that in Shastri,
India had a weak leader who lacked the appetite to challenge Pakistan
seriously. Pakistan drew another wrong lesson from the face-off—if India
had agreed to an international tribunal after the war in Kutch, then it
might agree on one for Kashmir too. The Kashmir dispute had remained
dormant, particularly since UN mediator Gunnar Jarrings’ report in 1959.
And the Kutch affair encouraged Pakistan to attempt having this frozen
issue thawed out and internationalized.
In June 1965, Ayub Khan and Shastri touched on the matter in London,
on the sidelines of a jamboree of Commonwealth heads of government.
Shastri also introduced a diplomat to Ayub he would soon send to Karachi
as his envoy: India’s deputy high commissioner in London, Kewal Singh.
Ayub said he would welcome Singh in Pakistan. Singh had little inkling
of how extraordinary that welcome would be.
 8

A GRAB AT KAS H M I R

K ewal Singh arrived in Karachi on 5 August 1965, riding on hope

and confidence in a relationship that on balance seemed headed
in a positive direction, despite the difficult years since the 1962 war.
The Kutch run-in of April seemed to have reached a fair diplomatic
resolution. Unusually, the designated high commissioner in Karachi got
an appointment for his credentials ceremony the day after his arrival in
the new capital of Islamabad. The seat of the federal government had
already moved to Islamabad, while the Indian high commission and
other diplomatic missions were gearing up to move into new premises
over the next few years. Singh was pleasantly surprised by this alacrity in
Pakistan’s response; it was a good sign, this goodwill from his hosts. At the
ceremony for which he flew in from Karachi, Singh spoke with emotion
and nostalgia: he had spent the first thirty years of his life in what was now
Pakistan. Ayub struck a similar high note—he pledged to reciprocate every
move from India for better understanding.
The bonhomie would last exactly three days.
While the president and the envoy had been exchanging pleasant
sentiments of peace and reciprocal goodwill, a war was building up at
the border. A day earlier, as the high commissioner had landed in Karachi,
2,000 armed infiltrators, dressed as tribesmen, had walked stealthily from
Muzaffarabad into the Indian part of Kashmir, to begin a campaign of
arson and violence. 5 August was to become a day marked in red in
Kashmir’s calendar, more than half a century before the abrogation of its
special status on that very date.
Kewal Singh morphed rapidly into a wartime diplomat. He had received
troubling reports from Delhi—of several batches of well-armed Pakistani
military personnel in civilian clothes perpetrating a well-planned agenda
of violence and sabotage in Kashmir. Indian forces were engaging these
outsiders, arresting scores of them and killing many in skirmishes. But
more kept coming. On 8 August, India’s home minister, Gulzari Lal Nanda,
revealed to the media after an emergency cabinet meeting that armed men
from Pakistan had infiltrated India and were fomenting ‘disturbances’. On
9 August, Prime Minister Shastri instructed the envoy in Karachi to lodge
a strong protest with Ayub Khan against Pakistan’s aggression and to warn
its leadership that unless the infiltrations were stopped immediately, the
consequences for bilateral relations would be grave.1
Singh worked the phones but failed to get a meeting with Ayub.
90 ange r m anage m e nt

At 7 p.m. on 10 August, however, Singh was granted an audience with

Foreign Minister Bhutto. The young minister, identified later as a key
driver of Pakistan’s 1965 gambit, was dismissive of India’s démarche. He
was belligerent and aggressive through the meeting, insisting that what
was happening was an open revolt by Kashmiris against ‘India’s military
occupation’.
In Pakistan, Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed was in the dark. He later
revealed2 that he was taken aback by reports in the press on 9 August.
He did not know of the operation; the number of armed men who were
reported to have crossed the ceasefire line particularly surprised him. Once
again, this demonstrated that the civilians were only reacting to decisions
already taken by the military, even though Bhutto played a key role.
The briefing messages from Delhi told the envoy that more than a
hundred raiders were killed in the first five days of the operation and
scores arrested. He also learnt that ‘most of the raiders belonged to the
Pakistan Army and were well-equipped with Sten guns, rifles and explosives’.
The raiders of Kashmir were soon making international headlines. The
Washington Post was explaining to its readers that this event was Pakistan’s
Bay of Pigs, referring to the failed landing operation of Cuban exiles that
had been launched by the CIA less than five years earlier in April 1961.
The implication was that this Pakistani attempt to grab territory in Kashmir
would fail, as had the US attempt to reverse Cuba’s Castro revolution.3

GIBRALTAR TO LAHORE
In Karachi, Bhutto was pleased at this turn of events. As an ambitious
young politician within a military regime, an India hawk, and foreign
minister since 1963, he had been pushing Ayub for a while for a military
solution in Kashmir. He had been arguing with the full force of his
Berkeley law degree that Pakistan’s ingress into the disputed territory
would not invite an Indian response on the international boundary (as
indeed it did not in 1947–48) simply because it would be illegal; while a
war in disputed territory was kosher, an attack across the international
boundary, Bhutto felt, would invite international opprobrium. This
argument had weighed heavy in Ayub’s war calculus.4
Pakistan’s despatch of raiders into Kashmir was code-named Operation
Gibraltar—named after the Muslim conquest of Spain from the Strait of
Gibraltar. The plan had been developed in the 1950s, drawing inspiration
from the first Kashmir war of 1947–48. It was now executed by Ayub’s
army as an ‘attack by infiltration’ by an irregular force that would eventually
grow to 40,000 highly motivated and heavily armed men. It was preceded
by a meticulous ‘Operation Nusrat’, launched to find gaps in the ceasefire
line that the mujahideen could use as entry points to assess the response of
the Indian Army and locals in Kashmir. The fighting was to be confined to
 a grab at kas hmi r 91

Kashmir in order ‘to defreeze the Kashmir problem, weaken Indian resolve,
and bring India to the conference table without provoking general war’.5
The August incursion, denied at the time, later had a glib official
explanation. This was Pakistan’s reluctant recourse to the military option,
its spokesmen said, given the popular uprising in Indian Kashmir and the
dashed hopes for a peaceful settlement. Major General Akhtar Hussain
Malik, who prepared the scheme, had called for incursions by ‘Kashmiri
volunteers into India-held Kashmir’.6 The move was based on three
assumptions: the people in Kashmir would rise in support of the guerrillas,
a large-scale Indian offensive against Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK)
was unlikely, and the possibility of attacks across the international border
could be ruled out. All three, in Pakistan’s own official account, turned
out to be wrong.7
International alarm bells were ringing soon enough. In the second
week of August, UN Secretary General U Thant visited India and Pakistan.
These were innocent times, when India still would allow conversations
with eager external peacemakers. The major world powers were not in
a hurry to jump in directly. They had seen the slanging matches between
India and Pakistan on Kashmir over the previous couple of decades and
were already ‘bored stiff’.8
Within India, the outrage was mounting. Even in the midst of the crisis,
Prime Minister Shastri read the situation clearly. He said in a broadcast
to the nation on 13 August 1965:
…there is no doubt that this is a thinly disguised armed attack on our
country organised by Pakistan and it has been made as such…. the
world will recall that Pakistan created a similar situation in 1947, and
then also she initially pleaded innocence. Later, she had to admit that
her regular forces were involved in the fighting.
Pakistan’s line was one of stout denial. Bhutto was now pushing the public
spin he had used privately with the Indian envoy: that since India had
closed all doors to a peaceful solution of J&K, the people of the state had
been driven to rebellion and Pakistan’s sympathies were with them.
X
Diplomatic relations had not been severed in August but this now seemed
imminent. High Commissioner Kewal Singh in Karachi was worried about
the classified records and documents at his mission falling into enemy
hands. He had already worked out a deal with Delhi to have officers carry
trunks by successive flights over two months to deliver these secret records
to New Delhi. An attaché, Bhaumik, had already been dispatched on 27
August with the first instalment of documents; Bhaumik had volunteered
for the assignment since he wanted to bring back his mother to take care
92 ange r m anage m e nt

of his pregnant wife, but eventually could not make it back for a couple of
months. Singh was bracing for a raid on the mission and seizure of these
secret documents, which, in his dark fantasy, would be published daily in
Dawn with provocative headlines.
On the battlefront, India’s counteroffensive was on. By the end of
August, Indian forces had occupied large chunks of territory in the Kargil
area in the north of Kashmir and around the Haji Pir pass between Uri
and Poonch. On 1 September, Pakistan struck again, launching Operation
Grand Slam, deploying tanks in Chhamb in the Jammu area, to cut off
Kashmir from Indian Punjab. Pakistan’s diplomatic script remained to
argue that India was forcing a war on it. President Ayub in his broadcast
on 1 September alleged that the Kashmiris had risen in open revolt, that
Pakistan had only offered sympathy and support to these valiant fighters
against Indian tyranny.
Given the communications of those times, the high commissioner and
his team in Karachi were oblivious to the details of the action on the
borders. Very little information was trickling in from headquarters. Media
reporting was unreliable and biased. The Pakistan media hardly mentioned
the all-out attack that had been launched by the Pakistan Army supported
by the Pakistan Air Force and some 70 Patton tanks in the Chhamb area.
Kewal Singh recalled in his memoirs that he would have acted differently
had he known even a fraction of the reality on the ground that evening.
Thanks to his ignorance, and driven by personal goodwill towards his
host, Singh even set out on 3 September to attend a marriage reception in
Rawalpindi, hosted by Pakistan’s finance minister Mohammed Shoaib for his
son. Singh overruled the advice of the Indian liaison officer in Islamabad,
the Lahore-born G. L. Puri, who was worried about the impending outbreak
of war. He realized ‘the folly of my decision’ when he walked into the
Rawalpindi club, a representative of an enemy country in the midst of
war, to attend an event where the eyes of Pakistan’s military and civilian
elites were upon him. Singh saw the surprise of his hosts and rapidly left
the soiree.9 He would later get a measure of the level of hostility when
he saw a newspaper item that said that the sari gifted by the Indian high
commission for the wedding was sold by his hosts to raise funds for
Pakistan’s war effort.10
The international community was getting increasingly alarmed by the
hostilities. On 4 September, the UNSC passed the first resolution on the
conflict, calling for a ceasefire. But the situation on the ground was evolving
rapidly. When High Commissioner Singh returned to Karachi from his
social misadventure in Rawalpindi on 5 September, he got into a huddle
with his colleagues to take stock of the conflict. The rapid descent towards
full-blown war seemed imminent. But if the situation was fast drifting in
that direction, he should have received from headquarters ‘a number of
 a grab at kas hmi r 93

warning signals required by the war book of any foreign office’. What he
had instead was radio silence from Delhi. For an India at war, that post in
Karachi, deep within enemy territory, was either forgotten or not a priority.
On the border, India was acting decisively. The substantive Indian
response to Pakistan’s Kashmir offensive came with speed and surprise.
India launched a counteroffensive action in the shape of a march towards
Lahore on 6 September. India’s action in Punjab, to open another front,
showed Shastri’s leadership, and also that India’s war-fighting capability—
the systemic strength of its army and the collective wisdom of its cabinet—
was intact, implying that decisions of war and peace could be made with
institutional efficiency even in the post-Nehru era.
X
As Indian troops marched towards Lahore, the Indian high commission
team in Karachi, oblivious to battlefield reports, scrambled to hear
President Ayub Khan’s special broadcast to the nation. They learnt from
Ayub that the Indian Army had attacked the Lahore front, a sequel to
India’s ‘aggression of the past five months’. Ayub informed his nation that
Pakistan was at war and declared an emergency. He chose not to refer to
the infiltrators of Kashmir but spoke of the familiar trope of those times,
of India having never reconciled to the establishment of an independent
Pakistan where Muslims could build a homeland of their own.
Pakistani war hero and politician, Air Marshal Asghar Khan, later
assessed that even as late as 4 September, Ayub did not feel that the
Indians would react so strongly.11 He was misled by false assurances and
a misreading of the situation by his foreign minister, Bhutto, who was
forcefully making the legal argument, as we have noted, that since Kashmir
was a disputed territory, the Indians would not dare to move on the
settled international border. Bhutto had shouted down the military view
that an adversary attacked on the throat may choose to retaliate with a
knife to the gut.
Later accounts from Pakistan admit that the official propaganda during
the war had built up an impression of Pakistani forces having gained a
great advantage, if not victory, over India. Not for the first time, Pakistan’s
state propaganda deluded its own people and even its leaders.12
X
The high commission staff in Karachi were now in ‘lockdown’ mode—
all personnel had been asked to remain in the chancery office or in the
two India-owned residential buildings, Shivaji Court and Hindustan
Court. With all his staff in virtual house arrest, the HC needed to take a
critical wartime decision about when to destroy classified papers. Political
counsellor K. S. Bajpai, in charge of burning the records, piped up with a
94 ange r m anage m e nt

pertinent question. (Bajpai would later be appointed high commissioner

in Islamabad after the 1971 war.) Were the two countries really at war?
Did Ayub’s broadcast to the nation amount to a declaration of war? The
argument was that a technical declaration of war was essential before
the countries went about the business of dealing with their diplomatic
missions, property, and personnel as warring countries should. After
debating this issue without conclusion, the good bureaucrats decided to
ask their host country for a clarification—were the countries indeed at
war? Deputy High Commissioner Prakash Kaul was rushed to the foreign
office. He politely asked his interlocutors in Karachi if their countries were
at war, and if so, whether steps would be taken to protect the diplomatic
missions under the Vienna Convention. He received a prompt bureaucratic
reply that the matter would be referred to the appropriate authorities: ‘We
cannot answer such questions without reference to Islamabad and shall
get in touch with the High Commission later.’ Effectively, in the midst of
a major border war, Pakistan’s officials were telling Indian diplomats that
they were unsure whether their countries were really at war. As it turned
out, neither government formally declared war or thought of closing down
diplomatic missions.
Nevertheless, fearing a sudden attack on India’s premises, the high
commissioner and his team started a bonfire on 7 September to burn the
classified documents and cipher codes. They also gathered most staff and
families into the chancery premises to forestall angry mobs attacking the
residences. Sentiment against India was ratcheting up in Karachi and the
enemy’s diplomatic representation suddenly was a vulnerable target.
On 8 September, a contingent of armed police descended upon the
home of Frank Dewars, first secretary at the high commission. Some ten
policemen and an officer, armed with guns and bayonets, barged in to begin
ransacking the family’s belongings and throwing things out. The police
officer on duty said that he had orders from his superiors to search for
a secret transmitter sending messages to India from within the building,
Hindustan Court. Kewal Singh and his deputy Kaul pushed back against
the police team. The excitable Kaul was livid and demanded the cops leave
immediately. He yelled at the bearded superintendent, ‘O, Darhiwale...
are you not ashamed of yourself? How dare you enter these diplomatic
premises, without our permission and frighten women and children in
this barbaric manner? Will you and your men get out of the premises
immediately!’ The superintendent grinned provocatively and said he had
orders to look for a secret transmitter.13
Kaul burst out, ‘That is a stupid pretext to harass and insult the families
of the high commission. What the Pakistan government is doing has not
happened in the 200 years of diplomatic history of the world. You will
pay for this.’ Kewal Singh tried to calm down his deputy and asked him
 a grab at kas hmi r 95

to contact the foreign office. Kaul did so and was assured that a ‘protocol
officer’ would arrive immediately. Kaul also telephoned the foreign media,
representatives of AFP and the New York Times. He was still speaking
to the New York Times correspondent when his phone went dead. When
the protocol officer arrived, Kaul protested strongly and the officer in
turn protested to the superintendent of police. The policeman snarled at
the civilian, ‘just vanish unless you want trouble.’ The orders were clearly
coming from authorities other than the foreign office.
Similar scenes were repeated in Shivaji Court, where gun-toting
policemen were ransacking boxes and cupboards while the officials and
their wives and children were made to sit along the corridors. To Kewal
Singh the whole exercise seemed intended to frighten and humiliate the
families. ‘So sad, so crude and so utterly meaningless.’ This, he felt, did not
represent Pakistani culture and stemmed from minds that were poisoned
by consuming hatred.
More was to follow. As the high commissioner drove to his residence in
Clifton in the late evening, he saw soldiers surrounding his own residence.
He asked his driver to take a detour to the residence of the Sri Lankan
high commissioner. General Wickrama Wijyekhoon received his Indian
counterpart warmly and the two diplomats discussed the conflict, the
destruction of records and the police searches. The Indian high commissioner
requested Wijyekhoon to send a message to his government to be conveyed
to our high commissioner in Colombo about the conversation they had.
He agreed to do so. But Singh later discovered that he never did act upon
the request.
The Sri Lankan diplomat’s decision, the Indian diplomat realized,
was correct according to international convention. A diplomat was not
supposed to send messages on behalf of a country that was at war with
his host government. Kewal Singh’s Pakistani counterpart in Delhi was
more fortunate, though. For the Pakistani high commission in New Delhi,
Singh later learnt, two embassies continued to act as a channel to send
detailed communications to Islamabad. But Singh was disappointed in his
Sri Lankan counterpart: he should have at least sent a situation report,
which the Indian mission had no means of sending.14
When Kewal Singh reached home, he found about two dozen soldiers
guarding each gate. Some police officers had been all over the house in
his absence for a perfunctory inspection. They took away a radio set, a
revolver, and a visitors’ book. Also, at Hindustan Court and Shivaji Court,
radios, transistors, and firearms had been taken away by the police. The
radio sets were missed most by the high commission since they were the
only means to access information of the war.
The high commissioner tried to catch some sleep after a harrowing day,
spent visiting the scenes of the searches and meeting frightened families. But
96 ange r m anage m e nt

he never got that well-deserved rest. First Secretary Amar Singh knocked
on his door at 2.30 a.m. with grim news.
The chancery had now been occupied by hundreds of Pakistani
policemen and officers, who had sent a police jeep to summon the HC
to the office. Kewal Singh bristled at the ‘stupidity’ of the Pakistani officers
in calling for him and officiously declared he would be available only to
the president, the foreign minister, and the foreign secretary. But he soon
changed his mind—concerned at the trouble at the office—and followed the
police jeep in his own car. At the chancery, the policemen appeared ‘sullen’,
having found only empty cupboards since secret documents had been
incinerated already. They were still ostensibly looking for the mysterious
transmitter. They left soon.
The next night, the Indian high commissioner was summoned by Foreign
Secretary Aziz Ahmed at 1.30 in the morning. Knowing Ahmed’s aggressive
style, Singh anticipated a stormy session and kept reminding himself to
be calm even if provoked or insulted. When he arrived, Singh smiled as
he greeted the foreign secretary, who ‘scowled grimmer than usual’ and
curtly asked him to sit down for a meeting that would be forty minutes
long, ‘the most unpleasant I have ever faced’. Ahmed started by shouting
about the treacherous aggression launched by the ‘rabid Hindu leaders’
who had evil designs against Pakistan for a long time. He fulminated,
increasingly incoherent, about Kashmir and Indian tyranny and aggression.
Singh intervened with a smile to say that he had already sent a note to
the foreign office saying that the armed raiders from Pakistan should be
stopped forthwith from entering Kashmir, as otherwise it could lead to
grave consequences. The foreign secretary interrupted him rudely and spoke
of the ‘Hindu fascists in New Delhi who should be made to realise that
instead of their evil designs to undo Pakistan, this misadventure by India
would lead to its own disintegration’.15
Kewal Singh remained pointedly polite, saying that he would convey
these serious warnings and threats to his government ‘provided you open
my communication channels with New Delhi’. He would then report
not just these messages but also of the ‘raid on the Chancery, the police
searches of all the houses and personal possessions including my own
and the police harassment and humiliation of the Indian families’.16 This
further infuriated the foreign secretary who ‘kept up his rant’. At this
point, the high commissioner rose to say that unless the foreign secretary
had something more worthwhile to say, he would leave. He left without
a handshake or a goodbye.
The next weeks for the high commissioner were spent in an information
vacuum. He was virtually under house arrest, completely cut off from the
outside world—without radio or telephone communications or visitors.
After four days, his butler was finally allowed to go out once a day,
 a grab at kas hmi r 97

with a military escort, to buy foodstuffs or tinned provisions. The high

commissioner remained unaware of what was happening on the war front
or to some 300 members of the Indian diplomatic staff and families in
Karachi. It was only on 28 September that an army officer of the rank of
brigadier arrived in a jeep to announce that the high commissioner was
now permitted to go from the residence to the chancery building with a
military escort. This told Kewal Singh that the war may have ended.
X
While Kewal Singh was incommunicado, the border war and global
diplomacy had taken several twists and turns. Amidst the battles on the
ground, China had stayed its military hand but rushed to the diplomatic
aid of its new partner. On 16 September, China delivered an ultimatum,
asking India to dismantle its ‘military structures on the Chinese side of
the border’ within three days. For India, the danger of a second military
front opening to the north seemed real. But the Chinese threat later proved
to be a hollow one. The USSR and the US also stayed aside pointedly,
preferring global diplomacy at the UN. The perils of the expansion of
the war triggered a UN Security Council resolution on 20 September that
went beyond past texts to call for a ‘settlement of the political problems
underlying the present conflict’. The ceasefire was finally announced on 23
September.
Getting out of his four weeks of enforced seclusion, the high
commissioner also learnt of the travails that his staff had gone through. A
baby had been delivered at the chancery with no outside medical assistance.
A mob had attacked the chancery premises on 21 September, with 200
people shouting obscene slogans; an hour later, another fierce group, a
thousand-strong this time, arrived at the scene with a truckload of stones,
which they tossed into India’s premises, with improvised explosives and
kerosene bombs. Fortunately, the building survived this orchestrated attack.
The Indian staff was enraged, not just at the mobs and at Pakistan, but
also at their own government, which had abandoned them in the heart
of enemy territory during the war. Deputy High Commissioner Kaul was
vocally critical of his own government and leadership that had failed them.
High Commissioner Kewal Singh and his political counsellor K. S.
Bajpai tried gamely to soothe the distraught staff and explain that the
leadership in the ministry and the country was perhaps too preoccupied
with the war to be able to attend to their situation in the high commission.
Kaul was unrelenting in his rage against the abandoning of the mission
by the ministry and India’s leadership. Singh reflected in his memoirs
that while he understood Prime Minister Shastri’s preoccupations, things
might have been different if Nehru were still alive. He would probably
have checked on the welfare of the mission through his foreign secretary,
98 ange r m anage m e nt

asked him to get reports on how diplomatic staff and their families were
faring in Karachi and Dacca through friendly diplomatic missions or by
approaching the UN or the International Red Cross.
Trying as the situation was, Kewal Singh later felt it could have been
a lot worse. His heart missed a beat when he read about what happened
to the US embassy in Iran when the Revolutionary Guards took over its
premises in November 1979, and kept over sixty diplomatic staff captive
for 444 days.17 The Iranians had painstakingly put together all shredded
records and published them over the next few months, to the considerable
embarrassment of the US administration, and jeopardized many high placed
Iranians who were mentioned in these records. At the US embassy in Tehran
in 1979, several barriers had to be overcome before the armed militia got
their hands on the classified material. But at the Indian high commission
in Karachi in 1965, only a glass door had separated the records from the
intruders.
All through the crisis of 1965, it did not occur to either country to
withdraw its envoy from the enemy nation or expel theirs. War was not
formally declared, diplomatic ties were not cut, the high commissions
remained operational. This was an undeclared war; diplomatic
communication, however shrill, was maintained. This diplomatic situation
paralleled the one of 1947 to 1949, where despite bloodshed on the border,
the conflict barely made it to the formal bilateral agenda.
X
The post-mortem of the war has extended across several decades. Later
writings confirm that Pakistan’s strategic objectives were to ‘defreeze’ the
Kashmir problem and weaken Indian resolve, forcing India to negotiate on
the Kashmir issue, without provoking a general war. About two decades
earlier, Pakistan had used similar tactics in its attempt to capture Kashmir.
Once again, in 1965, Pakistan had made a critical error of assuming
that Kashmir was a ‘ripe fruit’ about to fall into its lap. And thirty-four
years later, Pakistan would make the same miscalculation in Kargil—of
launching a ‘deniable’ infiltration led by irregulars, hoping to capture some
border territory in a conflict limited to Kashmir, and to bring India to the
negotiating table through renewed international attention.
The 1965 war infused deep distrust into the bilateral relationship.
This distrust would deepen with another war in six years. More broadly,
India’s wars of the 1960s, starting with 1962, became decisive factors in
ending the trust generated by the diplomacy of the 1950s. India had to
grapple with its security vulnerabilities both to its north and to the west.
The trauma and horrors of Partition had perhaps generated an impulse
for constructive state-building and trustful diplomacy, but the wars of the
1960s ended India’s period of strategic naiveté, as they underlined the
 a grab at kas hmi r 99

need for a strong security sensibility to protect the state from adversarial
neighbours.
Most analysts of the time saw the war as a military stalemate. Some
others felt that while India did not win the war, Pakistan in fact lost
it since it failed as the aggressor to secure its objectives of conquering
Kashmir or even of ‘defreezing’ the Kashmir issue.
In Pakistan’s internal assessment, the war was soon interpreted as the
culmination of the rise and fall of expectations of a peaceful settlement of the
Kashmir dispute. Pakistan had been agitated over India’s legal manoeuvres
since October 1963 to erode the disputed and even the ‘special’ status
of Kashmir. Nehru had made it clear in November 1963 that a gradual
erosion of the special status of Kashmir was in progress, even as Bakshi
Ghulam Mohammed had been installed in power through rigged elections.
Pakistan’s planners were also deluded into believing that the inflamed
sentiment in Kashmir following the theft of the holy relic in 1963 was a
pro-Pakistan movement. India’s march towards greater military strength was
seen in Pakistan as interrupted by a post-Nehru transition. In a strategic
sense, Pakistan assessed that the window was closing on its opportunity
to precipitate a military solution in Kashmir.
Pakistani writers refer to the hubris of the Kutch victory, but a deeper
attitude problem defined the Pakistani military makeup at that point. Ayub
Khan held the bigoted notion that Hindu morale would not stand more
than a couple of hard blows at the right time and place.18
While Ayub blamed Bhutto and some of his generals for their flawed
counsel, the ruling dictator could not escape the lion’s share of the blame;
even the failure of the talks between Swaran Singh and Bhutto after the
1962 war was later pinned on Ayub. He was seen as having missed the
opportunity for diplomacy to achieve a breakthrough towards a settlement
of the Kashmir issue, in conformity with the aspirations of the people. He
had then fallen into a military trap with a war that did nothing to further
the Kashmir cause. Reinforcing the assessment of his reluctance to own
the conflict, Ayub was silent on the 1965 war in his memoirs published in
1967.19 Some Pakistani writers hold him responsible for both wars—1965
and the one to follow in 1971.
Pakistani analysts also rue the fact that while China did support Pakistan
diplomatically, the US failed to do so. The cold US reaction became a matter
of deep disappointment in Pakistan. There was no meeting of SEATO or
CENTO, the US remained pointedly neutral, the UK was unresponsive.
Pakistan was getting increasingly disillusioned with the US and arguing
that they were ‘power drunk’ and that Pakistan was seeking friends, not
new masters.
As we’ve seen, Pakistan had tried through the 1960s to garner from
the US some political support for its core interest—the Kashmir cause. It
100 ange r m anage m e nt

also sought arms to realize a military solution. The US did back Pakistan
on the global stage, pushing a UN resolution on Kashmir in 1962 that
aggressively called for direct negotiations to resolve the dispute. But this
was blocked by the hundredth Soviet veto at the UN on 22 June 1962,
thanks to India’s warming ties with the Soviet Union. Pakistan did try to
invoke the 1959 agreement during its war in 1965 but the US argued that
the action clause could only be triggered exclusively by aggression by a
communist state. This is cited by Pakistani analysts as one of the first in
a series of acts of American perfidy towards Pakistan.
However, US arms supplies had continued, with Pakistan initiating
its military adventure against India in 1965, armed with Patton tanks
and fighter aircraft of US manufacture. Nevertheless, US support was
tempered, as we will see, by larger geopolitical concerns—the need to
balance communist China with democratic India that translated into
lukewarm political support for Pakistan in 1962 and a hands-off posture
in 1965. Disappointed by the failure of its Western alliances in 1965,
Pakistan attempted to cobble together another short-lived foreign policy
precept of ‘bilateralism’, distinguished from non-alignment, which was a
policy that in effect sought to distance Pakistan from the west and open
windows to the east. Bhutto later tried to convert this into a doctrine of
international relations but this hasty innovation did not survive beyond
Bhutto’s tenure as foreign minister.20
X
K. S. Shankar Bajpai, a thoughtful young Indian diplomat at the chancery in
wartime Karachi, felt disappointed by India’s approach. India, he felt, should
have prolonged the war and not surrendered the advantage. Reflecting on the
conflict decades later, Bajpai noted that Bhutto had long been contemplating
an ‘Algeria-type situation’ for Kashmir, inspired by the referendum in Algeria
that got it independence from the colonial French in 1961. But Pakistan
had finally decided on a military solution since ‘the hawks won Ayub over
when Washington’s fitful disenchantments with Pakistan started strangling
vital American aid’. Pakistan’s logistical problems were sharper than India’s;
neither side could fight a long war, but a ‘briefly longer war was feasible’.
Bajpai pointed out that even the army chief Sam Manekshaw ‘openly
regretted that we missed our chance’. Bajpai argued that ‘a state accustomed
to handling power might at least have considered the intriguing political
consequences of delaying the ceasefire.’ On the long-term meaning of 1965,
Bajpai felt that it demonstrated Pakistan’s obsession with Kashmir. Pithily
summarizing ties in the twentieth century, Bajpai observed that
the 1965 war was born of 1962, which left us looking like bumblers....
We foiled Pakistan’s resulting adventure, doubtless an achievement,
 a grab at kas hmi r 101

albeit limited, but it turned Pakistan to other means: fomenting

dissidence in our Punjab, feeding subversion elsewhere, developing
terror as an instrument of policy, apart from making life difficult in
J&K, while scheming its way to nuclear power. All comprehensively
demonstrating an undying obsession—doing India down, wresting
J&K.21

X
On 20 October, almost a month after the declaration of the ceasefire, Kewal
Singh was called in for consultations to India. The high commissioner hoped
that his summons by his home country would be noted by his Pakistani
hosts as a demand that they should make amends for the ‘outrageous
violations by the Pakistani government’22 of diplomatic immunities and
privileges of the Indian high commission in Karachi. The Indian government
had in September lodged a strong protest with Pakistan’s government on
the invasion and ransacking of houses of diplomatic personnel and the
mission. The permanent Indian representative at the UN, G. Parthasarathy,
had launched a similar protest with the secretary general of the UN. But
the Pakistani government flatly rejected the protests and in turn accused
India of breaches of diplomatic practices in dealing with its diplomats in
Delhi. Pakistan’s diplomats in India never had much of a rough time during
the conflict, but knee-jerk counter-accusations were the norm, and would
remain the practice over the next decades.
Pakistan also called in its high commissioner Mian Arshad Hussain
from New Delhi for consultations. The mistrust between the two countries
had now deepened. The Indian high commissioner was not allowed to
board the plane for Delhi for more than twenty-four hours, awaiting the
departure of the Pakistan high commissioner for Karachi. The Indian side
was insisting upon its high commissioner leaving Karachi before it could
agree on Hussain’s departure. In the end, both high commissioners left
for their countries simultaneously, on the evening of 25 October, more
hostages than diplomats accredited to neighbouring countries.
As the Indian high commissioner returned home to Delhi on 25 October,
the next act of the drama began in New York at the UN Security Council.
In yet another abortive meeting, the Security Council was trying to cobble
together terms of the ceasefire and of withdrawal of the adversarial forces
to their pre-5 August positions. Despite admonitions by the president of the
Security Council, Bhutto insisted on raising the discussion on the internal
situation in Kashmir after sharp exchanges with the Indian delegation. As
Bhutto persisted, the Indian delegation led by Foreign Minister Swaran
Singh decided to walk out of the council. Flying into yet another tantrum,
Bhutto shouted, ‘the Indian dogs have gone home’.23 Bhutto’s anger and
102 ange r m anage m e nt

frustration at the unravelling of his 1965 design was getting the better
of his diplomacy.

A TRUCE IN TASHKENT
Security Council resolutions adopted on 4 and 6 September 1965 asked
both countries to withdraw all military personnel to pre-5 August
positions. On 9 September, UN Secretary General U Thant paid a visit
to Pakistan and India. Pakistani diplomats were particularly displeased
that, despite numerous attempts, he made no mention of the earlier UN
resolutions of 1949–50.
The US, still beset by internal turmoil after after President John F.
Kennedy’s assassination a couple of years earlier on 22 November 1963,
showed some reluctance in jumping in to mediate this latest South Asian
conflict. But the Soviets now engaged with both parties with equal zeal.
On 18 September, Prime Minister Shastri told parliament that Premier
Kosygin had sent him a note offering Soviet good offices to settle the
differences between India and Pakistan. He revealed four days later that
India had accepted the offer. Pakistan accepted the same offer in the middle
of November, and a meeting was set for 4 January 1966 in Tashkent. The
main concern for India was the withdrawal of forces from the Haji Pir
Pass, Poonch–Uri, and Kargil positions. These were strategic heights along
the LoC that Indian troops had acquired during the conflict. These were
also bases from which Pakistani invaders had launched past incursions
into India. Surrendering these critical territorial gains, acquired at great
human cost, would not go down well with India’s military.
X
High-level delegations from both sides arrived in Tashkent on 3 January
1966. Prime Minister Shastri repeated the need for a no-war pact or at least
an agreement that the armed forces of the two countries would not in future
bear arms against each other. Pakistan was still insisting that such a peace
agreement would work only if ‘basic disputes’ were addressed, a standard
euphemism for the primacy of the Kashmir issue. In Tashkent, drafts flew
fast and furious between the two sides and were just as summarily rejected.
The Soviets kept a studied distance from the negotiation but Alexei Kosygin
and Andrei Gromyko tried hard in separate discussions with the delegations
to push for common ground. On 6 January, Kosygin spent nearly ten hours
with both delegations trying to bridge the gaps. On 7 January, Ayub and
Shastri met for two hours without aides and their ‘exchanges confirmed that
their positions were quite irreconcilable’.
High Commissioner Kewal Singh decided to try his own diplomacy
that evening. At the end of a lavish cultural performance by the Bahor
ensemble at the Ali Sher Nawai Theatre, attended by both delegations,
 a grab at kas hmi r 103

Singh walked across to his Pakistani counterpart, high commissioner to

India, Arshad Hussain, and greeted him warmly. Hussain looked the other
way and did not even respond to the greeting. Singh walked out of
the hall, surprised and crestfallen at the snub, blaming himself for the
indiscretion. But Hussain accosted Singh in the corridor later and told
him that he had acted cool since his leaders were ‘glaring’ at him. The
two high commissioners agreed to meet discreetly the next day to see if
they could find common ground. They pretended to go shopping opposite
the Tashkent Hotel, at the state departmental store. Hussain explained
to Singh that it would be hard for the Pakistani delegation to go home
with a document that did not refer to Kashmir. Singh then helped trigger
‘an honourable compromise’ in a formulation that said that both sides
explained their respective positions on J&K.
The more important issue for India was the future of Haji Pir and
other strategic heights. Shastri had publicly committed that these vital
posts would not be vacated, but the Security Council resolution supported
by the Soviet government, and which India had accepted, required that
forces of the two countries be withdrawn to pre-5 August positions. The
Indian side finally decided to give up these claims and withdrew to the 5
August levels in the larger interest of the joint declaration. After two more
days of aggressive mediation by the Soviets, Shastri and Ayub signed the
Tashkent Declaration at 4.30 p.m. on 10 January. The signing ceremony
was followed by a reception, after which the two delegations were to
depart on the morning of 11 January.
Watching the proceedings, Bajpai felt India had given away too much.
Bajpai was the designated protocol officer who dropped off the prime
minister to his room after the reception. Shastri had looked tired ‘but no
one thought he would succumb to a heart attack the same night’. Bajpai’s
shock at Shastri’s passing that midnight was matched by his disappointment
with the outcomes in Tashkent. Fifty years after India had signed on the
dotted line, Bajpai recalled that the agreement
would be forever questioned for returning heroically captured J&K
areas. We went determined not to return them, unless Pakistan agreed
to renounce force and accept the ceasefire line as a frontier. How
we could interpret what we signed as achieving those objectives is
anyone’s guess. We did face unexpected difficulties: Russia’s skilful
diplomacy turned from pro-Indian to even-handed, seeing possibilities
of weaning Pakistan away from its then bugbear China. Originally
urging the Tashkent meet not for a final settlement but to start a
process, Moscow pressed for an agreement there and then, with
messages sent through our ambassador warning of a return to the UN
Security Council, and without the benefit of a Soviet veto.24
104 ange r m anage m e nt

While many have held the dilemma of surrendering the heights or

abandoning the Tashkent deal to have taken its toll on Shastri, to Kewal
Singh, Shastri did not seem unduly concerned about this issue. In their last
meeting, the prime minister asked Singh to quickly get back to his duties
in Pakistan, since the declaration called for high commissioners to resume
their posts quickly and India needed to signal the importance it attached to
the Tashkent Agreement.
Bajpai in his later years was willing to concede that India’s national
capacity was limited in 1965, but he rued that the lessons had not been
learnt even five decades later. ‘All too often,’ he reflected, ‘there are no
solutions. Problems can only be managed until circumstances change....
Pakistan’s 1965 gamble failed, but we only scotched the snake, not killed
it.... In 1965, we were economically floundering, militarily weak, politically
bickering, and still diplomatically inexperienced. The lessons of 1965—not
to be any of those things—are obvious. So too is our refusal to learn.’25

AN UNCERTAIN PEACE DEAL

The Tashkent Declaration provided for the withdrawal of forces to
restore the status quo ante of 5 August 1965 and the return of the high
commissioners to their posts. Strong criticism was voiced within both
countries, of their leaders squandering at the negotiating table what
the armed forces had won on the battlefield. In India, Shastri’s passing
somewhat muted the censure. In Pakistan, the agreement flew in the
face of the manufactured narrative that Pakistan had won the war by
repulsing India’s attempts to capture Lahore. Ayub Khan’s position became
increasingly untenable, particularly since the wily Bhutto was slowly
distancing himself from the Tashkent outcomes. Facing mounting anger on
Pakistan’s ‘capitulation’, Ayub launched a spirited campaign to ‘educate the
people’ on the Tashkent Declaration, travelling across Pakistan for frank
discussions with opinion shapers.
An optimistic Kewal Singh himself tried to make the most of the
Tashkent spirit when he resumed duties in Karachi in mid-January 1966.
When Ayub arrived in Karachi from a tour of Lahore, he asked Kewal Singh
to see him. At 8.30 a.m., on 20 January, Singh arrived at the president’s
house where he saw ‘scores of cars’ bringing in an audience of public
intellectuals for another session with the president on Tashkent. It was
a smiling, relaxed and confident Ayub that greeted the Indian HC. The
president explained to the diplomat how he had gone against military and
political advice to sign the Tashkent Agreement in the larger interest of
peace between the countries. He apologized for the behaviour of Pakistani
officials who had harassed staff of the Indian mission and said that high
commission members in future would be shown every courtesy. Singh
agreed with Ayub that it was important to normalize relations and build
 a grab at kas hmi r 105

goodwill before addressing differences.

The high commissioner came away convinced of Ayub’s sincerity
in trying to resume ties. He recommended to Delhi that permission for
overflights be resumed immediately; the wartime ban was hurting Pakistan
in sustaining links with its eastern wing. The proposal was rejected on the
grounds that the issue could be discussed along with others, when ministers
of the two governments would meet. Singh sent a stronger telegram to Delhi
arguing that lifting the ban was a critical first step towards reconciliation
and went so far as to suggest it was ‘short-sighted political policy’ to use
it as ‘some kind of bargaining counter’. Even as a bargain, the resumption
of overflights was of ‘equal importance to us’26 given the longer routes
Indian flights were taking. He asked his views to be placed before the prime
minister. Four days later, he got a cable saying that Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi had agreed with President Ayub’s proposal to resume overflights.
But the goodwill was not seeping down to the ground. At a Republic
Day reception on 26 January, at the residence of Uma Shankar Bajpai,
deputy high commissioner and elder sibling of political counsellor K. S.
Bajpai, the atmosphere was festive at 7 p.m. Uma Shankar had arrived
recently from London, and was expecting several diplomats to join the
party that evening. An ‘underlying message’ was the celebration of India’s
success in the war and also the success in smuggling out First Secretary
Frank Dewars, the police officer posted at the mission, whom the Pakistani
agencies had linked to espionage. Naval Attaché Jack Shea had arranged
a daring escape from Karachi for Dewars and his family just a few weeks
earlier. Shea, along with his wife, Dorothy, was among the first guests at
the reception. Shea had just had a whisky as he chatted with a guest, when
he felt dizzy. He suspected his drink had been spiked, excused himself and
made it to a washroom on the first floor, where he was struck on the
head with a heavy object. Soon, three men, hiding in the toilet, mercilessly
beat up the naval attaché, tossed his battered body over the terrace into
bushes, and disappeared. Shea spent weeks in a Karachi hospital in a coma
and months recovering from the battering. India complained in Pakistan
as also in New Delhi. Pakistan denied any hand in the assault. But the
incident demonstrated a new aggression in the diplomatic relationship,
not seen before.27
As part of his post-Tashkent outreach, Kewal Singh again met with
the dreaded Foreign Secretary Aziz Ahmed. If the previous midnight
encounter had been the worst meeting of his life, the current one was
‘distressing’ even in the aftermath of India’s gesture of permitting overflights.
Ahmed expressed no regret on the harassment and violence against Indian
diplomats and said that all allegations made by the Indian high commission
were ‘fabrications’ to malign Pakistan. Once again, the exasperated high
commissioner walked out of the meeting without a handshake.
106 ange r m anage m e nt

When he received the letter from Mrs Gandhi on overflights, Kewal

Singh went to meet with President Ayub and Bhutto at the latter’s residence
in Larkana in Sindh. Bhutto was clearly setting policy on India; Ayub
seemed increasingly reluctant to overrule him. Bhutto again insisted that
Kashmir was the main issue and seemed ready to repudiate the Tashkent
agreement. Nevertheless, they agreed to a meeting of ministerial delegations,
which finally came about in Rawalpindi on 2 March 1966. India sent a
high-powered delegation led by Foreign Minister Swaran Singh, hoping to
take forward the ‘Tashkent spirit’. But within thirty minutes of the start
of the meeting, Bhutto dashed all hopes by invoking Kashmir and harking
back to the UN resolutions of 1949–50. The meeting ended with a clumsy
formulation that Pakistan requested for ‘special importance of reaching a
settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir dispute’, while the Indian side joined
only in the statement that ‘all disputes’ should be resolved.
High Commissioner Kewal Singh felt personally responsible for the
volte-face by Ayub and for the failure of the talks. As he saw off the Indian
delegation, one of the officials reminded Singh: ‘This is the result of your
ill-conceived insistence on the resumption of overflights. Pakistan is no
longer interested in any dialogue.’ This barb added to Singh’s dejection.
Soon after the talks failed, anti-India rhetoric and propaganda rose, with
Bhutto accusing India of treachery. Worse, both Bhutto and Ayub were
making scathing attacks on India. The events of March 1966 had sealed
the fate of the Tashkent declaration and Bhutto was leading the charge
for its quick burial. Ayub Khan, pressed by Bhutto, was now distancing
himself from the ‘unfair’ Tashkent deal.
But Bhutto had a longer game plan. It would soon become clear that
he was carving out his political future founded on a posture of vitriolic
attacks on India and an unwavering commitment to the Kashmir cause.
Ayub’s favoured politician had sensed that the military dictator was about
to complete his long run as Pakistan’s ruler. Driven ostensibly by his
opposition to the peace with India after the Tashkent fiasco, and sensing
the collapse of Ayub, Bhutto quit as foreign minister in June 1966, aiming
at a more exalted political future. This ended the Sindh politician’s tenure
as cabinet minister of eight years, three of which were spent as foreign
minister, where he guided Pakistan’s destiny, developed close ties with
China, and became the major driver of the war with India. But he had
also annoyed the US and the UK, and caused American aid to be ended.
In the midst of rising political turmoil, High Commissioner Kewal Singh
left Pakistan in October 1966 to take over as Indian envoy in Moscow. He
was soon replaced by the Dacca-born Samarendra Sen, a veteran ICS officer
who understood Pakistan well. Sen took over an Indian high commission
poised to move to Pakistan’s gleaming new capital of Islamabad.
 a grab at kas hmi r 107

X
By 1967, the ethnic divide between Pakistan’s west and east had widened.
This also impacted relations between India and eastern Pakistan. Sectarian
riots in 1964 that killed over a thousand people in Dacca had exacerbated
this long-standing problem. Hindu refugees flooded north-east India. The
1950 Nehru–Liaquat Pact was unravelling. East Pakistan was also upset
that the west had left that region undefended during the 1965 war; some
in the west had even suggested, implausibly, that China would step in if
India invaded the east. More fundamentally Dacca University economists
mocked the two-nation theory with a ‘two-economies theory’, pointing to
the brazen reallocation of funds to the west, despite the economy of the
east contributing most of Pakistan’s export revenues. At a 1966 Opposition
party conference in Lahore, the charismatic grassroots politician and leader
of the Awami League, Mujibur Rahman, had proposed a six-point plan of
autonomy, challenging Ayub Khan’s sham ‘Basic Democracy’ scheme. All
this would be the run-up to another painful partition in South Asia, and
the creation of a new nation to India’s east.
 SECTION 3

1967–1977: A SUBCONTINENT REDRAWN

 9

JOI BANGLA

O n the twentieth anniversary of its independence, 14 August 1967,

Pakistan officially moved its capital to Islamabad. This had been Ayub
Khan’s pet project, launched in the beginning of his reign. Islamabad had
already been declared the capital city in 1960 and Rawalpindi, close to
the army headquarters, served as the interim capital, where the seat of
government initially shifted from Karachi. The Indian high commission had
a new address in Islamabad from 1967. High Commissioner Samarendra
Sen rented a modest building in the F6 sector for the office and moved
into a neighbouring bungalow that served as his residence. Sen was in
good company. Other diplomatic reidences surrounded his. And about a
hundred yards away, at the foot of the Margalla Hills, was the residence
of Pakistan’s ruler Ayub Khan. The high commission left a subsidiary
office—now a consulate—in Karachi and continued to operate one in an
increasingly restive Dacca.
Sen watched with special interest the mounting anger in East Pakistan
towards the western wing. The bond between the two wings had been
an uneasy one since Partition in 1947. Religion had long been deployed
to divide the Bengali people. Some writers suggest that the genesis of the
divisions in the subcontinent should be traced to earlier in the century, to
the first partition of Bengal in 1905 (when the British rejigged the Bengal
Presidency, dividing it into a largely Muslim west and Hindu east) or
even earlier, to the divisive politics following the Revolt of 1857 (when
Indian troops rebelled against the British East India Company), or even
before that, to the Battle of Plassey of 1757, which first divided Bengal
and allowed the East India Company to establish its empire.
In negotiating Pakistan, Jinnah had successfully played up religion as
the primary marker of identity to join the eastern and western wings into
one nation. In March 1948, Jinnah had flown down to the eastern wing
of the country he had created on his maiden visit as Pakistan’s powerful
ruler. Indian HC Sri Prakasa in Karachi had pushed New Delhi for the
overflight permissions for Jinnah, for a visit meant to consolidate support
in the eastern wing. Little did the Quaid know that he was sowing the
seeds of its partition within the next quarter century. Jinnah’s speech at
Dacca University in March 1948 was tone deaf in declaring in English to
his shocked audience that Urdu would be Pakistan’s national language. This
was seen as an arrogant put-down of the Bengali language, and a failure
to read the cultural, as against religious, basis for Bengali nationalism.
112 ange r m anage m e nt

The speech was met with dismay and heckling. Jinnah compounded his
indiscretion later in the same month in a radio address, where he repeated
that Urdu would not just be the link language, but the only language for
Pakistan. This did not go down well in a region where language was central
to identity; it led to the first signs of resentment at ‘West Pakistani racism’.
Jinnah was then at the peak of his powers as Pakistan’s governor general,
combining an autocratic executive role with that of a ceremonial head of
state, almost like a British viceroy. He was the unchallenged authority of a
country he had created ‘with his typewriter’1, but the core of his creation
lay in Punjab, with Bengal on the distant periphery.
Punjabi Pakistanis added insult to hurt Bengali pride by ignoring the
historical Bengali contribution to Pakistan’s creation—the Muslim League
had begun operations in Bengal, and the Pakistan movement got much of
its strength from the eastern wing, making partition inevitable by 1947.
The language movement had exploded when police killed student
protestors of Dacca University on 21 February 1952, as they rallied against
the language policy. The killings led to wider civil unrest in the east. In
the first elections to provincial assemblies in 1954, the Awami League-led
United Front trounced the Muslim League comprehensively. The twenty-
one-point manifesto of the front demanded autonomy for East Pakistan
as envisaged in the 1940 Lahore resolution. The Karachi government was
compelled to grant official status to the Bengali language in 1956. But the
protests on language now evolved into strident voices for parity in economic
development. East Pakistan had woken to the fact of discrimination at
all levels. The foreign exchange earned by the East’s exports was seen as
being usurped by the west. The east seemed to be subsidizing a Punjabi
army. Young Bengali economists were asking for a course correction, if
not a systemic overhaul.
In March 1966, the Awami League led by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman
had first put forward the six-point programme that demanded a ‘federation
of Pakistan in the true sense of the Lahore resolution’. It demanded that
the federal government should deal with only two subjects: defence and
foreign affairs, while all residual subjects be vested in the federating states.
This was reminiscent also of the Cabinet Mission Plan of 1946 (envisaging
a loose confederation of India and Pakistan) that had been accepted by
Jinnah but rejected by Indian leaders. From early 1968, the protestors had
a new reason to intensify the agitation—the ‘Agartala conspiracy’ case was
slapped on Mujib and thirty-four Bengali military officers, accusing them of
colluding with ‘Indian government agents’ in a scheme to ‘divide Pakistan’.
Mujib was arrested in the case in May 1968 and a trial began.2 East
Pakistan remained disturbed by agitations related to language, economic
exploitation and, in the late 1960s, the six-point programme and the
Agartala case. Bengal had been instrumental in creating Pakistan in 1947,
 joi bangl a 113

but in twenty-three years, the project seemed to be unravelling because of

disaffection in the east.
X
In the west, Bhutto cashed in on Ayub’s falling stock and his own growing
popularity to found the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Lahore on 30
November 1967. The party sought ‘egalitarian democracy’ and ‘application
of socialistic ideas to realise economic and social justice’. Challenging
General Ayub Khan was the immediate priority. People were already
questioning Ayub’s self-serving democracy, where 80,000 partyless ‘basic
democrats’, had been indirectly elected in 1962.3 These sham democrats,
claiming to represent 125 million Pakistanis, had elected Ayub as president,
where, as has been noted, he rigged elections to beat the opposition
candidate, the sister of Pakistan’s founder, Fatima Jinnah. But people in
Pakistan, particularly politicians and the intelligentsia, were now yearning
for the sort of real electoral democracy that seemed to be thriving in India
and in other postcolonial nations.
On the bilateral front, the Tashkent spirit had evaporated and newer
irritants were creeping into the relationship. Pakistan tried to confiscate
more property of pre-1965 Indian companies that had stayed behind,
declaring it enemy property. India protested. India was expressing outrage
at the building of the Karakoram Highway, linking the northern Gilgit
region of Kashmir with Xinjiang province of China.
In early 1968, as Ayub Khan began celebrating ten years of his reign
as the ‘Decade of Development’, outraged citizens erupted into agitations.
While much has been made in Pakistan of the economic prosperity of the
1960s, with Western economists invited in to mentor Ayub’s enlightened
economic policy, the reality was not as rosy. Modest economic growth came
with aggravating inequity. While Harvard’s advisory services were guiding
development, with growth hovering around 6 per cent, economists, both
in Pakistan and the US, were also assessing that Pakistan suffered from
‘extreme elite capture’, with twenty-two families controlling vast swathes
of the economy, and more than 85 per cent of resources.4 Corruption was
rampant. Ayub’s son, Gauhar, was alleged to have profited and built an
industrial empire with this nepotism.
The global students’ movement had brought a new element of young
hope in Pakistan, along with widespread disturbance and demonstrations.
Ayub was losing his ability to effectively contain dissent through his security
forces.5 In the east, additional problems were caused by brewing resentment
against the political domination of the Punjabis, particularly the sustained
economic exploitation of East Pakistan for markets and raw material. The
new capital city of Islamabad, for the Punjabi elites, was being built, it
was claimed, with Bengali blood and taxes.
114 ange r m anage m e nt

Bhutto was detained for breaching the peace in November 1968, while
Mujib was already in jail for colluding with India to divide the country.
Other political dissidents were arrested as well. Bhutto made a legal appeal,
contending that he had been arbitrarily arrested for ‘differences I developed
with the regime over the ceasefire and the Tashkent Declaration’. But
disturbances persisted. War hero Air Marshal Asghar Khan joined the
opposition movement in November. By the end of 1968, revolutionary
zeal and collapsing governance threatened the military regime. Ayub tried
to stem the dissent in the only way he knew. He dispatched the army to
major towns in both wings and raised the bogey of the existential threat
from India. In a 29 December speech in Lahore, he warned that the enemy,
‘with its well-organised 30 divisions’, would ‘invade Pakistan and can do
so in a week’s time.’6

A DEMOCRATIC DICTATOR
By January 1969, the Opposition parties were demanding that emergency
conditions imposed by Ayub be lifted, elections be held, and political
prisoners released. Ayub, physically ailing by now, and with his back to
the wall, did release Bhutto and other Opposition leaders in the west. He
invited them to negotiate Pakistan’s political future. He also withdrew the
Agartala case—none of the charges of the alleged secessionist conspiracy
had been proved in a year—against Mujib and other arrested leaders. This
set Mujib free to agitate in the east and to be feted as ‘Bangabandhu’—
friend of Bengal. In February, Ayub announced that he would not be a
candidate for the next election and gave some vague assurances on direct
elections. This was not enough. Ayub’s own basic democrats and other
supporters had begun to turn on him. He was compelled by the army to
resign on 25 March 1969, handing over the reins to his army chief, General
Yahya Khan, and paving the way for another bout of martial law.
Yahya started his tenure by saying what several dictators had done
soon after takeovers—that he had no ambition other than the ‘creation of
conditions conducive to the establishment of a constitutional government’7.
He almost meant it.
Kewal Singh, India’s envoy in Pakistan during the 1965 war, was
watching the situation closely. He had returned from diplomatic stints in
Moscow and Bonn, as secretary in the ministry in New Delhi. His portfolio
included India–Pakistan relations. He was back in Pakistan in July 1969,
on a visit to sign boundary maps for the Kutch boundary (over which
the two countries had gone to war in April 1965), in accordance with
the Kutch tribunal’s awards. Prior to the visit, Singh met Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi to discuss his brief for his meeting with Yahya Khan. She
concurred in his proposal to focus on resuming trade and air services.
He was keen to revive the fabled Tashkent spirit that had visibly flagged
 joi bangl a 115

since his departure from Pakistan. For his meeting with Yahya, Singh had
managed a letter from PM Indira Gandhi, suggesting the resumption of
contacts to restore relations in various fields.
When Kewal Singh called on Yahya in July, he started with a relatively
minor diplomatic issue that he had also raised with President Ayub in
1966. This was a pet project: to cooperate in the United Nations and other
international organizations and not put up rival candidates for the same
post. Yahya, yet unschooled by his establishment on diplomatic postures
with India, willingly agreed. But he soon made a U-turn in the meeting,
when one of his aides reminded him that ‘basic issues need to need to be
settled first’, a euphemism for the primacy of the Kashmir issue.
Along with B. K. Acharya, the high commissioner (who had replaced
Samarendra Sen when he retired in December 1968—he had earlier been
India’s deputy high commissioner in Dacca), Kewal Singh met several key
personalities at a reception hosted by Acharya and came away feeling that
public opinion in Pakistan favoured better understanding and goodwill
between the two countries. He concluded that Yahya’s fickle take on India–
Pakistan relations did not reflect either popular or elite opinion in Pakistan.
Yahya soon sent a response to Indira Gandhi’s letter, saying that
Pakistan was ready for a dialogue for normalization and improvement of
relations provided India was willing to find answers to ‘all outstanding
issues’8. Clearly, the foreign office had drafted the letter persuading the
president to place the issue of Kashmir before peripheral ones like trade,
communications, and the movement of peoples. Kewal Singh knew that
Kashmir had not been discussed during his visit but the formulation had
been inserted by the foreign office to ensure that their obsessively promoted
Kashmir cause was not diluted even for a moment. This was to become
Pakistan’s reflexive response to, and the default position on, most Indian
peace initiatives. Exceptions would be made only occasionally when a
confident and pragmatic leader overruled the establishment.
Under the sway of his bureaucrats, Yahya acted hawkishly again, when
he opposed India’s entry into the Organisation of Islamic countries (OIC),
at its first summit in Rabat in September 1969. After initially appearing
to accept India’s inclusion, Pakistan threatened to walk out of the OIC
if India was admitted. Other Islamic countries did not counter Yahya’s
tantrum. This embarrassed India greatly. India withdrew its ambassador
in Rabat, Sardar Gurcharan Singh, as a mark of protest.
Events in the eastern wing were soon to take matters in a different
direction. Yahya remained true to his word and announced general elections
in Pakistan in a broadcast to the nation on 28 November 1969. He also
declared that the ‘one unit’—in which all West Pakistani provinces had
been integrated since 1955—would be dissolved and each province would
have its own autonomy with its own legislative assembly and government.
116 ange r m anage m e nt

This was widely welcomed by other provinces in West Pakistan that had
seen the one-unit system for what it was—a ruse for Punjabi dominance.
Yahya had also promised universal franchise that had been a distant dream
for Pakistan for all these years. These announcements were met with great
optimism in India. Pakistan would finally follow India’s path of the past
two decades—of democracy based on universal adult franchise. A segue
into genuine democracy was expected to reduce hostility and confrontation,
otherwise assumed to be natural corollaries of military dictatorships.
The promise of a free election triggered robust poll campaigns within
Pakistan from January 1970. The Awami League positioned elections as
a referendum for the six-point autonomy programme for the 75 million
people of East Pakistan. Bhutto countered with a promise of economic and
social reforms and preserving the unity of the country. But his message
was focused on the 55 million people in West Pakistan. On these two
diverse manifestos, the two major parties from Pakistan’s two disparate
wings were seeking their first truly democratic mandate from the people,
almost two decades after India had taken that path.
Relations between the two wings of Pakistan sank further in 1970,
as a major disaster struck East Pakistan on 12 November. A devastating
cyclone swept over the offshore islands and coastal districts of East Pakistan.
This was one of the worst natural disasters in modern history—it killed as
many as half a million people. The rescue efforts fell pathetically short and
aggravated the misery. Once again, the crushed inhabitants of East Pakistan
felt the Punjabis had betrayed the Bengalis during a time of tribulation.

YAHYA’S ELECTIONS
Yahya Khan is the only military dictator in Pakistan’s history who
actually kept his promise of early democratic elections. More than any
liberal democratic instincts, Yahya was driven by the expectation that
political power would be legitimized in the hands of a West Pakistani
politician, Bhutto. This would give the army continuing influence on the
polity. However, the free polls of December 1970 produced an unexpected
thumping majority for Mujib. His Awami League won 160 of the 162
seats in East Pakistan, giving it an absolute majority in the house of 300.
Bhutto’s PPP won just 81 of the 138 seats in the west. A shocked Bhutto
refused to accept the results and pressed Yahya to reject Mujib’s claim to
form the government, suggesting that a hint of force would take care of the
Bengalis.
For India, the outcome of the 1970 election seemed a good augury.
B. K. Acharya, the high commissioner, received an assessment from the
then deputy high commissioner in Dacca, K. C. Sen Gupta, that an Awami
League government in Islamabad ‘would be genuinely democratic and
would increasingly desist from military confrontations against India’.9
 joi bangl a 117

This assessment was widely shared by Indian policymakers, but concerns

were also flagged about Pakistan’s military build-up and whether the army
would allow this democratic outcome to find expression on the ground.
In December 1970, B. K. Acharya expressed a view that soon came
to be widely accepted in New Delhi. While recognizing the possibility of
the secession of Pakistan’s eastern wing, he argued that ‘majority control
of the central Pakistan Government by the East Pakistanis seems to be
our only hope of achieving India’s policy objectives towards Pakistan and
for overcoming the stone-wall resistance of West Pakistan’10. Moreover, a
secessionist East Bengal, he was concerned, might demand integration with
West Bengal for a ‘United Bengal’ and might pass under the control of
pro-Chinese Marxists. Such developments would further complicate India’s
defence and strategic challenges. While such a fear seemed exaggerated,
for people of Acharya’s generation, the 1947 proposal for an independent
undivided Bengal launched jointly by Suhrawardy, Sarat Bose, and other
prominent provincial politicians ‘was more than a historical footnote.’11
Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul agreed that India should do nothing to
encourage the separation of East Pakistan from West Pakistan, but added
significantly that it did not lie in India’s hands to stop it. Much would
depend on the rulers of Pakistan on whether West Pakistan would realize
the need to come to an equitable arrangement with East Pakistan.12
The new dynamics within Pakistan were presenting fundamental
dilemmas to India’s policymakers, trying to understand whether Pakistan
would democratize or disintegrate. India hoped for a progressive
improvement in bilateral relations with a ‘new democratic Pakistan’, in
which the eastern wing had its rightful representation but feared it would
be hard to bridge the ‘vast political divide between the two disparate and
distant wings’ of Pakistan.13
External factors, reflecting a world in flux, were conspiring with internal
factors in the move towards the creation of a new state. Military analyst
Srinath Raghavan, for instance, has persuasively argued that three global
factors of the times were shaping the destiny of the subcontinent: the play of
the Cold War between the US and the USSR; the dynamics of decolonization;
and the beginnings of globalization, particularly as manifested in the student
protests common to the US, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.

EAST VS WEST
A young Indian diplomat in Islamabad, Second Secretary Deb Mukharji,
watched bilateral relations sink steadily in 1971. He had ‘virtually no
connection with the natives’ in Islamabad even though he interacted often
with other diplomats. Only when Indian diplomats travelled to Karachi did
they meet ‘real Pakistanis’.14 He was alarmed by the rising crescendo of the
drums of war and would later reflect that he was living through the ‘most
118 ange r m anage m e nt

cataclysmic year since 1947, in the history of the subcontinent’.15

At the end of January, Mukharji saw a familiar marker of plunging
ties—the expulsion of several diplomats from both countries. When an
Indian diplomat B. L. Joshi was given twenty-four hours to leave, he had
to pack his household through the night; it was Mukharji’s job to escort
his expelled colleague, along with his wife and two children, to the border
in the Firozpur district of Pakistan’s Punjab. With unintended irony, the
last Pakistani village on the crossing was named after a Hindu—Ganda
Singh Wala, while the adjoining border village on the Indian side had a
Muslim name—Hussain Walla. This was the primary crossing between
India and Pakistan till 1986, before Attari–Wagah in Punjab became the
cross point of choice. When the Indian delegation nervously reached the
border to make good their exit on the late afternoon of 30 January 1971,
they were surprised by the absence of hostility; in fact, the bewildered
Pakistan Rangers presented them a spirited guard of honour, much to their
relief and amusement. Joshi was perhaps the only diplomat in history to
have been thus honoured before being booted out by his host country.16
Meanwhile, in New Delhi, Indian officials huddled to review the
situation. Ministry of External Affairs Secretary S. K. Banerjee and High
Commissioner Acharya observed in early January that the secession of
Pakistan’s eastern wing could occur only if it failed to secure its six-
point autonomy demand through constitutional means. A basic point of
contention would be powers of taxation; the army would not accept an
arrangement under which it would have to depend upon subventions from
the provinces for its funding. Acharya concluded that despite all reservations,
Bhutto, as leader of the PPP, might accept the autonomy demand if he
himself could be all-powerful in the western wing, or if each wing was
allowed to go its own way. A contrarian view came from Rameshwar Nath
Kao, the brilliant chief of the newly formed external intelligence agency,
the Research and Analysis Wing, or R&AW. Kao repeated the R&AW
assessment of 1969 that Pakistan’s army would not accept autonomy in
the east and Mujib would not compromise on his six-point programme.
He argued that India should support the Awami League if it launched an
independence movement. The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) went along
with the MEA’s assessment of a probable political compromise. But it
was clear, in retrospect, that R&AW had assessed the situation correctly.
India’s young and still callow prime minister, Indira Gandhi, was now
increasingly relying on advice from her principal secretary, P. N. Haksar,
whose role was less that of a mandarin advising a political leader and more
that of the sage Krishna guiding the inexperienced warrior Arjuna on the
battlefield. To the Americans, Haksar was Indira’s chief of staff and national
security adviser rolled into one, a formidable admixture of Nixon’s chief
of staff, Bob Haldemann, and National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger.
 joi bangl a 119

Haksar had been a lawyer and a friend of the Nehru family, personally
recruited by Jawaharlal Nehru to the foreign office. He had spent time in
unremarkable postings in Nigeria, Austria, and in Britain as deputy high
commissioner before he had been catapulted into a key role in the PMO,
soon becoming Indira Gandhi’s key adviser and confidant. He was perhaps
one of the most left-leaning of the ‘mostly socialist pro-Soviet advisors’17
of Indira Gandhi, all of whom happened to be Kashmiri Brahmins like her
and came to be called the ‘Kashmiri mafia’.18 India’s socialist government
then was leaning more on the Soviet Union, particularly to help the country
industrialize and nurture its defence industry; at this time, the government’s
distrust of the Americans was palpable.
Indira Gandhi faced a major challenge when, on 30 January 1971,
an Indian Airlines Fokker aircraft flying from Srinagar to Jammu was
hijacked and blown up in Lahore. In India, it was commonly assumed that
the hijackers were Pakistani agents. Bhutto infuriated India even more by
showing up at the Lahore airport for a brazenly convivial meeting with
the hijackers. However, Mujib in the east quickly condemned the plane’s
destruction. This gave India a foretaste of the changed relationship that a
Bengali-led government might have in store for bilateral relations. Soon after
this spectacular act of terrorism, overflights between Pakistan’s two wings
were again suspended by an enraged India. For Pakistan, the difficulties in
communicating and supplying soldiers to the east were mitigated in part by
Sri Lanka providing transit facilities to Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).
In Pakistan, conspiracy theorists continue to speculate that the hijacking
was staged by India in order to engineer a debilitating overflight ban, to
trigger the secession of the eastern wing from Pakistan.19
Diplomatic missions in both countries faced angry demonstrations in
February. Deb Mukharji was also looking after security of India’s diplomatic
premises and had installed barbed wire on top of the chancery walls to
prevent intruders from scaling them. That did not stop firebombs from
being thrown into the premises in Islamabad in the first week of February.
Two days later, while Mukharji was at work, his wife was hosting a
bridge party at home for some spouses of diplomats. A brick crashed in
through a window. Mukharji called the police and rushed back to his
unprotected house. He offered sherry to the ladies to calm them down.
More bricks were hurled at the house, shattering a French window. The
police had arrived but did not appear to be interfering with the gathered
mob. Mukharji, who possessed a licensed .405 Winchester ‘designed to shoot
elephants’20 and a revolver, loaded his weapons and waited, prepared to
pull the trigger. If the mob had come in, he recalled, it could have become
‘seriously unpleasant’.21 Later, the mob attacked again with firebombs
and the car of another visitor, the wife of a Canadian diplomat, was
set on fire in the driveway. Padma Chib, the wife of the deputy chief of
120 ange r m anage m e nt

mission, who was among the guests, told him, ‘Deb, this is like Lahore
1947.’ Pakistan media carried photographs of the blazing car, identifying
the Indian diplomat as the arsonist. The narrative in the media was that
some students were protesting peacefully, when Mukharji had himself set
the car of his guest on fire.22

SPRING MADNESS
From Dacca, Deputy High Commissioner Sen Gupta was reporting to his
superiors in Delhi and Islamabad that Bengali nationalism had taken root
in East Pakistan. Sen Gupta believed Mujib’s autonomy demands would
weaken Pakistan, but the Bengali leader was open to a deal. This hope
would soon be dashed.
If Yahya Khan had been guided by established democratic principles
as Pakistan’s head of state, he would have called upon the leader of the
largest party to form the government as prime minister. He decided instead
to play along with Bhutto in denying East Pakistan its due. The systemic
racism of the west against the east was also at play. The West Pakistanis,
in brazenly articulated notions of racial superiority, were determined not
to allow the ‘black bastards’ close to power. Bhutto’s role was becoming
clearer. First Secretary K. N. Bakshi was assessing in Karachi that Bhutto
had ‘stonewalled the constitutional talks and secured power through slogan
mongering and his not inconsiderable histrionic talents.’ Bhutto was now
a close collaborator with the army in keeping the Bengalis out of power.
Strategic analyst K. Subrahmanyam wrote in an assessment later that
Bhutto was directly responsible for ‘encouraging military action against
the Awami League.’23
Sen Gupta in Dacca was now reporting with alarm that hundreds
of civilians had been killed or injured in street violence. Yahya was even
suggesting that the army was above democratically elected representatives
‘playing at Constitution making’, leading Indian diplomats to argue that
Yahya’s attitude smacked of ‘Latin American style despotism’.
In parallel to the violence, there was talk of a constituent assembly as
well as a parliament to be formed in East Pakistan. Sen Gupta in Dacca
reported admiringly about Mujib—‘his constitutional method, solicitude for
democratic process, discussion with West Pakistan leaders and the spirit
of accommodation within the framework of his commitment is likely to
create a favourable impression on President Yahya Khan and the people
of West Pakistan.’24
Ominously, Lieutenant General Tikka Khan, the ‘butcher of Balochistan’,
was deployed as army commander in Dacca in March, and soon took over
as the military governor. Indian officials in Dacca and Islamabad were still
optimistic that Yahya and Mujib would reach a power-sharing agreement.
P. N. Haksar was however sceptical of a compromise. He foresaw the
 joi bangl a 121

upcoming military challenge and ordered the Indian embassy in Moscow

to find weaponry for a probable conflict with Pakistan.25
While the formal reporting from Indian missions was giving the
impression that a deal was in the works, Indira Gandhi was not taking
chances. On 2 March, she asked a team of advisers, including Haksar and
R&AW chief Kao, to evaluate the option of giving arms to and recognizing
the emerging state, given the inexorable march towards the creation of
Bangladesh. They were asked to ‘give their assessment to the PM’.26 India’s
leaders were acutely conscious of the possibility that an intervention in the
east could have repercussions in the west and even to the north. Going by
the playbooks of both wars of the 1960s, and particularly the experience
of 1965, military planners in India were wargaming scenarios of Pakistan
retaliating in Kashmir or China militarily joining the fray.
Indian embassies had been activated all over the world. Diplomacy was
especially focused on the United States, which was then locked in a close
embrace with Pakistan. India requested the US to exert pressure on Yahya
Khan to stop his crackdown. Indian ambassador Lakshmi Kant Jha told
his hosts in Washington that ‘nothing would be more tragic than President
Yahya Khan suppressing East Bengali aspirations for autonomy by force.’27
India was also dealing with internal political churn. Indira Gandhi, who
was the head of a coalition government at the time, called early elections
to consolidate political power, perceiving an Opposition in disarray. When
confronted with the slogan Indira Hatao (Remove Indira), she countered
with Garibi Hatao (Eradicate Poverty.) The tactic worked superbly and
Gandhi was re-elected in elections held from 1 to 10 March. Her party
swept the polls with a majority of 352 out of 518 seats in the Lok Sabha,
a resounding victory that boosted her confidence in dealing with the East
Pakistan situation.
India was now getting more embroiled in the East Pakistan crisis.
Tajuddin Ahmed, the general secretary of the Awami League, approached
India’s deputy high commissioner in Dacca for assistance on 5 March. He
asked for political refuge for activists as well as material aid in the case of
a Pakistani attack on East Bengal. Mujib’s impassioned 7 March speech in
Ramna urged the people to be prepared to resist force. Meanwhile, East
Pakistan’s administration controlled by the west soon fell apart. Second
Secretary Mukarji and his colleagues in Islamabad knew matters were
reaching a head when they heard nationalist songs transmitted from Dacca.
With several rounds of failed political negotiations, an army crackdown
appeared inevitable.
Sen Gupta met with Mujib’s representative, Captain Shujat Ali, on 14
March. Ali requested that India intercept troops, ships, and aircraft sent
by West Pakistan to East Pakistan, as this supply would violate Indian
borders. Mujib demanded immediate responses. Sen Gupta made a swift
122 ange r m anage m e nt

trip to Calcutta to deliver this important message and, more importantly, to

create the impression of activity to his East Bengali counterparts, as Mujib
had been displeased by India’s reluctance to mount a miltary intervention.
Meanwhile, Sen Gupta returned to Dacca and assured Tajuddin Ahmed
that India would offer all possible aid to victims in the event of an attack.
It turned out that Mujib’s message reached Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
only on 19 March.28
Bhutto had also invoked the traditional Indian threat to effectively
scuttle a possible east-west political deal.29 From Islamabad, Indian
diplomats were warning that hardliners were pressing Yahya, since they
were ‘back at their 23-year-old game of not allowing East Pakistan to
exercise its majority share in the country’s affairs’.30 Bhutto’s public
statements were carefully ambiguous, preserving the optics of cooperation
with East Bengal to ensure the West’s reasonable interests, while assuring
the army of its primacy in a Turkey-like political framework if he took
office.
Yahya flew to Dacca on 15 March to stage negotiations, while he
geared up for a crackdown. He told Tikka Khan, following his talks with
Mujib, ‘The bastard is not behaving. You get ready.’31
In Delhi, Haksar saw the moment coming. He advised Indira Gandhi
to stand firm, ‘We should not at this stage of development in Pakistan say
anything at all placatory, but be tough within reason. This is not the time
to make gestures of friendship to Pakistan. Every such gesture will bring
comfort to Yahya Khan and make the position of Mujib correspondingly
more difficult.’ He told the prime minister that ‘two and a half divisions
of the Pak army are poised to decimate East Bengal.’32 This was one week
before the crackdown.
At 11.30 p.m. on 25 March, the West Pakistani army was let loose
in Dacca, choking dissent and butchering civilians. Operation Searchlight
was on. Officials at India’s consulate in Dacca watched in horror as an
exodus began, with East Pakistanis swarming to India’s borders to escape
the persecution.
The violent events were causing equal consternation in another
consulate not far from India’s—the US diplomatic mission in Dacca.

AMERICAN BLOOD
On 25 March, when the Pakistan Army launched its brutal crackdown,
it shook Archer Blood, an American diplomat based in Dacca. Blood
spent a sleepless night on the roof of his residence, listening to gunshots
and screams. Like a war reporter, Blood started clinically relaying the
horrifying story back to Washington, of thousands being shot, bombed,
or burnt to death in Dacca. After his staff had visited Dacca University to
get a first-hand look at the unfolding massacre, Blood cabled: ‘At least two
 joi bangl a 123

mass graves on campus. Stench terrible.’33 But the stink was not powerful
enough to get Washington, or even Islamabad, where Blood’s discomfited
boss was reading the telegrams, to intervene. The dynamics of the Cold
War had frozen humanitarian concerns; these were realities no one wanted
to face.
On 26 March, Mujib declared the independence of Bangladesh in
Dacca. Yahya, now back in Islamabad, denounced Mujib and the Awami
League as traitors and enemies of Pakistan. Bhutto had supported the
crackdown. Mujib was arrested and flown to a jail in West Pakistan, the
Awami League was banned, along with all political activity. Some leaders
escaped to form a government in exile in India. Blood’s team of beleaguered
diplomats was overwhelmed with frustration and anger. They continued
reporting the situation on the ground, expecting their reports to excite the
same outrage they felt, to create a storm in Washington. But they were
answered with a deafening silence.34
Blood decided not to pull his punches any more. He sent home a
cable using stronger language and the subject line, ‘Selective Genocide’,
reporting, ‘here in Dacca we are mute and horrified witnesses to a reign
of terror by the Pak military.’ The report said that the military authorities
were ‘systematically eliminating’ Awami League supporters by seeking them
out in their homes and shooting them down. He gave graphic accounts of
the killings of politicians, professors, and students. ‘The streets are flooded
with Hindus and other targeted groups trying desperately to get out of
Dacca’. Blood was fearless in his recommendation. He wrote, ‘full horror
of Pak military atrocities will come to light sooner or later. Instead of
pretending to believe Pakistan’s falsehoods, we should be expressing shock
at least privately to GOP, at this wave of terror directed against their own
countrymen by Pak military’.35 Blood feared that these accounts would
expose his consulate and could result in Pakistan expelling him from the
country. That did not come to pass.
While Blood was concerned about how his hosts would react, the greater
concern was his government’s studied indifference to what was going on.
He had said in his cable that ‘many Bengalis have sought refuge in homes
of Americans, most of whom are extending shelter’.36 He said this, aware
that he was risking the wrath of his own government by putting down
on paper this account of American activism.
While Washington remained cold to Blood’s cables, he got a surprising
endorsement from Kenneth Keating, the US ambassador in Delhi. Keating
was a formidable political figure, a former republican senator from New
York in his seventies, who had served in both world wars. Keating was
seen as undiplomatic and unafraid to speak his mind. He had become
an outspoken advocate for both India and the Bengalis, ‘lending his own
gravitas and respectability to the Dacca consulate’s dissenters.’ Keating was
124 ange r m anage m e nt

stirred by Blood’s telegram, and shot off one of his own reinforcing the
policy recommendation, urging his own government to ‘promptly, publicly
and prominently deplore this brutality’, to ‘privately lay it on line’ with
the Pakistani government and to unilaterally suspend all military supplies
to Pakistan. He counselled his government that this was the time when
principles made the best politics.37
X
Accounts of the atrocities in East Pakistan soon hit the American media.
Keating was feeding stories of the massacres to the celebrated New York
Times correspondent, Sydney Schanberg, then bureau chief for the paper
in New Delhi, who also spent time in Dacca. Keating was not the only
ambassador taking sides and going ‘local’. The US ambassador to Pakistan,
Joseph Farland, became a strong supporter of the Yahya regime. Farland
was Blood’s immediate superior, even though the Islamabad embassy was
a thousand miles away from the Dacca consulate. Blood was wary of
Farland’s sympathy for Yahya; the dictator and the diplomat often drank
together and went on shooting excursions.
The relationship between the Islamabad embassy and the Dacca
consulate was fraught. After reading Keating’s cable about selective
genocide, Farland had reminded his junior, ‘intervention by one country
in the internal affairs of another tends to be frowned upon’. Farland was
trying to rein in his officers in the eastern outpost and had cabled them
that ‘since we are not only human beings but also government servants,
however right this indignation is not itself an adequate basis for our
reaction.’38
Blood sent a retort to his boss, ‘horror and flouting of democratic
norms we have reported is objective reality and not emotionally contrived.’
The US was continuing to be reluctant to even raise this issue with the
Yahya regime. When Kissinger brought up the slaughter in East Pakistan,
Nixon refused to say anything about it: ‘I would not put out a statement
praising it, but we are not going to condemn it either.’39
In a situation room discussion on the East Pakistan crisis in Washington,
the dissenters in Dacca and Delhi were mocked. Secretary of State William
Rogers said that India might be the first to recognize an independent
Bangladesh, ‘unless Keating beat them to the punch.’40 The Americans
were acutely aware of the fact that Pakistan’s military was now at war
with its own people, after being heavily armed by the United States. The
explosive cable on selective genocide had not only been read anxiously by
the administration but also found its way to the media through different
leaks. Someone had also shared the contents of the secret reports with
Democratic Senator Edward Kennedy, who was attacking Nixon and urging
him to stop the killing, denouncing the use of US weaponry. Kissinger was
 joi bangl a 125

convinced that the leak was coming from Keating, ‘the trouble making
ambassador in New Delhi’.
The American team at the Dacca consulate was feeling increasingly
dejected by the treatment from Washington. Blood and his staffers, including
Scott Butcher, the political officer, decided to risk their careers and send
a ‘dissent cable’: this was a new device in the foreign office, a Vietnam-
sparked reform meant to encourage candour by allowing diplomats to
speak out confidentially against official policy. Butcher drafted a strong
dissent note critical of US policy of refusing to speak out against the
crushing of democracy and the slaughter of innocents. All embassy staff
and the consulate signed the draft, which became the first dissent cable
of the US foreign service.
On 6 April 1971, Blood transmitted the cable with the blunt subject
line, ‘Dissent from US policy towards East Pakistan’, since considered one
of the most blistering denunciations of US foreign policy ever sent by its
own diplomats. It read:
…our government has failed to denounce the suppression of
democracy. Our government has failed to denounce atrocities.
Our government has failed to take forceful measures to protect its
citizens while at the same time bending over backwards to placate
the West Pak dominated government and to lessen likely and
deservedly negative international public relations impact against
them. Our government has evidenced what many will consider moral
bankruptcy… we, as professional public servants express our dissent
with current policy and fervently hope that a true and lasting interest
here can be defined and a policy restricted in order to salvage our
nation’s position as a moral leader of the free world.41
Archer Blood and his team of twenty officials were then not aware of the
‘bridge to China’ project that Kissinger and Nixon had embarked upon
with the help of Pakistan; this was Nixon’s Cold War move to challenge
the USSR with an overture to its estranged communist partner. The
larger geopolitical rebalancing may have made little impact on the Dacca
team’s decision, given that they were driven by their visceral ground level
experience. The cable gathered support among the experts of the State
Department, but provoked rage at the highest levels in the White House.
Kissinger was furious. Secretary of State Bill Rogers was livid. Rogers
got on the phone with Kissinger to denounce ‘that goddam message from
my people in Dacca’. The State Department scrambled to control the
damage and restrict the distribution of the cable. Kissinger did not show
the document to Nixon for a couple of days, to give the State Department
some time to soften its impact on the system. The concern was that the
cable would soon leak to the media and embarrass the administration.42
126 ange r m anage m e nt

Eventually, Pakistan faced nothing worse than polite concern voiced by

an assistant secretary of state to its ambassador in Washington, followed
by a tepid statement expressing worry and hope for a peaceful resolution.
Without any serious global pushback, the bloodshed continued in Dacca.
The Blood telegram had echoes of the ‘long telegram’ issued in 1945
by George Kennan, another intrepid diplomat, positioned then in Moscow,
who advocated the policy of containment of the Soviet Union. His cable
signalled the beginning of the Cold War, which shaped US policy instincts
even a quarter century later, as the White House cosied up to China,
ignoring bloodshed, or pushback from a US outpost. The Blood telegram
had no such lasting impact on geopolitics. But it did shake the Nixon
administration, albeit briefly.

ROGUE MISSIONS
On 27 March, India took the enlightened decision to make relief available
to the refugees flooding across its borders. The central government
provided shelter, food, and healthcare. East Pakistan’s neighbouring states
were urged to implement the aid programme.43 India had witnessed refugee
surges in 1950 and 1964 when sectarian tensions rose, but the current
inflow was unprecedented. The composition of the refugee groups would
soon undergo an alarming change. By April, approximately 80 per cent of
migrants entering India were Hindus, reversing the previous ratio of 80
Muslims to 20 Hindus.44
India’s diplomatic efforts had become a critical element of the larger
national toolkit to deal with this crisis. Envoys were exhorted in briefing
cables not to be content with receiving assurances of a few tonnes of
medicine or some money, but to make energetic efforts in presenting India’s
argument to their host governments. It even smacked of desperation: ‘plug
this once, twice, thrice, four times. Start from the lower rung and go up
to the highest levels.’45
Pakistan’s extraordinary brutality in its east stemmed from how Bengali
nationalists were perceived—as fighters supported by the Indian state. Both
the general slaughter and the specific targeting of Hindus could be attributed
to West Pakistani racism that blended rivalry against India with the need
to show the Bengalis their place. The irony was that Pakistan’s initially
misplaced conviction of collusion between Bengali rebels and Indian forces
soon became a self-fulfilling prophecy. The heavy-handed strategy employed
in East Pakistan generated a massive refugee crisis, providing India with
an excuse to intervene in the conflict.46
Soon, the defections started. On 6 April, two Bengali diplomats of the
Pakistan embassy in New Delhi, K. M. Shehabuddiun, second secretary, and
Amjadul Haque, assistant press attaché, ‘defected’ to pledge their allegiance
to the ‘Government of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh’. This opened the
 joi bangl a 127

floodgates. Third Secretary Mohiuddin Ahmed defected from the Pakistan

high commission in London and so did the vice consul of the Pakistan
consulate in New York, Mahmood Ali (who became foreign minister of
Bangladesh from 2013 till 2019).47
Pakistan’s consulate in Calcutta was the most hit by the defections,
while India’s in Dacca had its fate sealed as well. As trust between India
and Pakistan had plunged in 1971, staff strength at both consulates was
cut back. Departures of personnel were being negotiated and calibrated,
so that neither side had an edge. In Calcutta, on 19 April, the staff of the
Pakistan deputy high commission in Calcutta dramatically switched loyalty
to a nation yet to be created. The fifty-seven Bengali employees applauded as
the head of the post, Hossain Ali, lowered the Pakistani flag and raised the
Bangladesh movement’s green, red, and gold banner. Thirty West Pakistanis
were permitted to return home from this rogue mission. Pakistan retaliated
by holding hostage Indian officials at the Dacca consulate, on the grounds
that all their staff had been forcibly imprisoned by India. With bank accounts
inaccessible, Indian officials ceased receiving salaries until an innovative
solution came into play. They now received cash delivered in sacks to the
Soviet embassy in Islamabad and delivered in Dacca by the Indian mission
by the Soviet diplomats.
By the end of April, Pakistan asked India to shut its Dacca mission,
even as it technically closed down the Pakistan deputy high commission in
Calcutta. The officials of the rogue Calcutta consulate were now deemed
‘anti-state elements’. Pakistan also flew down a consul from Islamabad to
ask the Bengali officials if they wanted to stay in India or return home.
It soon complained that India was hindering the process, while Indian
authorities contended they could not force Bengalis to see the inquisitioner
individually. The diplomats became virtual hostages. Policy responses were
being improvised since this scenario had no precedence in international
law or practice. In July, after weeks of talks under Swiss mediation, Indian
officials and their families from Dacca and West Pakistani members of
their Calcutta mission were sent to their respective homes—aboard planes
that crossed mid-air.48
X

Despite the genocide and influx of refugees, the option of Indian military
action was not on the table in April. Not everyone was advocating
strategic patience. The most sophisticated argument for an early military
intervention came from K. Subrahmanyam, a senior bureaucrat and expert
on military matters who was the director of the Institute of Defence Studies
and Analysis (IDSA). He advocated a more decisive strategy beyond just
covert assistance, that could amount to a ‘full-scale intervention and full-
scale war with Pakistan’49. An advantage of early intervention would be the
128 ange r m anage m e nt

element of surprise. India, the argument went, could present a fait accompli
to the major powers and minimize its vulnerability to China.
In a famous war council—a cabinet meeting of 25 April—Indira Gandhi
ruled out the option of military intervention. Contrary to then army chief
General Sam Manekshaw’s narrative, embellished over several tellings
across the decades, that he dissuaded her from a military adventure, Indira
Gandhi was not spoiling for war. She had in fact summoned Manekshaw
to the meeting so that some of her impatient and hawkish ministerial
colleagues could hear for themselves the military’s views on the need for
some preparation and patience.50

COLD WAR LOVE

As has been noted, unbeknownst to Blood and his team reporting the
genocide from Dacca, Nixon and Kissinger were playing a game of
high geopolitical stakes, as they planned their secret opening to China.
The conduit for this opening was Pakistan and more specifically its
leader, Yahya Khan. The Sino–Soviet split of 1969 had only militarized
disagreements that had arisen between the two communist regimes from
the late 1950s. Kissinger’s outreach to China at the height of the Cold War
triggered an eager response, since China at the time was mulling over a
‘realist’ policy of engaging the superpower rival of its estranged communist
ally. Pakistan as a conduit was only one of the options that the Americans
had considered. France and Romania were also explored, briefly even used,
but Pakistan soon became the primary channel.
Before the Pakistani elections of October 1970, Nixon had personally
asked Yahya to deliver a message to China. Yahya had eagerly accepted
this diplomatic assignment and met with Zhou Enlai in person during a
visit to Beijing. Yahya returned with Mao’s invitation to Nixon to visit
Beijing. Zhou welcomed Yahya’s choice as envoy since he was a head of
state and a friend of China.
Kissinger had been contemplating holding a Sino–US meeting in
Rawalpindi. When the massacre in East Pakistan was unfolding on 25
March 1971, the White House was considering two similar invitations
from Romania and Pakistan.
The White House was also weighing substantial inputs from the ‘state
department and the two feuding ambassadors in New Delhi and Islamabad,
as well as the renegade Consul in Dacca’.51 Despite clear advice, Nixon and
Kissinger remained committed to their broader Cold War goal. China was
also crucial to the United States’s ambitions to withdraw from Vietnam,
where it was entangled in an impossible war. The North Vietnamese
government would listen to China and Russia.
Secretary of State Rogers was playing both sides. He articulated some
of the discontent among his subordinates when he informed Nixon that ‘it
 joi bangl a 129

was time to re-evaluate US policy towards Pakistan, particularly the Pakistan

army’s use of US-supplied military equipment’, which was embarrassing
for the government. Farland was still urging a non-interventionist policy
posture from Islamabad, coupled with some mild criticism of Pakistan.52
The Pentagon wouldn’t tell the White House how much American
weaponry was used in East Pakistan. The fine print obfuscated the issue.
After the 1965 war, Pakistan was still under a US weapons embargo.
In October 1970, Nixon had created an ‘exception’ to the embargo and
offered Pakistan a large cargo of armed personnel carriers, fighter jets,
bombers, and more. Kissinger now told Nixon that Pakistan was expecting
the $34 million worth of military equipment bought over the past four
years, though they would likely ship half of that.
Seeing the mood in the White House, Rogers was not the one to bear
only bad news. He tried to silence the dissenters in Dacca and Delhi and
reported proudly to Kissinger, ‘We have Keating quieted down.’ In a private
message to Kissinger, Farland slammed Blood and said, ‘Embassy has had
full-scale revolt on general issue by virtually all officers in Consulate General,
Dacca, coupled with forfeiture of leadership for American community there.
Dacca’s reporting has been tendentious to an extreme.’53
Meanwhile Kissinger and Nixon were holding their ground and
continuing their silence on the killings in East Pakistan: ‘Thank God we
didn’t get into the Pakistan thing,’ the president smugly concluded on
13 April. ‘We are smart to stay the hell out of that’. ‘Absolutely’, agreed
Kissinger. ‘Now, State has a whole list of needling, nasty little things they
want to do to West Pakistan. I don’t think we should do it, Mr President.’
Nixon growled, ‘not a goddamn thing. I will not allow it.’54
On 21 April, Zhou sent a breakthrough message, using Yahya, in
which the Chinese premier suggested that Kissinger, Rogers, or even Nixon
himself, come to Beijing. Zhou suggested that all the arrangements could
be made through the good offices of President Yahya Khan. This led the
US to retire all other channels—like Bucharest, Warsaw, Paris—and focus
on the Yahya channel. Kissinger and Nixon continued their policy, even
though they were getting advice that ‘almost all observers believe that
Bangladesh will eventually become an independent entity.’55
Just as the Nixon administration was firming up its policy on Pakistan,
Yahya relayed a message from Zhou, adding that it’s the first time we’ve
had a direct report, ‘from a president, through a president, to a president.’
Nixon found that phrase memorable and used it himself a few times. But
it spoke to how secretive diplomacy had subverted the systemic checks
and balances, crowding out professional advice.
The Nixon administration continued to hope that the Pakistan Army
would regain control of the Bengali cities in the east. But the cynical
geopolitical objectives needed to be balanced, to accommodate pressure
130 ange r m anage m e nt

from the US Congress to stop the supply of armaments. So, the US

reduced arms supplies to a trickle, ‘to avoid giving Yahya the impression
we are cutting off military assistance’, but holding the shipment of more
controversial heavy arms ‘in order not to provoke the Congress to force
cutting off all aid.’ Nixon dutifully initialled the option that Kissinger
had recommended and scrawled on the margins of the note of the memo:
To all hands. Don’t squeeze Yahya at this time. He underlined the word
don’t three times.56
A few weeks later, Kissinger told the Pakistanis that Yahya should
communicate on the China bridge only through Pakistan’s ambassador to
the United States, Agha Shahi, who in turn should speak only to Kissinger.
He exchanged messages in complete secrecy with Pakistan’s envoy, bypassing
the State Department. Shahi conveyed them back to Islamabad, where they
were picked up by the Chinese envoy and relayed to Beijing. The secrecy
was essential because of the risk of a public backlash if the US was seen
courting communist China.
Obsessed with their Cold War diplomacy, Nixon and Kissinger had
failed to use critical levers available to them to stem Pakistan’s genocide in
its east. Kissinger had observed that, ‘US economic support—multiplied by
US leadership in the World Bank and associated donors—remains crucial to
West Pakistan. Neither Moscow nor Peking can duplicate this assistance.’57
China had not then emerged as an alternative donor to Pakistan. However,
by rejecting the use of this leverage, Nixon and Kissinger effectively
deepened the crisis and aided the demise of a united Pakistan.

IMPOTENT RAGE
Anthony Mascarenhas was a Pakistani journalist of Goan Christian
descent who worked for the morning news in Karachi and was a stringer
for the Sunday Times of London. He was one of eight Pakistani journalists
taken on an officially sponsored trip to East Pakistan in late April. He was
shaken to the core by what he saw. The centrefold of the Sunday Times
on 13 June 1971 carried with his byline a single story with the headline
‘Genocide’. The article had escaped the curtain of censorship drawn by
the Pakistani regime and laid bare the brutalities being perpetrated on the
Bengalis. Mascarenhas’s 5,000-word story was a carefully crafted report of
the ten days he had spent in East Pakistan. With vivid precision, he told a
story of brutality, as well as grit and humanity. He wrote that the Pakistan
government was ‘pushing through its own final solution of the East Bengal
problem and compared what was happening to the Holocaust in Europe’.
The accompanying editorial—‘Stop the Killing’—added that there was no
escaping the terrible charge of premeditated extermination. The Bangladesh
tragedy now reverberated across the world, spawning multiple other stories
in the Western media.
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Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada was among the first leaders
to whom Yahya Khan wrote to justify his actions after the military
intervention. The Canadian high commissioner in Islamabad, George Small,
cabled dramatically to Ottawa that the ‘Pak of Jinnah is dead’, and the
emergence of East Bengal was ‘inevitable’. Yet, he advised an aloof and
noncommittal posture. Trudeau geared up immediately to deal with the
crisis. Ottawa adopted a four-pronged approach on the crisis: maintaining a
neutral public posture; urging restraint in both Pakistan and India; providing
humanitarian relief to East Pakistani victims; and encouraging Islamabad,
softly and privately, to move towards a political solution. In practice, the
last strand of his policy was so soft as to be useless. It only salved the
conscience of the Liberal government led by Trudeau.58
The liberal Canadian newspaper, the Globe and Mail, was castigating the
government and asking it to take a tougher stand to turn off aid to West
Pakistan and increase assistance for the refugees. In the end, the Canadians
took a bizarre position that the ‘internal problem of East Pakistan will be
settled sooner or later but it is inevitable that an important proportion of
the ten million refugees in India will not wish to return to East Bengal.... We
would suggest therefore that the world community should be prepared to
assist India integrate those refugees as productive members of the economy.’
It galled Indian diplomats that Canada was essentially asking India to take
in 10 million refugees and ignoring Pakistan’s aggression. This extraordinary
posture was effectively condoning a genocide and asking India to accept the
refugees simply because they were ethnically Hindu. Fortunately, the matter
was not discussed in the UN General Assembly (UNGA) debate. It would
have deepened India’s outrage at Canada’s cavalier lack of appreciation
of the situation on the ground.
Sri Lanka offered to intervene in the crisis or mediate between India
and Pakistan. Iran made an offer as well, as the shah of Iran was then a
stalwart US ally in the Middle East and a close friend of Pakistan. Foreign
Secretary T. N. Kaul flew to Iran to dissuade the Iranians from dispatching
arms to Pakistan.59
X
The US was blocking out the noise about the genocide, as also any
temptation to intervene in the crisis. Kissinger was indeed embarking on
a mission to Asia, but he was focused more on the exciting diplomatic
game between the US and Pakistan as a precursor to the US–China detente.
Kissinger stopped by in India and Pakistan in July, ostensibly to address
the crisis in the east. In his 6 July meeting with Indira Gandhi, Kissinger
asked her how long it would be before the problem became unmanageable.
Gandhi replied calmly that it was already unmanageable: ‘We are just
holding it together by sheer will power.’ She told him of the intense
132 ange r m anage m e nt

domestic pressure on her, including in parliament. P. N. Haksar reinforced

this message in a longer meeting with the visitor.
But Kissinger’s mind was on the next leg of his tour to Pakistan and
the springboard it would prove for his diplomacy in Beijing. Kissinger
was next in Rawalpindi and somewhat perfunctorily advised Yahya Khan
to defuse the refugee issue. Next day, feigning an upset belly, Kissinger
took his famous secret flight to Beijing. It was a testimony to Kissinger’s
stomach for daring diplomacy that while his belly was his official alibi
in this enterprise of secrecy, deception, and adventure, he actually was
braving some genuine indigestion, a ‘Delhi belly’ he had picked up on
the India leg of the tour.
‘There seems to be a growing sense of inevitability of war,’ Kissinger
later told Secretary of State Rogers of the South Asia leg of his tour. ‘Not
because anybody wants it, but because they worry they will not know
how to escape it.’ He compared the 1971 South Asian summer to the
1914 European summer, when miscalculations had propelled Europe into
World War I.60 He was still in denial of the role the US was playing in
driving the region towards that outcome.

MAO’S SMILE
In Beijing, Zhou said to Kissinger that the turmoil in East Pakistan was
caused by India.61 The Chinese were stressing this point because they
felt the US had considerable leverage over India thanks to economic aid.
Kissinger was however reading too much into Zhou’s words, when he said:
‘Please tell President Yahya Khan that if India commits aggression, we will
support Pakistan.’62
When Kissinger reported this matter to Nixon at the White House,
Nixon asked what China would do if India launched a war. Kissinger
replied that he thought the Chinese would ‘come in’. This loss in translation
of the Chinese position was to lead Nixon and Kissinger to misjudge the
Chinese moves when war broke out a few months later.
India’s diplomats were reading China more accurately after the crisis
erupted in March. India’s chargé d’affaires in Beijing, Brajesh Mishra,
was encouraging his government to mend fences with China before the
Bangladesh situation drove a deeper wedge in their relationship. He was
concerned that India’s growing dependence on Moscow would disincentivize
an improved relationship with Beijing. Mishra had good reason to stick
his neck out with this advice. He had seen Mao’s smile.
A year earlier, on 1 May 1970, Mishra had joined other diplomats for
a routine May Day parade. What followed was an innocuous-sounding
exchange with China’s leader. Mishra, in a standard diplomatic line-up,
shook hands with Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong. But the
Chinese leader’s words were music to Mishra’s sharp ears: ‘We cannot keep
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on quarrelling like this,’ Mao said through an interpreter. ‘We should try and
be friends again. India is a great country. Indian people are good people.
We will be friends again some day.’ Mishra replied, ‘We are ready to do it
today.’ To which Mao said, ‘Please convey my message of best wishes and
greetings to your President and your Prime Minister.’63 In another context,
these would have been mundane pleasantries at a national day interaction
between a diplomat and a head of state. But this was China, eight years
after the Indo–China war of 1962 and soon after the Cultural Revolution
that convulsed the communist nation. Given the bitterness of past years,
here was a critical exchange that Indian diplomacy needed to decipher.
Mishra dashed off a cable to Delhi that day, describing his conversation
and underlining the significance of such an expression of friendship from
Mao himself. The diplomat urged handling the message with sensitivity
and ‘weighty consideration’ of the hand of friendship from Mao. Despite
Mishra’s counsel for secrecy, a garbled account of the meeting was leaked to
the media in India, stating that Mao had smiled at Mishra during the May
Day celebrations, leading Opposition members in parliament to ask why
the government had succumbed to a mere smile. The obvious insinuation
was that Nehru’s inexperienced daughter might be about to repeat his
mistake of a decade earlier, of misreading Chinese intentions. The Chinese
signal to India was nevertheless a critical factor in the calculation of India’s
Pakistan strategy as it unfolded in 1971. P. N. Haksar was cautious about
this outreach and advised the prime minister ‘not to overestimate nor
underestimate’ the significance of Mao’s words. Mishra received instructions
and an assessment from New Delhi: ‘Whereas India would not be indifferent
to normalising relations between India and China to the extent of exchange
of ambassadors there will be no let-up in their propaganda against us. We
would like to test the validity of this assessment.’64
When Mishra returned to Beijing on 1 June 1970, after consultations
in India, he detected a subtle shift in Chinese behaviour. A slow diplomatic
dance followed in meetings with his counterpart, a senior official of the Asia
department, Yang Kungsu, with both sides watching each other cautiously
and awaiting the first step towards normalization. Months later, when the
East Pakistan crisis erupted in March 1971, China was still exploring an
opening with India, even as it was attempting a conversation with the
US, aided by Pakistan.
Brajesh Mishra in Beijing read the Chinese signals accurately. He
recommended that India should be happy even with a relatively neutral
Chinese stance in the conflict with Pakistan. As the crisis in Bangladesh
worsened in July, Indira Gandhi, at Mishra’s urging, wrote directly to
Premier Zhou suggesting that India and China could find a true basis for
durable understanding. The letter carried weight, even though China did
not respond specifically to this overture. China needed to balance Pakistan’s
134 ange r m anage m e nt

feelings. It was also watching the evolving Moscow–Delhi equation that

would be capped by the Indo–Soviet Treaty of August. Unlike Nixon and
Kissinger, the Chinese did not rush to emotive, unbalanced conclusions.
When Kissinger eagerly assured Premier Zhou in July that Nixon would
speak to Indira Gandhi in the strongest possible terms when she visited
the US in November, specifically about the need for India to exercise
military restraint in its dealings with Pakistan, the Chinese premier was
guarded in his response: ‘We will like to make a further study of this
matter before telling you.’65

THE DRUMS OF WAR

The war had been a near certainty from the second half of 1971, as the
continuing influx of refugees into India made it impossible to stanch the flow
without addressing the cause for it—the Pakistan army’s continuing genocide
in the country’s eastern wing. The matter had been escalating dangerously
since late August 1971. India was by now militarily active in East Pakistan,
training the Mukti Bahini armed resistance. Diplomacy had not been
particularly effective in averting war. The few countries that did understand
India’s position were unwilling to put public pressure on Pakistan. And the
country that possessed the most leverage over Pakistan—the United States—
was driven to be the most energetic supporter of Yahya Khan.
By August, as India’s hopes for a political solution to the crisis receded,
it noted that the number of refugees cited by Pakistan, a fraction of
the actual influx, was eerily close to the number of Muslims among the
Bengali refugees. The implications were clear. Pakistan had no intention
of allowing the Hindus to return to their homes. K. Subrahmanyam, who
had advocated an early military intervention by India, weighed in again to
persuasively suggest that the policy of abstention from direct involvement
‘will only result in increased defence outlay for India, recurring expenditure
on refugees, increased communal tension...erosion of the credibility of the
Indian government and further sharply deteriorated security situation in
eastern India and the likelihood of Pakistan creating trouble in Kashmir
as a retaliation.’ Most importantly, Subrahmanyam was arguing that India
had the capacity not only to prevail in a military contest with Pakistan, but
also to prevent intervention by the great powers.66 This was an accurate
assessment, as later events showed.
This time around, Subrahmanyam’s views found resonance with Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. Towards the end of August 1971, she adopted
a strategy of coercion towards Pakistan. By progressively increasing the
military pressure on Pakistani forces in the east, she sought to convince the
military regime that it would be better off seeking a negotiated settlement
with Mujib than in persisting with a crackdown. In pursuit of this strategy,
New Delhi stepped up its assistance to the Bengali fighters. Simultaneously,
 joi bangl a 135

India mounted strong diplomatic initiatives with the US, the Soviet Union,
China, and the West.
Indira Gandhi was pressing all the diplomatic levers; she was not
giving up on some bilateral coercion on Pakistan. She even appointed a
new envoy to Pakistan to replace B. K. Acharya, who had retired in May
1971. This was a diplomat serving then as India’s ambassador in Rome, Jai
Kumar Atal. Meanwhile, in Islamabad, First Secretary Deb Mukharji and
several of his colleagues were leaving station. Diplomatic missions in both
countries were still functional, but were being pared down to minimum
strength in a calibrated manner. One last and unpleasant duty Mukharji
performed, as the head of chancery, before he left in August, in a ‘body
exchange’ was to destroy the records of the mission in a furnace.67

BEAR HUGS
Russian influence had deepened in South Asia after the Soviet Union
presided over the Tashkent Agreement of 1966 and ensured its satisfactory
conclusion with some deft diplomacy. The Soviets had since then begun to
seriously play a role as a peace conduit between India and Pakistan. In July
1968, Premier Alexei Kosygin wrote to Indira Gandhi, expressing hope
that the two neighbours would be able to make progress in normalizing
relations68. He had even recommended that the Indus Waters Treaty of
1960 could provide the framework for the solution of the problem posed
by the Farakka Barrage, in sharing the waters of the Ganga between West
Bengal and East Pakistan.
India’s proactive ambassador in Moscow, D. P. Dhar, had great faith
in the diplomatic heft of his hosts. He was also trusted back home—he
was part of Indira Gandhi’s clique of influential Kashmiri Pandit advisers.
While Dhar’s cables painted an optimistic picture of Soviet support for
the secessionist movement in East Pakistan, and their willingness to turn
the screws on West Pakistan, a more sobering portrait was presented by
the Soviet envoy in New Delhi. He based his assessment on Pakistan’s
Foreign Secretary Sultan Khan saying that the Indian actions were being
deeply resented in Pakistan and Indian fighters were infiltrating into East
Pakistan to help the freedom fighters in Bengal.69
The Indo–Soviet Treaty was ready to be signed by July, with its
famous Article IX, which called for mutual consultations in the event
of an attack. India was still fighting shy of including a clause that gave
the impression of an explicit military alliance. In the end, the impetus
to sign the treaty came not from the Russians but from developments
in the US. On 17 July, Kissinger met Indian ambassador L. K. Jha and
told him that if China intervened in an India–Pakistan war, the United
States would be unable to help India. Foreign Secretary T. N. Kaul sent
a note to the prime minister, highlighting the US signal about potential
136 ange r m anage m e nt

Chinese intervention. The note outlined the deterrence the treaty would
enable against China or for any military support from the Soviets for
Pakistan. National interest at this point very pointedly was privileged
over the ideology of non-alignment.
It was at this stage that Indira Gandhi overcame her lingering doubts
about the treaty and moved ahead to conclude it. Gandhi’s instincts were
right. Kissinger was to go on to actively encourage Chinese intervention,
and this collusion needed to be balanced out. D. P. Dhar got the green light
in Moscow to finalize negotiations. Within weeks, the foreign ministers of
Russia and India, Andrei Gromyko and Sardar Swaran Singh, signed the
treaty in New Delhi on 9 August 1971, signalling a decisive geopolitical
shift, even as India and Pakistan hurtled inexorably towards conflict.
India’s best-case scenario was now to get the benefit of Soviet support
and Chinese neutrality in the case of conflict with Pakistan. Prime Minister
Indira Gandhi was particularly keen not to alienate the Chinese and even
entertained an idea of proposing a treaty similar to the Indo–Soviet treaty
with the Chinese, before P. N. Haksar wisely talked her out of it. Haksar
did not want Indira to repeat her father’s error of trusting the ‘inscrutable’
Chinese beyond a point. India’s policy nightmare was in preparing for
a ‘two-front situation’, with China and Pakistan ganging up on it in a
widening conflict. But China was reluctant to support Pakistan militarily.
Part of the reluctance stemmed from its desire not to push India too far
into the embrace of its now estranged communist ally, the Soviet Union.
The Soviet Union was fast becoming the most important external
player in the 1971 South Asian crisis. On 6 September, Andrei Gromyko
castigated the visiting foreign secretary of Pakistan Sultan Khan for the
‘bloodshed and persecution’ in the east. He insisted that the only solution
was political and this was possible only if the Pakistan government ‘stops
its policy of repression and persecution. Only this will bring the refugees
back, and other ways will fail’. Then came the warning: ‘Please do not
take any action that will oblige us to fulfil our obligations to a country
with whom we have a treaty of friendship.’ Gromyko then paused and
switched over to English:
‘The interpreter did not interpret me correctly. I did not use the word
‘please’. I think you understand my meaning.’ Sultan Khan responded
to this dire warning to say that Pakistan would not take the initiative
in starting hostilities but would defend itself if subject to an attack.
Gromyko then advised, ‘Restraint, restraint restraint! You must not
yield to emotions.’70
Indira Gandhi arrived in Moscow on 27 September for a crucial round of
consultations. She briefed the Soviets extensively. She requested them to
 joi bangl a 137

work for a political solution, starting with Mujib’s release and asked for
military supplies to prepare for the contingency of war. The Soviet leaders
agreed to consider these requests, but urged her to exercise restraint; that
mostly translated into advice to avoid a wider war with Pakistan in the
west. Indira Gandhi’s visit changed the Soviet attitude to the war and
persuaded them that they could trust Indira more than Yahya.

A DIPLOMATIC BLITZKRIEG
While Indira Gandhi was getting the expected support from the Soviet
Union, she wanted to ensure that the rest of the world did not move to
the American camp. She decided to campaign in Europe, particularly with
Britain and France, veto-holding members of the United Nations Security
Council. She embarked on a visit to a series of Western capitals—Brussels,
Vienna, London, Paris, Bonn, Washington. This was to be her final effort
for a peaceful resolution of the conflict. It would also demonstrate India’s
instincts to privilege a diplomatic over a military solution. Indira worked
hard: interacting with host governments and engaging in public diplomacy
with media, intellectuals, and artists. She gave multiple interviews; in one
to the BBC, responding to a question on the moral case for the war, she
likened the situation in East Pakistan to Hitler’s rampage in Europe.71
The US leg of the tour was the toughest. On the morning of 4 November,
Nixon and Indira Gandhi, flanked by Kissinger and Haksar, met at the
Oval Office in the White House. Nixon and Kissinger were at that point
acutely conscious of their stock with the Chinese and did not want to
allow India to humiliate Pakistan and their reputation. Indira explained
the Indian position at some length. The reality, she said, was that it was
‘no longer realistic to expect East and West Pakistan to remain together…
The crucial issue remains the future of Mujib.’72
The atmospherics of the meeting were not good, Nixon was wary of
Indira. Nixon also had a bit of history with India. In the previous decade,
he had not been particularly fond of Nehru either. He had visited the
subcontinent in December 1953 on an Asian tour as vice president under
Dwight Eisenhower, when he found Nehru siding with the Soviet Union. He
found India’s prime minister ‘railing obsessively and interminably’ against
Pakistan and later called him ‘arrogant, abrasive and suffocatingly self-
righteous’. In contrast, he found Pakistan a country he would like ‘to do
everything for’ since the Pakistanis were staunchly anti-communist and
pro-American. He had been particularly impressed by one upwardly mobile
General Ayub Khan, who would later become Pakistan’s master. Soon after
Nixon’s visit, Eisenhower went ahead with the deal to provide military
aid to Pakistan, which Pakistan promised would be used only to ward off
communism and not to target India. The promise was, of course, broken
in the next decade.
138 ange r m anage m e nt

Nixon was aware of the peculiar circumstances of the South Asian

conflicts of the previous decade. Nehru had asked Kennedy for help during
the 1962 conflict with China; as a result, a small measure of military
assistance came India’s way. When Pakistan attacked India in 1965, the
US was in the awkward position of providing arms to both sides, and
had to soon pause that game. But this time around, geopolitical conditions
were different, dictated by the Cold War. Nixon, egged on by Kissinger,
had now decided to favour Pakistan’s Yahya, the strongman whose suave
reassurance was important to US Cold War games, even though he ‘lacked
the US president’s complexity and keen intelligence’.73
In contrast, Nixon never developed a liking for Prime Minister Indira
Gandhi. The Nixon tapes revealed the epithets for Mrs Gandhi the two
patriarchal men deployed, like adolescent boys discussing a confusing
encounter with a member of the opposite sex at a high school party. The
tapes gave a transparent, if embarrassingly coarse, account of the American
assessment of the meeting of 4 November. When Nixon remarked that
Indira Gandhi was ‘being a bitch’, Kissinger observed that ‘the Indians
are bastards anyway. They’re starting a war there.’ Attempting to please
his boss, Kissinger said, ‘while she was a bitch, we got what we wanted
too.... She will not be able to go home and say that the United States
didn’t give her a warm reception and therefore, in despair she’s got to go
to war.’ Nixon famously replied, ‘We really slobbered over the old witch.’74
The duo decided to play it cool at their meeting with Indira Gandhi
the next morning, 5 November. It was, however, Gandhi who chose to
remain icily aloof. She made no references to the crisis but instead quizzed
Nixon about US foreign policy across the globe. A month later, Nixon
told Kissinger that ‘what I am concerned about, I really worry about, is
whether or not I was too easy on the goddamn woman when she was
here.... She was playing us. And you know the cool way she was the next
day.... This woman suckered us.’
On the way back from the failed US sojourn, Indira Gandhi had
equally unsuccessful meetings with smaller European countries. Belgium
offered mediation in the United Nations. In response, Gandhi made her
maximalist demand clear—‘the only solution was for Mujib to be released
and Bangladesh given its independence.’75
Around the same time, Pakistan’s foreign minister Bhutto and foreign
secretary Sultan Khan visited Beijing in early November and completely
misread China’s polite diplomatic noises. Bhutto later claimed to Yahya
that China had assured Pakistan of its support in the event of war with
India. China had, in fact, been more cautious and advised restraint. Soon
after the visit, Brajesh Mishra sent an authoritative assessment of China’s
stance. Mishra concluded: ‘China had adopted an attitude of restraint and
is advising Pakistan to do the same.’ It was also urging Pakistan to seek a
 joi bangl a 139

political solution in East Pakistan. He went so far as to suggest that China

wanted to keep its options open when it came to relations with India.
Mishra’s sources in Beijing had led him to assess that while China had
assured Pakistan about the supply of arms, ammunition, and material, and
of its support to Pakistan at the United Nations, ‘China will not intervene in
the event of war between India and Pakistan.’ Indira Gandhi read Mishra’s
cable when in Bonn for her diplomatic outreach. Two days later, she told
the West German foreign minister that she was ‘not apprehensive of Chinese
pressure on the borders of India, as China was occupied with its own internal
problems’. Thanks to Mishra’s astute diplomacy, India had assessed China
correctly this time. The US and Pakistan had both misread the tea leaves.76
 10

A SEC O N D PARTI TI ON, A THI RD COUNTRY

H igh Commissioner Jai Kumar ‘Makhi’ Atal thought his first call on
General Yahya Khan went off rather well, despite the dire state of ties
in November 1971. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had asked Atal to get
going in his new posting in Islamabad shortly after her world tour, to draw
attention to the East Pakistan crisis.
Associated with a princely family of Jaipur, Atal was also distantly
related to the Nehru family. He had moved into the diplomatic service
soon after Independence. He had been India’s ambassador in Rome when
the telegram arrived in early August: ‘You have been selected as the High
Commissioner to Pakistan. Join as soon as possible.’ Atal was then enjoying
what he thought was the last posting of an eventful career that began in
1936, when he joined the ICS. When Shekhar Dasgupta, first secretary in
Rome, handed over the telegram to his ambassador and congratulated him,
Atal asked his young colleague in mock wonder if the job was really worthy
of felicitation. The India–Pakistan relationship was spiralling downwards.
Dasgupta earnestly told his boss he was being entrusted with the job of
a peacemaker at a critical stage.
It took a couple of months for Atal to get his diplomatic agrément and
visa from Pakistan; he landed in Islamabad only on 11 November, for what
turned out to be an ill-fated diplomatic mission. Atal also happened to
be the last of the Indian envoys to claim past associations with Pakistan’s
leaders; Yahya was an old acquaintance from the pre-Partition days and
also from the time Atal was deputy high commissioner in Pakistan in the
early 1950s. In the backdrop of military action in eastern Pakistan, Atal
would go on to have a few other meetings with the general in November
and carry some last-minute peace proposals back and forth. Despite the
tense stand-off between the two nations, Atal found time to indulge his
passion for polo by getting special permission to play in Rawalpindi with
the army brass. Incredibly, Yahya invited the Indian high commissioner
to accompany him to inaugurate a Chinese cement plant, ostensibly to
demonstrate that war was not on top of his mind. But the inauguration
was ultimately cancelled. At forty days, Atal’s tenure in Pakistan remains
the shortest of any Indian high commissioner to Pakistan. But it was not
short on adventure.
The war that Atal watched from Islamabad in 1971 marked the lowest
point of the relationship between the two countries since 1947. A few weeks
before Atal’s arrival in Pakistan, Yahya had referred to Indira Gandhi as
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 141

‘that woman’. The rude remark had peeved the Indian government, which
had even lodged a protest against what was seen as Yahya’s drunken
outburst. When Atal casually raised this matter with Yahya, the dictator
parried, ‘Isn’t she a woman?’

A LAST SHOT AT PEACE

Yahya did refer to Indira Gandhi more politely in an Eid message he gave
Atal to carry to the Indian prime minister around 15 November. Atal was
acutely conscious of, and chuffed by, his role as an instrument of wartime
diplomacy. Atal had emphasized to Yahya that India was not seeking the
break-up of Pakistan. He had concluded his conversation with Yahya
with a discussion on the Eid letter, which, in its final form, contained
some formulations suggested by the diplomat. Atal took Yahya’s letter to
Gandhi on 17 November. In addition to greetings for the festival of Eid
coming up on 21 November, Atal carried also a secret five-point peace
offer from the Pakistani president. Yahya was proposing that: India and
Pakistan sign a non-aggression pact; India re-establish trade relations
with East Pakistan; Nurul Amin (an elected Bengali politician opposed
to Mujib) be installed as the head of a government for all Pakistan;
the refugees return to East Pakistan; and a referendum be held in three
years to determine whether or not East Pakistan wished to be free. The
Pakistan high commissioner in Delhi was also pushing these proposals
when he met Foreign Minister Swaran Singh and asked him for his views
on Yahya’s proposals.1
Indira Gandhi rejected the offer on the ground that the third and fifth
points were unacceptable—the 1970 election results were valid and there
was thus no need for a referendum. Atal was back in Islamabad on 25
November, with a fresh message from Mrs Gandhi that made it clear that
she wanted neither war nor the partition of Pakistan. ‘But Mujib must be
released and the refugee problem must be settled.’2
On 27 November, India’s cabinet formally turned down the proposals
delivered by Atal after his meeting with Yahya. But upon his return to
Islamabad, Atal downplayed the pushback he had received at home. While
he was acutely aware that the countries were locked into a course of war,
and the failure of his mission might accelerate the move towards conflict,
he was seen in Delhi as having gone soft on Pakistan’s dictator. On 27
November, the day India’s cabinet had rejected the peace proposals, Atal
told the US ambassador in Islamabad that Yahya was not an ‘ogre’ as
made out in the Indian media and by various high officials in India. He
said that ‘though bound by the complexes of a military mind’, Yahya was
‘extremely amenable to suggestion and most desirous of ameliorating the
tensions extant in the subcontinent.’3 Atal then went on to make a dramatic
142 ange r m anage m e nt

proposal—he suggested a meeting between the East and West Pakistanis

that could resolve the crisis.
Reporting on the meeting, the US ambassador in Islamabad, Joseph
Farland, excitedly cabled an optimistic picture back home, with the Indian
proposal for a meeting of a Pakistani government team with Awami League
representatives in Tehran. Atal also discussed these ideas at length with
Foreign Secretary Sultan Khan, on the evening of 27 November. The same
evening, Farland met with Yahya to discuss Atal’s proposals. Yahya said
that in his opinion Atal was either ‘amazingly uninformed’ or was playing
a ‘most mischievous’ role at this particularly critical time. Yahya said the
former was likelier, since, in his judgement, Atal was honest in his efforts
but apparently not adequately briefed. Farland agreed. Yet Yahya indicated
that he was still willing to consider the substantive part of the proposal
for a Tehran meeting, to avert a disastrous conflict.
A couple of days later, at the Yugoslav national day reception on 29
November, Farland had a less optimistic interaction with Atal. The US
diplomat told Atal that Yahya was willing to consider the Indian proposal
of a meeting in Tehran. To Farland’s amazement, Atal said that this would
take much too long and hence he had a new and even more dramatic idea—
the immediate formation of a civilian government by Yahya in Pakistan,
concomitant with the transfer of power. This government could then in
turn institute conversations with the representative of Bangladesh. This left
Farland’s head spinning. The American cabled home his disappointment
at the Indian diplomat’s lack of coherence. Farland heard Atal repeat this
idea at the reception to some other diplomats, who later told him that
Atal may be a ‘less than responsible diplomat’.
When Atal privately met the US ambassador again the next morning,
30 November, he had dropped the proposal of the previous evening, for
negotiations between civilian governments, and had reverted to his original
proposal of talks between the Awami League and Yahya Khan. Knowing
Farland’s proximity with Yahya, Atal asked him to pass on his proposals
to Yahya. He cited the example of conversations on power-sharing that
the British government had with Nehru before Partition and the transfer
of power. He emphasized that no solution was possible without including
Mujib in the mix. Despite his scepticism, Farland prepared a top-secret
aide-memoire with these proposals and sent them to Yahya’s attention.
Farland concluded that while Atal was probably being sincere in making
these proposals for talks between the Awami League and the Government
of Pakistan, it was likely that he did not have the complete backing and
clear instructions of his government to either make the proposals or to
deliver on them even if Pakistan agreed. Farland decided not to push the
proposal with either the Pakistanis or his own government.
Atal, in his interactions with the US ambassador, projected greater
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 143

optimism than he was feeling. He was possibly not in the loop where
Delhi’s strategic planning was concerned, but may have been used to assess
the mood in Pakistan. India was by now deeply involved in military action
within East Bengal, where it was continuing to train the Mukti Bahini.
Even as Atal continued with his futile peace initiative, perhaps with not
enough sense of the larger forces at play that had made war inevitable,
Indira Gandhi had returned from a tour of the border areas to Delhi on
29 November, and rejected another floating diplomatic idea: of referring
the India–Pakistan matter to the UN. She was not about to repeat the error
her father made in 1948, one that was sitting heavy on Indian diplomacy.
As the battle escalated in the east, Mrs Gandhi now firmly demanded the
withdrawal of West Pakistan troops from East Pakistan.4
By the end of November, Yahya’s remaining hopes for intervention
by the great powers had been deflated. The only major power somewhat
willing to raise this matter in the United Nations was the US. But the
Soviet Union made it clear it would block any moves to summon the
UN Security Council. The full-scale invasion was yet to come. On 29
November, Yahya made a tentative decision to open the western front and
finally decided on this course of action the next day. The D-Day Pakistan
originally chose was 2 December, but this was postponed to 3 December.
Yahya was also bracing for conflict by consolidating his hold on
power. On 26 November, he had briefed Bhutto on the outline of a new
Constitution designed by his experts, which would allow Yahya to remain
president, supreme commander, and army commander-in-chief, as well as
retain martial law powers. Four days later, on 30 November, he asked
Bhutto to join a coalition government that would be headed by Nurul
Amin, the old Bengali loyalist, who was one of only two non-Awami
League members of the National Assembly elected from East Pakistan in
1970. Bhutto agreed to do so, provided he was designated deputy premier
and foreign minister. Yahya and Bhutto struck their own power-sharing
deal on the eve of the war.5
Despite multiple reports of Indian troops crossing over into East
Pakistan, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had refused to publicly confirm
if this was true. In the last week of November, the prime minister gave
the go-ahead for a full-scale attack on East Pakistan. D-Day for India had
been set for 4 December.

WAR
In New Delhi, Defence Secretary K. B. Lall rushed into the operations
room at the army headquarters at 5 p.m. on 3 December. Lall told General
Manekshaw that the western army commander had just called to say that
three Indian airfields in Punjab were under attack by Pakistani aircraft.
Both the prime minister and defence minister were out of Delhi and could
144 ange r m anage m e nt

not immediately be contacted. Manekshaw ordered the commanders on the

western front to put into effect their operational battle plans.
India’s planners had been waiting for Pakistan to make the error of
invasion. The prime minister’s secretary, P. N. Dhar, told Ambassador D. P.
Dhar of Napoleon’s advice: ‘Never interrupt an enemy when he is making a
mistake.’ D. P. Dhar was on the prime minister’s plane, travelling with her
from Calcutta, when the pilot informed them of the Pakistani air strikes.
He appeared unsurprised and remarked, ‘The fool has done exactly what
I had expected.’
Indira Gandhi was received as she landed by the defence minister and
driven straight to army headquarters for a briefing. Soon the war cabinet
was meeting in India. It decided to declare hostilities on Pakistan and to
recognize Bangladesh. The war officially began for India on the morning
of 4 December 1971.
X
High Commissioner Atal walked quietly into the chatter of a diplomatic
reception in Islamabad, on 3 December, knowing it was not just another
day. The briefing cables from back home were getting more alarming.
Pakistan’s capital was buzzing with rumours that India would attack
Pakistan on 4 December, provoking a full-scale conflict in both wings.
Across the border, India had definitive intelligence inputs of a planned pre-
emptive air strike from West Pakistan on 3 December.
The bombing began that evening, even as Atal chatted with fellow
guests at the reception—a farewell for the departing ambassador of Libya
at their embassy. Some information on the start of the war even trickled
into the reception.
Pakistan’s attack had drawn inspiration from a war four years earlier
when a pre-emptive air strike by Israel had knocked the Egyptian Air Force
out of action. Pakistan’s strikes, however, failed to have much impact on
India’s air capability, but signalled the moment their most serious military
conflict formally began.
Nervous conversation at the embassy focused on the troubled border;
anxious foreign diplomats tried to divine information from clueless Pakistani
guests—judges, politicians, and bureaucrats. Atal overheard a Pakistani
official confidently tell the Egyptian ambassador that India had attacked
on the ground, so the Pakistani Air Force was taking retaliatory action.
The Egyptian ambassador turned quizzically to Atal, who responded within
earshot of several Pakistani guests: ‘Excellency, do you think Indians are
such bloody fools as to scratch on the ground and give the Pakistanis
a chance to attack by air?’ The Russian ambassador and some other
diplomats squirmed at Atal’s bravado and counselled him to leave the
room, brimming as it was with Pakistani military officers. But Atal was
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 145

in an expansive mood and insisted on making his views known to all he

encountered.
Atal did leave the reception before it ended and had his driver take
him straight to the nearby Indian chancery building. His juniors had been
camping in the office for days, given the imminence of hostilities and the
lockdown protocols in place. The embassy staff had been pulled in from
homes spread all over Islamabad to hole up in the chancery. Atal briefly
exchanged notes with his colleagues and then left for his own residence,
in the F6 sector, the elite Islamabad neighbourhood favoured by diplomats,
which was a fifteen-minute drive away.
Not long after he reached home, a few men in civvies walked into
his unguarded residence and asked Atal to step out. He quietly obeyed.
Outside on the road were three or four cars with men in military and
police uniforms. Atal was ushered into a car. A man he did not recognize
wordlessly slipped into the rear seat. After a short drive, Atal was taken
up two flights of a tall building. He was propelled into a dark room
where another man was seated at a table. Without introducing himself,
his inquisitor growled: ‘India has attacked us, we are at war, you are an
ordinary prisoner of war. What have you to say?’
Atal guessed his diplomatic immunity meant nothing to his interrogator
or even to his host government at that point. A war would lawfully
have required diplomats to be repatriated or exchanged under the Vienna
Convention. Taking them prisoner was, of course, illegal. But these niceties
did not seem to matter at that moment. Atal remained unfazed: ‘If I am
a prisoner of war, I have nothing to say except that don’t beat up or kill
my men and don’t insult and burn my flag.’
The men drove Atal back to his residence, which stood undefended
on the Margalla road, with neither a garden nor compound to buffer it
from aggressors. His minders ordered Atal to remain in the bedroom. The
house was now surrounded by dozens of uniformed men with automatic
weapons. The electricity had been shut off. It was dark. Atal’s only Indian
domestic helper was nowhere to be seen. His Indian chauffeur was locked
up inside the garage with the diplomatic car.
Atal was effectively a prisoner of war in Pakistan, with his diplomatic
status seemingly extinguished as the war began. Alone in his bedroom, Atal
took stock of his situation. His electricity and telephone connections had
been cut; he was incommunicado. He rushed to fill the bathtub, fearing
the water supply would also go quickly. The soldiers outside were talking.
Perhaps for his benefit, they said that Pakistan’s air strikes had destroyed
Indian airbases in Srinagar, Patiala, Delhi, and Agra; Bombay had been
left burning.
This news had Atal anxious and worried, but also surprised: how could
so much damage have been inflicted so quickly on India’s air defences? He
146 ange r m anage m e nt

had a pilot’s licence from Oxford and understood how aircraft operated.
Sleep eluded him that night, so he sat on a chair near a window, anxiously
peering out at a portion of Islamabad where he could see no lights nor
hear any sound of flying aircraft. ‘It was a terrible feeling,’ he recalled
later, ‘to find oneself so completely cut off and blocked from any source
of information.’
Near dawn, he heard the sound of planes flying high. He tried again
to peek from the window but the guards ordered him in with pointed
rifles. As a trained pilot, it was not hard for Atal to pinpoint the direction
in which these planes were heading. They remained high, not landing or
taking off. He was convinced they were Indian and not Pakistani aircraft,
since they were flying north, not east, over Pakistani territory. This made
him feel a little less depressed and a little more hopeful that India’s air
force had not been crippled by his host country’s attack.
For three days after the war began, Atal remained a prisoner of war,
under house arrest till the Red Cross took over. An official of the Red Cross
came to see him on 6 December, along with Pakistan’s chief of protocol.
Atal was asked to sign a declaration saying that all his mission staff were
alive and safe. Atal refused to sign off on the paper till he was satisfied
that his staff were indeed safe. Atal insisted that his deputy, Ashok Chib,
accompany him to all the venues where his colleagues were incarcerated,
so that they could do a head count before signing the Red Cross form.
X
On 6 December, the Indian government announced its formal
recognition of the government of Bangladesh. On the battlefield, India
had an overwhelming advantage. A limited West Pakistani force that had
descended on the east stood little chance in combating the combined might
of a strengthened Indian Army and well-trained Mukti Bahini fighters. On
9 December, Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi, the theatre commander
in the east, sent a message to Rawalpindi painting a desperate military
picture: ‘Situation extremely critical.... We will go on fighting and do our
best.’ Niazi wrote, ‘Orders to own troops issued to hold on until the last
man last round which may not be too long....’6
The same day, six days after the war began, the Swiss ambassador paid
Atal a visit to inform him that Switzerland had agreed to look after India’s
diplomatic interests in Pakistan and that he was under Swiss protection.
He handed over a Swiss flag to fly at the embassy residence. Atal flew the
Swiss flag and took custody of the Indian flag that he had been zealously
flying till then. Atal was then locked up in his home again, this time in
better conditions than before, along with the Embassy doctor, Colonel
Saksena. Here he remained incommunicado for the next two weeks. Atal
painstakingly maintained a diary noting the movement of aircraft each day,
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 147

hoping this data would be of some use back home. Atal kept the flag in
his bedroom and finally wrapped it around himself when he carried it to
India after the war was over. The flag still flies proudly on national days
in Atal’s residence in Jaipur, now occupied by his son.

WHITE HOUSE ILLUSIONS

Global forces had an important influence on the outcome of the war of
1971. The US had decided to tilt towards Pakistan, largely to protect
their new channel and reputation with the Chinese. Nixon and Kissinger
also worked themselves up to believe that India sought not only to
liberate East Pakistan, but thereafter also wanted to launch a major attack
on West Pakistan to incorporate into India some parts of POK.7 This
inference, based on random CIA reports, fit well into the White House
preconceptions about Indira Gandhi and Yahya Khan. The larger strategic
goal of fighting the Cold War was blinding the American leadership to the
realities on the ground. The US took multiple measures after the hostilities
began on 4 December. Nixon cut off economic aid to India, sought to
remove the arms embargo on Pakistan, and tried to draw China into the
fray.
Beyond the objective of challenging India and supporting Pakistan, as
we have seen, the US was at this stage courting China to challenge its
primary Cold War adversary—the Soviet Union. It wanted to enhance its
reputation of reliability for Beijing. Kissinger and Nixon worked to bring
every bit of diplomatic pressure on India. They used whatever levers they
had with the Soviet Union and China. Kissinger was arguing to Nixon
that it was necessary to rescue US credibility in a crisis ‘where a Soviet
stooge, supported with Soviet arms, is overrunning a country that is an
American ally’.
The UN Security Council was ringing with calls for the cessation
of hostilities and vetoes to counter them. The issue was debated in the
General Assembly in a marathon session that ran late into the night of
7 December. Both India and Pakistan sent their foreign ministers for the
next round of diplomatic sparring at the United Nations.
But the fate of the South Asian war was also being determined outside
the UN, in some pointed diplomatic exchanges between two Cold War
adversaries and Security Council members. Nixon made a clever argument
to the Russians when Soviet agriculture minister Vladimir Muskievich
visited Washington, ‘If the Indians continue to wipe out resistance in East
Pakistan and then move against West Pakistan, we then, inevitably, look to
a confrontation. Because you see the Soviet Union has a treaty with India;
we have one with Pakistan.’ The references to a US–Pakistan treaty were
significant, but a bluff. On 7 December, Kissinger had asked Pakistan’s
ambassador to the US to communicate with the State Department and
148 ange r m anage m e nt

‘invoke its mutual security treaty.’ However, there was no such treaty in
place. The only extant agreement, which had been signed in March 1959
under the Eisenhower administration, pertained to commitments under
Pakistan’s membership in the Baghdad Pact and dealt with the contingency
of aggression by a communist country. Under the Kennedy administration
in late 1962, the US had given an ‘assurance’ to Pakistan through an aide
memoire, of US aid in case of an attack by India. But neither of these
amounted to a defence ‘treaty’.8
In order to complete the deception, or simply because he had not studied
the details, Kissinger, in a meeting with Soviet diplomat Yuli Vorontsov on
10 December, referred to a secret protocol in the US–Pakistan agreement.
This ploy succeeded in alarming the Russians. Vorontsov cabled Moscow
that from Kissinger’s language he could infer that this military aid involved
‘moving US aircraft carriers and naval forces in general closer to the
subcontinent’. He correctly assessed that the Americans were more interested
in the western border between Pakistan and India and may have accepted
the fact of the situation in East Pakistan being decided in favour of India.9
The same day, Nixon instructed the largest aircraft carrier in the US Navy,
the USS Enterprise to move from South Vietnam into the Strait of Malacca
and onward to the Bay of Bengal.
Vorontsov and Maskevich sent reports which alarmed Moscow. The
Soviets in turn started leaning on India. Indira Gandhi had to pull out her
diplomatic weapons. She sent her trusted adviser and former ambassador
to Moscow D. P. Dhar with a letter to Premier Kosygin saying ‘we have
no design on the territory of others nor do we have any desire to destroy
Pakistan’.10 She reiterated the demand that Pakistan withdraw forces from
Bangladesh and reach a peaceful settlement. Without such a settlement,
‘ten million refugees would not return to their homeland.’11
India was in no mood to rattle the cage in West Pakistan and open up
a western front giving the Americans an excuse for intervention. Haksar had
written to the Indian defence secretary K. B. Lall not to give any impression
of wanting to ‘detach parts of West Pakistan as well as that of Azad
Kashmir’. India was repeatedly reassuring the Soviet leadership that ‘we
have no repeat no territorial ambitions either in West or East Pakistan. Our
recognition of Bangladesh is a guarantee against any territorial ambitions
in the east and our position in the West is purely defensive.’12
Pakistan had correctly gauged India’s reluctance to open a western
front. But by attacking from the west, the Pakistan Army was hoping
to relieve pressure in the east, and to ‘buy time for international action’
to dampen the conflict. The Pakistani army’s concern about an Indian
invasion was accompanied ironically by an irrational ‘overconfidence’ in
the ‘innate superiority of the Muslim soldier’ and an institutional myth
that this human strength differential had overcome India in 1965. This
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 149

was reinforced by the gendered negative view of India’s leadership where

Mrs Gandhi was seen as not tough enough to match the macho leaders
of Pakistan.13
As the hostilities ramped up, India asked the Soviet Union to make a
public announcement that intervention by any third parties—a reference
to both US and China—could not but aggravate the situation in every
way. The Soviets were reassured of India’s intentions, but did not wish to
make any public announcement.
Nixon and Kissinger were now on tenterhooks. The Soviet Union was
not stemming the war in East Pakistan. The new geopolitics involving China
was confusing them. White House chief of staff Alexander Haig interrupted
an Oval Office conversation on 12 December to say that the Chinese wanted
to meet urgently. Kissinger thought this was totally unprecedented and felt
‘they are going to move’. Kissinger warned Nixon: ‘If the Soviets move
against them [the Chinese], and we don’t do anything, we’ll be finished.’
Nixon asked, ‘So what do we do if the Soviets move against them? Start
lobbing nuclear weapons in, is that what you mean?’ Kissinger replied,
‘Well, if the Soviets move against them in these conditions and succeed,
that will be the final showdown.’ He added, ‘If the Russians get away
with facing down the Chinese and if the Indians get away with licking
the Pakistanis.... We may be looking right down the gun barrel.’14
Nixon and Kissinger were both inaccurate and irresponsible in this
reckless speculation. The Chinese had in fact sent a message to the US
to the effect that they had carefully studied the options and felt that the
Security Council should reconvene and push for a resolution calling for
a ceasefire and mutual withdrawals. They were thus favouring diplomatic
rather than military action. There was not a word about moving against
India. Or a posture against the Soviet Union. Kissinger’s gambit with China
to check the war had failed. The Chinese had refrained from acting because
they were not inclined to militarily back Pakistan, they did not want to
aggravate their problems with India and push it closer to the Soviet Union.
India’s diplomacy was also working. Indira Gandhi had written to China
the previous day seeking its understanding of India’s predicament and
asking Zhou to exercise his undoubted influence on Yahya to acknowledge
the will of the Bengalis.15
With both the Russian and Chinese gambits having failed, and its
appetite for direct intervention lost, the US reluctantly directed its attention
to multilateral diplomacy at the United Nations. On 14 December, the
Soviet leadership sent a message to Nixon that, ‘we have firm assurances
by the Indian leadership that India had no plans of seizing West Pakistan
territory’.16 The same day, a draft resolution came up in the Security
Council, tabled by Poland, then a Soviet proxy, outlining conditions of
the ceasefire.
150 ange r m anage m e nt

Before the resolution came to the Security Council, Yahya Khan spoke
to Bhutto on the telephone and told him that the Polish resolution looked
good: ‘We should accept it.’ Bhutto had replied, ‘I can’t hear you.’ When
Yahya repeated himself several times Bhutto only said, ‘What what?’ When
the phone operator in New York intervened to inform them that there was
nothing wrong with the connection, Bhutto told her to ‘shut up’. Clearly,
Bhutto had no intention of following Yahya’s instructions. Bhutto went on
to make a moving speech at the Security Council meeting and closed by
declaring, ‘I will not be a party to the ignominious surrender of part of my
country. You can take your Security Council. Here you are. I am going.’
Bhutto then tore up the resolution papers with a dramatic flourish and
stormed out of the meeting.17 That spelt the end of the Polish resolution.
Bhutto’s decision to walk out of the UN triggered Pakistan’s surrender on
the battlefield and a decisive victory for India.
The war ended at 4.55 p.m. on 16 December, thirteen days after it
began, when in Dacca, General Niazi unbuttoned his epaulettes, removed
his revolver and handed it to Lieutenant General J. S. Arora. He then
went on to sign the Instrument of Surrender. The speed and scale of the
operation made the victory decisive. India held 93,000 prisoners of war.18
The same evening, India announced a unilateral ceasefire on the western
front, effective from 17 December.
The eventual outcome was influenced by chance and circumstance; it
was not what the planners began with. The contingency plan drawn up
by the Indian Army did not specify the capture of Dacca as the military
aim, nor did the subsequent modifications to the war plan identify it as
the main objective or earmark resources for each capture.19
Had Bhutto accepted Yahya’s advice and accepted the UN resolution,
Pakistani troops may not have needed to surrender. Bhutto seems to have
played a larger and more clever game. Military analyst Raghavan plausibly
observed:
Singed by his experiences with the military, both under Ayub and
Yahya, Bhutto seems to have concluded that the new Pakistan must
be built on the ash heap of the army’s decisive defeat. He was not
wrong. Bhutto’s decision to walk out of the Security Council saved the
day for India and precipitated the ceasefire, leading to a decisive and
unambiguous victory for India.20
For the Americans, the creation of Bangladesh was a done deal and the
saving of West Pakistan was the illusion of success they created. For Indira
Gandhi, it was unthinkable for India to enter West Pakistan where it had
no political base, as against Bangladesh, where it had political allies in
Mujib and his forces.21
‘It’s the Russians working for us,’ said Nixon when he met Kissinger.
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 151

‘Congratulations Mr President,’ said Kissinger, ‘you have saved West

Pakistan.’ Writing their respective self-congratulatory memoirs later, both
Nixon and Kissinger claimed credit for saving West Pakistan. ‘By using
diplomatic signals and behind the scenes pressures,’ wrote Nixon, ‘we
had been able to save West Pakistan from the imminent threat of Indian
aggression and domination.’ Kissinger went a step further, ‘There is no
doubt in my mind, that it (the declaration of ceasefire) was a reluctant
decision resulting from severe pressure which in turn grew out of American
insistence, including the fleet movement.’
However, India never had West Pakistan in its sights. In February
1972, Ambassador L. K. Jha wrote to P. N. Haksar about the effort to
track down the alleged cabinet source for the intelligence report on the
prime minister’s intention to attack Pakistan. Indira Gandhi wrote on the
margins of that letter: ‘At NO time have I ever made such a statement.
Besides even a discussion had not taken place at any Cabinet meeting.’22
Clearly, Nixon and Kissinger had overplayed the importance of an
intelligence source that helped them rationalize their desire to project resolve
to China and the Soviet Union. The problem, concludes Raghavan, was
not just deception but also self-deception:
The only practical consequence of the aggressive US posturing was to
spur the Indians to capture Dacca and seal their victory—objectives
that had not been on their strategic horizons when the war began.
This was Nixon and Kissinger’s war of illusions. In retrospect, they
came across not as tough statesmen tilting toward their ally but as a
picaresque pair tilting at windmills.23

X
The day the ceasefire came into effect on 17 December, India’s chancery
in Islamabad faced chaos—Pakistan Army guards disappeared and
threatening mobs appeared on the scene. However, the situation was
eventually contained, no one was injured.
Atal and all Indian personnel from Karachi and Islamabad finally
made it home on 22 December on a Swissair aircraft. Atal and his 159
colleagues had left behind much of their personal possessions in Pakistan
and most of their earnings in Pakistani bank accounts. These savings
were not returned till a year later at miserably depreciated rates. They
felt bitter about the Indian government being more generous in allowing
Pakistani nationals to withdraw their money, move out of their homes
and residences, and for Pakistani students to even take exams in Agra.
But Atal asked his colleagues to refrain from speaking of this publicly in
order not to further aggravate the post-war hostility.
The fate of the Indian team in Islamabad had been replicated in Karachi.
152 ange r m anage m e nt

K. N. Bakshi, assistant high commissioner during the war, was living in

Clifton at the former ambassadorial residence, a neighbour of Zulfikar Ali
Bhutto. Bakshi had watched with horror the ‘Rape of Bangladesh’ in March
and was put under house arrest along with his colleagues on 3 December,
when the war began. Bakshi then spent the next few days in the chancery,
sleeping on sofas and eating the ‘meagre emergency rations we had kept
for such a situation’. He was eventually shifted to his residence but not
allowed to meet anyone, except the Swiss consul general. The officials
from Karachi were then repatriated to India along with their colleagues
from Islamabad, in the same Swissair flight on 22 December.
By the time India’s diplomatic prisoners were released after the war,
power in Pakistan had moved from Yahya to Bhutto. A weakened army had
yielded power in what was effectively a civilian coup. Atal was even taken
for a farewell call on Bhutto on 21 December, now the new President of
Pakistan. Atal spoke from his pre-war brief, about asking for the release
of Mujibur Rahman. Bhutto countered that the 93,000 prisoners India
had taken from East Pakistan should be released as well. Atal softly said
to him he would try. Bhutto spun this polite assurance from the departing
Indian envoy—just released from house arrest—to mean that India had
promised an exchange of prisoners for the leader of East Pakistan.

THREE-NATION SOLUTION
The complex interplay of global forces that precipitated the events of 1971
did not permit any simplistic conclusion about the inevitability of the
birth of Bangladesh. The creation of the new nation must no doubt be
located in the larger context of the rapid geopolitical realignment of the
era. But human agency and human folly contributed to it, as much as
global realignment.
Raghavan has credibly argued that the break-up of Pakistan can only
be understood by situating these events in a wider global context and
by examining the interplay between domestic, regional, and international
realities. The geopolitical context of the late 1960s and early 1970s was
shaped by three broad historical processes, suggests Raghavan, each poised
at an interesting conjuncture. The decolonization of the European empires
that had begun in the aftermath of World War II gathered pace in the
late 1950s. Then there was the Cold War which had begun in Europe as
an ideological and security competition between the United States and the
Soviet Union, backed by their allies. By the mid-1960s, the rivalry in Europe
had stabilized, but the Cold War had gone global, and its hottest locales
were in the developing world. The third and incipient historical current that
swirled through the period was globalization, spurred by unprecedented
improvements in transport, communications, and information technology.
The confluence of these three processes shaped the origins, course, and
 a s e cond part it ion, a t hi r d c o u n t ry 153

outcome of the Bangladesh crisis.24 Against this backdrop, India’s diplomacy

had its finest hour. India’s politicians, military leaders, and diplomats came
together to craft and improvise an approach that helped India realize its
internal, regional, and global objectives. Pakistan, in contrast, lost half its
territory as it failed to manage its internal contradictions or its military
strategy or to use the shifting geopolitical currents.
An important question to be asked is whether India’s intervention early
in the crisis of 1971 could have saved lives. In his first meeting with D. P.
Dhar in January 1972, Mujibur Rahman asked, ‘Why did India not intervene
soon after the army crackdown in Bangladesh?’ Such an intervention would
surely have saved so much suffering and lives. Such an intervention had
been proposed by K. Subrahmanyam. In retrospect, concludes Raghavan,
the case for an early intervention in May 1971 seems strong. For one
thing the Pakistani military deployment in the eastern wing had not yet
reached the levels that it eventually would. A swift intervention may not
have been as adverse as the Indian military and political leadership had
assumed it could be.
 11

LI NE OF CONTROL

I ndia’s foreign minister Swaran Singh was the first to propose a post-war
peace conference. He said in New York, on 22 December 1971, on the
day Atal returned home, that he was prepared to go to Islamabad and ‘we
will welcome them if they want to come to Delhi’. Indira Gandhi similarly
said in her statements in December and January that India was willing to
hold bilateral talks to settle issues like the repatriation of the prisoners
of war and the vacation of the territories occupied during the war, apart
from the normalization and improvement of relations between the two
countries. India said this again on 14 February 1972 to UN Secretary
General Kurt Waldheim, through Samarendra Sen, now its permanent
representative to the UN in New York.
India was pointedly ready for bilateral talks without any third-party
mediation and without any preconditions, with the aim of achieving ‘durable
peace in the subcontinent’. The message was clear: it could no longer be
the UN brokering the ceasefire, as in 1949, or a major power like the
Soviet Union doing so, as in Tashkent in 1966. Bhutto eventually agreed
to a summit meeting with Indira Gandhi that summer, to be preceded by
a discussion between officials on the agenda. After three days of official-
level meetings from 26 April in Murree, a hill resort in Pakistan, the two
sides agreed on an agenda for a summit to be held in Simla on 27 June.
The Indian diplomatic crew that had been expelled from Pakistan
was soon at headquarters in Delhi, taking the lead in crafting policy for
a peace initiative, after the war they had experienced in enemy territory.
Deputy High Commissioner Ashok Chib became the joint secretary or head
of the Pakistan division in the Ministry of External Affairs; K. N. Bakshi
who had been assistant high commissioner in Karachi was appointed his
deputy. Later, Naresh Dayal, who had served in Islamabad, joined the team.
This was the core group in MEA that prepared for the Simla summit.
The prime minister had asked D. P. Dhar to lead the official delegation.
Dhar called Bakshi one day and asked him to take ten days off and
produce a draft of what could be a possible agreement at the summit.
Dhar had the experience; he had been asked by Indira Gandhi to draft
and negotiate the Indo–Soviet treaty the previous year, a task he had
accomplished successfully. Bakshi got down to work and produced a draft
agreement that Dhar worked on. Dhar was seen by his team as a realist,
a pragmatist who understood the Pakistani mindset and India’s national
interests. His preparations were so thorough that he had even got his team
 l ine of cont ro l 155

to script a possible dialogue between the prime minister and Bhutto during
their first one-to-one meeting. Bakshi, with his Karachi experience, kept
flagging the point that Bhutto was not trustworthy: ‘We cannot depend
upon him...even his mother could not fully trust him’.1
Bhutto arrived to a warm welcome in Simla. He had brought along
some prominent members of the Opposition to Simla to signal democratic
consensus in his country behind the peace move. His daughter and future
prime minister, Benazir, accompanied him. The tortuous talks of five days
seemed headed for failure, when Bhutto asked for a late-night farewell call
on Indira Gandhi. In their one-on-one meeting, Bhutto ‘convincingly argued’
that given time, he would be ‘able to bring public opinion in Pakistan
around to accepting the Line of Control, with marginal adjustments, as the
permanent international boundary’. He told her,’ Aap mujh per bharosa
rakhen (please trust me).’ He pleaded that ‘if he was seen as having yieded
to pressure, the Pakistan Army, defeated though it might be, would have
his head.’2
Indira Gandhi relented and an agreement was hammered out in the
wee hours of 2 July. It underlined the principle of bilateralism, a shift
away from the dependence on major powers, or the United Nations, to
intervene in India–Pakistan issues. But it failed to explicitly capture Bhutto’s
promise to convert the LoC into an international boundary.

THE SPIRIT OF SIMLA

The Simla Agreement has been analysed threadbare over the decades and
particularly on its milestone birthdays. It was mostly welcomed at that
time in the two countries, even though a few critics on both sides panned
it. Scholars, diplomats, and historians have judged it from various vantage
points ever since.
To Kewal Singh, who was posted in Bonn in 1972, three of the pact’s
provisions pointed to the dawn of a new era in the subcontinent, even
though his enthusiasm was ‘tempered by some anxieties’.3 These were: the
decisions to end the state of confrontation and renounce the use of force
to settle future disputes and differences; the promotion of commercial,
cultural exchanges, and travel, to further people to people links; and the
commitment to put an end to adverse propaganda to reverse the suspicion,
distrust, and hatred between the countries.
Observers at the time and subsequently have compared the Simla
Agreement favourably with the Tashkent Agreement that had come six
years earlier. The two agreements came about in similar circumstances after
the two countries had gone to war. In both cases, Pakistan had suffered
serious setbacks and, in 1971, absolute defeat. Three issues confronted
peacemakers on both occasions: the return of prisoners of war; the vacation
156 ange r m anage m e nt

of territory; and the restoration of peace and normalcy. In both cases,

the belligerents decided to vacate the conquered territories and to restore
normalcy in relations. In each agreement, the parties reaffirmed their
allegiance to the UN charter and committed themselves to settling future
differences or disputes peacefully. Both agreements placed a premium on
economic, cultural, and commercial cooperation.
But there were some striking differences. First, a military dictator, Ayub
Khan, had signed the Tashkent declaration in the face of total opposition
from his civilian foreign minister, Bhutto. In Simla, it was Bhutto, as
president of Pakistan, riding on a huge mandate from the 1970 election,
who signed the agreement, after having effectively displaced a disgraced
military regime that had lost half of his country’s territory.
Second, the attitude of the people of Pakistan was different in the
two cases. In the 1965 war, the people of West Pakistan were fed on
the propaganda that Pakistan had bravely gone to liberate Kashmir and
had almost succeeded. These hopes were not translated into the Tashkent
Agreement. The people had eventually found out that their leaders had
deceived them and that Pakistan had failed in its venture to retrieve
Kashmir. The Tashkent declaration had thus met with widespread protest
from January 1966 onwards, leading to Ayub’s eventual downfall. In the
case of the Simla Agreement, Bhutto was seen to be trying to retrieve the
consequences of the reckless policies of military dictators President Ayub
Khan and later President Yahya Khan. The Pakistani public now appeared
to be confident that Bhutto was representing the people’s voice in making
the best of the situation.
Third, the Tashkent declaration had restored the status quo in terms
of territory, asking troops to be withdrawn to the ceasefire positions as
on 5 August 1965. In Simla however ‘the Line of Control’ was agreed to
as the boundary that the two forces had to respect. This was effectively
a rejection of the UN-supervised ceasefire line that had been considered
valid for two decades.
Fourth, and most important, was the discussion on the status of Kashmir.
Tashkent had seen a complete breakdown of negotiations on the Kashmir
issue. The Pakistani delegation had been keen to keep the issue on the
front burner while India had insisted that the matter had been settled nine
years earlier in 1957, by a duly elected Kashmir constituent assembly and
Kashmir was thus an integral part of India. In the final version, India had
agreed to a formulation that said, ‘Jammu and Kashmir was discussed
and each of the sides set forth its respective position.’ India had insisted
that Kashmir was an integral part of India and outside powers, including
the UN, had no locus standi to question it. For Ayub Khan, this one-
line formulation had provided a face-saving device, even though Bhutto
remained opposed to the agreement.4
 l ine of cont ro l 157

In Simla, the talks had also broken down on the Kashmir issue. However,
Bhutto retrieved the situation with some desperate diplomacy. He made the
persuasive but deceptive plea that a ‘sustainable solution’ was not possible
if he was seen to have surrendered the Pakistani position and accepted
the LoC as the new international boundary. For India, an acceptance by
Pakistan of the principle of a peaceful and bilateral solution to the Kashmir
issue, without any outside mediation or intervention, seemed at that point
a reasonable interim solution.
The Simla spirit dissipated rapidly just as the Tashkent spirit had
disappeared as soon as the ink was dry. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi told
Kewal Singh, who had in December 1972 returned as foreign secretary
and a key adviser on Pakistan, that Bhutto had gone back on his solemn
commitments. Bhutto had told Mrs Gandhi in Simla that he had himself
been transformed from being a believer in confrontation against India to
one who believed in cooperation as the way forward. But he had turned
belligerent in his pronouncements within a year of the Simla Agreement.
He had also failed to deliver on his commitment related to the recognition
of Bangladesh.5
To many, the Simla outcome reinforced the view that India had not
only won a decisive military victory, but had also exorcised the two-nation
theory that had haunted the subcontinent since 1947. However, the break-
up of Pakistan was not inevitable. As has been noted, it was influenced
by decolonization, the Cold War, and incipient globalization interacting in
ways ‘far from predictable’.6
Over the last half century several arguments have been made that
Indira Gandhi won the war but lost the peace—that she failed to use the
historic opportunity presented by the victory to impose a final settlement
on Kashmir. Perhaps one strong reason was that Indian leaders of the
time were betting on an internal transformation of Pakistan’s polity after
a cathartic defeat. That was a bet that did not pay off.
P. N. Haksar had persuasively argued with Indira Gandhi about the
‘Versailles effect’ that led the West to conclude a peace with a Germany
defeated during World War I and imposing humiliating terms that led to
the rise of Nazism and World War II. Also, Gandhi felt she herself did not
have the mandate of foreclosing the option of wresting POK back from
Pakistan by force. The respect that India showed a defeated Pakistan laid
the basis for a stable India–Pakistan relationship, but also precluded the
possibility of external intervention in bilateral disputes. Most importantly,
by converting the ceasefire line in Kashmir to a Line of Control that
would gradually assume the characteristics of an international border,
the decision-makers of the day saw prospects of an eventual settlement
of the Kashmir dispute. Bhutto had then agreed that ‘an agreement will
emerge in the foreseeable future. It will evolve into a settlement. Let there
158 ange r m anage m e nt

be a line of peace; let people come and go; Let us not fight over it.’7
It did not quite work out that way. Bhutto rapidly retracted from his
position. By 1973, he was talking of waging a 1,000-year war against
India, as Pakistan’s new prime minister under a new constitution.8 By mid-
1974, neither Bhutto nor Indira Gandhi had the political will or capital to
forge a lasting settlement. Some historians have argued that if India had
rammed through a final settlement in Kashmir, it is quite likely that the
Pakistan Army would have deposed Bhutto even before it actually did.9
More than half a century later, a robust debate still rages on both the
1971 war and the 1972 peace deal.

PRISONERS OF WAR
Indira Gandhi wrote to Bhutto on 24 January 1973 that the two sides
should meet early to discuss plans to resume communications and mobility
in accordance with the third clause of the Simla Agreement and to establish
a durable peace. But Bhutto was weighed down by the political burden
of the 93,000 captured Pakistani POWs still in Indian custody;10 this
made the normalization of relations between the two countries almost
impossible.
Soon after elections in Bangladesh in March 1973, Indira sent the
trusted Haksar as a special envoy, along with Foreign Secretary Kewal
Singh, to explore some ‘bold new initiatives’ between Bangladesh and
Pakistan that could eventually assist the Indian relationship. In April 1973,
Pakistan and India signed a joint declaration allowing most of the Pakistani
POWs to return—only 195 of them facing serious charges of war crimes
remained in captivity. The Indian government was authorized to negotiate
with Pakistan on behalf of Bangladesh.
In July 1973, an Indian delegation reached Rawalpindi. It comprised
P. N. Haksar, P. N. Dhar, and Kewal Singh. They were pitted against the
fierce Aziz Ahmed—who had by then become foreign minister—and Agha
Shahi, the Pakistani foreign secretary. Tough negotiations followed on the
fate of the POWs, with Pakistan strongly resisting trying some of them
as war criminals. When the delegation called on Bhutto on the evening
of 27 July, he was blunt in rejecting their proposal. He said, ‘I simply
cannot take the risk.’ The trial of the POWs ‘would be a point of no
return...you can throw the whole lot of the POWs in the river Ganges,
but I cannot agree to any of the soldiers being held back for trials.’11 The
Indian delegation left disappointed. But the deliberations resumed in New
Delhi the next month.
On returning to New Delhi, Kewal Singh got on a plane with Indira
Gandhi for a Commonwealth heads of government meeting in Ottawa. On
arrival, she was met by scores of protestors, apparently Pakistanis, with
banners condemning India for holding POWs for the past eight months.
 l ine of cont ro l 159

Singh marvelled at the effectiveness of Pakistan’s propaganda, which allowed

the sloganeers to follow Gandhi to different cities in Canada.
Before the next round of discussions in New Delhi on 18 August 1973,
Pakistan reached a democratic milestone by passing a new Constitution.
Pakistan’s new president, Chaudhary Fazal Ilahi, called it the ‘completion
of political recovery and realisation of democratic ideals’ in the country.12
Bhutto was sworn in as prime minister on 14 August 1973, handing over
the now ceremonial post of president to Ilahi.
In India, this was seen as a positive development, as Pakistan’s
democratic forces consolidated and the military kept its head down. The
argument began gaining ground that a ‘democratic peace’ would be a
reality if Pakistan continued on its path towards becoming a genuine
electoral democracy. India’s president and prime minister sent gushing
messages, referencing the ‘vigorous and responsive parliamentary system
of government functioning in the countries of the subcontinent’ and the
prospects of a durable peace.13 Bhutto also recognized Bangladesh in his
broadcast of 14 August 1973.
The Pakistani delegation arrived in India on 18 August and after ten
days of tough negotiations, arrived at an agreement, signed by P. N. Haksar
and Aziz Ahmed, as a result of which the three governments agreed to the
immediate and simultaneous repatriation of some 400,000 men, women,
and children, who had been away from their homes for the previous twenty
months—in India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. This included 93,000 Pakistani
POWs. The three-way movement of detainees was completed on 30 April
1974, with the last batch of 700 POWs crossing the Wagah checkpost into
Pakistan, along with their commander, Lieutenant General A. A. K. Niazi.
With this resolution of the 1971 war mostly out of the way, the path
was clear for normalizing relations. On 9 April 1974, the countries arrived
at a tripartite agreement on the fate of the 195 Pakistani POWs charged
with war crimes, such as crimes against humanity and genocide. They
were to be returned to Pakistan. A bilateral agreement was also signed
by foreign ministers Swaran Singh and Aziz Ahmed, to hold discussions
quickly on the resumption of communications and travel between the
two countries, working towards normalization after the 1971 war and to
implement the provisions of the Simla Agreement. The date was fixed for
10 June for these discussions. But, as was becoming the new normal in
India–Pakistan relations, an event took place which would again destabilize
the fragile relationship.

BUDDHA’S SMILE
At 9 a.m. on 18 May 1974, All India Radio interrupted its regular program
for a special announcement: ‘At 0805 am this morning, India successfully
conducted an underground nuclear explosion for peaceful purposes at a
160 ange r m anage m e nt

carefully chosen site in western India.’ An hour earlier, deep in the Thar
Desert, a group of scientists saw the earth shift and a giant mound of sand
rise up as if ‘Lord Hanuman had lifted it.’14 Indira Gandhi had verbally
ordered the test in 1972 and even her defence minister Jagjivan Ram was
not in the loop on the explosion. The big bang in the desert took place
on a festive day marking the birth of the Buddha and hence its code
name, ‘Smiling Buddha’. The scientists at the site had more to smile about.
In his excitement, the father of the bomb fell down—the chairman of
India’s premier nuclear research facility, the Bhabha Atomic Research
Centre (BARC), Raja Ramanna, was climbing down from the machan, a
temporary wooden viewing site rigged up in the desert, when the earth
shook violently; in the moment of his greatest triumph, he found himself
sprawled on the sands of the Thar Desert in Pokhran.15
Foreign Secretary Kewal Singh, one of the few people in the know of
the secret plan, had reached his workplace two hours before the Buddha
smiled. He anxiously awaited the signal from upstairs, which was to be
his cue to call in select Western ambassadors and high commissioners to
explain the party line of a ‘peaceful nuclear explosion’. He got the signal
and went on to invite several ambassadors for briefings.
Delhi-based diplomats were soon reporting this narrative to sceptical
capitals. Two days after this frenetic bout of diplomacy, Kewal Singh
accompanied the prime minister and the chairman of the Atomic Energy
Commission (the apex body that decided nuclear policy), Homi Sethna, to
Pokhran, to see the site of the implosion device. India was facing strong
geopolitical headwinds; it was castigated by the United States, United
Kingdom, Japan, and Canada. Most Western countries condemned the
Indian move, except for France, which commended the ‘mastery of nuclear
techniques’ by India.16 The Canadian government was the strongest in its
criticism, as it suspended all nuclear aid for India’s fledgling nuclear energy
programme. Singh was deputed to explain the move to the Canadians,
who had helped India at a crucial stage of the nuclear programme—the
plutonium fuel for the bomb had been brewed in a small research reactor
called CIRUS, donated by Canada in 1956. He stopped by in the US in
August on his way to Ottawa, to meet Henry Kissinger, who later privately
apologized to Canada for publicly insinuating that Canadian negligence
had allowed India to reach weapons capability.17
The strongest reaction to India’s nuclear test, of course, came from
Pakistan. An angry Prime Minister Bhutto called a press conference in
Lahore on 19 May to pledge that Pakistan would never submit to ‘nuclear
blackmail’. He referred to the suggestion made by India of a no-war pact
during the Simla conference to say, ‘now that India has begun to brandish
its nuclear sword, I declare that the question of concluding a pact simply
does not arise.’18
 l ine of cont ro l 161

India was trying hard to allay Pakistan’s fears. On 22 May, Prime

Minister Indira Gandhi addressed a personal letter to Bhutto (sent through
the Swiss embassy given the absence of diplomatic contacts) to assure
him that India’s nuclear explosion was entirely for peaceful purposes.
Bhutto was scarcely persuaded. He replied angrily that India had designs
to dismember Pakistan and get out of the no-war pact offer it had made
earlier. He warned that India’s nuclear explosion had upset the power
balance between the two countries and threatened the normalization of
relations.
Bhutto was whipping up sentiment within his own country, with the
narrative of a dangerous, nuclear-fanged India. The nuclear explosion would
weigh heavy on the bilateral relationship. On 31 May, Pakistan said it was
cancelling the talks for restoration of communication and travel facilities
that had been scheduled for 10 June. Bhutto stepped up the belligerence
and tried to use India’s new nuclear status to press the US to supply it
with arms. He also made paranoid claims of a pincer move planned against
Pakistan, with the simultaneous deployment of Afghan troops to its west
and the concentration of Indian troops on the Sialkot border on the east.
These were precursors of Pakistan’s future allegations about India’s attempts
to squeeze Pakistan, requiring it to get strategic depth in Afghanistan.
India continued to protest against Bhutto’s belligerence and insist on
the peaceful nature of its nuclear programme. Minister of External Affairs
Swaran Singh wrote to his Pakistani counterpart Aziz Ahmed on 15 June,
pointing out that Bhutto’s remarks were not only against the letter and
spirit of the Simla Agreement but also ‘constituted a gross interference in
India’s internal affairs’.
But Bhutto was not persuaded. He famously said in the Lahore’s
governor’s house: ‘We shall eat grass but have our bomb.’ He was only
reiterating what he said in 1965 after the Chinese explosion of 1964.
Back in 1965, Bhutto’s friend, Munir Ahmad Khan, had informed him of
the status of India’s nuclear programme. Bhutto said, ‘Pakistan will fight,
fight for a thousand years. If...India builds the bomb.... (Pakistan) will
eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own...we have no
other choice.’ Bhutto remained true to this commitment towards acquiring
nuclear weapons and so did his successor, Zia ul-Haq.19
 12

LI MP I NG BACK

P akistan’s anger at India’s nuclear test appeared to abruptly cool off as

the summer ended. Aziz Ahmed replied to Swaran Singh on 10 August
1974 that talks could resume in September. Kewal Singh was back in
Pakistan on 10 September and—after three days of talks with his Pakistani
counterpart, Foreign Secretary Agha Shahi—signed three agreements
that had remained suspended for the past three years: to resume postal,
telecommunications, and travel links. They also signed an important
protocol on visits by pilgrims to shrines in either country and agreed
that negotiations would start to restore trade and cultural exchanges and
resume air connectivity.
In late November 1974, an Indian delegation was back in Rawalpindi,
this time to discuss overflights and the resumption of air links. The civil
aviation talks broke down on India’s insistence that Pakistan withdraw the
complaint lodged with the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO)
against India’s ban on Pakistani overflights, from 4 February 1971. That
was the day the Indian Airlines plane had been hijacked to Lahore and
blown up with the apparent connivance of Pakistan’s security agencies and
to the rejoicing of the public in Lahore and elsewhere. The Government of
Pakistan had also granted political asylum to the hijackers, calling them
freedom fighters. India was now insisting on dealing with this issue bilaterally.
The delegation returned with this stalemate, but the return visit by
Pakistan produced an agreement to lift the embargo on trade and grant
mutual most favoured nation treatment. In January 1975, a follow-up
agreement was signed to resume shipping links. Thus, commercial links
were re-established between the countries within four years of the war.
If May 1974 was the time when Pakistan sulked, it was India’s turn
to be upset in February 1975. Prime Minister Bhutto visited Washington
in the first week of February 1975. On 24 February, an announcement
came lifting the ten-year-old embargo against supplies of arms to Pakistan
and—for the sake of optics—also to India. India found the move particularly
galling, given the history of US promises of the past two decades. President
Eisenhower’s assurances to Prime Minister Nehru in 1954—that American
arms supplied to Pakistan were only to combat aggression by communism—
had been belied, when those arms were used against India in the 1965 war.
India was also upset at the US having given deceptive signals in recent
times—when Henry Kissinger had visited New Delhi on 27 October 1974,
he had praised non-alignment during a speech at the Indian Council of
 l im p ing back 163

World Affairs (ICWA). He seemed to be distancing himself from the 1950s

posture since the days of John Foster Dulles, when this policy had been
dubbed ‘immoral’.1
Indira Gandhi made a statement on 26 February that the resumption of
arms supplies to Pakistan amounted to reopening old wounds and that it
would hinder the process of healing and normalization of ties between the
neighbours.2 She said that the US was falling into the trap of hyphenating
Pakistan with India, which was a flawed policy. Kewal Singh personally
felt that India’s reaction should not have been so strong in 1975. His view
reflected the frequent disagreements that politicians and diplomats had
on this issue and the political hyper-sensitivity to developments related
to Pakistan.
Again, February 1975 did not bring unalloyed joy to Pakistan. By a
coincidence, on the day the embargo was lifted (24 February), momentous
developments took place in Kashmir. Sheikh Abdullah was sworn in as the
chief minister of the state, after years in the political wilderness. The new
process had begun with the Indira–Sheikh accord of 1974, whereby the
Kashmiri leader had dropped his hard-line plebiscite demand. Islamabad
called for a general strike in Pakistan and Kashmir, evoking a strong
reaction from Sheikh Abdullah. During a prayer meeting on 28 February,
he said that Pakistan could not play with the future of J&K, after having
committed atrocities in the part of Kashmir that it administered and having
launched an orgy of violence in the state since 1947. The outburst on
Kashmir provided another layer of backdrop to Pakistan’s outcry about
India’s nuclear capability and India’s outrage about US arms supplies to
Pakistan.
In May 1975, elections were held in POK, rigged in favour of Bhutto’s
party, the ruling PPP, which led effectively to the integration of POK into
Pakistan. The move by Pakistan was clearly a response to Sheikh Abdullah’s
installation in Kashmir, suggesting that this move had left Pakistan with no
choice but to integrate POK deeper into Pakistan. Voices within Pakistan
were warning about the damaging effect that this integration would have
on the final solution to the disputed state of Kashmir. Bhutto, on the
other hand, seemed to be working on a status quo solution that he had
promised Indira Gandhi he would deliver in Simla. The move would have
familiar echoes in 2021, when Gilgit Baltistan was integrated deeper into
Pakistan in response to India’s perceived move to irreversibly integrate
J&K further after the Article 370 decision of August 2019.
It took a few months for matters to cool down enough for Kewal Singh
to get permission from the PM to invite his counterpart, Agha Shahi, to India
on 17 May 1975. The foreign secretary-level talks led to agreements on air
links, the construction of Salal hydroelectric plant on the river Chenab in
164 ange r m anage m e nt

India, and a reaffirmation of the Simla spirit. Kewal Singh again raised the
issue of the non-aggression treaty to allay fears of India’s nuclear capability
and to end the harsh anti-India propaganda unleashed by Pakistan.
Soon, India’s attention was directed inwards. On 12 June 1975, the
Allahabad High Court found Indira Gandhi guilty of electoral malpractice.
She was barred from holding elected office for six years. She lashed back
angrily and imposed a state of Emergency on 25 June, in what became an
eighteen-month interruption in India’s democracy.
The bilateral contestation spilled over once again onto the international
stage in October 1975, when India and Pakistan confronted each other
for a claim to a UN Security Council non-permanent seat. The bitter
contest arose for an Asian seat in the fifteen-member Security Council,
to be available from 1976 after Iraq completed its two-year term. India
had announced its candidature for the seat a couple of months earlier
and conveyed this to all governments, including to Pakistan. This did not
stop Pakistan from throwing its hat in the ring and lobbying for support
among member nations. Foreign Secretary Kewal Singh was particularly
disappointed because he thought Pakistan could have easily waited for
the next Asian vacancy in 1977, instead of trying to challenge India.
Singh tried to persuade his Pakistani counterpart Shahi of the futility of
a public diplomatic battle but Shahi reported that Islamabad was in no
mood to relent.
In the absence of agreement, India and Pakistan lobbied and slugged it
out for four days with seven successive ballots, which did not produce the
two-thirds majority for either candidate. The deadlock carried the danger
that the Asian seat would remain vacant. Kewal Singh and India’s permanent
representative, Rikhi Jaipal got the approval of the government in Delhi to
withdraw India’s candidature. When Jaipal made the formal announcement
that India had decided not to press its candidature any longer, the Pakistani
permanent representative, Iqbal Akhund, rose to express his country’s deep
appreciation for India’s decision, and said ‘there is no winner or loser
today’, and it would be Pakistan’s ‘pleasure and duty to back India, fully
at another Council election’. As India stepped aside for Pakistan to join
the Security Council as a non-permanent member in 1976–77, Pakistan
returned the favour with support for India joining the council in 1977–78.3
To Akhund and other Pakistani diplomats, the ‘victory’ at the UN was
some kind of balm for the humiliation of 1971, and the ‘consecration
of Pakistan’s reinstatement to the world community’. With India now
facing democratic backsliding with Indira Gandhi’s Emergency rule and
in Pakistan, Bhutto’s ‘vigorous, leadership, and reforms’, Akhund felt that
‘the Indians themselves were conscious of the relative decline in India’s
position. On one occasion, when India’s defence minister came to his home
in New York for lunch, Akhund escorted him down to his car, only to
 l im p ing back 165

find the car would not start. It had to be jumpstarted from the battery of
the Pakistan mission’s car. Akhund joked, ‘Mr Minister, here is a practical
demonstration of what we can do through peaceful coexistence’. Chavan
replied with a grin, ‘I know, but Pakistan likes to coexist only when India’s
battery is down.’4

THE LADDER OF PEACE

With the goodwill growing, Prime Minister Bhutto took the initiative to
write a letter on 27 March 1976, telling Indira Gandhi that Pakistan was
willing to withdraw its case from the ICAO. He suggested early talks
between the foreign secretaries. The resulting May 1976 meetings of the
foreign secretaries led to the resumption of air links and overflights and
also of goods and passenger rail traffic.
Finally, in mid-1976, diplomatic relations resumed between the two
countries. These had been carried out through the Swiss embassy since the
1971 war. It had taken more than five years after the war and four years
after the Simla Agreement to restore air and rail links between the two
countries and to normalize diplomatic relations. On 24 July, K. S. Bajpai
and Syed Fida Hussain, both diplomatic veterans of the 1965 war, went
across to their country missions.
It was more than five years after High Commissioner Atal had flown
back to India from Islamabad in a Swissair plane that his successor Bajpai
landed in the city. This was incidentally also a time when Indira Gandhi
was restoring diplomatic relations with another difficult neighbour, China,
after the 1962 war.
But the political trajectories of India and Pakistan were soon to diverge
again. Both Gandhi and Bhutto decided at roughly the same time in January
1977 to go in for fresh elections. Bhutto needed to abide by the provisions
of the 1973 Constitution, while the democrat in Gandhi had awoken, to
seek the people’s mandate after eighteen months of the Emergency.
Bilateral diplomacy continued. The issue of a no-war pact that had
been discussed in the 1950s and 1960s came up again. Bhutto had made
known his scepticism about no-war pacts. He saw these as a ruse by
India to take attention away from Kashmir. One of the last major media
interviews Bhutto gave was to the visiting Indian journalist Khushwant
Singh, where he pointed out that a no-war pact could only be considered if
it incorporated a ‘self-executing mechanism for the settlement of outstanding
disputes like the one provided in the Indus Basin Treaty’. Else, it ‘would
really mean the acceptance of the status quo in Jammu and Kashmir.’5
Pakistan’s diplomacy was thus trying to push back the principle of
bilateralism established in Simla and resume the argument that international
agreements superseded bilateral ones. Bhutto’s legal mind was trying to
find a way out by drawing a parallel with the Indus treaty. In the midst
166 ange r m anage m e nt

of the election campaign, Pakistan issued an aggressive White Paper to

keep the Kashmir issue simmering. It repeated the primacy of the UN
resolutions and ignored Pakistan’s commitment to the Simla Agreement.
In his protest, Ambassador Bajpai said that ‘we realize that Pakistan is in
the midst of electioneering. But we do not accept the facts as presented
in the White Paper.’6
The Indian general elections held in March 1977 led to a heavy defeat
for Indira Gandhi and her Congress Party and a resounding victory for the
Opposition Janata alliance led by the eighty-one-year-old Morarji Desai.
In Pakistan, Bhutto was believed to be heading for an easy win in
the March 1977 elections, on the strength of his support of democratic
institutions. These were only the second general elections that Pakistan
was holding in the three decades of its independence, so there was much
hope of Pakistan’s democracy emerging strengthened. However, Bhutto
decided to rig the elections, in a move that paralleled the Watergate affair
a few years earlier, when US Republicans decided to distort the democratic
process despite being in a comfortable electoral position.
Bhutto’s embarrassingly large margin of victory failed to convince his
people. An overwhelming majority of over 60 per cent of the votes for
the PPP appeared to have been obtained by brazen rigging, rather than
a persuasive democratic mandate. In several constituencies, votes for the
PPP candidates exceeded those actually polled. In Punjab, where Bhutto
faced a strong Opposition, his candidates had secured 95 per cent of
the vote. To the Opposition challenge to the results, Bhutto reacted with
the assured arrogance of an autocrat. He called in the army to suppress
demonstrations, followed by curfew and martial law. The scenes were
reminiscent not only of the last days of President Ayub Khan’s reign, when
Bhutto himself was leading the democratic charge against autocracy, but
also reminded observers of Mrs Gandhi’s weak moment in 1975 when
she had imposed the Emergency.

A FRESH START
Pakistan’s High Commissioner Syed Fida Hussain was one of the first
diplomats to greet Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the Janata Party’s new foreign
minister. The genial fifty-four-year-old politician had been a rising star in
India’s parliament, a member since 1954. Vajpayee had imbibed several
strongly democratic values in his journey in parliament and travels
abroad as an MP. He had watched Nehru and Indira grow as leaders and
understood the importance of realpolitik and flexibility in negotiations
with adversaries. His exposure to the world was telling him that his
political party, the Jan Sangh (the early avatar of the nationalist Bharatiya
Janata Party founded in 1951), had to change to be accepted by the
majority of Indians, as well as nations around the world. Foreign Secretary
 l im p ing back 167

Jagat Mehta had become a trusted and valued adviser.

Vajpayee reassured Pakistan’s ambassador of the new Indian
government’s peaceful intentions despite his own hard-line positions in the
past. Vajpayee told the envoy that the foreign policy of India had followed
a pattern which was more or less based on a national consensus and his
party was not going to change it. He suggested that with elections over
in both countries, the time had come to pick up the old threads and to
resume the normalization process.7
Meanwhile, across the border, Ambassador Bajpai met Bhutto in
Islamabad on 26 April to present him a letter from the Indian prime
minister Morarji Desai, which spoke of a positive agenda of moving from a
durable to a permanent peace. Bhutto spoke enthusiastically of accelerating
the normalization process and moving towards Indo–Pak trade talks and
the need for a fresh approach.
On 6 June, Ambassador Hussain called on Prime Minister Desai. Desai
again emphasized that there was no change in his government’s policy
towards Pakistan and invited Bhutto to visit India once things stabilized in
his country. Desai recounted an incident from 1964, when Sheikh Abdullah
had suggested to Nehru that the latter should propose to the Government
of Pakistan the creation of some kind of confederation between the two
countries. After hearing this proposal, Desai, who was not in government,
immediately advised Nehru against it, saying that this move would be
misunderstood by Pakistan. He was glad that Nehru agreed and did not
make any such proposals.
Morarji Desai, conflicted on nuclear weapons because of his Gandhian
beliefs, took a position that ‘we have no desire to possess atomic weapons
even if you produce such weapons’.8 At the same time, he told the envoy
that about ten years earlier India had been offered a nuclear umbrella
by the US for giving up the option to conduct atomic tests for peaceful
purposes. He had agreed with the view that India should prefer to have
its own nuclear weapons, instead of coming under such an umbrella. This
mixed nuclear signal would not influence Pakistan’s plans.
But Pakistan soon saw a more familiar kind of regime change. With
the threat of civil war imminent in Pakistan, Chief of Army Staff General
Zia ul-Haq snatched power in a military coup on the morning of 5 July
1977. Bhutto was dismissed and a new dictator with a waxed moustache
and toothy smile was now in power, promising early elections and stability
after chaos.
When the government changed in Pakistan, Vajpayee made a statement
in parliament that the army takeover in Pakistan was an internal affair
of Pakistan and that India’s consistent policy of non-interference in the
domestic affairs of other countries would continue. A few days later,
Pakistan ambassador Fida Hussain called on Vajpayee and briefed him
168 ange r m anage m e nt

on Pakistan’s new regime. Vajpayee asked after the welfare of Bhutto. The
diplomat informed the foreign minister that Pakistan’s leadership, including
his counterpart, Foreign Minister Aziz Ahmed, was in ‘protective custody’9.
Vajpayee observed wryly that this was exactly what his own detention
had been called during India’s Emergency. Hussain assured Vajpayee that
the martial law government had promised to hold elections by October
and hand over power to the people’s representatives. He referred to the
standing invitation to the Indian prime minister to visit Pakistan.
In Pakistan, Ambassador Bajpai got a chance to call on 9 July on the
new dictator then designated chief martial law administrator. Zia was all
charm, full of promise of holding elections within three months. Bajpai
said cheekily to Zia that the bilateral relationship should be like a Hindu
marriage—indissoluble. General Zia quoted Desai as having said to his
envoy that politicians never want elections and generals never want wars,
although both prepared constantly for these eventualities. Zia walked out
to drop the ambassador to his car, pledging peace.
Vajpayee realized that both Zia in Islamabad and his envoy, Hussain,
in New Delhi, were trying to downplay the significance of the military
takeover. He had warmed up to the Pakistani high commissioner, and spoke
to him in his poetic Urdu. But their burgeoning relationship was tragically
cut short. At the end of the year, Hussain suddenly passed away after a
heart attack—Vajpayee went personally to the Pakistan high commission
and penned an Urdu couplet in the condolence book:
Zamana baray shouq say sunn raha tha
Tumhi so gaye dastan kahte kahte.
(The world was engrossed in your story
But you fell asleep telling it. )10
 SECTION 4

1977–1987: FIVE BLOODY RIVERS

 13

THAWI NG TO DE CE I V E

I ndia’s top diplomat, dapper in a dark bandhgala and thick-rimmed

glasses, strode confidently to the podium of the United Nations General
Assembly in New York, to deliver a fluent three-minute address. It was
October 1977. The external affairs minister outlined the worldview of
the new Indian government, just six-months old then, signalling a broad
continuity in foreign policy. Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s carefully crafted
statement—the first at the UN by a non-Congress foreign minister—
mostly reaffirmed traditional positions: underlining India’s commitment
to democracy, basic freedoms, human rights, multilateralism, support for
Palestinian rights, and opposition to apartheid. ‘The vision of Vasudhaiva
Kutumbakum is an old one. We in India have all along believed in the
concept of the world as one family,’1 Vajpayee said, invoking civilizational
values and deploying what would become a Sanskrit buzz phrase for
Indian diplomats. What was also new was Vajpayee’s invocation of the
trauma of the recent Emergency; his wounds were fresh and personal; he
had been in jail for nineteen months before the historic 1977 elections
punished Indira Gandhi and catapulted the Janata government to power.
India’s foreign minister now vowed from the UN podium that India had
closed a dark chapter that involved the trampling of democracy and human
rights, and would make constitutional changes to ensure it would never
tread that path again.
But its substance was not what the speech was remembered for. Vajpayee
became the first foreign minister to deliver a UNGA speech in Hindi. For
Vajpayee, a Hindi poet, this was a personal dream fulfilled, ‘the happiest
moment of my life.’2 For many in northern India, the act became one of
linguistic pride and nationalist confidence. Others panned it: Hindi was
not an official language of the UN and not likely to become one.
In what was seen as a signal to Pakistan, Vajpayee said India hoped to
normalize ties with all countries. The message was clearly one of continuing
the 1976 process of stabilization, rather than bearing grudges for the 1971
war or the flawed Simla peace process.
The diplomacy with Pakistan began on the UN sidelines; Vajpayee had
dinner with Zia’s new diplomatic adviser, Pakistan’s ‘Secretary General’
Agha Shahi. Vajpayee was his genial self that evening. He pointed out to
Shahi that India had shown restraint in reacting calmly to the change in
government and internal developments in Pakistan. India would be happy
to have further talks on the question of Salal—a hydroelectric project on
172 ange r m anage m e nt

the river Chenab in Jammu and Kashmir—in March or April, after the
proposed Pakistan elections. Vajpayee said talks could begin as soon as
the political situation in Pakistan stabilized. In essence, India was willing
to talk to Pakistan whenever it was ready.
India assessed that this was a good time to move on some practical
aspects of the relationship, leaving tougher ‘outstanding issues’ for when
the internal situation in Pakistan steadied. The pressing matters on the
agenda included transit trade, the Salal project, the maritime boundary,
and issues of arm supplies.
Transit issues, then, as now, remained particularly sensitive, since they
required sovereignty concerns to be finessed. Transit through Pakistan would
imply India’s access to Iran and Afghanistan while Pakistan could gain
reciprocal transit rights through India to Nepal and Bangladesh. But this
implied an adversary country granting fairly untrammelled territorial access
for cargo. The optics would not be politically pretty. The Salal hydroelectric
project gave reason to Pakistan to invoke the dispute resolution provisions
of the Indus Waters Treaty of 1960. In 1976, Pakistan had wished to take
this issue to a neutral expert in terms of the treaty. India was keen to
resolve the issue bilaterally, keeping up the Simla spirit. The third issue
was of maritime boundary demarcation, for which India was keen, given
the objective of offshore oil exploration. Another issue was of US military
supplies to Pakistan. India was assessing that the military regime in Pakistan
remained committed to the installation of a nuclear reprocessing plant with
French know-how. But Pakistan’s ambitions for nuclear weapon capability
were not hidden from India, nor was India’s from Pakistan. India’s line on
its own programme remained that it was committed to harnessing nuclear
energy for peaceful purposes.
Vajpayee had received advice from MEA mandarins in October that
India’s attitude to Pakistan should remain one of ‘patience, restraint,
reasonableness and cooperation’3, underlining the belief that there was
no alternative to the peaceful and bilateral solution of problems and
differences. Vajpayee was to build on this interaction with his first foray
into Pakistan, in what would become a lifelong search for an elusive peace
with the neighbouring nation.

A DIPLOMATIC FORAY
Behind the poker-faced Buddha-like calm, High Commissioner K. S. Bajpai
was uneasy. It was a cool spring day in Islamabad in February 1978, as he
waited at a military airport for a plane from India. This was no ordinary
flight. It would be carrying India’s external affairs minister for not just the
first major bilateral political visit after the 1971 war, but the first visit by
an Indian foreign minister in a dozen years, since Swaran Singh’s visit of
1966. There was much that could go wrong with this goodwill visit that
 t haw ing to de cei v e 173

foreign minister Vajpayee had embarked upon. Would Vajpayee be as harsh

on dictator Zia as he had been on the prime minister his government had
just defeated, the autocrat Indira Gandhi?
The atmospherics before the trip had not been good. The Pakistan media
had maintained a steady, troublingly hostile, and apparently orchestrated
drumbeat about the new Janata government that included Vajpayee, a
representative of the anti-Pakistan, right-wing Bhartiya Jana Sangh. Scarcely
anything positive was being said about its senior leader and India’s foreign
minister, now descending upon Pakistan.
On the flight from Delhi, Vajpayee’s key adviser—Foreign Secretary
Jagat Mehta—was nervous too. His new boss was embarking on a critical
diplomatic initiative. More worryingly, Mehta was seeing reports of major
demonstrations in Pakistan that could easily drown out any positives the
visit hoped to accomplish. They could even threaten security.
If Vajpayee shared his advisers’ trepidation, it did not show on his boyish
visage as he emerged on the tarmac from the Indian Air Force aircraft, with
springy step, genial smile, and easy charm. His handshake was vigorous
and friendly as he met his counterpart, Agha Shahi, who now went by the
designation of adviser on foreign affairs to the martial law administrator
of Pakistan. Vajpayee was keen to manage expectations and treat this as
only a ‘goodwill visit’ that would set the stage for future dialogue. He
had prepared well for this charm offensive, working assiduously on his
Urdu, the poet in him transitioning from kavita to shayari, as he tried to
get his pronunciation and phrases just right. Known as a master orator
and an accomplished poet in Hindi, he had boned up on his Urdu to
communicate better with Pakistan.
Vajpayee’s quirky sense of humour did not allow him to take himself
too seriously; the moment of serious diplomacy never sat too heavy on
him. He had even composed a self-deprecatory poem on his new portfolio,
about the poet who found himself shaking hands only to then wring them
in despair:
Desh nikala mil gaya mantralaya foren;
Kootniti ke shastra hain, bain, nain aur sain;
Bain, nain aur sain, churi kaante bhi chalte;
Pehle haath milate
Phir haathon ko malte…
Pushed out of the country, to the foreign ministry
The tools of diplomacy are words, eyes, and signs;
Words, eyes, and signs; plus forks and knives;
First you shake hands,
Then wring them in repentance…4
174 ange r m anage m e nt

Vajpayee’s charm offensive during his week-long visit, directed at his

counterpart, General Zia, and a host of other interlocutors, pretty much
succeeded in altering Pakistan’s perception of India’s new government.
Vajpayee’s visit was not just the first by a foreign minister to Pakistan
in a dozen years, it was part of the new government’s outreach to the
neighbourhood including both adversaries with whom India had fought
wars—Pakistan and China.
General Zia admitted later that he too had been worried before the
visit. The thin-skinned general was concerned about a snub from the new
Indian government, given the recent coup and an elected prime minister
in the lock-up, with global leaders pressing Pakistan to release Bhutto.
Vajpayee’s seventy-minute call on Pakistan’s dictator on 6 February
1978 went off better than expected. India’s foreign minister did not
press Pakistan’s chief martial law administrator on the issue of Bhutto’s
incarceration. Bhutto had at best a mixed reputation in India—while to
some, he was the democrat wronged by his country, to others he was the
untrustworthy autocrat who had instigated two wars against India and
then got the better of Mrs Gandhi in Simla. More importantly, the focus
for the goodwill visit was on a positive, forward-looking agenda. Zia
apologized for the commotion in the Pakistan media for the previous ten
days and seemed to agree with Vajpayee that the obsession with solving
Kashmir before anything else must go. Vajpayee cited the example of how
India had made progress with Bangladesh on the tough Farakka Barrage
issue for sharing the waters of the Ganga.
Zia was countering Vajpayee’s charm offensive with one of his own. He
kept positioning himself as the outsider, almost a peacenik. He agreed with
Vajpayee that the obsession with Kashmir was misplaced. When Vajpayee
said that he had considered cancelling his visit in order not to embarrass
his hosts, Zia again apologized for the noise in Pakistan’s media.
Zia did say that the two key issues between the countries were Kashmir
and trade. But, in his perfunctory reference to Kashmir, he added that there
was ‘no harm in talking’, but this was ‘not an issue which could be solved
quickly’. They went on to discuss details of economic cooperation—trade
in cotton, gas, and rock salt. When Vajpayee delivered an invitation from
India’s prime minister for him to visit India, Zia responded with self-effacing
courtier-like formality—‘Daawat ki kya zaroorat thi. Ham unke khadim
hain (What was the need for the invitation. We are your servants.)’5
Accompanied by Foreign Secretary Jagat Mehta and Ambassador K. S.
Bajpai, Vajpayee also had lengthy interactions with his host and counterpart
Agha Shahi. As Zia’s foreign policy adviser and de facto foreign minister, the
Bangalore-trained mathematician and former ICS officer was equally warm.
When Vajpayee mentioned that he never thought he would visit Pakistan
as foreign minister of India, Shahi presciently observed that Vajpayee—still
 t haw ing to de cei v e 175

a couple of decades away from being prime minister—was still young and
‘we look forward to your further successes’. Referring to the Pakistan
media speculation about an insidious Indian plot to take over the country’s
economy, Vajpayee clarified that there was no real proposal for the idea
of an Asian common market; a South Asian free trade arrangement was
still a decade away.
In his meeting with Shahi, Vajpayee admitted that he had condemned
the Simla Agreement when it was signed; but he was now committed to
defending this national commitment. He even referred to the informal
understanding that had been reached in Simla about gradually giving the
LoC the character of an international boundary. Vajpayee cautioned against
Kashmir becoming an issue in Pakistan’s internal politics or in Indian
politics. He pointed out that in India’s general elections, no bilateral issues
related to Pakistan were raised: ‘We kept scrupulously aloof.’6 He suggested
there was no point in even mentioning in a readout of his ‘goodwill visit’
that the matter was discussed and not agreed upon. The officials eventually
agreed on a formulation that Kashmir was discussed, the two sides put
forward their respective points of view and that the talks were held in a
cordial atmosphere. Vajpayee made it a point to underline even in his public
declarations that the Janata government stood by the Simla Agreement.
At a banquet in his honour, Vajpayee charmed his hosts with several
Urdu couplets, compelling his flustered counterpart Shahi to rapidly
translate the prepared English script of his address into stilted, Persianized
Urdu. The text seemed foreign to Shahi as he stumbled through it. At
home in Delhi, Vajpayee had leaned on a friend, a college professor, to
polish his Urdu. Vajpayee appeared more at home in Pakistan’s proudly
adopted official tongue than his official hosts.
A critique of Vajpayee’s visit was that he never pressed Pakistan’s
dictator for mercy for Bhutto. The new government of India had pointedly
decided to treat this as an internal matter of Pakistan, at least in part because
Bhutto had not endeared himself to India by his antipathy towards it. But
Vajpayee’s charm extended to his public diplomacy. As the media quoted
the foreign minister’s earlier comments back to him, Vajpayee disarmingly
told them that he had forgotten the past and they should too.
Vajpayee was repeatedly asked by media where the Janata government
stood on the Kashmir issue. Would the starting point of dialogue be the
deadlock at the UN, the Tashkent declaration, or the Simla Agreement?
Vajpayee consistently replied that India stood by the Simla Agreement. He
even acknowledged that his party had led the move against the agreement
in 1971 and also advocated nuclear weapons capability for India; but
that was a minority view and he now subscribed to the Janata party
view that there was no need for India to produce nuclear weapons. This
disarmingly candid and easy distinction between his party’s stance—and
176 ange r m anage m e nt

his government’s view would serve Vajpayee well then and in his political
future.
Vajpayee succeeded in conveying a message of fresh thinking in Delhi
to facilitate the normalizing of the relationship between the two countries.
He visited Taxila, the ancient Buddhist city near Islamabad, and also
Lahore, where he went to the samadhi of Ranjit Singh, the Sikh leader
who had ruled much of northern India in the nineteenth century. An
assessment by the MEA of Vajpayee’s visit summarized its three broad
outcomes: emphasizing the Simla process of normalizing contacts; voicing
India’s commitment to a strong and stable Pakistan; and agreeing to
discuss ‘outstanding matters’ (read the Kashmir issue) once Pakistan was
more stable politically.
Vajpayee’s visit had also produced a host of practical ‘deliverables’ which
were as unexpected as they were creative: the greenlighting for India of
the Salal dam project on the river Chenab in J&K; opening of consulates
in Karachi and Bombay; cultural exchanges including pilgrims; resumption
of cricketing contacts. While Vajpayee was in Pakistan, an Indian hockey
team was playing a competitive match there. The common South Asian
love for sport and particularly for hockey and cricket was clearly a point
of convergence that could help bilateral diplomacy.
X
But in the always fraught India–Pakistan story, unforeseen events can
deflate painstakingly gathered goodwill just as easily as they can reverse ill
will. At a time when both sides were trying to consolidate the gains of the
visit, a diplomatic storm was kicked up by Vajpayee’s remarks to a North
Korean visitor in Delhi—he was quoted by All India Radio as having told
Pakistan during his visit in February that the UN’s Kashmir resolutions
were ‘obsolete’, since the territory was an integral part of India. The media
story led to a sharp outcry in Pakistan. Ambassador Bajpai was called
in for a protest in Islamabad by Foreign Secretary Shah Nawaz, even as
Foreign Minister Agha Shahi was leaving for UN meetings in New York.
Nawaz told Bajpai that Pakistan would issue a statement countering the
version emanating from Delhi since this was a ‘very sensitive issue’ with
Pakistan public opinion and India had brought this on itself ‘by giving out
(the) Foreign Minister’s remarks’. Bajpai cabled home an assessment on 18
March, that the Pakistani démarche was ‘part of preparations for telling us
in Delhi Pakistani public opinion will not permit of advances in relations
with us without movement towards Kashmir settlement’.7
That night, Pakistan’s foreign office released Agha Shahi’s statement
reiterating Pakistan’s carefully finessed position for its domestic constituency
that the ‘Simla Agreement safeguards the recognised position of either side
on the J&K dispute. Bilateral talks with India on a settlement of this dispute
 t haw ing to de cei v e 177

cannot therefore in any way erode much less amount to an abandonment

of Pakistan’s stand on the two UNCIP resolutions of 13 August 1948 and
5 January 1949 which call for demilitarization of the state and a plebiscite
to determine its future affiliation with Pakistan or with India’.8
More than India, Pakistan needed to continually remind its own people
that Bhutto’s commitment to bilateralism in Simla was conditional on a
rapid solution to the Kashmir dispute, in keeping with UN resolutions.
And with Bhutto no longer in charge, the UN resolutions were back in
play, becoming central to the narrative.
Bajpai believed that the impending judicial verdict against Bhutto played
a role in the timing of Pakistan’s sharp reaction. The following week,
Pakistan’s Supreme Court put an end to all democratic hopes and upheld
Bhutto’s death sentence. This was another shameful episode for Pakistan’s
judiciary, matching the clean chit it had given to Ayub Khan for his decade
of dictatorship, citing the doctrine of necessity.9

A DEMOCRAT AND A DICTATOR

Before long, India’s new prime minister also ran into Pakistan’s new
dictator. Morarji Desai had an unscheduled and warm exchange with Zia
in August 1978 in Nairobi, at the funeral of Jomo Kenyatta, the Kenyan
activist and politician. The dictator was all charm again, clearly flattered by
the attention he got from India’s democratic leader.
On his part, Desai came from a Gandhian pacifist tradition of Indian
politics; he had in general been critical of the break-up of Pakistan in
1971 and India’s direct control of Sikkim in 1975. He was opposed to
nuclear weapons and frowned upon the cloak and dagger games of India’s
intelligence agencies. His policy of silence over Zia’s overthrow of Bhutto
and assumption of power in Pakistan was perceived as a ‘principled and
detached stand’.10 Desai was seen as breaking away from Indira Gandhi’s
policy, of crediting the democratically elected Bhutto with greater legitimacy
in Pakistan than the dictator Zia. The Janata government was evolving its
foreign policy based on ‘genuine non-alignment’ aimed at strengthening
relations with neighbours, ‘based on non-interference and respect for
sovereignty’.11 Zia was seeing this change in India’s body language as an
opportunity for some sweet talking, accompanied by covert moves that
remained undetected by India’s gullible new leaders.
 14

PUNJAB AFLAME

E ven as the Kashmir issue receded in in bilateral conversations, a deadly

dynamic unfolded in another border state of India. In Punjab—a
province Pakistan felt had been unfairly partitioned in 1947—the Akali
Dal, led by Parkash Singh Badal, became an important coalition partner
of the Janata Party in power at the centre. In an attempt to destabilize
this coalition in Delhi, the Opposition Congress Party sought the help
of extremist and secessionist elements who could challenge Badal’s
government in Punjab.1 This led to the rise of radical leaders like Jarnail
Singh Bhindranwale, who kept Punjab off balance with violence. The
alleged political strategy was to keep the state simmering till the Congress
Party returned to power and quelled the violence. The dangerous flirtation
with extremist politics would continue even after Indira Gandhi’s return
to power at the centre in 1980, when this cynical political gambit would
morph into a means of strengthening the Congress Party for the next
election due in 1985.2 Thus started the most radical phase of Punjab
politics, with devastatingly violent consequences for India. The situation
presented Pakistan with a unique opportunity for mischief in another
border state of India. One of the tactical goals for Pakistan was to
potentially create a choke point for Kashmir.
With the increasing power differential and the bitter experience of the
1971 war, Pakistan’s planners seemed to adopt the view that a conventional
war over Kashmir should be ruled out, at least until Pakistan added
greater military muscle. Creative sub-conventional warfare options needed
to be explored. The Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) early experiences in
Afghanistan had emboldened it to try to promote an insurgency in India
beyond Kashmir. Punjab now seemed ripe for the picking, where Pakistan
could simply run a dagger through existing fissures in India. It decided to
effectively foment and support an insurgency that would cause deep pain
to India over the 1980s.
Pakistan had looked at Punjab as a covert battlefield several years
earlier. The separatist idea of Khalistan—a fantasy state to be carved out
of north-west India—had received early support from the ISI. Not many
had heard of the concept until Dr Jagjit Singh Chauhan, a dentist and
politician who had left Punjab for London, declared himself the president
of Khalistan. On 12 October 1971, Chauhan placed an advertisement in
the New York Times proclaiming the birth of Khalistan and seeking funds
to propel the idea forward. This was barely two months before Bangladesh
 p unjab af l am e 179

separated from Pakistan. The ad, it was widely believed in intelligence

circles, was paid for by the Pakistan embassy in Washington.3
After Bangladesh was formed in 1971, for Pakistan’s establishment,
the desire for revenge for the loss of its eastern limb had been added to
the core aim of reversing the ‘injustice’ of Kashmir going to India. Indeed,
Bhutto had said at an off the record briefing, that ‘Pakistan will also have
a Bangladesh carved out of India, except it will be on Pakistan’s border.’4
Pakistan’s deep state was looking for newer pathways to these goals.
While the larger aim was to bleed India, Pakistan’s military also had an
interest in creating a strategic space within India sympathetic to Pakistan.
This idea of a buffer revived memories of Jinnah’s initial partition claim
over Punjab.5 The tactical approach now seemed to be to work for a state
that could choke India’s land access to Kashmir, a chronic obsession of
Pakistan’s India policy. At the very least, helping Khalistanis create trouble
in India was a lot cheaper and safer than conventional warfare.6
Chauhan later claimed in an interview to India Today that Bhutto had
urged him to set up shop on holy ground for the Sikhs inside Pakistan,
at Nankana Sahib, birthplace of Guru Nanak, the first Sikh guru. Bhutto
allegedly told him in a New York hotel, ‘Sardarji, you have the keys to
Nankana Sahib. Come there, we will help you and make it the capital of
Khalistan. Start the movement from here.’ Chauhan, however, could see that
Bhutto was cynically exploiting the issue to get revenge for Bangladesh.7
Pakistan’s Punjab policy became part of the army’s newer strategic
doctrine covering a broad spectrum of warfare—an edge in sub-conventional
warfare that India would find hard to grapple with. This would eventually
be supplemented, at the other end of the spectrum, with nuclear assets at
parity with India, to deter a conventional attack.
X
By 1979, India’s post in Karachi had resumed functioning after a seven-
year hiatus, with a colourful IFS officer, Mani Shankar Aiyar, as the first
consul general. Aiyar was issuing visas to Sindhis at breakneck pace, as
many as hundred thousand a year, generating tremendous goodwill in
the process.8 As an outcome of Vajpayee’s February visit, Aiyar was in
the saddle from December 1978, to occupy the long-unused office of the
deputy high commission in Karachi, that itself was home till the mid-1960s
to India’s high commission. The Lahore-born Aiyar had proudly moved
into the high commissioner’s mansion in Karachi and had access to India’s
recreational beach cottage to boot. He would remain in Karachi until 1982
for his ‘most rewarding posting abroad’, to become a life-long advocate
of an ‘uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue’ as a pathway to peace.
In Bombay, Pakistan’s new consulate did not gain the same profile; it
struggled to get Jinnah’s favourite property as its home.
180 ange r m anage m e nt

The resumption of cricket ties, a less bloody arena of conflict for the
neighbours, had been another outcome of Vajpayee’s visit. In 1978–79, the
Indian team led by Bishen Singh Bedi visited Pakistan and was defeated
2-0. A rakishly handsome pace bowler, Imran Khan, had ripped through
India’s batting in the Lahore test match. When Pakistan’s cricket team
paid a return visit to India in 1979–1980, it lost the test series 2-0, but
Imran—a future prime minister—became a cult figure to swooning women
in India, for his charm on and off the field. (When I mentioned to Imran
in 2018 that he had Vajpayee to thank for his first India tour, he replied
he was not aware of this history, but the goodwill he sensed during the
1970s series was far greater than in the 1980s, when much hostility had
crept into the relationship.)

TROUBLE IN KABUL
Although the India–Pakistan relationship showed signs of a thaw that year,
1979 was a brutal year for much of the world. It began with turmoil in
Iran, where, by February, a pro-Western autocratic monarch was replaced
with an Islamic theocracy run by the ayatollahs, which deeply challenged
the post-war order in West Asia. The rest of the world seemed to be in
tumult too. China invaded Vietnam the same month on a punitive mission,
even as India’s foreign minister Vajpayee was in Beijing on a peace mission,
a year after his Pakistan foray. The Chinese officially told the world they
meant to teach Vietnam the same lesson they had taught India in 1962.
In March, Zia renounced Cold War Western bloc affiliations and
emulated India’s non-aligned stance to rebrand Pakistan for a global
diplomatic debut. Pakistan officially requested India’s support for its
membership in the non-aligned movement.9 Pakistan’s adviser for foreign
affairs wrote to the Non-aligned Movement (NAM) chair, Sri Lanka, to
convey Pakistan’s termination of its CENTO membership as a ‘further
reflection of its total solidarity with the aims and objectives of the non-
aligned movement’10, meeting the movement’s criteria. Pakistan was thus
formally ending its participation in a Western security alliance to join the
non-aligned movement, seeking parity with India. To Zia’s mind, diplomacy
with India was about projecting a friendly posture while pursuing his
goals covertly.
In April, the US uncovered evidence of attempts by Pakistan to develop
a nuclear weapons programme at the Kahuta facility, near Islamabad. It
immediately terminated economic and military aid to Pakistan, freezing a
nascent deal to procure F-16 aircraft. This plunged US–Pakistan relations
to a low. Pakistan slipped further into the morass when Zia executed
Bhutto in April in a flimsy murder case, despite several global appeals to
spare the life of the politician. Zia’s martial law, as also the politics and
economics of his country, was now defined by a commitment to Islamic
 p unjab af l am e 181

values as the core ideology of Pakistan.

India was facing its own internal political challenge. The Janata Party
experiment had begun crumbling by July, thanks mainly to infighting, with
the resignation of Prime Minister Desai, making snap elections mandatory
within six months.
In November, a mob torched the US embassy in Islamabad, fired up
by a fake report quoting Iran’s leader, Ayatollah Khomeini, that the US
was behind the occupation of the Great Mosque in Mecca. Just when
US–Pakistan relations had looked set to snap, Pakistan was saved by the
bell that went clanging in Afghanistan; the Soviet Union made a major
miscalculation there, that made Pakistan valuable again. As Soviet tanks
rolled into Kabul on Christmas Eve, to begin a decade-long misadventure,
Zia decided to seize the moment to make his country useful to the US.
The dictator was soon playing a larger Cold War game as America’s closest
partner in its Afghan challenge of the Soviets.
The Soviet occupation of Afghanistan gave Pakistan a key strategic role
as a frontline state in the Cold War. The US decided to jump in and lean
on Pakistan again, as it had done in another Cold War episode a decade
earlier when it had made an overture to China. Pakistan’s soldiers and
ISI handlers of the mujahideen were soon actively involved in operations
within Afghanistan. Some Pakistani analysts proudly claimed that the first
salvo of the end of the Cold War had been fired by the Pakistan Army.
Zia was soon celebrating significant US financial aid and military supplies
of $3.2 billion as a six-year package. This helped him further consolidate
army control internally over the executive and to squash the little political
challenge he faced. The spoils of war were adding up: Pakistan also managed
to clandestinely divert home a good deal of arms and food supplies meant
for the mujahideen fighting the Afghan government and the Soviet army.
At the same time, Pakistan saw an influx of 3 million Afghan refugees,
seriously impacting economic and cultural life, as also law and order, in
the frontier districts of Pakistan.
It turned out that the Democratic US president Carter, no cold warrior
like Nixon, had bought into an overstated case of a Soviet threat, prepared
by hawks led by his NSA Zbigniew Brzezinski. The ‘Carter Doctrine’
assumed that following Afghanistan, the Soviets would strike US oil interests
in the Persian Gulf. Such a plan required Moscow to believe it could
overcome Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Iran en route to its objective. To
ascribe this motive to Russia, the US needed to doubt not only Soviet
declarations, ‘but their sanity as well’.11
The Soviets had their delusions too, and became victims of their own
paranoia. Russian strategists argued that if the Afghan prime minister
Hafizullah Amin switched sides in the Cold War, like Egypt’s Anwar
Sadat had done in 1978, ‘the Americans could use Afghanistan to aim
182 ange r m anage m e nt

additional missiles at the Motherland’. While the Soviets had made a grave
miscalculation that would cost them and the Afghans dearly, threatening
Western oil supply was ‘probably the last thing on their minds’.12
The US, wearing its Cold War blinkers, recruited Pakistan into its
corner. To defeat the Soviets, it unashamedly allied with Brzezinski’s Islamist
‘freedom fighters’ in Afghanistan, as also a motley band of other fighters
like Osama bin Laden.
More dangerously, the Cold War hawks persuaded anti-proliferation
hawk Jimmy Carter to ignore Pakistan’s deadly nuclear programme. The
US State Department knew of Pakistan’s China-supported gas centrifuge-
based nuclear enrichment plant in Kahuta in January 1979, according to
documents declassified in 2021.13 After withholding funding, the Carter
administration downplayed Pakistan’s nuclear capability. As in 1971 under
Nixon, the US avoided confronting Islamabad for fear of alienating it
during a period of regional upheaval, this time the Iranian revolution and
expanding Soviet power in Afghanistan. Soon after the USSR attacked
Afghanistan, the US withdrew all sanctions against Pakistan. The sale of
F-16 jet combat aircraft was back on the table.
US-Pakistan ties had soured in 1962 (when the US briefly supported
India in the Indo–Chinese conflict, while Pakistan turned to China) and
worsened in 1965 (when US weapon sales were discontinued) to look up
during the 1970 US–China rapprochement and dip again as Pakistan’s
covert nuclear programme was detected. But after the 1979 Soviet invasion,
Pakistan was back as the Cold War’s ‘most allied ally’14 of the US and
would remain so as long as the Soviets remained in Kabul.

ALLAH, ARMY, AMREEKA

The midterm elections of January 1980 brought back to power a chastened
Indira Gandhi. She surprised Pakistan this time with her decision to
continue the thaw of 1977–79. She was aware of criticism of her tough
neighbourhood policy, that was being contrasted with a more friendly and
prudent one rolled out by the predecessor Janata government. Also, many
Indians were being won over by the smiling diplomacy of General Zia,
even if most doubted his sincerity
‘Kunwar’ Natwar Singh replaced K. S. Bajpai as ambassador to Pakistan
on 20 May. Singh, an Indian Foreign Service officer of the 1953 batch,
was married into the royal family of Patiala, and had served in Indira
Gandhi’s secretariat (1966–71) during her formative years as PM. He was
the Indian PM’s pick for the job and Pakistan’s dictator knew it.
When he presented credentials to Zia on 28 May, Natwar Singh was
not particularly impressed by the ceremony (‘not quite as spectacular,
colourful and impressive as the one in Delhi’), nor by the persona of Zia
(the president had power, but not personality). To Singh, Zia’s ‘lack of
 p unjab af l am e 183

charisma was made up for by a stunning display of tahzeeb, tahammul

and sharafat (politeness, patience and civility)’.15 He was a ‘master at
public relations’. Singh quickly developed a strong working relationship
with Zia, whom he met frequently. Pakistan’s dictator, a fellow alumnus
of St. Stephens college of Delhi, took to addressing the Indian envoy as
‘Kunwar sahib’. Their interactions were frequent and involved some good-
natured sparring. ‘Zia and I frequently assaulted each other with good
manners’, Singh recalled, ‘he was an expert at dissimulation, which he
combined with a natural courtesy.’ In one such exchange on Kashmir, Zia
said, ‘Kunwar Sahib, Kashmir is in my blood.’ Singh replied, ‘Sir, Kashmir
is in my bone marrow.’
Before leaving for his assignment in Islamabad, Natwar Singh had
called on his counterpart in India, Ambassador Sattar. Singh told Sattar that
he knew what to say to people across the border, but he was wondering
what not to say. Sattar gave some candid advice: ‘Never say that we are
the same people. We are not. If we were, then why did we part company
in 1947?’ Singh never overlooked that advice during his tenure.16
Zia’s Pakistan had a new trope defining it in the 1980s—Allah, Army,
Amreeka: the three pivots that determined the fate of Pakistan. The phrase
captured the military dictator’s hard right turn to public religiosity within
the protective embrace of the US. Zia in essence had bought domestic
legitimacy for his dictatorship with an alliance with the religious right and
international legitimacy through an alliance with the US. With this new
contract in place, Zia decided to approach India with a brand of cloyingly
sugary diplomacy, while supporting a covert proxy terror campaign and
accelerating a secret nuclear programme to bring force parity.
The idea of multilateral diplomacy was also gaining traction. With
it came the notion that bilateral ties could be furthered under a larger
South Asian umbrella. That South Asia was the least integrated region
in the world was becoming clear to policymakers in India and Pakistan
from the 1950s. For some in India, a regional framework could become
a welcome pathway towards diluting the India–Pakistan hostility. Kewal
Singh recalls that he even discussed the notion with Prime Minister
Nehru, citing the example of Nordic cooperation as he accompanied
the Finnish PM when ambassador to that Nordic country. Nehru was
too polite to share his conviction that more than finding avenues for
cooperation, Pakistan was interested in conjuring up foreign military
alliances to confront India.
In 1980, Bangladesh President Ziaur Rahman, after some preliminary
consultations, proposed regional cooperation between the South Asian
nations, in what appeared to be an overdue initiative. South Asian
efforts to establish the union were accelerated, as some of its leaders
were alarmed by the regional security crisis after troops of the USSR
184 ange r m anage m e nt

moved into Afghanistan. The objectives were to promote among South

Asian countries—including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh—the idea of
collective self-reliance and accelerated economic growth keeping political
differences at bay. Its proponents were promoting South Asian regional
cooperation—the SAARC initiative—as a technocratic solution to create a
climate of trust. The attempt was to keep out contentious areas and focus
on resolving key issues of trade, industry, and technology.
But many in India and Pakistan were not convinced of the practical
wisdom of the idea. A common Indian concern was that the reference to
security matters in South Asia might provide an opportunity for smaller
neighbours to re-internationalize bilateral issues and to collude to form
an opposition against India. Pakistan assumed that the SAARC proposal
might be an Indian strategy to organize the other South Asian countries
against Pakistan and ensure a regional market for Indian products, further
strengthening India’s regional economic hegemony. To many multilateralists,
it was a start that could lead to bigger regional gains in the future.
Zia was not giving up on bilateralism. He would visit India several
times, seemingly unbothered by the absence of return visits, driven by a
larger tactical objective to keep the eastern front quiet, while he helped
the Americans on the Western front in the Cold War. He also wanted to
keep India’s attention away from two important covert programmes he
had going: the Punjab insurgency and nuclear weapons.
While Zia had resorted to a policy of ‘low intensity conflict’ with
India, he had seemed to successfully persuade India’s prime minister
Morarji Desai, that he wanted peace and reconciliation with India. Indira
Gandhi, a shrewder judge of people, had her first meeting with Zia at
the Commonwealth summit in Harare in April 1980. The meeting was a
‘disaster’. She thought there was ‘something phony’ about Zia ul-Haq’s
profession of good intentions.17 Zia had made some uncharitable remarks
about India, reported just before the April meeting. An account of the
meeting by Inder Malhotra suggests a barbed exchange: ‘Madam, please do
not believe everything that you read in the newspapers’ was Zia’s opening
gambit. ‘Of course not,’ replied Mrs Gandhi. ‘After all, aren’t they calling
you a democrat and me a dictator?’18
Zia also repaired Arab relations with his diplomatic skills. In the early
1980s, ostracized by Gulf Arabs for murdering Bhutto, he journeyed to
Mecca on the ‘Night of Power’ in Laylat al-Qadr. He knew the Saudi king
and senior Al Sauds would be present and would not deny his request to
pray together on this auspicious day. This networking strategy rehabilitated
him in Saudi Arabia and established a Pakistani diplomatic tradition, later
followed even by Imran Khan.19
X
 p unjab af l am e 185

In 1981, Natwar Singh saw an opportunity to bring Pakistan’s dictator

to India. Zia was even keen to go for the centenary of his alma mater in
Delhi. Singh recalled:
the president was keen to come to Delhi for the Jubilee, but Mrs
Gandhi was not keen to have him in the capital. Nevertheless, he
telephoned Principal Rajpal on the morning of February 1, 1981. I too
had come to attend the jubilee. Mrs Gandhi was, of course, the guest
of honour. She spotted me, ‘Representing Zia, are you?’ ‘No Madam, I
am representing you.’20
Zia missed the centenary celebrations but invited ten students from the
college to visit Pakistan. They missed going that year, but in 1982, the
history professor of the college, Mohammad Amin, affectionately known as
Amin saab, along with college students were state guests for a week, even
as Zia placed a Pakistani Air Force plane at their service.
As Zia consolidated his position in Pakistan, he needed to defend
his brutal hanging of Bhutto in 1979 and the delay in implementing his
promise of elections for Pakistan. Zia adopted multiple ruses to perpetuate
his power. He declared a provisional Constitution in March 1981, which
precluded any challenge to his martial law in any court, and took away
fundamental rights and the rights to form political parties. Zia also retained
his position as chief of army staff, securing control over all levers of power
as head of the army and as the president.
He wanted to build a wider political alliance, which he did by an
aggressive Islamization drive and alliance with the JeI, to secure larger
social legitimacy. He promoted a right-wing coalition of Islamist and
religious forces, which later developed into the Muttahida Majlis–e–Amal,
or the United Assembly of Action (MMA) dubbed the Mullah-Military
Alliance. He strengthened his control over both the army and bureaucracy
by parachuting top army officers into the civilian bureaucracy. He set up
shariah courts to enforce Islamic tenets, thereby weakening the judiciary.
Zia was proving to be a master political manipulator who strengthened
his authoritarian rule by co-opting the religious right and eliminating or
silencing all political rivals.
On 15 September 1981, Zia revived an offer of a no-war pact with
India, reversing Bhutto’s position of dismissing it as a ruse to freeze the
Kashmir issue.
Variants of such an offer had repeatedly been made by India over
the past three decades, but had been rejected by Pakistan. Even in the
1960s, India had offered a no-war pact to Pakistan and had settled the
Indus Waters dispute mostly to Pakistan’s satisfaction. The conflicts of
1965 and 1971 kept this idea in abeyance. That the latest offer coincided
with a $3.2 billion military package by the US to Pakistan, which also
186 ange r m anage m e nt

included the state-of-the-art F-16 fighter aircraft, made it clear that the
US was prompting Pakistan to build fences with India, in their newly
rediscovered security relationship. The offer was later made formally by
Pakistan’s foreign minister.
The gambit was met with suspicion in India. To Kewal Singh, India’s
position on the offer was a tactical error. India should have welcomed the
no-war pact proposal as a reaffirmation of a commitment to peace and
friendship with Pakistan. Eventually, Indira Gandhi went a step further and
made a counter offer of a treaty of friendship and cooperation between
the two countries. It was Pakistan’s turn to view this offer with suspicion.
The draft treaty contained clauses such as restriction on the buying of
arms or to grant military bases to any foreign powers, which could not
possibly be acceptable to Pakistan.21
Instead of quibbling on the nomenclature and making counter offers,
Kewal Singh felt, accepting the no-war pact could have added to the trust
level between the countries and could have opened the doors to more
confidence-building measures and cooperation. Despite the distrust, the
diplomats tried to work out a document. A ‘flurry of aide memoires criss-
crossed from Islamabad to New Delhi’ while Abdus Sattar and Natwar
Singh, the two ambassadors, got busy ‘filling up their log-books with frantic
air-dashes to their respective capitals for urgent briefings’.22
To seal the deal, Pakistan’s foreign minister Agha Shahi showed
up in New Delhi in February 1982 with a proposal of a no-war pact,
incorporating the mutual reduction of armed forces and mutual inspection
of nuclear installations to promote trust between the countries. But Delhi
was beginning to see the pact as a ploy to win US approval for more arms
that would eventually be used against India. Even the Pakistan suggestion
for troop reduction was seen by the Indian government to be a gambit to
extract a disproportionate concession from India.
In 1982, Zia reiterated his idea of the no-war pact to Natwar Singh.
Zia was no longer concerned about the Kashmir cause getting diluted
by such a commitment to peace by the neighbours. By now, the Punjab
insurgency was more effective in keeping India off balance; a war was
not really required to change the status quo. More importantly, Pakistan’s
uranium enrichment programme of 1975 was in full flow in Kahuta, near
the capital, and Pakistan’s planners were spooked by the prospect of any
conflict leading up to Indian or Israeli or American raids to destroy the
nuclear facility. Zia could not fully trust the Americans despite being
consumed by their joint covert ops in Afghanistan. Singh recalls his chat
with Zia: ‘But what about my No-War Pact?’ he again asked. I said that
the government would most certainly examine this proposal seriously. Delhi
was not too enthusiastic, but I did persuade Mrs Gandhi to make a mildly
conciliatory reference to it in one of her public meetings.23
 p unjab af l am e 187

Natwar Singh’s strong advocacy for him did get Zia his visit to India.
Delhi reluctantly accepted only a transit halt, months after Singh was
prematurely pulled out of Islamabad in March 1982. Indira Gandhi received
Zia in Delhi in November 1982 for a more pressing assignment. In an hour-
long meeting between the leaders, the first in India since Bhutto’s sojourn
to Simla a decade earlier, the two countries agreed to ‘continue their search
for durable peace on the sub-continent’. They agreed on another meeting in
three months, on the sidelines of the non-aligned summit meeting in New
Delhi (for which Natwar Singh had been pulled in as the chief coordinator).
A joint statement spoke of the establishment of an Indo–Pakistani joint
commission. In the next leg of his tour in Jakarta, President Zia gushed
of a ‘breakthrough’ in his talks with PM Indira Gandhi, which would
lead to the formation of a South Asian organization on the lines of the
Association of South-East Asian countries (ASEAN).
Meanwhile, in January 1982, a new Indian consul general arrived in
Karachi. Gopalaswami Parthasarathy, popularly known as Partha, replaced
Mani Shankar Aiyar, who had made a strong impact by befriending a
wide cross-section of people in Karachi. Partha continued the tradition
of liberally issuing visas, often ignoring home ministry orders, to 250,000
people annually.24
Partha saw a Pakistan where Zia was consolidating power and
benefiting from the ISI’s role in the Cold War in neighbouring Afghanistan.
An American diplomat explained the US proximity to Zia by drawing
a parallel for Partha with what President Roosevelt had said about a
Nicaraguan dictator, ‘he may be an SOB. But he is our SOB.’25
Benazir Bhutto was under house arrest, and her mother, Nusrat Bhutto,
had the leadership of the PPP, the party founded by her husband Zulfikar.
In one dinner meeting in Karachi, Partha asked her how her husband had
miscalculated in appointing his nemesis as his army chief. Nusrat replied
that her husband had succumbed to Zia’s flattery. Zia would ‘flatter Bhutto’s
ego’ by calling him the ‘real saviour of Pakistan after the 1971 Bangladesh
debacle’; he had even personally supervised the security arrangements for
President Bhutto whenever he visited Multan. When Partha said he was
scheduled to meet General Zia the next morning, Nusrat said, ‘When you
are with him, do observe his eyes, and let me know what you think.’
Intrigued by her remark, Partha spent the hour-long meeting, where he
was accompanying the visiting lieutenant governor of Delhi, Jagmohan,
observing the dictator’s eyes. Partha concluded that Zia’s smile never reached
his eyes. When Partha reported his observations to Nusrat, that Zia’s eyes
were ‘cold and expressionless’, she asked, ‘did they not remind you of the
eyes of a cobra?’
During the NAM summit in March 1983, when President Zia called
on his Indian counterpart, President Zail Singh, and expressed his desire
188 ange r m anage m e nt

for peace with India, Singh replied with an earthy Punjabi saying: Akh
bhi maare, taay ghunghat bhi kaddae (It was not possible for a woman to
do two things at the same time—wink provocatively, and veil her face.)26
Also in 1983, India and Pakistan set up a joint commission, which,
over the years, failed to fulfil its promise of cooperation in trade,
communications tourism, and cultural exchanges in spite of some initial
hopes. The central cause for the lack of trust and the bitter relations
between the countries was Pakistan’s clear hand, as India saw it, in
terrorist activities in Punjab. The Punjab terrorism situation and evidence
of training camps or supply of arms by Pakistan to Khalistani terrorists
in Punjab made such initiatives non-starters. The confessions by captured
terrorists were clearly confirming Pakistan’s complicity and encouragement
to the Khalistani movement.
An international conference held in Dhaka in 1983 by the Bangladesh
Ministry of Foreign Affairs gave a strong push to regional integration.
Seven South Asian foreign ministers, including those of India and Pakistan,
adopted the declaration on SAARC and formally launched the Integrated
Programme of Action (IPA) initially in five agreed areas of cooperation,
namely, Agriculture; Rural Development; Telecommunications; Meteorology;
and Health and Population Activities. Bangladesh had been pushing this
idea in the previous three years and in 1981 had taken a concrete step
to draft a working paper for discussion among the foreign secretaries of
South Asian countries, who identified the five broad areas for regional
cooperation. The hope was that a multilateral regional grouping, focused
on economic well-being and without the political overhang of the UN,
would provide a forum to dwell on areas other than the India–Pakistan
hostility of three decades.

SCHADENFREUDE
At the Karachi consulate of India in the 1980s, in Zia’s Pakistan, Indian
diplomats27 despaired to see that Khalistani leaders were frequent guests
of Zia’s government, with their provocative statements getting much play
in the state-controlled media. Several Pakistanis masquerading as Sikh
terrorists were known to have crossed the border to aid the militancy.
In several instances, they had been killed by Indian security forces. Zia
appeared firmly wedded to a policy of separatism both in J&K and in
Punjab, dubbed by some as the K2 policy. The dictator’s official stance
was, of course, of cloying courtesy and a deep desire for friendship,
accompanied by total denial of any covert operations within India.
With his over the top diplomacy, Zia would block any attempt by India
to reason with him. When India dispatched Information and Broadcasting
Minister H. K. L. Bhagat to Islamabad in July 1984 to address the Khalistan
issue, he came back from Pakistan with plenty of assurances from Zia’s
 p unjab af l am e 189

government and a cow. Zia had gifted the befuddled Indian minister with
a high milk-yielding Sahiwal cow since he had pre-Partition roots in the
Sahiwal district of West Punjab.
Zia’s regime of the mid-1980s was getting more creative in abetting
Sikh militancy. Some Sikh extremists from Canada were being put up
in gurdwaras in Nankana Sahib and Panja Sahib. They began attacking
Indian embassy officials assigned on liaison duties to assist the jathas of
pilgrims that visited these holy shrines. The Pakistan media would then
gleefully report how the Sikhs had attacked Indian officials, glossing over
the fact that the thugs were ISI assets. Matters became more brazen when
Indian diplomats and officials were attacked during these visits. A truce
was called only when a Pakistani diplomat was roughed up outside his
house in Lajpat Nagar in New Delhi.
In the midst of these tensions over Punjab, on a ‘scorching afternoon’
in May 1984, a new Pakistani ambassador arrived in India. He was
still designated ‘ambassador’ given that Pakistan was out of the
Commonwealth in Zia’s era of military dictatorship. Humayun Khan
was not an India expert, but was no stranger to India, having spent his
boyhood as a boarder at the Bishop Cotton School in Simla (Zia also
went to school in the same city in what he called the more ‘proletariat’
Government School of Simla). Humayun Khan was an affable Pathan
from Peshawar and had a vast network of friends in India, through
connections with Hindu families of Peshawar and his undergraduate
years at Trinity College, Cambridge.
Soon after the arrival of the envoy, an Indian Airlines plane was
hijacked by Khalistani terrorists and forced to land in Lahore but
after thirty-six hours of gruelling negotiations, the passengers returned
unharmed in what Humayun Khan thought was a satisfactory resolution
of the crisis. But Khan’s introductory call on Prime Minister Indira Gandhi
did not go off too well. The prime minister greeted the ambassador with
the traditional Muslim greeting ‘adab arz hai’ but added with a wry
smile, ‘Aapke aate hi hadsa ho gaya (A mishap occurred the moment you
arrived).’ She cut short his attempt to highlight the cooperation between
officials to resolve the crisis, to say, ‘but you did not allow our people
to meet the hijackers or search their luggage.’ Khan was thrown off
balance by the ‘prime minister’s directness, and even more by the long
silences that followed her opening remarks’. The interview lasted seven
minutes; Khan concluded that ‘she was clearly a woman of few words
with little time for niceties.’28
Pakistan was worried at the time about retaliatory action by India
against its meddling in Punjab. On one occasion, when Humayun Khan
led his embassy team for a cricket match at the Chelmsford Club, he
was urgently called pulled aside by his defence attaché to say that he had
190 ange r m anage m e nt

‘information from a Grade A-one (that is, undeniable) source that India
had decided to break off diplomatic relations with Pakistan.’ Khan passed
on the information to the foreign office in Islamabad; it caused a ‘great
storm’. Much to his embarrassment, the report turned out to be untrue.
But the episode underscored the tensions of those troubled days.29
Adding to the nightmares for India’s leadership were the hijacks.
Between 1980 and 1984, five Indian planes were hijacked. India’s
intelligence agencies were confirming the impression that Zia’s Pakistan
had given a free hand to the ISI to develop a nexus with Sikh separatists,
who mostly hijacked the Indian planes, with most of them attempting
to land in Lahore.
X
The Khalistani flames were fanned from overseas by radical elements
who had migrated to distant lands like the UK, Canada, and the US.
But Pakistan and its trained assets were always closer to the theatre of
action. It was needed as the staging post to light the fires. Rawalpindi
thus became the nerve centre of a globally supported insurgency that
destabilized India’s Punjab of the 1980s. Weapons with clear Pakistani
fingerprints on them were flowing in from across the border to aid the
insurrection. When the crisis reached its crescendo in 1984—with an
army Operation Bluestar in the sacred Golden Temple—it led to the
assassination of Indira Gandhi.
When her Sikh bodyguards killed Indira Gandhi on 31 October 1984,
sweets were distributed in many areas of Karachi and around Pakistan.30
The assassination was seen as sweet justice by several Pakistanis who
resented not just her role in Punjab, but also one as the chief architects
of Pakistan’s break-up in 1971.
On Indira Gandhi’s death, Zia was not about to let go of the opportunity
for some funeral diplomacy. He landed in Delhi again. For Pakistan, the
most important meeting Zia had was with Rajiv Gandhi. The two met
privately for nearly an hour while the delegations waited in an anteroom.
Zia himself dictated a memo of the conversation as soon as he returned
to his hotel. It clearly indicated that the prospects for putting bilateral
relations back on track held promise.31
When Zia and his entourage returned to Delhi’s Ashoka Hotel after
the funeral, they found that a large number of delegations were waiting
for the elevator. Not wanting to wait, with a spring in his step, Zia said
he would take the stairs. When one of his entourage tried to dissuade Zia,
saying that it was on the fifth floor, Zia said sotto voce, assuming everyone
around him was Pakistani, ‘Aaj to hum paanch manzil bhi chadh jayenge
(Today, I will climb even five floors).’ He was in such good spirits at the
passing of an Indian leader who seemed to have seen through his game.32
 p unjab af l am e 191

It appeared to many that there were karmic overtones to something that

took place four years later—when Zia’s plane crashed, a similar sentiment
was expressed by Benazir Bhutto, this time openly, when she told the BBC,
this was too good to be true.
 15

AUTUMN I N KASHM I R

W hile India’s focus in the 1980s was on dousing the flames in Punjab,
many from fires lit by Pakistan, the Kashmir Valley had continued
to simmer. Resentment and hostility were evident in the valley, often
instigated from across the border, with pro-Pakistan slogans rising in the
1980s.
This was a continuum of a new phase of politics that had begun in
J&K in 1977, when the National Conference, under Sheikh Abdullah,
won a strong mandate soon after the Janata experiment started in New
Delhi. Abdullah was the lion of Kashmir in his winter, now convinced that
the state’s future lay in cooperating with New Delhi, rather than in him
spending time in prison. The Sheikh needed to counter the aggression of
the Pakistan-supported militant separatist Jammu and Kashmir Liberation
Front (JKLF), an outfit originally formed in the 1960s in POK and active
in the Kashmir Valley from 1977. He also needed to deal with the angry
youth in the state. Abdullah did both by enacting the Public Safety Act,
1978, seen in the valley as a draconian piece of legislation enabling arbitrary
arrests. The PSA deepened the anger and resentment in the valley.
Abdullah died in 1982, ending half a century of tempestuous politics in
the valley, that saw him in a love-hate relationship with the politicians at
the centre, mainly Nehru and his daughter Indira. Soon after the Sheikh’s
passing, an international cricket match was played in 1983 at the Sher-i-
Kashmir stadium named after Abdullah. The Indian team, which included
national stars like Sunil Gavaskar and Kapil Dev, were shocked by the
extraordinary hostility displayed by the young crowd which booed and
jeered the Indian players and cheered every success of their West Indian
opponents. They waved Pakistani flags even though Pakistan was not
playing. The green flags were not new in the valley. Abdullah’s term had
been marked by increasing Pakistani activism and thousands of Pakistani
flags appearing on 14 August, Pakistan’s Independence Day, or in cricket
matches.
Farooq Abdullah, Sheikh’s son, won Jammu and Kashmir’s mid-1983
elections. In February 1984, Farooq’s National Conference faced its first
major challenge when the valley faced unrest after a Kashmiri, Maqbool
Bhat, was executed in Delhi. Bhat, a JKLF leader, was sentenced to death
in 1968 for shooting a valley policeman. But he managed to escape to
Pakistan, only to be caught again in 1976. His death sentence of 1968
was finally carried out in 1984. Bhat’s hanging came days after UK-based
 aut um n in kas hmi r 193

militants of the JKLF from POK had abducted and executed a junior
Indian diplomat, Ravindra Mhatre, in Birmingham, in a botched attempt
at securing Bhat’s release. While the killing of an Indian diplomat by
Pakistan-backed militants was a huge setback to diplomacy, Bhat’s hanging
created a wave of anger in Kashmir, contributing to the rise of the JKLF,
while stoking the idea of an armed insurgency in the Kashmir Valley.
In the spring of 1984, Indira Gandhi sent in as governor of the state a
trusted trouble-shooter, Jagmohan, controversial for the part he had played
as the head of the Delhi Development Authority during the Emergency
(1975–77) in the bulldozing of slums in the city. Within a couple of
months, Jagmohan dismissed Abdullah’s government and replaced it with
a leader of a rebel faction of the National Conference and son-in-law of
the late Sheikh, Farooq’s brother-in-law, G. M. Shah, denying Farooq’s
pleas for fresh elections. To some, this political drama was a surreal rerun
of the 1953 political coup, with Indira Gandhi, Jagmohan, G. M. Shah,
and Farooq Abdullah in the roles of Jawaharlal Nehru, Karan Singh,
Bakshi Ghulam Ahmed, and Sheikh Abdullah. In the same month as the
‘Srinagar coup’, Mrs Gandhi sent armed forces to flush out militants from
the Golden Temple in Amritsar.1

THE HIGHEST BATTLEFIELD

In April 1984, another India–Pakistan front opened up, this time in the
upper Himalaya, north of the troubled valley, when Indian forces grabbed
control of the commanding heights in the Siachen Glacier.
A cartographic error had triggered this crisis. The Siachen saga had
begun in 1978 when two German explorers entered the office of Colonel
Narendra ‘Bull’ Kumar, commandant of the High-Altitude Warfare School
(HAWS) at Gulmarg. They proposed a river rafting excursion to follow
up on another they had successfully completed with Kumar on the Indus
in 1975. Kumar was struck by a US-published map his German friends
had placed on his table while outlining their strategy. From one point,
the border between India and Pakistan went on straight, as if made with
a ruler, in contrast to its jagged trajectory on the rest of the map. Kumar
had never seen a map with such a line in the north. This line connected
grid reference NJ9842, the last northern demarcation between India and
Pakistan, to the Karakoram Pass. Kumar was convinced, after reviewing
historical records and treaties, including the Karachi Ceasefire Agreement
of 27 July 1949, that the map was intentionally distorted and that the
area beyond NJ9842 had been represented as part of Pakistan without
legal or historical justification.
Kumar informed Major General M. L. Chibber, director general of
military operations (DGMO), of these facts, and suggested a reconnaissance
expedition to this location. A fifty-member expedition under Kumar’s
194 ange r m anage m e nt

leadership, had soon reached the summit—the Teram Kangri II peak at

24,300 feet, on 13 October 1978. It was a historic moment because it
was the first time Indian soldier-mountaineers had stood overlooking the
Shaksgam Valley, an area that Pakistan had illegally ceded to China in 1963.
Kumar and his team spent almost three months in the region, exploring the
snowy heights and mapping routes. They returned with enough evidence
of expeditions from the Pakistani side. It was Kumar who then proposed
to Chibber that to counter the Pakistani line, India should draw a line
joining NJ9842 with Indira Col due north, as the Saltoro Ridge formed
a natural boundary between the two countries.
In fact, Pakistan had never itself conceptualized or drawn the line,
going north-east from point NJ9842, which became the basis of its claim
of the whole Siachen territory. Declassified records showed that a US State
Department geographer Robert D. Hodgson was responsible for this ‘honest
cartographic mistake’. Pakistan’s claim over lands north of NJ9842 and the
Karakoram Pass was based on the claim that several foreign cartographers
had represented this territory on their side. This assertion later was shown
to be legally untenable.
It was Chibber, fortuitously the Northern Army commander in 1983–84,
who planned the Indian army’s high-altitude assault to take the Saltoro
Ridge and Siachen Glacier. The timing of the operation had to be advanced
to pre-empt the adversary, when information came in that the Pakistan
Army was buying high-altitude equipment in Western capitals, to occupy
the heights that summer. With Operation Meghdoot, the Indian military
took control of this region by 13 April 1984.2
Divergent views have prevailed, at various points in time, in Indian
military circles on the strategic importance of the Siachen area. Some believe
that ‘neither India nor Pakistan secures a strategic advantage by contesting
the possession of the Saltoro range. Neither also faces a military threat
to the territory it occupies in Jammu and Kashmir from over the Saltoro
range...a strategic veneer is given to what is actually a political necessity
for continuing the conflict.’3
Others insist, more plausibly, that if military collusion between Pakistan
and China were to occur, this is the area where it is most likely to happen.
More fundamentally, the issue is not the strategic value of Siachen, but that
of territory. That is why India has been insisting on the marking of the
current positions that the army holds on maps that are to be ratified by
both sides. This would establish Indian territorial control along the Saltoro
Ridge. On the other hand, Pakistan has been reluctant to authenticate Indian
positions as it might legitimize India’s ‘illegal act’ of violating the Simla
Agreement by occupying an area that was under Pakistan’s administrative
control. The ‘crux of the matter is that neither side is willing to make
any territorial compromise’.4 Despite the territorial logjam, resolving the
 aut um n in kas hmi r 195

Siachen issue will become an important bilateral agenda point over the
next decades, whenever the relationship reaches a stage of thaw.
X
Revenge for the Siachen surprise now became an additional driver for
the Pakistan army’s planning. Some army officers approached Zia with
a ‘Kargil plan’, meant to use surprise to grab territory in the Kargil area
in Ladakh, to avenge both 1971 and 1984. Zia rejected the proposal as
unviable and dangerous. He had other priorities; they could be threatened
by a skirmish with India. (Pakistan’s next dictator, Pervez Musharraf, was
not blessed with the same military acumen and would implement this
disastrous plan fifteen years later.)
Zia’s dream of parity with India now rested on acquiring nuclear
capability. On 10 December 1984, A. Q. Khan, Pakistan’s star nuclear
scientist, met Zia to tell him that the nuclear bomb, fabricated with Chinese
help, was ready and could be tested. Zia told him that he did not want
to test just then as he was tied up with the US on the western front
and did not want to jeopardize that front or risk losing US support. But
Zia also did not want to challenge India; he was feeling empowered by
the elimination of Indira Gandhi. It was enough for him to know that
Pakistan had been able to create the nuclear capacity to challenge India’s
conventional military superiority, notwithstanding the Siachen setback.
Zia was also facing a few legitimacy issues at home. Midway through
his reign, he had started to feel political pressure to show some semblance
of a revival of democratic processes. He engineered a spurious referendum
on 19 December 1984 on his Islamization policy, an effective ploy to
have himself confirmed as president for another five years. He announced
elections on a ‘non-party basis’, in effect crippling the political process.
Despite these manoeuvres to eliminate opposition to his rule, the elected
members of the assembly and his own prime minister Muhammad Khan
Junejo started asserting democratic rights and demanded the lifting of the
martial law.
In India, the young Rajiv Gandhi went on to ride a sympathy wave
for a huge electoral victory for the Congress in the general election of
April 1985. Even as Rajiv settled in, a new high commissioner, Shailendra
Kumar Singh, took over in Islamabad, amidst rekindled hope that the
India–Pakistan thaw of 1977–79 could be revived. Singh would go on
to become the longest-serving Indian envoy to Pakistan, in station from
1985 to 1989, and would form a strong association with General Zia,
in his attempt to avert conflict. But early in the ambassador’s tenure,
Rajiv, who shared his mother’s scepticism of Pakistan’s dictator, was in
no hurry to build bridges.
Rajiv faced enormous internal security challenges early in his term.
196 ange r m anage m e nt

While the familiar battleground of Kashmir was heating up, the crisis
in Punjab that had claimed his mother had not quite cooled down. In
fact, the tentacles of the Punjab conspiracy were going global. Air India
‘Kanishka’ Flight 182 was blown up over Ireland by bombs planted by
Khalistani separatists in Vancouver on 23 June 1985, killing 329 people,
mostly Canadians of Indian heritage. Indian intelligence had little doubt
about Pakistan’s role in training the men behind what was till then the
world’s deadliest aviation disaster.
In December 1985, Zia met Rajiv on the sidelines during the first
SAARC summit in Bangladesh. This was their second encounter, after the
one during Indira Gandhi’s funeral the previous year. To Humayun Khan,
the most important outcome of the meeting was a totally unexpected one.
Rajiv casually asked Zia after a formal meeting if it would be a good
idea for the two countries to enter into an agreement not to attack each
other’s nuclear facilities. Zia, in the throes of a covert nuclear programme,
was taken aback, but quickly regained his composure to enthusiastically
welcome the idea. (This accord was eventually signed in December 1988.)5
In Kashmir, unrest was growing through G. M. Shah’s uneasy tenure
of twenty-one months as chief minister. The power behind the throne
remained Jagmohan, who finally dismissed the Shah government in 1986.
In what was seen by many as a blow to the credibility of the democratic
process in the state, Farooq Abdullah agreed to be reinstated in power in
1986, pending the 1987 assembly elections. Brazenly rigged polls brought
back Farooq as chief minister, but created anger and resentment in the
valley, amenable conditions for fomenting an insurgency.
The JKLF became more aggressive after the polls. It started demanding
independence or integration with Pakistan. The 1987 elections in Kashmir
also coincided with the peaking of the Afghan war, where Pakistan was
actively engaged. Pakistan’s agencies were learning lessons from the Afghan
operations and drawing inspiration from the first ‘Palestinian intifada’ to
promote a ‘Kashmir movement’. A new separatist militant outfit, Hizbul
Mujahideen came up with Pakistan’s support, ostensibly as a reaction to
the 1987 elections. A worrying feature of the new phase of militancy was
that the struggle began to take on an Islamist colour, with rhetoric of the
creation of an Islamic caliphate from 1987.6

DOWN TO BRASS TACKS

It was a military exercise that triggered a peculiar twist in Indo–Pak
diplomacy in 1987. India launched Operation Brasstacks in the Thar
Desert—a major war-gaming exercise that ran from November 1986 to
January 1987 near Pakistan’s border. Army chief General Krishnaswamy
Sundarji initiated the massive air-land exercise in the Rajasthan and
Gujarat sectors, ostensibly to determine whether two strike corps of
 aut um n in kas hmi r 197

the Indian Army could cover good distance by night against moderate
opposition. This move rang alarm bells in Rawalpindi and Washington;
the Pakistan Army put its own operational plans into unscheduled play by
‘moving its offensive formations towards India’s areas of vulnerabilities in
Punjab and Jammu’.7
By mid-January 1987, the two armies were facing each other on the
border, amidst rising tensions. Pakistan’s ambassador Humayun Khan was
summoned to the foreign office in Delhi, to be warned that India would
escalate the conflict unless Pakistan withdrew its troops. In Islamabad,
Indian ambassador S. K Singh was not surprised to receive a midnight
summons from the foreign office, but was alarmed by what he heard.
The envoy was told by Minister of State Zain Noorani, just in from an
emergency meeting with President Zia, that in the event of any ‘violation
of Pakistan’s sovereignty and territorial integrity’ by India, Pakistan was
capable of ‘inflicting unacceptable damage’. When Singh asked Noorani
whether this implied a nuclear attack, Noorani replied, ‘It might be so.’8
The US was alarmed as well. It was now seeing Pakistan as an unreliable
ally, that was being less than transparent about its nuclear weapons
programme. While it accepted India’s version that Operation Brasstacks
was merely aimed at the ‘validation of emerging operational thinking’, the
US looked at it as a crisis that ‘had the potential to trigger a conflict as
much by accident and misperception as per design’. Both Pakistan and
the US had in fact overreacted to Operation Brasstacks, which was not
meant to signal any intent of war. In the absence of any political directive,
General Sundarji had no plan or mandate to go across the border. But
both he and even more, the hawkish Minister of State for Defence Arun
Singh, may have wanted to convince Rajiv Gandhi of the need to take a
tougher posture on Pakistan.9 On his part, Rajiv had no desire to escalate
tension with Pakistan, but was concerned at the developments and escalating
rhetoric. On one occasion, he pulled aside Natwar Singh and asked him:
‘Are we going to war with Pakistan?’10
Although the Brasstacks crisis had resolved by January 1987, Pakistan
was shaken. It found it necessary to send a strong signal to India. Journalist
Kuldip Nayar was surprised to find that he had been given access, during
a private visit to Lahore for a wedding, to A. Q. Khan, the father of
Pakistan’s nuclear bomb. Nayar cleverly baited Khan to admit that Pakistan
did have the bomb. The explosive story was published in The Guardian
of London in March 1987. Pakistan was quick to issue a denial, fearing
the weight of US sanctions. But the signal had been sent to India.11
Whatever its motivations, Operation Brasstacks did demonstrate India’s
conventional force superiority against the backdrop of Pakistan’s nascent
nuclear capability, at a particularly sensitive time—the Punjab crisis had
not stabilized and the worst of the Kashmir security crisis was to begin.
198 ange r m anage m e nt

All this happened while the Cold War was still on, with Pakistan embroiled
in lockstep with the US in a covert war on its western frontier. Pakistani
military writings have invariably ascribed larger objectives to India’s military
exercise at that point. Pakistan saw, in India’s muscle flexing, also an
attempt to stem Pakistan’s nuclear designs. Pakistan’s smart diplomacy was
in this narrative projected as the balm which healed the crisis.
In the midst of the tension created by Brasstacks, Rajiv Gandhi made
an administrative howler, in effect publicly dismissing Foreign Secretary
A. P. Venkateswaran on an issue related to Pakistan. Responding to a
Pakistani journalist at a press conference, who asked him to confirm the
foreign secretary’s statement that the Indian PM would visit Pakistan soon,
Rajiv said ‘you will meet the new Foreign Secretary soon’. Rajiv faced
an angry outburst from his foreign service bureaucracy. Incidentally, as I
trained at the civil service academy later that year, this episode became
the subject of the customary annual skit by the probationers: at a press
conference, a politician is asked if he would be visiting Goa. He counters,
‘Who told you that?’ The journalist responds: ‘Your wife, sir.’ The politician’s
response: ‘You will meet my new wife soon.’
Such incidents aside, Zia remained keen through the Brasstacks exercise
to visit India to both defuse the tension and brandish Pakistan’s nuclear
capability. An eager student of St. Stephens College wrote to Pakistan’s
leader in January 1987, on behalf of an ‘informal discussion group’ of the
college, wondering if Zia would revisit his old college some time soon.
To his pleasant surprise, Zia accepted. Ambassador Humayun Khan soon
came up from Pakistan House to St. Stephens College, as if for a dress
rehearsal of the visit. Keen to host a president, one member of the faculty
fell for the idea. But history professor Amin saab, more conscious of the
tense state of political play, nixed the proposal.
Soon enough, Zia came to India in March, for his fifth unreciprocated
visit, this time with the excuse of some cricket diplomacy, proudly facilitated
by Ambassador S. K. Singh. The media reported that ‘oblivious of the
cold glares of his reticent hosts’, Zia came to Jaipur, to witness the India–
Pakistan test match—the only test of that series to be played in the Pink
City. He ‘saw some cricket and conquered the media’. Zia left, ‘sadly and
with mixed feelings’. And in departing said he hoped to come back and
revisit ‘in a much better atmosphere, the kind of atmosphere an idealist
like me looks forward to’.12
While the public diplomacy in Jaipur was about cricket as a binding
force, many Pakistani writings refer to Zia having sent a nuclear signal
to India in the post-Brasstacks situation. On his return from India, Zia
famously asked a journalist if he had not seen his ‘six’, interpreted as a
nuclear threat he had issued to India’s leadership.
Nevertheless, India’s army leadership saw Brasstacks as a successful
 aut um n in kas hmi r 199

demonstration of India’s conventional military superiority, which came

close on the heels of a successful operation in Siachen. The leadership also
considered consolidating the gains of Siachen. General Sundarji wanted in
mid-1987 to militarily ‘resolve the Siachen Glacier imbroglio once and for
all.’ He got plans made for an ambitious airborne operation at Khapalu,
some 60 kilometres across the LoC. Code-named Operation Hammerhead,
the operation’s aim was to sever the Pakistani lines of communication to the
Siachen Glacier. Wisely, the operation was dropped, for being impractical
and risky in an increasingly nuclear environment.13 It was never moved
for political approval.
The next decade had momentous events in store. Pakistan would see
the end of army rule and a shaky democratic revival; India would face
tough political, economic, and internal security challenges. And, the two
countries would race inexorably towards a nuclear future.
 SECTION 5

1987–1997: TROUBLE IN PARADISE

 16

EXPLODI NG MAN G OE S

A mbassador Shailendra Kumar Singh was feeling good. His

Independence Day reception for India’s fortieth birthday bash in
Islamabad had seen the arrival of a chief guest he had invited but not
really expected. Pakistan’s head of state, along with his foreign minister,
had made a surprise appearance at the reception on 15 August 1987.
The reciprocity principle would have suggested that President Zia would
send an officially drafted polite greeting to his Indian counterpart, while a
minister would represent the government at the embassy reception: Indira
or Rajiv had not visited the Pakistan ambassador’s bashes in New Delhi,
nor has ministers. But Zia, like Pakistan’s first dictator, Ayub Khan, relished
throwing protocol to the winds to achieve larger objectives.
In Delhi, Singh’s counterpart, Humayun Khan, was pleased too. Pakistan
was getting high-level attention. Its ambassador was attending a special
investiture ceremony in honour of a Pakistani citizen, Khan Abdul Ghaffar
Khan, also known as Badshah Khan, who had fought valiantly for the
freedom of united India. India’s highest civilian honour, the Bharat Ratna,
was going to the ‘Frontier Gandhi’, now ailing in a Delhi hospital. The
award was received by his son, Wali Khan.
The promise of diplomacy was investing the year despite continuing
concerns in India about Pakistan’s proxy wars in the border states of
Punjab and Kashmir, as also its growing nuclear programme. Zia’s
diplomatic offensive was, in retrospect, designed to play for time, blunt
Indian hostility, and provide the cover for his covert battles and his secret
nuclear programme.
For want of better options, India was experimenting with multilateral
diplomacy under the SAARC umbrella, to see if engaging Pakistan
economically could dull the hostility. On 4 November 1987, Prime Minister
Rajiv Gandhi met his de jure Pakistani counterpart, Prime Minister Junejo,
in Kathmandu, on the sidelines of the 3rd SAARC summit; India tried
hard not to let frustrating bilateral concerns break the momentum of the
gathering South Asian multilateral process. The meeting cleared the decks
for talks the subsequent week in New Delhi on another deadlocked issue,
the Tulbul Project, where Pakistan’s strenuous objections under the Indus
Treaty had stalled a project aimed at managing the water levels of the
river Jhelum in J&K.
Although signs of Pakistan’s march towards nuclear capability were
bothering India, Rajiv decided a visit to Pakistan was in order. India’s prime
204 ange r m anage m e nt

minister paid a ninety-minute visit to Peshawar in January 1988, to attend

the funeral of Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan. Rajiv took along a high-level
delegation that included his wife, Sonia; Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao;
and Home Minister Buta Singh. Rajiv’s diplomatic advisers, Ronen Sen and
Mani Shankar Aiyar were in tow. Rajiv’s decision to travel to Pakistan
was ‘immediate and spontaneous’. It was not based on bureaucratic advice
and overturned security advice not to go.
Before leaving for Pakistan, Rajiv announced a five-day state mourning
for the Frontier Gandhi. He offered the janazah prayer next to the coffin,
condoled with the family, and returned to Delhi. There was no meeting with
Zia, and no attempt to visit Islamabad, a calculated snub for Pakistan’s
dictator. This was the only visit by an Indian prime minister to Peshawar.
(Nehru had visited the city in the 1940s; Manmohan Singh had attended
school there.) Rajiv’s visit was one of a series of gut instinct-based decisions
by Indian leaders about going to Pakistan; subsequent prime ministers, like
Vajpayee in 1999, and Narendra Modi in 2015, would make similar choices.
One of the positives from Rajiv’s visit was that it earned significant goodwill
from the Afghans, particularly from Pashtuns like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.1
Afghanistan had continued to remain a key concern for India’s policymakers.
The Soviets were bleeding heavily from the Pakistan-supported Afghan
resistance and were willing to negotiate a withdrawal with the West. It
was in this context that Rajiv called up Zia on 25 February, and invited
him for a visit to India to specially focus on Afghan developments. Zia
pointed out edgily that he had visited India twice already in the recent past
and countered by inviting Rajiv or his envoy to Pakistan. The two leaders
finally agreed to have their foreign secretaries meet. But it was clear to
India that Zia was dragging his feet since he was keen to ensure India did
not get a substantive say in the Afghanistan endgame. The urgency of the
Afghan crisis notwithstanding, Pakistan postponed the meeting scheduled
for 1 March for a couple of months.
Despite Pakistan’s concerns, some Indian diplomats, including Natwar
Singh had visited Kabul, even trying to take on the role of honest brokers
between the Americans and the Soviets. On 6 March 1988, Political
Counsellor Arun Patwardhan, at India’s embassy in Islamabad, sent a
somewhat self-congratulatory assessment to Joint Secretary Satish Chandra
in Delhi, arguing that big power ‘recognition of quiet Indian diplomacy
had served to inflame Pakistani complexes’, since ‘we seem to be closer
to these high-level discussions than even Pakistani diplomats were allowed
to be’.2 India’s diplomats in Islamabad did not seem to have a measure
of how deeply the ISI and CIA were in an embrace in the covert game
in Afghanistan or of the US–USSR deal being worked out in Geneva and
much less of the major geopolitical shifts about to unfold in the next few
years. In fact, Zia had ‘adroitly sidelined India from playing a major role
 e xp l oding m ango e s 205

in Afghanistan’ with the signing of the April 1988 Geneva Accords that
continued US arms supplies’3 to Pakistan. More troublingly for India, the
ISI had learnt some useful lessons in Afghanistan, putting a superpower
army on the backfoot. It was keen to try out this new playbook in the east.
Of the other concerns that India had to deal with at this time, the Punjab
crisis was somewhat easing, as the security forces finally got the better of
an insurgency that had claimed the life of a prime minister and threatened
anarchy in a critical border state. But Pakistan’s hand in this tragedy was
now abundantly clear to India’s leaders and was the central focus of bilateral
diplomacy. Diplomatic exchanges on the Punjab militancy demonstrated
the limitations of India’s options and the height of its frustration. On 15
April 1988, India issued an aide-memoire to Pakistan, spelling out in detail
the evidence of Pakistan’s support to Khalistani terrorism.
Pakistan’s involvement with extremist activities directed against India
continues to be a major irritant in Indo–Pak relations. India’s serious
concern in this matter has been conveyed to Pakistan on several
occasions.... Despite assurances and denials to the contrary, there
is incontrovertible evidence that Pakistan continues to aid and abet
extremist activities directed against India.... Pakistan’s involvement
with anti-Indian secessionist activities broadly extends to:

• Permitting its territory as sanctuary for extremist Sikh elements and a

base for training and indoctrination;
• Supply of arms and ammunition to Sikh secessionists;
• Facilitating visits of extremists from abroad;
• Hostile propaganda designed to inflame anti-Indian secessionist
sentiments;
• Use of Indian Jathas for instigating secessionist sentiments.4
This was an unusually direct message on Pakistan’s abetment of the Punjab
insurgency.
Rajiv Gandhi soon shared his frustrations with Pakistan with the
people of India. He said to India’s parliament on 20 April, that he had
proposed a treaty of peace and friendship, an agreement on non-attack
of nuclear facilities, discussions on new ground rules on the border, an
MOU to prevent hijacking and even most favoured nation treatment for
trade, but Pakistan continued to ‘pursue what is very obviously a nuclear
weapons program. They assume hostile postures in areas such as Siachen
and allowed their territory to be used for the support, maintenance, and
sanctuary of terrorists and separatists’.5
On 3 May, India’s foreign secretary K. P. S. Menon landed in Islamabad
for the postponed conversation on Afghanistan.6 In his call on Zia, Menon
raised India’s concerns about Punjab, even as he discussed Afghanistan,
206 ange r m anage m e nt

where the Geneva peace accords were signalling hope for a bloodless
resolution. Menon came away with the feeling that Pakistan would prevent
Indian participation in the resolution of the Afghan crisis and was refusing
to discuss any substantive aspects of the problem. Zia made all the right
noises on Punjab, denying any involvement in fuelling the crisis. Zia’s
party line of total denial was followed down the line in the foreign office.
Within a month of receiving India’s specific charges, on 14 May, Pakistan
responded, rejecting Indian allegations: ‘India’s charges are groundless and
motivated and no aid or abetment has been provided by this country to
any terrorist or secessionist activities directed against India.’
During the next round of Indo–Pak foreign secretary-level talks in June,
India’s ambassador in Islamabad, S. K. Singh, spoke up at length on the
issue of Pakistan’s meddling in Punjab. He pointed out that of the Muslim,
Hindu, and Sikh religious pilgrims from India since the 1960s, the numbers
of Hindus had remained constant over the years, but there was a greater
‘interflow of Sikhs from abroad’ when Indian jathas visited Pakistan. He
said ‘microphones and stages maintained by the Waqf authorities had been
handed over to the most militant Sikhs’, and huge quantities of books,
videos and literature, espousing the cause of Khalistan, were available
freely during the visits by Indian jathas. Singh said at the talks that he
did not think that anything could be done ‘till there was political will in
the higher echelons of the Government to deal with these elements’ and
suggested that the ‘dates for the visits by Indian Sikhs and foreign Sikhs
could be separated’.7
However, Pakistan was not about to change these tactics and denied all
the allegations. This despite the fact that ISI–Khalistani linkages were no
longer secret. During a one-on-one meeting with Ambassador Singh, Zia
conceded that a controversial US-based Khalistani secessionist, Ganga Singh
Dhillon, who had been photographed embracing Zia, did visit Pakistan.8
At a press conference in Bonn in June 1988, Rajiv Gandhi gave vent
again to his frustration in dealing with Zia’s Pakistan over his tenure of
the previous three years:
Let me just say that we have made about 22 proposals to Pakistan,
ranging from treaties of peace and friendship, non-attack on nuclear
facilities, MOUs on air-space violation by military aircraft, direct
contacts between military units so that escalation does not take
place...(but) Pakistan is demonstrating two things very clearly: its
intention with the nuclear weapon programme and its support to
terrorists. Pakistan today is perhaps the largest supporter of terrorism
on the globe and it is this that makes the difference.9
 e xp l oding m ango e s 207

THE JORDAN CHANNEL

King Hussein bin Talal of Jordan, a personal friend of Rajiv Gandhi,
offered to promote an initiative to bring India and Pakistan closer, using
his brother crown prince Hassan’s connections with President Zia. Rajiv
agreed to try this idea. Zia requested Hassan to facilitate talks between
the director general of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, and the
secretary of the R&AW, A. K. Verma, in Amman in July 1988. Rajiv
handed over the project to Ronen Sen to work out the details and the
two intelligence men met in Geneva and Amman. Verma summed up the
outcomes of the discussion on a Siachen solution:
a) withdrawal of the Pakistani forces to the west to the ground level
of the Saltoro mountains; b) giving up of Pakistani claims to territory
from NJ9842 to the Karakoram pass; c) the Line of Control to run
north from NJ9842 along the western ground level of Saltoro, exactly
north till the Chinese border; and d) reduction of Pakistani troop
strength by two divisions with some corresponding adjustments on the
Indian side.10
The grid line was delineated on a Pakistan GHQ map and handed over
by Gul to Verma, apparently with President Zia’s approval. The Indian
Ministry of Defence was asked to process the decision at the operational
level and then bring it up for political approval.11 The solution pencilled
in by the two intelligence chiefs was a pragmatic and smart recognition of
the ground realities. It could have translated into the Siachen solution and
a major confidence-building step along the entire LoC. But this was not
to be.

PLOTS TO KILL
Meanwhile, Zia’s stock was falling precipitously within his own country.
The demands for free elections grew, led by the young Benazir Bhutto and
the Movement for Restoration of Democracy (MRD), which included the
PPP and seven other parties. Faced with this determined opposition and
the support it was receiving, Zia announced in July that elections would be
held in November 1988, a decade after he took power. A faint hope grew
that Zia might finally loosen his grip on power.
But India was not seeing any waning in Pakistan’s covert plots. Four
years after the assassination of Indira Gandhi by Punjab militants, India’s
intelligence uncovered a credible threat of violence directed at her son,
Rajiv Gandhi. Home Minister Buta Singh told India’s parliament that a
plot to kill Rajiv was being hatched in Pakistan. On 9 August, Pakistan’s
spokesman rejected reports of any such conspiracy. The irony was to
unfold eight days later, when the same parliament would declare official
mourning for a death that would alter Pakistan’s course.
208 ange r m anage m e nt

Despite the hostility, Zia was not giving up on his special brand of
diplomatic surprises. Celebrating Pakistan’s 41st Independence Day on 14
August, Zia announced that Pakistan’s highest civilian honour, Nishan-e-
Pakistan, would go to India’s former prime minister, Morarji Desai, who
had in his brief tenure indulged the dictator more than Indira or her son
Rajiv did, and was now a critic of the Rajiv government’s approach to
Pakistan. This was also seen as a riposte to the Indian diplomatic gambit
of handing a civilian award to a critic of Zia, the Frontier Gandhi, a year
earlier. This would also be Zia’s last diplomatic gambit against India.

A FLIGHT TO DEMOCRACY
Laden with crates of mangoes, the C–130 Hercules executed a perfect take-
off from Bahawalpur Airport for Rawalpindi at 3.40 in the afternoon on
17 August 1988. It was a VIP flight with seventeen passengers and thirteen
crew. All was well for the first couple of minutes, but then the plane
bobbed violently in the air, before plunging into the ground in a fiery ball
near the Sutlej in south-eastern Punjab. Among the casualties was Zia ul-
Haq, Pakistan’s most powerful man of the previous eleven years.
When Ronen Sen got the intelligence signal in New Delhi’s South Block,
he immediately informed his boss of the dramatic death of Zia. Sen was
then a joint secretary in the PMO and a trusted adviser to Rajiv Gandhi,
sometimes dubbed India’s de facto foreign minister. The PM asked Sen
to keep close track of the situation and to keep him briefed. Sen shared
news of the crash with his friend, the US ambassador in New Delhi, John
Gunther Dean. The American worked the phones with Washington and
soon called Sen back to convey that his friend and counterpart in Pakistan,
Arnie—US ambassador Arnold Raphael—had also perished in the crash.
(Dean went on to later publicly declare that the crash was no accident
but an Israeli plot that had worked.)12
For three hours after Zia died, Pakistan was without a head of state
or an army chief. While the top brass of the army and the US ambassador
had been in Bahawalpur, watching a display of US M1 Abrams tanks, the
deputy army chief, Aslam Beg, had jumped into a smaller aircraft, for a
flight to Pakistan’s capital. (Beg was later installed as the army chief, fuelling
some conspiracy theories of his complicity in the crash.) Rajiv Gandhi
was particularly concerned that the assassination would be the precursor
of a violent coup. Indian observers were worried that the new army chief
would morph into a new dictator; or that another general would replace
Zia, call off the elections scheduled for November, and add a new layer
of uncertainty to Pakistan’s control over its secret nuclear arsenal.
From Delhi, Ronen Sen kept a careful eye on the developments. The
Indian PMO decided not to make any public statements during the day
for fear of worsening the situation across the border. So, although Indian
 e xp l oding m ango e s 209

intelligence listened in on the chatter in Pakistan with their newly acquired

state-of-the-art gear, India waited for Pakistan to announce the news first.
Pakistani official media waited till the evening to report that President Zia
ul-Haq had died in the crash of Pak One.13
When he got over the shock of this momentous event, Ambassador
S. K. Singh started planning for another round of funeral diplomacy in
Islamabad: a visit to Pakistan by an Indian leader looked inevitable. Deaths
of leaders had often joined the neighbours together by way of funeral
diplomacy, even amidst suspicions of convenient or insincere grief. Former
ambassador Natwar Singh, who had dealt with Zia closely in his years in
Pakistan in 1980–82, now a minister of state in the foreign office, heard
the news in South Block with concern. He quickly volunteered to go
for the funeral. Natwar Singh soon joined a high-level delegation led by
President Venkataraman, that included Foreign Minister Narasimha Rao
and the leader of the Opposition in parliament, Atal Bihari Vajpayee. Prime
Minister Rajiv Gandhi visited Pakistan’s high commission to condole the
death. Within three days of the crash, a high-profile funeral had been held
in Islamabad, attended by several heads of state. Natwar observed that
the crowd was enormous but the coffin was almost empty: it contained
only Zia’s spectacles, jawbone, and false teeth.14
Many in Pakistan assumed the moment would be reason for celebration
by India’s leadership just as Indira Gandhi’s gory end four years earlier
became a source of elation for Zia. Reports of merriment within the Indian
embassy started appearing in Pakistan’s media. One particular report in
an Urdu weekly Hurmat was angrily refuted by Ambassador Singh. The
embassy’s press release said:
This story is a vicious, virulent, and contemptible lie. It is well-
known and was appreciated at the highest level in Pakistan that the
Government of India immediately on learning of the death of the
President of Pakistan declared 3-day official mourning. The President
of India Shri R. Venkataraman...as also a large All-party delegation
of members of Parliament, totaling about forty persons came to
Islamabad for attending the funeral... Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi
cancelled his birthday celebrations....15
But there was no denying that Zia’s sudden exit opened up diplomatic
options for India. In the sudden vacuum that his death created, the
prospect of handling another military dictator of Zia’s ilk was a continuing
concern for India’s policymakers, one of dealing with a democratic leader
in Pakistan more agreeable. Mercifully, Pakistan’s army seemed to be in no
mood to front the successor government.
That role would go to Benazir Bhutto, who was finding it hard to hide
her delight. She had recently moved to Pakistan from London, inheriting
210 ange r m anage m e nt

the PPP that her father had founded. Benazir was eight months pregnant
with her first child, later to become politician and foreign minister, Bilawal
Bhutto. ‘It’s too good to be true,’ Benazir gushed to Indian journalist
Shekhar Gupta.16 The thirty-five-year-old Benazir saw the crash as the ‘wrath
of God’; some divine force had claimed the dictator who had brutally
executed her father and usurped power to run Pakistan unchallenged for
the past eleven years. This was an Allah-sent opportunity to end the army’s
dominance, do well in the long-promised elections, and take Pakistan on
a new trajectory.
Pakistani and American investigators came to different preliminary
conclusions on the crash, respectively attributing it to sabotage and
mechanical failure, causing some friction between the two allies. The cause
of the explosion was never really established, adding Zia’s to a long list
of unexplained political deaths in Pakistan. Expectedly, several conspiracy
theories swirled over the decades, pointing fingers at the usual suspects: the
CIA, the Israelis, the Soviets, Zia’s rivals inside the army and, of course,
India. The most creative explanation however came a few years later in the
form of a brilliant satirical novel by a Pakistani writer Mohammed Hanif,
that described multiple assassins including the CIA and a crow deploying
assorted modes of murder, including ‘a case of exploding mangoes’.17

THE BENAZIR FACTOR

A very pregnant Benazir was already campaigning for the November
elections when Zia’s plane crashed. She was soon catapulted into power,
even as dark rumours swirled about the CIA having engineered Zia’s end
to promote Benazir. After elections, in which her PPP grabbed 93 of the
205 contested seats, she was sworn in as the Islamic world’s first woman
prime minister on 2 December 1988.
Benazir had returned to Pakistan after an overseas education a decade
earlier, a twenty-four-year-old Oxford graduate keen to join Pakistan’s
Foreign Service in 1977. She was traumatized by her father’s 1979 hanging.
Worse was to follow—she was imprisoned and then exiled, only to return
in 1986. On reaching Pakistan, Benazir had dared to emphatically criticize
Zia’s governance, particularly for the loss of Siachen. But Benazir had been
cautious not to play into Zia’s hands by provoking the dictator beyond
a point, conscious that he was brutal in wiping out opponents. Zia also
had a history of being underestimated by his adversaries, thanks to his
self-effacing, unctuous demeanour. Among those who had misjudged him,
as has been noted, was Benazir’s father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, who promoted
him over the head of several other generals, believing him to be a weak
and pliable yes-man.
The arrival of a democratic government led by Benazir gave the opening
to Rajiv Gandhi to plan his delayed formal visit to Pakistan. Many in
 e xp l oding m ango e s 211

India were in this hopeful moment betting on Pakistan morphing into a

progressive nation under Benazir, mirroring a modern India, being shaped
by another youthful leader. Rajiv wrote to his Pakistani counterpart on 2
December reflecting this heady hope, pointing out to Benazir in a personal
letter that ‘you and I are children of the same era’ and that the ‘Simla
agreement signed by your father and my mother provides the basis of
building together a relationship of mutual trust from 1971.’ Benazir, feeling
a similar empathy for Rajiv, was to repeat this formulation often.
Rajiv was confident of a new Pakistan emerging with the advent of
Benazir and democratic rule. He had felt uncomfortable dealing with Zia
in much the way that his grandfather Nehru was uneasy with Ayub, or his
mother Indira was distrustful of Ayub, Yahya, and also Zia. Nehru’s visit
across the border in 1953 and his chat with the leadership had felt more
natural than his interaction with Ayub in 1960. Whatever their failings,
Pakistan’s leaders of the early 1950s had been civilians, with half-baked
aspirations to make peace with India. The democrat in Nehru had felt
conflicted while dealing with Ayub. Similarly, a couple of decades later,
Rajiv Gandhi’s body language changed when Benazir replaced Zia; a distinct
whiff of hope hung in the air.

A SAARC UMBRELLA
Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomatic adviser, Ronen Sen, jumped into a BSF plane
one morning in December 1988, to prepare for the visit of his boss for
the SAARC summit later in the month. Sen’s one-on-one meeting with
Pakistan’s newly minted prime minister in Karachi was going along
expected lines, until they touched upon a sensitive issue. She looked at him
conspiratorially and raised her finger to her lips. Benazir then conducted a
part of the meeting via slips of paper, indicating that there may be bugs in
the room to monitor the conversation. Sen told Benazir that while Rajiv
was keen to visit Pakistan, India had grave concerns about his security and
needed ironclad guarantees on this issue. If anything happened to Rajiv,
this would mean war. Sen also conveyed India’s concerns about Pakistan’s
accelerated nuclear programme, to which Benazir replied that she was out
of the loop on what the army was doing on the nuclear side. She agreed,
however, that an agreement on non-attack of nuclear installations would
be useful.
Benazir said that dealing with India through SAARC would be easier
for her than doing so bilaterally. Sen assured her that India would let
her decide on the pace and scope of progress in the bilateral relationship
and she should only do what she was comfortable with. Sen said that
after the restoration of democracy in Pakistan, both should move ahead
with a forward-looking agenda, while resolving differences on the basis
of the Simla Agreement. As the meeting ended, Benazir asked Sen not
212 ange r m anage m e nt

to record or circulate her remarks, which were only meant for the ears
of Rajiv Gandhi. The incident reflected both the paranoia of the civilian
regime of the first woman prime minister of Pakistan and also the delicate
relationship with India.18
Benazir reciprocated Rajiv’s gesture of sending a special envoy, by
designating her foreign affairs adviser, Iqbal Akhund, and a Pakistani Parsi
confidant, Happy Minwalla, as her ‘points of contact’ between Rajiv’s office
and hers. She clearly did not trust her own foreign minister, Yaqub Khan,
whom she had retained on the advice of Pakistan’s president, Ghulam
Ishaq Khan. Pakistan’s PM was in sync with the Indian PM’s attempt to
use the SAARC summit to restructure the bilateral relationship.
In a fractious South Asia, regional cooperation had finally come of
age after several abortive attempts, when SAARC took shape and held
its first summit in Bangladesh in December 1985. SAARC also became
a convenient platform for a conversation between Indian and Pakistani
leaders, when a standalone bilateral summit was politically unpalatable
to one or both parties. The second summit was held in Bangalore, where
PM Junejo came in 1986, and the third had been held in Kathmandu in
November 1987.
By the time the fourth summit was planned in Pakistan in December
1988, Zia had perished and Benazir was in charge. For India and Rajiv
Gandhi, this was an important moment to test and even bolster Pakistan’s
fledgling democratic government.
While SAARC provided a ready platform for the two leaders to meet on
29 December, there were still many areas of friction that would have to be
smoothened out. On 3 December, barely a day into her term, Benazir had
publicly rejected India’s no-war pact proposal, citing her father’s precedent
of rejecting such a pact, as Ayub’s minister in 1960. She was pointedly
distancing herself from Zia’s diplomatic posture of ‘appeasing’ India. Her
evolving political narrative for Pakistan involved playing up her father’s
role in Pakistan’s history and positioning herself as the wronged child of
a martyr. She claimed that the period from 1972 to 1988 had been the
longest spell of peace with India. Moreover, the relationship was now
one of equals, and not of Pakistan treating India as an ‘elder brother’.
She was contrasting herself politically with Zia’s deferential diplomacy
towards India. She, of course, could make no reference to the fact that
Zia’s smiling outreach to India was cover for massive covert operations
and a secret nuclear programme.
On the last day of 1988, when Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto met
after the SAARC summit, it was, for many, the dawn of a new era: the
first formal bilateral visit of an Indian leader to Pakistan in a quarter
century, after Shastri’s stopover in 1964 (not counting Rajiv Gandhi’s trip to
Peshawar for Badshah Khan’s funeral). The two young leaders had detailed
 e xp l oding m ango e s 213

conversations, ending in three concrete agreements: on preventing attacks

on nuclear facilities; avoiding double taxation; and facilitating air transport.
Positivity infused the bilateral exchange, but the leaders still made
sure they aired bilateral grievances. While Rajiv spoke of India’s policy of
improving relations with both China and Pakistan, he pointed to three major
bilateral irritants: Pakistan’s nuclear programme; terrorism; and Siachen.
Benazir raised the issue of Jinnah House, still not within Pakistan’s grasp
for its consulate in Bombay. Pakistan continued its firm denial of any
meddling within India or in Afghanistan, at a time when the Cold War was
coming to an end in that country. Foreign Minister Yaqub Khan insisted
that Pakistan was not supporting the mujahideen to its west. It was clear
to India these were both brazen lies.
Nevertheless, SAARC became a joint-family-like umbrella where the
two estranged siblings would have reason to meet at the annual family
dinner, dulling bilateral differences for a brief while. But India was getting
increasingly exasperated by the violence it was facing in Punjab and now
in Kashmir. That made good manners hard to force.
 17

A THOUSAND CUTS

I n 1989, the Indian security forces, as noted, were getting the better
of insurgents in Punjab. Benazir Bhutto, who had in December 1988
promised Rajiv Gandhi she would put the brakes on Pakistan’s proxy war,
later said bitterly that she was not given enough credit for ending the Sikh
insurgency.1 Clearly, Pakistan’s PM, in her innocence, believed she had
helped Rajiv deal with that problem, since Pakistan’s army was following
her command to stop active support for Sikh insurgents. However, even as
this was happening, Pakistan was gearing up to roil things up in a different
Indian border state—Kashmir. The battle of a thousand cuts was about to
begin.
The new phase of violence in Kashmir was also linked to wider
geopolitical developments. On 15 February 1989, the last Soviet soldier
crossed the bridge over the Afghan–Soviet border into Termez in Uzbekistan,
ending a bloody conflict fuelled by the decade-long Soviet occupation of
its southern neighbour. The USSR, then guided by Mikhail Gorbachev’s
perestroika, had acknowledged Afghanistan as a ‘bleeding wound’ and was
withdrawing from an unwinnable war against a mujahideen insurgency
that had succeeded only thanks to the support of the ISI in collaboration
with the CIA. The Soviets had hoped that the Geneva Accords of April
1988 would ensure an orderly withdrawal and a neutral government in
Kabul, helmed by Mohammad Najibullah.
Unbeknownst to Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan’s military
establishment had drawn a self-serving lesson in 1989 from the forced
exit of Soviet forces from Afghanistan—that jihadis trained by the ISI
could, at minimal cost, vanquish a powerful army in the neighbourhood.
Pakistan’s generals were persuaded that since Islamic zeal coupled with
local nationalism had been successfully weaponized by the ISI to throw
out the Soviets in 1989, this model could be replicated in Kashmir. Indian
forces could be removed from that region, using a lethal combination
of Islamist propaganda and Kashmiri nationalism, bolstered by weapons,
trained militants, and tactical directions from Pakistan.
On 16 April 1989, a new high commissioner assumed office in
Islamabad. With the end of the Zia era in 1988, Pakistan was back in
the Commonwealth, and the envoys between India and Pakistan were back
to being designated high commissioners. J. N. ‘Mani’ Dixit replaced S. K.
Singh, who was promoted as foreign secretary in February. Before taking
up his assignment, Dixit called on Rajiv a couple of times in January
 a t housand cuts 215

and February. Dixit had been India’s high commissioner in Sri Lanka at a
sensitive time, and had interacted closely with the prime minister when India
had followed a wrong-headed and ultimately failed policy of unleashing a
‘peacekeeping force’ on that country during a time of upheaval. Rajiv briefed
Dixit on his discussions on both Kashmir and Punjab with Benazir. On
Kashmir, Rajiv told his new high commissioner that Benazir had affirmed
to him that she was willing to resolve the issue in the framework of the
Simla Agreement, but no details were discussed. The prime minister told
Dixit he was keen to avoid an arms race in South Asia. Rajiv asked Dixit
to assiduously follow up on the decisions of his December visit.2
Dixit soon got involved in coordinating a large number of delegations
going back and forth since the beginning of the year, to discuss a range of
issues, including commerce, railways, transport, and tourism, apart from
security, border patrolling, and, of course, Siachen. He attended these
meetings with a sense of hope in a new phase in the relationship.
Ronen Sen also visited Islamabad in the summer, as Rajiv’s special
envoy, to follow up on the prime minister’s December 1988 visit and
prepare for the next bilateral one. Sen was granted an exclusive meeting
with Benazir at her official residence in Islamabad. Dixit accompanied
him. In an aside to the two Indian diplomats, Benazir confided that she
continued to face strong resistance from President Ghulam Ishaq Khan
and army chief Aslam Beg on both India and Afghanistan policies.3

DIPLOMATIC HEIGHTS
When Soviet forces withdrew in the summer of 1989, Pakistan’s agencies
had to do little more than transfer trained global jihadis from its western to
the eastern border, to fight for an old cause in Kashmir. Pakistan’s political
turmoil of 1988 had little impact on the army’s Kashmir strategy. While
Benazir thought she was in charge and could work out a modus vivendi
for peace with Rajiv, Pakistan’s deep state was also assessing that India had
been weakened—with the political crisis of a scandal-hit, floundering Rajiv
Gandhi government and an economic one of dwindling forex reserves.
This seemed the right moment to launch a new tactical push in Kashmir, to
catalyse a popular uprising in the valley.
The ISI’s Kashmir adventure was code-named Operation Tupac, after
an eighteenth-century revolutionary who led the war of liberation in
Peru against Spanish rule. It was seen by India’s security agencies as an
elaborate plan to destabilize J&K by sponsoring an insurgency carried out
through militants and through covert support to separatists. The plan was
authorized by Zia in 1988, his farewell gift to India months before he
perished. The programme would continue in various avatars and developed
an unstoppable momentum of its own, where Pakistan’s leaders, civilian or
military, would sometimes press the pause button, but could never really
216 ange r m anage m e nt

stop the machine. The initial programme involved the creation of six
separatist militant groups by the ISI, gradually relocating many mujahideen
fighters freed up for battle from the Afghan theatre. The star of the stable
was the Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), with which the ISI developed the cosiest
and most enduring partnership.4 The programme would soon morph into
a low-cost, light-touch plausibly deniable scheme of pushing a stream of
trained militants into India across the LoC.
North of the Kashmir Valley, the Siachen situation remained deadlocked.
But for the two young prime ministers of the enemy countries, ending this
mindless war in the snowy heights seemed doable. Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir
Bhutto invested personal political capital and prodded their envoys to find
a solution. The fifth round of defence secretary-level talks in June 1989,
between Naresh Chandra and Ijlal Haider Zaidi, had been inconclusive
but had brought the sides the closest to a resolution since the stand-off
began in 1984. The joint statement issued after the talks promised that
both sides would ‘work towards a comprehensive settlement, based on
redeployment of forces to reduce the chance of conflict’.5 However, the
more ambitious backchannel deal of Zia’s time, to delineate the northern
boundary, was not revived.
Media reports of the time reported optimistically on the deal that was
about to be struck and that ‘army officials from the two countries will
now work out the details of redeployment’. A reality check came when
Pakistan’s foreign secretary Humayun Khan prematurely told the media
after meeting his Indian counterpart, S. K. Singh, that the two sides had
agreed to relocate to positions ‘occupied at the time of the (1972) Simla
Agreement’. This would have implied a literal climbdown by India. Sitting
by Khan’s side at the presser, in an act of diplomatic tact, India’s foreign
secretary did not challenge the statement.6
The backchannel Siachen solution had been interrupted by Zia’s death.
A keen observer of these dynamics argued that if the line agreed to in mid-
1988 had been ratified at the intergovernmental level, it could have been a
‘major political-strategic step forward’, not just for peace and tranquillity,
along the India–Pakistan LoC, but also in the crucial India–China border
areas in eastern Ladakh. However, there was a real or feigned ignorance
about such an agreement at all levels in Pakistan after Zia’s passing. The
Rajiv–Benazir discussions on Siachen were more limited in ambition—they
did not seek agreement on demarcating the northern borders; they were
about settling the issue on the basis of mutual force withdrawal from
actual ground position locations (AGPLs) and establishing jointly monitored
demilitarized zones (DMZs).7
Dixit was hopeful that the prime minister’s visit on his watch would
spell a breakthrough. Rajiv Gandhi’s visit to Islamabad on 16 and 17
July was the first bilateral visit of an Indian leader to Pakistan in three
 a t housand cuts 217

decades, after Nehru’s in 1960. Rajiv was accompanied by Sonia, Foreign

Minister Narasimha Rao, and Minister of State Natwar Singh. While the
visit had set expectations high, its conclusion, to Dixit, was an ‘anticlimax’.
Benazir seemed desperate to see some shift in India’s Kashmir posture to
increase her credibility domestically with the army and Islamist forces.
They were accusing her of being soft on Rajiv and India. Rajiv, on his
part, reminded Benazir of the discussions on the Simla Agreement, and
suggested that a practical and realistic approach would serve them better
than a demand for unilateral concessions. Following her father’s example
(of a last-minute request of Indira Gandhi to salvage the 1972 Simla
Agreement), Benazir insisted on a final one-on-one meeting with Rajiv
before a scheduled joint press conference that the two leaders were to
address on 17 July. The unscheduled meeting delayed the press conference
and was held in an adjoining room. Rajiv remained firm and articulated
India’s views clearly.
One concrete outcome was the setting up of a joint commission that
would meet regularly. A couple of days later, on 19 July, Narasimha Rao
was in Islamabad for the meeting of the bilateral joint commission. He called
on PM Benazir Bhutto and discussed the glacier issue after the session with
his counterpart, Sahabzada Yaqub Khan. He said he had not quite caught
up on the details of the discussion on the issue between National Security
Advisor Iqbal Akhund and Rajiv Gandhi’s diplomatic adviser, Ronen Sen
on the night of 16 July, but the Siachen situation needed to be addressed
politically. Rao had got it right. No military deal was possible unless the
two countries developed a basic level of political trust.
Benazir was destabilized by domestic pressures after Rajiv’s visit and
tried to take a tougher stand on Kashmir. Foreign Minister Yaqub Khan
visited India at the end of July and made a cheeky offer to mediate
between India and Sri Lanka, even as Sri Lanka refused to host the next
SAARC summit unless the Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF) withdrew.
India politely refused to countenance this politically motivated offer.
In August, a military commanders follow-up meeting on Siachen
discussed the operational aspects of a possible agreement. It was clear
that by now Pakistan’s position had changed, as it introduced two new
points. First, while they could withdraw troops to be redeployed in mutually
agreed points, they would refuse to confirm these cartographically. Second,
the withdrawal would be subject to the line being drawn tangentially
north-eastwards to the Karakoram Ranges from NJ9842. This made it
clear that the game of the Pakistan Army was now to get the Indian
Army to withdraw from its strategically secure position on the glacier.
The discussion had reached an impasse.
Even as they faced domestic political challenges—elections in India
and civil–military tensions in Pakistan—the two leaders did meet again in
218 ange r m anage m e nt

September 1989 at a non-aligned summit in Belgrade. This time, there was

no headway in the meeting between the two diplomatic advisers, Ronen
Sen and Iqbal Akhund. Sen made it clear to Akhund that any progress in
the extension of the LoC beyond NJ9842 would have to be made after
India’s general elections.8
The line on the Siachen map that Ronen Sen, Iqbal Akhund, and the
defence secretaries were debating had dramatic implications. If the line went
due north, it would give the entire glacier to India; if it went north-east,
Siachen would be in Pakistan. If the two sides could not decide on the
line, they would need to discuss the ground positions of troops. Sen had
been involved in discussions to minimize the military pain of defending the
Siachen Glacier from the time Rajiv Gandhi became PM in 1985. Since
neither side was politically ready, the matter had to be kicked down the
road. Rajiv later revealed that he was close to a ‘deal’ with General Zia
before his death in 1988 and subsequently came close to an agreement
with Benazir in 1989. But he was not destined to untie that knot in the
high Himalaya.
Rajiv was soon consumed with a bruising election campaign, fighting
corruption allegations in the purchase of Bofors guns. By the end of 1989,
Rajiv Gandhi’s Congress government had been voted out and a coalition
government sworn in on 2 December, led by former finance minister
Vishwanath Pratap Singh.
The new government faced its first crisis within days, on 8 December
with the kidnapping of Rubaiya Sayeed, the daughter of the home minister,
Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Pakistan’s involvement in this brazen act was
clear to India’s security agencies. The kidnapping ended with the release of
militants from Indian jails and signalled a heightened militancy in Kashmir
and a weakened Indian security establishment.
To Dixit, the tenuous hopes of a new beginning came to a somewhat
abrupt end in December 1989. He had several one-on-one conversations
with both Benazir and Rajiv between August and December. He concluded
that their ‘mutual disappointment’ had been inevitable, given fundamental
differences in approach; the ‘downward spiral’ was triggered by Benazir’s
unrealistic expectations that India would be as accommodating as it had
been in Simla in 1972, and would be willing to compromise on issues like
Kashmir and Siachen. Rajiv, on the other hand, wanted to gradually create
mutual trust to get to practical solutions to intractable problems. Rajiv had
made it clear to his envoy that his macro-level approach to both Zia and
Benazir had been to build confidence, and reduce risk in the relationship
without compromising on core interests like Kashmir and Siachen.9
 a t housand cuts 219

EXODUS
The Kashmir insurgency intensified in 1990, even as Pakistan denied
its role and heightened its rhetoric. Benazir sent a special envoy, Abdul
Sattar, to Delhi in early January. Sattar, who had been a hard-line high
commissioner to India between 1978 and 1982, reported confusion and
weak governance in India, with a gap between Prime Minister V. P. Singh’s
cautious position on Pakistan and Foreign Minister Inder Kumar Gujral’s
attempt to open up communications.10
In the valley, targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus increased, as did a
campaign of terror asking them to leave the valley. In early January, some
newspapers around Srinagar started publishing messages ascribed to the
terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen, asking all Hindus to leave Kashmir
immediately. Soon, posters appeared on walls asking Kashmiris to follow
Islamic law and on doors of Hindu homes, asking them to leave. Masked
men with Kalashnikovs were reported to be forcing people to reset their
watches to Pakistan Standard Time. On 14 January, Pakistan expressed
concern at the deteriorating situation in Kashmir, in what was clearly a
communication offensive accompanying the terror campaign unleashed in
the valley.
On 17 January, Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah resigned, protesting
the appointment as governor of Jagmohan, the tough administrator sent
to resume his mission in Kashmir in the wake of the Rubaiya Sayeed
kidnapping. Jagmohan’s appointment was meant to signal New Delhi’s
resolve to contain the violence. But leaders in Delhi still did not have a
measure of the enormity of the assault on the valley from Pakistan. On
18 January, in an interview to Dawn, Foreign Minister I. K. Gujral chose
to focus on fuzzier matters—his roots in Pakistan. Gujral did not touch
on Kashmir as he spoke warmly of his birth on the banks of the Jhelum
in Pakistan and his visit in 1982, when all of the town of Jhelum came
to visit him.11
On the night of 18 January, a blackout hit the valley, with the apparent
exception of some mosques, which broadcast violent slogans calling for the
killing of Kashmiri Hindus.12 By 19 January, thousands of Kashmiri Pandits
were fleeing to Jammu, as militants appeared to have gained complete
control of the valley. This departure was dubbed an exodus, the largest
movement of people escaping persecution since 1971. Most analysts assess
that within a few months, close to 100,000 of the valley’s 140,000-strong
Kashmiri Pandit community fled to Jammu, Delhi, and other areas of India
and the world.13
On 21 January, Pakistan’s foreign minister, Yaqub Khan, a scion of the
princely family of Rampur in India, came to meet his Indian counterpart,
I. K. Gujral. Yaqub, possibly representing the approach of the army rather
than the elected PM, was aggressive and abrasive, stoutly denying any role
220 ange r m anage m e nt

in promoting insurgencies in India. He said that Benazir had been deeply

disappointed by Rajiv’s reticence on Kashmir. He implicitly threatened war
if the Kashmir situation was not resolved. Gujral, visibly upset by this
bluster and Yaqub’s attempt to intimidate India on the Kashmir issue, was
diplomatic during the day but decided to respond firmly in the evening.
Gujral discussed this matter with his prime minister, V. P. Singh, who
authorized him to send a clear message to Pakistan. Gujral went to a
dinner hosted by High Commissioner M. Bashir Khan Babar of Pakistan
for his boss, and said that he wanted a private meeting after the dinner
with the foreign minister. Dixit was present at the meeting where Gujral
said that Yaqub Khan’s statements during the day had caused concern and
resentment in the new government of India, and that such an attitude of
Pakistan would only evoke firm and decisive response from India.14 After
conversing in the book-lined study in the Pakistan ambassador’s house,
where Jawaharlal Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan had often met, the two
foreign ministers decided to take a walk on the lawns. Several writings,
including Gujral’s own telling of events, suggest that Yaqub, perhaps at the
behest of Pakistan’s army, may also have issued a nuclear threat. ‘Don’t
start a war now,’ he said in Urdu, ‘or there will be a fire that consumes
our rivers, forests, mountains, everything.’ Gujral responded in kind: ‘I
don’t know what you are talking about, Yaqub sahib, lekin jin daryaon
ka paani aapne piya hai, unka hee humne bhi piya hai. But remember,
we’ve been nurtured on the waters of the same rivers as you.)’15
Later observers saw a pattern to Pakistan’s behaviour. It started the
war in August 1965 assuming that Nehru’s death had left India weakened
with a floundering Shastri. Now, a weak post-Rajiv Gandhi alliance led by
V. P. Singh should have made India vulnerable in Kashmir and susceptible
to nuclear blackmail. The sorry episode of the kidnapping of the home
minister’s daughter and India’s weak-kneed response only reinforced the
impression of an unsteady India. This pattern would be repeated in the
future, despite its erroneous premise. Even when politically weak, India
was institutionally strong.
Pakistan’s rhetoric on Kashmir was now escalating to higher decibels,
with frequent threats of war. In February, both Pakistan’s newly incubated
civilian politicians of the post-Zia era, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif,
were in fact competing to see who could be shriller in their rhetoric on
Kashmir; such anti-India postures seemed a sure path for the civilian
politicians to ingratiate themselves to the deep state, at whose pleasure
they would be allowed to rule.
On 5 February, Pakistan called a ‘strike’ for Kashmir. This elicited
compliance not just across Pakistan, but also in the Kashmir Valley. For
the first time, college girls in Rawalpindi, Lahore, and POK joined in
processions with men. Groups of lawyers, labourers, and students were
 a t housand cuts 221

pulled in for public meetings. A sticker on a Suzuki said: ‘Time to win

Kashmir’.16
The strike was proposed in Pakistan by Qazi Ahmad of the JeI.17 This
was the Islamist party being used by the army to prop up a young Lahore
politician, Nawaz Sharif, to replace Benazir Bhutto, who was not toeing
the army’s line, particularly on India. 5 February would in subsequent
years be packaged to become for Pakistan a ‘Kashmir Solidarity Day’,
Youm-i-Yakjehti, ritually celebrated to this day with officially sponsored
banners and events across Pakistan, and sloganeering outside the Indian
high commission.

MARCHING INTO INDIA

In Islamabad, what worried Dixit most was that ‘various Islam–pasand
parties and groups’ announced that there would be mass crossings by
Pakistani civilians into the territory of Jammu and Kashmir as also
into portions of northern Punjab.18 Acting on instructions from Delhi,
Dixit told Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Tanvir Ahmed Khan, as well as
US ambassador, Robert Oakley, that ‘civilian crossings, and mass hysteria’
across the LoC, and across the international frontier would be met with
‘decisive responses’ by the Indian armed forces. But the message was lost,
the juggernaut was moving. A week after the strike call from Pakistan,
violent mobs crossed the LoC twice from POK into India. On 11
February—the death anniversary of JKLF leader Maqbool Bhat—hundreds
of people tried to cross the LoC in Chakothi, a crossing point in Kashmir.
When Indian troops fired, they dispersed, returning later with twice the
number of people. About 3,000 people crossed into the Indian side over the
LoC. Initially, Indian forces used public address systems to ask the civilians
to go back. But when the mobs started burning crops, wooden stakes, and
pillars, security forces from India fired two bursts of Sten guns on the mob,
killing about seven people. A similar crossing was attempted the same day
by about a 1,000 civilians from a point north-east of Sialkot in Punjab.
But with the firing in Kashmir, the civilian crossings stopped. Dixit feared
Pakistan would now go back to infiltrating militants and mercenaries into
India as soon as the snows melted.
Given the prevailing sentiment in her country, Benazir felt obliged
to get even shriller in her anti-India rhetoric. She had emerged in public
after giving birth to a baby girl, Bakhtawar, on 25 January, and wanted
to reassert her political persona. She publicly repeated in March in POK,
the promise her late father Bhutto had dramatically made in the 1970s19
to fight a thousand-year war with India over Kashmir.17 Benazir should
have known that in the intervening 1980s, Zia had changed the strategic
doctrine from the thousand-year war to the battle of a thousand cuts,
pragmatically recognizing the military power differential and privileging
222 ange r m anage m e nt

covert warfare on India’s periphery. Zia, had, of course, also added nuclear
weapons to Pakistan’s armoury, seeking power parity with India.
Prime Minister V. P. Singh’s weak government was initially circumspect
in its response to Benazir’s provocative posturing, but later responded in
kind in parliament: ‘Those who threaten 1,000-year wars,’ Singh said on
10 April, ‘should first see if they will be able to last even 1,000 hours
of fighting.’20 He followed up on this speech with one addressing troops
on the Rajasthan border to suggest that India was in the process of
initiating military measures against Pakistan. Predictably, Pakistan reacted
by summoning Dixit to the foreign office to explain matters. Dixit gleefully
conveyed to both the foreign office and the US ambassador that if Pakistani
‘pyrotechnics’ continued, it should be prepared for a military response
from India.
Later in April, Foreign Minister Gujral tried to ease the tension when
he met his counterpart Yaqub Khan again in New York. But Pakistan was
voicing its growing fears to the US, which was in turn getting worried by
the escalation in South Asia with a clear nuclear overhang. In May, US
ambassador Robert Oakley invited Dixit to his office for an urgent meeting.
He gravely produced some US satellite pictures showing an Indian Army
build-up on the Rajasthan–Sindh border, apparently threatening Pakistan’s
Punjab to the south. Oakley asked Dixit if this meant that India was
preparing to attack in Punjab to reduce Pakistani violence and pressure
in Kashmir. The 1965 war story would have informed US worries. Dixit
relayed these concerns to headquarters and soon had instructions from
Cabinet Secretary Naresh Chandra to convey that India had no plans
or intention to launch any military operation against Pakistan. However,
India would certainly retaliate militarily against any violence inside J&K.
Dixit asked Oakley to convey this message also to the upper reaches of
the Pakistan Army to ‘cease and desist from their adventurist inclinations’.
Oakley’s messages to Rawalpindi and also to Washington resulted in
the ‘Gates mission’ in the summer of 1990. US deputy NSA Robert Gates
flew in to India and Pakistan on a delicate diplomatic assignment, at
a time when US policy famously hyphenated the relationship between
the two belligerent South Asian neighbours. The primary mandate of the
mission was to de-escalate the tension, given the danger of a nuclear
confrontation between the covert nuclear powers.21 While the situation was
tense, Dixit later assessed that the danger of nuclear confrontation between
the covert nuclear powers was exaggerated. At any rate, the danger had
not reached the levels as later sensationalized in the book Critical Mass
by two American authors, William Burrows and Robert Windrem, which
claimed that a nuclear conflagration had been averted through smart US
diplomacy.22 While Gates conveyed ‘categorical, cautionary admonitions’
to both India and Pakistan, his trip did not, Dixit noted wryly, result in
 a t housand cuts 223

any abatement of Pakistan-sponsored separatism in J&K.

What the Gates Mission did do was to trigger a process that led to
five rounds of Indo–Pak discussions at the foreign secretary level between
May 1990 and October 1991. But the underlying structural chasms in the
relationship would ensure that the talks produced no substantive outcomes
of note, much like the Bhutto-Swaran Singh talks that preceded the 1965
conflict.
Too much was happening in 1990 on the bilateral front, for both
countries to notice the tectonic geopolitical shifts that would impact them
even more. The Soviet Union was collapsing after the Afghan withdrawal
as the West doubled down on the Soviets and Mikhail Gorbachev seemed
only too willing to dismantle the communist empire. The unipolar moment
of the United States was beginning.
This was also the period when regional geopolitics was in churn,
severely impacting an India preoccupied with internal woes. In June 1990,
Iraq had invaded Kuwait, suddenly bringing Western attention back to
West Asia, after it had wandered away post the withdrawal of Soviet
forces from Afghanistan.
Within Pakistan, Benazir was dislodged from office in August, after
twenty months in power, ostensibly by the president of Pakistan, on the
pretext of her indulging in nepotism and corruption. It was an open secret
that the army establishment, recovering from Zia’s loss, had had enough
of the Benazir experiment and wanted to install Nawaz Sharif, the new
puppet they had created. The army had convinced itself that Benazir had
become a security risk and was spilling out national secrets to the Americans,
particularly on Pakistan’s nuclear programme. Elections were scheduled in
October, but their outcome was never in doubt.
In September 1990, a newly appointed ISI chief, Asad Durrani, received
a call from his boss, army chief Aslam Beg, with a peculiar request. Some
Karachi businessmen, unhappy with Benazir’s PPP, wanted to contribute
to the Opposition’s election campaign. Since time was short, could the
ISI help ensure the money reached the right hands? The request struck
Durrani as unusual, but he was eager to please his boss who had got him
his new job. Durrani deployed intelligence men to collect `140 million
from a banker and distribute the money into various accounts.
When this sordid story tumbled out into the media four years later,
the by now retired General Beg said that the money had been passed on
to the ISI for ‘political intelligence’. Retired air marshal and PPP politician
Asghar Khan filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 1996, submitting
that this operation had violated his human rights at a time when he was
campaigning for the PPP in 1990. Durrani later called his decision to
distribute the cash the ‘most imprudent move’ of his career. He indicted
himself when he signed an affidavit later for an internal enquiry, admitting
224 ange r m anage m e nt

to this transgression. He even dedicated some part of his memoir to a

mea culpa explaining his actions of 1990.
Three decades later, I asked Durrani about this episode at a party in
Islamabad, soon after I read his remarkable self-critical memoir.23 Durrani
was unusually forthcoming—the ISI had clear evidence, he said, that Benazir
had gone too much into the arms of the US, and he was persuaded at
that point that she had to go. This wasn’t justification for the act, just
one of the reasons.

THE ARMY’S NAWAZ

For Dixit, 1990 had been a tough year. He reflected that both India and
Pakistan had in place weak coalition governments. On its part, Pakistan
had kept tensions ratcheted up in J&K instead of trying to distance itself
from the violence, to focus on building more important aspects of bilateral
relations. The general positive push given to bilateral relations by Rajiv
Gandhi went into ‘slow motion’ in the term of V. P. Singh’s Janata Party
government.
The October elections brought in Nawaz Sharif, riding on the
benevolence of his army mentors. (Imran Khan told me in 2018 that
Nawaz had been ‘manufactured in GHQ’ in 1990.) In this election, as
with every subsequent democratic election in Pakistan, the army had a
favourite civilian candidate it was backing. Having got a bad rap with the
dictatorships of Ayub, Yahya, and Zia, the army was learning through its
ISI to ‘manage’ Pakistan’s democracy.
Even as Nawaz Sharif took over as Pakistan’s prime minister in
November, V. P. Singh’s coalition government collapsed, to be replaced
by a Congress-supported regime headed by a new prime minister, Chandra
Shekhar. During Chandra Shekhar’s brief tenure, India–Pakistan relations
continued on a negative trajectory, even though the two prime ministers
met during the SAARC summit in the Maldives on 21 and 23 November
1990. They even decided to set up direct hotlines between themselves, as
also between the foreign secretaries and the DGMOs, as confidence-building
measures. The hotlines were seldom used, except the one at the DGMO
level, to discuss operational issues.
Despite the meeting of Chandra Shekhar and Nawaz Sharif, diplomacy
on the ground remained inflamed. In November, complaints emerged of the
harassment of diplomats in both countries. On 1 December, Pakistan issued
a note on the continued harassment of its diplomats; India’s spokesman
dismissed the allegation as a ‘cover-up for provocative harassment and
intimidation’ by Pakistan.
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UTOPIAN PROPOSALS
As a difficult year ended, another equally tough one began for both
countries. 1991 saw turmoil in the larger neighbourhood, as it kicked off
with a war in the Persian Gulf when the US launched Operation Desert
Storm on 17 January, with air attacks on Iraq and Kuwait. The Cold
War had ended messily. The USSR—India’s strong friend of the previous
three decades—had imploded and America’s unipolar global position was
gathering strength. In South Asia, Sri Lanka was in ferment, its ethnic
battles spilling over into India.
Around midnight of 21 May, Dixit received shocking news. Rajiv
Gandhi, on the campaign trail in south India, had been brutally assassinated
by Sri Lankan Tamil militants. Dixit immediately conveyed this information
to Pakistan’s president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and Prime Minister Nawaz
Sharif. The president arrived the next day at the Indian high commission
to sign the condolence book. Nawaz Sharif, on his part, decided to lead
the Pakistani delegation to the funeral in Delhi. Benazir as the former PM
came along as well.
On 24 May, Nawaz called Dixit up to say that he wanted a separate
meeting in New Delhi with India’s prime minister, apart from the standard
courtesy call. Chandra Shekhar readily agreed and hosted a lunch on
25 May. After exchanging courtesies in the delegation-level talks, Sharif
suggested that the two prime ministers have a private discussion. After
the meeting, Dixit saw off the Pakistani delegation at the airport, and
returned to brief his prime minister. The PM called a broader meeting the
next day to review Pakistan’s funeral diplomacy. The meeting of senior
officials (of the ministries of external affairs, home, and defence) concluded
that Pakistan’s anti-India activities could be expected to continue in
Kashmir, even if Nawaz Sharif might not personally be supportive of
these activities.
Something was clearly still weighing on Chandra Shekhar’s mind after
the meeting had concluded; he asked Dixit to return the next day. On 28
May 1991, the PM revealed to Dixit that Pakistan’s PM had sought the
separate meeting to convey a message. Sharif had told Chandra Shekar that
it was imperative to improve India–Pakistan relations and the only obstacle
to this goal was the Kashmir issue. Further, the only practical solution was
that both sides should move back from claiming total jurisdiction over the
entire territory of the former princely state. Then came the crux—Nawaz
Sharif advised Chandra Shekhar that his government should ‘seriously
consider’ allowing a plebiscite in the valley, so that India could ultimately
keep Ladakh and Jammu, while Pakistan would retain areas of POK. The
valley would later accede to Pakistan. Chandra Shekhar, taken aback, had
advised Sharif not to make ‘impractical, utopian proposals’. With this
snub, Sharif returned home to resume a hostile position on India, perhaps
226 ange r m anage m e nt

prodded by the army. However, Dixit assessed, the rhetoric on Kashmir

gradually became less shrill.
In the general election of 1991, the Congress Party and its allies
triumphed. A reluctant Narasimha Rao, pulled out of retirement, became
the choice of the Congress as Rajiv’s successor. Rao was sworn in as
prime minister in June. The new prime minister’s plate was full. External
flux was aggravating political and economic instability at home. India’s
economy threatened to go into a tailspin, its foreign exchange reserves
were perilously low, and it was in danger of defaulting on an IMF loan.
And India faced some of the toughest internal security challenges since
Independence.
Pakistan was not going to let this opportunity go. The Lashkar-e-Taiba,
launched in Muridke, Pakistan’s Punjab, in the mid-1980s, sharpened its
attacks on Kashmir. So also did the terrorist group Hizbul Mujahideen
that had been formed in 1989.
Rao was no stranger to the Pakistan relationship. As Rajiv Gandhi’s
foreign minister, he had met with Benazir in December 1988, and again in
July 1989. Rao had come to the conclusion that Pakistan could not really
be trusted. Soon enough, Rao had a visitor from Islamabad. Pakistan’s
foreign secretary Shahryar Khan, who, as noted, had been born into the
royal family of Bhopal, visited India in August as Nawaz Sharif’s special
envoy. His mission, similar to that of Abdul Sattar in 1990, was to assess
India’s new government for vulnerabilities on Kashmir. He told Prime
Minister Rao and Defence Minister Sharad Pawar that Pakistan would take
‘definitive steps’ to prevent subversion in Jammu and Kashmir originating
from Pakistani territory. He promised that India would see a ‘qualitative
change in the situation on the ground’.24 He recommended that both
countries undertake a discussion on Kashmir, as also on other issues, to
normalize relations.
Rao toyed with the idea of establishing a direct channel of
communication between himself and Pakistan’s leaders, learning from
Rajiv Gandhi’s successful deployment of Ronen Sen as a personal envoy
to Benazir. He asked Shahryar, after a one-on-one meeting, to remain in
touch with his private secretary, Ramu Damodaran. In an amusing mix-up,
Shahryar made contact a few weeks later with Rao’s principal secretary
A. N. Verma, rather than with his private secretary, but the connection
did not materialize as a channel.25
Rao was not overly impressed by Shahryar’s expression of good
intentions. His approach was to keep the conversation flowing, while never
taking Pakistan at its word. Rao felt that one-on-one talks were critical.
‘He always persisted’ recalled his aide, ‘despite his deep cynicism that
anything can happen.’26 Three months into his tenure as prime minister,
Rao saw no reason to change the assessment he had astutely made in his
 a t housand cuts 227

years as foreign minister. ‘Every time there is a change either in Pakistan or

India, there is a sense of euphoria created, some new hopes are aroused,’
he said in India’s parliament in September, ‘but subsequently, these hopes
are dashed to the ground.’27
Rao encountered Nawaz Sharif in the fourth month of his tenure. The
two met in Harare in October at a Commonwealth summit. They had a
constructive chat, and would go on to meet five more times in Rao’s first
two years in office. Rao would converse in chaste Urdu, as ‘the finest Urdu
speaker in all of the Nizam’s Hyderabad’ clearly better linguistically than
the West Punjab politician.28
Meanwhile, Dixit was completing his tenure in Islamabad. He bumped
into former PM Benazir in October at an Islamabad embassy reception. She
remarked: ‘Mr Dixit, I am hearing good rumours, I believe you are going
to be the next foreign secretary of India. I am glad that somebody who
has lived in Pakistan and who knows Pakistan is going back to the foreign
office. Despite the current difficulties, I hope that during your tenure in
office, we will be able to improve our relations.’ Dixit replied that while
the rumours were not entirely baseless, he had no formal orders yet. In
the same month, Dixit received Foreign Secretary Muchkund Dubey in
Islamabad for the fifth round of foreign secretary-level talks. But Shahryar
Khan’s promise of a ‘qualitative change’ remained unfulfilled.29

ANOTHER TRACK TO TALK

Around the same time, at American nudging and given the gathering crisis
in Kashmir, both sides had also agreed to try a new form of engagement,
pulling in civil society representatives to brainstorm on ways forward.
The ‘Neemrana dialogue’, at a fort in Rajasthan, began in October as a
‘Track Two’ accompaniment to the stuttering official dialogue. One of
the proposals of the Gates Mission had been to promote a ‘non-official
dialogue’ so that the two sides could communicate when official exchanges
collapsed. Soon, the Neemrana dialogue series and other similar ones
took off, with freewheeling discussions of contentious issues including
Kashmir, nuclear proliferation, easing of visa restrictions, cultural and trade
exchanges. The processes were supported by both governments, granting
visas to participants on priority. The discussions rested on two fundamental
principles. First, participants would maintain secrecy by not discussing the
meetings with the media. Second, they would not dwell on ‘history’ at the
meetings. Later, professionals were roped in to infuse fresh ideas, although
many officials remained cynical of ‘naïve meddlers and amateurs lacking
the skills and information to manage sensitive issues’.30
As Dixit’s tenure ended, Pakistan found another peg to ratchet up the
rhetoric. Tension arose in the Indian town of Ayodhya on 31 October,
as an excited mob bearing saffron flags damaged the disputed structure
228 ange r m anage m e nt

of an old mosque, the Babri Masjid. The movement for removing the
mosque to make way for a temple at what was for Hindus the birthplace
of Lord Rama, had become a lightning rod for communal tensions in
India, and a perfect opportunity for Pakistan to walk into a non-Kashmir
fissure. Pakistan’s foreign office spokesman declared on 2 November that
the government and the people of Pakistan were ‘outraged and anguished
over the desecration and damage to the Babri Mosque’.
 18

FROZEN TRUS T

I n the middle of January 1992, a new high commissioner of India

assumed office in Islamabad. Unlike his two predecessors, S. K. Singh
and J. N. Dixit, who were at the apex of the bureaucratic pyramid, and had
both transitioned after Islamabad to become foreign secretaries in India,
Satinder Kumar Lambah was a relatively junior joint secretary-level officer
posted as India’s consul general in San Francisco.
Lambah had received a call from the PM Rao’s secretary, Ramu
Damodaran, in October 1991, saying that the PM had decided to post
him to Pakistan and requesting his consent within twenty-four hours.
Lambah confirmed he would go. He hosted a dinner at his residence the
next evening, for Ambassador Abid Hussain visiting from Washington, but
did not share this news with his boss. At the party, a house guest, veteran
journalist Inder Malhotra, shocked his hosts when he raised a glass and
said he hoped Islamabad would be Lambah’s next destination.
Lambah was no stranger to Pakistan—he had served in Islamabad as
deputy high commissioner in the early 1980s, and also in the MEA in the
late 1980s as the joint secretary dealing with Pakistan. He had a deeper
familiarity with Pakistan—his family came from pre-Partition Peshawar
and his wife, Nilima, had distinguished lineage in pre-Partition Lahore.
These old connections would give the Lambahs extraordinary access and
connections within Pakistan. Rao had known Lambah as the ministry’s
long-time Pakistan expert, but also as someone who ‘spoke the idiom’ in
fluent Punjabi and Urdu, and could communicate effectively across a broad
spectrum of Pakistani society.
But the PM had played this choice of envoy close to his chest. When
Mani Dixit became foreign secretary in December, Rao asked to be given
a list of four names to choose his successor in Islamabad from. Dixit
handed over the list, with Lambah featuring in it. The PM told Dixit
later that he had chosen Lambah. In fact, Islamabad was the first station
for which Rao had chosen an envoy to fill the top job.1 He sent another
young career officer he knew well, Ronen Sen, as ambassador to Moscow,
but thinking out of the box, he chose politicians Lakshmi Mall Singhvi
for London and Siddhartha Shankar Ray for the US.
Lambah’s reputation preceded him in Pakistan. At a protocol line-up
at the Islamabad airport in December, PM Nawaz Sharif had casually
asked Acting High Commissioner Bhadrakumar when India would send
the next HC. The Indian diplomat replied that Pakistan’s concurrence was
230 ange r m anage m e nt

awaited in the case of S. K. Lambah. Sharif paused and asked, ‘You mean
Satinder Lambah?’2 When the acting HC confirmed the name, Sharif said
he would receive the agrément immediately. Later that evening, Foreign
Secretary Shahryar Khan informed Bhadrakumar that he could consider
the agrément as having been given, even though the formal communication
would follow in a couple of days.
Pakistan’s PM had recognized the name for good reason. When Lambah
had been posted as deputy high commissioner in Pakistan (1978–82), he
had been introduced to a young steel tycoon in Lahore, who became a
friend. This was Nawaz Sharif. Lambah had kept in touch and even hosted
Sharif in Delhi to a Chinese meal at the House of Ming, where the server
had memorably spilled soup on the future prime minister’s white suit.
When Lambah presented his credentials to Pakistan’s president in
January, he got a call from the PMO, with an invitation to join Nawaz
Sharif and his wife for lunch the next day, along with his family. The
prime minister discussed their past association, mostly in Punjabi. Lambah
handed over a personal letter from Prime Minister Rao that read, ‘This
note is just to tell you that Sati Lambah, whom I am sending as our
High Commissioner to Pakistan, enjoys my personal confidence.’ Lambah
hoped that the message from this additional gesture would be clear—that
any discussions on the backchannel could be shared with him. Lambah
also conveyed PM Rao’s request that Pakistan change its attitude towards
support to Sikh extremists in Punjab. Nawaz said he would try to do ‘as
much as he could’.3 The envoy requested unfettered access to the PM.
Sharif designated an official in his office to be Lambah’s point of contact.
This direct line to the PM would serve Lambah well.
The ISI’s activism in Kashmir was, however, not abating. In February,
Lambah had to contend with a threatened march by the JKLF across the
LoC, carrying the risk of escalation, as in 1990. This time, the march
was stopped by Pakistani forces but as many as seventeen people died
in the firing and clashes. Sharif was being more careful than Benazir
had been; he said that Pakistan would not allow such a crossing since
‘we did not want a fourth war with India’. The JKLF attempted another
crossing at the end of March, but this time Pakistani forces controlled
it without loss of life.
Another tack for Pakistan, to capitalize on the unrest in the region,
was to try to again bring Kashmir to international attention. Lambah
reported on meetings of Pakistani envoys with a focus on the Kashmir
issue. Pakistan was also raising the matter at the UN and international fora,
apart from sending delegations around the world to spread a narrative of
Kashmir as a global trouble spot. This policy started paying dividends. The
European community passed a resolution on 12 March4, supporting the
 f roze n t rus t 231

right to self-determination in Kashmir. Soon after, the Swedish parliament

expressed ‘deep concern’ at the human rights situation there.

BEATING DIPLOMACY
Cricket proved a unifier, when against all odds, Pakistan’s team led by
Imran Khan won the cricket world cup in March 1992. This was seen as
a subcontinental victory, and India’s president, R. Venkataraman, sent a
congratulatory telegram to his Pakistani counterpart within minutes of the
win. Lambah dashed off a handwritten note to Sharif, ahead of any other
the prime minister received. It seemed only natural that both countries
should pause hostilities and celebrate the subcontinent’s cricketing triumph.
But the default position of hostility soon returned. Lambah faced a
peculiar but not unfamiliar challenge early in his tenure. On 24 May,
Pakistani agents grabbed an Indian diplomat outside his home. Counsellor
Rajesh Mittal’s father and a domestic help watched in horror as the
goons roughed him up outside his residence and then whisked him away
in a car, despite his diplomatic immunity. Mittal suffered seven hours of
torture in captivity and was released battered and bruised after vigorous
protests by Lambah and relentless pressure from India. The Pakistani
action seemed to have been in retaliation for the arrest and detention
of a Pakistani official in April, when he was caught red-handed meeting
an Indian official whom he had subverted. The official, Arshad Ali, had
been returned to Pakistan on 13 May after several weeks of detention5.
But Pakistan had retaliated with disproportionate brutality, causing a
good deal of public outrage in India. Relations hit a new low as these
events played out in the media.
Even though Mittal had been declared persona non grata, and asked
to leave Pakistan within forty-eight hours, his safe passage from Islamabad
to the border near Lahore was not guaranteed, nor was the option of a
commercial flight feasible. Mittal was a stretcher case, and Foreign Secretary
Dixit offered to send an Indian Air Force plane to pick him up. Pakistan
refused on the grounds that they could not permit the Indian Air Force
to land in their territory. Eventually, a Border Security Force (BSF) plane
picked up the injured officer. Foreign Secretary Dixit himself received the
officer in Delhi and was horrified to see his condition; Mittal had to
be hospitalized for months. India retaliated by expelling two Pakistani
counsellors from Delhi. The two Pakistani diplomats walked normally
into a commercial aircraft in Delhi but mysteriously descended from the
plane in Pakistan limping and bandaged. Pakistani media reported that
they had been subjected to physical abuse and violence, like the Indian
diplomat was. Dixit concluded wryly that some ‘mid-air arrangement’ had
been conjured up, to temper Indian indignation and portray equivalence
to the ‘diplomatic courtesies’ extended to Mittal by Pakistani intelligence.6
232 ange r m anage m e nt

Diplomats who had been respected in the first decade of Independence,

and mostly spared in the second till the 1965 war, seemed no longer out of
bounds for intelligence agencies, even in the absence of war. The killing of
Ravindra Mhatre in 1984 and the assault on Mittal in 1992 demonstrated
the edge of anger poisoning the diplomatic relationship. Something needed
to be done to reverse this situation. India suggested that whenever the
next foreign secretary-level talks were held, the two sides should agree
on a code of conduct governing the treatment of each other’s diplomats.
Pakistan’s Foreign Secretary Shahryar Khan agreed.
Rao had his fourth meeting with Nawaz Sharif on 14 June at the
Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro. Given the Mittal affair and the other
lows in the relationship, Rao was reluctant to meet his counterpart, but
was finally persuaded by Foreign Secretary Dixit to go ahead. One of the
considerations was not to allow Pakistan a propaganda advantage by a
refusal to engage. A positive outcome of the conversation was a decision
to resume the dialogue at the level of foreign secretaries.
In July, Lambah had a chance chat, at an Islamabad gathering, with
the ISI chief Lieutenant General Javid Nasir that led to a structured
conversation between them at ISI headquarters. This reinforced Lambah’s
view that India should formally engage with the Pakistan Army as well.
Lambah recommended to Delhi that India should invite the army chief
of Pakistan, since India was the only key country which did not have
such an engagement with Pakistan’s main power centre. Lambah thought
that even if Pakistan would find the optics of a visit by its army chief
unacceptable, they might be softened by the gesture, leading to broader
gains for India.
Shahryar Khan arrived in India in mid-August for foreign secretary-level
talks with Dixit. Once both sides had stated their well-known positions on
Kashmir, they sensibly moved to ideas for the future. The sixth round of talks
was special for its focus on confidence-building measures; these included
an agreement on the ‘code of conduct’ for the treatment of diplomatic and
consular personnel. A key decision was to resume discussions at the level
of the defence ministries and armed forces to try and address the Siachen
stand-off. As part of the CBMs, India handed over a formal invitation
from India’s army chief for his counterpart to visit India. While Pakistan
accepted the invitation ‘in principle’, such a visit is still to take place over
three decades later.
Despite this burst of realism, Lambah remained concerned at the rising
tension in the relationship, particularly after a resolution in Pakistan’s
National Assembly on the Ayodhya temple issue on 27 August, seen by
India as interference in its internal affairs. PM Rao was sensing the decline
in bilateral ties, despite his preoccupation with challenges at home. Rao
instructed Lambah to discuss these matters with his Pakistani hosts. Lambah
 f roze n t rus t 233

met PM Nawaz Sharif and Foreign Secretary Shahryar Khan and reported
on 29 August that Pakistan had ‘noted’ India’s strong feelings. 7
Rao went through the motions of his fifth meeting with Nawaz Sharif
on 3 September on the margins of a non-aligned summit in Jakarta. While
the fact of the meeting itself was touted as a means of defusing tension,
Rao said later that he considered these meetings with Sharif as ‘merely
cosmetic’.8

ICY RESOLVE
Notwithstanding the deteriorating Kashmir situation and bilateral tensions,
India played along with Pakistan’s enthusiasm in looking for a solution to
the Siachen dispute, agreeing to resume the annual official dialogues. The
resolution would involve for India a leap of faith, of giving up a military
advantage, withdrawing troops, and trusting Pakistan not to breach the
written agreement.
Between 2 and 6 November 1992, the sixth round of talks on the
Siachen Glacier was held in New Delhi. The Indian side was again led by
N. N. Vohra, the defence secretary, who had been part of four of the five
rounds of talks held during 1985–89, while Rajiv Gandhi was PM. India
had pressed the pause button since, given the political shifts and Pakistan’s
proxy war in J&K since 1990. A draft agreement was exchanged before
the talks. Pakistan seemed to agree to India’s demand to mark the existing
positions—in India’s favour—before recording demilitarization.
The world had changed between the fourth and fifth rounds, impacting
negotiations with Pakistan. India’s chief negotiator Vohra later recalled.
This period witnessed momentous changes across the globe—the
Iraq War, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the implosion of the USSR and
the end of the Cold War... Domestically we were going through a
very bad patch—fall of two successive governments within a year
and a half, and a mounting economic breakdown. The end of the
rupee–rouble trading agreement with the erstwhile USSR created a
huge crisis with regard to the procurement of defence supplies, and
the growing financial stringency made it impossible to meet the
defence expenditures, particularly foreign currency payments for the
procurement of munitions.9
Lambah came in from Islamabad for consultations on the eve of the
discussions. He saw that while the ground position favoured India,
policymakers were entertaining the idea of a mutually agreed pull-back,
provided Pakistan did not insist on reverting to the pre-1971 ground
positions, or on its own physical presence on the glacier. Pakistan was
in fact only focused on containing India’s presence on the glacier. But
India’s leaders had their doubts. When Lambah called on President R.
234 ange r m anage m e nt

Venkataraman, who had been India’s defence minister in 1984, the year
India moved into Siachen, the president said that ‘there was still blood
in the snow’. Lambah reported this conversation to Prime Minister Rao,
reinforcing the PM’s reservations at a time when he was heading a minority
government. Rao was also not happy with the reports he was hearing
about Pakistan’s attitude in the talks; he was beginning to seriously doubt
Pakistan’s intentions’10
But India’s defence secretary felt the countries were coming closer to a
deal in 1992 than in 1989. India had proposed a ‘zone of disengagement’,
with both sides withdrawing their forward posts and base camps to
given locations; the area of this zone was to be subjected to surveillance
by both sides for a specified period and, thereafter, ‘collaborative non-
military activities’ were to be allowed, including removing military waste,
ecological conservation, trekking, mountaineering, and adventure sports.11
Vohra later described India’s moment of truth. After three days of ‘hard
discussions’, when he reached PM Rao’s residence at Race Course Road,
Foreign Secretary J. N. Dixit was already present. He briefed Rao on
the signing ceremony planned the next morning and pointed out that his
Pak counterpart had already gone public about ‘the successful conclusion
of the talks.’12 After a thoughtful silence, Rao said, ‘...do not sign the
Agreement tomorrow...’ and asked Vohra to ‘visit Islamabad in January
1993 to commence the process ad referendum.’13
Rao’s gut instinct proved right, the agreement was ahead of its time and
assumed a level of trust in the relationship that did not then exist. Decades
later, Vohra conceded that ‘whatever may have been PVR’s constraints or
considerations when I reported to him late that winter evening, it could
perhaps be said, in hindsight, that he had rare farsightedness when he
stopped me from signing the agreement with Pakistan.’14

A MARTYRED MOSQUE
Worse was to come that year. Lambah’s hopes for an upturn in the
relationship on his watch were dashed on 6 December, for him ‘one of the
most difficult days as High Commissioner in Pakistan’. The destruction
that evening by a charged mob of the Babri Masjid, the more than
400-year-old mosque in Ayodhya, plunged India into socio-religious
turmoil. For Pakistan, this was an unmissable chance to wade into India’s
internal politics.
Lambah had to take a call on whether to make an appearance at
a National Day reception of Finland later that evening. He decided to
stick to his normal routine, and soon became the centre of attraction at
the gathering, with multiple Pakistani guests accosting him to voice their
disapproval at the demolition of the mosque. The secretary general of the
Pakistan foreign office was happily directing all Pakistani journalists to
 f roze n t rus t 235

the Indian high commissioner. Lambah’s response to mediapersons was

brief—he was extremely unhappy at what had happened, was in principle
against any place of worship being a target of attack; but Indian democracy
was strong enough to bear such shocks.15
Soon, Nawaz Sharif issued a statement expressing ‘[a] deep sense of
shock and horror’16 at the Ayodhya developments. In Karachi, stones were
thrown at Indian residences at Shivaji Court. Lambah was summoned
to the foreign office the next day to be handed over an aide-memoire,
protesting the demolition, on the basis of the ‘Inter-Dominion agreement
of August 1947, and the Nehru-Liaquat pact of 1950’. Lambah found
these references odd, since Pakistan itself had disowned the 1950 pact in
1974; in the wake of the Simla Agreement and in the immediate context
of communal riots in Delhi’s Sadar Bazar, Pakistan’s foreign minister Aziz
Ahmed had said that such issues would be treated as internal matters.
Pakistan had then rejected the stake the 1950 bilateral pact gave both
countries in the other’s minority dealings.
But angry and violent reactions continued in Pakistan. Security became
a priority for the Indian mission, even as an Indian Airlines office in
Lahore was torched. Pakistan’s cabinet met after Lambah’s meeting to
declare 8 December a day of mourning and protest. On the streets, violence
grew. Minorities in Pakistan faced the (mostly orchestrated) wrath of the
mobs; 120 temples were eventually demolished, apart from gurdwaras
and churches.
A demand arose within ruling circles to declare the Indian high
commissioner persona non grata, to express Pakistan’s anger to the world.
The issue was not debated publicly, since the proposal was overruled by
Nawaz Sharif, pointing out that the international repercussions on Pakistan
of such a move would be negative. Also, Sharif did not want Lambah’s
tenure to end given their personal relationship. Lambah learnt of these
developments only later, when a cabinet minister confided in him.17
Most worryingly for Lambah, a mob attacked and ransacked the consul
general’s residence in Karachi. Part of the residence of Consular General
Rajiv Dogra was burnt,18 though Dogra’s family managed to escape disaster
by hiding in a room. Lambah was on the phone with the traumatized wife
of the CG, Meenakshi, while the ransacking was ongoing. Gallingly, the
house was attacked in the presence of the security services.19
A SAARC summit scheduled in Dhaka in December had to be
postponed. Pakistan was now demanding that the ‘martyred’ Babri Masjid
must be reconstructed exactly on the site it had stood on for more than
400 years. Pakistan also started pushing India to cut down its diplomatic
operations in Karachi; the Indian consulate there was often described as
a ‘nest of spies’, for the excellent access it had with multiple actors in
Sindh society. On 29 December, India issued a statement warning that any
236 ange r m anage m e nt

reduction of staff in Karachi would affect the Muhajir community. On 31

December, Pakistan asked India to scale back the Karachi consulate. India
protested that it needed the manpower to promote people-to-people links,
to continue issuing 700 visas every day. That was precisely the problem.
Pakistan icily pointed out that while there were sixty-four diplomats in
Karachi, Pakistan’s consulate in Mumbai housed only two diplomats and
one official. Foreign Secretary Shahryar Khan, a votary for better ties with
India, had instructions to ask High Commissioner Lambah to immediately
cut down staff in Karachi from sixty-four to twenty. Lambah called up
CG Rajiv Dogra to start the exercise.

EXPLOSIONS IN BOMBAY
The destruction of the Babri Masjid in December 1992 had given ready
cause to multiple militant outfits within and without India, leading to
an orgy of violence. In December 1992 and January 1993, India was
convulsed by rioting across the nation with Bombay particularly affected.
A commission later estimated that 900 had died and over 2,000 had been
injured in the two months of violence. On 12 March 1993, Bombay was
shaken by a series of 12 terrorist bombings that resulted in 257 fatalities
and 1,400 injuries.20 The bombings were engineered by the Dubai-based
gangster, Dawood Ibrahim, who became a close ally of the ISI. Dawood,
boss of a crime syndicate, D-Company, carried out the bombings through
his henchmen Tiger Memon and Yakub Memon. Both escaped to Pakistan
via Dubai.
Pakistan’s motives and involvement were soon clear to Indian
investigators, as some of the conspirators arrested admitted to being trained
in Pakistan.21 India also had some advance warning. Lambah had picked
up information from a source and sent a report from Islamabad a fortnight
before the attack, warning of impending ‘disaster in Bombay’. Lambah was
surprised that instead of taking action, authorities in India only wanted
to know the source of the envoy’s information. The news of the advance
warning leaked into the media and Lambah on his next visit to Delhi
expressed his ‘anguish’ to the prime minister on these developments.
In April, the postponed SAARC summit was held in Dhaka; Sharif
and Rao had another ritual meeting but the army effectively fired Sharif
soon after his return. Ostensibly, Pakistan’s president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan,
dismissed Nawaz Sharif on the basis of corruption charges against him and
his party Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI). Soon after, on 16 May, Lambah
met with the caretaker prime minister, Balak Sher Mazari, who admitted
to him that six members of the Memon family had arrived at Karachi
on 17 March, but had thereafter disappeared.22 India did subsequently (in
September 1993) provide detailed evidence on the D-Company through a
note verbale, but Pakistan, as would become the norm for terrorism cases,
 f roze n t rus t 237

did little by way of investigation. Three decades later, Dawood Ibrahim

continues to be a guest of the Pakistan ISI in Karachi. India’s foreign
minister S. Jaishankar would comment at the UN in 2023 about terrorists
granted safe haven in Pakistan, that the crime syndicate responsible for
the 1993 Bombay blasts was ‘not just given state protection, but enjoying
five-star hospitality’.23
Meanwhile, in Islamabad, Sharif was temporarily restored to his job
on 26 May, only to be fired again, in a formula where the army chief
got rid of both the president and the prime minister, announcing fresh
elections in October 1993.

AN INALIENABLE PART
North of Bombay, militancy supported by Pakistan was deepening in
Kashmir. The All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) was formed in 1993
to raise the cause of Kashmir’s self-determination. On the violent end of the
spectrum, another militant group, Harkat ul-Ansar (now known as Harkat
ul-Mujahideen)24, emerged in 1993 from a combination of organizations
that had been dedicated to the Afghan jihad, but now could be repurposed
for Kashmir.25
Speaking from the ramparts of the Red Fort on 15 August, PM
Narasimha Rao said that Pakistan was ‘fuelling Muslim militancy and a
guerrilla campaign in an integral and inalienable part of India’.26 Pakistan’s
caretaker foreign minister, Abdul Sattar, decided not to let Rao’s assertions
go unchallenged. Sattar said that the assertions on Kashmir by the Indian
prime minister amounted to ‘claiming ownership of robbed goods’. India’s
spokesman countered that ‘if India claiming Kashmir was robbery, then
Pakistan’s occupation of one-third of the state was nothing less than armed
dacoity’.27 Such rhetorical flourishes for public consumption became par
for the course whenever Kashmir was debated by the neighbours.
As Pakistan’s assiduous global campaign on Kashmir succeeded, the
region became an internationally recognized hotspot, at least for the US.
President Clinton referred to Kashmir in his UN address in September
as ‘a trouble spot where bloody ethnic religious war rages’. In October,
the US assistant secretary of state, Robin Raphel, made a statement that
flustered India, ‘We view Kashmir as a disputed territory, and that means
we do not recognise the instrument of accession as meaning that Kashmir
is forevermore an integral part of India.’28 This seemed like a shift in the
considered US position that called for bilateral dialogue.
Soon after making the statement Raphel visited Pakistan. Raphel had
lost her husband, the US envoy Arnold Raphel, in the plane crash that
killed Zia in 1988, and was seen in India to have a soft corner for Pakistan.
On the day of her arrival, US Ambassador John Monjo hosted a dinner
to which Lambah was invited. Raphel requested a pre-dinner chat with
238 ange r m anage m e nt

the Indian high commissioner, in which she insisted that she had been
misquoted. Lambah advised her to make that statement publicly, since
her original statement was public too. Raphel agreed but appeared restless
during the dinner. She delivered a formal speech and raised a toast to India,
instead of Pakistan, needing to hastily correct herself. The slip prompted
the chief guest, Pakistan’s interior minister, Major General Naseerullah
Babar, to joke that this was undoubtedly the doing of the Indian high
commissioner, who was talking to her before she entered the dining room.
By the end of 1993, after a strong pushback from India, the US line had
been corrected, and Robin Raphel had back-pedalled to say that it was
time to move forward on Kashmir, ‘not to look at past prescriptions’.29
On 18 October 1993, Benazir Bhutto was back in the saddle as prime
minister, having won the elections with the blessings of the army. This time
around, she was eager not to repeat the mistakes that had estranged her
from the army establishment. She took a tougher position on Kashmir, in
step with the unrest in the valley.

GENEVA BATTLES
With Benazir getting more hawkish on Kashmir, a chill gripped the
relationship. Despite the pessimism, Mani Dixit and Shahryar Khan met in
Islamabad in early January 1994, for a foreign secretary-level dialogue—
the seventh edition of the 1990s. India had agreed to discuss ‘all issues’,
including Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian delegation was flown by special
aircraft to Karachi, to call on Benazir, who on the day of their arrival, 5
January, was observing the 66th birth anniversary of her father, Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto. Recognizing the ‘basic divergence’ in positions on Kashmir, the
two sides agreed to make ‘sincere efforts to resolve the problem’. When the
Indian delegation flew back from Islamabad, Lambah learnt that Pakistani
officials had told their media that there would be no further talks at the
foreign secretary level ‘till there were meaningful discussions on Kashmir’.
Lambah passed this message onto Dixit in Delhi so he could keep this
in mind while briefing media in India. A few days later, Pakistan’s new
foreign minister, Sardar Asif Ali, told the media in Tashkent that there was
a danger of a ‘fourth war in South Asia’ that could go nuclear. Benazir, on
her part, stepped up the verbal campaign on 23 January, saying, ‘We do
not want to give a wrong signal to the Kashmiris by holding meaningless
talks with India.’ She then prepared to take the battle to a human rights
conference in Geneva that was scheduled in April. Lambah observed later
that she had underestimated Narasimha Rao.
Lambah was constantly looking for newer initiatives to give Pakistan a
more realistic assessment of India’s thinking and its own limitations. Before
the foreign secretary-level talks, he suggested to Prime Minister Rao that
India should spell out its views clearly in black and white on five or six key
 f roze n t rus t 239

issues. The prime minister readily approved the proposal; on 24 January,

India, handed over six ‘non-papers’,30 which were concrete but informal
proposals on the live bilateral issues of the day: Siachen; the disputed Sir
Creek estuary on the Gujarat border; the Tulbul navigation project in
J&K; a draft agreement on maintenance of peace and tranquillity along the
LoC; confidence-building measures; and revival of the India–Pakistan joint
commission. Lambah pointed out that the package of CBMs included two
critical nuclear measures: a proposal to expand the existing agreement on
not attacking nuclear facilities to include population centres and economic
targets; and an undertaking on no first use of nuclear capability against
the other. These were significant and substantive proposals that emphasized
a principle of constructive bilateralism, suggesting that the two countries
could engage deeply and solve bilateral problems without recruiting third
parties.
Not surprisingly, Pakistan, in its response, pushed Kashmir back on
centre stage. On 9 February, Pakistan proffered two non-papers of its own:
on the modalities of holding a plebiscite in J&K; and measures required
to create a propitious climate for talks on the J&K dispute. On Siachen,
Pakistan commented that there was no understanding in the sixth round in
1992, but only an agreement in the fifth round in 1989, and that Pakistan
did not agree on any authentication of the ground positions held by the
two sides in Siachen. Pakistan’s message was clear: discussions should
focus only on J&K.
Rao was troubled by Pakistan’s new activism on Kashmir, particularly
its attempt to internationalize the issue and bring it to the UN Human
Rights Commission. With the internal security challenges in the state and
Pakistan’s successful global campaign to shape a new narrative, Rao did not
like the way his minority government was being perceived in its handling
of the issue, domestically and externally in the new unipolar world. Taking
forward the idea of clearly stating India’s position on all issues, Rao decided
to take India’s parliament into confidence to send a ringing domestic and
international message, apart from making matters clear to Pakistan. For
the first time since Independence, a resolution passed by India’s parliament
affirmed that POK was part of India. With masterly political finesse, Rao
had the resolution adopted in both houses of Indian parliament on 22
February 1994. The text emphasized that the entire state of Jammu and
Kashmir ‘has been, is, and shall always be an integral part of India’. It
also demanded that ‘Pakistan must vacate the areas of the Indian state
of Jammu and Kashmir, which they have occupied through aggression.’
To Lambah, watching events in Islamabad, the resolution responded
well to Pakistan’s slogan that Kashmir was the ‘unfinished business of
partition’. Lambah noted admiringly that Rao never bragged about this
resolution because he knew the message was evident in the fact of its
240 ange r m anage m e nt

passing. When Pakistan protested the resolution, Lambah pointed out to

his hosts that India was only responding to, and effectively acknowledging,
Pakistan’s position on the Kashmir issue.
Five days after the resolution claiming POK was passed in India’s
parliament, Pakistan tabled a resolution at the UN Human Rights
Commission in Geneva through the OIC condemning India for human
rights violations in J&K. This presented an opportunity to Rao to display
his extraordinary diplomatic skills and those of his diplomats on the ground.
Riding on the back of the parliamentary resolution asserting India’s claim
to the areas under Pakistan’s occupation, Rao made several inspired moves,
including the choice of Opposition leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee to make
the Indian case at the UN.
From Islamabad, Lambah was reporting that Pakistan was choosing
its delegation to Geneva with great care. It was betting on UN experts
within the system rather than on political heavyweights. Iqbal Akhund,
Benazir’s trusted adviser, and an expert on the UN system, became the leader
of Pakistan’s delegation. Several multi-lateralists were roped in, including
Munir Akram, later Pakistan’s permanent representative to the UN in
Geneva and New York, apart from India experts like Shafqat Kakakhel. A
competent permanent representative in Geneva, Ahmed Kamal, coordinated
the exercise. Neelam Sabherwal, India’s deputy permanent representative
in Geneva, reported that Pakistan’s delegation had fewer generals and
more foot soldiers.31
India seemed to be doing the opposite, packing its delegation with
generals. At its peak, India’s delegation had twenty to twenty-five high-level
delegates for the month-long HR council meetings, arriving from Delhi, New
York, and other missions. The list included Finance Minister Manmohan
Singh, Opposition leader Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the BJP foreign policy
chief Brajesh Mishra, minister of state Salman Khurshid, former Congress
minister Natwar Singh, former J&K chief minister Farooq Abdullah, high
commissioner from London L. M. Singhvi, the permanent representative
to the UN in New York Hamid Ansari, and the UN team from Delhi, led
by MEA Secretary Vinod Grover, and UN Division chief Prakash Shah.
Fortuitously, the diplomat coordinating this exercise was India’s permanent
representative to the UN in Geneva, Satish Chandra, an old Pakistan hand.
Chandra had his hands full, managing the prima donnas of the Indian
team, his advice about not having too many bigwigs having been shot
down by a nervous Delhi, keen to deploy all its strength for this mission.
His Geneva team was preparing the statements and lobbying strategy for
interactions with other delegations to the council in Geneva. The VIPs
were interacting with other delegates, but Chandra was disappointed that
they were not striking a good rapport with the other official delegates.
Chandra’s team needed to selectively deploy the big guns. Finance
 f roze n t rus t 241

Minister Manmohan Singh and leader of Opposition Vajpayee would

add gravitas from the podium. The mercurial Farooq Abdullah, with his
histrionic talents, could be used in ‘short bursts’, an effective counter to
the blistering attack from Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto launched from
the podium.
Chandra recalled a bilateral lunch with a German delegation which he
set up with Khurshid and Natwar Singh. India was relentlessly grilled on
its human rights record, putting Khurshid and Chandra on the defensive.
Singh remained silent, until Chandra suggested towards the end of the lunch
that he should respond. After an ‘inordinately lengthy pause’, Natwar said
he saw no reason to engage on issues related to human rights with the
representatives of the nation responsible for millions of deaths with a record
in the matter that was amongst the most horrific. Singh’s caustic comments
abruptly ended the discussion, which then moved to more neutral matters.
When Finance Minister Manmohan Singh landed in Geneva, he was
told that Benazir had addressed the council from the podium with a
piercing diatribe against India. Dr Singh insisted on responding himself.
Since technically, this privilege was accorded not to the head of a delegation
but to an ‘eminent person’, this meant that Singh had to be re-designated
as a ‘statesman’ and could not lead the delegation. That also meant that
India had to choose another leader for its delegation. Chandra advised the
ministry that the next most senior person was the leader of the Opposition,
Vajpayee, who should be designated the delegation leader. He received
clearance within twenty-four hours from Delhi. Prime Minister Rao had
an excellent equation with Vajpayee and had possibly planned on this
approach anyway.
Chandra had experienced the dress rehearsal for this drama the previous
year. When Pakistan had made a similar move at the 1993 council meeting,
India had successfully countered the gambit through intense diplomacy. But
as the stakes were higher in 1994, both sides had pulled out the heavy
artillery. Policymakers were thinking of worst-case scenarios. A resolution
passed at the UN criticizing India for its role in Kashmir, would have,
regardless of the exact text, encouraged militancy in Kashmir. Its optics
would have weakened the government domestically. The PMO in India
was prepared to have any draft resolution watered down to a ‘chairman’s
statement’ on Kashmir. Chandra’s advice however was to fight it out and
not compromise in this winnable battle; to defeat any resolution in a vote.
On the eve of the debate on the resolution, India’s team assessed that
they would win a ‘no action motion’ on the resolution by a margin of
7–4, with all others abstaining in a house of fifty-three. The countries still
counted in the Pakistan camp included Iran, Libya, and Syria. The position
of many others remained undefined or undisclosed. This situation needed
a relentless diplomatic effort in Geneva, in Delhi, and in various country
242 ange r m anage m e nt

capitals through India’s heads of mission, to persuade member states of

the council to vote in favour of India or to abstain. Iran’s vote became
critical in the overall scheme of things.32
Prime Minister Rao was closely following the Geneva story. He had been
hearing disturbing reports on the uncertain levels of support for India. He
called a meeting at his residence on 6 March, to take stock of the situation.
Foreign Secretary Krishnan Srinivasan presented his ministry’s assessment
that seven countries would side with India and four with Pakistan, with
the rest abstaining. But Rao was ‘shaky’ and looking for some alternative
way out. He was worried that ‘a loss in Geneva would result in his loss
in Delhi’. An additional concern, as has been noted, was that a loss in
Geneva, would fuel the fire and encourage militancy in Kashmir. When
Srinivasan assured Rao that the numbers were on the Indian side, ‘he
looked dubious, but mercifully allowed matters to take their own course’.33
As the debate progressed in Geneva, Lambah reported from Islamabad
that key members of the OIC—Indonesia, Libya, and Syria—might not
finally support Pakistan. As their tally of votes of support dwindled,
the Pakistani delegation sought approval from Islamabad to amend the
resolution by dropping the demand of a fact-finding mission being sent
to J&K. This was a familiar multilateral trick—keep diluting formulations
to get broader support, to focus on the optics of a successful resolution
rather than the substance. Lambah reported that this verbal request was
rejected in Islamabad since any further dilution would have created more
trouble for Benazir domestically.
The Iran vote was critical. Rao decided to send a special envoy to
Tehran to clinch Iranian support. Foreign Minister Dinesh Singh, who was
ailing by this time, volunteered to undertake this mission. Singh carried a
special letter from Rao for President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who had
received Rao in 1993 as the first non-Muslim leader to address the Iranian
Majlis.34 Iranian foreign minister Ali Akbar Velayati, received Singh and
on learning of the purpose of his visit, suggested that he may also want
to meet the Chinese foreign minister who was coincidently visiting Tehran
on the same days. The Iranian president gave Singh no assurance during
their meeting, but said that the matter would be carefully considered. Singh
also managed to meet his Chinese counterpart for a ‘positive’ meeting. As
Singh departed Tehran, Foreign Minister Velayati informed him that the
president had instructed him to say that India’s interests ‘would be kept
in mind’.35
The Iran visit, Dinesh Singh’s last diplomatic foray before he passed
away, had a significant impact in Geneva. Chandra had been working
on the Iranian ambassador, Cyrus Nasseri. The Iranian diplomat took
the floor on the final morning of discussions on 9 March and asked for
a ‘deferral’ of the resolution, when Pakistan was still hopeful of pushing
 f roze n t rus t 243

it through. This move puzzled India’s representative, Prakash Shah, who

asked for a procedural clarification. Brajesh Mishra, who had an inkling
of the Iranian development, tapped Shah on the shoulder and asked him
to accept the deferral proposal.36
An anxious PMO in Delhi had instructed the teams in Geneva to
accept any deals to ensure that the proposed resolution did not go through.
Before the afternoon session resumed, the Chinese ambassador approached
the Indian delegation to say that he had been in touch with the Iranian
ambassador and was going to ask Pakistan to withdraw the resolution.
At another venue, India voted in favour of China as a quid pro quo. A
seminar on Tibet proposed by an Indian activist George Fernandes was
shelved. The Chinese noted these developments.37
When the session reconvened, Iqbal Akhund announced the withdrawal
of the Pakistan resolution.
India’s success was celebrated by a jubilant media, bolstering PM
Narasimha Rao’s image as a master tactician and unifier. Rao had, with
his choice of Vajpayee to lead the Indian delegation, ensured non-partisan
support not just for India’s position on J&K, but also for his own minority
government. In the annals of Indian diplomacy, this game plan for success
at the UN became a story for Indian diplomats to celebrate and to learn
from.

GOODBYE KARACHI
Pinak Chakravarty had replaced Rajiv Dogra as India’s consul general in
Karachi in September 1994. Chakravarty was presiding over a depleted
mission that, as we have seen, his hosts had called a ‘nest of spies’. The
success of the mission’s outreach, and visa policy had proven to be its
undoing. Both Chakravarty and New Delhi’s decision-makers had a strong
suspicion that he would need to shut down the consulate in Karachi,
though it had been unclear when that would happen. Chakravarty received
a phone call from High Commissioner Lambah one afternoon in January
1995 saying they had ten days to close down the Karachi consulate and
that all staff there had been declared persona non grata. Lambah had been
summoned to the foreign office that morning and given this ultimatum.
One of the reasons cited for the decision was that Pakistan’s Bombay
consulate had not been allotted the use of Jinnah House in Bombay. The
other ostensible factor was the Pakistani allegation that India was behind
the rising violence in Karachi. In reality, Pakistan wanted to get rid of the
Indian diplomatic post in Karachi because it felt that India was getting
more out of Karachi than Pakistan out of Bombay. High Commissioner
Lambah sent political counsellor G. Parthasarathy to Karachi to help in the
winding down of the post. Chakravarty locked up the Karachi consulate
towards the end of January 1995, thus ending an important chapter in
244 ange r m anage m e nt

India’s diplomatic history in Pakistan.

Even as the formal dialogue between the countries froze with the chill
in the relationship, the ‘Track II’ conversations between civil societies picked
up steam. The Pakistan India People’s Forum (PPIF) held a meeting in Delhi
in February, while the ninth round of the Neemrana dialogue intensified
another non-official track of exchange. Even though participants often
used talking points procured from officials, the conversations broadened
the base of bilateral ties.38
Kashmir continued to be on the boil. In May 1995, terrorists returning
from Kashmir after successful attacks were glorified in Pakistan, as for
instance, Mast Gul, who led the team that razed the Sufi Charar-e-Sharief
shrine in Kashmir to the ground. Indian diplomats’ protests were brushed
off in Pakistan.
Benazir Bhutto, who thought of Narasimha Rao as a poor successor
to Rajiv, decided not to attend the 8th SAARC summit in New Delhi in
June 1995. She sent Pakistan’s president, Farooq Leghari, instead, under
the protocol excuse that the summit could have either heads of state
or government. Ironically, the approach seemed to backfire on her as
his participation just added to Leghari’s perception of his position as a
constitutionally autonomous one. He would go on to dismiss Benazir a
little over a year later, in November 1996, at the prodding of the army.
Lambah’s own relationship with Pakistan’s prime minister was strained.
After becoming prime minister, she had not met him for some time since
she was suspicious of Lambah’s strong association with her political rival
and predecessor, Nawaz Sharif. On one occasion, Lambah raised this issue
with Prime Minister Rao, even suggesting he appoint someone else as high
commissioner to ensure better access to Pakistan’s PM. Rao wisely dismissed
the notion, pointing out, ‘You are our High Commissioner, not theirs.’39
To Lambah’s surprise, when he asked for a farewell call on the PM
on the eve of his departure in July 1995, Benazir not just granted one
but also hosted a lunch for him after the meeting. Lambah noted that this
was the first time any Pakistan prime minister had ever hosted a meal for
a departing Indian envoy. After the lunch, Benazir ‘suddenly dropped a
bombshell’ when she asked Lambah: why don’t you send the missile man
to us? She was referring to Abdul Kalam, then a missile scientist, and later
the president of India. Given the implicit assumption of Pakistan’s claim
on India’s Muslim citizens, a shocked Lambah asked the PM if she was
serious, because he would not report this part of the conversation back
at home. He did give her a gentle lecture on Muslims in India, pointing
out that they were held in high esteem, and occupied high positions in the
country, unlike in her home province of Sindh, where the ‘Mohajir Muslims,
who came from India (were) still treated as second-class citizens.’ Benazir
quickly changed the subject. Lambah mentioned this conversation verbally
 f roze n t rus t 245

when he called on PM Rao, who told him he had done the right thing.40
Lambah also had a farewell lunch in July with Nawaz Sharif, the
leader of the Opposition, at his Murree house, where the top leadership
of Sharif’s party was in attendance. Sharif told Lambah that he would
like to see him at his swearing in ceremony when he was appointed prime
minister again.41 Clearly, Nawaz knew something Lambah did not, since
he would be back in the saddle within eight months of that lunch.
X
Satish Chandra walked in as the new high commissioner of India in
Pakistan in August 1995 with bilateral relations at a low. Apart from
being a Pakistan expert in the ministry, Chandra was born in Lahore, and
spoke some Saraiki, the language of his parents who came from Multan,
apart from Urdu and Punjabi. As an old Pakistan hand, Chandra had
little illusion about the scope for reversing the downturn of relations. In
the aviary of Indian diplomats serving in Pakistan, if Lambah was a dove,
Chandra was a distinct hawk. The two officers were close friends, but
developed different prescriptions for dealing with Pakistan.
Chandra thought not much had changed since he was last posted
in Karachi on the eve of the 1971 war: ‘There was the same hostility
to India, the same ISI surveillance and harassment of our diplomats’, he
recalled in his 2023 memoir.42 Chandra’s first cable home assessed that
while the military was not directly ruling the country, civilian rule was
merely a façade. Frustrated by the harassment his teams faced, Chandra
tried to persuade the Indian government to retaliate in equal measure, and
even personally took up this matter with Prime Minister Rao. The prime
minister scoffed at the idea and told his envoy that India could not stoop
to any such tit-for-tat retaliation. This posture would change only in the
twenty-first century.
Chandra felt the frosty relationship and the absence of a dialogue
could be attributed to terrorism in Kashmir and to the fact that Pakistan
had not yet reconciled itself to its diplomatic failure in Geneva and other
UN fora. He sensed that there was little love lost between the two prime
ministers. In fact, when Chandra, on Lambah’s recommendation, suggested
to Rao that he consider the possibility of meeting Benazir at the 1995
NAM summit, Rao appeared cold to the idea. On her part, Benazir later
lamented that she was unable to have the same sort of cordial relationship
with Rao that she had with Rajiv. Chandra assessed that part of the
problem was the feudal mindset of Benazir; she identified herself more
with the Nehru–Gandhi family and saw Rao as a ‘commoner’.43
Soon after Chandra had presented his credentials to President Farooq
Leghari, he got a rude reminder of the violence that had gripped Pakistan’s
capital in the late 1990s. One morning around 9.30 a.m., a vehicle laden
246 ange r m anage m e nt

with a tonne of explosives was detonated at the gate of the Egyptian

embassy, just 500 yards from the Indian high commission. Around fifteen
people were killed and more than eighty injured. With the intensity of
the blast, some papers flew off Chandra’s desk, and some glass panes
cracked. The blast was directed against the Egyptian state, but underlined
the reality that after the Soviets were expelled from Afghanistan, militant
outfits, some of them reared by the ISI, had a free run within Pakistan,
even in the bubble of Islamabad’s diplomatic districts.

THE MOST FAVOURED NATION

When a new army chief, General Jahangir Karamat, took over in January
1996, High Commissioner Chandra sought an appointment with him
through the ministry of foreign affairs, as was the norm in those days. The
foreign office sat on the request, but Chandra bumped into the chief at
an Islamabad wedding. Karamat was cordial and invited Chandra to his
office. Soon, Chandra was in Rawalpindi, sitting across Pakistan’s most
powerful person. Karamat, perhaps Pakistan’s most straightforward army
chief, was correct and proper through the meeting. When Chandra invited
the general to India, Karamat said that the decision would rest with Prime
Minister Benazir Bhutto. He did give the high commissioner a telephone
number to call if he was ‘ever in any trouble’.
Benazir, in her second term, had pretty much given up on India, but
allowed herself to be persuaded by the British to try an initiative to engage
Narasimha Rao in some tea diplomacy. Even though India was in election
mode and Rao was not about to get a second term from the Congress
Party, British prime minister John Major addressed a letter to Rao, which
the UK high commissioner delivered personally. The British high commission
reported to London:
Rao read the passage about Benazir Bhutto carefully twice. Then
he said that… ‘we had better forget about cups of tea until after
the Indian elections. Such suggestions might be useful in due course,
though it was difficult to drink tea in secret.’ He hoped that in time he
would be able to dispense with the intervention of friends and talk to
Benazir Bhutto direct. He did not doubt her good intentions, but she
was immature and was not mistress in her own house. There was no
short-cut to summit level dialogue.44
The April elections in India produced a surprising result. The Bhartiya
Janata Party led by Vajpayee emerged as the single largest party in
parliament, leaving Indian president Shankar Dayal Sharma no choice but
to invite Vajpayee to form the government. In May, Vajpayee was sworn
in as prime minister of a government that lasted thirteen days, since the
BJP failed to cobble together an alliance to form the government. On 1
 f roze n t rus t 247

June, Vajpayee was replaced by another PM, H. D. Deve Gowda, who

had been the chief minister of the southern state of Karnataka. This shaky
coalition government wanted to take no foreign policy risks even though
the Pakistan policy remained in the steady hands of Foreign Minister I. K.
Gujral.
The Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in September 1996 was met with
jubilation in Pakistan’s security apparatus, which celebrated the success of
its protégés. The Afghan mujahideen, incubated and trained by Pakistan’s
ISI with CIA funding, had now grown up and morphed into the Taliban, to
take formal control of Afghanistan. Pakistan was among the first countries
to recognize the brutal regime. Pakistan was openly claiming ownership
of the Taliban and the ISI was commended for that success. An Indian
diplomat in Islamabad recalled that in 1996, when India was trying to
locate an Indian woman who had eloped with a foreign national into
Afghanistan, the ISI offered to help, but wanted Masood Azhar, then in
an Indian jail, and later head of the militant outfit Jaish-e-Mohammed,
to be released and sent to Pakistan as a quid pro quo.45
X
Trade between India and Pakistan had always been a political matter, even
though it began organically enough with trade agreements periodically
signed, in 1957 and in 1975. Trade exchanges were, of course, interrupted
by the wars of 1965 and 1971. Trade diplomacy began in earnest when
India joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 1995 and then as
an instrument of bilateral diplomacy decided to accord Pakistan the most
favoured nation status in 1996 for a non-discriminatory trade regime, in
the expectation that the act would be reciprocated and the two countries
could create some positive equities through trade and its lobbies. Under
WTO norms, member countries were mandated to give this status to
each other on a reciprocal basis. However, Pakistan continued to block
reciprocal benefits to India for fear of its markets being flooded by Indian
goods, and in part since it misinterpreted in its political system the idea of
a most favoured nation, pasandeeda tareen mulk, in Urdu. More crucially,
official circles continued to believe that trade was more in the interest of
India, and worse, a ruse to dilute the primacy of the Kashmir issue. One
outcome of the MFN status was that ‘there was more Indian whiskey
available in Pakistani homes in Karachi than we could find here in India’.46
As global trade evolved, MFN treatment and its withdrawal would
become political instruments over the years. For India, as its economy
grew, matters of trade and transit would become a confidence-building
tool when it came to its bilateral ties with Pakistan—these would also
be of relevance when it came to the issue of access to Afghanistan and
Central Asia. Where Pakistan’s much smaller economy was concerned,
248 ange r m anage m e nt

enhanced trade with India could have provided significant economic benefits
especially in the sectors of textiles and pharmaceuticals. The Pakistani deep
state looked at the matter through another lens: it remained suspicious of
growing bilateral trade and felt it was an instrument wielded by India to
dilute the primacy of the core issue of Kashmir.
Benazir’s government was running out of luck by the end of the year. She
was also visited by personal tragedy. Tensions had grown between Benazir’s
brother, Murtaza, and husband, Zardari. Murtaza was killed, apparently
by the police, in Karachi on 20 September. In November, President Farooq
Leghari, a former associate of Benazir, dismissed her government with a
midnight proclamation that depicted her administration as incompetent,
corrupt, and having committed several illegal acts. Zardari, whom the
establishment had portrayed as ‘Mister Ten Percent’, enriching himself from
kickbacks on government contracts, was arrested. The president called for
new elections in February 1997. The military was not walking in this time,
but simply rotating its civilian puppets.
 19

TALKI NG OF EVERYTH I NG

W hen Nawaz Sharif was elected prime minister in February 1997

with a huge (but suspect) majority, the Pakistan Army remained
the dominant power centre. It had steadily increased its power and
influence since the first military coup in 1958. The military exercised an
unchallenged veto over most critical decisions affecting both foreign and
security policy and during the era of General Zia in the 1980s expanded
its reach into several areas of domestic politics as well, often pandering to
religious zealots in social policy. While civilian governments in Pakistan
had some transient significance, the military, the higher echelons of the civil
service, and the intelligence services were unquestionably the permanent
features of the deep state.
As always, a diplomatic door opened with the change in government.
Prime Minister Deve Gowda felicitated Nawaz Sharif in a letter and
proposed the early resumption of talks between the two countries. In his
reply, Pakistan’s PM proposed a foreign secretary-level meeting. Pakistan’s
foreign secretary, Najmuddin Shaikh, was in Delhi at the end of March,
to resume the dialogue after a gap of three years.
For High Commissioner Satish Chandra in Islamabad, a key challenge
was to try to resume and sustain the India–Pakistan dialogue process that
had stalled during Benazir’s second regime. Chandra had seen that foreign
secretary-level talks had continued from the mid-1980s till early 1994, as
almost a routine affair, with seven rounds taking place annually or every
second year. The sixth (August 1992) and seventh (January 1994) rounds
between Mani Dixit and Shahryar Khan had been particularly productive,
even though they had focused excessively on Kashmir. The long hiatus in
talks since then was attributed in Indian thinking to Pakistan’s interest
in projecting a breakdown in dialogue, so as to strengthen the case for
third–party involvement in Kashmir and to internationalize the issue. From
1996 onwards, the approach finding favour in India was to try and deal
with all bilateral issues in one ‘composite’ process. The six non-papers
initiated by Lambah in 1994 provided the basis for designing this new
framework for engagement.
Chandra became part of a four-month process of behind-the-scenes
‘talks about talks’ between the two sides. Four diplomats were involved in
this conversation: foreign secretaries Salman Haider of India and Najmuddin
Shaikh of Pakistan, along with high commissioners Satish Chandra and
Riaz Khokhar. The foursome first met at Hyderabad House in Delhi over
250 ange r m anage m e nt

lunch, ‘away from the glare of publicity’, to discuss the modus vivendi of
the reimagined dialogue. Pakistan was somewhat reluctant and insisted
on three preconditions: a written agenda; a visibly higher profile for
the Kashmir issue; and tying progress on any other issue with that on
Kashmir. In examining the preconditions, India was inclined to be more
open on discussing Kashmir, since it had in any case committed to do so
bilaterally under the Simla process. A written agenda was also something
India could live with, even though it deprived the process of flexibility for
each meeting. While the high profile for Kashmir could also be handled
‘tactically’, the sticking point was Pakistan’s demand of linking forward
movement on any issue to Kashmir. Within these constraints, the diplomats
worked constructively for a solution.
Meanwhile in April, political conditions for a dialogue became more
favourable. Inder Kumar Gujral found himself promoted from foreign
minister to prime minister, as India’s shaky coalition went through another
political convulsion. He met Nawaz Sharif in the Maldives in May 1997
for the SAARC summit. Both Punjabis born in Pakistan found a common
language and hit it off.
The foreign secretaries met again in Islamabad in June. They had
by now hammered out the basic framework for a composite dialogue
process. An agenda of eight items was agreed to: peace and security,
including confidence-building measures; Jammu and Kashmir; Siachen;
Wullar bridge project/Tulbul navigation project; Sir Creek; terrorism and
drug trafficking; economic and commercial cooperation; and promotion
of friendly exchanges in various fields.
The diplomats set up mechanisms including working groups to address
these issues ‘in an integrated manner’. The first two issues were to be
discussed by the foreign secretaries directly; they would also monitor and
coordinate the work of all the working groups. A joint statement issued
at the end of talks between the foreign secretaries spoke of discussing ‘all
outstanding issues of concern to both sides’1.
India was now not overly worried about a higher profile to the Kashmir
matter. It was no longer only about Pakistani demands, but clear Indian
asks had been added. Guided by the 1994 parliamentary resolution, India
was also asking for Pakistan to vacate the areas of Kashmir held by it,
apart from bringing an end to its export of terrorism.
Gujral was personally involved in fine-tuning India’s negotiation
strategy. Chandra, who interacted with the prime minister regularly, found
him not quite the unalloyed peacenik he was made out to be, but in fact
‘clear-headed and sagacious’ on Pakistan. His ‘Gujral doctrine’ (which called
for accommodating neighbours like Bangladesh, Bhutan, the Maldives,
Nepal, and Sri Lanka to the extent possible without insisting on reciprocity)
did not apply to Pakistan. While Gujral was able to sustain a warm and
 tal king of e ve ryt h i n g 251

cordial relationship with his fellow Punjabi and Pakistani counterpart,

Nawaz Sharif, he was no romantic on Pakistan. As evidence, Chandra cites
a couple of occasions when Gujral asked him if he should visit Pakistan;
when the envoy responded in the negative, Gujral readily concurred.
The next decade held out the promise of deploying the new mechanism
of a multi-track comprehensive dialogue. Jammu and Kashmir and terrorism
would be discussed as also nuclear matters and a host of other festering
issues. The hope was that a constructive engagement on these issues would
counter Pakistan’s Kashmir obsession, terrorism in the region, and five
decades of distrust. This was not to be.
 SECTION 6

1997–2007: NUCLEAR GAMES

 20

STRATEGI C PARI TY

T he 50th anniversary of Independence in August 1997 gave both

countries cause for some celebration at a time of relative truce. The
stars seemed favourably aligned for a bilateral breakthrough. Both prime
ministers appeared keen on improving ties, not least since they spoke the
same language, and had common roots in western Punjab: the forty-eight-
year-old Nawaz Sharif was born in Lahore and the seventy-eight-year-old
I. K. Gujral, a hundred miles north in Jhelum.
The Gujral–Sharif meeting in the Maldives for the SAARC summit
earlier in May had produced positive chemistry between the leaders, even
though their bureaucrats had found it hard to share the optimism. The guns
were not going silent on the LoC, violence in Kashmir had not stopped,
and officials were quibbling about operationalizing the innovative bilateral
comprehensive dialogue originated in June. Foreign secretaries Krishnan
Raghunath and Shamshad Ahmed met in Delhi on 18 September, only to
disagree on whether they would form a separate working group to discuss
the Kashmir issue or continue discussing it in parallel with other issues.
Even though the divergence in national trajectories was becoming more
apparent, some cautious optimism hung in the air. The takeaway from
the journeys of the two countries this far, for some observers, was that
while India’s democracy was robust and its economy was still to reap the
benefits of reform, Pakistan’s story was the obverse, with its economy less
fragile than its democracy.1
On 23 September, Sharif and Gujral met in New York to take their
conversation forward. While the leaders had developed an easy conviviality,
neither of them was stable enough politically to sustain the process. More
importantly, neither bureaucracy was persuaded of the wisdom of this
top-down rapprochement.
A week after the New York summit, Foreign Secretary Raghunath
summoned Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, Pakistan’s new high commissioner in New
Delhi. Qazi was a suave, high-flying diplomat, born to a prominent Balochi
Hazara father and an Irish mother. He was well-connected back home
and had landed in New Delhi that year after back-to-back ambassadorial
assignments in Russia and China. In the 9 p.m. meeting in South Block,
Raghunath registered a familiar complaint—Pakistan’s unprovoked artillery
firing the previous night at the LoC had caused civilian casualties on the
Indian side. This had happened, the foreign secretary reminded the envoy,
despite the prime ministers agreeing in New York to take joint steps to
256 ange r m anage m e nt

stop firing at the LoC and to ask the DGMOs to work out the modalities.
India had given political directions to its defence forces, following which
India’s DGMO spoke to his Pakistani counterpart, who said that he had
received no ‘instructions’ to stop the shooting. High Commissioner Satish
Chandra had got the same response from Pakistan’s foreign office when
he raised the issue. Raghunath pressed Qazi—it was really a question of
straightforward implementation of a bilateral understanding. He pointed
out that the New York meeting had ‘again renewed the spirit and personal
rapport which exist between the two prime ministers and once again
indicated their desire that steps be taken to improve the relationship’2.
Qazi said he would take this matter home and press his side. He was
true to his word.
The next day, the two prime ministers spoke over the phone and
reaffirmed their agreement that the guns would go silent on the LoC. But
a day later, ironically on the birthday of peace apostle Mahatma Gandhi,
Satish Chandra was summoned by Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Shamshad
Ahmad, in Islamabad, to be told of ceasefire violations by India. Unusually,
the two PMs spoke again on 4 October, this time agreeing to ‘ask the
army commanders’ to establish contact and stop the shelling. The guns
did go silent, but clearly, political decisions were taking time to percolate
to those manning the artillery; the episode demonstrated both the hostility
between the armies at the borders and their trigger-happy instincts, half
a century after Independence and a quarter century after the 1971 war.

HER MAJESTY WADES IN

Five decades after the Raj had departed the subcontinent, the British
leaders were again reminded how prickly former subjects could be to about
any British interference in their matters. In an amusing sideshow to the
India–Pakistan relationship, Queen Elizabeth visited both countries in
October, to celebrate fifty years of their Independence. During her visit, Her
Majesty received a rude reminder that the two former dominions of the
empire were still adversaries.
The Queen was visiting soon after Princess Diana’s wrenching funeral,
where British royalty was targeted for the ‘inadequacy of its grief’. The
Queen visited Pakistan first, and it was here that trouble started. Pakistani
journalists reported that Robin Cook, the Labour foreign secretary, said in
informal remarks that Britain would ‘take up the issue of Kashmir with
India’ and even that it could help mediate the conflict. These comments
sparked outrage in India. Prime Minister Gujral, who was in Egypt at the
time, countered angrily. Britain was a ‘third-rate power’, he told a gathering
of intellectuals in Cairo. Tony Blair’s government scrambled to retrieve
the situation. Cook said that he had been misquoted, and in response,
Gujral said he had been too. ‘The Queen is doing everything she can to
 s t rat e gic parit y 257

make India like her. But so far it does not seem to be working’, British
media reported.3
The prime ministers of India and Pakistan met in New York on the
sidelines of the UNGA and were soon hosted by the Queen in Edinburgh
for a Commonwealth summit in October 1997. They did make some
progress in clearing the path for a comprehensive dialogue between their
officials. Both in New York and in Edinburgh, when Nawaz Sharif tried
to widen the conversation, he seemed to be interrupted by his bureaucrats
to suggest that Kashmir should not be forgotten. They stymied the attempt
made by Sharif to discuss trade. Pakistan’s diplomats had neatly divided
issues into two boxes—trade or travel matters—of interest to India; and
the Kashmir issue—Pakistan’s chief concern.4
Nevertheless, the innovation of the eight-track comprehensive dialogue—
for officials to discuss all contentious issues on an equal footing—was
gradually gaining traction, as both countries demonstrated the political will
to normalize the relationship. Critics of this process on both sides were
however questioning its wisdom. The biggest problem for India was of
equating Pakistan’s terrorism with seven other factors, rather than asking
for its immediate end as a prequel to engagement, particularly after a
decade of proxy terror in Punjab and then in Kashmir. For Pakistan, it
spelt a dilution of the core Kashmir cause.
But the Gujral doctrine of good neighbourly relations, propelled by
the Gujral–Sharif bromance, did not get the chance to flower. Elections in
India in February-March 1998, now gave the mandate to a coalition led
by the BJP. This led to the beginning of the Vajpayee era in India, ending
two years of uncertainty that saw three prime ministers and several false
starts in the bilateral relationship.
As we saw, Prime Minister Vajpayee was no stranger to Pakistan,
having made a successful foray to the neighbouring country in 1978
as foreign minister and having grappled with the Pakistan issue in his
two-year ministerial tenure. He started his new term in March 1998—
technically the second, after his thirteen-day innings in 1996—as the
prime minister who would make critical security choices for India and
then defend them through his brand of reconciliation domestically and
engagement internationally.
Soon after Vajpayee’s inauguration, the comprehensive dialogue
mechanism went back into the freezer in the explosive summer of ‘98.
Strategies, plans, diplomacy—all had to be reimagined for nuclear times.

BIG BANGS
The first blast shook the Thar Desert. It was 3.45 in the afternoon on
Monday, 11 May 1998. The shock waves travelled speedily westward;
the news flashed in Pakistan within minutes. High Commissioner Satish
258 ange r m anage m e nt

Chandra caught them in Islamabad and braced himself for some heavy
turbulence.
Chandra was not entirely surprised. A couple of years earlier, when he
had dinner with Brajesh Mishra, then head of the BJP’s foreign policy cell,
the retired IFS officer casually mentioned to Chandra that if the BJP came
to power, India would certainly go in for nuclear tests. This was made
explicitly clear in the foreign policy section of the BJP election manifesto
of 1998, drafted by Mishra. But Chandra also picked up, quite by accident,
an advance signal of the test a couple of days before it happened. He
had been in Delhi the previous week, doing the rounds on ‘consultations’,
meeting members of the new government that had been sworn in on
19 March. One of Chandra’s last calls—scheduled in South Block on a
Friday—was on Mishra, now Prime Minister Vajpayee’s principal secretary.
Mishra appeared surprised to see Chandra in Delhi and instructed the
envoy to get back to Islamabad forthwith. Chandra guessed that nuclear
tests were round the corner.5
The Pokhran blasts were originally planned for April 1998, but India’s
president K. R. Narayanan was travelling to Latin America. Vajpayee, as
head of the government, met the head of state on 10 May to brief him
on the explosions planned for the next day. Vajpayee later told Mishra
that Narayanan, a thoughtful diplomat, teared up with joy when he heard
that this long-delayed step would finally be taken.6 The blast was no easy
decision for Vajpayee. He realized it was a dangerous gamble—India could
face global isolation, economic sanctions, and possibly a domestic political
backlash, even if it was the right choice for the country.
But Vajpayee was determined to take the nuclear leap. Soon after he
was sworn in as prime minister in his thirteen-day government in 1996,
Vajpayee had met with the outgoing prime minister, Narasimha Rao, and
scientists Abdul Kalam, and R. Chidambaran, so that ‘the smooth takeover
of such a very important programme can take place’. Rao had explained
the circumstances, including US pressure, which had obliged him to stay
his hand. Rao had, in fact, agreed to the tests in 1995, but American
satellites had picked up evidence of the activities around Pokhran and the
US ambassador showed the pictures to Rao. President Clinton also spoke
to him ‘in strong terms’ and he had buckled.7 Rao now told Vajpayee,
‘Samagri taiyar hai (the ingredients are ready). You can go ahead.’ Vajpayee
had then asked for the tests, but was himself compelled to reverse the
decision when he realized his government would not last.8
On 11 May, Vajpayee had waited, tense, in a control room in No. 5,
Race Course Road, a few steps away from his office in No. 7. The control
room had been rigged up with a direct communications hotline to the test
site in Pokhran. He was joined that afternoon by his colleagues in the
Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS)—L. K. Advani, George Fernandes,
 s t rat e gic parit y 259

Jaswant Singh, and Yashwant Sinha. The team of officials included Principal
Secretary Brajesh Mishra, Cabinet Secretary Prabhat Kumar, Foreign
Secretary Krishnan Raghunath, and Vajpayee’s private secretary, Shakti
Sinha. The men sat wordlessly around the dining table.9
At exactly 3.45 p.m., the scientists in Pokhran saw a blinding flash of
light on the three monitors they were watching. This told them that three
devices had detonated successfully in underground shafts. A few minutes
later, Abdul Kalam called the PMO control room. It was Brajesh Mishra who
picked up the phone, to hear an excited Kalam say, ‘Sir, we have done it.’
Mishra said, ‘God bless you,’ and announced to the room it was a success.
The effect, recalls Sinha, was ‘electric’. Joy and tears filled the room.
But Vajpayee’s face reflected a feeling of ‘sombre responsibility’. He had
argued for a nuclear test all through his political career, from right after
China had tested in 1964. Although he had written poetry about the pain
of Hiroshima, he had come to the conclusion that if India had to live
in peace in its neighbourhood, credible nuclear deterrence was essential.
He saw nuclear weapons as instruments for preventing war. Besides, both
Vajpayee and Mishra saw India’s destiny as a great power. The possession
of nuclear weapons was a minimum entry criterion to the club of powers.
Right after the test, Jaswant Singh and Mishra jointly dictated to Shakti
Sinha a statement which he typed himself. Vajpayee had wanted a short and
factual statement to create a sober narrative, devoid of triumphalism. Soon,
Vajpayee read out a bare press statement to hastily summoned mediapersons:
‘Today at 3:45 pm, India conducted three underground nuclear tests in the
Pokhran range. The tests conducted were with a fission device, a low yield
device, and a thermonuclear device.... These were contained explosions,
like the experiment conducted in 1974....’ Unlike Indira Gandhi, in 1974,
Vajpayee did not use the word ‘peaceful’ to describe the tests. A few years
later, Vajpayee gave credit to his predecessor Congress PM Narasimha Rao:
‘Rao told me that the bomb was ready. I only exploded it.’10
Nawaz Sharif was touring Central Asia when Foreign Secretary
Shamshad Ahmad told him of the tests. The civil servant advised Sharif
that he had no real choice but to order Pakistan to follow suit. It was no
secret that Pakistan’s covert nuclear programme initiated in the 1970s by
Bhutto, and pushed along by Zia in the 1980s (credible reports suggested
that Pakistan had even conducted its nuclear test in a Chinese location in
1982)11, had reached maturity in the 1990s, with nuclear weapons ready for
testing. India was expecting the Pakistan response soon. In fact, Lambah had
written in ‘a handing over note’ in 1982, when leaving Pakistan as deputy
chief of mission, that Pakistan ‘conceives its nuclear program to subserve
its strategic military interests, which would necessitate an explosion’.12
‘The Indians have gone crazy’, screamed Pakistani headlines after the
second set of explosions of Operation Shakti on 13 May, even as Vajpayee
260 ange r m anage m e nt

declared the day after: ‘India is now a nuclear weapon state.’ Sharif cut
short his visit for emergency meetings in Islamabad, where the army told
him they were ready to go ahead as soon as they had the order.
US secretary of state Madeleine Albright leaked to the New York Times
a secret letter from Vajpayee to Clinton, that pointed a finger north, to
China, as the primary driver of India’s decision to test. The letter said that
China had conducted overt nuclear tests on India’s border and that an
atmosphere of distrust prevailed due to ‘the unresolved border problem’.
China, the letter pointed out, had helped Pakistan become a ‘covert nuclear
weapon state’ making India a ‘victim of relentless terrorism and militancy’.
Mishra was furious at this breach of diplomatic faith by the Americans, in
leaking a confidential communication. He was relieved that it was Deputy
Secretary Strobe Talbott India was dealing with and not Albright herself.13
China, on its part, expressed outrage at being singled out at a time of
relative calm in bilateral ties.
Vajpayee explained the decision to India’s parliament:
India is now a nuclear weapon state. This is a reality that cannot
be denied. It is not a conferment that we seek; nor is it a status for
others to grant. It is an endowment to the nation by our scientists
and engineers.... Our strengthened capability adds to our sense of
responsibility. We do not intend to use these weapons for aggression
or for mounting threats against any country, these are weapons of
self-defence, to ensure that India is not subjected to nuclear threats or
coercion.14
But Pakistan was judging India’s capacity, not intent. US president Clinton
dangled an incentive package of F-16s and other goodies in front of Nawaz
Sharif to persuade him not to go in for his big bang.15 But the pressure on
Sharif from the army establishment and indeed, domestic public opinion,
was unbearable and it became increasingly clear that Pakistan would
respond with tests of their own soon.
Satish Chandra received a peculiar message in Islamabad on 27 May
at 11 p.m. Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad wanted him in his office
immediately. Chandra insisted it would take him at least an hour to
get there. That would be a fair rejoinder, Chandra thought, for another
pointless midnight summons; Pakistan’s foreign secretary would now need
to remain at work longer. Apart from some sadistic pleasure in keeping
his interlocutor waiting past midnight, Chandra was playing for time to
ensure that he could rouse a colleague and take him along. It was past
one in the morning when the Indian high commissioner and his deputy,
Sharat Sabharwal, landed at the foreign office. Ahmad and three or four
other Pakistani officers received the Indian duo. Ahmad said that Pakistan
had credible information that India was going to attack Pakistan’s nuclear
 s t rat e gic parit y 261

facilities. The attack would be mounted by F-16 aircraft stationed at the

Chennai airfield. In the event of such an attack, Shamshad added darkly, he
had instructions from his government to say that there would be ‘massive
retaliation with devastating consequences’.16 When the high commissioner
pointed out that India did not possess F-16 aircraft, Ahmad parried that
the aircraft could be Israeli. Chandra asked if the foreign secretary was
referring to any of the nuclear installations and facilities included in the
list given by Pakistan at the beginning of every year17, Ahmad mumbled
in response that he was referring to ‘other’ facilities. To Chandra, the
brief meeting was relatively relaxed; he sensed no ‘air of tension’, which
should have been palpable if Pakistan was ‘genuinely apprehensive of an
imminent Indian attack’.
Chandra and Sabharwal went straight to the high commission to report
their midnight meeting to headquarters. When he called Delhi on a secure
line to discuss this démarche, Chandra took some time getting through
to the foreign secretary. The diplomats in Islamabad surmised that since
Pakistan did not appear to be really expecting a nuclear strike and India
appeared ‘extraordinarily relaxed’ for a country about to launch a deadly
attack on its neighbour, the threat was perhaps unreal. It turned out that
the Indian foreign secretary had already been alerted to the démarche by
the Indian mission in New York, since Pakistan had made identical ones
to all five permanent (P5) members of the UN Security Council. The high
commission team cabled in an assessment that night, correctly guessing that
Pakistan was about to carry out its nuclear tests and was nervous about
pre-emptive strikes on the testing site in the Chagai hills of Baluchistan.
This site did not feature in the list given to India at the beginning of
the year and explained Ahmad’s use of the word ‘other’ while answering
Chandra’s query. Chandra had little doubt that he had heard a major
nuclear threat from his host country—warning of a ‘massive retaliation
with devastating consequences’. Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine at that point
was ambiguous and would only evolve in the weeks following the tests.
By the time Chandra had cabled home his report and assessment, it was
already 5 a.m. He needed to de-stress. So, instead of returning home, he
headed straight for the Islamabad golf course.
Not for the first time or the last, Pakistan had reacted with nuclear
bluster to a non-existent threat. Sabharwal learnt years later from a retired
Pakistani official, also present at the midnight meeting, that Pakistan had
received reports of Israeli aircraft at the Chennai airfield, which were to
be used to attack the nuclear testing site in Baluchistan. Pakistan also
believed that the US was complicit in this plan to attack the testing site.
The trope of an Indian, US, and Israeli collusion, a ‘Hindu-Jewish-Christian’
conspiracy against Pakistan, was a familiar one and would make frequent
appearances in Pakistan’s strategic and media discourse.18
262 ange r m anage m e nt

Pakistan’s explosive response on 28 May seemed to calm official

anxiety but not public worries. Nawaz Sharif proudly announced to his
people that Pakistan had conducted five nuclear tests. To further showcase
the ‘existential threat’ and in a climate of uncertainty about India’s next
moves, Pakistan braced itself for strong Western sanctions. Soon, Pakistan’s
president imposed a state of emergency.
To Indian strategic analysts, Pakistan’s tests vindicated India’s position
at multiple levels. Clearly, the weapons were not hastily assembled in
1998, but had been around for a decade (and several more years in the
works). The opacity had now been shed. Nuclear ambiguity had given
way to nuclear assertion. This was the nuclear coming out party for both
countries.
Pakistan’s approach was to try and defuse the situation and pre-empt
any Indian or Western attack on its nuclear capability. It called for the
resumption of talks with India on the very day it tested. Even after Pakistan’s
foreign minister announced two additional tests on 30 May, Nawaz Sharif
offered talks with India in Pakistan’s National Assembly on 6 June.
To many observers, the days that followed emphasized the fundamental
difference between the neighbours. India was rapidly developing a
reassuringly professional doctrine based on a study of the existing literature
of four decades of Cold War nuclear doctrines and episodes of nuclear
brinksmanship—it spoke of no first use, a ban on further testing, apart
from responsible command and control. Pakistan’s army had to go on the
defensive: its record of proliferation and illegal acquisitions came under
intense global scrutiny; it could only articulate an India-centric doctrine
not precluding a first strike. Nuclear diplomacy and confidence-building
measures now became an imperative, as India–Pakistan relations acquired a
new dimension more troubling and dangerous than ever before. The hope
among some observers was that a new era of strategic stability would
finally end Pakistan’s paranoia about a conventional military invasion by
India, given its credible nuclear deterrence capacity. The optimistic view
was that the tests by Pakistan would remove its incentive to carry on a
sub-conventional proxy war or cross-border terrorism.
Brajesh Mishra later summarized a strategic vision behind India’s
Pokhran blasts that went past Pakistan, and even beyond China:
Since the demise of the Soviet Union and the lapse of the Indo–Soviet
treaty, India found itself more or less friendless. The US was not very
keen on having better relations with India. When Clinton was the
President he was much more attracted to China. Narasimha Rao went
to the US and met President Clinton. Nothing came out of it. So
what has changed? We had to find a place for ourselves in the new
global order and therefore Pokhran II happened. Pokhran II had two
 s t rat e gic parit y 263

purposes. One was to test the nuclear devices which had been built,
and the armed forces never accepted it till a lot of tests had been done.
And second was to firmly establish India as nuclear weapons power
and enter the new world order.19
India was articulating its compulsions forcefully. Pakistan’s proliferation
record, on the other hand, was under the scanner. Writing in 2007, a long-
term Pakistan watcher Adrian Levy revealed how Abdul Qadeer Khan
stole nuclear secrets to build a bomb before selling these secrets around
the world. Levy also revealed how the US had ended up arming countries
President George Bush had dubbed the axis of evil, by enabling Pakistan
to arm itself. The US had turned a blind eye to the naked proliferation
mounted by its Cold War ally.20 Pakistan had lucked out in the 1980s,
given the US dependence on General Zia during the Afghan war, just as it
had benefited from Nixon’s reliance on Yahya Khan during the Cold War
in 1971.
India’s planners had gamed the scenario of the global reaction to India’s
tests, confident that the sanctions ‘would last no more than one year’.21
Vajpayee decided to engage with the increasingly frantic major powers to tell
India’s side of the story. The dialogue with the US started by the summer.
Mishra embarked on a diplomatic mission in June to explain India’s position
to other P5 leaders: the UK’s Tony Blair, France’s Jacques Chirac and then
Russia’s Foreign Minister Yevgeny Primakov. He got the most traction in
Paris, when France expressed empathy with India’s concerns. While President
Boris Yeltsin’s Russia was then nervous about US concerns on South Asia’s
nuclearization, Russia’s foreign minister saw India now as a significant power.
To the Russians, India had in fact gained enough heft to be a pillar of the
1999 ‘Primakov Doctrine’ that saw Russia, China, and India as a ‘strategic
triangle’ to counterbalance a powerful post-Cold War United States.
Both countries now needed to prepare for diplomacy in a nuclear
environment. They had to learn from the experience of the major
nuclear powers, develop structures, doctrines, cadres of diplomats, and
military leaders who could understand and strategize on these weapons
of unthinkable catastrophic potential. The unanswered question remained
whether India and Pakistan would now also work out a stable truce with
the ‘weapons of peace’ given the spectre of mutually assured destruction
or whether the nuclear umbrella could be a perverse incentive for military-
backed revisionism or terrorism. Within a year of the explosions, the hope
of peace would be dashed as Pakistan demonstrated that it had neither
abandoned military efforts for the Kashmir cause, nor terrorism.
In the years to come, as the implications of a nuclear South Asia started
sinking in, both countries would develop fairly robust nuclear CBMs. They
were now forever condemned to execute their diplomacy under a nuclear
264 ange r m anage m e nt

shadow. Additionally, Pakistan would chime in to agree whenever global

leaders would periodically put the region on top of the charts as the most
dangerous nuclear flashpoint in the world.

ASSUAGING UNCLE SAM

The May explosions in India had caught the Clinton administration by
surprise, coming as they did decades after the almost forgotten ‘peaceful’
nuclear tests of 1974. Years of technology denial had followed. In a knee-
jerk reaction, a flustered US chose to react with sanctions against India and
an attempt to ‘cap, roll back and eliminate’ the nuclear programme.
The re-engagement with India started, surprisingly only months after the
nuclear tests, through an extended dialogue between Vajpayee’s government
and the Clinton administration. Strobe Talbott, the deputy secretary of
state, represented the US, while Jaswant Singh, a close friend of Vajpayee
and the deputy chairman of India’s Planning Commission, represented
India; they began in 1998 a protracted multi-round conversation (dubbed
by India Today as the ‘longest foreplay in Indo-US history’22) that would
continue for years. The dialogue promoted a better understanding of the
strategic rationale of India’s nuclear programme, as also the strong sense
of nuclear restraint and responsibility of its successive civilian governments.
In fact, the Singh–Talbott dialogue became an important inflexion point
in the trajectory of US–India bilateral relations of the past five decades. As
we have seen, the world’s oldest and the largest democracy had a chequered
history of relations during the Cold War. India’s professed non-alignment
with a tilt towards the Soviet Union had been countered by a distinct US
tilt towards Pakistan. Relations between the US and India had taken on a
positive but slow ‘collaborative’ trajectory with the end of the Cold War
in 1991, when India entered a pragmatic policy phase, based on multiple
engagements with the global community.
However, to India’s disappointment, US attention in the Clinton era
had wandered away from South Asia in the 1990s. With the withdrawal of
Soviet troops from Afghanistan, and the end of the Cold War, it was not
just Afghanistan that the US took its eyes off. All of South Asia slipped
off its radar, even though India—and particularly Kashmir—was suffering
a terrible decade of terrorism and insurgency which ran from 1989.
The US had continued to look at India through the prism of ‘hyphenated’
relations with Pakistan.23 By most accounts, US intelligence was well aware
that al-Qaeda and the Taliban had taken over the training of Kashmiri
militants in Afghanistan after 1997 and were promoting the jihad in Kashmir
as part of their programme of global jihad.24 This apparent indifference
on the part of the US made India deeply suspicious of its sincerity when
it came to resolving any South Asian problems.
In May 1998, following the nuclear tests, more American sanctions
 s t rat e gic parit y 265

kicked in (triggered by the Glenn and Symington Amendments designed

to check nuclear proliferation) for Pakistan, mirroring the ones imposed
on India. The US approach of doubling down on its ally was seen by
Pakistan as a particularly unkind cut. It should not have been surprised
as its usefulness to the Americans had declined. The US no longer felt a
strong need for a South Asian regional ally after the Soviet withdrawal
from Afghanistan and the end of the Cold War. An inflexion point had
come in 1990, as sanctions associated with the ‘Pressler Amendment’ kicked
in, when the US president refused to certify that Pakistan did not have
nuclear weapons. These episodes of US ‘perfidy’ would be invoked again
by Pakistani analysts after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021,
to point to the transactional US ‘use and throw’ Pakistan policy.
X
While bilateral suspicions between the neighbours had risen, an impulse
was also growing within the military-strategic community in Pakistan
to match India’s stance of being a responsible nuclear power. Some deft
diplomacy set the partnership on a positive path. Again, the SAARC
came to the rescue. Vajpayee and Sharif met at the SAARC summit in
Colombo in July 1998, mindful this time of the burdens that came with
their nuclear status. Their nuclear credentials had changed the game in
terms of the power equation but also lent an immediacy to peace, not least
because the global community was prodding both countries to patch up
their differences. They agreed to discuss confidence-building measures and
resume the composite dialogue. Both terrorism and Jammu and Kashmir
could be addressed along with other more constructive issues. The two
prime ministers met again in New York in September, reaffirming their
commitment to meaningful dialogue. One innocuous idea tossed around at
the meeting—of a bus service between Lahore and Delhi—would become
the basis of the boldest diplomatic gambit between them.
X
But the reality of continuing violence soon dampened the prospects of
successful diplomacy. India’s fears were confirmed when cross-border
terrorism seemed to continue with greater impunity under the nuclear
umbrella. Pakistan’s denials were wearing thin. Even as terror attacks
became more brazen, Pakistan’s diplomats were attempting business
as usual with the eight-track composite dialogue, denying the state’s
complicity in the violence. Pakistan’s foreign secretary, Shamshad Ahmad,
in a meeting in October 1998, dismissed India’s allegations about militant
outfits like the LeT, insouciantly calling them ‘charitable organisations’.
The denials were not fooling India. But others were still being taken in.
For example, in 1998, US officials were asking Pakistani counterparts in
266 ange r m anage m e nt

Islamabad about the whereabouts of al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden, three

years before he masterminded the mayhem of 9/11 in New York. While
Pakistan’s foreign secretary innocently promised help in tracing bin Laden,
the DG of the ISI flatly denied any knowledge of the Saudi guest, already
known to be an ISI asset.25
In October 1998, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif rattled the army’s cage.
He forced the military chief, Jehangir Karamat, into early retirement, after
Karamat proposed, quite reasonably, the creation of a National Security
Council as an institutional means of providing more formal input from the
armed forces into policy-making for a nuclear Pakistan. Karamat’s removal
was to prove a major blunder. The navy chief of the time, Admiral Fasih
Bokhari, criticized General Karamat for resigning, implying he should have
stayed on and challenged the civilians. But Karamat defended his actions
as the ‘right thing’ to do as he had lost the confidence of a constitutionally
and popularly elected prime minister.
Sharif compounded his error by picking a relatively junior general,
Pervez Musharraf, to replace Karamat. The new army chief had scant
respect for what he thought were weak civilian leaders such as Sharif and
would end up exiling Sharif from power the next year. Musharraf was a
Mujahir, one of the millions who were born in India and migrated during
the Partition in 1947. He had strong views, to the point of obsession, on
Pakistan’s right to capture Kashmir. He had been wrenched by the 1971
dismemberment of Pakistan where he saw India as the villain. He was
angry over India’s pre-emptive action of 1984 in Siachen. He had yearned
for the day he would be in a position to launch a military campaign across
the LoC, even though such aggressive ideas had been rejected by Zia, as
also by Benazir when Musharraf was DGMO. Musharraf also happened
to be a commando trained in unconventional warfare; he was acutely
aware that Pakistan’s army had lost every conventional war and fared
much better at guerrilla wars.26 He now had a chance to implement plans
he had long dreamed of; he just needed a clique of supporters within the
army to execute these plans, and he was working on them by November.
As his tenure in Pakistan drew to a close, Satish Chandra closely
watched this transition in Pakistan’s most critical post. He soon encountered
Musharraf socially, at a dinner hosted by Pakistan’s former army chief Aslam
Beg on 19 December, as a farewell to the Indian HC. Beg engineered a
one-on-one chat, between the army chief and the diplomat. After the thirty-
minute meeting in a alcove in Beg’s home, Chandra cabled an assessment
back home, describing Musharraf as ‘ambitious, devious and virulently
anti-Indian’. He wrote that Musharraf’s appointment was ‘bad news for
the India–Pakistan relationship’ and presciently suggested that Musharraf
was a general who would ‘not be averse to overthrowing the democratic
dispensation in his country’, to do what Zia had done to Bhutto.27
 s t rat e gic parit y 267

A BUS TO LAHORE AND A TRAIN OF EVENTS

More than high politics, it was sports that exercised a calming influence on
the nuclear powers for a brief while. The last year of the millennium began
with a cricket series when the Pakistan team toured India after twelve
years, in January-February 1999. Pakistan’s former foreign secretary and
one-time heir to the princely state of Bhopal, Shahryar Khan, was by now
the manager of the Pakistan cricket team. He experienced first-hand the
exhilaration and frustration of an India–Pakistan cricket tour, with high
passion playing out off the field. An angry Shiv Sena kept the matches
away from the state of Maharashtra; its activists even inflicted some minor
damage to the pitch at the Feroze Shah Kotla in Delhi. The series was
restricted to two tests, given the charged atmosphere and the looming
security threats. As if to reflect the new nuclear parity, the two-test series
ended in a tie between the teams led by the Indian captain Mohammad
Azharuddin and Pakistan’s Wasim Akram.
A more serious people-to-people game was also in the works. Both
sides had been toying with the idea of a bus service between Delhi and
Lahore, since the two prime ministers met in New York for the UN General
Assembly in September 1998. But the hallmark of India–Pakistan relations
had been that diplomatic initiatives could abruptly be aborted, and could
equally suddenly fructify. The final preparations for the visit came only
weeks before the bus journey. It started with a very public invitation to
Vajpayee from Nawaz Sharif, in an interview published in the Indian
Express with Shekhar Gupta on 3 February 1999.28 The journalist recalled
that he had asked Nawaz Sharif in a light-hearted exchange in Punjabi:
‘Why don’t you announce the bus in the interview and invite our prime
minister to Pakistan on the first bus?’ Nawaz asked: ‘What if I invited him
and he declined?’ Gupta had then reached out to Vajpayee, who seemed
to like the idea. Till then, the plan most talked about was for Vajpayee
to flag off the bus service and for Sharif to receive the bus in Pakistan.
Vajpayee’s private secretary Shakti Sinha confirmed that the proposal for
this public acceptance of a public invitation was not finding much favour
with the bureaucracy. Vivek Katju, who headed the Pakistan desk as joint
secretary, and was considered a hawk on Pakistan relations, called Sinha on
2 February 1999 to say that the ministry was going with an unimaginative
line, where the spokesman was going to say that ‘the government would
give an appropriate answer as and when a formal invitation was received’.29
Katju felt this was a matter that required the prime minister’s political
judgement and he was short-circuiting the system through Sinha for the
prime minister to consider the invitation carefully. Sinha spoke to Vajpayee
during a visit to his constituency in Lucknow. Vajpayee agreed that this
gesture needed a positive not a formalistic response. Later that day, on 2
February, while answering a media question, Vajpayee said, ‘I would like
268 ange r m anage m e nt

to have a bus ride from Delhi to Lahore.’30 After dropping this bombshell,
Vajpayee would only say that the details would be worked out between
the two governments. To global observers, the visit was an indication that
India and Pakistan could move on the road to sign the Comprehensive Test
Ban Treaty (CTBT). Western non-proliferation lobbies had been pressing
both countries to forsake further testing by signing the 1996 treaty, after
which nuclear sanctions could be lifted. Pakistan had made it clear that it
would do so only if India also signed the treaty.
What Vajpayee had perhaps not revealed to Shekhar Gupta or even
to his private secretary was that he had been turning this idea over in
his mind for several months. Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh, who was in
London for some difficult conversations with the British on nuclear issues,
said that Vajpayee had decided to take the inaugural bus to Lahore months
ago, ‘but the announcement had come only now’.31
The atmospherics suddenly changed, as did the tone of the commentary.
This was a way for the nuclear adversaries to devise a pathway to peace.
As the visit was confirmed, expectations veered on the unrealistic. Rumours
surfaced that Sharif would visit Delhi for the second India–Pakistan match
even before Vajpayee’s trip began. That did not happen but Vajpayee did
visit the Feroze Shah Kotla grounds to meet with the teams and later
hosted a reception for them at his official residence.
Soon, the MEA got into the act of playing up the significance of
the political decision. This would be the first visit to Pakistan by an
Indian PM since Rajiv Gandhi’s in 1988 and could be as significant as
Nehru’s tour in 1960. More positive statements started emanating from
both sides, underlining the significance of the visit and its timing. The
Pakistani establishment said it was a ‘welcome step and would go a long
way in establishing good ties with India’. The official invitation however
was caught in a bureaucratic loop with one side asking for a written
invitation and the other written confirmation.32
Days before Vajpayee’s visit, India sent a new high commissioner to
Pakistan—Gopalaswami Parthasarathy (Partha) who had been India’s
second consul general in Karachi, in Zia’s Pakistan, from 1982 to 1985. With
the same name as, but no relative of, the high-flying high commissioner of
the 1960s, Partha had been a short-service commission army officer before
he joined the foreign service. He was now moving, with mixed feelings,
from a cushy assignment in Canberra to the neighbouring country. Before
leaving for Islamabad, Partha called on Vajpayee. The designated envoy
sensed that despite the deep misgivings about Pakistan within India, and
particularly in the BJP, Vajpayee had a vision of progress and was keen
to write a new chapter in bilateral relations. Partha assessed it had been
Vajpayee’s ambition that he could achieve in foreign policy something that
even Nehru was unable to do.
 s t rat e gic parit y 269

Despite his own personal scepticism about prospects for improvement

in ties, Partha went to Pakistan, determined to make every effort to ensure
that the prime minister’s visit was ‘hailed as a major effort for peace and
reconciliation’. In Pakistan, Partha found no let-up in hostility to India as
he set to work preparing for the PM’s impending visit. He had to navigate
rivalries within the Pakistani establishment—the foreign secretary and his
deputy, were seeing the visit from India as an unnecessary diversion from
the ‘core agenda’ of Kashmir; they seemed determined to queer the pitch
of a visit coming at the initiative of their own prime minister.33
The bus service that was being proposed envisaged a point-to-point
service between Delhi and Lahore, a distance of 500 kilometres that would
be traversed in fourteen hours. The initial idea for Vajpayee to travel the
entire length of the journey was dropped in favour of his boarding the bus
at Amritsar airport and travelling 37 kilometres to the Attari border, where
he would be received by Nawaz Sharif. High Commissioner Parthasarathy
rushed to sign the agreement on the bus service just a couple of days
before the trip was to begin.
Shakti Sinha and Satish Mehta, a director in the PMO, scrambled to
get together eminent persons for the bus ride. They included journalist and
peace activist Kuldip Nayar, poet Javed Akhtar, actor Dev Anand, cricketer
Kapil Dev, heads of Indian Chambers of Commerce like Rajesh Shah,
actor–politician Shatrughan Sinha, and Punjab’s chief minister Parkash
Singh Badal. Sinha rued that he forgot to include Jinnah’s grandson and
Vajpayee’s friend, Nusli Wadia, whose symbolic presence in Pakistan would
have been a ‘coup’. The official machinery started its preparation. Vajpayee’s
principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra, along with joint secretaries, Vivek Katju
(heading MEA’s Pakistan desk) and Rakesh Sood (heading the disarmament
division), were dispatched to Islamabad in advance. A joint statement was
in the works. Partha had initiated the negotiations even before the Indian
delegation arrived and had suggested to his colleagues in the MEA that
the ambition should be upped to work out a ‘declaration’.
On 20 February, Vajpayee was on the inaugural bus, riding from
Amritsar to Wagah, gambling on a ‘risk for peace’ that could fundamentally
alter the contours of the relationship. In Amritsar, Vajpayee repeated a
message of peace and friendship. The billion people of India, he said,
wanted relations with Pakistan to improve, trade between the two nations
to increase, and travel to be made easier. At Attari, the prime minister said
his message to the people of Pakistan would be short and simple—to put
aside the bitterness of the past. ‘Together, let us make a new beginning.’34
Nawaz Sharif received Vajpayee with a warm embrace and with half
his cabinet ministers in tow. The veteran Indian actor Dev Anand who
stood by watching the two men hug launched into reminiscences of his
move from Lahore to Mumbai and had to be gently guided away. But
270 ange r m anage m e nt

while the bonhomie was palpable to the delegation, the chaos on the
ground gave anxious moments to the planners. Pakistan’s military guard
of honour ceremony at Wagah was so squeezed for space that when the
guard commander lowered his weapon to convey the ritualistic acceptance
of dismissal, Prime Minister Vajpayee, to his nervously watching private
secretary, was well within striking distance of a Pakistani sword.35
The outcomes of the visit lived up to the heady hope it had generated
in the final week. The symbolic significance was staggering. The countries
seemed to have achieved the breakthrough their people had failed to achieve
around the 25th anniversary of Independence and had sought in the 50th
anniversary year. Hostile neighbours that had recently acquired nuclear
power had agreed to address their territorial disagreements and to establish
confidence in each other despite their nuclear weapons capability.
But the cracks within Pakistan were showing. Partha recalled that
the lavish dinner hosted by Nawaz Sharif at the Lahore Fort had to
be delayed, because the Lahore police was fighting running battles with
protesters from the fundamentalist Jamat-e-Islami, who were trying to block
the route that Vajpayee’s motorcade had to take. Apart from negotiating
the delegation’s security, the high commissioner and his team were taking
care of a giant media delegation of 300, several high-profile delegates,
and negotiating teams that were hammering out agreements. Despite all
the problems, the visit seemed to be breaking new ground, both in terms
of optics and substance.
At the official talks, the two sides referred to their known positions,
but agreed to expand contacts and interaction. At lunch after the talks,
a Punjab Police band played instrumental music from Indian movies of
the 1950s and 1960s, familiar tunes in Pakistan. Neither Vajpayee, nor
Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh could satisfactorily answer Nawaz Sharif’s
questions on the tunes played. It was left to Partha, with his fondness
for old Hindi musical hits, to identify the tunes for the Pakistan prime
minister. Partha found that the Pakistani prime minister’s wife, Kulsoom,
and the governor of Sind, Lieutenant General Moinuddin Haider, shared
a love for the hits of Lata Mangeshkar and Mohammed Rafi.
With the ‘Lahore Declaration’, the two prime ministers agreed to
intensify the composite dialogue process, to address all issues including
J&K. More importantly, they agreed on an MOU for nuclear times—to
consult each other on nuclear postures and doctrines and to notify each
other in advance of ballistic missile tests and any nuclear accidents. For
India, the Lahore Declaration was also a nod to the principle of bilateralism;
it reaffirmed the Simla Agreement. Vajpayee’s public statements had a deep
impact, even greater than the one he had made two decades earlier as
a foreign minister on his maiden trip to Pakistan. He won over several
Pakistanis by affirming several times that India had accepted the reality
 s t rat e gic parit y 271

of Pakistan as an immutable geographical fact.

The most memorable outcomes came at public events on 21 February,
which spotlighted the emotional connection in the relationship. At the
Minar-e-Pakistan, Vajpayee made another powerful affirmation:
I wish to assure the people of Pakistan of my country’s deep desire for
lasting peace and friendship. I have said it before and I will say it again
that a stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interest. Let
no one in Pakistan be in any doubt of it, India sincerely wishes the
people of Pakistan well.
More than the words, the symbolism silenced the fringe elements in India
asking for an Akhand Bharat and those in Pakistan portraying India as an
existential threat.
Later in the evening, Vajpayee played to the gallery with a theatrical
flourish: ‘I was told that my presence at the minar put my mohar (seal)
of approval on the creation of Pakistan, but ‘Pakistan does not run on my
seals. It has its own seal.’36 The optics were strong. Vajpayee was driving
the message home. He continued in this vein at a reception on the lawns
of the governor’s house: ‘One can change history, not geography. One can
change friends, not neighbours.’ And he then unleashed his most potent
weapon, reading out from his poem, ‘Jung na hone denge’:
To those who peddle shrouds, we must say
We have seen through your game;
you will not succeed.
We shall not allow war.
A moved audience greeted the poetry, replete with Urdu words, with
standing ovations and wet eyes.37 A sentiment among those watching was
that if Vajpayee were to stand for election from Lahore, he would sweep
the polls.38
On his part, Sharif also struck a note of high optimism in his media
remarks. He said that in the near future, Pakistan would extend the most
favoured nation treatment to India, reciprocating India’s act of 1996. For
both leaders the meeting had been an act of some courage.
The chief ministers of both the Punjabs met separately. Parkash Singh
Badal discussed with Shehbaz Sharif the upkeep of Sikh shrines. Among the
issues raised was the matter of the Kartarpur corridor that led from India to
the birthplace of the first Sikh guru in Pakistan. Shehbaz was more cautious
and raised issues of Kashmir and bilateral trade. When Parthasarathy tried
to arrange a meeting between Opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto and
Vajpayee, Sharif’s government seemed reluctant to give her the stage and
did not allow it to materialize. Pakistan’s democracy had a long way to
go before it matured, inferred the Indian high commissioner.
272 ange r m anage m e nt

The next day the prime ministers met again informally, expressing
mutual satisfaction at the outcomes they had achieved. It felt, recalled
Sinha, like the morning after a grand subcontinental wedding.39
Not everyone was swayed by this friendly sentiment. Watching the
proceedings disapprovingly was Pakistan’s army chief Pervez Musharraf,
a man who had refused to publicly salute Vajpayee and later dismissed
the visit as ‘hot air’. The army chief had plans to take the relationship in
a different direction.

A DISCREET CHANNEL
The two prime ministers decided to nominate personal representatives for
closer and more reliable communication between them. The Indian side
nominated R. K. Mishra, a former journalist and a friend of Dhirubhai
Ambani, who headed the Reliance conglomerate. Reliance had an
additional stake in India–Pakistan peace; they were invested in a refinery in
Jamnagar on the Gujarat border, within shooting distance of Pakistan. The
project was vulnerable to India–Pakistan tensions. Nawaz played it safer:
he nominated a former foreign secretary, Niaz Naik.
The visit of 1999 was hugely successful, if the metric is to be the
optics and the hope it generated at that time. The emotional content was
high—it seemed that a page had been firmly turned and a new glorious
one was about to be written. It was the most innovative diplomatic move
in the history of India–Pakistan relations till then. Initially it seemed that
Vajpayee’s instinctive gamble, on a move that would build peace and
friendship in the twenty-first century between the nuclear neighbours, would
pay rich dividends. This was the first of the two forays to Pakistan that
Vajpayee would make in his six years as prime minister. It is tempting to
believe that had the gains of Lahore not been frittered away by a bitter
general, the twenty-first century relationship may have unfolded a lot more
positively.
The euphoria generated by the visit began to dissipate rather quickly.
High Commissioner Partha, who had been sceptical about the ‘Lahore
spirit’, was unsurprised when Nawaz Sharif again started ‘playing footsie
with Sikh separatists’ nurtured by Pakistan. Sharif appointed the former DG
of the ISI, Lieutenant General Javed Nasir, as chair of the so-called ‘Pakistan
Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee’, positioned to mirror the highest Sikh
body in India. Nasir had earlier been fired by Sharif under US pressure,
for allegedly engineering the 1993 Bombay blasts. The intelligence man was
now hobnobbing openly with Khalistani extremists from Indian Punjab.
The army was clearly pressing Sharif not to let up the pressure on Kashmir
and Punjab, and was stepping up operations under the nuclear umbrella.
 21

HEI GHTS OF TROUB L E

V ajpayee’s sunny disposition during his charm offensive in Pakistan

masked his political woes at home. A day before his departure for
the border, on 19 February, Vajpayee had called a meeting of the National
Development Council that included chief ministers of the states and was
used to allocate resources between provinces. A trend of ‘competitive
populism’, or reckless spending to gain electoral advantages, had pushed
some states into bankruptcy and brought Vajpayee’s government at the
centre—a coalition of regional interests—under considerable strain. On the
day he left for Lahore, a key ally, Om Prakash Chautala, from Haryana’s
Lok Dal Party, had walked out of the coalition, handing over his letter of
withdrawal of support to the president of India.
Vajpayee’s government fell on 17 April, where he lost his thin majority
by precisely one vote in a no-confidence motion, when another key ally,
this time the leader of the Tamil Nadu AIADMK Party, J. Jayalalithaa,
walked out of the alliance after her stiff demands were left unmet. Mid-term
elections were now to be concluded by early October, giving nearly five
months to a lame duck regime; the government faced the challenge of fixing
a declining economy without a convincing mandate. Reeling from bruising
politics and economic challenges, Vajpayee’s government was counting the
decision to explode nuclear devices and the subsequent diplomatic effort
around the world, and especially with Pakistan, as key achievements of
its abbreviated tenure. Vajpayee had no inkling that Pakistan would soon
draw his caretaker set-up into a huge national security crisis.
On 3 May 1999, a shepherd in Kashmir reported the presence of
strangers in the deserted mountainous expanse of Batalik, a little village in
western Ladakh within the LoC on the Indian side. An Indian patrol sent
out to investigate the problem was ambushed on 5 May, four soldiers were
killed and as many injured. Thus were fired the first shots of the Kargil
war. Soon, India started artillery shelling to dislodge the infiltrators from
the heights. Pakistan responded in kind. On 8 May, army chief Pervez
Musharraf made an unannounced visit to the forward areas opposite Kargil.
A day later, a munitions dump was blown up in Kargil by Pakistani artillery
shelling, destroying about 5,000 tonnes of ammunition.1
For an Indian Army used to an active western border, the situation
was still not serious enough to retaliate strongly. On 10 May, army chief
General V. P. Malik proceeded on a ten-day tour of Poland and the Czech
Republic; he did not consider cutting it short for what seemed like the usual
274 ange r m anage m e nt

infiltration and shelling in J&K. On 17 May, Principal Secretary Brajesh

Mishra informed Vajpayee that cross-border developments in Kashmir might
be cause for concern. He organized a briefing in the Ops room of South
Block for the prime minister the next day, where DGMO N. C. Vij told
the prime minister that groups of irregular mujahideen had crossed over
the LoC Pakistan had tried to maintain the fiction that the infiltrators were
not Pakistani troops but ‘freedom fighters’ for Kashmir’s independence who
had slipped past the LoC, unbeknownst to the Pakistan Army. The Indian
army’s initial estimates said that the intruders would now be evicted in a
matter of days. It seemed simple enough but was not quite so.
Across the border, Nawaz Sharif came to know about the incursion
around the same time as Vajpayee. But the briefing the Pakistani army
gave its prime minister was much too fuzzy for him to sense anything
amiss. Sharif had received three earlier briefings on Kashmir that year:
on 29 January, 5 February, and 12 March. But those briefing had him
obfuscated the central issue with confusing military maps and none of
these referred to the specific Kargil operation. Only the briefing of 17
May touched upon the ongoing operation in Kargil. Still, no alarms rang
in Sharif’s non-military brain, no political red flags went up in Pakistan.2
When General Malik returned to India on 20 May, he rushed to review
the situation before briefing Vajpayee in more detail in the Ops room.3 HC
Parthasarthy, in from Islamabad, also attended the briefing. The ex-army
diplomat was appalled, as were many others, at the poor intelligence and
surveillance on India’s border.
On 26 May 1999, the Cabinet Committee on Security, meeting in the
Ops room, authorized the use of air power after the three service chiefs
agreed on operational principles. The Kargil operations were on. The HC
was asked to return to Islamabad immediately, given the imminence of
the air strikes.
An outraged Vajpayee called Sharif the same evening he had authorized
the launch of Operation Vijay—air strikes and ground assaults to oust the
invaders from the heights. He told Sharif that India was aware that the
intrusion in Kargil involved the use of regular troops from the Pakistan
Army. He said this was totally unacceptable and would compel India to
take ‘all necessary steps’. This was the first time Sharif realized that his
rogue army generals had got Pakistan into a serious conflict with India.
Apart from a military counter-offensive, India also launched a diplomatic
one. The Indian permanent pepresentative at the United Nations mobilized
international opinion. Indian embassies were activated, particularly in
Washington; the ambassador gave extensive briefings on Capitol Hill and
to the media.4
Partha in Islamabad had served in the Indian Army and knew that air
operations would be both difficult and hazardous given Vajpayee’s insistence
 he ight s of t roub l e 275

that under no circumstances, would the Indian Air Force cross the Line
of Control.5 The Indian high commissioner watched with some discomfort
as the air strikes in the first few days led to the downing of two Indian
MiG fighters, and the loss of a helicopter gunship. All these were caught
on camera and gleefully played on loop on Pakistani television screens,
causing much joy to the Pakistan establishment.
Given that there was ‘every chance of matters escalating’ Partha also
asked his colleague, Counsellor Syed Akbaruddin to draw up a contingency
plan of a lockdown: this would have involved stocking up on rations and
herding all staff, then scattered in residences across Islamabad, into the
chancery premises in case of a full-blown war.6

A PILOT DOWN
A ticklish diplomatic issue that the Indian team in Islamabad faced was
the capture of an Indian air force pilot, Flight Lieutenant Kambampati
Nachiketa. The pilot flew one of the first MiG-27s to strike the entrenched
intruders in the heights of the Batalik Sector on 26 May 1999. The aircraft
took a hit from a Pakistan Army surface to air MANPADS missile; the
pilot was forced to eject. Nachiketa was initially beaten up and later taken
into custody by Pakistani forces as a POW. The Geneva Conventions
required POWs to be returned and Nawaz Sharif grandiosely announced
that the pilot would be handed back to India. An excited Tariq Altaf,
manning the India desk in Pakistan’s foreign office, called up High
Commissioner Parthasarathy to say that the pilot would be handed over
to him. ‘Smelling a rat’, the high commissioner asked if the media would
be present. Altaf confirmed that it would. An angry Parthasarathy retorted,
‘Tariq, if you think I am going to allow you to make a media monkey of an
officer of the Indian Air Force, you are sadly mistaken. There is no way I
am coming to the Foreign Office if there is even one media person present
anywhere in sight.’7
Partha took the call because he felt the world media was watching,
and Pakistan was keen to create a spectacle, matching the surrender by
General Niazi in 1971. The high commissioner took a calculated risk
that Pakistan would be unable to hold the prisoner after making a public
announcement and had not factored in the possibility that India would
refuse to play along. After checking with Delhi, the HC suggested that the
prisoner could be handed over to the International Red Cross authorities,
who would then drive him over to the high commission without fanfare.
After eight days of traumatic captivity that he said was ‘difficult to be
described in words’, Nachiketa was repatriated to India on 3 June 1999,
crossing over at the Attari border post.
276 ange r m anage m e nt

A SPARSE TERRAIN
Kargil made for a tempting target for the Pakistan military. It was
strategically valuable, located on the only road between the Kashmiri
summer capital of Srinagar and the town of Leh in the far north-east, near
the Chinese border. Since 1997, the sparse terrain had seen a pattern of
relatively minor Pakistani incursions that had triggered bursts of sniper fire
and occasional artillery exchanges.
By a gentlemen’s agreement, Indian and Pakistani forces withdrew
every year from the heights in the winter harshness and returned to man
the posts in spring. The two sides had refrained from major attempts to
alter the status quo during this ebb and flow of seasonal deployments.
This had been the case in Siachen as also in the Kargil sector. Pakistan
had now violated this agreement.
The total area of Pakistan’s ingress was between 130 and 200 square
kilometres. India’s Operation Vijay mobilized 200,000 Indian troops.
However, because of the nature of the terrain, the fighting was limited
mostly to the regimental and battalion level. Pakistan’s infiltration of armed
intruders involved some 700 men who crossed the LoC; most of them
were attached to the Pakistani army’s 10 Corps. The US condemned the
intrusion and went public with this information.8
By the end of May, the initial skirmishes had blown up into a full-fledged
border conflict involving infantry assaults, artillery barrages, and other
operations including attacks on ground positions by helicopter gunships.
By mid-June, the fighting intensified between military units in the Kargil
area. The Indian Army was paying a heavy price and suffering losses as
they tried to dislodge the Pakistani fighters from strategically advantageous
and well dug-in positions in the mountain heights.
By mid-June, India also began firing on targets on the Pakistani side
of the LoC. US military experts were worried that India might break out
of its restraint mode and cross the LoC since its tempered approach was
costing it additional casualties around Kargil. After shooting down two
Indian aircraft near the border, the Pakistan Army had moved its regular
army troops into the Kargil area to construct bunkers on the Indian side
of the line.
The conflict was initially characterized as a skirmish or a border
incident. However, it was later judged to be a war launched by Pakistan
with definite and clear strategic, territorial, and political motives, with
premeditated planning and detailed preparation. The US confirmed the
assessment that the thrust by Pakistan was a pre-planned probe mounted by
the Pakistani military and intended to create a ‘new’ LoC more favourable
to Pakistan.9
 he ight s of t roub l e 277

TALKING IT OUT
India had not shut the door to wartime bilateral diplomacy. Starting in
May, Vajpayee spoke to Sharif some five times during the course of the
summer conflict. With each call, it was clearer to Vajpayee that Sharif
had little grasp of the war being run by his army chief. The two foreign
ministers, Jaswant Singh and Sartaj Aziz, met on 12 June 1999 in New
Delhi, to look for a solution. But Aziz had a brief to link withdrawal of the
border intruders with a time-bound discussion on Kashmir, while for India
an unconditional withdrawal was non-negotiable.
The deadlock at the FM level catalysed a robust backchannel
conversation between R. K. Mishra and Pakistan’s former foreign secretary,
Niaz Naik. An additional impetus for the apex level communication between
the two prime ministers came after Mishra (who met his counterpart some
five times from mid-June) reported Sharif’s dilemmas. In one of Mishra’s
missions, he carried tapes and transcripts of two intercepts procured by
Indian intelligence—of army chief Musharraf’s conversations with his chief
of general staff, Lieutenant General Mohammad Aziz—to Nawaz Sharif.
The tapes made it clear that the Pakistan Army was the central actor in
the Kargil operation, with the ‘Mujahideen’ playing only a bit part. Mishra
reported to Vajpayee that Sharif had turned ashen listening to the tapes.
Sharif’s position seemed to be getting increasingly tenuous in June 1999.
After another meeting with Mishra, Sharif seemed concerned that his own
house was bugged and told his guest that they should take a walk in the
garden. When Mishra reported this to Vajpayee, the latter took this as an
indication that Sharif was more a ‘prisoner of circumstances’ than anything
else’.10 Following another visit on 25 June 1999, Mishra returned in a
Pakistani special aircraft. The next day, his counterpart, Niaz Naik, reached
Delhi for a meeting at the Imperial Hotel. Naik later called on Vajpayee,
who asked him, ‘We started the journey from Lahore. How did we reach
Kargil?’ Naik responded that a way needed to be found to return from
Kargil to Lahore. Vajpayee said, ‘Very simple. You should just withdraw.’
In Islamabad, High Commissioner Parthasarathy remained sceptical of
the backchannel, and particularly of the ability of R. K. Mishra to deal
with a wily diplomat like Niaz Naik. Partha felt it was ‘unusual’ that
Mishra was not overly familiar with basics like the Simla Agreement or
past negotiations between India and Pakistan. Naik claimed that Mishra
had said in one of the meetings that India would agree to ‘adjustments’ in
the LoC that would eventually lead the line to be moved to the Chenab
River basin. Such an ‘adjustment’ would have meant that the entire Kashmir
Valley would be handed over to Pakistan. Naik claimed that it was on
this basis that Nawaz Sharif was proposing to visit Delhi on his way
back from China in June. Mishra had vehemently denied this assertion.11
278 ange r m anage m e nt

US COERCION
The US had been deeply concerned with the situation in South Asia since
the nuclear tests. While the first US instinct was to bring both parties to
the table, and to offer mediation, this was no easy task. Pakistan was
steadfastly insisting that the intrusions were caused by Kashmiri freedom
fighters; India, on the other hand, was suspicious of any mediation, its
primary goal was to reverse the occupation of its territory by Pakistan.
India was apprehensive that the US would also fall into the trap of pointed
‘neutrality’ adopted by some other international players. Major powers of
the world as well as the United Nations tended to take the view that while
Pakistan’s violation of the LoC was wrong, the intrusion had occurred
because India and Pakistan did not have a substantive and meaningful
dialogue going on the Kashmir issue.
The US was trying to use every bit of leverage it had on Pakistan. The
administration pointed out that if Prime Minister Sharif did not order a
pullback, the US would hold up the $100 million International Monetary
Fund loan that Pakistan needed. Sharif meanwhile visited Beijing hoping
for comfort from Pakistan’s ‘all-weather’ friend, but got none. The US
embassy reported that he came home desperate.12
The US was unsure whether Sharif had personally ordered the
infiltration above Kargil, reluctantly acquiesced in it, or had not even
known about it until after it happened. But there was no question that
Sharif now realized it had been a colossal blunder. Pakistan was universally
seen to have precipitated the crisis, ruining the promising peace process
that had begun in Lahore.
By the end of May 1999, when the situation seemed somewhat stable,
the US saw an opportunity to offer its ‘good offices’ to look for a diplomatic
solution. State Department officials Rick Inderfurth and Tom Pickering
began a regular dialogue with the Indian and Pakistani ambassadors in
Washington, while Secretary of State Madeleine Albright made phone calls
to Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, Jaswant Singh, and the British foreign
secretary Robin Cook. The central message was to blame Pakistan for
instigating the crisis, while urging India to exercise restraint and not broaden
the conflict.
President Clinton became fully involved from early June, even though
he was preoccupied with the resolution of the ‘Kosovo crisis’ in the former
Yugoslavia, where NATO was executing air strikes to coerce the Serbian
leader Slobodan Milošević to withdraw Yugoslav forces from Kosovo. In a
turning point in US diplomacy, Clinton, on the Kargil issue discarded the
traditional US posture of studied neutrality as the primary mediator and
now leaned heavily on Pakistan. In letters to both prime ministers, Clinton
made Pakistan’s withdrawal a precondition for a settlement and the price
it must pay for the US diplomatic involvement that it was seeking. Clinton
 he ight s of t roub l e 279

also made phone calls to the two leaders in mid-June to emphasize this
point. The private diplomacy soon became public as the US was reinforcing
the same two-fold message (asking for Pakistani withdrawal and Indian
restraint) through the media. For India, Kargil was its first ‘TV war’, as
the conflict was being beamed live into homes across the country; the ‘fair
and just’ US stand was playing well with public opinion in India.
In late June, President Clinton called Prime Minister Sharif to stress
that the US saw Pakistan as an aggressor and rejected the fiction that the
fighters were separatist guerrillas. He sent a special envoy, General Anthony
Zinni, who was in charge of the US Central Command, to reinforce the
message in person to Musharraf and Nawaz Sharif. Zinni warned Musharraf
that India would cross the LoC if Pakistan did not pull back. Musharraf
appeared unmoved by the threat.
Clearly, the US attempt at crisis management through private and
public diplomacy was not gaining much traction with either side. The
US had aligned itself with India’s position, but Pakistan was unwilling to
change the status quo unconditionally. The opportunity for replacing the
strategy with coercive diplomacy came in late June, when, through the US
ambassador in Islamabad, Prime Minister Sharif ‘begged Clinton to come
to his rescue’ with a plan that would stop the fighting and set the stage
for a US brokered solution to Kashmir.13
On 2 July 1999, Sharif phoned Clinton and pleaded for his personal
intervention in South Asia. Clinton recalls in his autobiography that he
agreed, with two conditions: ‘first, he had to agree to withdraw his troops
back across the Line of Control; and, second, I would not agree to intervene
in the Kashmir dispute, especially under circumstances that appeared to
reward Pakistan’s wrongful incursion.’14 Clinton then telephoned Vajpayee
to report on Sharif’s request and his own reply. Vajpayee expressed concern
that Sharif would deceive, or worse, co-opt Clinton.
The exchanges between Strobe Talbott and Jaswant Singh became an
important additional channel of communication during the crisis.15 Talbott
called Singh several times by phone in June, even as he shuttled between
European capitals to deal with the Kosovo situation, to reinforce Clinton’s
assurance that under no circumstances would the US associate itself with
any outcome that rewarded Pakistan for its violation of the LoC. Singh
expressed ‘muted, cautious, but unmistakable relief that this time the United
States was tilting in India’s direction rather than Pakistan’s.’16 National
Security Advisor Sandy Berger did the same with his counterpart Brajesh
Mishra.17
In early July, President Clinton’s team was looking at diminishing
options in an escalating crisis. The crisis management strategy implemented
so far—asking Pakistan to revert to the status quo and pleading with
India not to escalate the conflict—had not worked. Pakistan continued to
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plead with the US to get involved in mediating and brokering a ceasefire,

consistent with its objective of ‘internationalizing’ the Kashmir issue. For
precisely that reason, India was allergic to any kind of mediation and
wanted a Pakistani withdrawal from the LoC to precede any dialogue.
President Clinton’s principal mediator role had worked well in the Arab-
Israeli conflict and the Irish peace process and could be replicated here
only if India could be persuaded to join in trilateral talks.18 Should the
US push for a trilateral summit or a three-way dialogue so that it could
jump into a mediatory role? Should it continue its vigorous public and
private diplomacy, offering its ‘good offices’ and sending across envoys in
a situation where India’s patience was running thin and the conflict could
rapidly spiral out of control? Or should it attempt to use its leverage
with Pakistan to try a policy of ‘coercive diplomacy’, getting Pakistan to
climb down?19
When Nawaz Sharif called Clinton and announced he would come to
Washington the next day, 4 July 1999, Clinton took a snap decision to
receive him, knowing instinctively that this would be an opportunity to push
for a resolution. Clinton subsequently invited Vajpayee to Washington for
a face-to-face meeting with Sharif, but the Indian prime minister politely
declined, citing the prevailing security situation.20 This effectively foreclosed
the mediation option and obliged the US to try a bout of coercive diplomacy.
An additional layer of complexity was added by the fact that while the US
was exercising coercion on Pakistan, the other key player in the game—
India—was not willing to play. The US hope, bolstered by continuous multi-
channel communication with India, was that since the primary objective
of both India and the US coincided (unconditional Pakistani withdrawal),
the outcome would be acceptable to India.
A key driver for the US security establishment to press the president
to play a direct role was the genuine fear of nuclear escalation if the US
diplomacy failed. The US NSA Sandy Berger told Clinton after Sharif
arrived that he was heading into the ‘most important and most delicate’
meeting with a foreign leader of his entire presidency. The overriding
objective was to induce Pakistan’s withdrawal from the LoC. But another
goal was to increase the chances of Sharif’s political survival. If Sharif lost
his job while he was in the US, he would be unable to keep his end of
the bargain in Islamabad. The US objective was to find a way to provide
Sharif ‘just enough cover to go home and give the necessary orders to
Musharraf and the military.’21
India’s objectives were also clear to the Americans and had even been
spelt out directly to Pakistan (when the Pakistan foreign minister Sartaj
Aziz had visited New Delhi on 12 June 1999): Immediate vacation of the
aggression; Reaffirmation of the validity of the Line of Control; Abandoning
of cross-border terrorism; Dismantling the infrastructure of terrorism in
 he ight s of t roub l e 281

Pakistan-occupied Kashmir; Reaffirmation of the Simla Agreement and the

Lahore Declaration.22
Strobe Talbott, who as deputy secretary of state, remained the point
man for India, added a caution that even though Clinton would be
meeting the prime minister of Pakistan in the ‘most intense, high-stakes
circumstances imaginable’23, he must keep his Indian audience in mind.
The US, he said, ‘was finally making headway with India...in allaying
their doubts, accumulated over 50 years, about whether the US would
take their security interests properly into account, especially when push
came to shove with Pakistan.’ Talbott knew that India ‘would scrutinise
every word that came out of Blair House for evidence that the US had
fallen into a trap the Pakistanis had set’ for them and recommended
that ‘providing Sharif with political cover was fine, as long as what
the US was covering was Pakistan’s retreat from the mountain tops.’24
The US planners had assessed that while key US and Indian objectives
coincided, Pakistan’s army had different ideas. Sharif’s brief from the
army was to make Pakistani withdrawal conditional to India agreeing
to direct negotiations sponsored or even mediated by the US. But the US
also realized Sharif was politically weak, ‘fighting for his own political
and physical survival’. He would therefore prioritize his own interests,
‘which would not always coincide with that of the army, or even with
Pakistan’s national interest’.25
The Clinton strategy was to confront Sharif at the end of the talks
with a ‘good’ and a ‘bad’ press statement: the good statement would hail
him for withdrawing—or restoring the sanctity of the LoC—and the bad
one would blame Pakistan for starting the crisis and the escalation sure
to follow Sharif’s ‘failed mission to Washington.’26
Nawaz Sharif started the meeting by raising the ‘Kashmir cause’; he
pleaded with Clinton to devote more attention to the issue. If Clinton
would devote to South Asia just 1 per cent of the time and energy he
had put into the Middle East, Pakistan’s prime minister said, there would
be no problem. He argued that India was to blame for the crisis, since it
had carried out an incursion of its own fifteen years earlier, in Siachen.
Clinton rejected Sharif’s depiction of India as an instigator of the crisis.
He pointed out that the Indian prime minister had been more than flexible
in going to Lahore—he had taken a ‘risk for peace’ (a phrase that Clinton
had used to describe Yitzhak Rabin of Israel).
Clinton made his demand clear early in the talks: ‘If you want me to
be able to do anything with the Indians, I’ve got to have some leverage.
Only withdrawal will bring this crisis to an end.’ He also said that a
Pakistani military pullback across the line had to be without any links to
American diplomatic intervention in the Kashmir dispute: ‘I can’t publicly
or privately pretend you’re withdrawing in return for my agreeing to be an
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intermediary. The result will be war. Plus, I’ll have sanctioned you having
crossed the LoC. I can’t let it appear that you held a gun to our head by
moving across the line.’27
Sharif responded from his brief: ‘I’m prepared to help resolve the
current crisis in Kargil, but India must commit to resolve the larger issue
in a specific timeframe.’28 That translated into negotiating a settlement on
Kashmir under the pressure of a Pakistani imposed, US-sanctioned deadline.
Clinton was furious: ‘If I were the Indian Prime Minister, I’d never do
that. I’d be crazy to do it. It would be nuclear blackmail. If you proceed
with this line, I’ll have no leverage with them.... I’ll be stripped of all
influence with the Indians. I’m not—and the Indians are not—going to
let you get away with blackmail, and I’ll not permit any characterisation
of this meeting that suggests I’m giving in to blackmail.’29
Clinton quoted from John Keegan’s The First World War, which he
was then reading. He said that European generals and politicians had
stumbled into a world war once military plans went into autopilot and the
diplomats couldn’t do anything about it. It was important not to get into
a position in which India felt that because of what Pakistan had done, it
had to cross the LoC itself. ‘That would be very dangerous. I genuinely
believe you could get into a nuclear war by accident.’30
Clinton said that he had just a year and a half left in office and he
was committed to working with India and Pakistan.
If you announce you’re withdrawing in response to my agreeing to
mediate, India will escalate before you even get home, and we will
be a step closer to nuclear war. If you hold out for a date certain
for the resolution of the Kashmir dispute, you would have made a
terrible mistake in coming here…What I’m prepared to support,
however, is a resumption and intensification of the Lahore process and
a commitment on the part of the US to work hard on this.31
Sharif repeated that he was trying to work out a deal with India that
would feature the trade-off between Pakistani withdrawal and a timetable
for the resolution of the Kashmir issue. It was clear that Sharif needed a
face-saver to show back home that he had achieved something beyond an
unconditional surrender over Kargil.
When Clinton asked Sharif if he understood how far along his military
was in preparing nuclear-armed missiles for possible use in a war against
India, Sharif seemed genuinely surprised. Clinton invoked the Cuban missile
crisis, which had been a formative experience for him (he was sixteen at the
time). Now India and Pakistan were similarly on the edge of a precipice.
It would be catastrophic if even one bomb were to be used.
At this point, President Clinton returned to the offensive.
 he ight s of t roub l e 283

He could see they were getting nowhere. Fearing that result, he had
a statement ready to release to the press in time for the evening
news shows that would lay all the blame for the crisis on Pakistan....
Having listened to Sharif’s complaints against the US, he had a list
of his own, and it started with terrorism. Pakistan was the principal
sponsor of the Taliban, which in turn had allowed Osama Bin Laden
to run his worldwide network out of Afghanistan. Clinton had asked
Sharif repeatedly to cooperate in bringing Osama to justice.... Sharif
had promised to do so but failed to deliver. The statement the US
would make to the press would mention Pakistan’s role in supporting
terrorism in Afghanistan—and, through its backing of Kashmiri
militants, in India as well.32
Clinton was by now deep in the throes of coercive diplomacy—with
‘his face flushed, eyes narrowed, lips pursed, cheek muscles pulsing, fists
clenched,’ he said it was ‘crazy enough for Sharif to have let his military
violate the Line of Control, start a border war with India, and now prepare
nuclear forces for action. On top of that he had put Clinton in the middle
of the mess and set him up for diplomatic failure.’33 Sharif seemed beaten.
He denied he had given any orders with regard to nuclear weaponry and
said he was worried for his life.
In a break in the negotiations, Clinton called Vajpayee. It was past
midnight in India. Brajesh Mishra, who was by Vajpayee’s side, recalled
that Clinton told Vajpayee he had just broken off a meeting with Sharif
and was to meet again in about half an hour. Clinton shared with Vajpayee
that he was persuading Sharif that Pakistan had to withdraw from the
area beyond the LoC. Vajpayee stressed that this was the least India would
expect.34
Now that Clinton had made the maximum use of the ‘bad statement’
his team had prepared in advance to coerce Sharif, it was time to dangle
the good one. Clinton’s team cobbled together a new version of the good
statement incorporating some of the Pakistani language from the paper that
Sharif claimed was in play bilaterally between India and Pakistan. But the
key sentence in the new document was added by the US and it focused
on the primary objective of the US from the talks—‘the Prime Minister
has agreed to take concrete and immediate steps for the restoration of
the Line of Control.’35 The paper called for a ceasefire but only after the
Pakistanis were back on their side of the line. It also reaffirmed President
Clinton’s long-standing plan to visit South Asia. To this draft, Sharif and
the Pakistan team requested just one addition: a promise that Clinton
would take a personal interest in encouraging an expeditious resumption
and intensification of the bilateral efforts (that is, the Lahore process) once
the sanctity of the LoC had been fully restored. This was acceptable to
284 ange r m anage m e nt

the US and the meeting came to a satisfying end.

The public messaging from Washington was clear. It was Pakistan that
had to step back from the line. At a White House briefing shortly after the
three-hour talk between Sharif and Clinton, the US said it ‘has been given
a clear understanding by Pakistan that there will be a withdrawal from
Kargil only by those forces that had crossed the LoC from the Pakistani
side and not by the Indians’.36
The diplomatic endgame had been reached 10,000 miles to the west of
the theatre of conflict. The US had tried mediation and crisis management
but had soon de-hyphenated that relationship and moved to coercive
diplomacy with Pakistan. This successfully combined with Operation Vijay,
with the credible use of hard power exercised by India, notwithstanding the
nuclear overhang. Clinton’s role in the Kargil endgame marked a tipping
point. It ended the painful period since the 1998 explosions and built
trust that was to serve the India–US partnership well. India spent a few
more weeks to secure the hilltops and declared victory on 26 July 1999.
Operation Vijay had concluded with victory.

REFLECTING ON KARGIL
In public comments on 30 July 1999, Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh
said that Pakistan’s ‘ill-conceived misadventure’ may have aimed to
turn ‘tactical surprise into a strategic gain by bringing about a de facto
realignment of the LoC’, or to ‘provoke India into an escalation’. But India
had decided to respond firmly without crossing the LoC, even in the face of
high casualties and even when the decision to employ air power was taken.
The area of conflict was thus not expanded.37
The discourse at the time also recognized it to be India’s first televised
conflict; the age of aggressive round the clock media was beginning. While
Jaswant Singh belonged to the old school of conducting war and diplomacy
away from the media glare, he had to reluctantly acknowledge the shape the
media machine was taking ‘marked by exuberant enthusiasm bordering, at
times, on the reckless’, to influence the conduct of warfare. Singh, a former
army officer, confessed that ‘this was our first experience of conflict in the
TV/information age. We learnt as we went along’. Singh was also drawing
lessons on how to strengthen India’s military capability and to overcome
its hesitations about US and global diplomacy, ‘as in the present instance,
we should always be ready to engage with the world...such engagement is
the very substance of diplomacy. That is not any internationalization of an
issue. Nor does it imply mediation or any acceptance of intermediaries.’38
Across the border, Pakistan’s foreign office was floundering for answers,
with none forthcoming from the military. It decided to take the safest
position of blaming India for not resolving the Kashmir issue. Commenting
on Jaswant Singh’s remarks, Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad urged
 he ight s of t roub l e 285

India to avoid using dialogue as a tactical ploy and resume meaningful

talks to resolve the core issue of Kashmir, since so far, it had been India’s
policy to ‘wriggle out of a serious dialogue’ to resolve issues. ‘Kargil like
situation erupts,’ he added lamely, ‘only due to non-resolution of the core
issue of Kashmir.’39
To later analysts in both countries, Kargil, by many metrics, was a
success for India and a setback for Pakistan. The conflict demonstrated
to the world the difference between a responsible nuclear power and an
army-dominated autocracy prone to taking wild risks. It exposed Pakistan’s
fiction of irregular troops versus the regular army and showed India’s
determination in ejecting every intruder across the LoC. Nuclear analysts
were perturbed by another reality: a year after Pakistan’s nuclear tests,
the Pakistani army and the state had behaved irresponsibly, risking war
with a nuclear neighbour. Through the Cold War, no such action had been
tried by the US and Soviet Union in each other’s territory
Military tensions shot up again on 10 August 1999. A Pakistani naval
aircraft, Atlantique, was downed at the border by the Indian Air Force,
killing twenty personnel. Conflicting versions emerged from both sides
on whether the aircraft had crossed into Indian territory. But military
escalation was contained as Pakistan this time took the matter to the
International Court of Justice, where the matter was eventually dismissed.
To analysts, this incident pointed to the ‘dangers of unintended escalation
on aggressively patrolled and monitored borders’.40
In September, Pakistan tried to defend the army’s Kargil record with
another ‘revelation’: ‘backchannel’ talks had taken place both before the
Kargil operation and after it. ‘After the Lahore diplomacy, negotiations
started and continued for at least two months till the time Prime Minister
Vajpayee’s government fell,’ Foreign Minister Sartaj Aziz told Pakistan’s
parliamentary senate: ‘When the Kargil operation started, India approached
us to defuse the tension and this was a time when (R. K.) Mishra came here
and we told him that they should hold serious negotiations on Kashmir,’
he added. There was emphasis on abiding by the Simla Agreement as far
as the LoC was concerned and this package was to culminate in a joint
statement by the two prime ministers after Nawaz Sharif’s visit to China.
‘But India backed out of this package,’ he said.41
India categorically denied this version. Brajesh Mishra said that
there was no ‘deal’ whatsoever on resolving the Kashmir dispute and,
consequently, there was no question of laying down a time frame to
implement it. Moreover, there was no proposal from the Pakistani side
that Nawaz Sharif should stop over in New Delhi during the Kargil conflict
on his way home from China. All communications between India and
Pakistan during the conflict, Mishra insisted, focused on a single issue:
to get Pakistan to unconditionally withdraw its troops to its side of the
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LoC as swiftly as possible.42

Serious Pakistani analysis of this issue later judged the Kargil
misadventure to be a huge military blunder. But Army Chief Musharraf
was maintaining a public line that the Kargil operation was a ‘great military
success’. Privately, he felt the civilians had surrendered too early. Fears
had arisen that the army chief might move against the prime minister
just after Kargil, but Musharraf, with his duplicity, pretended otherwise.
‘Are you comfortable with the prime minister?’ Pakistan’s media asked
him on 30 September. ‘Yes’, he replied, ‘very comfortable.’43 But within
two weeks, Musharraf had removed Nawaz Sharif and installed himself
as Pakistan’s leader. The Kargil misadventure launched by a rogue army
chief had claimed a civilian regime.

SEPARATE PATHS
High Commissioner Parthasarathy was preparing to leave for a National
Day reception at the Spanish embassy residence on 12 October 1999 when
the news on television announced that General Musharraf (who had been
away on an official visit to Colombo) had been removed from office as
army chief, and replaced by the ISI chief, General Ziauddin. Partha called
foreign secretary, K. Raghunath, and informed him of this development,
pointing out that the matter would not end with this announcement. He
asked his team to fan out in the city and watch for developments. As
the Indian high commissioner drove home to change for the reception,
he saw army soldiers in battle gear clambering up the walls of the PTV
headquarters on Constitution Avenue, from where the announcement of
the firing of the army chief had come. He rushed back to the office to
report that the army had arrested Nawaz Sharif and was surrounding
the presidential palace. The fact that the infamous 111 brigade of ‘coup
makers’ had moved within minutes of the announcement of the army
chief’s firing, suggested to the Indian diplomat that the army had made
preparations for the takeover, even prior to Musharraf’s departure from
Colombo. Pakistan’s third bloodless coup of the century was underway.44
The day after Sharif was ousted for the second time, Vajpayee took
office as prime minister for the third time. In India, Vajpayee was again
sworn in as prime minister on 13 October, heading a stronger NDA coalition
of twenty-four parties with 299 seats in a 543-member house, ending a
period of political instability that had continued since his thirteen-day
government in 1996. Vajpayee’s NDA coalition had stepped into elections
in September, with the caretaker government’s handling of security and
the Kargil victory an important plank of the campaign.
That the trajectories of nations born on the same day, gone nuclear in
the same month, and emerging from a bruising conflict at their border, were
now starkly diverging, became clear to observers in the subcontinent and
 he ight s of t roub l e 287

elsewhere. The new Indian government, with little change in its leadership,
was worried by events in Pakistan—unmistakably the result of the Kargil
conflict and Sharif’s efforts to rein in his army. Musharraf’s choice of
foreign minister added to the worries: Abdul Sattar, who had been both
high commissioner to India and foreign secretary in Pakistan, was hawkish
on India and regarded the Simla Agreement as an ‘unequal treaty imposed
on a defeated nation’.45 He was a member of the Tehreek-e-Insaf Party
(PTI), ostensibly led by cricketer Imran Khan, who had founded it in 1996,
under the tutelage of a hardline Islamist, former ISI chief, Hamid Gul.46
To make sense of Musharraf’s Pakistan, HC Parthasarathy took Gul
out for lunch in November. Gul, who had political ambitions, was voluble,
candid, and insightful. He told Partha that Musharraf’s intention was to stay
in power for an indefinite period of time, but the World Bank recipes that he
was adopting were no cure for the economic ills of Pakistan. When Partha
asked about Afghanistan, Gul predicted, two years before 9/11, that the
Taliban would not surrender or offer terrorist Osama bin Laden to the US.
And ‘given the strong pro-Taliban sentiments in Pakistan, no Government
in this country could afford to be seen to be pressurizing or acting against
the interests of the Taliban.’ He failed to tell the Indian diplomat that bin
Laden would soon be a guest of the Pakistan government.47

A TROUBLED FLIGHT
On 24 December 1999, when Prime Minister Vajpayee’s plane returned
from a tour within India, I clambered into the car with him for the fifteen-
minute ride from the Palam Air Force station to his official residence at
Race Course Road. Vajpayee was going to turn seventy-five the next day
and was his usual reflective self in the car. He did not know then that the
last week of the year would bring a major crisis from heights higher than
Kargil.
I had joined as the prime minister’s private secretary the previous
month. On 1 April, I had received the orders out of the blue, when posted
as first secretary in the Indian embassy in Berlin. A telex message that
morning said I had been posted as the prime minister’s additional private
secretary and should join immediately. I initially thought it was an April
Fool prank and then naively wrote to HQ that I needed a few months to
finish working on a crucial project of the new Indian embassy in Berlin.
Ronen Sen, then my ambassador based in Bonn, gently admonished me to
say that one never said no to the PMO. As luck would have it, Vajpayee’s
government was defeated by one vote that month and went into caretaker
mode, allowing me to leave for Delhi at my own pace. I did join as a
deputy secretary in the PMO, just as the Kargil crisis was ending in early
July. So, on Christmas Eve 1999, I was about to get my first lesson in
crisis management in high places.
288 ange r m anage m e nt

I received a message on the Special Protection Group net, from my

colleague Anandrajan, the PM’s other private secretary, to call him urgently.
As the ‘VIP carcade’ sped towards RCR, I spoke to Anand and then
breathlessly told the prime minister that an Indian Airlines flight from
Nepal had been hijacked and had landed at Amritsar airport; the crisis
management group led by the cabinet secretary was in session and (the
principal secretary) Brajesh Mishra was waiting at RCR to brief the prime
minister on unfolding events. The PM, seated in the front seat of the white
Ambassador, said, ‘Oh’ and asked me if I had anything else. He stared
out of the window, deep in thought. We went straight to office, and a few
minutes later, a grim Mishra was briefing Vajpayee.
Pakistan’s involvement in this operation became apparent to India’s
security experts as the hijack drama unfolded over the next few days,
particularly when the hijackers demanded the plane land in Lahore. Plans
had been afoot to celebrate Vajpayee’s seventy-fifth birthday on a grand
scale, given that he had been sworn in prime minister for the third time.
These were instantly abandoned, as the Cabinet Committee on Security met
continuously to take stock of the evolving situation. Flight IC-814, scheduled
to fly from Kathmandu to Delhi, had finally landed in Taliban-controlled
Kandahar, after a tortuous journey that took it to Amritsar, Lahore, and
the UAE. A passenger Rupin Katyal, returning from his honeymoon, had
been knifed to death. The hijackers brandished the blood-soaked knife
before the pilot, Captain Devi Sharan, and assured him that a passenger
would be killed every five minutes, unless he did their bidding.
Musharraf’s Pakistan reacted defensively on 26 December with a
familiar narrative—suggesting India had launched a false-flag operation.
‘Since October 12 New Delhi has been trying to isolate Pakistan, beginning
with its moves to seek suspension of our Commonwealth membership, its
unilateral postponement of [the] SAARC summit and now perhaps, India
decided to manufacture the hijacking incident,’ Foreign Minister Abdul
Sattar told the media. He also dusted off a thirty-year old story—the
hijacking incident was ‘not unlike the operation of January 30 1971 when
India planned and foisted a so-called hijacking of an Indian airliner named
‘Ganga’ for manufacturing a pretext to deny Pakistan’s rights and block
overnight flights by PIA between East and West Pakistan.’ He denied Indian
assertions that the hijackers boarded the Indian aircraft at Kathmandu
airport after disembarking from a PIA flight.48
For India, the hijacking was real enough. Pakistan’s role was clear
and exasperating. Relatives of passengers were marching in protest, a
pressure group the government needed to mollify, their anxiety amplified
and exaggerated by over the top electronic media reportage. Worse, despite
the multiple hijacks of a decade ago, no protocols or reflexive anti-hijack
measures seemed to have come into play. India’s crisis managers were
 he ight s of t roub l e 289

floundering for a coherent response.

High Commissioner Parthasarathy watched the drama from Islamabad
with a sense of déjà vu. He had handled two hijackings when posted in
Karachi in 1984; during one of these which terminated in Dubai, the ISI
had actually provided a pistol to the hijackers at Lahore airport. Familiar
with the modus operandi of the hijackers, the high commissioner predicted
to Delhi that the flight would land in Lahore after Amritsar. He suspected
that the Pakistanis would not be keen to let the flight stay in Lahore
and it might end up in Dubai like the last time. Hoping to negotiate in
Lahore, he asked the Pakistan foreign office to facilitate his trip to the
city. The foreign office went through the motions of trying to transport
Partha from Rawalpindi to Lahore, but told him at the airport that the
hijacked flight had taken off from Lahore.
The high commission team was then contacted by Taliban representatives
in Pakistan, who told them that the final destination of the aircraft
would be Kandahar in Afghanistan. In his negotiations with the Taliban
representatives, the high commissioner insisted that no terrorist would
be released. On 28 December, he was told to step down from his role in
negotiation since this was now being handled by a team from Delhi. The
ISI’s links with the Taliban were well-established and their connection with
the hijackers was now clear to the high commission, as well as the Indian
negotiating team that reached the tarmac in Kandahar. Counsellor A. R.
Ghanshyam from Islamabad joined the Kandahar team and saw Urdu-
speaking, apparently Pakistani, handlers guiding the Taliban. Partha soon
learnt that after intense negotiations, India had agreed to release three
jailed terrorists to secure the hijacked passengers and plane.
Under pressure to resolve the issue before the new millennium began,
Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh informed the Cabinet Committee on
Security that he would personally go to Kandahar. His act came in for
criticism since the three terrorists exchanged for the passengers were on
the same flight as the foreign minister. But Singh defended himself later
to point out that only one aircraft could land at the airport and bring
the passengers back. The final act of the drama was enacted on the last
day of the millennium, 31 December 1999, when three terrorists were
delivered in Kandahar in exchange for the passengers who returned safely.
To Parthasarathy, the decision to exchange terrorists for passengers,
was reminiscent of the one in 1990 in the case of the kidnapping of
Rubaiya Sayeed. He rued that this capitulation would tell the Pakistani
establishment that India was a soft and vulnerable state.49 As it turned out,
each of the terrorists would be responsible for multiple murders in their
respective Kashmir-focused terrorism careers launched with ISI support.
Maulana Masood Azhar would go on to found the Jaish-e-Mohammed
in 2000, responsible for spectacular acts of terror, including on India’s
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parliament in 2001 and in Pulwama, Kashmir, in 2019; Mushtaq Ahmed

Zargar was assigned to training Kashmiri terrorists in POK; Omar Sheikh
was involved in plotting 9/11 in 2001 and then ‘arrested’ for the murder
of the US reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002, only to have his death sentence
reversed in seven years.50
The NDA government, in its new term, had faced its first major crisis
with the eighth Pakistan-related hijacking, evoking unhappy memories of
the series of hijackings of the 1970s and 1980s. This was yet another
manifestation of terror, with a global dimension, a humanitarian situation
and a media spectacle that reduced policy options. Vajpayee had mixed
feelings about how the crisis had ended. When I informed him of a
felicitation function to celebrate the success of the operation, led by the
family of Captain Sharan, the prime minister asked me, ‘But why did he
not ground the plane in Amritsar?’
Vajpayee’s abbreviated term of thirteen months, followed by the
caretaker phase of six months had seen the Pokhran explosions, the
Lahore visit, and Kargil, all connected deeply to one another. But the
decision to go nuclear had redefined diplomacy between the estranged
neighbours. Hopes that were revived of the nuclear-armed rivals forging
a new détente with Vajpayee’s bus diplomacy to Lahore had been dashed
with Pakistan’s aggression in Kargil; this hope plummeted further for India
as the millennium ended with the traumatic hijack.
 22

MI LLENNI AL DI PL OM ACY

B ill Clinton made his promised South Asia visit in March 2000. The
highlight of his tour was five intense days in India, right after the
colourful festival of Holi. But the first US presidential visit to India in
twenty-two years was clouded by a terrorist massacre of thirty-five Sikh
villagers in Chittisinghpura, J&K. It was a brutal reminder for Clinton,
on the eve of his visit, that apart from nuclear weapons, terrorism could
destabilize the region. While sharing his anguish at the tragedy, Vajpayee
told Clinton that Pakistani groups were behind the massacre and asked
him to press the matter in Pakistan. The visit served to develop a bond
of trust between the leaders, bordering on friendship; Vajpayee thanked
Clinton for his role in Kargil.
The Pakistan leg of the tour stood in stark contrast to the Indian visit;
Clinton spent six hours in Islamabad, with some tough talking for Pakistan’s
new military dictator and a lecture on what democracy meant. Clinton’s
visit to Pakistan had come on the heels of a sentence of life imprisonment
awarded to Nawaz Sharif by a anti-terrorism kangaroo court. Soon after
the visit, Pakistan’s Supreme Court once again invoked the doctrine of
necessity to give Musharraf three long years for the restoration of civilian
rule. The US worked hard behind the scenes to ensure Sharif did not meet
Bhutto’s fate of being hanged by a dictator—he was exiled instead.
In July, India sent in a new high commissioner to Musharraf’s Pakistan.
Vijay Kumar Nambiar was a career diplomat with expertise on China and
UN matters. He had earlier served in Afghanistan in the chaotic times right
after Soviet troops exited. He took over in Islamabad when ties were at
a low but also when India was reconciling to a post-Kargil reality of a
nuclear Pakistan with power firmly in the grip of the army.
Meanwhile, Pakistan’s ambassador in Delhi, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi,
had lunch with the MEA’s Pakistan division chief, Vivek Katju, on a July
afternoon in 2000. Qazi had for months been trying to create grounds
for India to hear out the dictator he now represented. In a note, since
declassified, recording their unusual chat, Katju reported, ‘PHC remarked
that Kargil should never have happened.’ Qazi told Katju that ‘Musharraf
was a soldier who had never expected to assume the office which he
was now holding.’ Pakistan’s ambassador also argued ‘that the General’s
articulation was becoming a little more nuanced...he was now saying that
while Kashmir was the core issue and had to be discussed in a major way,
other issues would also be discussed’.1
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Qazi felt he needed to jump the barrier of the MEA and develop
direct contact with the BJP leadership. After establishing a relationship
with George Fernandes, he decided to approach Lal Krishna Advani, the
leader branded the most inflexible hawk within the BJP. To approach the
Sindh-born home minister Advani, Qazi deployed his family connections
with journalist Karan Thapar. The journalist drove him to Advani’s home
where he would secretly hobnob with the deputy prime minister ‘perhaps
twenty or thirty times’2 and eventually persuade him to consider a visit
by Musharraf.
The betrayal of Kargil and Pakistan-supported terrorism were on
Vajpayee’s mind when he paid a return visit to the US at Clinton’s insistence,
in September 2000. In his meetings, Vajpayee found a US system that
still did not share India’s deep concerns about terrorism emanating from
Pakistan. Even scholars debating the grand strategy for US foreign policy
in the 1990’s failed to recognize the threat and displayed ‘a lack of concern
about terrorism.’3 The picture, Vajpayee told his US interlocutors, looked
remarkably different to countries that were victims of terror. India, for
instance, had been painfully aware of the global and transborder dimension
of international terrorism, with terrorist bombs reverberating through the
1980s and 1990s in the border states of Punjab and Jammu and Kashmir.
Vajpayee presciently told the US Congress, a year ahead of 9/11: ‘No country
has faced as ferocious an attack of terrorist violence as India has over the
past two decades: 21,000 were killed by foreign-sponsored terrorists in
Punjab alone, 16,000 have been killed in Jammu and Kashmir…Distance
offers no insulation. It should not cause complacence.’4
In November, a couple of months after his visit to the US, Vajpayee’s
government balanced his Pakistan and Kashmir policy to announce a
month-long ceasefire by Indian security forces against militants in the
Kashmir Valley for he holy month of Ramzan. Called the non-initiation of
combat operations (NICO), this controversial move built some confidence
for Kashmiri leaders. But to some security experts, it gave time to the
militants to regroup to attack again.
It was an active time for India’s post-Pokhran engagement with
the world. The Vajpayee–Mishra duo worked on building on strategic
partnerships with several emerging poles: the US, Russia, the EU, and
the ASEAN; the last put into action Narasimha Rao’s ‘Look East’ policy.
A few years later, when Mishra and I sat with Vajpayee in his living
room, reminiscing about those years, Mishra summarized India’s approach
succinctly: after our nuclear tests, we needed powerful friends to realize our
greater global status. The Russians were too weak to help. The Americans
were the most powerful and willing to help. Our diplomacy worked; the
Americans came to our corner. And the rest of the West followed.
 m il l e nnial dip l omacy 293

VAJPAYEE’S MUSINGS
India–Pakistan tensions weighed heavy on Prime Minister Vajpayee’s mind
as he spent the end of the year in an idyllic resort in Kerala, to muse on
the state of the nation. Vajpayee’s ‘Musings from Kumarakom’ appeared
as two separate articles in select newspapers on 1 January 2001. I was
with Vajpayee on that break, from 26 December to 1 January, running the
personal office, sitting in on some sessions as Vajpayee discussed issues
at length with speechwriter Sudheendra Kulkarni, who drafted the text.
The approach was to squarely address the two major issues playing on
Vajpayee’s mind—the Ayodhya temple5 and the Pakistan conundrum—
since, as the article said, ‘a self-confident and resilient nation does not
postpone the inconvenient issues of yesterday to a distant tomorrow.’6
So, India was willing to ‘seek a lasting solution to the Kashmir problem’,
and was ‘prepared to recommence talks with Pakistan, including at the
highest level, provided Islamabad gives sufficient proof of its preparedness
to create a conducive atmosphere for a meaningful dialogue.’ Vajpayee was
willing to get over the Kargil betrayal and deal with Pakistan’s dictator, to
find a solution to the terrorism problem.7
At one of the periodic lunches at the PM’s residence in May 2001,
the big three BJP leaders—Advani, Vajpayee, and Jaswant Singh—discussed
Pakistan. Advani broached the idea of inviting Musharraf to India, while
simultaneously intensifying counter-terror operations. Singh agreed and
added a third prong of a ‘diplomatic offensive’ to the approach: make the
global community understand the reality of Kargil and Pakistan’s continuing
sponsorship of terrorism. Vajpayee was game to try the experiment his
two friends and most senior CCS colleagues were suggesting.8 It would be
useful, he thought, to read the mind of Pakistan’s new dictator, to make
him understand what the new India was about and to find an arrangement
to counter terrorism.9
The operational approach that emerged was to experiment with the new
idea of inviting Musharraf to India and to simultaneously end the ceasefire
that had been declared for Ramzan and later extended for six months.
India’s security forces had been complaining of large-scale infiltration of
trained militants into Kashmir in the absence of artillery fire, and pushing
for the ceasefire to end. Across the border, Musharraf had repeatedly been
offering a meeting with India’s leaders ‘at any time and at any place’.10
When the discussion was brought to the Cabinet Committee on
Security in May, a couple of MEA officers, Vivek Katju and Raminder
Jassal, waited in my office, adjoining the cabinet room. Jaswant Singh
walked in and informed them of the ‘well thought out decision’ to invite
Pakistan’s dictator. ‘Good grief,’ said Jassal, reflecting the anti-Musharraf
mood prevalent in the baffled foreign office. Nevertheless, the invitation
to Pakistan’s ‘CEO’ went on 23 May. India had, in essence, reversed its
294 ange r m anage m e nt

decision on not engaging with Pakistan until terrorism was stopped; and
also linked the Kashmir issue with its Pakistan policy. Both decisions had
their critics, but also supporters for another ‘bold move’ by Vajpayee to
look for peace in a nuclear environment.

THE DICTATOR AT THE TAJ

Agra, a town in western Uttar Pradesh famous for the Taj Mahal, was
designated the venue for the summit. Elections to the legislative assembly
of India’s most populous state were expected in a few months and the idea
to showcase the state as a venue for global diplomacy had been proposed
by the prime minister’s politically-savvy media adviser, Ashok Tandon. I
was packed off with security teams to recce the Agra hotels, including the
new Oberoi property, where the Taj Mahal could provide a backdrop to
the talks.
Musharraf landed in Agra in July 2001 after promoting himself as
president of Pakistan, throwing out then President Rafiq Tarar, a Nawaz
Sharif acolyte. Musharraf was coming on an official visit and needed to
claim protocol equivalence with his host, India’s president and veteran
diplomat, K. R. Narayanan; else, he would not receive the guard of honour.
The media wanted the summit to play out like a high-octane cricket
match, with a huge appetite for a ball-by-ball telecast. Private TV channels
had started in India a decade earlier and were then seeing a mushrooming
of round the clock news channels hungry for content. The first televised
foreign policy show was to unfold after the first television war of Kargil
and the first televised communal riots in Gujarat that were to follow. It was
television that was to prove the undoing of Musharraf’s diplomatic foray.
In Vajpayee’s PMO, the media coverage of the visit was a hot topic.
Media adviser Ashok Tandon was making the case for hourly briefings
in Agra. Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh was sceptical of a ‘media circus’,
and suggested a traditional diplomatic format—such as the ones that were
in place for summits in Tashkent or Simla or Camp David—with leaders
emerging with smiles and handshakes to release a brief outcome document
in stilted prose. But India–Pakistan relations in the twenty-first century
were a different game, and round the clock TV demanded round the clock
briefings, on minutiae if not on substance. Jaswant Singh later felt the
media pinch of a failed summit, but became its greatest explainer.
The question playing in Vajpayee’s mind, and before the diplomats, was
whether Agra could become the peace conference that transmogrified the
bitterness, humiliation, and tragic loss of lives of Kargil, just like Tashkent
was for the 1965 war and Simla for 1971. Could something come out of
talking with the new dictator?
Apart from the formal conversations with prepared statements in
the delegation-level talks, the bulk of the diplomacy took place at the
 m il l e nnial dip l omacy 295

apex level, with Vajpayee and Musharraf in conversation, with only their
notetakers present. The entire Cabinet Committee on Security, including
Advani and Jaswant Singh, waited in anterooms along with officials, as the
two principals met in a banquet hall improvised as a room for summitry
at the Jaypee Palace Hotel, Agra.
Towards the end of the delegation-level talks, Musharraf launched
into an exposition of his plans to bring grassroots democracy to Pakistan
and garrulously explained how important this was. In a break before the
official lunch began, I walked up to Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra and
said that I hoped everyone got the irony of Pakistan’s dictator explaining
democracy to India’s cabinet. Mishra laughed and said I should present
my view to the cabinet myself. We walked to where Vajpayee, Advani, and
other cabinet members were seated, and Mishra said to Vajpayee that his
private secretary had an important observation to share. I did repeat my
take to the prime minister and his cabinet colleagues. Vajpayee chuckled. He
was letting Musharraf do most of the talking, he wanted to read the man.
On the second day of the summit, Musharraf met with editors of
major newspapers and TV networks for a breakfast conversation. The
event was filmed by NDTV, with an apparent understanding with the
Pakistani embassy that the event was not to be telecast. NDTV however
soon decided to telecast the entire conversation. Musharraf had let loose
his hawkish position on Kashmir and equated terrorists with freedom
fighters. This public telecast sounded to observers like a mid-summit report
on the talks, where Pakistan’s hard views were being inflicted on India,
while India’s positions were unclear.
In our makeshift PMO at the hotel, Brajesh Mishra and I watched the
proceedings with dismay. Mishra turned to me and said that the PM needed
to be informed of this development, since he was sitting in conversation with
Musharraf oblivious to everything happening outside the meeting room.
Mishra scribbled a few lines. I had them quickly typed up, adding a couple
of sentences of my own. The note basically said that a press conference by
Musharraf was being telecast, where he had repeated his hardline positions,
harping on the Kashmir issue and had talked of terrorists as freedom
fighters. It fell upon me to walk into the room where the two principals
and the two notetakers were sitting. My arrival interrupted the conversation
as both leaders looked up. Musharraf had been talking and Vajpayee was
listening, apparently with great interest. I handed over the paper to the
boss and said that there had been some important developments. After
I left the room, Vajpayee looked at the paper and then read out from it
to Musharraf, saying edgily that his behaviour was not helping the talks.
India Today reported that the summit went downhill from the point I had
handed over the note to the prime minister11; I was playfully accused by
some colleagues of torpedoing the Agra initiative.
296 ange r m anage m e nt

Advani was quite aware of the slant in the media reporting, making
him the villain of the piece. The simplistic narrative emerging from the
meetings, fuelled by Pakistani leaks, was that while Vajpayee and Jaswant
Singh were for an understanding and OK with Pakistan’s convoluted draft
of the Agra joint statement (linking progress in bilateral ties to forward
movement on the Kashmir issue), Advani the hawk had vetoed it since he
did not want any progress with Pakistan. Later Pakistani writings tend to
highlight the almost agreed upon draft.12
The reality was different. Jaswant Singh walked in to Vajpayee’s hotel
suite to show him the paper he had negotiated with his counterpart,
Sattar. Vajpayee asked his other cabinet colleagues to come to the suite.
Brajesh Mishra was already present. Pakistan’s initial formulations linking
a Kashmir settlement to other bilateral matters had been diluted, but the
first operative paragraph still referred to ‘progress towards settlement of
(the) Jammu and Kashmir issue.’ The draft ended with calling for addressing
all issues ‘in an integrated manner.’13 The draft also asked for a sustained
dialogue at the political level on terrorism, but made no promises of
Pakistan curtailing it.14 While the overall formulations seemed innocent
enough, the draft was sending a political message that India was letting
Musharraf get away lightly on the terrorism issue. Several red flags went
up in the room.
Jaswant Singh recalled that the ‘collective view expressed there was
that without sufficient and clear emphasis on terrorism, also accepting
categorically that it must cease, how could there be any significant movement
on issues that are of concern or are a priority only to Pakistan? And none
that are in the hierarchy of priorities for India? How can we abandon
Shimla or Lahore? Or forget the reality of Kargil? I went back and reported
failure to Sattar.’15 As Jaswant Singh walked out of the room, Advani
sighed and said, in English, that he would now be the ‘fall guy’.
Musharraf asked for a last meeting with Vajpayee to see if he could save
the failing summit. To Vajpayee, this move had echoes of Bhutto’s gambit
in Simla in 1972, when he had asked for a last call on Indira Gandhi, at
a time when the Simla Agreement was deadlocked. Bhutto had pleaded
with Gandhi and persuaded her that he would not survive if he did not
carry back an agreement. Musharraf famously claimed that he bluntly told
Vajpayee that there seemed to be ‘someone above the two of us who had
power to overrule us’. But Vajpayee ‘just sat there speechless’.13 Vajpayee
had in fact let Musharraf speak and refused to cave in to the dictator’s
pleas. He then gently said it was too late to retrieve the situation. The
meeting ended on that note. When Vajpayee walked out grimly, Advani
joked he was going to send someone to check ‘kya guppen lada rahen hain
(what the tittle-tattle was all about).’ Vajpayee would refer to this remark
when he spoke later in parliament. Jaswant Singh, who was also waiting
 m il l e nnial dip l omacy 297

for the meeting to end, later recalled, ‘I knew that a mistake was being
made by our guest, for when I later asked Vajpayee what had happened, he
said quietly, “nothing”. He said it in Hindi, in effect to mean, “the visiting
general sahib kept talking and I kept listening”. This is an art at which
Vajpayee, so often and so disconcertingly to the unfamiliar, specialises.’17
Musharraf’s overreach in terms of publicly broadcasting hawkish
positions on Kashmir—and his insistence on a formulation linking progress
on all issues with progress on Kashmir—had led to the unravelling of the
summit. Another factor was that both countries attempted to summit a
mountain with little planning or even Sherpas to help them. Negotiating
a joint statement at the level of the prime minister and foreign minister
was not the smartest choice by Pakistan. There had been little diplomatic
bargaining, no backchannel dialogue, and limited diplomatic attempts to
choreograph the summit’s outcomes to bridge the vast chasm in the two
positions on Kashmir and terrorism.
The night of Musharraf’s sudden departure saw some tense moments
in the Indian camp. Global media, including Pakistani journalists, were
awaiting India’s position on the collapse of the talks and Musharraf’s
premature departure. The new external affairs spokesperson, Nirupama
Rao, stepped up to ask Jaswant Singh if he would address the media.
Singh said that he would not, but added dramatically in his baritone that
she should make an appearance in the media room with the message: ‘The
caravan has left but was yet to reach its destination.’18 Rao went in past
midnight to battle a roomful of journalists baying for information. She
had to go on with this woefully inadequate brief, just that Urdu phrase
rendered into English about a travelling caravan. She announced that the
longer press conference would be held the next day at ‘a level above’ hers
since the leaders had not decided on this issue. The waiting media howled
in protest. Rao was even jostled and heckled by Pakistani journalists. The
next day, Vajpayee asked Jaswant Singh to handle the press conference,
nixing Singh’s gentle suggestion that Advani do it instead.
Jaswant Singh was in command of the 17 July press conference, where
he repeated his analogy of the departing caravan and wordily countered
the suggestion that India had not shared details with the media:
India does not believe that discussions or negotiations between two
heads of government are ever or can ever be conducted in public
or through the press. We abided by that impeccably. However, when
we found that there was a kind of approach from the other side of
engaging with the media as an additionality ... it was found necessary
that for the sake of the public of India the essence of what Prime
Minister Vajpayee had emphasized and said be made also known to
everybody.19
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India had officially released Vajpayee’s formal opening statement at the

delegation-level talks. Singh focused on themes of cross-border infiltration
and firing at the LoC, as also India’s attempt to take forward the ‘peace
process’ of November 2000. He deftly parried some aggressive questions,
and refused to call the summit a failure.
Since the talks seemed to have collapsed because of the divergence
of views in the draft joint statement, I felt then that we could easily
have brought into play the blander version, which would not mention
the ‘K-word’ and simply say that Pakistan’s president came for talks and
these would continue. But it was also true that if terrorism had continued
in subsequent years despite the joint statement, Musharraf’s Agra visit
would have felt like another betrayal. A few months later, I raised this
issue in a dining table conversation with Vajpayee and Brajesh Mishra:
if India had gone with a bland text to declare the summit a success and
then cross-border terrorism had continued, would we not have appeared
even more gullible than we did when the summit was declared a failure?
Mishra agreed that would have been a worse outcome. Would Musharraf
have then put a lid on cross-border terrorists? More likely, Agra would
become another Lahore, where risen hope had been dashed by Kargil.
Still, the invitation to Musharraf served a purpose, Vajpayee did manage
to read Pakistan’s loquacious dictator, and this experience would help him
evolve his Pakistan policy over the next three years. The summit did not
succeed, but diplomacy had worked. It had worked for both countries.
 23

THE TERROR FACTOR

I t would take four jet planes and a handful of fanatics on a fine

September morning to position terrorism at the centre of global
discourse. Before the events of 9/11 shattered the calm in 2001, terrorism
in the US perception appeared to be something that happened to generic
others. It now became the central policy concern of the Western world. The
fact that the terrorists had been trained in Pakistan put an uncomfortable
spotlight on Pakistan’s role as the ‘epicentre’ of terrorism. The US
message for Pakistan was clear, that it had to be ‘either with us or with
the terrorists’. Musharraf felt he had no choice but to join the US effort
in Afghanistan. He explained his decision later in a self-congratulatory
memoir, In the Line of Fire, pointing to intense American pressure on him.
‘In what has to be the most undiplomatic statement ever made’, Musharraf
recalled, ‘(Richard) Armitage added to what Colin Powell had said to me
and told the (ISI) director general not only that we had to decide whether
we were with America or with the terrorists, but that if we chose the
terrorists, then we should be prepared to be bombed back to the Stone
Age.’1
From India, the situation looked grimmer. The country that was part
of the global terrorism problem, had now been recruited to be part of
the solution. To most Indian observers, the US-led action in Afghanistan,
part of the ‘war on terror’ was predicated on the use of overwhelming
force against the Taliban regime in Kabul, playing hosts to the al-Qaeda. It
failed to take into account the complexity of the problem—the conflicting
objectives of Pakistan and the US.
Terrorism from Pakistan continued to raise its ugly head in Kashmir.
On 1 October 2001, a three-man Jaish-e-Mohammed fidayeen suicide squad
rammed an explosive-laden Tata Sumo into the legislative assembly complex
in Srinagar. Thirty-eight people were killed. This terror in Kashmir suggested
that far from hiding from the post-9/11 US spotlight on Pakistan as a training
hub for terrorists, the events in the US had inspired the militants to launch
spectacular acts of suicide terror. More was to come.

12/13
Around 11.30 a.m., on 13 December 2001, a white Ambassador car with
security stickers entered India’s Parliament complex and parked near
Gate 12. When an alert guard approached the vehicle, the driver panicked
and backed into the carcade of the vice president of India. Soon, five
300 ange r m anage m e nt

men jumped out of the car and started firing indiscriminately. Security
guards locked the gates of the Parliament building and returned fire,
eventually killing all five terrorists. The media covering parliament telecast
the gunbattle live. When it ended, seven soldiers and five terrorists lay
dead. For India, this was a 9/11 moment; the national mood of anger and
outrage matched the shock at the audacity of the terrorism plot.
The Parliament attack could have been a worse tragedy. I had a
footnote to add to the tragic episode. In the PM’s personal office, some
important files had piled up for Vajpayee to sign off on. He was leaving
for parliament from Race Course Road at about 11.10 a.m. when I saw
on TV that the Lok Sabha had been adjourned due to some commotion.
I jogged behind the departing carcade and asked for it to stop. I told the
PM that parliament had been adjourned and was unlikely to meet that
morning, so there was no point in going there. A couple of meetings at
the Parliament office could be shifted, and we could take care of some
urgent files at the office at Race Course Road. The PM looked at me with
mock reluctance, but agreed to get to work at RCR.
While my colleague in the personal office, R. P. Singh, was discussing
his files with the PM, I got a breathless call from Ravi, an official in the
PM’s Parliament office just after 11.40 a.m.: he was hearing gunshots, the
parliament building was locked and we should not come there. It’s on TV,
he told me. I switched on the television and saw the breaking news story;
the shootout was already playing out live on every news channel. I raced
to the adjoining room to tell the PM that terrorists had opened fire in the
Parliament complex and he should come see it on TV. Vajpayee, whose
adult life had been dedicated to parliament, watched the horror in silent
outrage before he got on the phone.
That afternoon, a group of officers from the PM’s security, the SPG,
came in to my office. They were convinced that the PM was the primary
target of the assault and thanked me for my fortuitous morning intervention.
Our obsession in the PMO on ‘no pendency’ had prevented the prime
minister’s carcade from crossing paths with the terrorists.
Five days later, Home Minister Advani would confirm that ‘the terrorist
assault on the very bastion of our democracy was clearly aimed at wiping
out the country’s top political leadership.’2 A US official, Bruce Riedel, later
wrote that in the US assessment, the operation was aimed at assassinating
the PM or at the minimum holding him hostage.3
The day after the attack, India’s foreign secretary, Chokila Iyer,
summoned High Commissioner Qazi to spell out ‘some of the steps that were
required and were also mandated by international law’.4 These included
the arrest of the leadership of Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammed,
stopping their activities and freezing their assets. Advani also revealed
in parliament that the assault ‘was executed jointly by Pak-based and
 t he t e rror facto r 301

supported terrorist outfits, LeT and JeM, organizations known to ‘derive

their support and patronage from Pak ISI’. All five terrorists of the suicide
squad were Pakistani nationals. An angry security establishment was
rounding up their Indian associates.5
A week later, a frustrated government said India had ‘seen no attempts
on the part of Pakistan to initiate action against the organisations involved’6;
so, it had decided to recall High Commissioner Nambiar from Islamabad.
India also terminated the train and bus services between the countries.7

PARAKRAM
Nambiar had walked into Pakistan during the post-Kargil low in the
summer of 1999. He went through a roller-coaster tenure of eighteen
months in nuclear times. A year into his tenure, he saw the high of the
build-up to the Agra summit and then a deep low as relations plummeted
after 13 December. When Nambiar received the summons from New
Delhi, they did not specify a date for his return. In the next few days in
Islamabad, he went to multiple farewell receptions, including one hosted
by the foreign office. On one outing to the Islamabad Golf Course for
a farewell round of golf with some friends, he was photographed by
the media. A mischievous and clearly planted story made the headlines,
suggesting that the Indian HC was reluctant to leave Islamabad. The
Pakistan desk chief in Delhi, Joint Secretary Arun Singh, called up the high
commissioner and requested him to return immediately.
By the end of the month, it was clear that Pakistan was not about
to help in the investigation into its assets, ‘veritable arms’ of the ISI, nor
crackdown on the terrorism machine. Musharraf’s establishment seemed
to be testing India. How would India react to terrorism emanating from a
nuclear Pakistan? Would the fear of escalation stay India’s hand? Just as
the Pakistan Army had tested India’s resolve in a nuclear environment with
incursions into Kashmir at Kargil a couple of years earlier, it seemed to want
to test its resolve in regard to cross-border terrorism. Besides, Musharraf
was now not overly concerned about US censure, as a keen, if duplicitous,
soldier in the US war on terror being played out to Pakistan’s west.
An angry Jaswant Singh told parliament on 27 December that ‘India’s
serious concerns about all the ramifications of the 13th December attack
on our Parliament have not been fully grasped in Pakistan’ and ‘attempts
to dupe the international community with cosmetic half measures, non-
measures, or even fictitious incidents are still being made.’ He also
announced decisions to halve the strength of both high commissions
within forty-eight hours, particularly since ‘officials of the Pakistan high
commission have been involved in espionage, as well as in direct dealings
with terrorist organizations. Also, the remaining Pakistani officials of the
high commission would be confined to the municipal limits of Delhi; and
302 ange r m anage m e nt

India’s air space would close again to Pakistani overflights. He warned

that these were ‘minimal measures’ to get Pakistan to curb terrorism and
that ‘India remains ready to take such further measures’.8
All options for ‘kinetic action’ were thus on the table, and indeed furiously
discussed in the security establishment and in the Cabinet Committee on
Security. The anger was palpable. The mood in the country, in the ruling
coalition led by the BJP, and within the cabinet, was to ‘do something’.
Three factors were weighing strongly on Vajpayee’s mind. One, Kargil
had taught him the value of post-nuclear strategic restraint. It got the West
to prevail over a clearly errant and irresponsible Pakistan. The US had
changed administrations, with a Republican president, George Bush in the
saddle, promising to be harder than ever on terror post 9/11. Besides, the
services of Clinton were still available to rally global support for India. Two,
Vajpayee embodied the idea of India being a responsible nuclear power.
He was retrieving global relationships; the Kargil restraint had won him
the trust of the US and the West. Any hasty hot pursuit or strikes across
the border would undo this work. Besides, both India and Pakistan were
trying to learn about their nuclear thresholds and India had not yet made
up its mind where Pakistan’s threshold lay. Vajpayee was acutely aware
that his decision to change India’s nuclear status came with a great deal
of responsibility. He had taken a call during Kargil of not crossing the
LoC and this was a decision his cabinet was inclined to maintain. Three,
Vajpayee was not sure it would be in India’s interest to risk conflict with
Pakistan on its eastern border, when the US was present on the western
border and indeed promoting Indian interests by ridding Afghanistan of
the Taliban regime. In one conversation with Advani, Vajpayee said he
was clear in his mind that India should not for the moment risk a war
while NATO troops were fighting in the region. Both nuclear responsibility
and global obligations thus dictated a line of action of aggressive global
diplomacy backed by a credible threat of force.
India’s policy response evolved into a rapid military build-up on its
western border, Operation Parakram (attack), accompanied by global
diplomacy to highlight the reactivated terror infrastructure within Pakistan.
The approach yielded some early results. Pakistan came under intense
Western pressure to focus on supporting the US-led action on its western
border and to curb terror within. A few cosmetic arrests began. India reacted
cautiously at the end of the year with a media statement acknowledging
‘information about some actions...against the Lashkar-e-Tayyaba and Jaish-
e-Mohammad’, including some arrests and raids. ‘If this information is
confirmed, then it is a step forward in the correct direction. We hope that
such actions against terrorist activities targeting India, including Jammu
and Kashmir, would be pursued vigorously, until cross-border terrorism
in our country is completely eliminated.’9
 t he t e rror facto r 303

COERCIVE DIPLOMACY
As a new year arrived, the Pakistan factor continued to be the Vajpayee
government’s strong preoccupation. The prime minister had cancelled his
annual year-end holiday to deal with the crisis and decided to share his
views with the people. He worked with speech-writer Kulkarni on an
article that hit the papers on 1 January 2002.10 Vajpayee pointed out that
the December attack had shown ‘beyond a shadow of doubt that the anti-
India forces in Pakistan are prepared to wreak any havoc on our soil’ and
that ‘the outrage of December 13 has breached the limit of the nation’s
endurance’. Addressing the people of Pakistan, he warned presciently that
these forces in Pakistan had been ‘allowed to play with fire, apparently
with no thought given to what this fire can do to Pakistan itself.’ He
took a swipe at Pakistan’s new approach to its western border, observing
that ‘the leadership of Pakistan took a commendable decision to join the
international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan, although it meant
a drastic U-turn in their policy of support to the Taliban regime.’ He asked
Pakistan’s leaders to ‘shed your anti-India mentality and take effective steps
to stop cross-border terrorism.’ If Pakistan took that path, India would be
‘willing to walk more than half the distance to work closely with Pakistan
to resolve, through dialogue, any issue, including the contentious issue of
Jammu & Kashmir.’ Pakistan’s litmus test was to demonstrate its sincerity
by responding to ‘India’s legitimate demands’ that included handing over
some terrorists who had found safe haven within Pakistan.
Pakistan decided to respond by cherry-picking the convenient parts of
the article. The foreign office spokesman Aziz Khan welcomed Vajpayee’s
‘willingness to resume high-level talks’, since Pakistan had always desired
‘resolution of all issues including the core issue of Jammu and Kashmir.’11
On 4 January, a SAARC summit had been planned in Kathmandu.
Vajpayee considered postponing the meet in view of the prevailing tensions
but eventually relented, since Nepal was keen. I had made a visit to the
Nepali capital in December as part of a security liaison team and had the
sense that Nepal, which also hosted the SAARC secretariat, saw the summit
as an opportunity to add to its regional profile and to defuse the tension.
No bilateral conversation was fixed between Vajpayee and Musharraf.
At a plenary meeting held in an auditorium, Musharraf surprised Vajpayee
by ending his speech with a flourish, extending a hand of friendship to
India. He then walked up to Vajpayee for a handshake. This grandstanding
annoyed the Indian team, Musharraf had done nothing so far to demonstrate
any will to act against the terrorists. Vajpayee’s speech was to come later
and a public response to Musharraf had to be improvised in the next
twenty minutes.
Brajesh Mishra scribbled a few sentences and asked me to walk in
front of the table on the dais where the leaders were seated, rather than
304 ange r m anage m e nt

discreetly behind, to hand the slip to the PM. This was to signal publicly
that Vajpayee would respond to Musharraf’s theatrical gesture. I did exactly
that and passed on the slip, relaying the principal secretary’s draft to the
PM. He read the draft silently and said nothing. I was carrying the speech
but needed to get the PM off the high table to confer with him on where
to insert the paragraph. I went up to him and requested him to take a
toilet break. After the break, we sat in a corner to read the draft which I
had by then written in bold, adding a few words to Mishra’s hasty draft.
When the PM had read the draft, I added for good measure that it was
important to give that message, and we could insert the draft addition
at the end. ‘Theek hai,’ said the PM, which meant he had approved the
draft and would use it.
Towards the end of his speech supporting the SAARC process, Vajpayee
said:
I am glad that President Musharraf extended a hand of friendship
to me. I have shaken his hand in your presence. Now President
Musharraf must follow this gesture by not permitting any activity in
Pakistan or any territory in its control today, which enables terrorists
to perpetuate mindless violence in India. I say this because of our
past experience. I went to Lahore with a hand of friendship. We were
rewarded by aggression in Kargil and the hijacking of the Indian
Airlines aircraft from Kathmandu. I invited President Musharraf to
Agra. We were rewarded with the terrorist attack on the Jammu and
Kashmir assembly and last month on the Parliament of India. But
we would be betraying the expectations of our peoples if we did not
chart out the course towards satisfying the unfulfilled promises of our
common South Asian destiny.
Soon, various diplomatic interlocutors were assuring India that Musharraf
had been ‘persuaded’ by the US to soon make a statement declaring an end
to Pakistan’s support to terrorism. On 8 January 2002, Home Minister
L. K. Advani had reached the US, where he was similarly informed of
the upcoming speech by Musharraf. The US told India it had doubled
down on Pakistan, emphasizing the need for credible action, both in the
context of 9/11 and the Parliament attack. The Indian system found this
assurance underwhelming, since India needed verifiable action, not more
words. Nevertheless, on 12 January, PM Vajpayee, EAM Jaswant Singh,
and Principal Secretary Brajesh Mishra, along with a few of us, assembled
to watch Musharraf’s speech on television. It felt like a group watching a
suspense movie which could end with any twist. In a speech that started
late, Musharraf did deliver a promise on checking terrorism, but added a
not unexpected Kashmir twist:
 t he t e rror facto r 305

I would also like to address the international community, particularly

the USA on this occasion…Pakistan will not allow its territory to be
used for any terrorist activity anywhere in the world. Now you must
play an active role in solving the Kashmir dispute for the sake of
lasting peace and harmony in the region....12
Jaswant Singh responded the next day at a press conference spelling out
India’s expectations. But he welcomed
the now declared commitment of the Government of Pakistan not
to support or permit any more the use of its territory for terrorism
anywhere in the world, including in the Indian State of Jammu and
Kashmir. This commitment must extend to the use of all territories
under Pakistan’s control today. We would assess the effectiveness of
this commitment only by the concrete action taken.... The Government
notes the decision of the Government of Pakistan to ban the Lashkar-
e-Tayyaba and the Jaish-e-Mohammad, the two terrorist organisations
involved in the December 13 attack on the India Parliament. We look
forward to an effective and full implementation of this measure…
lack of action against fugitives from law about whom detailed
information has been provided to Pakistan on several occasions is
disappointing....13
India was now piling on the pressure for Pakistan to act on its promises,
especially the extradition of terrorists in Pakistan, including Indian citizens,
‘fugitives from the law’ like the Bombay blasts mastermind, Dawood
Ibrahim. ‘Withdrawn’ high commissioner Nambiar, now based in Delhi,
said in an interview that India had demanded that twenty criminals housed
in Pakistan be prosecuted; fourteen of these were non-Pakistani and India
demanded their extradition. He rejected Pakistan’s claim it had no idea
about their whereabouts: ‘They have properties, relatives, associates—all
that can be used to track them down. The Pakistani government must take
these measures to restore its credibility....’14
Pakistan’s deputy high commissioner, Jalil Abbas Jilani, was also called
in to the Ministry of External Affairs to be reminded of the list of twenty
‘fugitives from law’ that had been handed over on 31 December 2001. If
Pakistan was sincere in its recently declared commitment to fight against
international terrorism, he was told, it must ‘apprehend and hand over
these persons to India.’
But the violence within Pakistan was not abating. On 23 January 2002,
an American journalist reporting for the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Pearl,
was kidnapped in Lahore while meeting a fake source for a story. One
of Pearl’s abductors was Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, one of the terrorists
released by India in the 1999 hijacking of an Indian Airlines aircraft. To
306 ange r m anage m e nt

the shock of the global community, Pearl, who was Jewish, was brutally
murdered on 1 February, his beheading chillingly captured on a videotape
released later by the killers. With Musharraf’s Pakistan under intense US
pressure to deliver justice, Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin,
surrendered in March to his ISI handler, Brigadier Ijaz Shah. After the
high-profile arrest, India’s foreign office summoned Jilani, to demand that
Sheikh be interrogated for information relevant to the hijacking of IC-814,
as well as the recent terrorist attacks on the Srinagar Assembly building
and on India’s Parliament. But Sheikh was a special guest of the ISI and
a precious asset who needed to be shielded at all costs, both from the US
and India. (He was sentenced to death by hanging for Pearl’s abduction
and murder in July 2002, but his conviction for murder was overturned
by a Pakistani court in April 2020.)

AN ENVOY EXPELLED
On 14 May 2002, three armed men gunned down thirty-one people,
including army men and children, in Kaluchak, J&K. Again, the terrorists
were shot dead and identified as Pakistanis. This bloodbath gave India
reason to correct a diplomatic asymmetry and expel Pakistan’s HC,
Jehangir Qazi. India had after the Parliament attack five months earlier
only withdrawn its own envoy, but overlooked removing Pakistan’s. The
next day, EAM Jaswant Singh announced that the Cabinet Committee on
Security had decided to ask Pakistan to ‘recall’ its envoy in Delhi. Joint
secretary in the Pakistan Division Arun Singh called in Qazi’s deputy, Jilani,
at 3 p.m., and told him Qazi had a week to leave.
Pakistan expressed disappointment at the expulsion, arguing that India’s
move would escalate tension between the ‘two nuclear-capable rivals by
hampering the communication between them.’15 Pakistan’s spokesman
claimed that when India recalled its HC in December, ‘we did not take a
reciprocal action because we felt that our diplomatic representation at the
highest level should be maintained so that all issues with India should be
resolved through dialogue and through peaceful means.’16
When she met Qazi for a farewell call, Foreign Secretary Chokila Iyer
conveyed India’s message to Qazi to take back home: Pakistan’s current
approach towards India and its reliance on violence and terrorism is
unacceptable.17 In the week he had, Qazi himself hosted a well-attended
farewell reception before he left India. Qazi also called on Deputy PM
Advani, the political leader with whom he had interacted the most, when
an emotional Advani even embraced him at the instance of Mrs Advani.18
The escalating violence was worrying the world. Would India continue
to exercise restraint or would it retaliate? Nuclear concerns became serious
in 2001–02. A large number of diplomats fled New Delhi as advisories
were issued on the dangers of tensions escalating to nuclear levels. The
 t he t e rror facto r 307

ban on civilian overflights by both countries persisted. Firing continued

at the LoC, the two armies were primed and ready for battle, and the
Pakistan Air Force practised for war by landing fighter aircraft on the
Islamabad–Lahore highway.
Global attention was riveted on the subcontinent. Western diplomats
and peace negotiators came in droves to both India and Pakistan. They
included the prime minister of Britain Tony Blair and several US diplomats
like Richard Armitage, who told Vajpayee that the US had told Musharraf
that the idea of root causes of terrorism had gone out of the window
after 9/11.

WHOSE JINNAH HOUSE IS IT ANYWAY?

In July, India had a new foreign minister, Yashwant Sinha; he swapped
portfolios with Jaswant Singh, who became finance minister. Sinha took
over at a time of high tension with Pakistan. He had been familiar with
the collapsing ties, as a member of the Cabinet Committee of Security. A
ticklish issue Sinha faced was of Jinnah House, a contentious matter since
1947, with a new twist in the twenty-first century. The issue of Pakistan’s
claim on this property had been long settled, with the closing of the
Mumbai consulate and the bungalow being treated as abandoned enemy
property. But it was now a matter of the Indian government contesting an
Indian citizen’s claim. In Sinha’s account:
A recommendation had been made to the PM, by my predecessor
Jaswant Singh, that Jinnah House in Mumbai should be returned to
its ‘rightful’ owner—Nusli Wadia’s mother Dina Wadia, daughter of
Muhammad Ali Jinnah. The PM had already approved the proposal.
When the file came back from the PMO to the foreign secretary,
Kanwal Sibal personally brought it to me, saying it would be wrong
and indefensible for us to part with the precious property.... Sibal
prepared a note in which he succinctly argued why the property
should not be transferred to Dina Wadia. I added my own argument
on the file and we asked the PM to reconsider his earlier decision.
Vajpayee promptly agreed with our revised recommendation.19
The house that Jinnah had hoped to return to one day was eventually
taken over by the Government of India.
X
India’s leaders were persuaded by October 2002 that the military stand-
off with Pakistan with the massive mobilization of forces at the border,
Operation Parakram, had achieved its objectives and the tactic had run
its course. Following international diplomatic intervention, mainly by US
president George Bush and his team, but also by the UK PM Tony Blair,
308 ange r m anage m e nt

Pakistan had made the right noises on fighting terrorism. India had drawn
sufficient global attention to South Asia and on the ISI’s undeniable links
with militant groups within Pakistan. Both countries pulled back troops
from the border, reducing tensions considerably. But firing at the border
continued, as did some bellicose rhetoric pointed at each other.

CASH FOR SEPARATISM

Diplomacy suffered another setback, when in February 2003, India
expelled Pakistan’s charge d’affaires, Jalil Abbas Jilani, for ‘activities
incompatible with his official status’. Jalani was detected passing cash to
Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat members at a hotel and given forty-eight
hours to leave the country. Predictably, Pakistan wasted no time in
following suit in Islamabad, although the Indian mission indulged in no
comparable practice of paying off separatists. Three days later, India’s CdA,
Sudhir Vyas, was asked to leave Islamabad. With both CdAs expelled, the
missions were looking emaciated, with little hope of diplomacy reviving.
Before he left, Vyas needed to pare down the size of the mission further,
with now only a handful of staff available to man the mission.
The cross-border dynamics in J&K were shifting. Musharraf had said
more than once that the territory of Pakistan would not be used for any
action against India. The feeling in the Indian camp was that it would be
useful to capture that assurance in a bilateral document, to make it more
sustainable. But for that, relations needed to get better.
As soon as Jalani was packed off, India’s Foreign Secretary Kanwal
Sibal called diplomat T. C. A. Raghavan to his office. Raghavan who had
worked in EAM Jaswant Singh’s office, had received posting orders in
2002, having volunteered to go as CdA to Pakistan despite more glamorous
options. However, the bureaucratic chain of postings had been jammed,
since Sudhir Vyas was unable to relocate to his next posting. With Vyas
expelled, the chain moved. Sibal instructed Raghavan to urgently take over
as CdA in Islamabad. Raghavan and his Pakistani counterpart, Munawwar
Bhati, received assignment visas right away.
Raghavan’s briefings in Delhi offered little hope of any improvement in
the relationship; most policymakers were pessimistic. But the one meeting
that offered him a glimmer of hope was his last call in Delhi—on Vajpayee’s
principal secretary and national security advisor Brajesh Mishra. Mishra
said that once Pakistan withdrew its petition from the International Civil
Aviation Organization (ICAO) and overflights were allowed, the relationship
might improve, culminating in the Indian prime minister visiting Pakistan for
the SAARC summit in a few months. Mishra knew the mood in Pakistan
through his backchannel connection with Musharraf’s confidant Tariq Aziz.
Raghavan arrived in a bleak Islamabad. Aziz Ahmed Khan, in charge
of South Asia at the foreign office at the time, was as pessimistic about
 t he t e rror facto r 309

the relationship as Raghavan’s Indian colleagues. The bilateral relationship

was severely disrupted. The mission had been reduced to seventeen people
against a sanctioned strength, bilaterally agreed, of 110. Manning the
fort were three armed-forces attachés, and a young IFS officer, Vikram
Misri, apart from a few security guards and junior officials. This mirrored
exactly the composition of Pakistan’s embassy in Delhi. Given the level of
animosity, Raghavan had the sinking feeling that he would have to close
the mission and return to India in a few months.
 24

A HAND OF FRI ENDS H I P

A nd then, suddenly, things changed.

India’s prime minister decided to disrupt the status quo. Vajpayee was
acutely conscious of the need to bring peace to Jammu and Kashmir, to free
it from the violence Pakistan had promoted since 1990. The Pakistan factor
had become part of the politics of the state, with most political parties
advocating a better relationship with the contiguous western neighbour. We
were prioritizing Kashmir-focused meetings in the PMO in preparation for
Vajpayee’s trip there in April 2003. Vajpayee had been speaking to Pakistan
experts, including former R&AW chief A. S. Dulat, now an adviser on
Kashmir matters in the PMO. Vajpayee carefully read and listened to a
range of opinions and recipes for healing Kashmir. Brajesh Mishra, who
was continuously discussing both Kashmir and Pakistan with the PM, told
me even he was not sure whether the Pakistan issue would come up in a
public speech Vajpayee was about to deliver, where his healing touch was
expected. Dulat, who had prepared an excellent set of reports on Kashmir,
was not sure either.
Speaking extempore at a public rally in Srinagar on 18 April 2003,
trusting his own political instincts, Vajpayee spoke of a poetically
ambiguous approach of Insaniyat (Humanity), Jamhooriyat (Democracy),
and Kashmiriyat (Kashmiri values), later widely acclaimed as the ‘Vajpayee
doctrine’, even if not interpreted uniformly. The prime minister congratulated
the people of Kashmir on the previous year’s elections, where they had
participated ‘defying bullets’ and added that he had come to share their
pain and suffering. Then came the surprise: ‘I once again extend a hand of
friendship to Pakistan, but the hand must be extended both ways.’ The next
day, at a crowded press conference, Vajpayee said he was awaiting a reply
from Pakistan. But terrorism needed to stop for talks to be meaningful.
On 23 April, he told parliament in Delhi: ‘I expressed the hope that a new
beginning can take place between India and Pakistan...stopping cross-border
infiltration and destruction of terrorist infrastructure can open the doors
for talks. Talks can take place on all issues, including that of Jammu &
Kashmir.’
Vajpayee’s surprise offer led to a rapidly unfolding chain of events,
including the appointment of envoys by both countries. When Brajesh
Mishra came to discuss a few names of possible envoys, I was with Vajpayee
in his room. Harsh Bhasin, an IFS officer, had been posted to Pakistan the
previous year, but had got tired of waiting indefinitely given the deadlock
 a hand of f rie ndsh i p 311

in diplomatic relations. He had requested Foreign Secretary Sibal to send

him to the only available slot—in Denmark. One option was to pull Bhasin
back in. The PM looked at the names, heard Mishra out, thought for a
while and then said, ‘Nahin sahab, Menon ko bhejiye. (Send Menon.)’
Shivshankar Menon, then envoy to China, was thus Vajpayee’s personal
choice to take forward the latest peace initiative. Menon had been a star
diplomat whom Vajpayee trusted and had seen in action from his Sri
Lanka and China days. I sat in on the meeting when Menon called on
Vajpayee. Menon, who had not dealt with Pakistan in his career that far,
asked the PM, ‘Why me?’ Vajpayee chuckled: ‘Because you are innocent.’1
Even before Menon arrived in Islamabad, the situation had improved.
Menon had in Beijing known Foreign Secretary Riaz Khokhar well, who
was, till the previous year, Pakistan’s envoy to China. Khokhar told his
staff officer Shafqat Ali Khan that the ‘agrèment’, accepting the nomination
of Menon by Pakistan, was approved at his level and should be conveyed
immediately. CdA Raghavan was surprised to get the nod from the foreign
office the same day he had put in the request.
The mood in Pakistan was changing. The later Musharraf was different
from the early Musharraf, less impetuous, more understanding of nuances,
less reflexively combative about India. A good influence on Musharraf was
his friend and classmate Tariq Aziz, a level-headed and pragmatic adviser
committed to India–Pakistan peace, with little patience for the games being
played by the army.
India, on its part, was looking beyond Pakistan. India’s post-nuclear
global diplomacy was picking up, as the country emerged from relative
isolation with the 1998 sanctions. Vajpayee, thoughtful and wise in the
eyes of other leaders, became the global face of this new India. With
Clinton’s visit to India in 2000 and Vajpayee’s to the US, a strong strategic
partnership was being constructed with the US. The same year, Vajpayee
had visited Moscow to establish a strategic partnership with an emerging
Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. Apart from the US and Russia, India was
looking at building ties with other poles of the emerging global order.
Vajpayee’s global vision had translated into a good deal of summitry with
substantive outcomes: the first India–EU Summit had been held in Portugal
in the summer of 2000. In 2003, Vajpayee went for a ‘G8 plus’ summit
of rich economies, where the French invited India to Evian for a meeting
format that was gradually giving way to the G20. He went in October for
the first India–ASEAN Summit in Bali, as part of a ‘Look East’ orientation
to India’s foreign policy. Being boxed in by Pakistan in South Asia was not
acceptable to those helming an emerging India. But it was also important
to address the Pakistan question and the terrorism problem, to give greater
bandwidth to diplomacy, to focus on India’s global rise.
312 ange r m anage m e nt

A QUIET CHANNEL
Vajpayee was now thinking seriously of a visit to Islamabad for a SAARC
summit scheduled in January 2004. He needed to follow up on his hand
of friendship to attempt a breakthrough that had eluded him in Lahore
and Agra. On one occasion, since I was the only one around, Vajpayee
asked me, thinking aloud, whom he could send to Pakistan to prepare
the ground for his visit. I suggested it could be Jagat Mehta, Vajpayee’s
foreign secretary when he was foreign minister, who was now sending long
handwritten notes to Vajpayee on an approach to Pakistan. The PM said,
‘Nah, too old now to travel.’ We tossed around a few other names. Finally,
Vajpayee decided to go with his trusted principal secretary, Brajesh Mishra,
who had earlier made a diplomatic foray into Pakistan during Kargil, and
now became a messenger on the backchannel that was earlier run by Niaz
Naik and R. K. Mishra.
Mishra quickly got down to work. He went across to Islamabad in
May 2003, and hit it off with his newly designated counterpart, Tariq
Aziz, an officer of the Pakistan Taxation Service whom Musharraf had
known as a student when they were both in the Forman Christian College
of Lahore. Aziz was now Musharraf’s most trusted and loyal civilian aide.
Mishra would go on to meet Aziz five times over the next year.
Gradually, the atmospherics began to improve. An India–Pakistan
CEO forum was launched in mid-September with much fanfare, both
sides believing that industry would be in a position to develop linkages
that could reinforce the détente.
Musharraf and Vajpayee were to meet in New York on the sidelines
of the UNGA in September, in the backdrop of a positive turn in relations
helped along by an active backchannel. On the eve of the bilateral meeting,
Musharraf’s address at the UN on 24 September was unexpectedly brimming
with the usual strong rhetoric, condemning India’s suppression of the
Kashmiri people. The flustered Indian camp had to devise a sharp retort,
with Vajpayee accusing Pakistan of making terrorism a tool to blackmail
the world.
I later asked Tariq Aziz on what went wrong, with Pakistan making
such a statement at the UN at a time when the two leaders were to discuss
the possibility of a SAARC summit and a breakthrough in the relationship.
Aziz told me that the speech became an embarrassment for Musharraf. It
was the standard draft of the foreign office with the usual references to
Kashmir which no one really checked until Musharraf actually delivered it.
But the peace process was strong enough for both sides to retrieve
the situation in the bilateral conversation. Mishra continued his outreach
and conversations with Aziz. The breakthrough came soon enough the
next month when the external affairs minister, Yashwant Sinha, made an
announcement regarding the resumption of civil aviation talks to address
 a hand of f rie ndsh i p 313

the overflight ban in place since January 2002.

It was an odd peace when both sides had not ceased artillery firing at the
border. On 25 November, this anomaly was corrected. Indian and Pakistani
commanders formalized the ceasefire during a weekly teleconference. An
official statement said the ceasefire deal ‘included the 450-mile Line of
Control, India–Pakistan boundary, and Siachen Glacier’.2 Pakistani Prime
Minister Jamali had declared a unilateral ceasefire two days earlier to
commemorate Eid al-Fitr. The yearlong ceasefire on the LoC that had
begun in July 2001 had only ended with hostilities. Now, after eighteen
months, the guns would go silent again. The ceasefire also led to a dramatic
decrease in cross-border infiltration, confirming the view of some observers
in India that most of the artillery firing from Pakistan was meant to give
cover to infiltrating militants.
Both countries worked hard in the run-up to Vajpayee’s visit to
normalize relations. Pakistan was particularly keen that the visit and the
SAARC summit should go well. It was important to prepare well this
time around to ensure that the bilateral process did not falter as it had
done in Agra.
One day at the breakfast table, where Vajpayee would often take key
decisions, Mishra conferred with Vajpayee and instructed me to invite
in all previous envoys to Pakistan to give inputs to the PM. I contacted
Satinder Lambah, my former ambassador in Germany, to drop in and share
his views with the PM. Lambah offered his pointed advice based on years
of dealing with Pakistan, Vajpayee listened patiently and I took notes. To
be sure I got it right, I requested Lambah to send his advice in writing
so that I could share it within the PMO. Lambah’s plan included: having
Pakistan strengthen the 2003 ceasefire line; ensuring it caused no harm
to India, through official, or jihadi action; adhering to a code of conduct
for diplomatic missions to function; and resuming economic, trade, and
travel contacts.3 India’s approach was pretty much on the lines suggested
by the veteran diplomat.
On 30 November, at a meeting with members of the Pakistani and
Indian chapters of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), Musharraf
dramatically announced, ‘As a gesture of goodwill, Pakistan will agree to
the resumption of overflights with India at the talks being held in Delhi
next week.’4 He disarmingly told the Indian delegates that their flight
home would be the first from Pakistan after the resumption of air links.
Musharraf’s unilateral offer to end the ban on Indian flights over Pakistani
territory eliminated the main obstacle to resuming air services. The next
day, a memorandum of understanding (MOU) was signed in New Delhi,
on 1 December 2003, by the Directors General of Civil Aviation of both
countries, agreeing to resume air links and overflights with effect from 1
January 2004 ‘on a reciprocal basis’. The aviation experts in Delhi had
314 ange r m anage m e nt

by resuming air links after a two-year hiatus, firmly laid the ground for
Vajpayee’s visit. The agreement had come a week after the guns went
silent and was seen as part of a peace process pushed by the newfound
political will on both sides.
Worryingly for India, the internal security situation in Pakistan
deteriorated on the eve of the SAARC summit. December saw two separate
attempts on Musharraf’s life. On 14 December, a powerful bomb went off
minutes after the president’s convoy crossed a bridge in Rawalpindi; this
was the third such attempt. On Christmas Day, two suicide bombers tried
to assassinate him. The dictator escaped with only a cracked windshield,
but the car bombs killed sixteen others.
When I travelled to Pakistan as part of the advance security and
liaison team in late December, the Indian side was anxious about security
for the prime minister. The visit was my first exposure to Pakistan, and
it was clear that the Pakistani establishment was pulling out all the stops
for Vajpayee’s visit.

THE ISLAMABAD BREAKTHROUGH

The 2004 visit to Pakistan was critical for Vajpayee. He would turn eighty
that year and wanted to leave behind a legacy of peace in Kashmir, and
with Pakistan. General elections were due in a few months, and Vajpayee
was not keen on another term personally because of his failing health, but
he was willing to lead the election campaign. The visit to Pakistan was
politically risky, given recent history, but this was a risk for peace he had to
take. It was important for his team to prepare well and get it right. Brajesh
Mishra went to Islamabad a week in advance and parked himself at the
Serena Hotel. So did Pakistan’s envoy in India, Aziz Ahmed Khan. HC
Menon had withdrawn from the logistics and was closeted with Mishra,
leaving the bandobast in the safe hands of his deputy, Raghavan. The
key interlocutor for Mishra was Tariq Aziz, who was discussing matters
directly with Musharraf. The script worked out by Mishra was playing
out. Pakistan had allowed overflights and withdrawn a contentious case
from the ICAO that alleged violations of international norms by India.
Raghavan sensed something big was afoot. But he had his hands full
negotiating the SAARC meeting logistics, including a ride by helicopter
to a leaders’ retreat, which was giving nightmares to security teams. The
SAARC summit was becoming a footnote to the bigger bilateral game.
Mishra and Menon, along with the MEA team, were quietly hammering
out the text of a joint statement. The Pakistan foreign office was involved
in negotiating the text, but the helpline to Tariq Aziz was available to
Mishra to remove any roadblocks. It was used on the morning of 6
January. In a last-minute hitch, the negotiated text got stuck at a line
in Pakistan’s draft, which said that Pakistan’s soil would not be used to
 a hand of f rie ndsh i p 315

support terrorism. For India, a better formulation was to refer to ‘territory

under Pakistan’s control’, which would pointedly include POK. Menon
called up Tariq Aziz to explain the problem. Aziz told me later that he was
with Musharraf when he got Menon’s call. He got the president’s approval
for India’s formulation ‘within seconds’. Aziz then asked Riaz Khokhar in
Punjabi to get it done. The backchannel work of Mishra and Aziz had paid
off.
The bilateral deal at the end of a multilateral meet made global
headlines. Vajpayee had achieved what was promised in Lahore but snatched
away in Kargil. This was finally the peace deal for Kargil that had proved
elusive in Agra. The joint statement of 6 January 2004 had been crafted
to mention both terrorism and Kashmir but focus on a future roadmap.
Both leaders welcomed the recent steps towards normalisation of
relations between the two countries and expressed the hope that
the positive trends set by the CBMs would be consolidated. Prime
Minister Vajpayee said that in order to take forward and sustain the
dialogue process, violence, hostility and terrorism must be prevented.
President Musharraf reassured Prime Minister Vajpayee that he will
not permit any territory under Pakistan’s control to be used to support
terrorism in any manner. President Musharraf emphasised that a
sustained and productive dialogue addressing all issues would lead
to positive results. To carry the process of normalisation forward,
the president of Pakistan and the Prime Minister of India agreed to
commence the process of the composite dialogue in February 2004.
The two leaders are confident that the resumption of the composite
dialogue will lead to peaceful settlement of all bilateral issues,
including Jammu and Kashmir, to the satisfaction of both sides. The
two leaders agreed that constructive dialogue would promote progress
towards the common objective of peace, security and economic
development for our peoples and for future generations.5
When Vajpayee had gone with SAARC leaders for the customary retreat,
the Indian delegation reported enormous goodwill for Indians in the streets
and markets of Islamabad, where many picked up pirated CDs of the latest
Bollywood movies. Vajpayee’s son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya, was keen
to get in a round of golf at the famous Islamabad Golf Club. He roped me
in, along with our Pakistani host, to sneak out for a quick round of golf. At
the course, we saw no other golfers. Suddenly, armed security men in battle
gear appeared from behind a cluster of trees. Alarmed that there may have
been an incident, Ranjan asked one of them what was going on. Assuming
he was a Pakistani, the security man whispered conspiratorially: ‘Vajpayee
ka damaad khelne aaya hai (Vajpayee’s son-in-law has shown up to play.)’
X
316 ange r m anage m e nt

Vajpayee’s diplomacy had paused the hostility, with the guns at the border
silenced, terrorism reduced and a robust bilateral engagement in the works.
An issue that concerned policymakers was whether these processes would
endure beyond the Musharraf regime. With the rapprochement with
Pakistan, India’s leaders were hoping to get a peace dividend in Kashmir.
A moderate faction of the Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat met Deputy PM
Advani in late January for their first direct discussions with New Delhi.
Vajpayee also met them briefly as a gesture of goodwill. The Hurriyat had
created conditions for the talks by dropping its earlier insistence on three-
way talks between India, Pakistan, and the Hurriyat. They had deferred
to the government’s position that separate tracks of dialogue viz India–
Pakistan and Centre–Hurriyat, was a more pragmatic approach. The talks
in January marked a step forward in the healing and reconciliation process
in Kashmir.

NUCLEAR SCAPEGOAT
Later that month, Musharraf was hit by a fresh crisis that threatened
his fragile relationship with the US, as also the domestic stability of
his military regime. On 31 January, Pakistan’s leader was compelled to
fire his ‘Science Advisor’, nuclear physicist Abdul Qadeer Khan. In a
choreographed move, Khan appeared on official PTV on 4 February to
confess to running a ‘proliferation ring’ that transferred nuclear technology
to Iran, North Korea, and Libya in the 1990s. Musharraf’s government
did not arrest Khan but launched ‘security hearings’ to investigate the
scientist’s misdeeds. On 5 February, Musharraf issued a presidential pardon
to Khan. He was now placed under ‘house arrest’.
Few had any doubts that the Pakistani state was complicit in smuggling
technology to rogue states and that Khan was being scapegoated in the
‘national interest’. Khan, who had been feted for transforming his country
into the first Islamic nuclear weapons power, had come under US scrutiny
after Pakistan’s 1998 tests. He began to lose his domestic sheen when
Musharraf, under US pressure, removed him as chief of the Kahuta nuclear
lab in 2001 and made him an adviser. In 2003, the Bush administration
confronted Musharraf with evidence of a nuclear proliferation network that
implicated Khan. That Khan was a lone-wolf proliferator was a convenient
fiction for both Musharraf and the US; if it had not been for the war on
terror, Musharraf would have invited the full weight of US sanctions on his
country. An embittered Khan later retracted his confession to say he had
been wronged even though ‘I saved the country for the first time when I
made Pakistan a nuclear nation and saved it again when I confessed and
took the whole blame on myself.’6
The episode underlined once again the different trajectories of the
nuclear programmes being run by the two countries and raised questions
 a hand of f rie ndsh i p 317

about nuclear responsibility within Musharraf’s military regime.

X
The next month, on 13 March, it was a peacenik-like Musharraf who
spoke via a satellite link to a India Today conclave in New Delhi.
Pakistan, he said, was determined ‘to take two steps forward if India
takes one step’ towards peace. But his message was mixed, even in his
own mind, as he tried to reintroduce the centrality of Kashmir into
the bilateral discourse. India and Pakistan, he said, ‘must bury the past
and chart a new roadmap for peace’ but ‘Kashmir is the central issue
that awaits just and durable settlement’ and there was an ‘indigenous
freedom struggle’ being waged in Kashmir.7 An exasperated India scolded
Musharraf the next day. An MEA statement pointed out that the 6
January joint press statement had made no reference to ‘any so-called
central or core issue, but to addressing all bilateral issues, including
Jammu and Kashmir’ and that double standards in describing the violent
attack on himself as terrorism, but on the J&K Assembly as a ‘freedom
fight’ were ‘clearly not tenable’.8
Musharraf’s peace rhetoric of ‘two steps forward and one back’ would
be often repeated by Pakistan’s leaders, both civilian and military. Imran
Khan used it in 2018 after he became PM and army chief General Bajwa
deployed it in 2021.
X
Pakistan became cause for a hiccup in the US–India relationship when the
US declared it a major ‘non-NATO ally’, despite the A. Q. Khan episode.
US secretary of state in the Bush administration, Colin Powell, made the
announcement on 18 March in Islamabad, after visiting New Delhi. India’s
problem was more being kept in the dark by the US, than it bending over
backwards to reward Musharraf for his Af-Pak policy. Brajesh Mishra
complained sharply to his counterpart NSA Condoleezza Rice, the chief
architect then of the foreign policy of President George W. Bush. Rice
expressed surprise that Powell had not taken India into confidence on this
issue. It was clear to Mishra that Rice and Powell were not on the same
page, and that Powell might not last too long in his job. Powell, under
pressure from the White House, tried to reach External Affairs Minister
Yashwant Sinha to explain himself but Sinha was out campaigning and
unreachable.
In an election year, it was important to publicly admonish the US, and
the MEA spokesman duly did so on 20 March.
The Secretary of State was in India just two days before this statement
was made in Islamabad. While he was in India, there was much
318 ange r m anage m e nt

emphasis on (the) India–US strategic partnership. It is disappointing

that he did not share with us this decision...which has significant
implications for India–US relations.9
Powell did connect with Sinha the next day to say his intention had not
been to spring a surprise on India. The media reported this as an apology
and sourced a report from the US that pointed out that Bush had offered
the same status to India. The MEA spokesman clarified tersely that ‘we
have not given any consideration to that kind of relationship with the
US.’10
 25

ESSAYS I N MUTUAL COM P RE H E NS I ON

I n May 2004, the Vajpayee-led NDA suffered a shock defeat in the

general elections. The new Congress-led United Progressive Alliance
(UPA) government, with Manmohan Singh as prime minister, signalled
strong continuity in foreign policy. PM Singh made it a point to seek a few
briefings from Mishra and met Vajpayee several times.
On the new PM’s first day in office, I remained one of his private
secretaries, as part of the transition team that would make way for a
new one. I needed to schedule a series of congratulatory calls from world
leaders and sit in on them. George W. Bush was one of the first callers
(with Condoleezza Rice patched in); he assured Singh of continuing US
friendship and suggested that Rice, who was working closely with him,
would be the point person for the relationship.
We had Pakistan’s president scheduled next. Before the call from
Musharraf, after I had quickly briefed the new PM on Vajpayee’s peace
process, he asked me whether it was OK to quote a couple of Urdu couplets,
apart from using the PMO brief. He produced a piece of paper and read
out two couplets he had handwritten in Urdu. I said they sounded perfectly
fine, reflected his persona, and should go down well with Musharraf.
Soon after the conversation began, in English, Manmohan Singh told
Musharraf he had something to say in Urdu: ‘Kuch aise bhi manzar hain
tareek ki nazron mein/ lamhe ne khata ki, sadiyon ne saza payee (History
has seen missteps that we have suffered for ages.). He followed it up with
another one: ‘Aa ki tarikyon se surkhiyan paide karen, is jameen ki bastiyon
se aasman paida karen (Let’s seize this moment and reach for the sky.)1
A bemused Musharraf listened with rapt attention as his new Indian
counterpart recited couplets in Pakistan’s official language. The two men
agreed to work for peace.
As Manmohan Singh crafted his new foreign policy, the emphasis
remained on continuity in major relationships. On Pakistan, Singh decided
to take forward the Vajpayee peace initiative and the Lahore–Islamabad
peace process. This was in line with the personal convictions of the
prime minister who had been born in what was now Pakistan’s Punjab.
Singh had the advantage of having two former envoys to Pakistan in his
team—National Security Advisor Mani Dixit and External Affairs Minister
Natwar Singh. Both former IFS officers seemed equally convinced that a
breakthrough with Musharraf’s Pakistan was worth striving for.
Without wasting any time, Dixit met with Tariq Aziz in June, resuming
320 ange r m anage m e nt

the quiet conversations that had led Brajesh Mishra to the January
document. Dixit would meet Aziz four times that year. He did not discuss
any specific agreement on Kashmir, but prepared the ground for opening
the LoC for travel and trade.2
On 23 July 2004, External Affairs Minister Natwar Singh, who had
dealt extensively with Zia in the 1980s, got to call on Pakistan’s latest
dictator. The ninety-minute meeting took place in Musharraf’s camp office
at Rawalpindi. Musharraf reiterated a statement he had made the day
before, that without any progress towards the settlement of the core issue
of Kashmir, no headway on confidence-building measures was possible.3
Despite Musharraf blowing hot and cold, the meetings held by former
envoys Natwar Singh and Dixit created grounds for the upcoming first
encounter between Manmohan Singh and Musharraf in September.
The meeting in New York between the new Indian PM and Pakistan’s
dictator at the height of his powers was held on the margins of the
September UN General Assembly. As the talks began, Manmohan Singh
assured Musharraf that he remained personally committed to the dialogue
process. Both leaders emerged pleased with the hour-long conversation
and, unusually, Musharraf read out the agreement their teams had worked
out, saying they had ‘also addressed the issue of Jammu and Kashmir and
agreed that possible options for a peaceful, negotiated settlement of the
issue’. They signalled continuity by adhering to the ‘spirit of the Islamabad
joint press statement of January 6, 2004’, and ‘agreed that CBMs will
contribute to generating an atmosphere of trust’.4
Manmohan Singh added poetically that this meeting was ‘an essay in
mutual comprehension’5 and that the two leaders would together write a
new chapter in the history of the two countries. Musharraf presented Singh
a painting of the school in Gah village (now in Pakistan), the Indian PM’s
birthplace, and where he had had his initial schooling. On his part Singh
again recited the Urdu couplets which he had read out to Musharraf in
their phone conversation.
Reacting to criticism that the latest joint statement failed to mention
‘cross-border terrorism’ Natwar Singh told journalists in London on 1
October that the fact that the 6 January statement was specifically mentioned
at the meeting meant that terrorism was indeed discussed. He pointed out
that the composite dialogue had kicked off with as many as eight meetings
‘in all areas and at all levels’. Underlining the importance of economic
contacts despite political hurdles, he cited China’s example and said that
India’s trade with that country was slated to touch $10 billion that year.6
The competing narratives of terrorism or Kashmir as central issues
continued to play. When Indian Foreign Secretary Shyam Saran arrived in
Islamabad on 25 December to wrap up the eight-track composite dialogue
process, he was conscious of criticism at home that the new government
 e s says in m ut ual com p r e h e n si o n 321

was falling into Pakistan’s trap and not keeping the focus on terrorism.
In Islamabad, however, he felt obliged to counter another critique in the
Pakistani media: that India was putting a premium on confidence-building
measures to sideline the Kashmir issue. Saran said while the focus of the
foreign secretary-level engagement was on building mutual trust in the
fields of nuclear and conventional arms and countering narcotics trafficking,
India was ready for a ‘serious and sustained dialogue’ on Kashmir.7 But he
also reminded the media of the ‘fundamental assurance’ given by General
Musharraf in January 2004 about not allowing Pakistani soil for anti-
India activities.8

THE UNQUIET INDUS WATERS

Despite the bonhomie, the waters in Kashmir were not flowing quite so
calmly. For the first time since the Indus Waters Treaty was signed in
1960, Pakistan invoked the dispute resolution clause of the treaty, in late
2004, taking the matter to a ‘neutral expert’. Thus far, disagreements had
been resolved in the bilateral Indus waters commission. As Pakistan took
the matter to the World Bank, which pondered over this situation, India
warned the bank that interfering in the project would be seen as an ‘act
unfriendly to India’. The Indus Waters Treaty came up for discussion once
again in 2005 when the Baglihar project, a run-of-the-river dam on the
Chenab River, was referred to a neutral expert to be appointed by the
World Bank. I had just joined the World Bank group as an adviser to C.
M. Vasudev, the executive director for South Asia, and this ticklish matter
landed on my desk. Eventually, the Indian and Pakistani delegations made
their case before a Swiss expert, Raymond Lafitte, who seemed to favour
India with small technical changes. The dispute resolution clause would
become the default option for Pakistan for future projects. When it came to
the Kishanganga project, Pakistan decided to invoke the arbitration panel
clause of the treaty and take the matter beyond a neutral expert in the
hope of getting a more favourable judgement. Pakistan’s security concern
was that India would construct a large number of upstream projects in the
western rivers, making it possible to start using these as leverage.

PEACE DIVIDEND
India’s new government had kept up the frenetic pace of global
engagements of the Vajpayee years. Soon after he returned with the PM
from one overseas visit, India’s overworked NSA, Mani Dixit, tragically
passed away of a heart attack in January 2005. His departure left a huge
vacuum for Manmohan Singh, who had come to rely on Dixit’s strategic
thinking and advice, particularly on the neighbourhood. Singh now
reached out to Satinder Lambah and appointed him in the PMO to pick up
where Dixit had left off in the backchannel dialogue with Pakistan.
322 ange r m anage m e nt

Soon after his appointment in April, Lambah met Tariq Aziz. The
two men instantly developed a strong rapport and would go on to meet
eighteen times between April 2005 and August 2008, in different cities.9
It was in these meetings that Lambah would negotiate, discuss and nearly
finalize a draft agreement on the J&K issue. Lambah worked more formally
than his Pakistani counterpart. He had taken the PM’s permission to take
along a deputy secretary in the PMO, and later the prime minister’s private
secretary, Jaideep Sarkar. Lambah had told the PM that this would ensure
the prime minister stayed in the loop on the backchannel conversations.
Aziz however ‘travelled alone, rarely carried a briefcase, and often had to
scribble his notes on hotel stationery’.10
In mid-April 2005, Musharraf arrived in New Delhi to strengthen ties
with the new government and for a spot of cricket diplomacy. The visit
coincided with the last One Day International cricket match between India
and Pakistan, parts of which Musharraf watched, along with Manmohan
Singh. In their talks, Singh and Musharraf reaffirmed past commitments and
‘determined that the peace process was now irreversible’.11 They endorsed
several decisions taken by the foreign secretaries and foreign ministers to
boost trade and connectivity. They agreed to add new routes and step
up the frequency of bus services in Kashmir and Punjab. Trucks would
be allowed to use these routes to promote trade.12 Significantly, they also
agreed that the consulates general of the two countries in Mumbai and
Karachi, shut in the 1990s, would be revived.
The upbeat media coverage did not mention the backchannel that was
now working on a long-term solution for the contentious Kashmir issue.
But the Indian PM did drop a hint in April, when he told journalists
that if the process of allowing increased interaction between the people
of J&K was to continue, it would ‘create a climate conducive to the final
settlement’ of the ‘territorial dispute’.13

ENDORSING JINNAH
Lal Krishna Advani embarked on an emotional trip to Pakistan in June
2005, a visit he could not undertake to the land of his roots when he was
India’s home minister. Advani visited his old school and home in Karachi,
the city where he was born in 1927. At the mausoleum of Pakistan’s
founder Jinnah, the BJP president wrote a glowing tribute, fairly standard
fare in Pakistan’s official narratives, recalling a description of Jinnah
as an ‘ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity’ early in his political career.
‘There are many people who leave an inerasable stamp on history,’ Advani
wrote, ‘but there are very few who actually create history. Quaid-e-Azam
Mohammed Ali Jinnah was one such rare individual.’14 Advani went on to
describe Jinnah’s famous 11 August 1947 speech as a ‘forceful espousal of
a secular state.’ The reaction back home, particularly in Advani’s political
 e s says in m ut ual com p r e h e n si o n 323

party, surprised the former minister for its intensity. It also illustrated the
complexity of bilateral relations, the politicized past that always preyed on
the present and the conflicts within Advani himself. Once an icon of the
Ayodhya temple movement, Advani was conscious of his roots in Pakistan;
he was a hawk on relations with Pakistan but also the man who had
engineered stronger relations with Pakistan’s current dictator. Advani’s BJP,
not yet recovered from the loss in the 2004 polls, could not stomach its
president’s praise of a man who had been demonized as the villain of
Partition. Advani was compelled to resign as president of the BJP though
he insisted he had ‘no regrets’.15 The speculation did not go away that
with Vajpayee now unwell, Advani was trying to soften his image as an
acceptable face to lead a future BJP-led coalition.

DISASTER DIPLOMACY
A devastating earthquake hit Pakistan on 8 October 2005, its impact
felt most in the northern reaches of Kashmir under Pakistan’s control.
As many as 20,000 people died. The humanitarian tragedy presented an
opportunity for strengthening bilateral trust and goodwill. India offered
assistance; Pakistan accepted. $25 million worth of earthquake relief
assistance soon reached Pakistan. The disaster gave a tantalizing glimpse
of the latent goodwill that still persisted in the relationship, even if not as
freely expressed as the lurking hostility.

TALKING WITH TERROR

The good times would not last. On the night of 30 April 2006, the pause
in major terrorism ended. Heavily armed terrorists, suspected to be
Lashkar-e-Taiba, targeted and gunned down thirty-four Hindu villagers,
in serial terror strikes in the J&K districts of Doda and Udhampur. High
Commissioner Shivshankar Menon was to speak about this in Lahore
on 2 May. ‘Despite some variations in infiltration patterns,’ he reminded
Pakistan, ‘terrorist training, communications and support continue, waxing
and waning with the seasons and the political climate.’16
But India was giving the Pakistani state the benefit of the doubt about
its complicity, or at least it chose not to blame Pakistan until investigations
provided evidence. In retrospect, the three years since Vajpayee had extended
his hand of friendship to Pakistan in April 2003 had been heady years
of goodwill, where cross-border infiltration had fallen, major terrorist
incidents were absent, border firing was at its minimum, and the army in
Pakistan was talking peace. This was when cricket was played and talks
were held via multiple channels and the BJP hardliner president praised
Pakistan’s founder and India rushed to the aid of Pakistan in its moment
of need. The period matched the one of 1977 to 1979 when Vajpayee
had managed to push an agenda for peace. Another earlier parallel was
324 ange r m anage m e nt

of 1958 to 1961, Ayub Khan’s times, when the Indus Waters Treaty was
signed by Nehru. The period from 1972, since the Simla Agreement, to
1987, before the bloodbath in Kashmir, had been of one of relative peace
too, albeit marred by Pakistan’s support to an insurgency in Punjab. The
neighbours seemed to have from 2003 found a way of building trust. But
the terrorists bred by Pakistan were now issuing a reminder that they had
not abandoned their cause.

TALKING SIACHEN
As the eight-track composite dialogue chugged along at the level of
secretaries, defence secretary-level talks were scheduled in May 2006. The
will to demilitarize the Siachen Glacier seemed stronger on both sides than
in 1989 or 1992; the two armies had even agreed on authenticating ground
positions of the troops in an ‘annexure’ to the proposed agreement. This
would have allowed troops ‘to mutually withdraw’ and be spared ‘extreme
cold and unpredictable weather in inhospitable areas’. In fact, Foreign
Secretary Shyam Saran had worked out the contours of an agreement
with his Pakistani counterpart, Riaz Mohammad Khan. India had insisted
that the agreement and its annexure be signed together, explicitly stating
that the annexure (authenticating ground positions) carried the same legal
validity as the agreement itself. PM Manmohan Singh asked Saran to draft
the agreement and take key Indian stakeholders on board. Saran did both.
A crucial meeting of the CCS—the apex national security body chaired
by the PM—was to approve the draft agreement, already cleared by
the ‘army and other stakeholders’. However, two men in the room had
changed their minds. When the meeting started, Saran recalled, NSA M.
K. Narayanan ‘launched into a bitter offensive against the proposal, saying
that Pakistan could not be trusted, that there would be political and public
opposition to any such initiative and that India’s military position in the
northern sector vis-à-vis both Pakistan and China would be compromised.’17
Army Chief J. J. Singh, ‘who had happily gone along with the proposal in
its earlier iterations, now decided to join Narayanan in rubbishing it.’18
Narayanan also suggested that the Siachen issue be taken off the agenda
for India–Pakistan talks on border issues. Even though Defence Minister
Pranab Mukherjee supported demilitarization of the glacier and Home
Minister Shivraj Patil held the same view, the CCS killed the proposal.
Saran’s account confirmed the prevailing view among diplomats on both
sides that agreements on Siachen, as also Sir Creek, were the ‘low-hanging
fruit’19 of the composite bilateral dialogue. But the army continued to ask
if India could ‘trust Pakistan’ and ensure Pakistani troops wouldn’t return
to occupy positions in Siachen.
The initiative of 2006—to demilitarize the glacier, mutually withdraw
troops from the area and thereafter establish a joint monitoring team—met
 e s says in m ut ual com p r e h e n si o n 325

the same fate as its predecessors in 1989 and 1992. The trust deficit had
not yet been bridged.
Sharp differences on the Siachen stand-off within both political and
military circles, made a resolution harder. On the Indian side, military
commentator and former Northern Army commander, Lieutenant General
Rustom Nanavatty, argued that ‘the conflict is essentially over preserving
territorial integrity and upholding national military pride. It is an irrational
conflict in subhuman conditions with significant costs and little prospect of
military solution. Its perpetuation does no credit to political and military
leadership at the highest levels in both countries.’20 He suggested that
‘India’s approach to a final settlement should be based on demilitarization
of a limited, well-defined and mutually agreed area following a political
agreement. There should be a lasting ceasefire, delimiting, demarcation,
disengagement, redeployment, verification and joint monitoring and
administration’.21 In contrast, a Pakistani perspective by Omer Farooq
Zain suggested never giving up: ‘For Pakistan, Siachen glacier is worth
the blood spilled over it, and to give it up would be nothing short of
giving up its coat of arms.’22 Indian military historian Arjun Subramaniam
concluded in 2020 that ‘Indian and Pakistani soldiers will continue to
patrol the glacier, and the best the two countries can do at this juncture
is to minimize the human price they pay by ensuring that living on the
glacier is made easier.’23

A JOINT BATTLE?
The pain of terrorism was to hit India again in mid-2006, this time in
the financial capital, Mumbai, on 11 July: a series of seven bombs ripped
through the suburban railway system over a period of eleven minutes. 209
people lay dead and over 700 injured. The bombs were set off in pressure
cookers on trains; the role of the Pakistan-based LeT was suspected,
but India did not reflexively blame Pakistan in the absence of ‘clinching’
evidence.
Pakistan condoled the deaths, but Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmud
Kasuri seemed to link the terror to the lack of resolution of disputes
between India and Pakistan. ‘His remarks,’ India retorted angrily, ‘appear
to suggest that Pakistan will cooperate with India against the scourge
of cross-border terrorism and terrorist violence only if such so-called so
disputes are resolved.’24 But India was trying a new experiment, exhibiting
its willingness to engage Pakistan in a joint anti-terrorism mechanism.
On 24 July, speaking in Nainital, PM Manmohan Singh defended himself
against domestic criticism of the proposed anti-terrorism mechanism. It was
designed, he said, to ‘test’ how Islamabad would ‘fulfil its responsibility
towards fighting terrorism’.25 He insisted there was no change in the
government’s policy on terrorism and that Pakistan must ensure that its
326 ange r m anage m e nt

soil was not being used to spread terrorism in India.

Shivshankar Menon—the latest in a series of high commissioners
to Pakistan who were elevated as foreign secretary—left Islamabad to
take over his new assignment in New Delhi on 1 October 2006. Soon
after assuming charge, he said that India would use the anti-terrorism
mechanism, envisaging joint investigations with Pakistan’s security agencies,
to seek Pakistani action on the evidence unearthed by the police. Since
the preliminary evidence suggested an ISI role in the serial train blasts,
he added ‘we will judge them not by their immediate reaction of verbal
statements but by what they actually do about terrorism.’26
Satyabrata Pal succeeded Menon in Islamabad. Pal was a quiet
professional, a scholar–diplomat endowed with extraordinary analytical and
communication skills. He appeared dauntingly clever at Islamabad parties
as he made a sophisticated case for deepening engagement. Years later, a
Pakistani journalist would mention to me, only half in jest, that India had
adopted a strategy of sending as envoys strong South Indian and Bengali
intellectuals like Nambiar, Menon, and Pal, rather than regular Punjabi-
knowing North Indian folk, only to intellectually humiliate Pakistan.
X
The signs of internal collapse in Pakistan had begun to show from 2006.
Just as the India–Pakistan diplomatic rapprochement began to show
promise, Musharraf had begun to lose his grip on a Pakistan steadily
descending into violent chaos. To many observers, the snakes in the
backyard, nurtured to bite the neighbours, were now turning on their
masters. The charitable explanation was that Musharraf may have lost
control, if not over his own ISI, then certainly over the terrorist groups that
were mounting audacious attacks, as in the 1990s. To others, the instability
triggered by the violence once again underlined the need for confident and
stable regimes in both countries to propel any peace process. The surge in
terrorism in the year seemed set to derail ties again.
A Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) Summit in Havana in September
2006 helped prevent a breakdown in ties that the recent acts of terrorism
should have caused. Musharraf and Manmohan Singh met on the sidelines
of the summit to reaffirm their faith in the peace process and agreed to ‘put
in place an India–Pakistan anti-terrorism institutional mechanism to identify
and implement counter-terrorism initiatives and investigations’. They also
directed their foreign secretaries to resume the composite dialogue.27
At the end of the year, Musharraf articulated a posture on Kashmir
that was not normally seen from Pakistan in public statements. In an
interview with the Indian journalist, Prannoy Roy of NDTV, Musharraf
said that an ‘independent Kashmir’ would be unviable and unacceptable to
both Pakistan and India. This did inject some degree of realism into the
 e s says in m ut ual com p r e h e n si o n 327

debate on the future of Kashmir, where Pakistan’s position was to speak

only of UN-supervised referenda, giving Kashmir the choice to join either
India or Pakistan. Pakistan had mainly remained silent on the scenario of
azadi or independence.
 26

DOWN TO SEMI COL ONS

O n 8 January 2007, Manmohan Singh repeated his idea of soft borders

to a Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry
(FICCI) business gathering; he dreamt, he said, of the day when ‘one
can have breakfast in Amritsar, lunch in Lahore and dinner in Kabul’.
He added for good measure that industry ought to be prepared for ‘fast-
track economic integration in South Asia’. The next week, India’s external
affairs minister, Pranab Mukherjee, met some political leaders of Pakistan
for an informal breakfast, where he told them that the borders were not
up for negotiations, but India was prepared to discuss all ideas towards the
resolution of the Kashmir issue. He said India and Pakistan must learn from
Europe that had set aside differences to forge a successful economic union.1
Mukherjee had been briefed on the quiet progress on the backchannel.

THE BACKCHANNEL
By early 2007, the tenacious engagement between Lambah and Aziz had
led to broad agreement on the contours of a deal that was ready for
political endorsement. Away from the spotlight, the countries had engaged
in a ‘serious, sustained and structured backchannel negotiation’ for the first
time in their history. They had a non-paper ready and had come down to
‘negotiating semicolons’.2
Lambah saw his backchannel role as a continuation of the ‘pre-
negotiations’ that Brajesh Mishra had initiated in 2003–04 and Dixit had
continued in 2004–05, both with Tariq Aziz. Lambah reflected that the
backchannel initiatives of the twenty-first century were really a continuation
of different initiatives by past prime ministers for a final settlement with
Pakistan on the issue of J&K. Past proposals had involved adjustments to
the ceasefire line, or to the LoC and its conversion into an international
boundary. But this time, the vision was to make borders irrelevant. When
Lambah was appointed in 2005 as special envoy in the PMO, he saw his
mandate from Manmohan Singh as a solution that did not involve redrawing
borders. An important reference point to the conversations was Musharraf’s
‘four-point plan’ for Kashmir, which the general had articulated in bits and
dribbles at various points over the period 2001–06. The four-point plan
involved demilitarization with cessation of military activities; self-governance
in the region; a joint mechanism with representatives of India, Pakistan,
and Kashmir for overseeing the self-governance; and trade and movement
of people between the two parts of Kashmir.
 dow n to s e m icol o n s 329

At the same time, Manmohan Singh had famously said in Amritsar

on 24 March 2006, that ‘borders cannot be redrawn, but we can work
towards making them irrelevant—towards making them just lines on a
map’.3 Essentially, Singh’s idea was of economic integration through soft
borders, much like in the European Union. Lambah had concluded that
it would be ‘manageable’ to discuss Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan
on the basis of the four-point formula and guided by Manmohan Singh’s
Amritsar speech.
With the PM’s permission, Lambah later laid out in a public address in
Srinagar the five broad principles at the heart of the Kashmir settlement,
that India had explored with Pakistan during 2005-07. These were: freezing
the current territorial disposition in Kashmir; changing the nature of the
LoC by allowing freer movement of goods and people across it; granting
substantive and similar levels of autonomy on both sides of the LoC;
creating a cross-LoC consultative mechanism to deepen cooperation on
a range of issues; and reducing military forces on either side of the LoC
after violence and terrorism come to an end.4
But Musharraf was losing control of his country by 2007 and had
little room for a bold initiative with India. Manmohan Singh later revealed
that India was close to an ‘important breakthrough’ in the talks with
Musharraf, just before the general’s power began to ebb.

SAMJHAUTA EXPRESS
In the early hours of 18 February, around sixty-eight people, mostly
Pakistani civilians, were killed and scores more injured in a terrorist attack
on the Delhi–Attari Samjhauta (reconciliation) Express train. The attack,
near the Indian city of Panipat, the scene of many historical battles, was
initially attributed to Pakistani terrorists but later evidence suggested the
perpetrators were Indian citizens.
While India promised Pakistan full investigations into the incident, and
even offered to share the findings with Pakistan, the Pakistan National
Assembly passed a resolution asking for a joint investigation. This time,
External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee on 21 February ruled out a
joint investigation, saying, ‘As per the law of the land, the probe will be
conducted by India and the results shared with Pakistan.’ He pointed out
that the basic objective of the anti-terror mechanism, scheduled to meet
in Islamabad, was to both ‘share and act on the information’ passed on
between the two nations.
Fortuitously, the first meeting of the ‘anti-terrorism mechanism’ was
held in Islamabad on 6 March 2007, within a fortnight of the incident.
It agreed to exchange specific information for ‘helping investigations on
either side related to terrorist acts’.5
330 ange r m anage m e nt

Despite the growing violence, the diplomats were trying to take the
composite dialogue forward. Foreign Secretary Menon cautioned against
cherry-picking issues, since the process ‘walks on three legs’: confidence-
building measures; resolution of conflicts, including the issue of Kashmir;
and establishing links between the peoples to build ‘mutual stakes’. He
added, ‘Frankly, I think the reason this process has moved forward for the
last almost three years is because we have done all three things together
and we have avoided getting into saying, do one first, if you do this, then
we can do that.’6

DECLINE OF THE DICTATOR

But the dictator India had invested in was now seeing the terminal decline
of his regime. On 9 March 2007, Musharraf suspended the Pakistan
Supreme Court’s maverick chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry,
and pressed corruption charges against him. Musharraf’s move was the
spark Pakistan’s civil society needed. On 12 March, Pakistani lawyers
started a campaign across Pakistan, dubbed ‘judicial activism’, and began
boycotting all court procedures in protest against the suspension. In
multiple cities, hundreds of lawyers dressed in black suits attended rallies
condemning the suspension as unconstitutional. This major pushback from
the fraternity of lawyers, and more generally from civil society, turned
into a wider questioning of the country’s military leadership. By May,
protesters and Opposition parties were taking out huge rallies against
Musharraf. His tenure as army chief was challenged in the courts. At the
same time, Musharraf was also alienated from his own corps commanders.
He had pushed them too hard against their institutional convictions on
India and Kashmir, to ensure his own political survival; he was seen to be
jeopardizing the interests of the army.
Another blow to Musharraf’s regime came in July, this time from the
religious right. The Lal Masjid administration in Islamabad, associated with
the right-wing Jamia Hafsa madrasa, had from April started to encourage
attacks on local video shops, alleging that they were selling pornographic
films, and on massage parlours, allegedly being used as brothels. These
attacks were often carried out by the madrasa’s female students. In July, the
authorities decided to stop the student violence by sending in the police.
Mosque leaders and students fired at the police, leading to casualties on
both sides. The police action at the mosque was reminiscent of other such
dangerous actions at places of worship that alienate a large part of the
population.
Musharraf faced two attempts on his life in July, both ironically by the
Kashmir-centric Jaish-e-Mohammed. The dictator’s popularity plummeted.
By August, polls showed that almost two thirds of Pakistanis did not want
another Musharraf term. Musharraf faced public anger for his battle with
 dow n to s e m icol o n s 331

the judiciary and lawyers, the Lal Masjid action, the earlier arrest of nuclear
hero A. Q. Khan, the unpopular war in the Federally Administered Tribal
Area (FATA) region in north-west Pakistan, as also the scathing remarks
on him by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif. His personal image was
damaged beyond repair, as in the case of Ayub Khan in the late 1960s
and Yahya Khan in the early 1970s.
X
Still, the decade was ending on a relatively peaceful bilateral note as India
and Pakistan celebrated their 60th anniversaries. The decade of Musharraf
in Pakistan that had begun with aggression against India had ended with
shifts in entrenched positions. The Vajpayee–Musharraf tango began in
Agra in 2001, but was derailed by terrorism. It was some quiet diplomacy
away from the public glare that had finally led to the breakthroughs for
an era of relative peace from 2004. India had tried hard to do business
with Pakistan’s dictator, primarily through a backchannel that continued
the conversation for a lasting Kashmir solution, until it was abandoned with
Pakistan’s internal turmoil in 2007. Pakistan also faced a backlash from the
terror proxies it had created. The era of ‘good and bad terrorists’ had begun.
Pakistan’s forces were hunting down the groups who were increasingly
attacking Pakistan’s security forces, and protecting the ‘good terrorists’ who
were being actively encouraged to focus their deadly talents on India.
This was an era when the two nuclear powers developed greater stakes
in peace. Pakistan, under Musharraf, experimented with both Kashmir
adventurism and terrorism under a nuclear umbrella. India had not made
a judgement on Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, nor had it found the space
for an answer for the asymmetric on-and-off proxy warfare coming from
Pakistan. India’s tolerance of terrorism was diminishing yet was tempered
by a desire to try to normalize the relationship. This would all change in
the next decade, when events in Mumbai would harden India’s views on
terrorism forever.
 SECTION 7

2007–2017
KILLING AND CHILLING
 27

REVENGE OF THE S NA KE S

I f the sixth decade had raised hopes of a backchannel breakthrough to

untie the Kashmir knot and stabilize ties, the seventh began on a sombre
note, with even those slim prospects thinning. Pakistan was convulsed
by violence in 2007. The Afghan Taliban, nurtured by the ISI as a hugely
successful geostrategic tool in the 1990s, had now spawned a sibling that
hated Pakistan and declared war on the country. It resided in the badlands
of the FATA region of north-west Pakistan (now Khyber Pakthunkhwa)
and called itself the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Ambassador
Satyabrata Pal watched in dismay from the Indian chancery in Islamabad
as the mayhem unfolded. Explosions rocked Pakistan, blood spilled, even
the bubble of Islamabad was not safe.
Musharraf was embattled and cornered. His decade-old military regime
was floundering in the face of this security challenge. The terrorists seemed
to be gaining the upper hand over his forces. The judiciary and politicians in
the Opposition sensed an opportunity to push back against the illegitimate
military ruler. Benazir Bhutto’s PPP and Nawaz Sharif’s PML-N, both
in exile, were not just questioning army rule, but preparing for a post-
Musharraf political contest. On 14 September 2007, the military regime’s
deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, said that if Benazir Bhutto showed
up in Pakistan, she would not be deported, but would face corruption
charges. He still did not challenge Sharif’s and Bhutto’s right to return
to Pakistan.
The exiled civilian leaders had been building on the ‘charter of
democracy’ which they had cobbled together in London in May 2006, to
try and challenge the military regime. In July 2007, Bhutto had met with
Musharraf for the first time, in Dubai, to negotiate her return to Pakistan.
On 17 September, Bhutto spoke from exile, accusing Musharraf and his
allies of pushing Pakistan into crisis by refusing to restore democracy or
to share power. Sharif returned to Pakistan that month to test the military
regime, only to be arrested and taken into custody at the airport. He was
sent back to Saudi Arabia. Musharraf, who had now mostly lost popular
support and legitimacy, still held on to the illusion that he could reinvent
himself as a politician and contest presidential elections. He had in a
March 2007 interview said he intended to stay in office for another five
years. He now sought a judicial stamp to these ambitions.
Some hope arose of judicial censure on the dictator when a nine-member
panel of Supreme Court judges looked at six petitions (including one from
336 ange r m anage m e nt

the JeI, Pakistan’s largest Islamic group) for disqualifying Musharraf as

a presidential candidate. But on 28 September, in a majority 6-3 verdict,
Judge Rana Bhagwandas’s court permitted Musharraf to contest elections.
Bhagwandas, from a Sindhi Rajput family, became that year the first Hindu
(acting) chief of Pakistan’s Supreme Court.1
A condition for Musharraf, the politician, to emerge was that he
concede some space to the civilians. He relented, and approved a ‘national
reconciliation’ ordinance, NRO, issued on 5 October, to drop pending
corruption cases against the civilian politicians, in an attempt to restore the
democratic process. The NRO granted amnesty to those facing corruption
proceedings from January 1986 and October 1999, between two martial
law periods. (The NRO clearly illegal and effectively a free pass to the
corrupt; it was revoked by one judge later in October, and reinstated the
next year, to be eventually declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court
of Pakistan in December 2009.)
The day after he signed off on the NRO, Musharraf engineered his own
re-election as president. He won by a huge majority, in indirect elections
on 6 October 2007. The electoral college was packed with members of the
‘king’s party’, PML-Q, that had occupied legislatures since sham elections
on Musharraf’s watch in 2002. Controversially, Musharraf decided to hang
on to the post of army chief, given his inability to trust his own army
colleagues.
But the NRO and Musharraf’s assurances paved the way for Benazir
Bhutto to return home on 18 October, from eight years of exile. Bhutto
was hoping to reprise her feat of 1988, of replacing a dictator. Then, she
had been assisted by a providential plane crash that killed Zia. This time,
fate had a crueller twist in store.

FIGHTING TERROR TOGETHER?

In the midst of the political volatility within Pakistan, and somewhat
delayed by it, the second meeting of the joint terror mechanism was held
in New Delhi on 22 October. The meeting came days after a terrorist blast
in Ludhiana and amidst Indian concern over Pakistan’s attempts to revive
Sikh radicalism in Punjab. To many in India, joint efforts with Pakistan
against terrorism spelt a contradiction in terms—a disastrous idea, at the
very least akin to an attempt to collaborate with one thief to catch another.
The idea of the mechanism, as we saw, had gained sanction at a meeting
between Manmohan Singh and Musharraf in Havana in September 2006.
It was basically designed as an experimental CBM; some hoped that the
tactic could fruitfully engage Pakistan on the terrorism issue.
But the Jammu and Kashmir issue muddied the waters here as well.
Pakistan continued to draw a distinction between terrorism in the northern
state and elsewhere in India. Responding to an Indian Express report on
 re ve nge of t he s na k e s 337

the meeting that claimed that ‘for first time Pak accepts Indian dossier
on terror in J&K’, Pakistan’s foreign office dismissed the media story as
baseless. The Pakistani spokesman added that the purview of the talks
‘does not cover Jammu and Kashmir, which is a disputed territory, and
is being discussed under the Composite Dialogue process. The scope of
discussions under the Mechanism relates to the terrorist incidents in India
and Pakistan.’2
India was quick to rebut this take, reminded Pakistan of its ‘assurance
of 6 January 2004 of not permitting territory in its control to be used to
support terrorism in any form.’ The mandate of the mechanism, an Indian
statement said was ‘helping investigations on either side related to terrorist
acts and prevention of violence and terrorist acts in the two countries.’3
Pakistan wanted to treat the state of Jammu and Kashmir effectively
as a third entity, apart from India and Pakistan. To Indian analysts, this
was a bizarre posture: Pakistan wanted to discuss J&K, and was OK with
discussing terrorism, but not with discussing terrorism in Kashmir.

DESCENT INTO CHAOS

Despite his re-election on 6 October, Musharraf was weakened by the
judicial and security challenge that he faced. With his back firmly to the
wall, Musharraf declared a state of emergency on 3 November 2007,
suspending the Constitution to consolidate his hold on power. Chief
Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, the defiant judge who had been reinstated in
July after Musharraf had suspended him in March, promptly convened a
seven-member bench, which issued an interim order against the Emergency.
Soon, the 111th ‘coup-maker’ brigade of the army entered the Supreme
Court building, arrested Chaudhry, along with some sixty other judges, and
detained them in their homes. Musharraf once again fired the chief justice,
asked other judges to take fresh oaths of office, blocked TV channels, and
cracked down on public protests. The emergency situation was justified on
grounds of the threat from Islamic militancy, but it was clear that it was
only the dictator’s desperate bid to cling on to power.
PM Manmohan Singh watched the situation with increasing concern.
He reviewed Pakistan’s crisis on the evening of 3 November, along with
external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and a few key officials. While
National Security Advisor M. K. Narayanan said after the meeting that
India was treating the situation as an ‘internal problem of Pakistan’, the
official spokesman said, ‘we regret the difficult times that Pakistan is
passing through’, adding that India hoped that ‘conditions of normalcy
will soon return, permitting Pakistan’s transition to stability and democracy
to continue’.
Under pressure to give up one of his posts, Musharraf resigned as army
chief on 28 November, appointing General Ashfaq Kayani as chief of army
338 ange r m anage m e nt

staff. While Musharraf was still clinging to the office of president, the newly
invigorated political Opposition was aggressively criticizing Musharraf’s
army regime; Benazir Bhutto was sharply critical of Musharraf’s four-point
formula on Kashmir. Musharraf was compelled to lift the Emergency on
15 December, in preparation for elections promised on 8 January 2008.
But more bad news was to come.

A HOPE EXTINGUISHED
Benazir Bhutto clambered onto the rear seat of a Toyota Cruiser to stick
her head out of the sunroof hatch. She waved with practised cheer to a
crowd of charged supporters. It was early evening of 27 December 2007,
she had just finished a stump speech at the Liaquat Bagh in Rawalpindi, as
part of her comeback campaign, given the imminent end of the Musharraf
era. She had made a strong pitch for support to her party to more than ten
thousand people at the traditional rallying ground where Pakistan’s first
prime minister Liaquat Khan had been assassinated in 1951. At 5.10 p.m.,
a fifteen-year-old boy called Bilal, who had been fitted with a suicide jacket
by his Taliban handlers, and promised paradise for what he was about
to accomplish, pumped three bullets into Benazir, before blowing himself
up. The young assassin had added another bloody chapter to the Bhutto
dynasty’s tragic saga. Benazir, it turned out, had been warned of the specific
threat by no less than the DG of the ISI, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj,
just fifteen hours before being killed. But she saw no option to the path she
had chosen: risking her life for the larger cause of pulling Pakistan back to
normalcy.4
A cruel December killed the hope for stability in Pakistan that the
ascendance of the civilians had stirred. Musharraf called for a three-day
mourning period, even as many pointed fingers at the army for a pre-
meditated murder. Did Musharraf just brutally eliminate Benazir, many
asked, as Zia had erased her father three decades earlier? For many liberal
Pakistanis, all hope was interred with the end of Bhutto. To some others,
after Benazir’s funeral on 27 December, it was her benign ghost that would
run the country, with her husband Asif Zardari as proxy, a placeholder
till her son and heir, Bilawal Bhutto, came of political age. At the same
time, public revulsion rose against domestic militancy, as the army tried
to take on the splinter group of the Taliban, the TTP.
X
Benazir’s death saw the spontaneous eruption of grief and empathy in
India. This killing of a promising leader from a political dynasty was a
subcontinental tragedy, with familiar historical parallels in India. Less
than two decades earlier, a young, popular former prime minister from
a violence-hit political dynasty had been assassinated in India while
 re ve nge of t he s na k e s 339

working on a political comeback. Apart from the analogous destinies of

Rajiv Gandhi and Benazir Bhutto, commentators cited the parallel loss to
political violence of a parent in both cases, Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto. The Hindustan Times commented that the light had gone out
of Pakistan, invoking a phrase used by Nehru for the assassination of
Mahatma Gandhi on 1948.5
India’s president, Pratibha Patil, said in a message that the assassination
was a ‘tragedy not just for Pakistan but for our entire region’. PM
Manmohan Singh extolled Benazir’s ‘contributions to a previous moment
of hope in India–Pakistan relations, and her intent to break India–Pakistan
relations out of the sterile patterns of the past,’ adding that ‘the sub-
continent has lost an outstanding leader who worked for democracy and
reconciliation in her country’.6
India was increasingly worried about Pakistan’s implosion. Apart from
fears of a takeover in Pakistan by mullahs, in a situation akin to the Taliban
capture of power in Afghanistan in the 1990s, New Delhi was concerned
about the physical safety of its Islamabad mission. An intelligence report
in January 2008 warned of a suicide bomber planning to target the Indian
high commission in Islamabad. The threat came from a banned militant
group, called Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, meaning ‘movement
for the enforcement of Prophet Mohammad’s Islamic laws’. The group
specialized in suicide missions, had been running a parallel government
in Pakistan’s Swat district, and now wanted to demonstrate its reach in
Islamabad. High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal asked for extra security
from the Pakistan government for the mission.7
X
To many Pakistanis, Benazir’s assassination signalled the victory of darker
forces over both the military and civilian politicians; militant groups
had now got emboldened, with the writ of the state challenged all over
Pakistan. The killing demoralized the nation, but led to a strong sympathy
wave for Benazir’s PPP, which emerged as the single largest party when
the postponed general elections were finally held on 18 February 2008.
With Musharraf still president, the two largest parties—the PPP now led
by Benazir’s widower, Asif Zardari; and the PML-N, helmed by Nawaz
Sharif—cobbled together a coalition to work under the dictator.
Taking credit for the elections, Musharraf said an ‘era of democracy’
had begun in Pakistan and that he had now put the country ‘on the
track of development and progress’. Since Zardari had not contested the
elections, the PPP, on 22 March, named a former parliament speaker, a
political lightweight, Yousaf Raza Gilani, to lead the coalition government
as prime minister.
X
340 ange r m anage m e nt

As Satyabrata Pal watched the bewildering politics in his host country,

an attack came dangerously close to home on a Monday afternoon.
Around 12.10 p.m. on 2 June, a man drove a speeding Toyota Corolla with
diplomatic registration plates into Islamabad’s F6 sector, passing in front of
India House and the entrance of the Danish embassy located next door, to
stop at the parking lot in front of the embassy complex. Seconds later, the
vehicle exploded, killing six and wounding several others. The residences of
the Dutch ambassador and the Australian defence attaché, located nearby,
were damaged. Windowpanes were shattered in Ambassador Pal’s home.
Both Pal, who happened to be home, and his wife, got cuts from the
glass that shattered. The target this time was the Danish embassy, the
explosion a reprisal for cartoons published in a Danish newspaper insulting
the Prophet of Islam.
Another blast, specifically targeted at India, came in the middle of
the year. This bombing took place not in Islamabad, but ripped through
the heart of Kabul. In the morning office rush hour, on 7 July, a suicide
bomber drove a heavy vehicle packed with explosives towards the gate
of the Indian embassy, where he detonated his load. The blast outside the
embassy killed fifty-eight people and wounded 141, mostly Afghan visa
seekers. It destroyed two embassy vehicles entering the compound.
In Delhi, Malti, a teacher in Sanskriti School, got a call that morning,
saying that the media was reporting an explosion near the Indian embassy
in Kabul. Malti’s first reaction was that such explosions were pretty much
routine for Kabul, but nevertheless rang up her husband, Venkat Rao,
press counsellor at the Kabul mission, to check if he was OK. The phone
rang, but Venkat did not answer. It was only later that Malti learnt that
her worst fears had come true: Rao was in the car that was blown up
that day, his mobile phone intact as it was flung far by the explosion.8
Soon, Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee announced that among others,
India had lost two diplomats, Counsellor Venkat Rao and Brigadier Rajesh
Mehta, the military attaché. Mukherjee said two Indian security guards
and an Afghan national who worked at the embassy were also killed.
The needle of suspicion initially pointed towards the Taliban, which had
been attacking the Kabul regime in a wave of suicide attacks across the
country, since the US had moved in seven years earlier. However, evidence
soon emerged of Pakistani involvement from Indian, Afghan, and US
intelligence agencies. Taliban sources started saying they would never mount
an attack where the majority of those killed were Afghan civilians. The
Afghan government said the attack was the work of ‘regional influences’;
Afghanistan expert Ahmed Rashid told Al Jazeera that the Kabul government
was implicitly linking Pakistan to the attack. Pakistan’s agencies had been
worried about India’s growing profile in Afghanistan, and particularly
the collaboration between Indian and Afghan security agencies. Pakistan’s
 re ve nge of t he s na k e s 341

paranoia about being squeezed on both borders by Indian influence might

have instigated it to take desperate and violent measures.
Rangeen Spanta, the Afghan foreign minister, visited the Indian embassy
in Kabul soon after the attack in a show of support; his spokesman said
that the ‘enemies of Afghanistan and India’s relationship’ were behind the
attacks. Rao’s killing, the first of a diplomat in Pakistan-related violence
since Ravindra Mhatre’s abduction and death in London in 1984, was
a grim reminder that when Pakistan gave free run to violence, Indian
diplomats were unsafe not just in Islamabad, but everywhere.
X
The peace process somehow survived the near fatal blow of the Kabul
bombing. It was once again summit diplomacy that kept communication
channels open. A SAARC summit in August 2008 in Colombo opened up
the possibility of a bilateral conversation. Musharraf himself was fighting
for his political survival and sent his PM instead. The meeting between
prime ministers Manmohan Singh and Yousaf Raza Gilani on the sidelines
of the Colombo summit barely thawed the frosty relationship between
the neighbours—India remained angered and frustrated by the unrelenting
terrorism directed against it by Pakistan.
Soon after the summit, on 7 August, Zardari and Sharif joined hands
to force Musharraf to step down. The two politicians announced they
were filing a ‘charge sheet’ to compel Musharraf to resign, and would
impeach him through a parliamentary process in case he refused. Musharraf
refused to be dislodged, and the charge sheet was made public, listing all
Musharraf’s violations of law: his seizure of power in 1999, accompanied
by the imprisonment and exile of Sharif; the Emergency of 2007; and his
role in the US-led ‘war on terror’.
With the possibility of impeachment now real, Musharraf announced his
resignation on 18 August. The Musharraf era thus ended with a bloodless
transition, despite the sharpening violence within Pakistan. But Musharraf’s
exit was not unique. Each of Pakistan’s previous three major dictators had
been eased out of power, with no trial of their illegal regimes. Zia had, of
course, been killed at the height of his powers, but his regime had faced
no trial. None had been imprisoned, unlike their civilian counterparts.
On the following day, Musharraf defended his rule in an hour-long
televised speech. Public opinion was hardly persuaded: a poll conducted
a day after his resignation showed that 63 per cent Pakistanis welcomed
Musharraf’s decision to step down while only 15 per cent were unhappy
with it. Three months later, on 23 November, Pakistan’s dictator of a
decade would leave for exile in London, his safe passage negotiated by
the army. Musharraf would go, holding on to his political ambition to
one day return to his country to contest elections.
342 ange r m anage m e nt

Asif Ali Zardari succeeded Musharraf as president on 9 September,

with Afghanistan’s president Hamid Karzai present at his inauguration.
Apart from signalling continuity in the US-led war on terror, Zardari tried
to consolidate the PPP’s hold on power. But the structural primacy of the
army was embedded in Pakistan’s polity. Zardari’s regime over the next
four years would struggle to shake off the grip of the post-Musharraf army.
Hours after Zardari made his first speech to Pakistan’s parliament,
terrorists issued a reminder that they could now strike at will in Pakistan’s
capital. On the night of 20 September, a truck laden with explosives was
detonated in front of Islamabad’s prestigious Marriott Hotel, killing some
fifty-four people and injuring over 266. Among those killed were five
foreign nationals. (The al-Qaeda–TTP masterminds of the attack were
later reported killed by a US drone attack in eastern Afghanistan in 2017.)
X
Despite the violence at home, Zardari made it to New York for the UNGA.
On the sidelines, he held his first meeting on 24 September 2008 with
India’s PM, Manmohan Singh, who told him that the peace process had
come ‘under strain in recent months’. Zardari reiterated that Pakistan
‘stands by its commitments of January 2004’ and agreed that the ‘forces
that have tried to derail the peace process must be defeated’.
Pakistan’s army was worried about a few other things. Despite Pakistan’s
collaboration with the US in Afghanistan, the US was going ahead with
the India–US nuclear deal, which carved out a strong exception for India
from the non-proliferation protocols then in force, apart from unlocking
dual use technologies for India’s use. The US Congress approved the deal
on 1 October. None was envisaged for Pakistan. The nuclear deal, seen as
a watershed in US–India relations, completed a process initiated in 2005
by Bush and Manmohan Singh, lifting a three-decade US moratorium on
nuclear trade with India. It was signed by External Affairs Minister Pranab
Mukherjee with his counterpart, Condoleezza Rice, on 10 October.
Zardari, innocent of nuclear matters, saw himself and his wife as
victims of terrorism; he was not sticking to his talking points on India.
In October 2008, he faced criticism in Pakistan’s media for calling out
‘terrorists’ in Kashmir, given their official characterization as ‘Kashmiri
nationalists’. In November, Zardari told an Indian newspaper that Pakistan
was for closer economic ties with India and would not be the first to use
nuclear weapons. He had clearly spoken without the army’s approval.
Pakistan walked back the declaration, asserting that it had not moved to
a ‘no first use’ nuclear posture.9
 28

MASSACRE I N M UM B A I

W hen the shooting began in Mumbai, just after 9 p.m. on 26

November, High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal was in Delhi for the
visit of Shah Mahmood Qureshi, Pakistan’s new foreign minister. Qureshi
himself was giving a pre-dinner media interview to CNN-IBN’s Suhasini
Haider at Pakistan House, the residence of Pakistan’s high commissioner,
Shahid Malik, when the news of the terror attacks broke on the evening of
26/11. The interview was never aired.
Qureshi should normally have been dining with his host, but India’s
EAM, Pranab Mukherjee, had decided not to host a dinner for him, only
a high tea. As the visit was being planned, Malik had joked that he would
take his minister to Wimpy for a meal, since India was not hosting a
formal dinner. Malik eventually did host an official dinner at his residence
for both delegations; National Security Advisor Shivshankar Menon and
High Commissioner Satyabrata Pal were among those present. The Indian
minister seemed to have had a premonition about things to come; he
could have been caught in the awkward position of breaking bread with
a Pakistani minister as Pakistani terrorists sprayed bullets in Mumbai.
Mukherjee had, however, agreed to have lunch with Qureshi the next
day in Chandigarh; they had been invited for a round table discussion
on India–Pakistan agricultural cooperation, by the Centre for Research in
Rural and Industrial Development. The centre, headed by Rashpal Malhotra,
where Manmohan Singh was one of the founders, also worked on bringing
the ‘two Punjabs’ closer.
The talks earlier that day at Hyderabad House had gone off well.
Mukherjee had announced to spirited applause at the post-meeting press
conference that cricketing ties between the countries would resume. In
the car ride back to his hotel, Qureshi exulted over the day’s proceedings
and told Malik that they were going through perhaps the best period in
bilateral relations. He had spoken too soon, the good times would last
about three hours.1
After the engagements with Qureshi, Mukherjee left Hyderabad House
that evening for his office in South Block. At around 9 p.m., his staff
alerted him to breaking news on TV, of unfolding violence in Mumbai.
Mukherjee watched the news in South Block, ‘shocked to see the audacity
and scale of the attack’, and returned home only around midnight ‘but
could hardly take my eyes off the TV’.2 Millions of Indians were up
watching in horror, as the terror attacks played out live on television
344 ange r m anage m e nt

screens through the night. The body count mounted, as smoke and fire
billowed from the rooms of Mumbai’s landmark hotels—the Taj Mahal
Palace and the Oberoi, and other targeted buildings. The day was later
dubbed 26/11, echoing the trauma of New York’s 9/11 seven years earlier.
The next morning, Mukherjee cancelled his visit to Chandigarh, but
Qureshi decided to proceed with his scheduled programme to Jaipur, Ajmer,
and Chandigarh. The siege of the hotels continued, as security forces tried to
neutralize the ten Lashkar-e-Taiba terrorists. Meanwhile Pakistan’s foreign
minister was still holding meetings in India.
A bizarre twist to the crisis diplomacy came when President Asif Zardari
received a ‘threatening call’ from someone he thought was India’s EAM,
Mukherjee. It turned out the hoax caller, who also tried to threaten Pranab
Mukherjee and US leaders, was Omar Sheikh, the murderer of Daniel
Pearl who had been released in the 1999 hijack drama and who was now
lodged in a jail in Pakistan. He had managed to fool Zardari and hoped
to con a few other world leaders or at least to alleviate some boredom
in the Hyderabad jail.3
President Zardari called PM Manmohan Singh on the morning of 27
November to condemn the attacks and surprisingly, promised to send the
DG of the ISI, Shuja Pasha, to help in the investigation.4 On the evening
of 27 November, just before Qureshi addressed a group of journalists
at the Women’s Press Club in New Delhi, Shahid Malik’s phone buzzed.
It was Pakistan’s army chief, Kayani. The Pakistani diplomat was given
the delicate job of relaying the army chief’s instructions to his foreign
minister to walk back the rash offer made by his president. This was an
announcement Qureshi made early in his presser—the visit of the Pakistani
intelligence chief was not imminent.
During the media meet, Malik received another call. This time, it was
the office of India’s external affairs minister, demanding that Qureshi be
pulled out of whatever he was doing for an urgent conversation. When
Qureshi came on the line, Mukherjee sounded furious. He read out a
‘speaking note’ prepared by Foreign Secretary Menon, concluding: ‘Mr
Minister, no purpose will be served by your continuing to stay in India in
these circumstances. I advise you to leave immediately. My official aircraft
is available to take you back home whenever you find convenient. But it
would be desirable if a decision is taken as quickly as possible.’5
T. C. A. Raghavan, then heading the Pakistan desk at MEA, was
woken up at 4 a.m. the next morning to be told that a Pakistan Air Force
aircraft was on its way to Delhi to take the minister home. He had an
hour to organize the flight clearances. India’s foreign minister had just
politely expelled his counterpart in the throes of an official visit. Both the
ignorance and the irrelevance of Pakistan’s civilian leadership was clear to
India, but the gesture was important. Since he was already in Delhi, Pal did
 m as sacre in m um ba i 345

not need to be ‘recalled,’ or even called in for consultations. The expulsion

of High Commissioner Shahid Malik was not considered necessary; this
time, India had effectively expelled Pakistan’s foreign minister.
Mukherjee recalled later:
As usual, Pakistan was in denial mode and some Pakistani leaders
maintained that the terrorists were non-state actors. My response
was sharp and strong. When asked by the media, I asserted ‘non-state
actors do not come from heaven. They are located in the territory of
a particular country.’ In this case, we had evidence that the terrorists
came from Karachi port. They were dropped in mid-sea with a smaller
vessel. They captured an Indian fishing vessel, killed the crew, and
finally killed the pilot, upon reaching Mumbai coast.6
But asking Pakistan’s minister to leave India was not retribution enough.
As the attacks played out live on TV channels, 175 people lay dead,
including nine terrorists and a few foreign citizens—Israeli, American,
British. The impact on the national psyche was deep. The anger was
mounting and the national mood was to ‘do something’. Even though the
complicity of the Pakistan state had not been established, the Opposition
BJP blamed the UPA government for its soft stance on Pakistan. A pained
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh addressed the nation on 27 November:
‘We will take up strongly with our neighbours that the use of their territory
for launching attacks on us will not be tolerated, and that there would be a
cost if suitable measures are not taken by them.’7
While India’s Pakistan policy has largely been run by prime ministers,
Pranab Mukherjee, with his heft in the cabinet of Manmohan Singh, was
an exception. He was detailing neighbourhood policy, even though he
would consult with the PM frequently. In one meeting, in the wake of
the Mumbai attacks, as Foreign Secretary Menon, High Commissioner
Pal, and Joint Secretary Raghavan sat across the table in his South Block
room, he asked his advisers what should be done. After a brief silence,
Menon said India could target the LeT headquarters in Muridke with a
cruise missile. Visibly startled, Mukherjee paused to clean his glasses, then
thanked the officers to signal that the meeting was over.
Menon later confirmed that he had for a while argued for ‘immediate
visible retaliation of some sort, either against the LeT in Muridke, in
Pakistan’s Punjab province, or their camps in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir,
or against the ISI, which was clearly complicit.’ But ‘on sober reflection
and in hindsight’, he was convinced that restraint was the right choice.
While the public debate on policy choices was angry, with an
overwhelming sense that India’s reaction to Mumbai fell short, experts
were trying to bring out the nuances of India’s policy considerations.
Menon argued that the choice was made to use restraint and diplomacy
346 ange r m anage m e nt

at that point for multiple reasons, including the fact that a new civilian
leadership had taken over in Pakistan which had nothing to do with the
planning or execution of the attacks. Also, India could take the high moral
ground and put global pressure on Pakistan to clamp down on its terrorist
activities. Perhaps a key factor informing India’s restraint was also the
civil nuclear deal arrived at with the US, after a great deal of diplomatic
manoeuvring. The deal could be jeopardized if India went into a full-scale
war with Pakistan in a nuclear environment. India’s preoccupation with
other geopolitical priorities, like the global economic crisis, stayed its hand
in dealing with the terrorism problem in a firmer way.
In his 2016 book, Menon noted presciently that the policy would
change with the next major terror attack:
All the same, should another such attack be mounted from Pakistan,
with or without visible support from the ISI or the Pakistan Army,
it would be virtually impossible for any government of India to
make the same choice again. Pakistan’s prevarications in bringing
the perpetrators to justice and its continued use of terrorism as an
instrument of state policy after 26/11 have ensured this. In fact, I
personally consider some public retribution and a military response
inevitable. The circumstances of November 2008 no longer exist and
are unlikely to be replicated in the future.8
The policy dilemma was not new. A fierce debate had taken place in 2001
after the brazen attacks on India’s Parliament and would be reprised several
times in the next decade after each act of terror; the response, however,
would now be of a different order. In 2001, India had responded to the
terror attack with Operation Parakram, a credible threat of conventional
force, while the nuclear threshold was still being debated. The then NSA,
Brajesh Mishra, had later argued that this was a one-off response pattern
that could not be credibly repeated. In 2008, the countries were already
a decade into being nuclear, with doctrines and systems in place; this was
arguably a time when India could have found this space to give a ‘sub-
conventional’ response to Pakistan through a military operation. Another
former NSA, Menon, had later assessed that the posture of restraint of 2008
would not be effective if repeated in the future. The debate continues to this
day on whether India’s restraint gave the wrong message to the terrorists
and their backers after Mumbai, about India’s high threshold of tolerance
for terror. An attack then on Muridke, the headquarters of the LeT, may not
have resulted in huge operational success, but could have been an important
signal to Pakistan and the world of India’s resolve.
In case India had reacted in 2008 the way it did in 2016 or 2019, with
a surgical or air strike, a strong Indian response would have entered the
security calculus of Pakistan and served as a disincentive for the Pakistan
 m as sacre in m um ba i 347

army’s support of India-focused militant groups. A decisive strike on a

terrorist base like Muridke could have acted as an effective deterrent for
the attacks India would face for a decade.
X
In 2008, it was clear that Mumbai had caused a churn within Pakistan.
While the complicity in the attack of the top echelons of the army could
not be proven, and the civilian leadership was definitely unaware of the
planning for these events, it was clear that the ISI was actively conniving
with the militant groups that had mounted the attack. In many ways, the
Mumbai attacks did a great deal of damage to Pakistan’s own reputation.
Together with its training of the 9/11 hijackers, and the shelter given
to Osama bin Laden that would be outed three years later, Mumbai
reinforced Pakistan’s reputation as the epicentre of global terrorism—there
was now no question that the country was deploying terrorists and lying
about it.
Asif Ali Zardari’s arrival on the political scene had seemed to usher in
a new rather less uncivil line on India, but this soft line seemed personal
to him and served only to highlight the weakness of Pakistan’s civilian
leaders. As we have seen, Zardari had mentioned ‘no first use’ and had
immediately been chastised by the Pakistan establishment for tampering
with a foundational nuclear doctrine. The 2008 nuclear deal between India
and the US along with the NSG waiver had been another critical moment
of disappointment for Pakistan in 2008 in its quest for nuclear parity.
Pakistan felt left out and cheated once again: its role in Afghanistan, it
felt, was not properly acknowledged, much less rewarded.
Within Pakistan, most analysts recognized that the civilians had nothing
to do with the Mumbai attacks. So far as the Pakistan Army was concerned,
the post-Musharraf army led by General Kayani was also assisting the US
in fighting a full-scale battle against terrorists to the west. The TTP, and
some elements in the army may have taken a bet that India would not
react with force while the Pakistan Army was colluding with the US. To
HC Pal, assessing the domestic convolutions within Pakistan, the army’s
role in encouraging the Mumbai attacks was undeniable:
Under General Kayani, there has been a clear and very obvious shift
in the use to which skirmishes at the LoC are being put. Sending
infiltrators into Jammu and Kashmir is of secondary importance; the
primary objective is to create incidents that would nip in the bud
any attempt to make peace. In 2008, every public statement by Asif
Zardari, proclaiming his intention to make peace was followed by an
attack on a soft Indian target. When raids on Indian soldiers at the
LoC did not work, our Embassy in Kabul was attacked, which did
348 ange r m anage m e nt

derail the process for several months. When the leaders nevertheless
met in New York in the autumn and decided to resume the process,
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) went further with Mumbai,
attacking it on the evening that its Foreign Minister arrived in Delhi
for talks.9

X
The Mumbai attack soon crowded out all other bilateral issues between
India and Pakistan, as it became the defining event of the decade for India
and damaged the bilateral relationship in ways that were to become clear
only in the coming years. The Musharraf four-point formula on Kashmir
was not being discussed any more, even though the records of discussion
had been shared with the army. Kayani appeared to have distanced
himself from the backchannel initiatives. Husain Haqqani, the Pakistani
ambassador in the US who came in for consultations in Islamabad in 2008,
tried to look for the files but could not lay his hands on them. He was told
the whole matter had been a personal initiative of Musharraf and no files
were available.
The peace process that Manmohan Singh was continuing from
Vajpayee’s last year, which Lambah had pursued on the backchannels,
had proved resilient enough to withstand a severe shock of terrorism: the
2006 Mumbai train blasts. It also survived the Kabul blasts on the Indian
embassy of July 2008. But it was overwhelmed by the shock of the Mumbai
attacks. The peace process that had continued robustly from 2003 to 2006
was now clearly at a standstill. The central political assurance of 2004 that
Musharraf had given to Vajpayee, to end terrorism from Pakistani soil,
now lay in tatters. Mumbai’s trauma redefined the decade as one when
India became more vulnerable to terrorism, but failed to quickly develop
a credible strategy to deal with the issue.
Despite the surge in uncontrolled violence, Satyabrata Pal remained
persuaded of the need for continuous engagement with Pakistan. He was
a dove in the aviary of Indo–Pak engagement. His counterpart in Delhi,
Shahid Malik, was also known as a peacenik. It was therefore ironic that
the biggest terrorist blow on the bilateral relationship in the twenty-first
century took place during the tenures of these two diplomats. Arguably,
the presence of civilian ‘engagers’ on both sides hastened the diplomatic
recovery, even if the trauma of the attack irretrievably damaged the trust.
High Commissioner Pal was arguing for continuing dialogue, making
a sophisticated argument for sympathizing with Pakistan’s predicament:
Pakistanis feel that the world now sees them as mendicants with
suicide belts on…Gandhi would have urged India to be generous for
pity’s sake, but also in its self-interest, as he did when he went on his
 m as sacre in m um ba i 349

last fast, just months after the first war with Pakistan, to urge India to
give Pakistan the 550 million that were its due... Since then, we have
become more Chanakya’s disciples than Gandhi’s, but of the seven
ways of dealing with neighbours the Arthashastra offered—samman,
upeksha, bheda, maya, indrajala, danda and dana—(honour, overlook,
divide, bribe, entrap, punish and pity). We have tried the first six,
without much luck either. So, perhaps the time has come for us to
marry Gandhi and Chanakya and try on Pakistan a selfish altruism,
our dana, not a gift that can be turned against us, but a determined,
hard-headed generosity that we can turn to our advantage.10
But it was not selfish altruism that Indian policymakers needed to be
deployed any longer.
Pal was conflating an engagement with Zardari as one with Pakistan’s
foreign policy establishment. The message, however, needed to go directly
to the army. India had failed to unambiguously impress upon Pakistan the
unacceptable cost of terrorism. Public opinion dictated that they search for
that elusive answer to cross-border terror, in the domain of what security
analysts saw as sub-conventional warfare. India needed to inflict a cost
for terrorism on the Pakistan establishment factoring in hardening public
opinion and lowering thresholds of tolerance to terror attacks.
Another terror attack from Pakistan-based terrorist groups would
inevitably come. It would need a different response. The policy would be
given newer names from 2016—no talks with terror. Offensive defence.
Surgical strikes. With the benefit of hindsight, it does appear, as I have said
earlier, that if India had executed surgical or air strikes after Mumbai, these
would have made for strong disincentives for later attacks by Pakistan in
Pathankot, Uri, and Pulwama. It would not have just punished the civilian
government of Zardari, but also the deep state.
X
For the world at large, the terrorism in South Asia seemed to be an
aberration in the twenty-first century. The US engagement in Afghanistan
had plateaued into a stalemate. Global leaders were fully occupied with
the global financial crisis, which began with the fall of Lehman Brothers in
2008; geoeconomics seem to be triumphing over geopolitics. It was a time
for the G20 to step up as the premier global economic forum to try to save
the world; India was a member and its economist leader, Manmohan Singh,
the star. Regressive violent developments in South Asia were distracting the
world from that agenda. And Pakistan was to blame.
Within Pakistan, the Mumbai attacks had exacerbated civil–military
tension. The Zardari regime was deeply embarrassed, and initially denied
any links between the perpetrators and Pakistan. Ajmal Kasab, the lone
350 ange r m anage m e nt

living terrorist arrested by India, was not accepted as a Pakistani citizen;

his family, when journalists unearthed them in Pakistan’s south Punjab,
was whisked away into the custody of the ISI. But the government soon
succumbed to global pressure and raided the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s hideout
on 7 December.
 29

DI P LOMATI C DOOD L E S

I n March 2009, President Zardari challenged another institution that

had been responsible for ridding the country of Musharraf. He angered
the judiciary by postponing the reinstatement of Iftikhar Chaudhry, the
maverick chief justice Musharraf had fired. This gave his political rival
Nawaz Sharif the opportunity to join another lawyers’ movement leading
to a ‘Long March’ that forced the restoration of Chaudhry, along with
other suspended judges, on 22 March. (Chaudhry would go on to complete
his tenure in December 2013.)
In April, another veteran Pakistan hand, Sharat Sabharwal, landed
in Islamabad as Indian high commissioner. Sabharwal, who had been
the deputy HC in the 1990s, arrived at a time when policymakers in
Delhi were worried about his safety, and that of the Indian mission in
Islamabad, given the impunity with which the Taliban seem to be striking
within Pakistan’s capital. More broadly, Delhi was worried about the larger
implications for India of the lawlessness within Pakistan. The fact that
the Taliban ‘had consolidated their power in the Swat valley, barely 200
kilometres from Islamabad, raised the spectre of them coming to control
the nuclear-armed Pakistani state’.1 The high commissioner walked into an
Islamabad that looked like a garrison town with visible security barriers
and armed personnel, his residence was a ‘veritable fortress’. Three security
barriers guarded the road to his home in the F6 sector. The height of the
boundary wall of India House had been raised. It was surrounded by Hesco
and Texas barriers, with concertina wire running along its perimeter and
security cameras looking nervously in all directions. This did not come as
a surprise to the HC, given the Marriot Hotel bombing of 2007, and the
attack on the neighbouring Danish embassy the previous year.2
Yet, Sabharwal, saw some ‘silver linings’ on the bilateral front,
‘feeble’ indicators of a possible turn in the relationship compared to his
previous tenure in the 1990s. He saw an increasingly vocal constituency
questioning the use of terrorism; an information revolution that had reduced
the dependence on state media; an increasing tendency to question the
post-Musharraf army; a judiciary capable of pushback; and widespread
awareness of the growing gap between its power and international standing,
and that of India.3
Sabharwal tried to pursue the Mumbai investigations. He encountered
a good deal of rhetoric about Pakistan’s attempts to stamp out ‘non-state
actors’ but very little forward movement. On the civilian side, he saw
352 ange r m anage m e nt

Pakistan keen to resume a structured dialogue with India and found that
the civilian leaders did have some breathing room, but were still wary of
each other. When Sabharwal called on Nawaz Sharif in May 2009, the
former PM appeared bitter with the PPP, but was not inclined to rock
the boat too hard for fear of playing into the army’s hands. In fact, the
reluctance of both the PPP and PML-N to collaborate with the army
against each other gave them greater democratic space. The army on its
part reacted to the challenge by promoting a third force—Imran Khan’s
Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the movement for the restoration of justice.
After Manmohan Singh got a second term in the Indian elections from
May 2009, the bilateral engagement increased. In June, Zardari met Singh
for the first time since the Mumbai attacks, at a Shanghai Cooperation
Organisation (SCO) summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The meeting took
place against the backdrop of the release from prison of the Mumbai
attacks mastermind, Hafiz Saeed. The UN-designated terrorist had defiantly
emerged in public view after a nominal house arrest. Singh pointedly told
Zardari after a handshake in front of the assembled media that Pakistan’s
territory must not be used for terrorism.
The two leaders met again in Egypt on the sidelines of a NAM summit.
But the national appetite was low in India for the conciliatory ‘joint’
document with Pakistan issued so soon after Mumbai. The Sharm El Sheikh
agreement of July 2009 came in for scathing criticism from the Opposition
BJP, for allowing the mention of Balochistan, interpreted as conceding
equivalence between Pakistan’s covert activity over the decades in Kashmir
and India’s recent alleged operations within Pakistan. The agreement was
also panned in Pakistan—the Balochistan reference was seen as a concession
to India and an invitation to interfere in Pakistan’s internal matters. Former
HC and Foreign Secretary Menon, who negotiated the document, reflected
later on the dynamics and found the critique within India illogical: ‘If
Pakistan wished to discuss its internal affairs in Balochistan with India,
even if it was to accuse India of meddling, why should Indian diplomats
shy away from a discussion?’ he asked. He argued while speaking to
parliamentarians that ‘while we might be accused of bad drafting, there was
nothing wrong with the policy behind the attempt at Sharm El Sheikh’.4
Menon later recalled that
in the resulting media cacophony, only the first part of the sentence
was picked up; my statement was portrayed as an attempt to shield
the government from blame, and the policy arguments were ignored...
In retrospect, it may be that it was premature to resume dialogue
with Pakistan nine months after the Mumbai attack. One problem
was the general impression in India that while Pakistan had much
to gain by way of international respectability from a dialogue, India
 dip l om at ic dood l e s 353

did not. But that was a time when a new government in India and a
positively inclined civilian government in Pakistan could have made
a difference, if domestic politics had not intervened. To me, Sharm El-
Sheikh was another opportunity squandered in the long list of missed
half chances in India–Pakistan relations. Too often in India the debate
on Pakistan policy is reduced to a series of meaningless shibboleths or
false opposites—to talk or not to talk, for instance.5
In the politically polarized debate, critics were buying neither the ‘bad
drafting’ theory nor the ‘good policy’ one, and were attributing base
motives to Manmohan Singh of being overly soft on the land of his birth.
More fundamentally, as Menon discovered by hindsight, it was too soon
after Mumbai to have any kind of joint statement with Pakistan, which
would need trust and a congruence of views.
Given the prevailing mood in India, former foreign minister Jaswant
Singh’s book, Jinnah: India-Partition-Independence, on the partition of India
and Jinnah’s role in it, which was released in August, plunged the author
into controversy over some positive references to Jinnah. Over six decades
after Independence, the mention of Partition’s primary protagonist was still
an ideologically loaded proposition in India. Jaswant Singh was expelled
from his party for violating party discipline, ironically by a committee
chaired by L. K. Advani, who, as has been noted earlier, himself had been
compelled to resign as BJP president in 2005, when he praised Jinnah
during a sentimental trip to Pakistan.
X
On 10 September, High Commissioner Sharat Sabharwal hosted the Indian
high commission’s traditional iftar at an Islamabad hotel. Unusually, the
British high commissioner told Sabharwal that he might receive a high-
ranking guest from the ISI that evening. A few minutes before the event
was to start, the Indian HC received confirmation that the DG of the ISI
would show up. Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha landed up in a
black sherwani and made small talk with the high commissioner at the
head table. It was clearly a message to suggest that the military was on
board for the rapprochement with India and to show a benign side of the
ISI (the ISI’s seeming desire to build bridges was in part due to its struggles
with the US). The ISI chief’s presence at an event hosted by the Indian high
commissioner made it to the front pages of Pakistani newspapers with one
daily gushingly describing the development as a ‘milestone’ in the history of
Indo–Pak ties.
In October 2009, the US Congress passed the Kerry Lugar Bill, which
became a flashpoint between the civilian Government of Pakistan and the
army. The bill made security assistance to Pakistan contingent on good
354 ange r m anage m e nt

nuclear behaviour, action to combat terrorist groups, and on ensuring

that the security forces of Pakistan were not subverting the political or
judicial processes in the country. The Pakistan Army reacted angrily to
the last element, over the ‘national security implications’ of requiring US
certification over its role in Pakistan’s polity. Sabharwal assessed that the
army suspected President Zardari of having engineered the provisions of
this bill through its ambassador in the US, Hussain Haqqani. This led to
rumours in Islamabad that the army would sack the Zardari government
and replace him with a technocratic one, a not unfamiliar fear through
all the years of civilian rule in the country.6
By 2010, the bilateral relationship was hobbling back from the pain
of 2008. Manmohan Singh had begun to engage with Zardari. Diplomacy
veered towards discussing issues beyond security, like trade, even as Pakistan
contemplated reciprocating the MFN status that it had received from India
in 1996.
Even as governments cautiously tried to engage with each other ferment
arose within civil society on both sides of the border. The Arab Spring
that began stirring in 2010, destabilizing regimes in West Asia through
spontaneous popular movements, gave inspiration to Pakistan’s support for
the movement in Kashmir, to revive the conditions created by the political
and militant movements of the 1980s. In India, a state government led
by Omar Abdullah, grandson of Sheikh Abdullah, had come to power
in Jammu and Kashmir from the end of 2008, with the support of the
Congress Party at the centre. To some commentators, the summer of
2010 that saw an uprising of young men pelting stones marked ‘a new
generation of resistance’ in Kashmir. Security agencies often saw Pakistan’s
hand behind the stone-throwers, as an ecosystem emerged of young stone
pelters, who would suddenly appear as ‘overground supporters’ whenever
‘underground’ militants were cornered by security forces or during funerals
of slain militants. Some tough summers were coming up in Kashmir with
a huge increase in stone pelting cases.
However, despite all that was going on, so far as Indian diplomacy was
concerned, post Mumbai, terrorism remained the central theme of bilateral
conversation. It was increasingly an Indian condition that negotiations
with Pakistan could not go on while terrorism continued to seep across
the border; linking incidents of terrorism with ‘progress on the Jammu
and Kashmir’ issue was unacceptable to India. But the ISI continued to
deploy the made-for-India proxies for terror within Kashmir. It also tried
to repurpose the militant groups waging the war within, to focus their
wrath on India. The chief of the infamous Taliban faction TTP revealed a
feeler he got from the ISI in 2011. The former TTP commander, Ehsanullah
Ehsan, who escaped from a safe house operated by the Pakistan Army
in 2021, revealed, including in a piece for the Sunday Guardian from an
 dip l om at ic dood l e s 355

undisclosed location, how the ISI had approached him when in North
Waziristan to lead a hit squad of his cadres to target ‘enemies’ including
Pashtun freedom activists, Indian and US forces.7

A GUEST OF THE PAKISTAN STATE

On 2 May 2011, shortly after 1 a.m. local time, a US military special
operations unit executed America’s most wanted man. The 9/11
mastermind, Osama bin Laden, was sniffed out in a military township
in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Reports later emerged that a former Pakistani
intelligence officer had provided the tip-off to the US embassy in August
2010, following which the US recruited a Pakistani doctor, Shakil Afridi,
to run a fake vaccination programme, which enabled the US to get blood
samples of bin Laden’s children to confirm his presence at the safe house.
The episode embarrassed the Pakistan Army and presented it with
two dilemmas. The first hard choice was whether they should admit to
complicity or to incompetence—of harbouring America’s most wanted man
on Pakistani soil while pretending to hunt for him; or being unaware of
his presence in a safe house in a Pakistani garrison town. The second
dilemma was whether to admit to prior knowledge of the US operation
and therefore complicity; or to ignorance and a failure to detect the ingress
of American aircraft, therefore incompetence. The army chose to claim
incompetence on both counts. There were few takers for the first claim;
most observers were persuaded that Pakistan was complicit in providing
a safe haven for bin Laden, but had been incompetent in detecting the US
operation to rescue him. Sharat Sabharwal surmised that Pakistani radars
failed to pick up the US helicopters that flew in from Afghan bases that
morning, since they were all directed eastward towards India.8
But the shamefaced army still needed to display outrage, so a joint
session of Pakistan’s parliament was made to pass a resolution condemning
American violation of Pakistani sovereignty. It failed though to hold its army
accountable for harbouring bin Laden as its guest. The CIA director, Leon
Panetta, confirmed that no information on the US operation was shared
with Pakistan, but investigative journalist Seymour Hersh later claimed
that the army leadership had been taken into confidence. Sabharwal would
not rule out some senior members of the Pakistan Army having played a
private game in facilitating the US action.9
Even as fears rose in Pakistan of a cornered army resorting to a
familiar tactic of mounting a coup to dismiss the civilian government,
the aftershocks of the bin Laden operation continued to claim victims. In
October 2009, Sabharwal watched fascinated as ‘Memogate’ unfolded. A
global hedge fund manager of Pakistani origin, Mansoor Ijaz, claimed in an
article in the Financial Times10 that he had passed on a one-page unsigned
memorandum from President Zardari to Mike Mullen, the chairman of
356 ange r m anage m e nt

the US Joint Chiefs of Staff committee, that spoke of a ‘unique window of

opportunity’ for Pakistani civilians to ‘gain the upper hand over the army
and intelligence directorate due to their complicity in the UBL (bin Laden)
matter.’ It called upon the US administration to send a ‘strong, urgent
and direct message to General Kayani and General Pasha’ to ‘end their
brinkmanship aimed at bringing down the civilian apparatus’. In return, the
president would order an enquiry into the harbouring of bin Laden, and
would help in handing over to the US other al-Qaeda operatives—including
Ayman al-Zawahiri, Mullah Omar, and Sirajuddin Haqqani—and allow
US forces to capture them on Pakistani soil. Also, the document promised,
a new security dispensation in Pakistan would cooperate with the Indian
government ‘on bringing all perpetrators of Pakistani origin to account
for the 2008 Mumbai attacks, whether outside government or inside any
part of the government, including its intelligence agencies. This includes
handing over those against whom sufficient evidence exists of guilt to the
Indian security services.’
Zardari and Haqqani immediately denied their involvement in the
matter. But the army was accusing both of treason. Zardari was forced
to replace Haqqani as ambassador. The president of Pakistan himself
suffered a nervous breakdown, for the treatment of which he headed to
Dubai. Mullen was later reported to say that he did not take the memo
seriously. Both the army and the civilian government lost public credibility
with this episode. The matter only served, Sabharwal noted, to put more
army pressure on the civilian leadership. Sensing a political opportunity,
Nawaz Sharif went to the Supreme Court in November 2011, asking for
a thorough probe into the memo matter. Sharif subsequently regretted his
action, speaking to journalists in March 2018, since the matter had only
served to give the army a handle to corner the civilians.11

TALKING TRADE
On 8 April 2012, President Zardari, along with his son Bilawal Zardari
Bhutto, the president of the PPP, visited Dargah Sharif in Ajmer, India,
on a pilgrimage, a ‘private visit’. The duo also met with the Indian PM
Manmohan Singh. Behind the religious diplomacy was an attempt to
revive the peace process that had been interrupted by the Mumbai attacks,
particularly since Zardari’s term was coming to an end in the shadow of the
attacks, despite his party’s and his own personal agenda to improve relations
with India. Manmohan Singh’s government reciprocated the sentiment,
this time by pushing along the dialogue process, already on since 2011, by
rechristening the ‘composite’ dialogue as a ‘resumed’ dialogue process.
Soon after, in June 2012, the thirteenth (and last) round of talks
on the Siachen Glacier took place in Rawalpindi. The talks focused on
the demilitarization of the Siachen Glacier, but the Indian precondition
 dip l om at ic dood l e s 357

remained acceptance of the Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL). For

India, the AGPL lay along the Saltoro Range west of the Siachen Glacier,
where the Indian Army held most of the heights; Pakistan needed to
accept ground positions on maps and ‘sign on the dotted line before
any kind of disengagement takes place.’ But the defence secretary-level
talks proved to be another stalemate, with the countries not coming any
closer than they had thrice in the past: in the fifth round of talks (1989)
when they discussed redeployment of forces; in the sixth round (1992)
when Narasimha Rao had refused political clearance for an agreement
all but signed; and the tenth round (2006), when a draft agreement was
drawn up for a phased, mutual withdrawal and joint monitoring of
a demilitarized zone at Siachen—the Indian cabinet refused permission
on that occasion. Once again, arguments for withdrawals to prevent
mounting peacetime casualties in the harsh mountain conditions were
pitted against those pointing to the absence of trust. ‘Pakistan has violated
every written agreement and verbal commitment since 1947. Why does
our Prime Minister want to close his eyes to hard facts and trust Pakistan
blindly?’ asked an army analyst. ‘What are the guarantees that Pakistan
will not occupy the heights vacated by India?12
A more tangible fruit of the dialogue process was a liberalized visa
regime agreed upon by the two countries in September 2012. Sporting
ties resumed as well, after a gap of five years, with a tour by a Pakistan
cricket team to India from 25 December 2012 to 6 January 2013. At the
same time, tensions rose on the LoC, with increased firing signalling that
the Pakistan Army might not be on board in the process of normalization.
The most significant initiative was the resumed dialogue on trade,
even as it was continuously threatened by the firing at the border and
worries about the next terrorist attack. Trade relations between India and
Pakistan had always been conducted in the shadow of the volatile political
relationship. The trade agreement of 1957, with an MFN-like clause, had
lapsed in 1963. It had been followed by another MFN-based agreement
in 1975, that had itself expired in 1978. India had accorded formal MFN
status to Pakistan in 1996, soon after joining the WTO in 1995, but this
gesture had not so far been reciprocated. Trade discussions had featured
prominently in the commerce secretary dialogues, as part of the ‘composite
dialogue’ process from 2004 to 2008, but the process crashed after the
Mumbai attacks. When Sabharwal took over as high commissioner in
Pakistan in 2009, trade was based on a positive list of 2,000 items and
stood at about $2 billion with another $5 billion flowing in through third
countries like the UAE. Sabharwal sensed a strong appetite for increasing
trade with India in Pakistan’s business community as he went about the
country, speaking to chambers of commerce.
At a meeting of commerce secretaries in 2011, Pakistan’s high
358 ange r m anage m e nt

commissioner to India, Shahid Malik, told Sabharwal that the two

foreign offices needed to control the process of trade liberalization closely.
Sabharwal saw this as a sign of the foreign office bureaucracy trying to
scuttle the process, thanks to their traditional positions of seeing trade as
a distraction to the central political issue of Kashmir. Nevertheless, India
pursued the trade agenda with enthusiasm.
Indian commerce minister Anand Sharma led a business delegation of
100 businessmen to Lahore, Karachi, and Islamabad in February 2012.
Pakistan was planning to transition from the ‘positive list’ of items permitted
for trade to a ‘negative list’ of only those forbidden. This significant move
was to be announced during the Indian visit. However, the Government
of Pakistan lost its political nerve, even as Sharma attended a business
event in Karachi, and ‘deferred’ the move. When Sharma expressed his
displeasure, and even walked out of a dinner, Pakistan promised to make
amends before the end of that month. Pakistan’s cabinet did later approve
the transition to a liberal resume of a negative list of 1,209 items, which
could not be imported from India. A separate trade and travel gate opened
at the Attari border in April 2012, and was inaugurated with fanfare in the
presence of the chief ministers of the two Punjabs and commerce ministers.
The two sides moved towards the last mile of trade liberalization with
another meeting of the commerce secretaries in September 2012. The joint
statement issued at the end of the meet noted that India had reduced its
‘sensitive’ list, applicable to Pakistan, to 614 tariff lines, while Pakistan pared
its own list to 936 products that could not be imported from Pakistan.
Clearly, Pakistani politicians, particularly in Punjab, were seeing this as
a move that would go down well with the electorate in the upcoming
elections in May 2013. Sabharwal pushed the agenda forward till he retired
in June 2013.

NAWAZ RETURNS
In May 2013, Nawaz Sharif, carrying some uneasy memories of his two
aborted terms of the 1990s, comfortably won the general elections held
that year, to become PM again, fourteen long years after Musharraf
had displaced him in a coup. For his first term as Pakistan’s democratic
leader in the twenty-first century, Sharif had cashed in on the growing
unpopularity of Zardari, and trumped Imran Khan, who was beginning
to emerge as the favourite candidate of the army. The most significant
achievement of the Zardari government, tripped up continuously by civil–
military tensions, was that it had managed to complete a full parliamentary
term in the post-Musharraf era, although it was routed in a relatively free
democratic election. Khan at that point had only half-hearted support
from the establishment, with some former army luminaries guiding his
campaign. The strategic decision to decisively back Imran Khan as a ‘third
 dip l om at ic dood l e s 359

force’ would be taken only later, to destabilize the Sharif regime.

As Sabharwal left Islamabad after completing his tenure in June, he was
replaced by T. C. A. Raghavan, another Pakistan veteran. Raghavan’s earlier
tenure in 2003–06, as deputy high commissioner, was mostly spent under
Musharraf’s military reign, at a time when the bilateral relationship was
on an extraordinary high. He was now starting his tenure in a democratic
Pakistan, almost at the same time as Nawaz Sharif, a politician known to
favour a stronger relationship with India.
The prime minister’s past relationship with his own military had been
troubled. Even before Sharif was sworn in, the Pakistan Army was getting
suspicious of foreigners. The New York Times journalist Declan Walsh, who
had been covering Pakistan for a decade, was abruptly expelled from the
country, after being served notice by police who arrived at his Islamabad
residence at night. He was given seventy-two hours to leave and asked to
sign his own expulsion order.
Walsh was not the only one under scrutiny. Soon, another outspoken
foreigner, American South Asia scholar Christine Fair, was expelled from
Pakistan after being declared persona non grata. Fair was accused by the
Pakistani government of double standards, partisanship towards India, and
for pursuing contacts with dissident leaders from Balochistan, a link which
‘raises serious questions if her interest in Pakistan is merely academic’.13
 30

DELHI DURBAR

O n 3 January 2014, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh revealed that

India and Pakistan had been ‘on the verge of a historic deal on
Jammu and Kashmir’1, and at one time in his tenure, it appeared that an
‘important breakthrough was in sight’. He attributed the failure to get there
to Musharraf’s exit from power. Singh was reflecting on his legacy at a press
conference, having decided not to contest elections any longer. He added
wistfully that he hoped to go to Pakistan, the land of his birth, even before
elections in May 2014. Singh’s former minister, Natwar Singh recalled in his
memoirs that each time Manmohan Singh wanted to visit Pakistan, ‘an anti-
Indian incident took place’2. The frequent acts of terrorism, the resulting
strong national sentiment against the neighbour, and Musharraf’s political
demise, all conspired against Singh from triumphantly visiting the land of
his birth and returning with a peace deal to solve a sixty-year-old problem.
In Pakistan, some commentators had been offering gratuitous advice
on an itinerary for Singh: it should involve a visit to the birthplace of
Guru Nanak, Nankana Sahib near Lahore, Panja Sahib near Rawalpindi,
the shrine believed to have an imprint of Guru Nanak’s hand, where
‘apart from India–Pakistan peace, Dr Singh needs to pray hard to minimise
the embarrassment that awaits his party in the April-May 2014 general
elections in India’. Dr Singh, a Dawn commentator suggested, must
also ‘visit Gurudwara Dera Baba Nanak at Kartarpur in Sialkot. This
gurudwara is just three kilometres from the Indian border at Jammu.
Dr Singh could persuade Pakistan to create a visa-free zone for Sikh
pilgrims to visit Kartarpur Sahib when they like’. And he could also
visit the village of his birth, Gah in district Chakwal, and meet his old
schoolmates.
As Manmohan Singh prepared to leave office, Nawaz Sharif was
pressing ahead firmly with the trade agenda. Pakistan had even decided
to accord MFN status to India, in a cabinet meeting held in March 2014.
The MFN clause now had a more politically palatable name—NDMA
(non-discriminatory market access). But India was already in election mode.
A new Pakistani high commissioner took over in New Delhi in March
and the issue landed on his table. Abdul Basit recounted the events in his
2021 memoir, Hostility: A Diplomat’s Diary on Pakistan-India Relations:
Our Commerce Minister, Khurram Dastagir Khan, had visited New
Delhi in January and it was decided that Pakistan would extend the
 de l hi durbar 361

NDMA to India soon. For this purpose, his Indian counterpart, Anand
Sharma, was very keen to visit Pakistan at the earliest, that is, prior to
general elections that were being held in several phases in April/May
2014. While the dates for his visit to Pakistan were being worked out,
I was approached by a person…who claimed to be a close friend of
both Mohan Bhagwat, Chief of RSS, and the BJP’s prime ministerial
candidate Narendra Modi. I invited him for lunch on 1 April… He
contended that granting NDMA to the outgoing Congress government
would be wasteful. Islamabad should defer the matter. Since the BJP
would most likely form the next government, it would make eminent
sense to oblige the incoming set-up. This would help make a good
beginning…I finally wrote to Islamabad that postponing the NDMA
would be wise as the Congress party was in deep water and in no
position to win for a third consecutive time.3
The decision on the NDMA was thus deferred.4
In May 2014, the Indian correspondent for The Hindu in Pakistan,
Meena Menon, was expelled, mostly for writing about Balochistan. She,
along with Snehesh Alex Philip of the Press Trust of India, the only two
Indian journalists in Pakistan then, were told by the Pakistan’s Information
Ministry that their visas would not be renewed and that they would need
to leave Pakistan within a week. The two Indian journalists had been in
Pakistan for less than a year, and were given no reason for the decision.
Their predecessors had spent more than six years each in Islamabad but
had left Pakistan after being denied visa extensions in July 2013. The
journalists owed their presence in Pakistan to a bilateral agreement of the
late 1970s that allowed each country to post two journalists in the other.
This had been an important confidence-building measure that gave both
peoples a lens to see one another. But too much reality was puncturing
specially synthesized official narratives. The people would now need to
rely on social media and WhatsApp forwards to have a real measure of
one another.
In India, Lambah spoke publicly for the first time (in his ‘personal
capacity’) in Srinagar of a ‘possible outline of a solution’ of the Kashmir
issue, in May 2014. His talk was a guarded public airing of the four-point
Kashmir peace plan.5 That this public lecture came towards the end of
Manmohan Singh’s ten-year prime-ministerial tenure indicated that for
both the PM and Satinder Lambah, this was a legacy issue: a carefully
nurtured secret initiative that had to be tested for the possible interest
it would hold for the next Indian government. Lambah had displayed
extraordinary patience and tenacity in taking the idea forward with multiple
interlocutors in Pakistan. After hammering out a near agreement with his
Pakistani counterpart Tariq Aziz in 2007, Lambah had seen it freeze with
362 ange r m anage m e nt

the political implosion in Pakistan. He had however continued sporadic

low-key conversations on this quiet channel with President Zardari’s
representative Riaz Mohammad Khan (two meetings: in 2009 and 2012)
and Nawaz Sharif’s nominee Shahryar Khan (six meetings in 2013 and
2014). In Pakistan however, there was little clarity on whether the army
supported or endorsed the plan after Musharraf’s departure.6
X
The arrival on the scene of Prime Minister Narendra Modi of the Bharatiya
Janata Party, after winning a thumping majority in the 2014 election in
India, aroused, in equal parts worry, scepticism, and fear in Islamabad,
given his record of tough talk on Pakistan. Yet, defying expectations, like
Vajpayee had done on several occasions in his tenures, Modi reached out to
the Pakistan leadership early in his term. In fact, even before he was sworn
in. The new National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government, led by the
BJP, reached out to Nawaz Sharif and invited him for Modi’s swearing-in
ceremony, along with other SAARC leaders.
When High Commissioner Raghavan got a call from Foreign Secretary
Sujata Singh to check if PM Nawaz Sharif would attend the oath-taking
ceremony, he asked her if she was sure Pakistan’s PM was on the guest
list.7 Sharif had always shown a willingness to accept invitations from
India. But even before the official acceptance arrived, Sharif had conveyed
his willingness to attend, through a more informal channel. Speculation
arose on that channel: was it steel tycoon Sajjan Jindal or a leader of the
Bohra community or a non-resident Indian that was the messenger? But
one thing was clear, the men in uniform had not been asked—an offended
Pakistan Army that felt entitled to determine India policy claimed it had
not been consulted before Sharif’s visit to India.
To some in Pakistan, the presence of Nawaz Sharif in Delhi for the
inauguration of a new Indian regime evoked unwelcome imagery of an
emperor ascending the throne in Delhi and those in peripheral kingdoms
attending the event, laden with gifts. For many in Pakistan’s establishment,
Sharif had walked into a trap set up by a new Indian government. Asad
Durrani told me in Islamabad later that it had been a ‘foolish’ error. Multiple
media stories plugging this viewpoint appeared in Pakistan’s media. Clearly,
accepting the invitation had been an instinctive judgement of the civilian
leadership that did not have the blessings of the military establishment.
Satinder Lambah was one of the experts invited to brief the prime
minister designate on the eve of his meeting with Nawaz Sharif. Lambah
strongly endorsed the decision to invite Pakistan’s leader and pointed out
that Sharif was coming to India more than two decades after his last visit,
for Rajiv Gandhi’s funeral.8
Despite the scepticism in Pakistan and the concerns of his high
 de l hi durbar 363

commissioner, Abdul Basit, Nawaz Sharif received a cordial reception

from India’s new government, followed by a friendly and future-focused
conversation with Modi. The new Indian PM sent Sharif a particularly
warm letter after the visit, saying that he was
delighted and honoured by your participation in the ceremony for
the swearing in of the new government. Your presence and that of
other leaders from our region not only added a special sheen to the
event, but (was) also a celebration of the strength of democracy in our
region.... I was also encouraged by our discussions on our bilateral
relations and the convergence in our views, especially on the fact
that a relationship between India and Pakistan defined by peace,
friendship and cooperation would unleash enormous opportunities
for our youth, secure a more prosperous future for our people and
accelerate progress across our region. I look forward therefore to
working closely with you and your Government in an atmosphere free
from confrontation and violence in order to chart a new course in our
bilateral relations.... I thank you once again for the sari that you sent
for my mother, a gesture that she has deeply appreciated.9
Lambah later met PM Modi again to brief him on his backchannel talks.
After his last conversation on the subject with the PMO in 2014, Lambah
realized that both sides were looking at newer solutions, but concluded
optimistically that ‘the principles and the text of the draft agreement are
still there to be taken up, whenever the two sides feel the need to resume
the process. Or, they can start afresh with new guidelines and parameters,
but with the same objective—to seek permanent peace between two
neighbours.’10
PM Modi would go on to deepen his relationship with PM Nawaz
Sharif, with five more meetings in the next eighteen months: on the margins
of multilateral events, in Ufa, Kathmandu, New York, Paris, and even in
Lahore.
While Pakistan’s army chief, Raheel Sharif, on the job since 2013,
kept a wary eye on the personal communication between Nawaz Sharif
and Modi, he had a domestic implosion to worry about. Angered by
the US presence in Afghanistan, and Pakistan’s support for it, the TTP
launched a fresh offensive within Pakistan. An attack on 8 June on the
Jinnah International Airport in Karachi, for which the TTP and the Islamic
Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) claimed responsibility, led to much hand-
wringing in the military establishment. The answer came in the shape
of Zarb-e-Azb (a sword strike) from 15 June 2014—decisive strikes on
militant groups by the Pakistan Army in North Waziristan, along the
Pakistan–Afghanistan border.
Pakistan’s top diplomat in Delhi decided to add his voice to the army’s
364 ange r m anage m e nt

in pushing against his prime minister’s attempts at rapprochement. High

Commissioner Abdul Basit had been unhappy about the tone of his prime
minister’s visit to India in May and decided to do his bit to sabotage what
he thought was a misguided peace initiative. He pointedly and publicly
invited leaders of the Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat to the Pakistan high
commission in August 2014, just when India was preparing to send Foreign
Secretary Sujata Singh to Islamabad to follow up on the Modi–Nawaz
meeting. India called off the talks between the foreign secretaries over the
provocation.
Basit seemed to revel in his role of playing the spoiler. He defiantly
outlined his mea culpa in his memoirs published in India, and spoke of
it volubly to the Indian media:
As the top Pakistan diplomat in New Delhi at the time when both
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Narendra Modi had
made a very encouraging start with their first meeting in New Delhi
on 27 May 2014, I do share some, if not total, responsibility for the
later developments on the diplomatic front…Some even suggested that
I was working at the behest of the Pakistan establishment and worked
in close coordination with them rather than pursuing the peaceful
aspirations of the civilian leadership...I somewhat crossed my mandate
by displaying excessive zeal on Kashmir…For instance, I should have
avoided meeting the Kashmiri leadership which led to the cancellation
of India’s foreign secretary’s scheduled visit to Pakistan in August
2014.11
Basit was scathing in his criticism of Nawaz Sharif: ‘His approach was to
make unilateral concessions in the hope that Mr Modi would reciprocate’
and he ‘weakened our principled position on Jammu and Kashmir in
particular’. Sharif, he judged, ‘had an emotional attachment to India and
Indians, which at times went beyond his stature as the prime minister.’
He was particularly disapproving of Sharif’s visit to the home of an
Indian friend—‘his visit to Sajjan Jindal’s residence while he was in New
Delhi was not really required…the way he received so many journalists...
was again not required…he did not seek a meeting with the Hurriyat
leadership…he was all out to oblige everyone, and that, to me, was not the
right thing to do’.12
X
On 16 December 2014, six armed men affiliated with the TTP opened
fire on the Army Public School in Peshawar killing 149 people including
132 schoolchildren. The bloody massacre executed by foreign terrorists
including from Russian Chechnya, had echoes of a similar one in Beslan,
Russia, in 2004. It pointed to a global dimension of terrorism visiting
 de l hi durbar 365

Pakistan. The horrific images of children lying dead saw an outpouring of

grief and solidarity in India. Prime Minister Modi condemned the attack,
calling it ‘a senseless act of unspeakable brutality that has claimed lives
of the most innocent of human beings, young children in their school’.13
A hashtag #IndiaWithPakistan trended on Twitter; the Lok Sabha, as
also schools across India, observed a two-minute silence for the victims.
Most felt that Pakistan’s crackdown on terrorism after this outrage would
be uncompromising. A shocked Pakistan had doubled down on its anti-
terror campaign in the north-west and rolled out a ‘National Action Plan’
to counter terrorism. But the good terrorists, those nurtured by the ISI
for action in Afghanistan and Kashmir, remained protected. The attack
worried India’s diplomatic establishment. India took a call to declare
Islamabad a non-school station, withdrawing all children of staff from
school in the city.

A WEDDING IN LAHORE
Modi would go on to encounter Nawaz Sharif on five separate occasions,
as previously noted, including in July 2015, for the Ufa SCO in Russia,
when Sharif was roundly criticized in Pakistan for allowing an agreement
that did not mention Pakistan’s Kashmir cause. Ufa was seen by some
as a drafting exercise on the opposite end of the spectrum as the 2009
joint statement in Sharm El Sheikh between Manmohan Singh and
Gilani, mirroring the criticism that the government of the day faced—of
acquiescing in an asymmetric document that favoured the adversary.
A year after New Delhi cancelled the foreign secretary-level talks with
Pakistan for inviting separatists before the talks, Abdul Basit again decided
to test India’s patience by inviting the Hurriyat leaders to the Pakistan high
commission, this time for a meeting with Sartaj Aziz on 23 August 2015,
the day the NSA-level talks between the two countries were slated. Aziz,
who had been Nawaz Sharif’s NSA since May 2013, was to be received
by NSA Ajit Doval for a follow-up conversation on security after the
Ufa dialogue. Pakistan complained of India setting up ‘preconditions for
talks’ while India said it would be ‘inappropriate’ for the visitor to also
meet with the Hurriyat separatist movement while in the Indian capital.
The talks were cancelled amidst familiar rhetoric from Pakistan that ‘no
dialogue could take place between the two countries until New Delhi
agreed to discuss the Kashmir issue with Islamabad’.
In September 2015, speaking at the UN General Assembly, Pakistan’s
prime minister, Nawaz Sharif put forward his own four-point proposal
on Kashmir, a more flexible variation of Musharraf’s. It envisaged: one,
complete ceasefire by India and Pakistan along the LoC; two, reaffirmation
by both sides that they will not resort to the threat or use of force under any
circumstances; three, demilitarization of Kashmir; and four, an unconditional
366 ange r m anage m e nt

withdrawal by both sides from the Siachen Glacier, the world’s highest
battleground. To Indian analysts, the proposal was a non-starter, because
it did not address the issue of terrorism, seemed to give terrorists a free
pass to enter a demilitarized Kashmir, and asked India to vacate Siachen
so that it could cancel the strategic advantage India had from the heights
giving Pakistan a chance to occupy them some time in the future. Like
Zia’s no-war pact and Musharraf’s four-point formula, Sharif’s proposal
did not address India’s central concern of the day—putting an end to the
proxy war and terrorism emanating from Pakistan.
The ‘comprehensive’ dialogue, a rebranding of the composite dialogue
of the 1990s, was meant to continue after External Affairs Minister Sushma
Swaraj visited Pakistan in early December 2015, for a ‘Heart of Asia’
conference on Afghanistan. Despite the hiccups, the conditions seemed
right for another breakthrough in the relationship, with the ‘composite’
dialogue that had been altered to ‘resumed’ dialogue, now mutating into
a ‘comprehensive’ dialogue.
An even more ambitious diplomatic gambit was to play out that month.
On Christmas day in 2015, High Commissioner Raghavan, in his last week
of active duty before he retired at the end of the month, was surprised by
a call at 8 a.m. from Foreign Secretary S. Jaishankar, saying he better get
ready to receive the Indian prime minister in Islamabad. When Raghavan
asked if Nawaz Sharif would really be in Islamabad to receive his guest
that day, the foreign secretary rang back to clarify that the two leaders
had agreed to meet in Lahore in a few hours. By 10 a.m., Raghavan was
on the road to Lahore. Since he would not be in time to receive his PM
at the airport, he directly reached the Sharif residence in Raiwind, on
Lahore’s outskirts.
Modi later revealed14 that he had called up from Kabul only to greet
Sharif on his birthday that day, but the prime minister of Pakistan had
insisted that he should drop in to Lahore en route home to attend his
granddaughter’s wedding that afternoon. Modi then called his cabinet
colleague, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, who had visited
Pakistan earlier that month, for her advice, adding that he was inclined
towards accepting the invitation. She said she would have no objection to
such a visit and asked the PM to take that call. Modi took a spontaneous
decision to drop in on Sharif, on his way to Delhi, where he was committed
to visiting the ailing Atal Bihari Vajpayee on the former PM’s ninety-first
birthday.
Again, demonstrating the instincts several Indian prime ministers before
him had displayed when they wanted to break the mould and take the
relationship forward, PM Modi went to Lahore to visit his Pakistani
counterpart. The visit had India’s security agencies on edge and Pakistan’s
military establishment in shock. India’s PM agreed to jump into a Pakistani
 de l hi durbar 367

army helicopter from the airport to meet his counterpart.

Modi’s instinctive judgement call was akin to Vajpayee’s, when he took
a bus to Lahore in 1999. Both times it was a ringing statement to the
people of Pakistan and the world that Indian leaders were willing to take
risks for peace. In Pakistan, Raheel Sharif’s army sulked at this intrusion,
just as Musharraf’s had done in 1999. The India policy monopoly that
the army assumed it held, had been defied by Sharif. But, as it turned out,
both recent choices by Sharif—of visiting India and of inviting India’s new
leader—had not gone down well with Pakistan’s army.
‘Gatecrashing,’ said former ISI chief Durrani to me in Islamabad, when
I talked up that visit three years later, as an example of a huge risk for
peace. I was puzzled by this reaction, but it was fairly representative of
the Pak army’s take on Sharif’s India policy. It was as if Sharif had thrown
a party and invited a neighbour only the uniformed men were entitled to
deal with, both in the case of the invitation to Vajpayee in 1999 and to
Modi in 2015. A Pakistani military analyst, whom I discussed this reaction
with later, labelled Durrani a super hawk masquerading as a dove on the
Track II circuit.
As far as Pakistan policy was concerned, the Modi government’s
approach in the first twenty months, from May 2014 to December 2015,
paralleled Vajpayee’s approach to Pakistan during his tenure, from March
1998 till April 1999. Both times, India’s prime minister led intense, hopeful
diplomatic engagement, culminating in a visit to Nawaz Sharif in Lahore.
And each time, hope was belied.
Within a few days of the Indian PM’s visit on 25 December 2015, High
Commissioner Raghavan hung up his boots and left Islamabad on a note
of high hope for the relationship. But a day after the envoy’s departure,
the trajectory of bilateral relations changed again: a terrorist attack shook
Pathankot in Indian Punjab on the second day of the New Year. Twenty
Indian soldiers lay dead.

STRIKING SURGICALLY
Raghavan’s successor in Islamabad, Gautam Bambawale, had been
preparing for his new job with upbeat briefings in Delhi in December
2015, picking up a picture of a relationship poised for a breakthrough.
But in 2016, he had to contend with the aftermath of the Pathankot
terrorist attack, even before he reached Islamabad. While Bambawale’s brief
was initially to retrieve the relationship from its post-Pathankot low, a
tough summer followed in Kashmir in 2016 in his tenure. Kashmir had
been overrun by new-age militants like Burhan Wani that summer. Even
Bollywood movies had started to portray a glamorized Kashmir cause
taken up by new-age militants, with movies like Haider (2014), based on
Curfewed Night, the memoir of Kashmiri journalist, Basharat Peer. External
368 ange r m anage m e nt

Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj later said in India’s parliament that even
more than Pathankot, it was the Burhan Wani summer in Kashmir and
Nawaz Sharif’s praise for the terrorist that soured bilateral ties.15
On 18 September 2016, matters reached a head. Four armed men
sneaked into an Indian Army brigade headquarters camp near the border
town of Uri (J&K) and shot dead nineteen Indian soldiers; dozens of
others were injured. The attackers, later identified as belonging to the
Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed, had carried out one of the deadliest
attacks on security forces in Kashmir in two decades, at a time when
the leaders of the two countries were looking for diplomatic solutions.
Public opinion in India was inflamed by this brutal attack by a designated
terrorist organization, seen as the ISI’s then weapon of choice for Kashmir,
after the LeT faced the heat after the Mumbai attacks. The attack seemed
designed to promote greater instability in Kashmir, with the valley already
convulsed that summer by extensive violent unrest. Forces on both sides
of the border went on high alert as India weighed its options.
An immediate diplomatic fallout was the cancellation of a SAARC
summit planned for November in Islamabad, where PM Nawaz Sharif
was hoping to receive PM Modi. India told SAARC chair Nepal that
‘increasing cross-border terrorist attacks in the region and growing
interference in the internal affairs of Member States by one country have
created an environment that is not conducive to the successful holding of
the 19th SAARC Summit.’16 Pakistan’s foreign office called the withdrawal
‘unfortunate’, but posted a defiant rejoinder that it was ‘India that has
been perpetrating and financing terrorism in Pakistan’.
India’s response came on 28 September, eleven days after the Uri attack,
in the shape of ‘surgical strikes’ on launch pads used by militants in POK.
India’s DGMO Lieutenant General Ranbir Singh announced that India had
conducted a ‘pre-emptive strike’ against ‘terrorist teams’ preparing to ‘carry
out infiltration and conduct terrorist strikes inside Jammu and Kashmir
and in various metros in other states’.17
Indian Army soldiers had returned after killing terrorists and without
encountering Pakistani armed forces. Even as fears of escalation grew,
Pakistan surprisingly denied any incursion. Reports appeared in the Indian
media of dozens of militants killed in launch pads. More than the actual
operation, the key message of the Uri surgical strikes was that India had
publicly declared it had crossed the LoC in hot pursuit of terrorists. This
was a significant assertion and marked a shift in policy. It was clear that
retaliation against major terrorist attacks would now become the norm,
as against the strategic restraint displayed after earlier ones. In strategic
terms, the signal to Pakistan and to the world was that India was willing
to escalate conflict in the sub-conventional space to deal with cross-border
terrorism.
 de l hi durbar 369

After the Uri events, bilateral relations took a plunge, snapping even
cultural connections. Sensing strong public hostility, the Indian movie
industry decided to ‘ban all Pakistani actors, actresses and technicians
working in India’. The TV entertainment channel Zindagi stopped airing
popular Pakistani soaps. Predictably, Pakistan responded in October with
a blanket ban on ‘all Indian television and radio programming’. The Board
of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) ruled out reviving bilateral cricket
ties with Pakistan and asked the International Cricket Council (ICC) to
separate India and Pakistan cricket teams in international matches. India’s
participation in an international badminton series in Islamabad in October
was called off.
With the surgical strikes, the Indian high commission went into
‘lockdown’ in Islamabad, fearing escalation and hostility. Both Indian and
Pakistani media and strategic circles debated India’s new posture. India
had stayed its hand in 2001 against terrorism in the aftermath of the
Parliament attack, by trying coercive diplomacy. Again in 2008, India did
not take punitive military action, but tried restraint and global diplomacy.
It was only after 2016 that India began to fine-tune ‘surgical’ instruments
to deal with the terrorism challenge. Pakistan tried to promote the myth
that any conventional action by India could lead to a threat to peace and
stability (read nuclear escalation). However, in the past few years, India
has demonstrated that the space existed for a sub-conventional response
to terrorism.
Meanwhile, the domestic politics of Pakistan had taken a new turn.
Pakistan’s army was questioning Nawaz Sharif’s India policy and now
seemed to be backing Imran Khan more firmly. It was looking for pathways
to dislodge Sharif and replace him with Khan.

THE DAWN LEAKS

Soon after the Uri attacks, the US ambassador in Pakistan met with PM
Nawaz Sharif and handed over a file to him. It had, among other nuggets,
information of the ISI’s complicity in planning the Uri attacks. Sharif was
dismayed. This additional evidence fuelled his resolve to confront his army,
which was running down his government’s reputation. He summoned two
meetings: a political ‘all parties’ conference’ to dwell on the issue, and a
meeting at the PMO, where civilian leaders were invited, together with the
military brass. Foreign Secretary Aizaz Ahmad Chaudhry gave a ‘separate,
exclusive presentation’ in the second meeting, chaired by the PM himself,
to a small group of civilian and military officials. The military team was led
by the ISI Director General Rizwan Akhtar.
The presentation at the meeting spoke of a ‘recent diplomatic outreach
by Pakistan’, which revealed that ‘Pakistan faces diplomatic isolation and
that the government’s talking points have been met with indifference in
370 ange r m anage m e nt

major world capitals’. On the US, Chaudhry said that ‘relations have
deteriorated’, and on India, ‘completion of the Pathankot investigation
and some visible action against Jaish-e-Mohammed were the principal
demands’. Then, ‘to a hushed but surprised room’, Chaudhry suggested
that China had indicated a ‘preference for a change in course by Pakistan’
and questioned the logic of repeatedly ‘putting on technical hold a UN
ban on Jaish-e-Mohammed leader Masood Azhar.’ When General Akhtar
asked what steps could be taken to prevent the drift towards isolation,
Chaudhry suggested that action could be taken on principal international
demands for ‘action against Masood Azhar and the Jaish-e-Mohammed;
Hafiz Saeed and the Lashkar-e-Taiba; and the Haqqani network’18.
More unusual than the issues discussed at the meeting was the fact
that a blow-by-blow account, based on ‘sources’, found its way to the front
page of Dawn, on 6 October, in a story with the byline of the brilliant
young journalist Cyril Almeida. The sensational ‘Exclusive’ was headlined:
‘Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military’.19
The impact of the story on Pakistan’s polity, and on civil–military, was
explosive. Soon, the focus shifted from the substance of the meeting, to
accusations of treason against those who had leaked this information; army-
leaning journalists called it ‘Dawngate’. Nawaz Sharif came under intense
pressure from the army; his daughter, Maryam, who held no government
post, was rumoured to be behind the leak. When the controversy refused
to die down, Sharif was forced to fire two of his closest aides, Minister
of Information Pervaiz Rashid and Special Assistant Tariq Fatemi.
An angry and embarrassed army saw this as the tipping point; a
civilian was rocking the boat and publicly questioning a carefully considered
‘security policy’ of deploying militants in the neighbourhood. The time had
come to remove Nawaz Sharif. The army started playing up allegations
of treason against a prime minister who had dared to question a core
national interest.
The internal dynamics of the army were also in play—Army chief
Raheel Sharif’s three-year term was ending in November and he was in
no mood to relinquish charge. His own predecessor Kayani had spent six
years in power and that seemed par for the course for army chiefs, unless
they wanted to run the country more directly. Raheel Sharif’s successor,
Qamar Javed Bajwa, claimed seven years later that ‘there was nothing in
the Dawn leaks,’ and that Raheel had tried to exploit the incident to seek
another three-year extension for himself. Bajwa said that the ‘Dawn leaks’
posed no threat to national security. The former PM had told Bajwa that
Raheel kept requesting a three-year extension, whenever he met him along
with former chief of ISI, Rizwan Akhtar. But the two generals were in
competition themselves: ‘In front of General Raheel, General Rizwan always
insisted on a three-year extension for the army chief. But in private, he
 de l hi durbar 371

only asked for a one-year extension because he saw himself as the next
army chief after General Raheel,’ Bajwa quoted Nawaz Sharif as saying.20
Nawaz Sharif soon announced the appointment of Qamar Bajwa as the
chief of army staff. Sharif, who had been twice ousted already as prime
minister by his army chiefs, was awarded a high grade by media pundits
for making the right choice this time round. While Bajwa was the fourth
by seniority, and superseded two generals to the top job (the most senior
general, Zubair Hayat, picked up the notionally more senior appointment
as the chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee), he was rumoured to
hold strong pro-democracy views and favour a low-key style. Bajwa took
over his new assignment on 29 November 2016.
While the army under Bajwa did not pursue treason charges against
Nawaz Sharif for the Dawn leaks, it continued to pursue corruption charges
based on the ‘Panama papers’, published in global media in early 2016,
that uncovered links between the Sharif family and offshore companies.
The papers made for a juicy global financial scandal, detailing more than
200,000 offshore entities and their connections to global plutocrats. The
Panama allegations were pursued by the then favourite politician of the
army, Imran Khan, who had filed a petition with the Supreme Court,
seeking Sharif’s disqualification as prime minister and as a member of
the National Assembly of Pakistan. Khan was soon encouraged to ‘lock-
down’ Islamabad with an extended protest sit-in, until Sharif ‘resigned or
presented himself for accountability’.
Even as all this was rumbling on, the primary challenge for the new
army chief came from the terrorists striking within Pakistan. In February
2017, General Bajwa unveiled Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad (Elimination of
Strife), a military operation to support police in countering militant groups
active within Pakistan. The operation aimed to double down on the gains
of Operation Zarb-e-Azb which had been launched in 2014, and to also
present a picture of decisive action to US forces embroiled in Afghanistan.
Nawaz Sharif appeared cornered by the army. In an order on 20 April,
the Supreme Court castigated Sharif, with two of the five judges asking
for his disqualification. The court, however, formed a joint investigation
team (JIT) to probe the matter further. The judiciary was under enormous
pressure to indict Sharif.
It later turned out that the judges hearing the case were being
blackmailed or under severe pressure from the deep state.21 A leaked audio
recording of a conversation of former Pakistani chief justice Saqib Nisar
emerged in 2021, sensationally disclosed by Maryam Nawaz at a press
meet. It revealed he had passed on clear instructions to sentence Sharif.
‘[Military] institutions have asked to do so. Whether it is fair or not, it
has to be done,’ Nisar was heard saying. For good measure, Nisar added
‘Even though there are no cases against Maryam Nawaz, she would still
372 ange r m anage m e nt

have to be punished.’ The judge involved in the sentencing, Arshad Malik,

was removed from office.22
Army chief Bajwa claimed later that he had persuaded Nawaz Sharif
to resign earlier in 2017 in the wake of the Supreme Court’s judgements
on ‘Panamagate’, but his daughter Maryam prevailed on him to drop the
idea and fight it out.23
On 28 July 2017, a five-member bench of the Supreme Court of
Pakistan disqualified Nawaz Sharif from holding public office for life in
the Panama papers case. In the end, Sharif’s party claimed, he was ousted
for not revealing a couple of payments and on the tenuous grounds of
not being sadiq and ameen, truthful and righteous. Sharif’s removal from
office by the Supreme Court, in what several observers felt was a ‘judicial
coup’, where the judiciary had acted again as a handmaiden of the army
in easing out a civilian leader.
X
With the exit of Nawaz Sharif as PM, even the feeble efforts to find peace
with India tapered off. As India and Pakistan completed seventy years of
their independence, their relationship had reached another low. India was
consolidating its strong economic progress, with the Pakistan relationship
reduced to one of managing borders and terrorism. Within Pakistan, a
new army chief was finding his feet, with Nawaz Sharif dispatched for
the third time without completing his term. In the US, Donald Trump had
come to power and Pakistan was under intense US pressure to end its
support to the Taliban, to facilitate Trump’s electoral promise of a rapid
US exit from Afghanistan. China’s role in the region was rising through the
China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a promise of up to $64 billion
of investment in the Pakistan leg of the global Belt and Road Initiative
(BRI), the Chinese gambit for global influence. While a weakened civilian
leadership under a Sharif loyalist, Shahid Khaqan Abbasi, tried gamely to
run the Pakistan government, the army’s writ ran large. Pakistan was now
focused on a possible second democratic transition after 2013: an election
in the coming months for which the army was grooming for the top job
a new leader, Imran Khan, in a new experiment to run a ‘hybrid’ regime.
The India relationship and much of Pakistan’s governance was on hold in
anticipation of elections in 2018.
 SECTION 8

2017–2023: TOUGH TALKING

 31

LI ES, DECEI T, AND D I P L OM ACY

I n the summer of 2017, as India and Pakistan prepared to turn seventy,

I had little inkling that my own path would connect directly with
the clashing destiny of the neighbours. In fact, I read about it in the
news. A news story in the Hindustan Times1 spoke casually of whispers
about various diplomatic postings. A line in the piece said I was being
considered for the Pakistan assignment. I was then India’s envoy in Poland,
basking in a late European summer that July. I dismissed the story as
random speculation by a beat journalist picking up South Block corridor
gossip. Until another media story appeared, slotting me in for the same
assignment, quoting official sources with greater confidence. This was
unusual. I had months to go to end my tenure in Poland. Pakistan was not
listed as a possible posting option for envoys in administrative circulars. I
had not asked or lobbied to be sent there. Most importantly, nobody had
called or asked me. Surely, it couldn’t be true. Colleagues in Delhi were
not letting on any inside information. I called a couple of friends in the
ministry who had also been mentioned in the media reports. They claimed
equal mystification.
As I walked in the precincts of the beautiful Krakow Castle one July
afternoon, my cellphone buzzed. It was a colleague, Shilpak Ambule, from
the office of the foreign secretary.
‘Sir, you’re being considered for the western neighbour. We need your
consent.’
‘So the news wasn’t wrong. It’s of course a great honour. But I hope
they know...I’m more of a Europe and Russia hand.’
They knew that. But I’d been picked nevertheless. It was final. Asking
me was a formality.
The vacancy in Pakistan had arisen since our ambassador in Beijing,
Vijay Gokhale, was being moved to Delhi in order to take over as foreign
secretary a few months down the line; the HC in Pakistan, Gautam
Bambawale, a China expert, was being sent off to replace him. I later
discovered that my appointment was born of a conversation between
Foreign Secretary Jaishankar and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj,
and then later between the EAM and PM.

MISSION PAKISTAN
On a cool December morning in 2017, I crossed the white line separating
Attari from Wagah, the Indian Punjab from the Pakistani one. That border
376 ange r m anage m e nt

was, of course, a segment of what Cyril Radcliffe had traced on a map with
a blue pencil in 1947, sundering the destinies of two new-born nations
whose people had for centuries inhabited a common space. Seven decades
after the two countries were born, crossing the Zero Point still felt surreal,
familiar yet different, like being sucked into another dimension while still
at home.
As I stepped over the thick white chalk—after handshakes with BSF
officers, our ‘first line of defence’—to salutes by the Pakistan Rangers, I
felt a mix of excited anticipation and concern of the days to come. The
central questions that buzzed in my head, in this low phase in the bilateral
relationship, was the one that had been asked by many of my predecessors.
Did we have the capacity or the bandwidth to create a future substantially
different from the past? Could I play a role in that process?
The next morning, I was sitting in Islamabad’s diplomatic enclave, on
a chair that had been occupied by stalwarts I’d admired growing up in
the Foreign Service, ranging from K. S. Bajpai to J. N. Dixit to Satinder
Lambah to Satyabrata Pal. In South Block’s scheme of things, I was a
bit of an interloper in Pakistan. I hadn’t ever been posted there, I hadn’t
manned the Pakistan desk at any level, I hadn’t really ‘dealt’ with Pakistan
directly at any stage in my career. For that matter, I had no ‘neighbourhood
experience’. I was part of the MEA’s ‘Russian mafia’, speaking the language
and having dealt with the USSR and Russia for chunks of my career. But I
was familiar with the Indo–Pak relationship, particularly from my days in
the Vajpayee PMO earlier in the century; I had more than a few Pakistan
stories to tell, of the hits and misses of visits and summits.
I arrived in a Pakistan where army chief Bajwa was quietly consolidating
power, while hesitatingly contemplating some change. He had been
appointed to his new role for a three-year term in November 2016 by
Nawaz Sharif, who, as noted, had plucked him out of a seniority list as
the least bad option. Sharif had a history of misjudging army chiefs. He
had been twice bitten: twice deposed by army chiefs he appointed. This
time would be no different.
Bajwa, a tall, square-jawed Punjabi Jat had dreamt of being a cricketer,
but ended up in the next best Pakistani profession, the army. He had
developed a soft spot for Pakistan’s cricketing hero, Imran Khan. He had
now bought into the Pakistan army’s ongoing ‘project Imran’, to create a
third political force as an alternative to the PPP and PML-N. The previous
two elections of 2008 and 2013 had largely been free, since his army
backers had not been too proactive in propelling Imran Khan to the
victory podium. This needed to be corrected. Sharif had been successfully
removed and Khan needed to be crowned victor in the 2018 elections.
When I walked into Pakistan, the overall bilateral climate was of a
troubled, prickly relationship. My brief was to work with the foreign office
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 377

and official civilian interlocutors to gradually build trust to take us further

up the path of resolving the bigger issues when the time was right. Our
focus was on baby steps: humanitarian efforts, and quiet conversations that
could build trust, rather than on leaps of faith, as had often been attempted
in the past, mostly with sorry outcomes. In my briefing conversations in
Delhi, the issue of engaging the army in Pakistan did come up. My mandate
was to deploy ‘local creativity’ to engage with everyone who mattered and
to convey India’s point of view.

A WHITE HOUSE TROLL

The United States has foolishly given Pakistan more than 33 billion
dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing
but lies & deceit, thinking of our leaders as fools. They give safe haven
to the terrorists we hunt in Afghanistan, with little help. No more!2
This tweet was not from your regular Pakistan-baiting troll. US president
Donald Trump’s early morning rant was less than 140 characters long but
powerful enough to kick up a storm in Islamabad. The peculiar diplomatic
message on New Year’s Day 2018 came on the back of continuing tension
between Washington and Islamabad that had flared up in August 2017
when the US commander-in-chief announced his administration’s national
security strategy for Afghanistan. Trump had warned Pakistan against
support for fighters finding safe havens along the Afghan border: ‘We can
no longer be silent about Pakistan’s safe havens for terrorist organizations,
the Taliban and other groups that pose a threat to the region and beyond…
we have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same
time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting. But that will
have to change, and that will change immediately.’ 3
After smarting for a few hours that New Year’s Day, Pakistan rustled
up a retaliatory tweet, from the handle of Defence Minister Khurram
Dastgir Khan:
Pak as anti-terror ally has given free to US: land & air communication,
military bases & intel cooperation that decimated Al-Qaeda over last
16 years, but they have given us nothing but invective & mistrust. They
overlook cross-border safe havens of terrorists who murder Pakistanis.4
At 9 p.m., Pakistani foreign secretary Tehmina Janjua summoned US
ambassador to Pakistan, David Hale, to give formal vent to Pakistan’s
outrage. Media reports amplified Pakistan’s hurt pride.
But Trump’s trolling of Pakistan had won him several admirers in
Islamabad’s diplomatic circles. It was refreshingly blunt. The blow from the
US made it to the front pages in India, as also in Afghanistan, where it was
seen as a vindication of what both countries had been alleging for long.
378 ange r m anage m e nt

‘The Trump administration decision has abundantly vindicated India’s

stand...as far as the role of Pakistan is concerned in perpetrating terrorism,’
said Jitendra Singh, Indian minister in the PMO. Some media speculated
that Trump may also have been influenced by a quip by PM Modi the
previous year, that the US had given so much for so little.
Former Afghan president Hamid Karzai tweeted a dig from Kabul at
both Pakistan and the US:
President (Trump’s) tweet on Pakistan’s duplicitous position over the
past 15 years is vindication that the war on terror is not in bombing
Afghan villages and homes but in the sanctuaries beyond Afghanistan.
I welcome today’s clarity in President Trump’s remarks.
Pakistan’s damage control efforts did manage to dredge up some
support from iron brother China: ‘Pakistan has made...(an) outstanding
contribution to the global cause of counter terrorism. The international
community should acknowledge that,’ said Chinese foreign ministry
spokesman Geng Shuang, hinting that, unlike for the US, Pakistan was an
‘all weather partner’ for China.5
For Pakistan, this was yet again proof of the capriciousness of the US
as a partner and, worse, its increasing tendency to ‘speak India’s language’.
Foreign Secretary Janjua was even quoted as wondering what Trump was
doing tweeting at 4 a.m. Soon, a conspiracy theory gained currency that
the tweet was engineered by Pakistan’s former envoy to Washington,
Hussain Haqqani, a known hawk on the relationship, advocating greater
accountability from the Pakistan Army.
In India, the celebration of this US epiphany was tempered with the
realization that the anger was directed against Pakistan’s proxy battles
against US interests in Afghanistan, not India’s interests in Kashmir.

WORDS MATTER
Within weeks of my arrival, I received an invitation to the Karachi Litfest,
held every February, from Ameena Saiyid, a prominent civil society and
literary activist. I accepted gladly. It would give me an early opportunity
to see the fabled Sindhi city. Another attraction was the clutch of Indian
writers who were going to converge on Karachi; they were mostly vetted
by the powers that be and expected to be friendly, or at the minimum,
not critical of their hosts. The organizers had risked censure from the
establishment in inviting me to address the opening session. I was expected
not to abuse the hospitality. The aim was also to set the tone of my
outreach to civil society over the next months. I debated between touching
on only safely literary matters, or dipping into more troubled aspects of
the political relationship. I eventually spoke of both—our common love for
literature and our common hopes of the future.
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 379

Our engagement has never been easy. Recent times have been troubled
for the India–Pakistan relationship, but I do believe that we can
imagine a future substantially different from the past. Writing and
literature can shine the light, free thinkers often show us the way
when politics becomes complex and unmanageable. We hope to see
the relationship between our countries improve, we hope that we can
help create an atmosphere free of violence and terror, in which we
could approach each other and have a calm conversation. We could
continue in mistrust and suspicion or imagine an alternate universe.
We could take the high road to peace, to fight our common enemies,
which are poverty, illiteracy and disease, and certainly not each other.
As our democracies strengthen, we see similar aspirations in our
young, with two in three Indians and Pakistanis under thirty-five. The
instincts of our elected leaders are also similar: to promote peace and
development, without the distractions of conflict and violence. I do
hope we move to such a future.
The brief remarks got two effusive rounds of ovation. This puzzled me.
This was hardly a path-breaking vision. Leaders had referred it to in the
past, it echoed Vajpayee’s offer to Musharraf, to take the high road to
peace. It was what PM Modi had written in his first letter to PM Sharif. It
was perhaps the kind of thing a diplomat would say when starting a tenure
in difficult terrain. But that evening in Dawn, this remark became the first
of top ten quotes for the festival. A distinguished older man came up to
me later and said, ‘Aap dushman desh se hain, phir bhi aapko sabse zyada
taaliyan mili (You represent the enemy, yet you got the most applause.)’ A
former Pakistani civil servant asked me with some sarcasm if there was a
change in government in India—was I representing some new one?
The episode told me two things: one, the default expectation in 2017
was of hostility or at least lack of warmth from India—any new diplomat
speaking for the BJP-led government was expected to be aggressive, if not
hostile. And two, anything positive that I would publicly say in Pakistan
would only come as a welcome surprise to audiences, given the state of
play of the relationship.
It was an early lesson.
I had my public diplomacy brief from the top. In a conversation that
I had before my departure, with Prime Minister Modi, I had asked him
what his message would be to the people of Pakistan. He unhesitatingly
said that I should convey clearly that India had always stood for peace
and expected the same in return.
Building on peace with the peace constituencies, such that they were,
became an important part of our diplomatic outreach in Pakistan. It was
important to balance the message of a tough posture coming from political
380 ange r m anage m e nt

and military quarters with a diplomatic position that India would be open
for dialogue, should certain basic conditions be met.

DIPLOMATIC HARASSMENT
On the evening of 15 February 2018, three black sedans screeched to a halt
just across from the new high commission residential complex of India in
the diplomatic quarter of Islamabad. A dozen men got out of the car and
walked into the diplomatic property that was under construction, lightly
guarded by a hired Pakistani agency. The leader of the group, who emerged
from a black vehicle with darkened windows, walked to the edge of the
Indian property and directed the local service providers to get out. He then
ordered out the contractor’s men at the Indian high commission across
the street and said that he wanted to see no Pakistani employees working
there. He announced dramatically that some Pashtuns were being hidden
in the Indian high commission campus. This was the time the nascent
Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM) was gaining ground in Pakistan. Both
the PTM and India could at once be discredited if some Pashtuns could
be planted and then ‘discovered’ on the Indian premises. I got a report
on this incident in the night just as I heading out to host a visiting Indian
delegation in the Margalla Hills. 6
I asked to see Pakistan’s foreign secretary the next morning and made
a strong démarche to her about this unacceptable invasion into India’s
diplomatic property, and harassment of our service providers. We were
concerned, I said, that the move was a gambit to shut down the Indian high
commission. It would invite retaliation in India and we would needlessly
aggravate an already troubled relationship. The foreign secretary was
puzzled by the development and said that she would try to correct the
situation. Her surprise was not feigned, we thought; the ISI would not
have informed the foreign office of its little adventure.
The threat of ‘assured retaliation’ seemed to have some effect as the
number of incidents started to taper off.7 The problem here had always
remained the fundamental asymmetry in the operations of diplomatic
entities, since Pakistan’s agencies treated diplomacy as an extension of some
kind of proxy war. They felt they should launch small tactical operations
against the Indian diplomatic representation rather than allow diplomats to
do what they were supposed to do—meet people and have conversations.
The oldest trick in the game known to the ISI is the classic honey trap,
which they tried to set up in abundant measure against staffers of the
Indian high commission. A handful of staff needed to be sent back after
they were aggressively pursued.
Another asymmetry was in play: Indian diplomats were having to deal
with ruffians—goons of intelligence agencies—while attempting diplomacy.
The situation for Pakistan’s diplomats in India was more comfortable. Over
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 381

the years, as we saw, Pakistan had become known to be a difficult station

for Indian diplomats given the intrusive surveillance, and the aggressive
interrogation of guests who dared to walk into the homes of Indian officials.
The stories of Indian diplomats being harassed in Pakistan were legion,
not matched by the stories of the treatment being meted out to Pakistani
diplomats in Delhi. Successive generations of Indian diplomats posted in
Pakistan had such tales to tell. For instance, in 1999, at the height of
the Kargil conflict, High Commissioner Parthasarathy and his wife went
through a ‘harrowing experience’ of consoling the sobbing wife of an
Indian official after her husband had been dragged out of his house and
kidnapped by ‘ISI goons’. Partha recalled that a young colleague of his in
Islamabad observed after the incident that it was strange that while Pakistani
diplomats in Delhi were ‘feted and hosted’, their Indian counterparts in
Islamabad were ‘booted and roasted’.8
While, for years together, there has been talk of Pakistan’s agencies
acting much more brutally than their Indian counterparts, what now helped
temper the behaviour of Pakistan’s agencies was the ‘assurance’ of reciprocal
action. This marked a shift in India’s posture. When High Commissioner
Satish Chandra had, in the 1990s, gingerly suggested reciprocity to Prime
Minister Narasimha Rao, the PM had shot down the idea on the grounds
that India could not stoop to that level.9
We felt this situation had to change. The stakeholder most critical
to a satisfactory resolution of this situation would be my counterpart in
New Delhi. When I discovered in March 2018 that the Pakistani high
commissioner to India, Sohail Mahmood, was in Islamabad on a visit,
I requested a meeting with Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua and High
Commissioner Mahmood, so that we could jointly discuss the futility of
these actions by intelligence agencies. It was bad diplomacy, I suggested, if
diplomats themselves became the story. I pointed out in these meetings that
we only needed to reiterate that we would abide by the Vienna Convention.
Mahmood dug out the 1993 agreement on treatment of diplomats, which
had become necessary after a particularly nasty round of violence against
diplomats in the early 1990s. If we expressed adherence to these documents,
we would probably be much better off. Mahmood pushed for a deal,
equally worried about the path we were taking.
At the best of times, an Indian diplomat is never lonely in Pakistan.
You are followed everywhere. You are watched closely. Your pictures are
clicked with cellphones by swarms of men in salwar–kameez. You could
be harassed in multiple ways; among other things, cellphone cameras could
come within inches of your face at public events.
Yet, Indian diplomats had over the years also made many close friends.
Pakistan touches Indian diplomats in a variety of ways—you could become
a peacenik, you could become a hawk, but you’re seldom left in the middle.
382 ange r m anage m e nt

Very few preserve their neutrality. A retired Pakistani foreign secretary

told me that on the Track II circuit, several former hawks, freed of their
talking points, became doves fluttering for peace.
Curiously, the Indians were not the only diplomats targeted for special
treatment in Pakistan. The US ambassador in Islamabad told me that he
was having a similar set of issues with Pakistan, though it did not descend
into physical harassment. The US had decided to cut reciprocal access to
travel for Pakistani diplomats, who were now in a bizarre situation where
they could not travel beyond the boundaries of Washington DC without
permission. This was mirroring the position of US diplomats who could
not travel out of Islamabad. Similarly, Pakistani diplomats in Delhi needed
permission to visit the twin towns of Noida and Gurugram from Delhi.
The harassment drama was being played out in March 2018 amidst
screaming headlines whipping up sentiment in both countries. We were
attempting quiet diplomacy to negotiate an end to the harassment. We
were discussing also construction projects to expand high commission
operations in both countries. The attempt was to work out a deal to
ease the harassment of diplomats and encourage projects, or at least not
obstruct them. Despite the larger tensions in ties, we had soon hammered
out an understanding. After months, we had a document that said ‘India
and Pakistan’ and ‘agreed’ in the same sentence. ‘India and Pakistan have
mutually agreed to resolve matters related to the treatment of diplomats
and diplomatic premises, in line with the 1992 ‘Code of Conduct for the
treatment of diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Pakistan,’ the
MEA statement said on 31 March 2018.
A similar one was issued by the Pakistan foreign office the same
day. The code provided for the ‘smooth and unhindered functioning’ of
diplomats. The code also asked the two countries not to resort to ‘intrusive
and aggressive surveillance’ and actions such as ‘verbal and physical
harassment’, or disconnection of phone lines. India had shot off sixteen
diplomatic notes to Pakistan since February listing instances of ‘harassment
and ‘intimidation’. On its part, the Pakistan high commission in Delhi
had claimed twenty-six instances of intimidation of its diplomats since 7
March. The diplomacy had worked to calm things down. For the moment.
The high commission’s residential complex, where the trouble had
started, was being prepared to be inaugurated during a possible high-
level visit from India. We had been goading the contractors to work on
it to meet repeatedly broken deadlines. The land had been acquired as
early as in 1962, the foundation stone laid by PM Vajpayee during his
2004 visit, but the project execution had started only in 2009. It was
to be completed in 2012, but was only half ready in 2018. On 2 April,
I hurriedly inaugurated the complex myself, to underline the point that
it was part of the diplomatic premises of India as much as the Pakistan
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 383

high commission was in New Delhi. We soon had it going. Eventually,

all of India’s staff moved into the complex, giving them a higher level of
protection within Islamabad’s diplomatic security zone.
The harassment truce was no guarantee sporadic incidents would
not recur; the restrictions to diplomatic activity remained unrelenting,
particularly in my meetings with sensitive groups. On 14 April, we went
to the holy Panja Sahib gurdwara to greet 1,700 Sikh pilgrims who
had come for their annual pilgrimage, covered under the 1974 bilateral
agreement. Halfway to the destination, I was asked to turn back, because
of a ‘charged atmosphere’ among the 2,500 Sikhs gathered there, due to
some objectionable scenes in a movie, Nanak Shah Fakir, that had been
released in India.10 I decided to test my boundaries and tried again on
22 June. Despite obtaining permission from the Pakistani foreign office, I
was turned back again.11 The reason given was that some overseas Sikhs,
mainly from Canada, were objecting to any Indian government presence,
so my security could not be guaranteed. This was not entirely convincing,
since the overseas visitors from the UK and Canada were known to be
under the sway of the ISI. On another occasion, I was blocked when I tried
to visit the Bohra community in Karachi, again on grounds of ensuring
my security. It was not easy getting out of Islamabad’s diplomatic bubble.
Moreover, guests coming to the homes of Indian diplomats in Pakistan
were still being aggressively questioned about their visits and on details
of discussions in the diplomatic gatherings. A Pakistani minister I had
once invited home was abused when he refused to give his visiting card
to the ISI surveillance team. A well-connected guest leaving my residence
once screamed at the minders to do something better with their lives; he
got a call from a higher up in the agency the next day, asking him to let
the boys do their job. Despite all this, the situation had improved after
the two countries had decided that the harassment of diplomats needed
to be toned down.

THE BAJWA DOCTRINE

In early 2018, a ‘Bajwa doctrine’ was unveiled, designed to reveal the
worldview of Pakistan’s most powerful man. It was based on some articles
released by the army’s PR machine, the Inter Services Public Relations
(ISPR), reinforced by Bajwa’s off the record interaction with a number of
senior journalists.
This was par for the course. Several Pakistani army chiefs in the past
had aired branded doctrines publicly within a couple of years of starting
their innings, as much strategic communication for the general public as
a message to the civilians on who was in charge of policy. History told
us that in every army chief’s tenure, there comes a decisive moment when,
after consolidating power, he tries to leave a legacy. This turning point
384 ange r m anage m e nt

sometimes came in the shape of a coup (Musharraf, Ayub, Zia). Or a

major speech or policy statement outlining some kind of vision (Kayani,
Raheel Sharif, Bajwa). Often, the ISPR would frame a ‘doctrine’ to define
an army chief’s imprint.
For Bajwa’s coming out party, he was presented by the ISPR to Pakistani
media anchors for a background briefing. It turned out to be an informal,
wide-ranging chat. The ISPR tried to position this doctrine as one focused on
security, speaking of clearing Pakistan of terrorists and expressing concern
about the relationship with the US in the wake of Trump’s rude tweet about
Pakistan’s lies and deceit. Bajwa also disseminated his message through
friendly media articles that attempted to paint a picture of a soldier with
novel, progressive views, a visionary expounding on issues like terrorism,
international affairs, (particularly Afghanistan, India, and the US), even
financial management and democracy. The key elements of the doctrine
related to issues of governance and the Pakistan army’s support to the
democracy project. At the same time, Bajwa expressed opposition to the
eighteenth constitutional amendment’s12 devolution of power to the states,
comparing it to the devolution demanded by East Pakistan, which broke
up the country in 1971.
Some friendly sections of the media profiled Bajwa flatteringly, even
comparing him to a Roman emperor. This was especially true of one version,
suspected to have been planted by the ISPR with the liberal Jang media
group’s veteran and maverick writer Suhail Warraich. Bajwa, the narrative
went, was a cut above his two predecessors: he was not ‘unpredictable
and deep thinking’ like the ‘philosophical’ Kayani, nor ‘stiff necked and
robotic’ like the ‘showman’ Raheel Sharif. He was more a pragmatist—a
model soldier, a patient and rational thinker ‘like Musharraf’.13
The doctrine quite randomly predicted a rapprochement with India in
three years, since there could be no war between ‘two neighbouring nuclear
countries’ and because the ‘extremist Modi regime’ within two to three years
‘due to its growing economy’ would realize the need for a peace dialogue
with Pakistan. It also spoke of peace with Afghanistan. The strategy to
counter terror included an element of ‘mainstreaming’ of terrorists and
radicals (even inviting them to fight elections), giving a glimmer of hope
that Pakistan would be willing to tackle the groups the ISI had created
for proxy terror against India. In that sense, it took forward the Kayani
doctrine of strengthening the fight against terrorism, rejecting ‘the old idea
of distinguishing between good or bad Taliban’ and adding that militant
groups needed to be ‘de-weaponised and mainstreamed’ like in Ireland. But
the groups in Pakistan were expected to be deweaponized with no credible
effort to have them first deradicalized. I did share my concern with some
Western diplomats discussing these issues with Bajwa—the mainstreaming
of the radicals could lead to radicalizing the mainstream.
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 385

Dawn was not wholly impressed by Bajwa’s briefing and gently chided
the army for overstepping its boundaries pointing out that ‘economic
policy, centre-province relations and governance matters...are civilian
domains’; howsoever desirable, improvements in these ‘must flow through
constitutional channels.’14 The Bajwa doctrine faced another criticism from
within Pakistan—it was not tough enough on the Kashmir cause.
What the doctrine left unsaid was Bajwa’s (and, by extension, the
Pakistani army’s) belief in political engineering with the hybrid government
project, that involved ejecting the elected PM, Nawaz Sharif, in 2017 and
bringing in the ‘selected’ Imran Khan in 2018. The doctrine would add
more elements as Bajwa would grow on the job—like a stronger posture
against domestic terrorism, a professed political neutrality, and a longer
tenure for Bajwa to rule Pakistan.

CONNECTING WITH THE ARMY

After the doctrine was aired, almost on cue, the military invited me along
with some of my colleagues, including the deputy high commissioner, J.
P. Singh, and the defence attachés, to the Pakistan Day parade on 23
March. This was a courtesy extended to India after several years. Yaum-e-
Pakistan, or Pakistan Resolution Day, was a national holiday in Pakistan,
commemorating the Lahore Resolution passed on 23 March 1940 (with
the Muslim League’s call for the creation of separate Muslim homelands
as ‘independent states’ in India) but also celebrating the first short-lived
Constitution of 1956, which technically graduated Pakistan from dominion
to republic.
On a blazing hot day in Islamabad, we attended the army’s Pakistan
Day parade, gazing at the marching contingents. We found our faces,
squinting in the sun, in every Pakistani newspaper and channel the next
morning. The invitation was variously interpreted as a peace gesture and a
warning to India, depending on the editorial inclination of the publication.
I was amused to find myself the subject of a lengthy and angry enquiry by
an Indian TV channel, wondering why we would not boycott a Pakistani
parade. That diplomats in both countries routinely attended National Day
parades and functions was not an argument the channel was willing to
countenance. While we were happy to play along with Pakistan’s invites,
the bottom line for India was interpreting the situation on the ground,
rather than the gestures.
It was clear to us in the summer of 2018 that the army was not keen
to take direct control of power, despite having removed Nawaz Sharif
from the scene. It was apparent that there was something deeper afoot for
the upcoming federal elections. The army was now building Imran Khan
and creating conditions for his victory. It had the makings of a ‘non-coup
coup’, with the army prepping a ‘hybrid’ regime, where it would not only
386 ange r m anage m e nt

not take over the reins of power, it would not need to.
We decided to initiate conversations with the army to sensitize them
to India’s concerns on violence and terrorism. The communication needed
to be away from any spotlight. I had no mandate to meet Bajwa, even
if he were willing to meet me. But I could be creative and communicate
with Pakistan’s most powerful man through people close to him.
We made it clear to the army that India no longer had the patience
for words and the ‘no talks with terror policy’ was a fact. The position
could change if Pakistan could show some sincerity in tackling terrorism
against India. One basic metric of this would be a fall in the verifiable
cross-border infiltration numbers. Another test would be whether Pakistan
could hand over those responsible for past terrorist attacks on India. This
process could begin with the twenty-six Indian citizens we knew were
being given safe haven by Pakistan.
Bajwa conveyed Pakistan’s sincere desire to end terrorism, but signalled
in mid-2018 that we would continue this conversation once the new
government was in place in Islamabad. This demonstrated confidence that
the government put in place would be on the ‘same page’ as the army.
However, it was Pakistan’s assessment that India would find it hard to
have any conversation until the election of a new government in India
in May 2019. The window, the army was guessing in 2018, would only
open in the second half of 2019, after Indian elections, when the political
rhetoric would have dampened.
In retrospect, while the Pakistan Army was making a reasonably smart
assessment, it was in 2018 not factoring in a few black swan events that
would change the shape of the next year—the Pulwama terrorist attack,
the Balakot response, and the Article 370 decision by India. It would
appear that Bajwa modestly spoke of a window of opportunity between
Indian elections until his date of retirement in November 2019, in which
he would work for a lasting peace.

THE BLEEDING BORDER

The guns at the LoC in Jammu and Kashmir had rarely fallen silent since
the relationship dipped in 2016. But as the holy month of Ramzan began
on 16 May 2018, both armies announced they had agreed on a ceasefire.
The most plausible explanation of the motive for a quiet border was the
Pakistan army’s preoccupation with its western border and with domestic
elections; the two DGMOs spoke on that day and issued simultaneous
statements announcing the start of a ceasefire at the LoC. This was
followed by a more sustained one announced on 29 May. This was a
border truce after a long gap and the question was whether it would hold.
Both countries celebrated this minor outbreak of peace; analysts debated
if it would lead to some bigger breakthroughs as Pakistan awaited the
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 387

election of 2018 and India prepared for those of 2019.

The May ceasefire was accompanied by some other positives—a team
of Indian journalists got visas to visit Pakistan. An Indian counter-terrorism
team showed up in Pakistan for an SCO Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure
(RATS) meet; it was not lost on observers that India and Pakistan were
discussing jointly countering terrorism, albeit under a regional plurilateral
structure. A Track II Neemrana dialogue group in Islamabad had been
followed by a Pakistani Coast Guard team visit to India. The bilateral
and multilateral security mechanisms seemed to be gingerly engaging, as
Pakistan moved to an interim caretaker arrangement in preparation for
elections in July. The Indian Express front-paged my interview mentioning
signs of positivity.15 The paper was also linking India’s internal truce in
Kashmir with the external ceasefire.
The optimism had to be laced with caution. Several ceasefire
announcements had taken place in the past, only to be observed in the
breach. Both countries were still technically committed to the 2003 ceasefire,
which had been repeatedly violated after holding in the initial years.
A few days before Eid on 14 June, I received a call at 2 a.m. from
my political interlocutor with the Pakistan Army. Pakistan was seeing
some worrying activity, he told me sombrely, on the Indian side of the
LoC, and was concerned that India was planning some misadventure in
Pakistani territory. Using this channel for operational military issues was
not the norm; such issues would normally be discussed at the level of
the military through the hotlines of the DGMOs. It was unusual for the
Pakistan Army to be raising this matter at the diplomatic level directly
with the Indian high commissioner. When I asked the caller if the military
had used their standard channels, he told me that he had a specific request
from the ISI chief to raise this matter at my level, given the seriousness
of the situation. I assured him that India had no plans or reasons to
attack Pakistan that morning, but would nevertheless check. I woke up my
colleague and defence attaché, Brigadier Sanjay Vishwas Rao, a veteran of
Kashmir operations, who circled back after checking with military teams in
Delhi that Pakistani observers may have been spooked by some standard
movements. I called back my interlocutor, up for his sehri meal before
the Ramzan fast began, and asked him to advise his friends in the ISI to
relax and catch up on sleep.
The peacetime dynamics of India’s engagement with Pakistan at
the LoC (which accounts for almost a fourth—776 kilometres—of the
3,323-kilometre-long land border) had always been peculiar. A low-grade
war that played out at the LoC, almost through my entire tenure, was
propelled by its own internal logic, not fully controlled by the political
leadership. LoC actions had been delegated to the military, very deliberately
in India, to deal with the issue of terrorism and automatically in Pakistan,
388 ange r m anage m e nt

where the army was the final arbiter even of the political and strategic
implications of actions at the border.16
Indian academic and commentator Happymon Jacob argued that the
militaries on both sides violated the 2003 ceasefire agreement because of
‘auxiliary factors’, beyond foreign and security policy. These stemmed from
a subjective interpretation by the two armies of each other’s behaviour and
for the desire for a ‘perfect symmetry of firing’. Jacob based his conclusions
on research, interviews, and crunching data on ceasefire violations since
2003.17 What had changed by 2018 was that India’s behaviour was now
less predictable. What used to be a ‘comfort posting’ for the Pakistan Army
on the eastern front, only meant to drive in irregulars and proxy warriors
into India, became a sleepless one where the Pakistan military needed to
be alert to firing from the Indian side. This was no longer a rest and
recreation posting for the Pakistani military.18 India’s army chief, General
Bipin Rawat, told me that this paradigm shift was causing Pakistan to
pay a lot of attention to the LoC.
A peculiar public dynamic accompanied casualties on the border.
Pakistan normally called the Indian deputy high commissioner or any
available diplomat and handed over a public protest note for any civilian
death. But killings of military personnel at the border were seldom
acknowledged, even during conflicts, because this diluted the impression
of the strength of the Pakistan Army and the notion of victory during
conflict.

A CHANGING KASHMIR
It was special to visit Kashmir from Pakistan. I went up to the valley in
June 2018, when, after a conference of heads of missions, I chose, for an
official refresher visit, Kashmir, the land of my birth, rather than Uttar
Pradesh, the land of my ancestors. Governor’s Rule had just been imposed
in the state and a group of us heads of mission had the opportunity to have
extensive interactions with the state’s civil and military leadership. These
convinced us that Kashmir could be healed if it went a few years in absence
of terrorist violence. The extent of radicalization instigated by outfits from
across the border had been disturbing; as we have seen, the summer of
2016, also known as the ‘Burhan Wani summer’ (after one of the young
social media-savvy, Kalashnikov-wielding militants), had been particularly
rough and violent. Security forces had followed an approach to deal firmly
with the violence, and then rapidly moved to the healing stage. The mood
on the ground seemed sullen, but there were many voices arguing that
violence needed to be stopped, before we could move to a new chapter in
the history of Kashmir.
 l ie s , de ce it, and dip lo m acy 389

HUMANITARIAN DIPLOMACY
In the summer of 2018, I got a call from Manvinder Singh, the member of
parliament from Barmer, a border desert district in Rajasthan. He told me
that a poor family from Rajasthan had crossed to Pakistan for a wedding,
where Reshma, an elder of the family, had passed away on a Sunday.
The family wanted to return to India with the body via the same border
crossing but the weekly train was not due till Friday, five long days away.
There was no way to keep the body refrigerated. Travel for the whole
day north to Punjab and to the Attari–Wagah border was not feasible,
because the ambulance was not refrigerated. The request was a desperate
one. Could the Munnabao border be opened to allow this body to be
brought into India by road over the rail-only crossing on a priority basis?
This seemed a tall order in the best of times, but particularly hard given
the overall climate of the relationship. Nevertheless, we decided as an
experiment to test the system.
The Thar Link Express weekly service had started in 2006, connecting
Karachi and Khokrapar (Pakistan’s Sindh) to a Zero Point border station,
and then to Munnabao (Rajasthan’s Barmer) and Jodhpur, a distance of 381
kilometres, covered in seven hours. It had been a welcome new connection
between the people of the region and had worked well for years. (It would
eventually be cancelled by Pakistan on 9 August 2019.) We wrote to the
foreign office and also connected with some NGOs on both sides to see
if they could assist with the request to move the body. We needed to get
the customs and immigration folks, who came only once a week, to reach
the border points for this transaction to take place smoothly. As if by a
miracle, the humanitarian dimension of this poor family’s drama triggered
the right emotions in all the right quarters and the crossing was opened
for a day on a Tuesday for the family to pass.
This episode told us that there was enough latent goodwill in the
relationship to help out each other’s citizens caught on the wrong side of
the border. We continued to focus on citizens in distress. Visas for medical
cases became a case in point. We issued these liberally after verifying
details by calling up the doctors and checking the status of each case.
Each medical visa produced enormous goodwill for India.
Most importantly, when the rest of the relationship was paused, we
decided to build trust by continuing with the humanitarian agenda. External
Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, with her instincts for a people-centric
approach to neighbourhood diplomacy, asked me to work on the issues of
prisoners. We identified three categories of the most vulnerable among the
imprisoned—people with mental health problems, seniors, and women. We
discovered a corresponding appetite for extending humanitarian assistance
to Pakistani prisoners in Indian jails. This process clipped along even
during difficult times.
390 ange r m anage m e nt

Another category of humanitarian cases was that of imprisoned Indian

fishermen who ended up in Pakistani waters and Pakistani custody. These
poor fisherfolk defied the maritime border in their pursuit of the lal pari or
red snapper. They would be housed in Karachi jails and it would usually
take about six months to identify them, verify their nationality, and have
them returned to India.
Many such humanitarian rescue acts caught the popular imagination
when they made it to the media, particularly when cross-border love was
at play. In May 2017, an Indian citizen, Uzma Ahmad, had knocked on
the gates of the Indian high commission in Islamabad, pleading for help,
since she had been abducted by a Pakistani citizen, Tahir Ali, whom she
had met in Malaysia. She had travelled to his home in the Taliban-infested
badlands of Buner district in KP, only to discover that Ali was already
married with four children from a previous marriage. She was drugged,
married at gunpoint, and sexually assaulted, but managed to talk her way
to the high commission, where she got refuge. EAM Sushma Swaraj took
personal charge of the case and Deputy HC J. P. Singh delivered her to India
after a brief legal battle and a midnight run to the Wagah–Attari border.
In late 2018, some NGOs activated journalists on both sides to ask for
the release of a young and very sick Indian prisoner in Karachi, who had
wandered to the other side some months ago. Veteran Pakistani journalist
Hamid Mir raised the profile of the case as he posed this case as a question
to Pakistan’s foreign minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, saying he hoped
the boy would be released. He eventually was.
On another occasion, I received a report that a married Punjabi Hindu
woman from a well-connected family in India had eloped or had been
kidnapped and taken to Pakistan. The family of this woman insisted that
she was being held hostage by a Pakistani citizen, who had even got her
a visa. We had this informally investigated through Pakistani agencies and
discovered that the explanation was less complicated; the woman went of
her own volition after falling in love with the Pakistani man whom she
had met on social media. The challenge was to break this assessment to
the family.
Blind love also drove Hamid Ansari, the software engineer from
Mumbai who decided to make an entry from Afghanistan into Peshawar
to meet his online flame. He was promptly nabbed and labelled a terrorist.
His mother raised the alarm and after much lobbying, he was released
from jail after six long years, only when it was clear to Pakistani agencies
that he was only courting trouble for himself, not wreaking destruction
on the Pakistani state.
 32

NAYA PAKI STAN, OL D TRI CKS

B y July, ‘Project Imran’ seemed unstoppable. It was clear that Imran

Khan was the army’s chosen one for the elections scheduled on 25 July
2018. The stories of ‘pre-election engineering’ by the military establishment
made this quite clear. Army chief Bajwa was firmly supporting the
project that had picked up steam from 2008, under the army chiefs who
succeeded Musharraf—General Kayani (and particularly his DGs of the
ISI, Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha and Lieutenant General Zaheer
ul Islam), and Bajwa’s predecessor, General Raheel Sharif.
One impediment to this project had been the prime minister elected in
2013, Nawaz Sharif, who had now been neatly unseated. To seal matters,
Sharif was barred from politics when he was sentenced to ten years in
prison in July (for owning unaccounted properties in London) and arrested,
along with daughter Maryam and son-in-law, Safdar Awan.
Imran Khan’s ride to power was far from smooth; he gained in
popularity through mammoth election rallies resounding with populist
rhetoric about tabdeeli—change—and creating a ‘naya Pakistan’. But he
seemed embattled as his adversaries ran a bruising smear campaign against
him in the election year. Ugly details emerged of his personal life, as a
London-based ex-wife, Reham Khan, joined the campaign, with a tell-all
book presenting salacious details of his love for sex and cocaine; the text
was gleefully circulated by Pakistan’s elites in WhatsApp chat groups, with
the juiciest portions helpfully highlighted in yellow. Islamabad’s rumour
mills also buzzed with gossip about Imran Khan’s third wife, the fully veiled,
burqa-clad Bushra Bibi, also known as Pinki Pirni, a Sufi spiritual preacher
and faith healer from south Punjab. Khan, it was alleged, had married the
pirni early in 2018, because of her prediction that their betrothal would
win him the prime minister’s job. The pirni and her djinns were believed
to be furiously at work against Khan’s enemies, and even some former
associates with bad energy, to pave the way for his political success.
As we watched the drama at the high commission, we were able
to confidently assess that Imran Khan was a frontrunner in Pakistan’s
power play, even though the ‘minus Nawaz’ PML-N was fighting hard. On
election night, the electronic transmission system inexplicably collapsed,
allowing for some onsite ballot box stuffing. The PTI captured the most
seats in the National Assembly but fell short of a majority. The party
subsequently formed a coalition government with several smaller parties
and independents propelled by mysterious forces to join the government.
392 ange r m anage m e nt

The verdict was fractured in the provinces: the PTI remained dominant
in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa; the PPP-retained Sindh, and the military
establishment-backed Balochistan Awami Party (BAP) emerged as the
largest in Balochistan. In Punjab, the result was a hung parliament with
the PML-N reaffirming its traditional dominance; but several independent
MPs joined the PTI, gifting it the government. Naya Pakistan now had
a PTI-led coalition at the centre, along with governments in three of the
four major provinces.

THE HYBRID REGIME

When the coalition’s numbers seemed assured, one of the first global leaders
to call Imran Khan was Narendra Modi. India’s leader congratulated Khan
on 30 July on his PTI emerging as the largest political party in the 25 July
polls. He also expressed the hope that ‘democracy will take deeper roots’
in Pakistan and spoke of a ‘vision of peace and development in the entire
neighbourhood’1. Khan spoke of his own desire to improve ties.
The call was my cue to renew my efforts to meet with Pakistan’s PM-
designate. The meeting had technically been in the works for a while. We
had been in touch with Imran Khan’s team for several months, but had
not pursued the request in election season. I did meet Khan at an annual
iftar he hosted in June as a fund collection drive for his cancer hospital
and found myself seated next to him thanks to a common friend. But
that had been an occasion for pleasantries and a chat on cricket, not any
substantive discussion on political ties. He did tell me then that he thought
Virat Kohli, the Indian cricket captain, was an even greater player than
Sachin Tendulkar, because Kohli was helping India win matches against
greater odds.
I had been in touch with the BCCI and had procured cricket bats
signed by the Indian cricket team led by Virat Kohli, which I hoped to
present to some cricket lovers in Pakistan. I had been intending to present
one of these bats to Imran Khan earlier in the year, but the vicissitudes
of the bilateral relationship and the election schedule did not allow us to
meet. Post-elections, despite the conversation with India’s PM, we were
not sure if Khan and his team would like the optics of meeting early
with the Indian high commissioner. (He had already met some Western
and West Asian envoys.)
A rumour soon circulated in Islamabad that Khan was planning to ‘do
a Modi’ and invite all South Asian leaders for his inauguration, including
Prime Minister Modi. However, the fact that he led a coalition government
meant that there was not enough time between proving his parliamentary
majority and the swearing-in, to mount a SAARC ‘festival’ or even a
neighbourhood mela with his South Asian peers in attendance.
My meeting with Khan came through suddenly, after we connected with
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 393

a key associate of his, Naeemul Haq. Khan’s friends were in a euphoric

mood; it was the season to believe in Khan as the man with the Midas
touch. The loyalist coterie was arguing that the breath of fresh air that Khan
had brought to cricket and to the Shaukat Khanum hospitals (charitable
multi-speciality hospitals driven by Khan, named after his late mother)
would now have a magical impact on the governance of Pakistan.
On 10 August, I called on Imran Khan at his scenic Bani Gala residence
on top of an Islamabad hillock. He was by then sure to be sworn in
PM, and had begun meeting diplomats. Deputy HC J. P. Singh and I
walked into a beehive of activity, prepared to be bundled out after a brief
courtesy meeting. We were surprised to find Khan accompanied by the
entire top PTI leadership, including Shah Mahmood Qureshi and Shirin
Mazhari, both expected to find ministerial berths. This presented me an
opportunity to have a substantive, even if brief, conversation on bilateral
ties with Khan and his advisers; I wanted to sensitize the team to India’s
concerns at a time when they may not have thought through their India
policy too carefully.
When I congratulated Khan on his victory, he disarmingly—and, as it
turned out, presciently—said that he wished his party had got 20 more
seats in parliament for a more decisive mandate. India, he added, had
learnt the art of running coalitions and perhaps a complex country like
India needed such coalitions, but Pakistan needed stronger governments at
this stage. He expressed some unhappiness at the way the Indian media
had portrayed him and his victory. (He was clearly referring to some
stories, particularly on electronic media, describing him as a fundamentalist
‘Taliban Khan’.) I reassured him that several of his friends had also taken
to public fora in India to defend his leadership qualities and the narrative
was not all negative.
Khan said he was particularly disappointed that he was being called
an army puppet. He said he was perhaps the only democrat in Pakistan’s
history and wished to bring genuine democracy to Pakistan. The only
exception was possibly Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, but he too had served as a
minister under Ayub’s military dictatorship. He argued that it was ironic
that Nawaz Sharif was being characterized as a democrat since Sharif had
been ‘manufactured in Rawalpindi’. He would later repeat this narrative
in public and, in his delusional way, probably believed it.
Khan said that he had multiple friends in India and was keen that
we normalized our relationship. He felt that in the past, several Pakistani
diplomats he worked closely with [former FM Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri
was known to be an early supporter of Khan] had told him that we were
close to a solution on the Kashmir issue. He said the dialogue should
continue in a sustained way and not be interrupted, no matter what
happened.
394 ange r m anage m e nt

I pointed out that it was hard to continue a dialogue when we had

to deal with terror attacks like the one in Mumbai. He nodded, ‘that’s
true’, and looked towards future foreign minister Qureshi, pointing out
that Qureshi had been in India on the day of the Mumbai attacks, even
though, he added with a grin, he could not be blamed for having caused
them. I offered that if only we could stamp out cross-border infiltration
and terrorism, we could normalize our relationship and take it forward.
Shirin Mazhari, a known India hawk on social media, interrupted the
conversation at this stage to say that Pakistan had its own problems about
India’s attacks in places like Balochistan. Khan, in turn, interrupted her and
went on to say that it was important to work on each other’s problems.
Pakistan, he added, had issues with India’s military presence in Kashmir.
He argued that the presence of the military in urban settings alienated
people and was bound to lead to violence. He had seen it in the province
of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where the PTM movement had been born of the
popular grievances against the Pakistan army’s presence. This was a bold
statement to an Indian diplomat, coming from someone who was to be
Pakistan’s next prime minister.
We talked cricket in the end and I presented him with an autographed
cricket bat. That became the viral image of the meeting and the signal
of some kind of rapprochement. Most seasoned observers were however
cynical, because bilateral relations had been littered through history with
positive gestures that did not necessarily translate into better ties. A new
prime minister and a new elected government had always led to some hope
of new beginnings. This was particularly true of Imran Khan’s government,
because it was famously on the same page as the army and was presumably
going to make moves on India in consultation with the army, as against
the two previous governments, which had seen their friendly overtures
towards India vetoed by the army.
Khan’s friends and supporters seemed desperate to believe in his
superhuman qualities. They said that Khan carried no baggage of
corruption and was only driven by good intentions to help Pakistanis;
he was determined to make peace with the country’s neighbours in order
to achieve these objectives. The naive belief that Khan’s goodness would
change the reality of Pakistan’s governance was often touching and even
infectious. His supporters argued that the two dynasties, the Sharifs and
Bhuttos that had looted Pakistan for decades were finally defeated and a
viable alternative had emerged for the Pakistani people. Some commentators
were privately arguing that while Khan was getting a leg up from the
establishment, he would soon become his own person and would do what
was good for Pakistan rather than what was good for Pakistan’s army.
Reinforcing this view, some army officers were arguing that Khan was too
temperamental to be controlled by the army for long and might become
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 395

dangerously destabilizing if he went rogue. These Cassandras would be

proven right four years later.
Soon after he was sworn in, Imran Khan invited his primary mentor,
army chief Bajwa, over for dinner at his residence. It was just the four of
them: Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi; and Bajwa with his wife, Ayesha.
The fully veiled first lady ate nothing at the dining table, even when the
general politely asked her to have something. In keeping with the traditional
cultural practice, the two men sat in the living room for a post-dinner
chat, while Ayesha Bajwa was led away to the women’s quarters for an
exclusive meal with Mrs Khan. On the way back in the car, Ayesha seemed
shaken. She said to her husband in Urdu that he should save his prime
minister if he still could. She refused, he said later, to explain herself.2

A CORRIDOR OF FAITH
Imran Khan was sworn in as PM on 18 August 2018, on that day a story
hit the headlines in India that Pakistan had agreed to a long-standing
request from India to open a special corridor for Sikh pilgrims by 2019.
It was also the day another story from Islamabad grabbed eyeballs—
of an embrace between Army Chief Qamar Bajwa and Punjab MLA
Navjot Singh Sidhu. In the presidential palace Awan-e-Sadr, where Khan
was sworn in, two of his buddies were present to applaud the event: his
roommate in Oxford, Vikram Mehta, and his fellow cricket commentator,
Navjot Singh Sidhu. Two other cricketing mates—Sunil Gavaskar and
Kapil Dev—were also invited but could not make it that day.
An air of hope hung in the hall that morning, with PTI supporters
suggesting that Khan would rescue Pakistan from its multiple crises and
take it to a happier place. I could not speak at length to Sidhu at the
ceremony, since his Pakistani minders were close by and he was in any
case surrounded by selfie-seekers.
I invited Sidhu and Mehta to drop in at the high commission for a
chat that morning. They came in directly from a meeting Khan had with
his former Pakistani cricket team-mates, where the former cricketers had
spoken to Khan with brutal frankness. By the time my guests came in,
footage of the ‘Sidhu hug’ was making ripples in India; Sidhu’s political
foes were already accusing him of treason, in embracing the head of an
army that had killed Indian soldiers at the border.
Sidhu revealed that Bajwa had mentioned to him that Pakistan had
decided to open the Kartarpur corridor for Indian pilgrims to make it
to Kartarpur Sahib, where the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak, had
spent the last eighteen years of his life. This would be timed as a gesture
from Pakistan for the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak. Delighted by
the news, Sidhu had spontaneously thanked his fellow Jat with a hug, a
Punjabi jhappi.
396 ange r m anage m e nt

The Kartarpur story was not a recent one. The gurdwara was renovated
in the 1920s by the maharaja of Patiala, grandfather of Captain Amarinder
Singh, at a cost of a million rupees. As luck would have it, when the
Radcliffe Line was drawn, Kartarpur fell on the Pakistani side of the border
since it was 4 kilometres east of the Ravi River. Over a period of time,
Indian pilgrims had expressed a desire to walk into Kartarpur, which was
in Pakistani Punjab’s Narowal district, only 4 kilometres from the border
with India. Yet Kartarpur Sahib was not listed as one of the pilgrimage
sites when the 1974 protocol was signed, even when it was periodically
amended, but it was very much a site that pilgrims started to visit—by
taking a circuitous route around the Attari–Wagah border.
In 1999, when Vajpayee took the bus to Pakistan, he was accompanied
by Parkash Singh Badal, the chief minister of Punjab. Badal had also
articulated this longstanding Sikh demand for easier access to Kartarpur.
Now, the Pakistan Army had overnight decided to accept the longstanding
Indian demand. Even more curious was the way in which the decision was
conveyed to India—there had been no official communication between the
two governments, this was a Pakistan Army chief softly whispering the
proposal to an Indian Sikh politician on a private visit.
I gently suggested to Sidhu that he might want to correct the negative
perceptions in the Indian media about his interaction with the chief of the
Pakistan Army and explain the context publicly. His response was: ‘Dunia
vich subse vada rog, ki kende nain mere baare mein log (The biggest
affliction in the world is to care about what people say about you)’.
We initially assumed this was a polite talking point that the army
had prepared for their chief, to speak of pleasant matters to a politician
from Indian Punjab. However, it soon became clear that this was a more
serious proposal that would be welcomed by millions in India, even if it
was part of a larger tactical game plan that the army was developing to
gain greater influence in Indian Punjab.
I soon visited Kartarpur, given the very real possibility of a corridor
opening up. The gurdwara was in the Narowal district of Pakistan’s Punjab,
just across from Gurdaspur in Indian Punjab. Driving into Narowal, we
caught the Airtel signal and knew that the Indian border was close by. I
was deeply impressed by the fertile landscape and the humble dwellings
that surrounded the shrine and could easily imagine why Guru Nanak
would have chosen such a peaceful spot in his final years.
Analysts wondered in India why Pakistan’s army should abruptly
spearhead this generous gesture towards India. Aside from the altruism,
Pakistan was hoping to gain some leverage, through the corridor, in India’s
border state of Punjab. Some strategic influence in Punjab and some sway
over Sikh sentiment could be tactically useful for Pakistan in future scenarios
of fanning separatist sentiment. India’s policy planners were mindful of
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 397

Pakistan’s thinking behind the Kartarpur move, but confident that it was in
overall terms, a welcome project. India had decided not to be overwhelmed
by the security risks posed by the corridor but to welcome the opportunity,
given that it was based on India’s own request and represented the strong
sentiment of the people of Punjab. At one level, it showed to me the
successful working of Indian democracy, where the sentiments of a sizeable
population of Punjab were privileged over security concerns through a
political judgement by India’s leadership.
It turned out that Pakistan’s army had started work on the corridor
soon after Imran Khan’s inauguration in August. A few weeks later, Pakistan
made a formal proposal to India, to work jointly on the project. India
quickly agreed in principle. A divine hand seemed to be guiding both
countries to do the right thing for the people. The decision in India was to
move on the corridor with speed and to lay its foundation on the Indian
side, in time for the start of the celebrations of the 550th anniversary of
Guru Nanak coming up in November 2018. The celebratory year itself
was coming at a sensitive time, six months before India’s general election
scheduled for May 2019. In India, the political judgement was to factor
in security concerns without being overwhelmed by them. In my public
remarks, I began calling Kartarpur a corridor of faith and a corridor for
peace.
Pakistan soon announced that PM Imran Khan would himself lay the
foundation of the corridor in a ceremony in November 2018. Speculation
grew that Pakistan would want to invite PM Modi to the inauguration
and that he could even accept. But if the Indian prime minister arrived,
Pakistani strategists feared, all the political credit for the corridor might
go to him, defeating several Pakistani objectives. Finally, Pakistan balanced
these considerations to invite, for the foundation ceremony, India’s foreign
minister Sushma Swaraj, Punjab chief minister Amarinder Singh, and Punjab
Congress MLA Navjot Singh Sidhu. India decided to field, instead of
Sushma Swaraj, the two Sikh ministers in the NDA government, Hardeep
Singh Puri of the BJP and Harsimrat Kaur Badal, a member of the Akali
Dal, a coalition ally party at the centre.
Foreign Minister Qureshi seemed to give away Pakistan’s thinking in a
speech during the PTI government’s hundred-day celebrations in November,
when he said that Pakistan had thrown a ‘googly’ at India and made an
offer that India could not refuse. India, he implied, was being forced to
send two of its ministers to the inaugural despite its reluctance to do so.
Punjab chief minister Captain Amarinder Singh chose not to travel for
the ceremony, voicing objections as a former soldier against Pakistan’s
behaviour at the border. But his maverick party colleague Sidhu did arrive
once again. I received ministers Hardeep Puri and Harsimrat Kaur at
Wagah and, after some debate, we accepted the Pakistani offer of taking
398 ange r m anage m e nt

a chopper to Kartarpur to save time. The Pakistan high commissioner

Sohail Mahmood accompanied us.
Defying all expectations, the corridor project across the river Ravi
went speedily ahead on both sides. This was one of the highlights of my
tenure in Pakistan. In other areas, the way forward was rockier.

TALKING OF TERROR
Bilateral conversations on terrorism in Pakistan became as dividing and
sensitive as those on Kashmir. In July 2018, I was invited to speak at a
panel discussion at an ‘ideas conclave’ organized by the Jinnah Institute
in Islamabad, a think tank where ‘serious conversation’ was encouraged
by Sherry Rehman, its president. The panel included Ayesha Jalal, a well-
known Pakistani historian, and Nasim Zehra Malik, a journalist, apart
from Lieutenant General Azif Janjua, a former NSA. The invitation was
to speak on the ‘eastern question’, which of course was a geographical
euphemism for India. I spoke of the ‘western question’ for India, the
beleaguered relationship with Pakistan. I spoke of the difficulties in the
relationship since 2016 and argued that the story of the twenty-first
century was one of hope in the relationship dashed by acts of terror. I
pointed out that bilateral ties, after showing some promise with a new
government in India in 2014, had plunged in 2016 because of terrorism in
Kashmir. I argued that there was hope to revive the relationship with the
election of a new government in Pakistan. I traced the historical pattern
of terrorism in India and suggested that containing terror was the magic
bullet to pull the relationship out of trouble and onto a path of normalcy.
This take was never seriously countered by the other panelists, although
they did speak of Pakistan’s territorial and other grievances.
On another occasion, the National Defence University of Pakistan
invited me for a lecture on the bilateral relationship. We debated at the
high commission on whether to confine my speech for an army audience
to non-controversial areas like the small steps required to build trust or the
long-term peace dividends that were possible if we made the right choices
today. After much debate, we decided in favour of putting some hard facts
before the audience. My presentation argued that India’s instincts were
primarily economic and India’s relationship with its neighbours was focused
on providing security for the Indian economy to grow and for preserving
the economic gains already made. I explained to my audience that in the
current century, the sensitivity of our policymakers to acts of terrorism
appeared to have determined their choices on dialogue and détente. We
decided to put some of this down on slides and show them to the young
Pakistani military men and their guests who included foreigners.3 We put
together the actual numbers of the cross-border infiltrations over the years.
In presenting the narrative, I paused on this slide and emphasized that if
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 399

this number fell to zero, the sky was the limit when it came to India’s
relationship with Pakistan.
The feedback we received from the participants was positive. Some
said the speech had made them revise their views of the relationship,
some foreign participants at the NDU reported that even the Pakistani
participants had expressed surprise that they had never experienced such
a discussion in their public or private discourse.
But the speech did not go down too well with the authorities; it had
too much reality and not enough diplomacy. As a result, I was not invited
again to talk on India–Pakistan relations to either the military or civilian
bureaucracy. A couple of my speaking engagements were mysteriously
cancelled in Lahore and even in Karachi, citing scheduling issues. I was
in any case not doing media interviews, which often lapsed into hostile
inquisitions. Still, in private conversations, I kept trying to paint a real
portrait of India’s concerns.
It soon became clear to us that we needed to have these conversations
directly with the army and with those diplomats who were having regular
exchanges with the army on these issues. Our engagement with all elements
of Naya Pakistan (Imran Khan’s), the old (army, ISI, MOFA) and beyond
(civil society, diplomats) came under the rubric of ‘normal diplomatic
activity’. In a relationship where formal dialogue was absent, the high
commission became the primary vehicle of communication with Pakistan’s
establishment and people. We were soon having candid conversations with
multiple players that were willing to talk.
Under the broad policy direction of ‘no talks with terror’, no structured
dialogue with Pakistan was on in this period. India had signalled repeatedly
that its formal interactions with the Pakistanis would be kept to the bare
minimum until Pakistan renounced terrorism in word and in deed. But the
informal diplomatic conversations at the level of the high commissions never
stopped. They were supplemented by weekly operational conversations
between the two militaries (DGMOs) which mainly focused on managing
borders, and by scattered global conversations between intelligence agencies
in different world capitals. This web of interaction was something that
all those dealing with Pakistan were more or less aware of. But during
my time in Islamabad, I was visiting India almost every month to share
information and assessments, so that policymakers at home got a feel of
developments on the ground.
In the big picture, the Pakistan Army was at once India’s key interlocutor
and primary adversary. Analysts in India pointed out that the Pakistan
Army had three separate verticals to deal with three different domains:
the Strategic Plans Division (SPD) for nuclear weapons; the DGMO for
conventional warfare; and the Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) to run proxy
wars, leveraging armed militants through its directorates. The ISI also
400 ange r m anage m e nt

controlled the information warfare. What distinguished the Pakistani army

from normal armed forces was its robust engagement in a fourth domain—to
keep the domestic situation favourable for the army. So, the fourth vertical,
again run by the ISI, was its political arm. In 2018, it had added a new
tool in the fourth vertical—Imran Khan. This was the essence of Naya
Pakistan—a ‘hybrid’ regime with a prime minister under the army’s control.
Another strategic objective of the Pakistani army was increasingly
worrying Indian planners and analysts: its eagerness to gang up on India
along with China. ‘Interoperability’ with the Chinese was a key goal. The
Pakistani and Chinese armies had equipment and military exercises in
common, doctrines in common, and an adversary in common.
A Western military delegation once told us that the ISI chief had
admitted to them that they were using covert proxy means of dealing with
India, because all intelligence agencies did that, particularly in our tough
neighbourhood. Such a talking point would have been anathema for the
foreign office, which had a party line of stout denial.
On the lighter side, during my time in Islamabad, no conversation with
Imran Khan’s friends or foes was complete without being peppered with
some salacious gossip on the goings-on in Bani Gala, where Khan lived
with his third wife. Tales of a break-up with his wife and her departure
for Lahore were often followed by assertions that he would not ever leave
his soulmate. Stories would often emerge of the excessive use of white
powder, djinns that were fed red meat on the rooftop each day, several of
the prime minister’s inner circle friends being banished to the provincial
Punjab, and Khan, like a schoolboy, being caught ‘sexting’ with his young
lady ministers leading to sharp domestic strife.

QUIET CHATS
Over the next few months, we did maintain discreet contacts with Team
Imran although I had no further substantive conversations directly with
him. This was beyond the formal dialogue we continued to have with the
foreign secretary and the India team at the foreign office, who remained
our primary formal interlocutors, as indeed they had been for successive
high commissioners over the decades. I got to meet several of Imran Khan’s
friends, some ministers in his cabinet, and was able to have discreet,
deniable conversations with them.
One such interlocutor, a close friend of Khan’s, disarmingly honest
and committed to peace with India, was the one with whom I had several
late-night conversations. Naeemul Haque was a passionate politician from
Sindh, and had been one of the founder-members of the PTI. Ironically for
a peacenik, Haque had slapped a minister of the previous government on
live television and thrown water on another occasion at a Sindh politician,
much to the entertainment of TV audiences and watchers of viral clips. He
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 401

was formally a special assistant to the PM without portfolio, but worked

on several issues with Imran Khan, particularly on Afghanistan and India.
I discussed with Haque the possibility of peace, after we got past the
prevailing troubled times. He understood the emphasis India placed on
terrorism, on the destructive impact of cross-border infiltration. He was
also keen that the consulate in Karachi would reopen one day. He had no
romantic view on the Mumbai consulate and felt that Pakistan should not
insist on reclaiming Jinnah House but rent suitable property and open the
corresponding consulate. Haque would meet me intermittently, because he
was in chemotherapy for blood cancer. (Sadly, he passed away in 2019.)
It was useful to continue conversations on a discreet and informal
basis with Imran Khan’s team, and simultaneously with the army, because
it gave us the sense of where their positions converged or diverged. It
became increasingly clear to us that Khan’s team was mostly not in the
loop on India matters and blissfully ignorant of establishment thinking.
This was the experience of several diplomats who found the foreign office
frustratingly behind the curve while Rawalpindi and the army teams were
often refreshingly candid in admitting what Pakistan was up to. In contrast,
the foreign office was great at making a virtue of spinning out army-
approved talking points in mostly less than creative ways.
India cancelled the conversation between the two foreign ministers at
the UN in September 2018, in response to a surge in attacks in Kashmir.
Immediately after this news broke, I got a call from Tariq Aziz, the
veteran of the backchannel and former Musharraf aide. I invited him to
India House for a quiet conversation over dinner. Aziz, avuncular and
old worldly, remained a strong advocate for peace with India. He was
keen to work with me to do his bit for peace. He told me he had spent
a couple of hours with army chief, Bajwa, the previous night, discussing,
in particular, the India question. He had a few messages to convey to
me. He had reminded Bajwa of how cross-border terrorism had been
controlled in 2004 with the January joint statement between Vajpayee and
Musharraf. He said both he and Bajwa were concerned about the latest
setback to the relationship, the recently cancelled meeting between the
two foreign ministers in New York and were keen to calm things down.
My interlocutor said he was convinced Bajwa genuinely wanted peace
with India, ‘more than any army chief in the past’ and had said so multiple
times. In his assessment, the army was willing to put a stop to cross-
border infiltration. DG ISI Naveed Mukhtar was to retire in October and
would be replaced by another general more aligned to Bajwa’s thinking.
(In October 2018, Lieutenant General Asim Munir took over as DG ISI.)
This would be an opportunity to try and work things out. The Kashmir
desk in the agency would be overhauled and cross-border infiltration would
gradually come down.
402 ange r m anage m e nt

Aziz was sending a specific peace message to India, suggesting that

the Pakistan Army would make all efforts to stop cross-border infiltration
and requesting the start of some kind of political dialogue. I told him I
would happily carry such an encouraging message of peace to India but
pointed out that words had little meaning for India these days, we needed
to see action on the ground. I explained India’s concerns at length—that
we needed to see infiltration numbers fall, that we needed some action on
extremists in safe havens as a demonstration of good faith.
I had argued that India would be ready for a conversation of some
kind whenever the infiltration numbers went down. Aziz sighed and told
me that it was always the ‘Kashmir files’ that were pulled out, whenever
we spoke of a breakthrough.
My meeting with Aziz took place around the time we had opened
channels of communication with the ISI, which had begun assuring us
that cross-border terrorism and cross-border infiltration would end. We
said we would wait for the numbers before we could make a judgement.

TALKING OF GANDHI
For the launch of Mahatma Gandhi’s 150th birth anniversary celebrations
on 2 October 2018, EAM Minister Sushma Swaraj, on PM Modi’s
suggestion, promoted a quirky idea of inviting singers from all across the
world to render their version of ‘Vaishnav jan’, Gandhi’s favourite bhajan,
in Gujarati. All heads of missions were advised to explore finding global
artists who would be willing to be part of this project. This presented us
with a quandary in Pakistan. When the relationship was plunging low,
would we even find a Pakistani artist willing to stick out their neck and
sing a song for India? After much deliberation, we decided to approach
Shafqat Amanat Ali, a singer popular on both sides of the border. Ali
had sung for us for the Republic Day of 2018, soon after my arrival in
Pakistan, where I had decided to add some oomph to our reception by
inviting an iconic Pakistani singer for a brief performance.
Ali sounded nervous when we approached him for the project. We
assured him that this was a global and apolitical attempt to celebrate
Gandhi’s legacy of humanitarian peace and nothing more. To our great
relief, Ali agreed to try to sing the bhajan even though he knew no Gujarati.
When we received the WhatsApp forward of Ali’s version, I was astounded
at the quality and depth of his performance. Ali is from the Patiala Gharana
(ninth generation), and already had a huge following in India for his
prowess in folk and Sufi music. He’d become a bigger star on both sides
of the border and particularly in Pakistan, after his foray into Bollywood,
having sung superhits like ‘Mitwa’. Clearly, while he knew no Gujarati,
Ali had put his soul into an extraordinary rendition.
We released this tribute to Mahatma Gandhi at a special ceremony
 naya pakis tan, ol d t r i c k s 403

on 2 October, where we invited a number of Pakistanis and diplomats.

This song floored the audience. The invited Pakistani ‘Gandhians’ included
the Pashtun leader of the Awami National Party, Afrasiab Khattak, whose
party was linked to Gandhi’s friend, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan.
Ali’s rendition of the Gandhi bhajan got a good deal of traction on
social media and was, at that time, not really censored. (Ali’s fears came
true soon enough. Payback time for the singer came on the first anniversary
of the Article 370 revocation in August 2020. Ali produced and released
an ISPR video, wearing black, on the atrocities against Kashmiris in India,
with grim music and deathly greys. This potentially damaged his future
Bollywood career.)4

MUSICAL DIPLOMACY
With traditional diplomacy stalled, we were looking for options to speak a
common cultural language to engage with Pakistan’s elites. For Dussehra,
Diwali, and several other festivals, music became an idiom of our
celebrations in Pakistan. My few attempts to get troupes from the Indian
Council of Cultural Relations, or chefs for culinary diplomacy fell through,
as soon as it became clear that that even if India agreed to send any such
group, they would never get visas from Pakistan.
With Bollywood in Mumbai the epicentre of the regional entertainment
industry, Pakistani artistes had used it as a launch pad when times were
good. But the cinema connection had in recent times been severed. The
Pakistani icon Fawad Khan had starred in a Bollywood movie in 2016.
The Shiv Sena had stalled the release. ‘When I shot my film Ae Dil Hai
Mushkil last year (2015),’ producer Karan Johar said, the ‘climate was
completely different.’ The film was allowed a release only after Johar
swore: ‘I will not engage with talent from the neighbouring country given
the circumstances.’5 Cultural diplomacy had been squeezed out from 2016,
the summer of violence in Kashmir.
The next best thing for us in Islamabad was to invite to our social
events upcoming Pakistani artists, who were mostly of the same level of
musical competence as their Indian counterparts, and underlined the cultural
intimacy between our countries. Since the big names of Lahore would
perhaps be nervous to walk into the Indian high commission, we decided to
scout for newer talent who would play music familiar to both Indians and
Pakistanis, and with their lower profiles not necessarily come to the notice
of or upset Pakistani minders. On one occasion, our high commission’s
dentist Dr Abrar brought along a friend who regaled the audience with
Mohammed Rafi and Kishore Kumar songs. For another event, a young
singer from Lahore belted out songs and ghazals where both Indian and
Pakistani guests were mouthing the lyrics. Pakistani music always touched
special chords with the audiences at India House in Islamabad, because
404 ange r m anage m e nt

it was essentially subcontinental music. I would invariably introduce the

artist, mentioning that while the relationship did not permit the exchange
of cultural troupes, we did inhabit the same cultural space and could
enjoy the same music.
It was this paradox that generations of Indian diplomats had
experienced in Pakistan. The strong hostility and difficult conversations of
the day would often melt away in the evenings, when layers of animosity
would peel away and reveal people sharing a unique cultural intimacy.
 33

PULWAMA

O n Valentine’s Day in February 2019, a convoy of buses carrying

paramilitary personnel snaked its way from Jammu to Srinagar on
National Highway 44. Just short of Lethapora, a little town in Pulwama
district, a loud explosion drowned out the quiet hum of the cavalcade. It
was 3.15 p.m. A bloodied Kashmir once again became the central focus of
India’s attention and of the bilateral relationship.
When we saw the first ticker reports of this explosion at the Indian
high commission in Islamabad, we assumed we were seeing one more of
those terrible terrorist attacks in the violence-ridden state, with perhaps a
handful injured or dead. As the story developed, and news started trickling
in of a large number of deaths of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF)
personnel, it became clear that this was bigger than the standard grenade
attack that we had got used to in Kashmir. We watched alarmed as reports
confirmed that some forty security men had perished in the explosion.
Soon, a video emerged of the Jaish-e-Mohammed claiming credit for
the explosion, but attributing it to a local Kashmiri youth. The chief of
the outfit, Maulana Masood Azhar, was known to reside in Bahawalpur, in
Pakistan’s south Punjab, in the protective embrace of the ISI. Chatter soon
emerged of celebrations and distribution of sweets by Azhar and his Jaish
henchmen, making it abundantly clear where the attack had been planned.
This attack went against the grain of the overall relationship that
had seemed headed into positive territory. We hadn’t expected a major
breakthrough but no major quarrel either, a sort of ‘unpeace’, as a new
government settled down in Pakistan and as India got absorbed deeper
into an election campaign.
But this was big, the biggest terror attack since the one in Uri in 2016,
the worst during my tenure in Pakistan. We stayed in office late, bracing
ourselves for the diplomatic tremors of the explosion. In Pakistan, matters
seemed superficially calm. The media reporting was factual, and PM Imran
Khan was preoccupied with the visit of the Saudi crown prince Mohammed
bin Salman (MBS) whom he was personally driving around Islamabad.
An emergency cabinet meeting was held the next morning in New
Delhi. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale called me minutes after it ended.
My orders were to report immediately for consultations in New Delhi—if
possible, by that night. The Pakistan high commissioner had been called in
for a sharp démarche in South Block, pointing out that the killing of forty
personnel had the clear imprint of a group protected by Pakistan. I had
406 ange r m anage m e nt

instructions not to be available for any démarche by the Pakistani side.

Speaking after the meeting, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley reflected
public anger when he said they will ensure that ‘those who have committed
and actively supported this heinous act are made to pay a heavy price’.
Jaitley added that the MEA would launch ‘all possible diplomatic steps that
have to be taken to ensure complete isolation of Pakistan’.1 Home Minister
Rajnath Singh reached Srinagar and PM Modi declared the ‘sacrifices of
our brave security personnel shall not go in vain’.2 The condemnation had
been accompanied by immediate steps to halt trade. India withdrew the
most favoured nation trading partner status given to Pakistan in 1996.
Amidst the flurry of activity at the high commission the day after, we
tried to assess why a terror outfit would have carried out such an attack,
or the ISI allowed such a bloody blow in Kashmir. There could have been
several motives. The ISI could have made the not unfamiliar assumption
that the valley was smouldering with anger and a terror attack attributed
to an indigenous movement could ensure both international reaction and
local support for the Kashmiri struggle. An attack could weaken the ruling
BJP in the upcoming general elections, assuming that India would have
limited resolve to retaliate. Pakistan may have learnt the wrong lessons
from Afghanistan—some radical elements were already crowing that one
strategic asset, the Taliban, had brought the US to its knees in Afghanistan;
similarly, the Jaish might have thought it could wear out and defeat the
Indian ‘occupation forces’ in Kashmir. The powers that be in Pakistan may
have calculated that as India had committed itself to improving relations
with Pakistan through the Kartarpur corridor, it would perhaps be reluctant
to retaliate for an act of terrorism. There was also the traditional trope that
the India threat towards Pakistan would assure the beleaguered Pakistan
Army some extra budgetary support, if India retaliated after the attack.
Or perhaps the Pakistan Army might have wanted to embarrass a civilian
government (albeit one supported by it) foolish enough to contemplate
better relations with India.
On the record, and for public consumption, the discourse within
Pakistan was one of denial and injured innocence. Why would Pakistan
at this point invite trouble when they had enough trouble with the FATF3
breathing down their backs and a Saudi prince visiting? It was a knee-jerk
reaction on India’s part to blame Pakistan. This was the work of a local
Kashmiri freedom fighter. The army-leaning media was soon suggesting
that India had launched a ‘false-flag operation’ to frame Pakistan, possibly
to bring Pakistan into its election narrative, so that a subsequent military
exchange would benefit the ruling dispensation.4
Even as I asked for my tickets to be booked for New Delhi on 15
February, I received the expected summons from the foreign secretary of
Pakistan, Tehmina Janjua, to show up for an ‘important meeting’.
 p ulwam a 407

The latest diplomatic game had begun.

I sent a response that I would not be available for a conversation
since I was en route for consultations in India; my deputy and acting
high commissioner, Gaurav Ahluwalia, was available for any conversation.
This did not go down too well with the foreign office. They knew only
too well, from the watchers outside my office, that I was still ensconced in
the chancery. I left work immediately. I would pick up a bag from home
and reach the airport early, to be firmly not available to my hosts for a
démarche. I asked my deputy to do the honours at the foreign office, and
jumped on a flight to Dubai.

TERROR DIPLOMACY
Sleepless from overnight flights the next morning, I reached South Block
for a series of meetings, trying my best to sidestep media stakeouts. To the
amusement of my colleagues, I was thirty minutes late for my first meeting.
I had forgotten to switch from Pakistani to Indian time.
In Delhi, after meeting with various agencies, I had revised some of
my initial assessments. Pulwama was in all likelihood a small operation
gone out of control, where the suicide bomber lucked out in getting an
unprotected target in a convoy of vehicles. The general assessment of
several security experts was that this was an operation that had become
bigger than was originally planned: even Pakistan’s agencies had been
caught flat-footed by the Pulwama action—some said, they were internally
trying to blame the Jaish for overstepping the brief and not executing
it professionally enough. Investigations would confirm a year later that
it was a meticulously planned operation of the JeM that had met with
unexpected success.
When I got to South Block, walking past a battery of cameras, I
joined meetings discussing options. Particularly diplomatic options. The
steps taken by the Cabinet Committee on Security had included withdrawal
of the most favoured nation treatment, a customs duty of 200 percent on
Pakistani goods (that would effectively end imports), and a halt to trade
at the Wagah border. But this was just the beginning.
A host of other ideas were mooted, to scale down our engagement with
Pakistan. Stop the Samjhauta Express, stop the Lahore bus service, defer
the BSF border talks, defer the Kartarpur corridor talks. And then there
were the familiar proposals being bandied about in policy debates and by
pundits writing in the media. Stop issuing visas. Stop honouring SAARC
visas. Cease cross-LoC trade. Disallow travel of Indians to Pakistan. Suspend
flights between the countries. How hard it was to build trust, I thought.
And how easy to break it. All the confidence-building measures planned,
negotiated, and implemented over years in this difficult relationship, could
be slashed off on a yellow notepad in minutes.
408 ange r m anage m e nt

South Block was in crisis management mode and I was part of the
crisis team, trying to guess Pakistan’s next moves. I was in constant touch
with my team in Islamabad that was led by Gaurav Ahluwalia who was
reporting continuously on internal developments within Pakistan.
An intense phase of diplomacy began, for sharing India’s outrage with
the world. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale’s day included briefings for
envoys of twenty-five countries—including the UN P5—the US, UK, China,
Russia, and France—on 15 February, to talk of the role of the Jaish in
the attack and on the use of terrorism as an instrument of Pakistan’s
state policy. Apart from the P5, Gokhale met diplomats of key countries
in Europe and Asia, such as Germany, South Korea, Japan, and Australia.
Indian envoys were being asked to repeat these messages in global capitals.
Countries from across the globe were condemning the incident and sharing
India’s outrage.
Pakistan was soon reacting to this diplomatic offensive. The foreign
office had summoned India’s acting high commissioner in Islamabad to
reject ‘baseless allegations made by India’. Prime Minister Imran Khan
waited a few days before reacting, using the army’s talking points of stout
denial of any Pakistani involvement. In an address on 19 February, he
claimed: ‘This is Naya Pakistan.... If you have any actionable intelligence
that a Pakistani is involved, give it to us. I guarantee you that we will
take action...’5
In South Block, we had drafted a comprehensive response, aimed at
Pakistan, but also reminding the world that it was ‘a well-known fact that
Jaish-e-Mohammad and its leader Masood Azhar are based in Pakistan’.
Also, proof had been provided to Pakistan on the Mumbai attacks, but ‘the
case has not progressed for the last more than 10 years’. The international
community was well acquainted with the fact, India said, ‘that Pakistan is the
nerve center of terrorism.’ The MEA statement also called out the insinuation
that ‘India’s response to the terrorist attack is determined by the forthcoming
General Election. India rejects this false allegation. India’s democracy is a
model for the world which Pakistan would never understand.’6
As the Saudi crown prince and prime minister MBS travelled from
Pakistan to India on 21 February, PM Modi shared India’s anguish with
him. He added publicly that punishing terrorists and their supporters was
important and that Saudi Arabia and India ‘have shared views about this.’
India decided to prepare a dossier of evidence on how Pakistan and the
JeM were complicit in the terrorist attack in Pulwama. UN diplomacy was
activated, based on the dossier, through four of the UN Security Council
members, i.e., the P5 minus China. France was prepared to propose a UN
resolution to corner the JeM and Pakistan. Both the UN and the EU were
being approached to designate Azhar a terrorist, already so designated
by the US in 2001. Even Pakistan had in the past indicted Azhar when
 p ulwam a 409

the pressure had become unbearable in the Musharraf years; Azhar had
technically been detained for a year in 2002. India was now also advocating
Financial Action Task Force (FATF)-like stiff anti-terror financing conditions
on Pakistan at the IMF, where Imran Khan’s government was negotiating
a critical loan to save its sinking economy.
India suggested to Japan that it might consider postponing the visit by
Foreign Minister Qureshi, or if he did show up, highlighting the terrorism
issue. Qureshi eventually had to cancel his Tokyo trip. The idea was to
work towards calling out Pakistan globally as a terrorist sponsor, rather
than just ‘isolating’ it, as was the initial rhetoric. Indian diplomats were
suggesting to countries engaging with Pakistan to put the issue of terrorism
on top of the agenda. On the Indus Water Treaty, while the familiar instinct
was to abrogate it, the decision that was finally taken was that no data
would be given to Pakistan beyond the treaty requirements. Forty-eight
agreements were now being examined for possible suspension. Proposed
confidence-building talks between the BSF and Coast Guard were called off.
Pakistan’s military establishment seemed jittery about the impending
Indian action. They decided on some nominal moves against the JeM to
fend off the pressure. They were worried Azhar would be picked up or
targeted by an Indian or US agency. He had been moved from Bahawalpur
to Islamabad, deeper into the protective embrace of the Pak ISI.
I continued my briefings of the CCS and called separately on each of
its members, including the PM and the NSA; each seemed keen to hear
my assessments at this time, particularly my perspectives on Pakistan’s
internal conditions. I did share an assessment with the political leadership
that the diplomatic space for manoeuvre was limited and that other options
needed to be considered, particularly in the context of the surgical strikes
of 2016. Pakistan was bracing itself for such action by India but did not
know when and in what shape it would come. The PM asked me when I
was scheduled to leave for Islamabad; I told him it would be in a week
or so. He listened to me attentively, asked questions, but did not let on
what India was contemplating by way of a response to the terror attack.
India’s security analysts had been pointing out that the Jaish had
become the preferred ‘sword arm’ of the army, instead of the LeT, in the
years following the 2008 Mumbai attacks. The degree of damage that the
Pulwama operation had inflicted was unexpected for the Pakistan Army.
An assessment I heard was that Bajwa may not have known about the
specific operation, but it could have been cleared by the DG ISI.
India’s army chief General Bipin Rawat told me that the retaliatory
attack that India was planning would be much bigger than the surgical
strikes of 2016 and it was coming soon enough. I decided not to share
this information in the other part of South Block, thinking it best that
the diplomatic planning went ahead without specific knowledge of ‘kinetic’
410 ange r m anage m e nt

operations. Rawat agreed with the assessment that his Pakistani counterpart,
Bajwa, was broadly interested in peace with India, but often let the ISI set
the broad directions of policy. He felt that the Pakistani corps commanders
were not too happy with the Bajwa doctrine, since it seemed to be diluting
traditional postures and that affected morale.
In Kashmir, a crackdown had begun on local terrorists. More than eighty
‘overground supporters’ of the Jaish had been arrested. Home Minister
Rajnath Singh had travelled to Jammu and Kashmir. The protocols of road
movements of security personnel were being looked at very carefully. The
investigation of the Pulwama terror case had been handed over to the
National Investigation Agency (NIA). Dossiers were under preparation on
Adil Dhar and on Kamran (an alias for Abdul Rasheed Ghazi, the Pakistani
national believed to be the mastermind behind the Pulwama attack; Ghazi
was killed in an army operation on 18 February 2019) and the idea was
to share these with the MEA for onward transmission to friendly countries
looking for evidence. On the political side, an all-party meeting had been
called and had passed a resolution.
India’s diplomatic outreach had intensified. The P4 (P5 minus China)
led by France was approaching the UN sanctions committee once again
for the listing of Azhar.7 India was in touch with the fifteen members of
the ‘terror sanctions committee’ which happened to be composed of the
fifteen UNSC members. Pakistan’s global credibility was falling again.
India was also revisiting the proposed CCIT, the UN’s deadlocked
Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism, to see if its
diplomacy could move the needle on that ponderous process that remained
deadlocked because of its inability to settle on a common definition of
terrorism. The Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) ordinance
was also discussed to give it teeth for sanctions against individuals and
particularly their travel and asset freezes.
But neither the bilateral nor global diplomatic measures would be
enough. The matter had gone beyond the pale of diplomacy, of words. It
was time for action. A cost had to be imposed on the Pakistan establishment
for allowing the Pulwama attack. It was increasingly clear that India had
rolled out measures that were only a faint expression of its outrage at
the death of forty soldiers. Much more needed to be done to give a direct
message to the terrorists and to the Pakistan Army. Also, the world was
sharing India’s outrage at this fresh act of terrorism and would support
India for any legitimate and proportionate response.
The next CCS member I briefed was Finance Minister Arun Jaitley—
whose health was slipping, but whose mind remained sharp. In my long
chat with the minister I knew well from earlier times, Jaitley asked why
Imran Khan the cricketer was unable to deliver better and prevent this
madness from continuing. He agreed with me that my presence in Pakistan
 p ulwam a 411

would be useful in adding persuasion to everything else we were doing

for Pakistan to change its behaviour. I called on Home Minister Rajnath
Singh right after his visit to Kashmir. He shared his assessment of a security
establishment angered by yet another act of terror. We discussed a long-
term approach to persuade Pakistan to change its behaviour.
The last of the CCS members I caught up with, on 25 February, was
EAM Sushma Swaraj. I briefed her on developments within Pakistan and
on my conversations with the prime minister, the NSA, and her other
CCS colleagues, on the palpable anger in the security establishment. We
discussed the long press conference of the ISPR, which revealed the mind
of Pakistan’s military.
On 22 February, DG ISPR Ghafoor had given a rambling, somewhat
comical press conference, brazenly recrafting history as he went along. He
blamed India for imposing wars on Pakistan in 1948, 1965, and 1971; and
for capturing territory in 1984. He had skipped any reference to the 1999
Kargil conflict but argued that all terror incidents—Mumbai, Pathankot,
Pulwama—had been staged by India to distract attention from Pakistan’s
growth. Pakistan, he insisted, was not isolated. He ended on a high note
of military bluster: ‘We will never be surprised by you...we will dominate
the escalation ladder...don’t mess with Pakistan...we can respond to a
full-spectrum threat.’8
I also reminded EAM Swaraj of the presence of a high-profile Pakistani
citizen in India: this was Ramesh Vankwani, a Hindu member of parliament
and rights activist from Pakistan, who was positioning himself as a possible
mediator in India–Pakistan affairs. Vankwani had arrived as part of India’s
global ‘Kumbh diplomacy’ for the Prayagraj ardh Kumbh9, that was on from
mid-January to early March, with some 50 million people converging on
the banks of the Ganga for the ‘world’s largest peaceful gathering’. India
had invited representatives from some 188 countries, including Pakistan,
which had nominated the genial politician from Sindh, who had posed
for pictures with PM Modi and EAM Swaraj in the midst of the bilateral
tensions. Vankwani was among the guests the PM had addressed at the
Kumbh global participation event on 23 February, where Modi spoke
of the ‘Kumbh of democracy’ that was about to start—the forthcoming
general election in India.
I repeated to the external affairs minister two broad assessments I had
shared with the political leadership. The first was that India’s diplomatic
options in dealing with a terrorist attack of this nature were limited. The
second, that while our diplomatic strategy to expose Pakistan’s connection
with this terrorist act had been successful, Pakistan would not be globally
‘isolated’ but must be globally identified as a perpetrator of unacceptable
levels of terrorism. She gave me the impression that some tough action
was round the corner, after which, I should expect the role of diplomacy
412 ange r m anage m e nt

to expand. I would need to return to Pakistan to resume conversations

at that end.
Meanwhile, Pakistan, under strong global pressure, was showing frenetic
activity in Punjab, particulary in Bahawalpur, where the government was
pointedly taking over madrasas and facilities of the Jaish.
India’s strong diplomatic offensive was continuing on 25 February, ten
days after Pulwama. On the agenda was the designation of Masood Azhar as
a terrorist by the UN sanctions committee and in the EU ‘autonomous terror
list’. The first to receive the Pulwama dossier was the French ambassador,
in recognition of France’s strong support. India was requesting the listing
at the UN, based on the evidence in the dossier. The NSA had already
spoken to his French counterpart. The EU ambassador was called in for
discussions on the procedure for the listing of Azhar as a terrorist and
similarly designating select individuals and entities. Members of the FATF
were being sensitized, given that the body now had more teeth to put
Pakistan on grey and black lists to ensure compliance. I had managed
to persuade my colleagues to share this dossier, as an experiment, with
Pakistan as well, to test the resolve of ‘Naya Pakistan’ in tackling the
snakes in its backyard.

AIR STRIKES
I woke up early in Delhi on 26 February, to social media chatter about
bombs being dropped by India in Pakistan. One of my colleagues in
Islamabad had picked up a tweet by the DG ISPR at 5.35 a.m. that said
that an Indian fighter plane had dropped a bomb after entering Pakistani
airspace.
It was going to be a long day.
I followed the action on Twitter, and the speculation on our media
channels, before making it to South Block for our morning crisis meeting.
The meeting was called off, so I sat with the foreign secretary in his corner
room as he prepared for the cabinet meeting at 9.30 a.m.
The public speculation mounted. The cabinet meeting dragged on as
the stories on national and international media got wilder. We were finally
told that the foreign secretary would make a statement. He read it out to
the media at 11.30 a.m, some six hours after the news first broke, giving
enough time for multiple fanciful narratives to float into the public realm.
In an intelligence-led operation in the early hours of today, India
struck the biggest training camp of JeM in Balakot. In this operation,
a very large number of JeM terrorists, trainers, senior commanders
and groups of jihadis who were being trained for fidayeen action
were eliminated…this non-military pre-emptive action was specifically
targeted at the JeM camp…We expect that Pakistan lives up to its
 p ulwam a 413

public commitment and takes follow up actions to dismantle all JeM

and other camps and hold the terrorists accountable for the actions.10
Pakistan’s denial came quickly. It ‘strongly rejected’ India’s claim of
targeting a terrorist camp even as it vowed to respond at a time and place
of its choosing to this ‘uncalled for aggression’. The significance of the
operation that morning was not lost on Pakistan. While Pakistan’s army
had flatly denied that any surgical strikes had taken place in 2016, the air
strikes of 2019 were not deniable. The Pakistan Air Force was embarrassed
that it could not even scramble an air defence against the Indian warplanes
that had intruded deep into Pakistan’s territory, and struck 50 kilometres
from the LoC in the province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, not far from
Abbottabad where the al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed by
US airborne forces. This was the first time since 1971 that Indian fighter
aircraft had crossed over the international border to drop bombs. The
panic was rising. At a special meeting of the National Security Committee,
PM Imran Khan asked the armed forces and the people of Pakistan to
remain ‘prepared for all eventualities’.
Reports later confirmed that twelve French-made Mirages of the Indian
Air Force took off from multiple air bases, crossed over into Pakistani
air space, and carried out the attacks. At around 3.30 a.m., the aircraft
dropped five ‘Spice 2000’ bombs, out of which four penetrated the rooftops
of the building in which more than 300 terrorists were housed. The IAF
jets returned to their bases unchallenged, spending all of four minutes in
Pakistani airspace. Later in the day, I met with the new DGMO in South
Block for a pre-scheduled appointment. He was one of the handful of
people in the know of the operation at Balakot. He was also the designated
point for ‘mil-mil’ army-level coordination and for working the hotline
between the two armies established in 2003. He or his deputy, the DMO, a
brigadier, would have a chat every Tuesday with their Pakistani counterpart.
We discussed the significance of the operation. He pointed out that the
coordination between the DGMOs would continue; a call was scheduled
later that night, since 26 February happened to be a Tuesday.
The strikes also unleashed frenetic political and diplomatic activity
in both countries. An all-party meeting was called by the government to
share details of the morning’s operation. EAM Sushma Swaraj called me
later that afternoon to ask about the morale of our team in Islamabad.
‘How’s the josh?’
‘High, ma’am!’
This was a nod to the movie Uri: The Surgical Strike, a slick thriller
based on the events following the Uri terror attack of 2016. In a comical
twist, Swaraj had been under the impression that I was already back in
Islamabad. I was, in fact, still in Delhi, but in constant touch with our
414 ange r m anage m e nt

team in Islamabad. Her office called back to ask me to join her team
for an all-party meeting scheduled that evening. The meeting, chaired by
Swaraj and attended by the home and finance ministers, was a follow-up
to another such meeting that Home Minister Rajnath Singh had chaired
on 16 February to brief all political parties on the Pulwama attack.
The EAM told the political party leaders that the morning operation
was a pre-emptive move in the context of what had happened in Pulwama
on 14 February. On the global diplomatic effort, the EAM revealed that
she had been in touch with US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, apart
from her counterparts from Afghanistan, Singapore, as also Russia and
China, during the week.11
The EAM asked me to respond to a question from an Opposition
leader on how Pakistan could be expected to react to the air strike. I
described the goings-on in Pakistan during the day and the meeting of
the nuclear command authority. This was signalling by Pakistan, but the
nuclear sabre-rattling was only a distraction. I said it was hard to predict
how soon a ‘response’ would come but it would inevitably come, to give
the army and the people of Pakistan a notion of a ‘fitting response’, if
not of victory.
In Pakistan, the mood was of anger giving way to panic. It was
comparable in many ways to the situation after India had exploded the
nuclear device in May 1998. To most serious observers, it was a question
of when, and not if, Pakistan would retaliate, to give its army and its
people a notion of victory—this had been of great importance to Pakistan
through various skirmishes and battles with India. The DG ISPR had
pointedly mentioned in his press conference that Pakistan would escalate
the conflict and ‘surprise’ India. The meeting of Pakistan’s nuclear command
authority and the nuclear sabre-rattling was not lost in the din, even though
Ghafoor repeated that to even talk of nuclear weapons was ‘insane’. It
was the same old attempt to demonstrate that the nuclear threshold was
lower than it actually was.
In Islamabad, India received another démarche from Pakistan’s acting
foreign secretary, alleging that India had violated Pakistan’s sovereignty and
territorial integrity. Pakistan was also asking for ‘actionable intelligence’
from India on the Pulwama attack and on the alleged involvement of
Pakistani nationals. No terrorist camps existed, they insisted, at the location
that was attacked by the Indian Air Force. No further violation of Pakistan’s
territory would be tolerated. The peace process had been jeopardized by
India. The Pakistan propaganda machine went a step further to allege that
India’s actions were part of electioneering by the current government and
Pakistan was being dragged in for electoral gains.
Bilaterally, India reiterated the need to take credible and urgent action
against the JeM and asked Pakistan to avoid ceasefire violations in the
 p ulwam a 415

spirit of the 2003 agreement. India said that the meeting of the nuclear
command authority in Pakistan was an act of provocation, not behaviour
expected of a country that claimed to be a responsible nuclear power. India
asked for additional armed guards for its high commission in Pakistan.
Staff was asked to remain in the bubble of the diplomatic conclave.
On the morning of Wednesday, 27 February, I joined a defence–foreign
office coordination meeting between the DGMO and the foreign secretary,
reviewing the reaction from Pakistan on the border after the Balakot air
strikes. It was clear that Pakistan’s ‘precautionary deployment’ posture
before the Balakot air strikes had moved by the evening of Tuesday, 26
February, to an aggressive one on the Line of Control. Pakistan was firing
along the LoC south of the Pir Panjal range and the Indian side was
watching their behaviour in a defensive posture. At around 5 a.m., on
Wednesday, 27 February, Pakistan had escalated artillery fire across the
border at the Uri sector of the LoC. It was soon obvious that the border
fire was only a diversion.
At around 9.30 a.m., on 27 February, five Pakistani aircraft, of a
‘package’ of twenty-four, crossed over to a depth of around 4 kilometres
across the LoC, through the Nowshera and Poonch sectors. They dropped
their munitions near military targets (Krishna Ghati, Hamirpur, Gambhir,
and at the Narayan ammunition dump). They also tried to mount an
incursion into Rajasthan, around Anupgarh, possibly a decoy, but the
Indian Air Force scrambled warplanes in pursuit and the Pakistan Air
Force did no damage.
Early reports suggested that India had lost an aircraft in the melee
and so had Pakistan. India’s official statement finally came around 3.15
p.m., after the Indian Air Force had done a proper stocktaking exercise.
It revealed that some twenty-four Pakistani aircraft had come in, were
engaged by Indian aircraft, including a MiG-21 bison, which had targeted a
Pakistani F-16, but was itself hit in the operation. India was confirming that
the Pakistan Air Force had violated the LoC and entered Indian airspace.
While Pakistani airspace had been shut since the Balakot air strikes, India
shut its airspace for several hours after the air skirmish, but reopened it
later in the day, signalling an end to air hostilities.
The fog of war was made denser by multiple ‘expert’ comments and
visuals on social media. A host of claims, denials, and allegations flew thick
and fast. Eyewitnesses on the ground and Pakistan’s military spokesman
initially claimed that two planes had been shot down and three pilots
were spotted descending with parachutes. By some accounts, a Pakistani
pilot downed in his own territory was fatally wounded by locals mistaking
him for an Indian pilot. Pakistan stoutly denied the claim that any US-
supplied F-16 aircraft were used in the operation, much less downed.
Indian officials rejected Pakistani claims of shooting down a Russia-made
416 ange r m anage m e nt

Su-30MKI. But there was no denying the significance of India’s strategic

paradigm shift—of using hard power for pre-emptive or punitive strikes
against terrorists sheltered by Pakistan.

ABHINANDAN
Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman flew the MiG-21 bison that
was part of the air defence sortie scrambled to intercept Pakistani aircraft
on the morning of 27 February. In the ensuing aerial dogfight, his aircraft
was struck by a missile and crashed, but Varthaman safely ejected, to
descend into a village in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, some 7 kilometres
from the LoC. Varthaman was initially captured and assaulted by locals
before army soldiers took him into custody. Soon, Varthaman became for
the Indian public both a symbol of heroism—having engaged an enemy
aircraft—and the human cost of the skirmish. He also became the lightning
rod for the diplomatic action of the next few days and its primary focus.
India’s demands for Pakistan were clear. Pakistan had retaliated against
India’s pre-emptive counterterrorism action. It had responded by attacking
military targets. It had captured an Indian pilot and violated the Geneva
Conventions. India would expect the pilot not to come to any harm.
Pakistan should exercise restraint and responsibility; any provocation along
the LoC would not be tolerated.
India had activated multiple diplomatic channels to deal with the crisis.
Pakistan on its part was trying to drag the matter to the UN, as an issue
that threatened regional peace and stability. Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale
in Delhi had emphasized to the US and UK that any attempt by Pakistan
to escalate the situation further or to cause harm to Varthaman would
lead to an escalation by India; raising this issue at the UNSC instead of
resolving the issue of terror could also lead to an escalated response from
India. Other channels were in play to send similar messages to countries
with influence over Pakistan, particularly the UAE and Saudi Arabia.
The US ambassador to India, Ken Juster, and UK envoy, Dominic
Asquith, worked with their counterparts in Islamabad, Paul Jones, and
Tom Drew, to impress upon Pakistani interlocutors that India was serious.
Frenetic diplomatic action was unfolding in Pakistan. India’s hard messages
were being conveyed both in the diplomatic bubble of Islamabad and at
general headquarters, Rawalpindi. The diplomats of the P5 in particular
had been called in by the foreign office ‘thrice in rapid succession’ after 26
February, most of the time separately. To the diplomats, Pakistan appeared
genuinely spooked by the prospects of an escalation in the conflict. At
the same time, Pakistani officials, as also ISI officers, were insisting that
they had no direct role in the Pulwama attack. It had been claimed by
the JeM, which was based in Pakistan, but had no connection with the
army or with Bajwa personally.12
 p ulwam a 417

Pakistan’s public and private talking points included the default position
that the Pulwama attacker was a local Kashmiri, the video of the JeM
owning responsibility was suspect, the weapons shown in the video were
not Pakistani, and that the flag displayed in the video did not belong to
the JeM. There was ‘considerable pushback’ by the US, UK, and France to
the Pakistani narrative, in their discussions with the DG ISI Asim Munir
and Foreign Secretary Tehmina Janjua. They pointed out to Pakistan that
its narrative was weak. One, the JeM had already undeniably claimed
responsibility for Pulwama. Two, the Jaish chief Masood Azhar was
undeniably in Pakistani territory. Three, the video of the claim may have
been edited, but did not suggest the Jaish did not claim the attack. Four,
the markings on the weapons did not matter, since any sort of weapons
could be bought, even within the arms markets of Pakistan. Five, the flag
of Jaish may not be the original one but could have belonged to some
splinter group.
The Western diplomats were pointing out in private conversations
that the connection between Pakistan and the terror attack was obvious.
Pakistan also tried to make the argument that this may have been a ‘false-
flag operation’ connected to Indian elections. The British high commissioner
and the US ambassador both advised their interlocutors to not even go
down that route. This was a familiar denial practised by Pakistan through
this century, whether it was for 9/11 or Mumbai or Pathankot or Uri,
and was no longer credible.
At 4 p.m. on 27 February, the day after India’s air strikes at Balakot,
the US, UK, and French ambassadors were closeted at the US embassy
in Islamabad to discuss the crisis. During their consultations, their offices
called to say that the foreign office was requesting them to show up for
yet another meeting with the Pakistan foreign secretary at 5 p.m. While
the conference was in progress, and they were discussing India’s asks,
Foreign Secretary Janjua paused the conversation at 5.45 p.m. to read out
a message she had just received from the army, saying that nine missiles
from India had been pointed towards Pakistan, to be launched any time
that day. Also, India’s navy had taken on an aggressive, threatening posture.
The foreign secretary requested the envoys to report this intelligence to
their capitals and ask India not to escalate the situation. The diplomats
promptly reported these developments, leading to a flurry of diplomatic
activity in Islamabad, P5 capitals, and in New Delhi that night. One of
them recommended to her that Pakistan should convey its concerns directly
to India. (A P5 diplomat later reconstructed these events for my benefit.)
Later in the evening, the DG for South Asia, Mohammad Faisal,
summoned India’s acting high commissioner, Ahluwalia, for a démarche.
After condemning the ‘unprovoked ceasefire violations by the Indian
occupation forces along the Line of Control’ a ruffled Faisal said that
418 ange r m anage m e nt

Pakistan had credible information on nine missiles India had prepared to

launch into Pakistani territory. India was asked to desist, since this was an
unprecedented act of aggression and an action tantamount to open war.
While Pakistan’s media reported the démarche on ceasefire violations by
India, the story of the potential missile launch was held back that night
but released in a background briefing by ISPR on 4 March, with some
embellishments. Several media reports appeared in March, detailing the
conversations around the missiles between India and Pakistan and through
global interlocutors.13
At around midnight I got a call in Delhi from Pakistani high
commissioner Sohail Mahmood, now in Islamabad, who said that PM
Imran Khan was keen to talk to Prime Minister Modi. I checked upstairs
and responded that our prime minister was not available at this hour but
in case Imran Khan had any urgent message to convey he could, of course,
convey it to me. I got no call back that night.
The US and UK envoys in Delhi got back overnight to India’s foreign
secretary to claim that Pakistan was now ready to de-escalate the situation,
to act on India’s dossier, and to seriously address the issue of terrorism.
Pakistan’s PM would himself make these announcements and the pilot
would be returned to India the next day. India’s coercive diplomacy had
been effective, India’s expectations of Pakistan and of the world had been
clear, backed by a credible resolve to escalate the crisis. Prime Minister
Modi would later say in a campaign speech that, ‘Fortunately, Pakistan
announced that the pilot would be sent back to India. Else, it would have
been qatal ki raat, a night of bloodshed.’14
The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo later made a dramatic claim
in his memoirs that ‘the Indian minister’ had told him that Pakistan might
escalate the conflict into a nuclear one. He wrote he was awakened to
speak with his Indian counterpart who ‘believed the Pakistanis had begun
to prepare their nuclear weapons for a strike.’ He said the Indian side
informed him that New Delhi ‘was contemplating its own escalation.’ After
the call, Pompeo and NSA John Bolton contacted the Pakistani side. ‘I
reached the actual leader of Pakistan, General [Qamar] Bajwa, with whom
I had engaged many times. I told him what the Indians had told me. He
said it wasn’t true…he [Bajwa] believed the Indians were preparing their
nuclear weapons for deployment. It took us a few hours—and remarkably
good work by our teams on the ground in New Delhi and Islamabad—to
convince each side that the other was not preparing for nuclear war.’15 But
Pompeo seemed to have overstated the case, both of fears of escalation
of the conflict and of the US role in defusing it.
In Pakistan, the Indian threat of action was taken seriously. Foreign
Minister Qureshi spoke at a closed-door session of parliament to explain
Pakistan’s decision to release the Indian pilot. A Pakistani MP later revealed
 p ulwam a 419

in parliament: ‘In the case of Abhinandan, I remember Shah Mahmood

Qureshi was in that meeting which the prime minister [Imran Khan] refused
to attend and the chief of army staff joined us—his [Qureshi’s] legs were
shaking and there was sweat on his brow.’16
Imran Khan’s promised ‘peace speech’ started hesitatingly. The address
in Pakistan’s parliament was telecast live in India on the afternoon of 28
February. Khan apparently spoke extempore, as Foreign Secretary Gokhale
and I sat in front of a TV in his chamber, making notes. Khan referred to
the ‘tragedy of Pulwama’ and said that Pakistan was ready to investigate
this incident. He did assure the world that the soil of Pakistan would
not be used by terrorists to launch an attack against any other country.
This promise checked a box, but it was a familiar refrain that had been
sung, also under pressure, by Musharraf in 2002. Khan also said that
Pakistan was ready for dialogue. Pakistan, he complained, had received
the Pulwama dossier only after India had taken action in Balakot. Instead,
India should have given the dossier first and waited for Pakistan to take
action before attacking.
Pakistan had shown restraint, Khan insisted. When India’s planes
attacked Pakistan at 3.30 a.m., the Pakistan leadership waited to assess
the damage and then decided to attack India, which they did successfully,
without causing any damage. Khan said he had tried to call Modi on the
night of 27 February in the interest of peace, ‘not out of weakness’. Foreign
Minister Qureshi had also tried to call his counterpart to discuss the issue.
Khan ended with a flourish. Pakistan, he said, did not want to share the
fate of Bahadur Shah Zafar, the last Mughal, who capitulated before the
British, but its hero was Tipu Sultan, who defied them till the death. His
message to the Indian PM was that India should not force Pakistan into
war. Pakistan would then be forced to respond to Indian missiles and the
situation could escalate to dangerous levels.
As Imran Khan sat down in parliament, Gokhale and I looked at each
other in disappointment. Pakistan’s prime minister had said nothing about
the pilot, or about specific action against Jaish terrorists. Before we could
start making calls to confer on this speech, we got the breaking news
that Khan had said that he would return Abhinandan Varthaman, the
IAF pilot, as a peace gesture. Khan had in fact resumed his speech after
sitting down when he was prompted to deliver a part of his speech that
he had forgotten—that the pilot would be released as a ‘peace gesture’.
I later learnt from a source in Islamabad that the army brass had been
exasperated that day because Khan had forgotten his lines and spoken
extempore on this crucial issue. He had to be nudged by Qureshi into
making the key announcement.
Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Qureshi said publicly that Pakistan was
ready to talk about terrorism and was prepared to examine India’s dossier.
420 ange r m anage m e nt

He told CNN and BBC that the JeM head Masood Azhar was in Pakistan
but very sick. This fact, well known to India and shared with the world,
had to be roundly denied by the military spokesman soon after, because
of the official Pakistani line that (just as in the case of al-Qaeda leader
Osama bin Laden) Pakistan had no clue where the Jaish chief was.
But India was not assuming the situation had been completely defused
until Abhinandan Varthaman actually returned home. On 1 March, India’s
Cabinet Committee on Security met again, to make public some firm
decisions. India’s approach was focused—press for the return of the pilot,
continue the pressure on Pakistan on dismantling the terror network, and
work on the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist by the Security Council
before mid-March.
We got working on the modalities of the return of Varthaman the next
day. We decided to ask Pakistan not to make a media spectacle of the return
of the pilot. We said that he could be returned through the international
Red Cross like other pilots before him, most recently Flight Lieutenant
Nachiketa, who was downed, as we saw, during the Kargil operations in
1999 and repatriated after eight days in Pakistani custody.17 Varthaman
would need to be returned following prisoner of war protocol. We were
willing to send an Indian Air Force aircraft to pick him up but Pakistan
refused permission; the optics of an Indian Air Force plane landing in
Islamabad after all that had happened over the previous three days, was,
of course, not acceptable to Pakistan.
Pakistan agreed to hand over Varthaman at Wagah between 2 p.m.
and 5 p.m. on 1 March. We activated a team in Islamabad, led by the
air attaché, Group Captain Joy Kurien, to go to Wagah to pick up the
pilot who, we heard, would be transported from Islamabad to Lahore.
For Kurien, who had been stationed in Islamabad for three years and was
about to return to India, it was a special joy for his last official task to
be one to escort his colleague from Pakistan to India.
India decided to call off the border ceremony at Wagah on that day
and said that the prisoner should be returned in compliance with Geneva
Conventions. A representative of the Indian Air Force would receive the
wing commander according to protocol norms. India issued a statement
expressing satisfaction that a worthy son of India was returning.
I was continuously on the phone with colleagues in Islamabad
monitoring Varthaman’s release, as was the entire Indian media. We had
word that the pilot had been taken to Lahore. I told Defence Minister
Nirmala Sitharaman when she called me that the ISI was possibly making
multiple propoganda videos in some Lahore studio starring the Indian pilot,
and would release Varthaman before the day was over. But only when they
had the perfect take. As it turned out, the pilot was finally produced at
Wagah at around 9 p.m. and was handed over to the Indian side.
 p ulwam a 421

Our overall approach had been to go by standard global protocols on

these matters and to avoid a media circus. But the public narrative had
been frenzied on Pulwama, Balakot, and Varthaman. What was missing
was a deeper analysis of Indo–Pak relations and India’s shifting security
paradigms. Pakistan maintained the line that it had returned the pilot ‘as
a goodwill gesture aimed at de-escalating rising tensions with India.’ The
IAF simply said it was ‘happy to have Abhinandan back’.

REVIVING DIPLOMACY
The events of February had moved rapidly, with many operational
details still blurred; commentators were asking penetrating questions and
demanding answers. Why was the government not producing evidence of
those killed in the Balakot operation? If India had intelligence inputs about
the Balakot terror camps preparing terrorists to be let loose on India for
attacks, why did it not have such inputs for Pulwama? A media article18
had suggested that only seven people knew about the Balakot operation—
the PM, NSA, the IB and R&AW chiefs, and the three service chiefs:
was this true? Did international pressure work and did global powers
play middlemen to mediate for the release of the wing commander? In an
election season, the questions had to be credibly answered, even if they
were not particularly relevant to the big picture.
In internal meetings in South Block, a senior security official pointed
out that the objective of the mission was to destroy terrorists, not to
photograph them. The army chief pointed out that India had not released
details of operations even when forces had crossed the LoC for the surgical
strikes. Details could be sensitive, they could at times compromise sources
or operations or tactics. Yet, some strategic communication was essential.
India’s military and diplomatic strategy had worked in concert to deal
with a national crisis; the defence establishment would gradually share
what it could in the media.
The diplomacy of the time had necessarily to be more transparent since
multiple countries were involved. Multiple global partners had played their
roles, and India had seen strong global sympathy for and in alignment with
its positions. Several countries had offered to send special envoys over to
the subcontinent but this was no longer necessary. Even China, not to be
left behind, had suggested that it could send its deputy minister to both
countries to seek de-escalation. India had politely declined the offer.
The action now shifted to the UN. India continued making demarches to
the fifteen UN Security Council members, including the ten non-permanent
members, all of them in the terror sanctions committee. They all held a
persuasive Pulwama dossier in their hands. The case was clear. India had
only conducted a counterterrorism strike on non-military terrorist targets;
Pakistan had escalated this situation twenty-four hours later; Pakistan was
422 ange r m anage m e nt

now peddling news of ‘credible intelligence’ about India’s escalation even

before it had taken place; this was a counter-terrorism issue and not a
‘peace and security’ issue which needed to be debated at the UN; and the
listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist was the issue the Security Council
should be focusing on.
Bilaterally with Pakistan, India was underlining expectations of
immediate credible and verifiable action to dismantle the terrorist
infrastructure and to deal with terrorists. India had not closed its channels
of communication. The DGMOs hotline was open and so were the high
commissions in India and Pakistan. In media briefings, Foreign Secretary
Gokhale was also pointing out that Pakistan had issued a notice to airmen,
‘NOTAM’ closing its airspace, while India had quickly opened its airspace
to normalize the situation.
With the dust settling on Pulwama, Balakot, and with the return of
Varthaman, the political temperature had come down in India. By 5 March,
we seemed to be getting into the de-escalation phase. The CCS felt that
it would be in India’s best interest to have its high commissioner back
in Pakistan, a nod to moving to the next phase of diplomacy. I reached
Islamabad via Dubai on 10 March, twenty-two days after I left in the wake
of Pulwama. India was willing to give old-fashioned diplomacy another
chance.
India had signalled to Pakistan through its acting high commissioner
that I would be back in Islamabad that weekend. Pakistan responded by
sending its own high commissioner back to Delhi. At that point, Sohail
Mahmood was already the front runner to take over as the Pakistani
foreign secretary, since Tehmina Janjua was to retire the next month. His
interaction with the Pakistani leadership through the Pulwama and Balakot
crisis had apparently strengthened his candidature, as also his credentials
as a quiet and competent diplomat with the most recent experience in
handling the key India relationship.
The media interpreted the coordinated return of the diplomats as
evidence of a thaw in diplomatic relations between the two countries.
The most serious military exchange between the countries since Kargil had
thus run its course in less than a month from a Pakistani proxy attack,
to a military response from India, a counter from Pakistan, and an Indian
diplomatic move to press Pakistan for credible action against terrorism.
This, with India having achieved a strategic and military objective and
Pakistan having claimed a notion of victory for its domestic audience.
What this episode, from Pulwama to my return to Islamabad, told
me was that the recovery time from an India–Pakistan crisis, triggered by
terrorism, could be as short as three weeks as long as escalatory steps were
accompanied by a de-escalation impulse on both sides. We had seen the
first attack by Indian aircraft across the international border since 1971.
 p ulwam a 423

We had seen Pakistan’s response. We had seen a move towards normalizing

ties even if no peace conference or peace pact had followed this exchange
to give the matter closure.
In terms of the ‘escalation dynamics’ of the conflict (as determined by
a theoretical conflict escalation ladder favoured by some nuclear experts19),
the first rung of the escalation ladder was Pulwama, a terrorist action
whether state-sponsored or otherwise. Only as a response to such action
did the situation escalate to the next rung of the ladder with India’s
air strikes, still a military operation in the sub-conventional space. A
response to Pakistan’s action after Balakot by India could have led to
a further escalation, experts argued, that could lead the countries over
the conventional threshold. While Pakistan tried to speak of false-flag
operations, it was trying to create insurance policies: to question global
diplomatic acquiescence in India’s response to the first-rung terrorist attack,
which, in the case of Balakot, did not invite any international censure.
X
My mandate in Pakistan in March 2019 was to meet diplomatic and other
interlocutors to explain India’s post-Balakot posture and expectations for
the future. I was still not to seek meetings with either Khan or Qureshi
or Bajwa, to avoid these being mischaracterized as a formally resumed
dialogue. But I was free to hold quiet chats with other players.
Hectic diplomacy followed over the next few days. India had signalled
the intention to seal the Kartarpur agreement and Pakistan was all set to
send its team to India in mid-March for talks. I had been recommending
that the conversation take place as an official and technical discussion,
away from the spotlight of the capital, at newly renovated facilities at
Attari on the border, to signal a desire to do business without indicating
any deeper political reconciliation for the moment. This is eventually what
we did when the Pakistan team arrived in India for joint secretary-level
talks at Attari on 1 April.
More privately, Pakistan was beginning to signal a serious intention
to address the core issue of terrorism, rather than repeating its line about
the centrality of the Kashmir issue. Both countries had therefore run the
course of military actions for the moment, even though the sporadic firing
at the LoC continued at its own momentum. India was willing to move
towards a phase of diplomatic normality with a focus on a conversation
on terrorism. Pakistan seemed willing to play ball.

THE PULWAMA DOSSIER

The Pulwama dossier was a unique document. It enhanced the credibility
of India’s claim of Pakistan’s role in the attack. While the full National
Investigation Agency (NIA) charge sheet would take eighteen painstaking
424 ange r m anage m e nt

months to construct and present to the courts20, the early evidence was
clear. Forty people had been killed in an explosive attack, the Jaish had
claimed responsibility, the Jaish leader and headquarters were in Pakistan.
A credible narration of these details with the names of Jaish operatives
and the last known locations of terror camps was what India had put in
the dossier and even shared with Pakistan. The dossier listed some ninety
active JeM members. It also gave coordinates of about twenty JeM camps.
A Western envoy close to Pakistan’s army told me on my return to
Islamabad that he was optimistic that India’s actions had triggered a rethink
by the Pakistan Army. Bajwa now appeared to have been persuaded that the
cost to benefit ratio of deploying proxy terror was no longer in Pakistan’s
favour. What was even more encouraging was that the civilian and army
leadership were still on the same page. In the past, such friction with
India had often strained the civil–military equation. We had, for instance,
seen Nawaz Sharif’s stock with the army sink after Kargil and after the
surgical strikes in Uri on both occasions, the elected PM had lost his job.
One strong external impulse that was playing on Pakistan’s mind was
the FATF and its staying hand, which was compelling the country to change
its behaviour on terrorism. Pakistan was added to the Paris-based UN
body’s inglorious ‘grey list’, and subjected to ‘increased monitoring’ from
June 2018 onwards. It had been struggling to shake off this intense global
scrutiny of its state support to militant groups; the post-Pulwama global
spotlight was not helping, particularly since FATF conditionalities were
finding their way into the IMF economic rescue package it was negotiating.
The Pulwama dossier that India had shared widely was also something of
a game changer, since India had so openly shared evidence with Pakistan
and the world. Moreover, Pakistan was actually claiming to be acting on
it, not, as in the past, dismissing it offhand. Bajwa was telling Western
diplomats that the hard action against the ‘Barelvi’ extremist political
formation, TLP (Tehreek-e-Labaik, known for its violent street protests
against changes to the blasphemy law) showed that if an organization
acted against the national interest, then Pakistan would push back. The
same would be the case with Jaish. What Pakistan needed was support
on the FATF front.
A theory that soon emerged in Islamabad was that some 190 people
from ‘proscribed organizations’ that Pakistan claimed to have arrested in
March were militants killed in the Balakot action; Pakistan was trying to
account for them in some way. The arrests on 7 and 21 March were simply
reported with no documentation or videos, and the numbers seemed to
match those quoted by an Italian journalist Francesca Marino who filed a
story on 8 March claiming that 170 terrorists died in India’s air strikes.21
On the Indian side, a colleague from one of the agencies expressed
some cynicism to me about sharing details with Pakistan; each time a
 p ulwam a 425

dossier was passed on to Pakistan, it used it as briefing material for its

ISI handlers to explain to the terrorists what not to do in the future. This
was spoken only half in jest.
Meanwhile, the Pakistan Army was telling some Western confidants
that this was another ‘APS moment’ for the army in dealing with non-state
actors, referring to the killing of 145 children in the Army Public School
of Peshawar back in 2015 that had traumatized the army. This was an
opportunity for Bajwa’s army to reclaim the ‘monopoly of force’ with
the state and to disarm the terrorists, even the Kashmir-focused ones like
JeM believed to be ‘good’, as distinct from the ‘bad’ Pakistan-targeting
TTP. The situation paralleled the ‘good Taliban, bad Taliban’ debate of
the early 2000s, a constant gripe of Pakistan’s partners in the global war
on terror initiated in 2001.
A key issue was the mainstreaming and disarming of radical groups. The
Pakistan Army was engaging with the UK and quoting the Irish example
of mainstreaming militants. The UK was explaining that the analogy was
not necessarily close, since a disarming and deradicalizing process was
essential before mainstreaming could begin. Some Pakistani commentators
were pointing to the Saudi model of deradicalization: to arrest the militants,
re-train them, ‘explain’ to them that the monopoly on violence lay with
the state and then release them into society. But the Pakistan case was
different—state structures had created armed militant groups and trained
them for ‘jihad’. It was not easy to undo this mess.
On his part, Bajwa was claiming that the push against terror was serious.
The army was citing multiple data points: the arrest of 154 Jaish militants,
which meant the top leadership of Jaish and also of LeT ‘reincarnates’—
Jamat ul dawa (JUD) and Falah-e Insaniyat Foundation (FIF); there was a
new ‘top-down’ impetus against some groups, with Khan and Bajwa firmly
on the ‘same page’ on this issue. The JUD had been forced to mainstream
its ‘ambulance service’, thus separating the charity arm from the militant
wing of the organization. The Pakistan Army was now working closely with
the Interior Ministry to work on this issue of deradicalization, implying a
strong civil–military consensus on the moves.
Bajwa explained to various interlocutors the difficulties of dismantling
organizations like JeM. He argued that small and incremental steps needed
to be taken. The radicalization had been taking place over the previous
thirty years. So deradicalization would take at least a few months. The
militant elements could be dismantled, but how did one take over the
charitable parts of militant organizations?
Based on my briefings in Delhi, we embarked on multiple conversations
in Islamabad with Pakistani influencers and diplomats. Our counter-terror
diplomacy was focused. We did some blunt speaking. There were broadly
ten messages that we shared with Pakistani and foreign interlocutors.
426 ange r m anage m e nt

One, India’s threshold of tolerance of terrorism had come down. India

was now determined to take swift, surgical, and resolute action against the
terrorists. India had no quarrel with the people of Pakistan and was not
even directly targeting Pakistan’s army. Two, India was encouraged by the
reiteration by Prime Minister Imran Khan and Foreign Minister Qureshi
in Pakistan’s parliament and to CNN and the BBC that the territory of
Pakistan would not be used for any act of terrorism against its neighbours.
But we wanted to see these promises translated into action. Three, India
was willing to work with Pakistan to ensure there was sustained, credible,
and verifiable action against terrorism. We would encourage Pakistan’s
government and army to take more than cosmetic action against terrorists
to win back India’s confidence and that of the world community. Four, we
would ask Pakistan to proscribe Jaish, Lashkar, and Hizbul. The leaders
should be locked up, disarmed, banned from travel, and their assets frozen.
Five, India was willing to discuss modalities for an informal dialogue with
Pakistan on terrorism and ways of tackling it. Six, for the army and civilian
leadership, for Bajwa and Khan, I was carrying a clear message that we
could use this opportunity to move ahead and tackle what for Pakistan were
good terrorists. Seven, we were willing to work on the humanitarian front
to build trust. We were willing to work on the exchange of prisoners and
on the Kartarpur project which had popular support in India, particularly
in Punjab. Eight, India was requesting the support of the global community
when it came to tackling the menace of terrorism, since it was clear the
kind of danger it was putting the world into. Nine, the world community
needed to deploy the FATF to do what it was designed to do—counter
the financing of terror and demanding that Pakistan commit clearly to
timelines to stop funding terrorist outfits. Ten, we deeply appreciated the
role of several partners including the US, UK, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE,
who had helped defuse the tension.
Armed with this brief, I started a period of intense diplomacy in
Islamabad, talking to people close to Imran Khan and Bajwa while
continuing conversations with the foreign office. The talks with the MOFA
were more on the ‘humanitarian agenda’ because the foreign office followed
a party line of stout denial on terrorism. It had failed to create for itself the
space to engage on this issue. On 12 March, I met with Foreign Secretary
Janjua for a candid chat on the month gone by. I discussed the dossier
we had handed over. Since we were back from the brink, I suggested, we
needed to continue the diplomacy. Action on the dossier in Pakistan would
be a good confidence-building measure for India. The foreign office was
not taking any chances. They continued to deny any role in Pulwama by
any agency from Pakistan. But the party line had changed. Pakistan was
informing us it was taking action against terror under its own National
Action Plan (NAP) of 2014, and not due to any Indian pressure. The
 p ulwam a 427

imminent Indian election had a part to play in focusing the mind of

the Pakistani establishment. I was beginning to perceive more attentive
engagement because the Pakistan establishment had by now assessed that
I was a spokesman of an Indian government that would return to power
with a firmer mandate to deal decisively with Pakistan and terrorism.
The coalescing of multiple factors—India’s focused diplomatic effort
after the air strikes, the Pulwama dossier, FATF and global pressure—
was having a telling effect on Pakistan. In March 2019, an ordinance
amended Pakistan’s antiterrorism act to ban the groups that were already
proscribed under the UNSC sanctions, i.e., FIF and JUD, both front
outfits of the Mumbai attack mastermind Hafiz Sayeed’s LeT. Pakistan’s
National Counter-Terrorism Authority (NACTA) had earlier put seventy
organizations on its watchlist. The ordinance banning them had lapsed in
October 2018. The JUD had gone to the Lahore High Court in October
2018 and had succeeded in overturning the ban on its activities. The
script seemed familiar—this was the usual pre-FATF meeting illusion of
activity. But many in Pakistan were insisting that the army was shifting
its approach to terrorism.
Some analysts, like Abdul Basit, Pakistan’s former high commissioner
to India, were more critical of the new global narrative, arguing that the
Pulwama–Balakot episode had shown that the international community
was keener to de-escalate the tension between the two countries rather
than focus on the ‘root cause’ of Kashmir. Once again, Pakistan’s echo
chamber of readily churned out narratives tried to switch off global voices.
But, this time around, not even Pakistan’s loyal friends in the OIC were
buying the weakly proffered and oft-repeated hypothesis that the root
cause of Kashmir triggered the latest violence. All data was reaffirming
the reputation that Pakistan’s deep state had earned for the country—of
a terror-exporting nation.
The weekly conversations between the DGMOs were continuing.
Pakistan had been told in mid-April that if terrorist infiltration stopped,
firing at the border would stop. The Indian Army had reminded Pakistan’s
Army about the mutually agreed moratorium on artillery fire and the use
of special forces on the border. The only ongoing official conversation
between India and Pakistan, apart from the one we were having at the
diplomatic level, was the one between the two militaries. The DGMOs were
talking regularly and India had made its substantive position clear. When
Pakistan claimed that it was taking action on the western border, India’s
suggestion was to take similar action against terrorists and militants on
its eastern border. India had pointed out that some forty Indian nationals
including of the ‘D company’, who were known terrorists, had been given
safe sanctuary on Pakistan’s territory.
Somewhere in mid-April, Pakistan summoned Western diplomats to the
428 ange r m anage m e nt

foreign office again, alleging imminent Indian attacks against it. Curiously, it
even put this episode in the public domain.22 The diplomats were assessing
that Pakistan was genuinely spooked and jumpy. It perhaps also saw crying
wolf as a means of pre-emption, an insurance policy against an Indian
punitive attack. In case of an incident, it would have the advantage of
suggesting to the West that South Asia was a dangerous flashpoint. The
international community was however not even raising these issues with
India, dismissing them as alarmist rhetoric and arguing that India was
much too busy with its election to be involved with such gambits.
My interlocutor with the ISI was reporting a more receptive attitude for
India’s concerns. The message from DG ISI Asim Munir was clear—Pakistan
was working on a project to finish militancy, there would be no more
terror incidents in Jammu and Kashmir, there would be no cross-border
infiltration. But it was hard to act on the Indian asks in the prevailing
climate of inflamed Pakistani public opinion. High-profile actions, like
arresting Masood Azhar or Hafiz Sayeed, were therefore ruled out.
The ISI had made a clear assessment that the BJP would return to
power in India’s elections. Pakistan would be prepared for a dialogue,
to participate in the swearing-in of the new prime minister, and to send
Imran Khan for a meeting at the SCO summit in June with India’s new
prime minister. The ISI was rejecting for the moment India’s demand to
hand over Indian fugitives. This was a big ask and not quite feasible for
the moment, when even the listing of Masood Azhar as a terrorist was
being blocked.
On JeM chief Azhar, while fourteen of the fifteen sanctions committee
member countries of the Security Council were on board to have him
listed, the Chinese were the holdout, trying to ‘persuade’ Pakistan to give
its consent, in effect giving a veto to Pakistan. From 2009, there had been
four attempts to put Azhar on the UN counter-terrorism sanctions list, all
of which saw blocks by China, citing ‘lack of evidence’. China had again
moved to protect Azhar in October 2016 when it blocked India’s appeal
but famously asked Pakistan to get its act in order.23 China also blocked
the post-Pulwama moves to get Azhar banned in February and March.
Three permanent UNSC members (P3)—the US, UK, and France—were
pressing Pakistan to talk to their Chinese friends to unblock the listing.
Pakistan was again overplaying its hand and placing an unreasonable
condition to acquiesce in the listing—that there should be no further listing
of any individual, especially in relationship to Kashmir, at least for the
rest of the year. This was a bizarre demand that the Chinese seemed to be
relaying unthinkingly; the rest of the P5 members were shaking their heads
in disbelief. How could there be political quotas on the listing of terrorists?
Pakistan, some in its media were warning, was ‘testing its friends’.24
In the midst of this debate, I had a frank chat with the Chinese
 p ulwam a 429

ambassador Yao Jing, along with his deputy Zhao Lijian, who later went
on to become a ‘wolf warrior’ anti-West spokesman of the Chinese foreign
ministry. (Zhao incidentally departed from Pakistan on the same day that
I left for Delhi, the end of my abbreviated tenure coinciding with his
longer one. To my amusement, he told me at the airport lounge that the
Pakistan establishment would miss me.) The Chinese ambassador hinted at
frustration at Pakistan’s tall asks of guarantees against any further listing of
Pakistan’s citizens. China seemed to be playing for time to deal with this
issue but seemed also to be pressing Pakistan to relent. China lifted the
technical hold only on 1 May, when Masood Azhar was finally listed as a
global terrorist by the UNSC’s al-Qaeda and Taliban Sanctions Committee.
Islamabad tried to play this development as a Pakistani decision, but still
kept Azhar hidden from public view.

BAJWA’S CT DOCTRINE
Bajwa, due to end his tenure in November, seemed to be caught, in the
summer of 2019, between legacy and extension. He was claiming he would
leave at the appointed hour when his term ended in November, but this
seemed to be some ‘virtue signalling’. Almost all of Pakistan’s army chiefs
have indulged in some ‘political management’ in the months leading up
to the end of their first terms and Bajwa was no exception. But Bajwa
had also set up some long term goals. He seemed prepared to add to his
doctrine an element of having stamped out terrorism from Pakistan.
A new kind of Bajwa doctrine was emerging. By early April, Bajwa’s
confidants were claiming a distinctly different tone at the GHQ. The word
had got around that the army was trying to create ‘political space’ to deal
with the Jaish militants, to avoid a blowback by right-wing forces. Bajwa
was arguing that he would take action in a series of sequential steps. The
first action would be on the Indian dossier. It would be followed by wider
arrests of both the LeT and the JeM, more madrasas would be taken over,
and the authorities would not let the militants regroup.
Bajwa, we learnt, was speaking the same language within the army,
with his senior commanders and at limited conferences. Most Western
interlocutors were coming away convinced that the army was beginning
to change, at least at the top. Bajwa was openly questioning a forty-
year-old doctrine that he had seen in play from the time he was a young
cadet and which now needed to change because it was not working. He
was saying clearly that Pakistan’s assets had become liabilities and the
time had come to insist that the use of force should be the monopoly of
the state. This point was not being conceded publicly, nor by the foreign
office, which tended to be behind the curve and balk at the prospect of
any public admission of past errors.
The DG ISI appeared to be taking an even harder line on domestic
430 ange r m anage m e nt

terrorism compared to Bajwa in his conversations with Western diplomats.

DG Munir said that a few misdirected men were threatening the reputation
of 200 million Pakistanis by their actions. He said that Pakistan was taking
serious action against the militants and it was not facing much resistance,
even though militant groups were splintering and merging into other groups.
The ‘good terrorists’ were however still getting a free pass. The ISI
was taking a harder line on Kashmir and fudging the issue of whether it
would use proxy groups to fuel conflict in Kashmir. It would often justify
its actions to diplomats by alleging that India was using its own proxy
groups within Pakistan.
Nevertheless, it was unquestionable that Pakistan’s action against
terrorist groups was gaining momentum. At the very least, Pakistan’s public
and diplomatic proclamations were gaining pace as Pakistan took the
trouble to brief all diplomats (except India) repeatedly on the action it was
taking against militants. While the official line was that all the action was
based upon Pakistan’s own National Action Plan (NAP) against terrorism,
more private briefings to Western diplomats were quoting the Indian dossier
and saying that Pakistan had detained fifty-six of the fifty-seven individuals
listed in that document. Two hundred of the ‘most egregious’ madrasas
had been taken over. Pakistan would now try the militants in civilian
and military courts to lead up to a process of demobilization and the
decommissioning of weapons. This was part of the professed doctrine of
retaining monopoly of force with the state. While ‘kinetic action’ would
be taken against the JeM, the JUD, and and other militant groups with
large charitable wings, would be taken over more gently.
To the British, Pakistan was claiming it was following the Northern
Ireland model. Both the British and the Americans had argued that Pakistan
was dealing with hardcore terrorists and needed a different approach. The
counter from Pakistan was that they were not dealing with five or six
terrorists but a hundred thousand and needed a more gradual approach
to demobilize them. Pakistan’s army was claiming to confidants that its
approach to the militants was marked by much ambiguity, learning from
the TLP experience. It was meeting with surprisingly little resistance as
it rounded up these militants. A few of the Jaish cadres were splintering
and joining up with the Tehreek-i-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA) and TTP.
Pakistan had claimed to have eliminated more than 17,600 terrorists.
of the militant organizations in counter-terror operations from 2001 till
February 2018, and cleared over 46,000 kilometres of land of terrorists,
mainly in the badlands of the former FATA, in numbers publicly announced
in February 2018, after Trump’s tweet of 1 January 2018.25 From India’s
viewpoint, the real problem was the camps in the heart of Pakistan, in
Punjab’s Bahawalpur, and in Balakot, which were providing state protection
to the India-directed groups like JeM and LeT.
 p ulwam a 431

India was also pressing its global partners to insist on direct action
against the JeM and LeT and on punishing the guilty for previous acts
of terrorism, like Pathankot 2016, Mumbai 2008, Parliament 2001, and
the earlier Mumbai 1993 and 1996 blasts. A prominent Pakistani think
tanker relayed the message to me from the army that it was important to
mainstream and re-educate the militants. You could not quite jail 300,000
people from the LeT in the same way as Pakistan had managed to deal
with the smaller number of the TLP.
X
Global opinion was supporting India’s position. Ashley Tellis, the
US security analyst, prepared a comprehensive assessment of the post-
Pulwama situation to argue that the focus must continue to be on
Pakistan’s terrorism, that India should not fall for Pakistan’s ‘nuclear
coercion’ and that the new paradigm of India’s response should be
‘ambiguous’. He saw the US role as positive, with Secretary of State
Pompeo having recognized India’s right to self-defence and asked Pakistan
to focus its attention on countering terrorism.26
A Pakistani acquaintance, close to both the army and the civilian regime,
assured me that 1,800 JeM members would be arrested as both Imran
Khan and the army were determined to act against the JeM. However,
unlike the TLP, the JeM carried arms and they were not easy to wish
away or to neutralize. When we argued that the Pakistan Army had the
capacity to make the bad guys disappear as they did in the FATA region
and with the TLP not long ago, we were told that the JeM was different.
Varying characteristics of the various terrorist organizations, and the
need to find an appropriate way of dealing with them, was only one
aspect of what Bajwa was dealing with. He was also up against a deeper
systemic problem. As Christine Fair has argued, the ethos and the strategic
culture of the Pakistan Army favoured ‘persistent revisionism’.27 Pakistan’s
own narrative was that India was implacably opposed to its existence and
the Pakistan Army was thus obsessed with strategic depth despite all its
professions otherwise. The temptation was to keep doing ‘jihad under an
expanding nuclear umbrella’,28 to continue to use non-state actors with
an attempt not to cross India’s retaliation threshold.
Yet, two significant new trends accelerated forward on Bajwa’s watch,
which required Pakistan to rethink older strategies. The first was that
the western border of Pakistan was now more troubled, with the Afghan
regime confronting the Taliban and the TTP directly attacking Pakistan’s
forces. The second was that on the eastern front the ideological fervour
of the ‘Kashmir cause’ had been toned down, with a post-Balakot pause
in Pakistani support to militants. This implied a new direction to security
policy. It did seem that Pakistan’s army would see the balance of advantage
432 ange r m anage m e nt

in pressing the pause button on Kashmir-directed militancy.29

A former Pakistan high commissioner, active on the Track II circuit,
told me that Pakistan was now willing to talk on all issues with India,
including terrorism and trade/business. The Pakistan establishment was
perhaps trying to change the narrative on identifying discussions on both
terrorism and trade as perfidious Indian attempts to take attention away
from the core issue of Kashmir. A signal to the Track II circuit would
normally imply that Pakistan would test the waters for having a similar
conversation through normal official channels as well. The reality on the
ground seemed to substantiate the Pakistani claims that they were making
a genuine effort to curb militant activity. The infiltration numbers from
Pakistan into India were showing only twenty-three cross-border bids in
2019 compared to 300 in 2018, and 400 in 2017.30
In the bigger picture, three decades of terrorism had an important
impact on bilateral diplomacy—it increased the political risk for India of
high-level engagement with Pakistan. India’s instincts were now to factor in
the risk that dialogue with Pakistan may result in an immediate significant
terrorist attack by Pakistan-based militants; this had happened to Vajpayee’s
Lahore initiative with Kargil and to Modi’s with Pathankot.31
Also, despite its historical concerns about internationalization of
disagreements with Pakistan, India was now not averse to taking the terror
issue to global fora like the FATF and the UNSC sanctions committee
for the listing of Masood Azhar and others. This was part of a policy of
‘measured flexibility’32, to take forward bilateral disputes to specialized
global bodies like the International Court of Justice (for the captured
Indian citizen Kulbhushan Jadhav) or the World Bank (for the Indus Waters
Treaty), or the ICAO (for airspace closure matters) while sticking to the
principle of bilateralism to address the Kashmir issue.
 34

KASHMI RI YAT

I n the spring of 2019, the world’s biggest dance of democracy was

underway in India. As the dust settled on the February events, we
received requests in April for visas for Pakistani journalists to cover the
elections. I was all for sending Pakistani media in for the journalists to see
the scale and efficiency of India’s electoral process. The concern in India
was that the coverage was unlikely to be balanced and objective. It was too
soon after the events of February to expect unbiased reports in Pakistan’s
press. The visas finally did not come through.
By mid-April, diplomatic conversations in Islamabad were veering back
to the prospects of peace in a post-election scenario in India, as prophesied
by the Bajwa doctrine. Pakistan’s establishment had by now assessed that a
BJP-led coalition would return to power. Policymakers in the country were
debating what that would mean for bilateral ties. I had been pointing out
to most interlocutors that India’s threshold of tolerance for terrorism had
lowered and would remain low, no matter which political dispensation
came to power. It would be advisable for Pakistan to approach any new
government in India with both the assurance and the evidence of some
concrete action against terrorism. That would be the biggest confidence-
building measure and could give reason for a new Indian government to
turn a new page in the relationship.
We were telling our interlocutors that Pakistan could do this in obvious
ways—by turning off the tap and switching off cross-border infiltration
completely, by taking some high-profile action against terrorists like Masood
Azhar and the dozens of Indian terrorists enjoying sanctuary in Pakistan, by
counter-terrorism action that was credible, verifiable and irreversible, and,
most importantly, by ensuring that there would be no violence in India that
would disrupt Indian elections. This was a key concern on the Indian side.
Given that the February events were still fresh in the public mind,
national security, terrorism, Pakistan, Pulwama, and Balakot were constant
themes in India’s electoral discourse. ‘We want to tread the path of friendship
but a lot depends on Pakistan’s response. I reiterate that only talks can
resolve all the issues,’ PM Modi said in a media interview in Varanasi on
27 April, while campaigning in his constituency, adding that that ‘only Atal
Bihari Vajpayeeji’s formula can work for Jammu and Kashmir.’ He vowed
to follow Vajpayee’s doctrine of ‘Insaniyat, Jamhuriyat and Kashmiriyat’
but with a caveat not to let the state be ‘emotionally blackmailed by a
handful of families.’1
434 ange r m anage m e nt

I made a quick trip to India at the end of April to sense the policy
mood in election season. The mammoth exercise was on from 11 April to
19 May. The results were to be declared on 23 May. I got an opportunity
to meet with key non-political players in a relaxed mood, to brainstorm
on options on the next steps with Pakistan. The key issues on which we
needed decisions were—whether there would be at the inauguration of
the new government a reprise of the 2014 invitation to SAARC countries?
Was it time to consider inviting Pakistan?
In my meetings with a range of interlocutors in Delhi, we discussed
Pakistan’s internal situation, its dealing with the issue of terrorism post-
Pulwama and Balakot, its IMF loan antics and its approach to the upcoming
FATF plenary meeting in June.
An SCO foreign ministers meeting was scheduled in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan,
on 22 May, as the Central Asian country held the rotational chair of the
regional body. The question arose if India’s foreign minister Sushma Swaraj
would participate, and if she did, would she meet Pakistan’s foreign minister
Qureshi? The SCO heads of state summit was scheduled in Bishkek later
in June, soon after the new Indian government was sworn in. Would the
new Indian PM attend the summit and could that lead to an encounter
with PM Imran Khan?
EAM Sushma Swaraj, struck by a kidney ailment and in need of regular
dialysis by now, was being brave; she was effusive in my last chat with
her. She had already announced her retirement from electoral politics and
was widely expected to transition to a less taxing, possibly gubernatorial,
role after the elections. India granted a meeting with the minister to the
departing Pakistani HC and foreign secretary designate Sohail Mahmood,
so that he could carry a direct message to the Pakistan leadership. She
contemplated an approach to have a ‘shishtachar ki bhent’, a courtesy
meeting, with Qureshi, depending on the situation on the ground and with
no prior announcements, learning from the experience of the non-meeting
in New York in September. She told me in jest that Qureshi’s whole attitude
was bitter and he perhaps needed some sweets to change his style. She
gave the same message to Mahmood, which, given its directness, I doubted
would be accurately conveyed to Qureshi.
The decision on a meeting between the prime ministers would need to
await the actual election results that would be clear by the end of May.
X
Pakistan’s new foreign secretary Sohail Mahmood was fresh from his New
Delhi posting when I met him in Islamabad in early May. I emphasized
the central message of India’s lowered threshold of terrorism. He insisted
that Pakistan was taking firm action under its own national plan against
terrorism. He had reverted in his new job to the default position that if
 kas hm iriyat 435

there was no corresponding movement on resolving the Kashmir issue, it

would be difficult for Pakistan to move ahead on any of the other agenda
items.
But analysts in Pakistan were speculating that an inauguration of Modi
2.0 might see a reprise of 2014 and an invitation to SAARC leaders. Imran
Khan, the guess was, could then go to Delhi on a peace initiative, trying
to erase the memories of the February events. The Pulwama–Balakot shock
may have caused the army to rethink its use of terror proxies. But this
was only a tentative pause button that was being pressed. Thirty years of
addiction to the proxy war strategy could not end overnight. All action
on curbing the militants, as we later learnt, was reversible.
India’s overarching policy direction of ‘no talks with terror’ remained in
place and the central ask of Pakistan remained that it would need to take
credible and irreversible action against terrorism. In this broad framework,
we started diplomacy in Islamabad within the rubric of ‘normal diplomatic
activity’. This was a focus on activism on the terrorism question on multiple
tracks—engagement with the foreign office, and with foreign diplomats.
But also more discreet chats with Imran Khan’s camp and particularly
with the army. This was a moment of some change in Pakistan and the
conversations began to get more candid and pointed.
Some members of Khan’s team were pointing out that India’s sharp
electoral rhetoric targeting Pakistan was upsetting Khan. This could poison
bilateral relations. Khan, I was told, had decided to stay clear of the
‘Khalistan 2020 referendum’, a global propaganda move by separatists
demanding a separate Sikh homeland, which had several ISI-supported
activists within Pakistan. It was clear to us that while Khan’s intentions may
have been noble, the ISI would not easily withdraw its covert support for
the idea. Khan had said in an interview to The Economist that the ‘Kashmir
exception’ for terrorism would go. He had repeated this formulation to the
BBC on 11 April.2 He said this would be the end of militants including
Jaish; Pakistan was dismantling the terrorist infrastructure, dismantling
the militant groups ‘in the first serious effort’. This was positioned as a
major concession to India.
Meanwhile, the deep state was dusting up old narratives to say that India
had been launching false-flag operations to besmirch Pakistan’s reputation
and Pulwama was the latest example. Pakistan was, on the other hand,
cracking down on militants under its new counter-terrorism policy—about
8,000 militants had been proscribed. The move came with an eye on the
FATF process; the government claimed that the militants faced travel bans,
asset freezes, and arms embargos. Later in July, Imran Khan was to blurt
out that Pakistan hosted about 40,000 armed militants in its territory,
who still needed to be disarmed.
Bajwa was also hinting at an overhaul of the ISI and its new leadership
436 ange r m anage m e nt

so that it became a more effective instrument to address domestic security

issues. Diplomats were assessing that the military-PTI project was threatened
by the floundering economic project even though the political opposition
was too weak to take advantage of the situation.
Pakistan’s airspace had remained closed for Indian aircraft after India’s
air strikes. To test Pakistan, we requested special permission for EAM
Sushma Swaraj’s aircraft to go through to Bishkek and got it soon enough.
Swaraj and Qureshi met in Bishkek on 22 May for a friendly exchange
of greetings. She did tell him that his language was harsh, ‘kadva bolte
hain’, and that he needed some sweets to keep his bitterness in check.
He praised her sari and she complimented him on his sherwani. This
conversation took place in a lounge where foreign ministers waited before
a SCO plenary session, a day before the Indian election results were to be
announced. A Pakistani photographer sneaked in to shoot a few photos
which were happily supplied to the Pakistani media to depict a pleasant
chat between ministers. Qureshi attempted to turn this courtesy encounter
into a story about a substantive meeting and a thaw in the relationship.

JASHN-E-JAMOORIYAT
On the eve of the Indian elections, we decided to risk some public
diplomacy at the high commission, despite a fairly hostile climate in
Pakistan’s media against India. We agreed to an interview focused on
Indian elections with a young Urdu online channel. The journalist who had
approached us agreed on the election-oriented format of the interview, but
her editor apparently did not. As the camera started rolling and the pro
forma question on Indian elections was out of the way, the familiar ‘hard’
questions breathlessly rolled out, about ‘warmongering’ by Indian media,
India’s ‘proxy terror’ against Pakistan from Afghanistan and Iran, India’s
‘false claims’ on Pulwama and Balakot. This surprise turn to an ‘election
special’ had me batting defensively and trying to steer the chat to positive
subjects. Clearly, the young journalist had succumbed to editorial pressure
to tease out a juicy controversy by trying to trip up an Indian diplomat.
Soon afterwards, we invited a group of Pakistani journalists, think
tankers, and diplomats to watch the Indian election results unfold live on
television in the high commission’s auditorium. I tried to supplement the
assessments of the TV talking heads with a big-picture analysis of Indian
democracy at work. The question that hung in the air was the impact on
Pakistan of the new government in Delhi. The upcoming overwhelming
majority for the ruling BJP became clear early in the counting. Soon,
some of our Pakistani guests were taking all the credit for this turn of
events, arguing that the election was won by the BJP thanks to India’s
post-Pulwama actions against Pakistan.
The more thoughtful journalists were soon debating the nuances of
 kas hm iriyat 437

the results over wine, samosas and pizzas. The election results on 23
May were variously interpreted—to some, the ruling party in India had
won a sweeping mandate in an election, an apparent endorsement for
tougher positions on terrorism and by extension, Pakistan, accompanied
by a harder posture on the Kashmir issue. To others, it was a glimmer of
hope of post-election rapprochement, as we had seen in 2014.
The latter view seemed to find favour in Pakistan’s official circles—that
the tough pre-election rhetoric and action would be replaced by more
conciliatory positions from India. Imran Khan tweeted his congratulations
to PM Modi and made a phone call on 26 May. It appeared, at least
to some columnists, that Pakistan was hoping to make a new beginning
with India and be forgiven transgressions like Pulwama. Khan had earlier
publicly assessed that ties between the two countries could improve if
Modi returned to power. Perhaps if the BJP wins, Khan said, ‘some kind
of settlement in Kashmir could be reached’.3 Now, in their first telephonic
conversation after the Balakot air strikes, Modi had told Khan that
‘creating trust and an environment free of violence and terrorism was
essential for fostering peace and prosperity in the region’.4
A rare positive report that appeared in Pakistani media assessed that
‘Modicare’ rather than Balakot was a key reason for the BJP victory. It
said that Modi’s healthcare programme covered 500 million people and
provided them health insurance that won him hearts and votes.
When the new Indian government was sworn in on 30 May, Pakistan
did not have an invitation for the ceremony. The decision in Delhi was
to invite BIMSTEC (a regional South Asian grouping that did not include
Pakistan) leaders rather than those of SAARC, as was done in 2014. Imran
Khan tweeted his felicitations after the oath-taking ceremony on 30 May,
despite not being invited to the party. After India’s re-elected PM had
thanked Khan in a tweet, media speculation began in Pakistan about a
possible breakthrough meeting in Bishkek. The two leaders would soon
spend some time under the same roof during an SCO summit.

THE IFTAR SIEGE

Each year, in the fasting month of Ramzan, we hosted an iftar dinner
at Islamabad’s spiffy Hotel Serena, where we would invite the movers
and shakers of Pakistan, as well as common folk we were in touch with.
This was an event for which invitations were coveted by Pakistani society,
particularly by the media, because a large number of Pakistani dignitaries
and the entire diplomatic corps would attend, giving much potential for
gossip and breaking news.
Indian envoys in Pakistan had traditionally hosted the iftar each year
but it had been discontinued when ties soured in the late 1990s. The
iftar tradition had been revived in 2004 by three officers of the high
438 ange r m anage m e nt

commission—Political Counsellor Sibi George, Embassy Doctor Dr Qureshi,

and Head of Chancery Pal. The hosts of the event, who happened to be, in
Bollywood Amar Akbar Anthony fashion, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu,
pooled their representational grants to host an event at the Islamabad
Club. Over time, the idea regained momentum and the annual Indian iftar
continued in Islamabad, weathering all manner of adverse events. And so,
I hosted one with over 500 guests in 2018.
In 2019, we planned to hold the event again, scheduling it on 1 June,
despite the negativity in the relationship. We sent out over 1,000 invitations,
expecting as many as 500 guests to show up. However, I had an inkling
that this year would be different. Pakistan was bitter about their National
Day having been boycotted by a large number of Indians on 23 March.
Some Pakistanis now reported that they had received phone calls warning
them not to visit the Indian high commission. Our invitations were mailed
using a local courier service and we had reason to believe that our watchers
were intercepting the invitation cards. We were not sure how far they
would go to prevent guests from coming to this iftar celebration. But the
extent and severity of the action by the Pakistani agencies surprised us.
On the evening of the reception, Pakistani agencies launched what
looked like a military operation against the Serena, the fanciest hotel in
Islamabad, built by the Aga Khan, where our event was being held. Security
personnel laid siege to all the entrances. Forklifts were in attendance to lift
any defiant cars and to fling them aside. Barriers had been set up. Some
foreign diplomats were allowed in, but Pakistani guests were told that
the event was cancelled and entry was forbidden. Bizarre scenes unfolded,
of guests who had been fasting all day arriving for the iftar and arguing
with the plainclothes operatives. A former DG of the ISPR, former high
commissioners to India, and former ministers were turned away. The irony
was not lost on us. In order to spite India, Pakistan’s agencies had decided
to cut their own noses, to harass hundreds of their own elite citizens who
were trying to arrive for an evening of goodwill. I spoke that evening to the
few Pakistanis and the diplomats who had managed to penetrate the siege
and publicly apologized for the harassment they had faced. The irony was
that the bulk of the spite directed at India was borne by Pakistani citizens.
X
A few days later in June, I received a phone call in Islamabad at two in
the morning. My caller was a contact close to the ISI and I assumed he
was calling me simply because he was up late like most folks in Islamabad
awaiting the sehri meal in the month of Ramzan. The call had a more
serious purpose, it was to tip me off with a specific input about al-Qaeda
planning an attack in Kashmir. On 23 May, a terrorist, Zakir Musa, had
been killed in the town of Tral in Kashmir’s now famous Pulwama district.
 kas hm iriyat 439

Musa, whose funeral drew a horde of over 10,000 mourners, had been an
associate of slain terrorist Burhan Wani, but had split from the Kashmir-
focused militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen to declare his allegiance to al-
Qaeda in 2017.5 Al-Qaeda was apparently about to avenge Musa’s killing.
I asked if this information had been conveyed through the normal
military channels, the DGMO hotline. I was told it might have been, but
that the ISI leadership was keen to escalate the information to my level
so that I could convey this to India. At this point Asim Munir was the
DG of the ISI. I passed on this information to India, concerned this was
some kind of game.
It turned out that this was a genuine enough tip-off when an attack
was indeed attempted close to the predicted time and place. This was an
unusual input that Pakistan seemed to be giving to India. One theory
about why the high commission was used as a channel was that the ISI
was taking no chances and wanted no repeat of Pulwama; it wanted to
make it clear at a political level it was not involved with the revenge
attack being planned, but was only giving India a friendly tip-off with a
piece of intercepted intelligence. Another surmise was that General Bajwa,
the army chief, through the ISI, was trying to improve the atmospherics in
the relationship in the run-up to the Bishkek summit of 14 June, hoping
that Pakistan’s sincerity about trying to better relations would register on
the Indian side. Perhaps coincidentally, a day before the attack, the ISI
chief, Asim Munir, lost his job.
X
Munir was replaced overnight as DG of the ISI by Faiz Hameed, a three-
star general who had been famously named by Nawaz Sharif as the army
man who was responsible for giving cash to TLP militants during an anti-
blasphemy protest, the Faislabad sit-in. He was someone Bajwa appeared
to trust, and Imran Khan was familiar with, as the political fixer within the
ISI. Hameed’s forte was political manipulation within, rather than strategic
games with neighbours.
Rumours were afloat of an angry moment with Imran Khan insisting
that Munir, who had been appointed spy chief on Khan’s watch only eight
months earlier, should be removed that very day. Bajwa, whose extension
file needed to be signed by Khan, reluctantly agreed to humour the angry
PM. Talk began in Islamabad’s gossip circles of a litany of lapses by the
short-lived departing DG—he had not shared information on Pulwama;
not warned his bosses about Balakot; had goofed up on a few domestic
political operations, like a hatchet job against Justice Qazi Faez Isa, an
upright Balochi judge who was challenging the writ of the army and would
later become Pakistan’s Chief Justice.6 When I asked my interlocutor if
the change had anything to do with India and Pulwama, he flatly denied
440 ange r m anage m e nt

this theory and told me it was a sensitive internal matter and he could
not share details of that time, but ‘Khan Munir se bahut gussa hua (Khan
was mad at Munir)’. The real reason for Munir’s axing would only tumble
out into the public domain in 2022. Asim Munir, the revelation went, had
dared put the scope on First Lady Bushra Begum and warned PM Imran
Khan about corruption in his household.7

TALKING PEACE
Imran Khan’s friend, Naeemul Haque, invited me to his home late one
night in June 2019 to share some thoughts after India’s elections. Despite
his battle with cancer and continuing chemotherapy, Haque at that point
was deeply involved in the Pak–Afghan relationship. Haque felt the
‘Afghan model’ of Khan’s diplomacy could be applied to India—Khan’s
short meeting with President Ghani in Mecca on 1 June on the sidelines
of an OIC meeting had gone off well. Haque was convinced that his
friend could have a similar meeting with Modi and convince him of his
sincerity. He would be willing to give some persuasive answers to the
Indians on the question of terrorism and how he intended to stamp it out
in Pakistan. The opportunity would present itself in a few days in Bishkek
on 14 June and all it required was a brief handshake and conversation.
Khan would be happy to spend just five or ten minutes with Modi in
a one-on-one meeting—that’s all it would take to persuade the Indian
prime minister of his sincerity. He would hope to get a positive response
to starting a dialogue that could perhaps kick off with a meeting of the
foreign secretaries but should be rapidly escalated to a personal structured
meeting between the political leaders. If the Indian prime minister chose
to discuss the issue of ‘violent extremism’, Khan could give a reassuring
response on Pakistan’s action so far and its vision of the future. This could
open doors for flights, trade, transit. Haque also believed that we could
move towards opening our consulates in Mumbai and Karachi; he felt
Pakistan should not insist on getting back Jinnah House.
Haque’s optimism was infectious, as much as his faith in Khan’s abilities
was touching. I said that I would pass on these ideas to Delhi, but this was
a meeting perhaps too soon after Pulwama–Balakot and much too soon
after Indian elections for us to hope for a breakthrough. We might perhaps
need to wait for decisions on the spot in Bishkek on the nature of the
meeting and whether it could go beyond the courtesies. Most importantly,
India had not been convinced that elements in the Pakistani system would
not try to sabotage any fresh peace initiative with a new terror initiative.
The previous month, the meeting between the two foreign ministers was
also a courtesy chat in a waiting lounge. It was a better model than what
we had experienced in New York the previous year on the UNGA sidelines,
of the ministers studiously avoiding each other.
 kas hm iriyat 441

Clearly, Haque’s naive assessment was that India might forgive and
forget Pakistan’s transgressions and terrorist attacks once Indian elections
were over and perhaps even make peace overtures to Pakistan. But India
was not in a mood to humour Pakistan without significant movement
on terrorism. In an election fought in the wake of Pulwama–Balakot, the
electoral mandate was one requiring a tough posture on terror. In the
phone call between the prime ministers, PM Modi had asked PM Khan
for action on the fugitives that were present in Pakistan.
I was sure Haque had not run these ideas past Rawalpindi. Even if
he had, Pakistan had wrongly assessed the Indian national mood which
India’s political leadership needed to respect. The policy of ‘no talks with
terror’ could not be reversed overnight and Pakistan needed to build trust,
showing some demonstrable results on the ground.
The media had been abuzz with speculation on whether Modi and
Khan would meet in Bishkek or steer clear of each other. India did not
seek a meeting, and the Pakistan foreign office did not make any formal
request. A range of options were available under the rubric of a ‘courtesy
meeting’ between the prime ministers on 14 June. The two leaders did
not mingle in the more visible settings of the SCO family portrait or the
leaders’ dinner. As it happened, there was no structured bilateral engagement
in Bishkek, but the two prime ministers did exchange courtesies in the
‘leaders’ lounge’, one of the anterooms. Khan, Pakistani media claimed,
had congratulated Modi on his big win in the election.
I met Haque again in the end of June and we continued our candid
conversations. We agreed that Bishkek in mid-June had perhaps been too
early for a meaningful conversation to take place between leaders and that
action on the ground was necessary to build trust. Pakistan by now had
a list of India’s demands in terms of visible action against Indian fugitives
living in safe sanctuaries in Pakistan and against JeM and LeT on whom
we had requested irreversible action. I had also suggested action against
a prominent Khalistani activist in Lahore. Haque had already taken up
the issue with Punjab governor Sarwar in my presence.
X
I arrived in Delhi in July 2019 for another round of consultations, to brief
our side on the post-Pulwama Pakistan, and to get a sense of where we
were after the Bishkek ‘courtesies’.
Before I travelled to India, I had met with Foreign Secretary Sohail
Mahmood for a stock-taking exercise. Mahmood told me that Pakistan
continued to believe in the need of structured and sustained dialogue
with India. It was Foreign Minister Qureshi’s view that Pakistan would
not be pleading for such a dialogue, but would give enough time to India
to come to the table. Pakistan was willing to take forward the ‘stalled’
442 ange r m anage m e nt

initiative of Kartarpur and had acted with restraint. It would be keen that
India’s position became ‘less inflexible’, India’s media became less strident,
so that diplomacy got a chance. I pointed out that India would need to
see some tangible action taken on terrorism before we could think of a
dialogue. Clearly, the foreign office was behind the curve in reimagining
the relationship, compared to the political class or even the military.
In India, domestic public opinion had still not settled. The anger over
Pulwama lingered both in political and popular perception and the distrust
of Pakistan continued. It did appear that a major and visible change of
heart in Pakistan would be required to change the narrative in India. Any
attempt to reconcile politically could easily be derailed by another act of
terrorism, which would not be acceptable to any government, regardless of
whether it was in election mode or not. India was moving ahead cautiously
with Pakistan. The Kartarpur initiative had a clear political impetus to
continue, but India would be circumspect about any sudden détente with
Pakistan without first building a certain level of trust.
I found the various arms of our government eager to understand what
was happening in Pakistan. I got to have substantive conversations on the
state of play with our security establishment, diplomatic establishment, and
also the political leadership. The highlights of the visit were meetings with
the re-elected prime minister, the reappointed NSA, and the freshly minted
external affairs minister, S. Jaishankar. I had been particularly keen to meet
Jaishankar, who, as foreign secretary, had sent me to Pakistan and was
now elevated to a more critical role. I wanted to share some perspectives
and get his take on the relationship.
I also briefed NSA Ajit Doval and Prime Minister Narendra Modi on
internal developments and prospects in Pakistan, particularly the fragile
state of the Pakistan economy and the finalization of the IMF loan to the
beleaguered country. I tried to draw a roadmap of the next six months—the
possible meeting of Imran Khan with President Donald Trump in the US,
the possibility of a meeting between the two prime ministers in September
at the UNGA, the possible invitation to the PM to visit Kartarpur for the
corridor opening in November, and the FATF plenary meeting in October
where Pakistan’s blacklisting issue would be discussed.
My conversation with Jaishankar revealed his clear, realistic take on
the Pakistan conundrum. I told him that Pakistan was not too happy
about him calling it not a ‘normal neighbour’ in a recent interview. He
said in mock surprise that was the politest expression he could use.8
We agreed that India’s Pakistan policy needed to meet three objectives
simultaneously—of managing the bilateral relationship, managing global
influences, and managing the domestic narrative.
X
 kas hm iriyat 443

My advice to the leadership was that India’s Pakistan and Kashmir policy
could and should work on separate tracks. We should do what was right
for Kashmir and not be overly concerned about Pakistan’s reaction. I had
argued that Pakistan was at its weakest and would not risk any military
misadventure over Kashmir, even though it might escalate the rhetoric.
While I had an inkling of the imminent action on Kashmir, I did
not know of the specific time frame. My takeaway mandate from my
consultations was to keep pressing on the counterterrorism agenda and
the Kartarpur corridor opening.

PAKISTAN’S SINKING ECONOMY

One of the issues I had briefed our policymakers on was Pakistan’s
economic crisis. After more than nine months of stalling and self-
delusionary populism, Imran Khan’s government had finalized a deal
with the IMF. On 3 July, the IMF approved its 23rd bailout package for
Pakistan, a $6 billion, 39-month extended fund facility (EFF) arrangement,
envisaging immediate disbursement of about $1 billion. The programme
was optimistically expected to unlock from Pakistan’s international
partners around $38 billion over the programme period. All this when
GDP growth was limping below 3 per cent.
Economic trouble had been brewing for the ruling dispensation with
early signs of economic tension, particularly in April 2019, when Imran
Khan was forced to effect a mini reshuffle of his cabinet, firing an old
friend, Asad Umar. Cricket analogies had been legion—the captain was
only changing his top-order team for better performance in the next game.
Finance Minister Umar was eased out because he was unable to comprehend
the complexity of his job or the inescapability of bailouts, given years
of economic mismanagement. The IMF teams had been frustrated by his
intransigence. An international economist, Hafeez Sheikh (who had run a
mutual fund in Dubai), replaced him, even though the IMF was not too
pleased with Sheikh’s handling of an earlier bailout programme of 2010,
which remained incomplete when Pakistan did not fulfil IMF conditions.
This time around, he had asked for a freer hand in handling the IMF and
steering the economy.
But the malaise ran deeper, it was more structural and long-term.
Experts were saying that the IMF’s injection of funds was too little too
late. Pakistan’s economy was seeing the cumulative impact of decades of
mismanagement and the absence of economic reform. Several experts had
pointed to it. The World Bank had released a report in 20199 mentioning an
annual cost of ‘elite capture’ at about $8 billion. It repeated the argument
made earlier by Pakistani economists—that four influential groups had
captured the Pakistan economy: civil servants, landowners, industrialists,
and the military. It even went so far as to say that the military’s security-
444 ange r m anage m e nt

centric policies were a tool to extract state resources. Pakistan’s 23rd

trip to the IMF was being likened to an addiction for which the country
refused long-term treatment but landed up every few years for a quick fix.

A CORRIDOR OF DEBT
Pakistan now needed $50 billion over two years because of unsustainable
fiscal and external deficits. The only FDI Pakistan was getting was from
China, directed to the China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which
was stalling with only about $24 billion invested in completed projects, far
short of the promised $64 billion.
While the corridor of faith at Kartarpur hummed with activity,
Pakistan’s key ally, China, was losing faith in its own corridor, the CPEC,
flagship of the global BRI. A CPEC authority was being created to manage
this flagship project of the BRI that had considerable strategic significance
for both Pakistan and China. This would later be headed by General Asim
Bajwa, caught out for vast corruption and a global ‘pizza’ empire, allegedly
funded by skimming funds meant for the project. China was insisting on
security guarantees and arguing that Pakistan needed to improve its relations
with Afghanistan, the US, and even with India, to create security for the
corridor to be built. Sporadic stories were appearing in the Pakistan media
asking if the CPEC was dead or only recycling older projects, with China
investing only a third of the targeted $64 billion.
Chinese embassy sources were expressing frustration to us in July about
getting projects done with Khan’s government. I also learnt that Khan
had told the Chinese that they should support Pakistan since the US had
decided to support India against China. President Xi Jinping apparently
responded sharply to Imran Khan for this simplistic geopolitical assessment
and declared that China would not be propping up Pakistan against India.
He had advised Khan that it was the US that could help Pakistan in its
India relationship and it would be in Pakistan’s interest to make up with
the US as well as with Afghanistan.
X
In July 2019 we were still trying to work on the small steps to build trust
to push the counterterrorism agenda. Bajwa, I learnt, had acknowledged
that he had been overly optimistic in assuming that India would move
ahead quickly to repair relations after elections.
I met with Naeemul Haque for his usual blunt take. On the new DG
of the ISI, he said that he had heard mixed reviews of his competence. He
felt that both Khan and Bajwa were willing to work hard and sincerely
on repairing the relationship with India, but their attention was then
focused on working out the US visit of Khan. Haque promised me that
there would be serious consideration of our ask of taking action against
 kas hm iriyat 445

some or all of the Indian fugitives, but this would take time.
One step towards building trust was to open the closed airspace.
Pakistan was losing more in revenue, lost flights and lost routes than
it was gaining by making India pay for avoiding overflights. A media
report in early July suggested that while India had lost $78 million as a
cost of airspace closure for four Indian airlines, Pakistan had lost $100
million from 26 February till early July.10 Technically, Pakistan could not
single out Indian commercial airlines, so it had effectively shut down the
eastern routes to Pakistan of British Airways, United Airlines, and Thai
Airways flights.
Wilting under Western pressure on airspace closure, Pakistan had begun
to tell the Britons and the Americans that they would open the airspace
if India did it too. This was a specious argument, because India had
already unilaterally opened its airspace on 31 May. It was only incumbent
on Indian ATCs to warn West-bound traffic that Pakistani airspace was
closed. I was tasked with negotiating with the foreign office to have the
airspace opened. We were not easily going to give Pakistan a face-saving
formula of issuing a joint statement that said that both sides had agreed
to open their airspace. We argued that India had not closed its airspace
at all and would have no problem resuming air activity that Pakistan had
shut. Pakistan finally opened its airspace to incoming flights from the east
on the eve of Imran Khan’s visit to the US on 16 July 2019.

KHAN IN AMERICA
Pakistan had strong hopes for Khan’s visit to the US. Army chief Bajwa
was to accompany Khan, since the army felt it was important to retrieve
that relationship given that a dependence on China alone would not serve
Pakistan well. For many analysts, the army’s ability to game the US had
been a characteristic of the US-Pakistan relationship for decades.
I shared with the US envoy in Islamabad, during one of our chats,
India’s expectations and red lines for the visit. The US, we thought, should
ask for the following: credible and verifiable action against cross-border
terrorism, on Pakistan’s western, as well as eastern, border; Pakistan to
extradite to India the thirty-five fugitives (especially the twenty-six Indian
nationals) under Pakistani protection; greater regional stability by removing
restrictions in trade and transit between India and Afghanistan; and action
on past terrorist cases and investigations like Mumbai (where six US citizens
were also slain) and Pathankot.
When Imran Khan reached the US, his conversation with Trump made
headlines with the US president’s offer to mediate on Kashmir. When India
issued a sharp response, saying it had not asked the US to mediate, Trump
rapidly walked back his offer, clarifying that he would only intervene if
asked by both sides, which was the traditional US position.11
446 ange r m anage m e nt

Meanwhile, the US and Pakistan were continuing discussions on the

FATF. Pakistan was claiming that it was implementing all the obligations
outlined by the 1267 sanctions committee. It was expressing frustration
at the lack of acknowledgement of its heroic efforts in fighting terrorism.
It was arguing that the legal and evidentiary requirements of Pakistan
courts were high. This was a familiar argument to stonewall the arrests of
militants. The US was not buying this and continued to seek a commitment
from Pakistan on fighting terrorism. At this time, besides the US, the others
involved with the FATF process were turning up the heat on Pakistan.
The Asia–Pacific Group of the FATF met in the US in June. We were
watching, along with other diplomats in Islamabad, as Pakistan twisted
and turned, trying to avoid getting scorched by the heat that was being
brought to bear on it. Internally, Pakistan’s actions against terrorists were
being carried out under Punjab’s Maintenance of Public Order (MPO)
ordinance rather than under the more robust Antiterrorism Act (ATA)
of 1997. We were concerned that the terrorists who were being rounded
up would be held under protective detentions rather than punitive ones,
where the militants would be sent to ISI safehouses as guests of the army
to create the optics of action. We were told that 66 organizations and
7,600 individuals had been proscribed but the problem was that concrete
data was simply not available on arrests made, assets frozen, and funds
confiscated.
Nevertheless, the FATF became an effective instrument to influence
Pakistan’s behaviour. Both army and civilian leaders were saying in private
conversations that the FATF was a blessing in disguise for Pakistan,
compelling it to change its habits.12

DIPLOMATIC BATCHMATES
A week before my expulsion from Islamabad, I invited Moin ul Haque,
Pakistan’s high commissioner-designate for Delhi for a quiet meal,
where I briefed him on what I saw as the challenges of his role and
the opportunities they presented for peace. I sensitized him to India’s
sensitivities to terror. I was not making any special gesture, but only
reflecting the diplomatic nicety afforded me by Moin’s predecessor Sohail
Mahmood, when he hosted a lunch for me in Delhi. Mahmood modestly
told me he was in turn only repaying the generous hospitality of India’s
HC, Gautam Bambawale, who had hosted him in Islamabad.
I wished Moin ul Haque a successful tenure that was to start the next
week. We discovered we were notional batchmates, both having joined our
respective foreign services the same year in 1987. Haque had gushed with
considerable excitement about his forthcoming stint in Delhi. It was by
far, he said, the greatest honour of his career to have been nominated to
go to India, since it was the most important head of mission assignment
 kas hm iriyat 447

a Pakistani diplomat could hope for. I tried to give him pointers for a
meaningful tenure and for the strong allies he could make in Delhi in our
common quest for normalizing this relationship.
My farewell meal for the Pakistani diplomat turned out to be his
for me, since I would leave Islamabad within ten days of that meeting.
Haque’s Delhi posting remained stillborn, a farewell to his India hopes. In
the event, both of us had soft landings in our next assignments. I was in
Canada within a few months. Haque continued his sojourn in Paris and
landed finally in China almost a year later.

A SURPRISE IN KASHMIR
A puzzled Pakistan had begun to watch India closely in August. It was
tracking the situation in Kashmir, with increasing concern at the build-up
of troops, but still without a fix on the impending changes.
The diplomacy in Pakistan reflected this confusion. A Western diplomat
revealed to me that he received a call from army chief Bajwa on Saturday,
3 August. Bajwa expressed worry at the escalation of firing on the LoC. He
pointed to the dangers of a miscalculation by either side. He said Pakistan
was concerned that there would be some constitutional changes that would
impact Kashmir, that troop movement into Kashmir was rocking the boat,
threatening regional stability. He also brought out the familiar trope of
the Afghan border—while Pakistan was engaged in managing its western
border at a sensitive time, India was escalating the situation in Kashmir.
This made it harder for Pakistan to deal with the counterterrorism agenda
that the West expected of it. Even if there was no dialogue, India’s activities
were creating a problem. Clearly, Pakistan was even in early August more
worried about military activity by India across the LoC.
Foreign Secretary Sohail Mahmood similarly complained to Western
diplomats about escalation on the LoC, the paramilitary build-up,
the warning to Amarnath pilgrims to leave Kashmir, and the talk of
constitutional changes on the status of the state. The cumulative effect,
he said, would be that any violent acts would be blamed on Pakistan
and may involve an attack across the border by India. Foreign Minister
Qureshi wrote a letter to the UN articulating these fears to the world.
On 5 August, India’s parliament revoked Article 370. Jammu and
Kashmir’s special status was now extinguished and it became a union
territory, at a par with others in the Indian union. Home Minister Amit
Shah said in parliament that the revocation of Article 370 was meant to
bring an end to the bloodshed and violence in Kashmir. With 41,000 lives
lost in Kashmir, he asked, should we wait to lose 10,000 more before we
changed the status quo?
When Pakistan’s policy establishment recovered from the shock of
India’s announcement, it felt obliged to take a series of short-term measures
448 ange r m anage m e nt

to assuage the public opinion within the country that it had itself whipped
up. Among the measures being envisaged was a ban on trade, raising
diplomatic decibel levels globally, and, of course, asking India to withdraw
its high commissioner. In retrospect, many in Pakistan thought their country
could have managed the situation better, limiting its reaction to a strong
protest note and some moderately angry diplomatic and political rhetoric.
But Imran Khan’s inexperienced government did not have the capacity to
think its moves through or calibrate its reaction to the event.
Pakistan’s media was full of alarmist rhetoric. In the absence of a
clear line from the official PR machinery, multiple lines of action were
being advocated, everything from military action to isolating India
globally, by raising the matter at the UN. Tribal militia ‘Kabalis’ from
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa announced plans to march into Kashmir, in a move
reminiscent of 1947 and 1965. The implications of this move chilled
Pakistan’s establishment for the reputational damage it could cause Pakistan,
and even more, for a military escalation with a powerful India. 2019 was
not 1947. Imran Khan had to intervene and say that such actions would
be anti-Pakistan.
Pakistan’s best hope was that there would be a violent pushback on
the Article 370 move within Kashmir. Any bloodshed there would give
Pakistan the basis to raise the issue in international fora from a ‘peace and
security’ and also a ‘human rights’ perspective. Mounting a terror attack,
as in Pulwama, was now ruled out by the establishment. Any jihadi action
would invite an assured and currently unacceptable reaction from India.
The internal jihadis in Pakistan could not defy the establishment and still
go to India. The immediate use of non-state actors was ruled out thanks
to Pakistan’s NAP and commitments made to the international community
under the FATF. The Opposition was already critical of Khan and reminding
him that he had said that Modi would be good for resolving the Kashmir
issue if he was re-elected.
Much confusion arose about the Simla Agreement, which the Pakistan
media was saying India had abrogated. In the same breath, Pakistani
commentators were rejecting the Simla Agreement and harking back to the
UN resolutions. While the abrogation of Article 370 was being roundly
criticized as amounting to annexation, the military spokesman tweeted a
view that Article 370 was itself flawed and had been rejected by Pakistan
in the 1950s.
Pakistan media commentators13 were beginning to point to the lack of
viable options. Pakistan was militarily weak and could not attack India.
Diplomatic options were limited. Trump’s mediation offer could be revived,
but the US would certainly favour India.
In the days I was in Pakistan after the Article 370 move, I also met
with US assistant secretary of state Alice Wells, the point person for India
 kas hm iriyat 449

and Pakistan policy, at the residence of the US envoy Paul Jones. She was
there to discuss the FATF issue. She assured me that Trump’s offer for
mediation was an off-the-cuff remark that was later qualified to reconfirm
that there was no change in the US position and that mediation would
be considered only if both parties would request it.
After I was ‘withdrawn’ from Islamabad on 10 August, Pakistan
escalated the rhetoric further. The floundering responses and overreaction
had surprised policymakers in New Delhi. Angry statements were expected
from across the border, but what India was facing bordered on hysteria.

MANAGING THE HYPE

India had anticipated some shrill rhetoric and Pakistan taking this issue
to the global fora. If Pakistan had done just that and chosen to talk to
India at a later stage, it would have promoted its own cause. However, this
rhetoric would escalate uncontrollably and become so personal against
India’s leadership that Imran Khan effectively shut that door. When I asked
some Pakistani interlocutors later why this was happening, I was told that
Khan had run away with the talking points and was taking them too much
to heart. The army had been quiet on this issue and not shut the door
entirely. Army chief Bajwa, some suggested, had taken a back seat with
his extension file in play for November 2019; the inexperienced Khan was
handling the crisis without the army’s guiding hand.
For me personally, the action shifted to Delhi. I had hoped to take
a few days off to take a breather after the frenetic action of Islamabad.
However, in my first meeting with Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale, it
became clear that we were in crisis management mode at the MEA and
that I was willy-nilly part of that team. I wasn’t complaining. This was
important, several diplomatic fronts were open. We were keeping a firm
eye on the UN and knew that this game would continue for the next
few days and weeks. The UN Security Council would get into session in
September, as would the Human Rights Council in Geneva soon after.
We could expect Pakistan to escalate its shrill rhetoric. Indian diplomacy
needed to step up and defend both these positions.
Simultaneously, within Pakistan, the jihadi groups were now active.
The United Jehad Council (an organization formed in 1994 by the army
to coordinate the activities of various Kashmir-focused militant outfits)
had given directives to all groups to start mobilizing their cadres. India’s
security agencies spotted increased activity at the launch pads along the
LoC. Clearly, the Kashmir files had been dusted off and were back in
circulation. The path of least resistance of the Pakistani establishment
was the default option, the low-cost option, of getting the jihadi groups
working. Bajwa’s deradicalization process was sent into deep freeze.
Pakistan was internally debating whether to give the status of ‘interim
450 ange r m anage m e nt

province’ to both parts of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (what it called ‘Azad

Jammu’ and ‘Gilgit Baltistan’ by Pakistan). While the former had the de
jure character within Pakistan of an independent state, the latter was a
federally administered territory with a governor and chief minister. All of
POK was technically UN-administered awaiting a plebiscite to determine
its future. These provinces had been given the legal character in Pakistan
of independent states, technically pending a plebiscite to determine which
way they would go.
Simultaneously, an internal narrative was triggered of an imminent false-
flag operation from India: an act of terrorism for which Pakistan would
be blamed. The propaganda machine was back in high gear, Pakistani
diplomats were being asked to write articles on Kashmir for the global
media.
With Pakistan’s counter-terror campaign paused, the ‘good terrorists’
were also back in business. The JeM and LeT had stepped up their
recruitment drives. Training camps were being reactivated and arms were
now funnelled to the jihadists.
But India had learnt lessons from several bitter summers of terrorist
violence in Kashmir when the security forces seemed to lose control of the
valley. This time a pre-emptive security counter-terrorism grid and counter-
infiltration grid had been put in place in J&K to ensure that bloodshed
was minimized and Pakistani militants were contained.
Pakistan was debating approaching the UNGA for a resolution to
take the matter to the International Court of Justice (ICJ), if not for any
substantive gains, then for its propaganda value. The information campaign
was getting shriller. PM Imran Khan was calling India’s PM a ‘fascist’
and deploying all social media assets for a new war against ‘Hindutva’.14
The UN Security Council in New York would not respond to Pakistan’s
representations because it was not seeing a peace and security issue.
Nevertheless, on Pakistan’s prodding, the Chinese brought up the issue of
Kashmir at an informal meeting of the UNSC. The gambit ended with no
formal statement or even a press note. Pakistan decided to make diplomatic
capital of the process regardless of the absence of outcomes. It even set
up a press conference through its permanent representative in New York,
Maleeha Lodhi, claiming that the issue of Kashmir was taken up at the
UNSC after decades. For its domestic audience, Pakistan was playing up the
meeting as a diplomatic success. The Chinese ambassador also made himself
available to the press. India’s permanent representative, Syed Akbaruddin,
was obliged to counter the statements and point out that Pakistan was
not even in the room when the discussion took place. When this matter
was raised in Beijing, the explanation given was that the Chinese PR was
new and inexperienced and did not quite know the procedures.
Bilateral relations had dipped and Pakistan’s best hope was that the
 kas hm iriyat 451

Article 370 move would be deeply unpopular in Kashmir, even if it could

not engineer violence by Kashmir-focused militants. One more promising
venue was presenting itself to Pakistan to try to internationalize the issue—
at the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

KASHMIR GOES TO GENEVA

The Human Rights Council in Geneva was scheduled to hold its regular
sessions from late September. Pakistan had decided to focus its attention
there, hoping to do better than its past failed attempt to stir up the issue in
1994.15
EAM Jaishankar decided to send me to Geneva to make India’s case.
So, less than a month after my abrupt departure from Islamabad, I found
myself in the salubrious surroundings of the Hotel Kempinski in Geneva,
overlooking Lake Geneva and Mont Blanc. But this was no holiday. The
upcoming HRC session needed careful preparation. We were spending
hours gaming every scenario that could play out in the coming weeks.
Pakistan was making an all-out diplomatic effort. Its themes included
dressing up the issue as a regional peace and security crisis at the UNSC
in New York, and as a human rights crisis in Kashmir for its UNHRC
narrative. In Geneva, Pakistan was keen on getting some visibility on the
Kashmir issue through three process options—an urgent debate, a special
resolution or a joint statement. Each option required procedural support
from some of the forty-five member states of the HRC.
India had started some diplomacy at the EU level, approaching
individual members of the European Parliament that were contemplating a
Pakistan-inspired resolution on Kashmir. Indian diplomacy was also focused
on chats with OIC members. The conversation with the UAE and Saudi
Arabia was particularly critical; PM Modi happened to visit the UAE at
this time and had reiterated India’s request for support at the HRC. India
needed to ensure there was no OIC statement, no call for a referendum
on Article 370, and no country specific resolution against India. At the
OIC, the secretarial work had been virtually ‘outsourced’ to Pakistan, with
Pakistani officials managing the paperwork for resolutions. No voting
among members or majority approval was required at the OIC for passing
resolutions on issues like Kashmir and Palestine. In Geneva’s Human Rights
Commission, the threshold for passing resolutions was higher, but the OIC
and EU were important constituent groupings within the HRC. While the
OIC had a strength of 15 of the 47 members, the EU had 11 members.
Each group tended to think if not vote en bloc.
The mission to Geneva was welcome for me personally for another
reason. In 1994, as we saw,16 Atal Bihari Vajpayee had been deputed as
Opposition leader to go to Geneva to fight a similar diplomatic battle with
Pakistan. When I worked in his office, I had often heard Vajpayee extol
452 ange r m anage m e nt

this unique show of political bipartisanship by Narasimha Rao. He spoke

also about India’s success in blocking Pakistan’s resolution. We needed to
do this again and my mandate was to do some quiet diplomacy with not
just the forty-seven members but with all the major delegations in Geneva.
We had a credible narrative to offer, in contrast to Pakistan’s overhyped
brief, and India’s standing with most member countries was at a different
level compared to a quarter century earlier.
Pakistan often expresses disappointment and surprise that its narrative
on Kashmir does not find traction in the world. This narrative is mostly
developed in the echo chamber of a controlled domestic environment where
both the originator of the story and its consumers start believing it. It
is normally the same domestic version, with some minor tweaking, that
is trotted out for international audiences. The Kashmir narrative, hastily
drawn up by ISPR, was now ready for international use.
At the OIC, Pakistan was trying to make the latest Kashmir issue a
common cause for the Muslim ummah. The Kashmir matter had been
agitated in the OIC several times in the past, invoked in the same breath
as Palestine, a symbol of the oppression of the Muslim. At the UNSC, it
was dressed up as a threat to regional peace and security in South Asia.
At the UNHRC in Geneva, it was positioned as a human rights problem.
In their public diplomacy, Pakistan’s missions were being pressed to have
articles published, particularly in liberal newspapers like the New York
Times and Washington Post through Pakistan’s PR agencies and lobbyists.
Elements of the Kashmiri diaspora were being deployed with prepared
talking points and arresting visuals of those injured.
We decided to keep India’s account in Geneva more balanced, rather
than defiantly insistent on this being an internal matter and everything
being near normal. The central thrust of India’s case was that while the
situation in the valley was not how India wanted it to be, the status quo
could not have continued. Over 40,000 lives had been lost in Kashmir and
$40 billion had been spent on Kashmir, ten times more per capita than
the national average. Business as usual was no longer tenable. The Article
370 move aimed to correct a historical wrong that had been allowed to
persist for too long.
India’s diplomacy had faced the last such challenge perhaps in 1998,
when global pressure was brought to bear on India after the nuclear tests.
The difference was that three of the five P5 countries were then against
India; France had been the P5 holdout, Russia had been ambivalent. Even
Japan had gone after India, as global public opinion had veered against
the country. In 1998, the UNSC had passed a resolution censuring India
for the nuclear tests.
This time, the P5 countries, even China, were not ganging up on India.
In the twenty days since the Article 370 decisions, the UNSC had held
 kas hm iriyat 453

closed door consultations which had come to naught. The UNHRC was
being activated for possible resolutions. Several national parliaments were
being approached, apart from the EU Parliament. Of course, the driving
force behind this effort was Pakistan, which was trying desperately to
trigger overseas reactions.
Indian diplomacy’s challenge was to globally counter this narrative
and prevent any outcomes that unfairly censured India. In the event, what
went most in India’s favour was the negation on the ground of Pakistan’s
prediction that rivers of blood would soon be flowing in Kashmir. This
had to be conveyed to the world through some effective diplomacy.
The Kashmir case we were making went somewhat like this. No
‘special deal’ had been put in place with the princely state of Kashmir at
Partition. The Instrument of Accession that was signed in that period of
history was the same as the one signed with all other princely states. The
Constituent Assembly had given premiers of the 560 states a platform and
an opportunity to make their views known. Eventually Kashmir became
the only state that had the requirement of endorsement of central laws
by its own state-level Constituent Assembly. While the federal constitution
was being written, Kashmir was facing an extraordinary situation in two
ways—it was under attack by tribal militia from Pakistan. More importantly,
it was the site of the first India–Pakistan war that ended only in 1949.
In this context, Article 370 came as a temporary and transient provision.
Clearly, seventy years was a long enough shelf life for a transient provision.
On the constitutional issue of whether the manner in which the state
assembly was dissolved was correct, the matter was before the courts.
Essentially, the exercise was of repealing a temporary provision in India’s
Constitution. Each of the 560 states changed their borders and states were
reorganized in India multiple times since 1956. Even before 5 August,
Kashmir was a troubled land. There was a climate of separatism, of
terrorism fuelled by cross-border ingresses, of discrimination, and of lack
of development.
India’s attempt was to address the problem at its root, not at the
impact point. We needed to end the discriminatory climate where 106
central laws did not apply to Jammu and Kashmir, including progressive
ones on socio-economic issues like domestic violence and inheritance laws.
1989 had been a watershed moment for Jammu and Kashmir. This was
the year when terrorism started, just as the war was ending in Afghanistan.
The politics of the state changed with terrorism and a stronger proxy
presence of Pakistan in the valley. From that year, Kashmir’s assembly did
not implement central legislation. From 1989 to 2017, the implementation
of central laws in Jammu and Kashmir had ceased. The last law that had
been adopted by the assembly was the anti-defection law of 1989. The
next law that could be applied in Kashmir was the Goods and Services
454 ange r m anage m e nt

Tax of 2017, that was aimed at bringing India under the umbrella of a
single tax system.
In these three decades, the progressive integration of Jammu and
Kashmir into the national mainstream was halted. Pakistan, through its
political and militant proxies, had begun to play an outsized role in this
part of India. The political parties active in Kashmir had played a somewhat
dubious role in gaming the centre’s concerns for narrow interests, and not
for the good of the people. It was clear after the bloodshed of 2016 and in
2017 that the status quo in Kashmir was unacceptable. Business as usual
was not an option given the strong deterioration in the overall climate.
X
Meanwhile, the situation on the ground in Kashmir, after the dismantling
of Article 370, gave some reason for cautious optimism. There had been
no loss of life for days. There was no curfew in Kashmir except for the
imposition of Section 144 preventing the assembly of more than five
people. The shutdown in communications was critical to prevent Pakistan-
based terrorists from attacking and as long as it was temporary it was
a defensible position in human rights fora. Overall, the situation was
improving by the day, the police in crowd control measures had used no
live ammunition, and there had been no fatalities. The detention of political
leaders had been effected as a law-and-order measure and was clearly a
temporary situation. We were being told that of the 196 police districts in
Kashmir, 136 were peaceful and 10 faced moderate violence. In the valley,
there were reports of shock but also of relief that there was no major
bloodshed. The sense was of wait and watch.
A stronger argument was about borders. The borders of J&K had not
been constant. Pakistan itself had reorganized the areas under its control
multiple times in decades. The 1927 order of ownership of property and
domicile had been revised in POK in 1974. Some voices in Pakistan were
heard about further consolidating their hold on POK. Pakistan had ceded
territory to China, which had not only built a highway in Aksai Chin but
also taken control of the Shaksgam Valley in the trans-Karokaram area to
build the Karokaram Highway. The CPEC projects in the northern ‘Gilgit
Baltistan’ area of POK also amounted to illegally ceding of territory to
China.
Pakistan’s case of citing early UNSC resolutions was also a weak one.
Resolutions 39 and 47 (of 21 April 1948) on Kashmir clearly laid out
a sequential three-step procedure for a solution. This included Pakistan
removing all its nationals from Jammu and Kashmir followed by India
progressively reducing its forces to minimal levels, followed by a plebiscite.
From India’s point of view, these matters had been debated, discussed, and
disputed for decades, but had been overtaken by the 1972 Simla Agreement
 kas hm iriyat 455

and the Lahore Declaration of 1999. The Simla Agreement specifically

referred to the bilateral settlement of all issues.
While Pakistan was trying to take its familiar arguments to the UN
bodies, along with a set of dramatic exaggerations about 8 million Kashmiris
locked up like animals in a prison, suffering like Palestinians in Gaza, they
were using a different tack with Muslim OIC member countries. A new
narrative was being added to the mix about the current dispensation in
India being anti-Muslim and looking for ethnic cleansing in Kashmir. We
were in our response pointing towards our commitment to the Constitution
and the intent of the new amendment to bring good governance and
development to Kashmir. It was not about changing demographics.
X
I landed in Geneva on 22 August and walked in the next morning to the
office of the permanent representative of India to the UN, Rajiv Chander,
an old friend and Moscow hand. Many of the international delegates
were returning from holiday that week, in time for the plenary session of
the HR Council starting on 11 September. We decided to meet all forty-
seven delegations at the UNHRC, except Pakistan, although I was tempted
to ask for a conversation with familiar faces from across the border. In
Geneva, the OIC and EU tended to think like blocs, even if they did not
always vote en bloc, and therefore, these were the two crucial groups we
needed to speak to. My mandate was for some old-fashioned diplomacy in
exposing delegations to India’s point of view and offering perspectives on
the Kashmir issue, briefing them on Pakistan’s intentions and requesting
support in blocking Pakistan’s propoganda games.
Pakistan’s diplomats, well-versed in the intricacies of multilateral
diplomacy, had an unenviable brief. They had two disadvantages to deal
with. The first was an overly militant anti-India brief which had not found
much traction anywhere outside Pakistan. The diplomats would clearly be
forced to spew out those fallacious claims about the status of Kashmir since
they were coming from the top. Second, they had to contend simultaneously
with a situation on the ground that did not match their narrative of
mayhem in J&K. Pakistan had fielded former Foreign Secretary Tehmina
Janjua, an old hand at the Geneva game, while foreign secretary Qureshi
was expected to speak at the plenary session. Janjua had been my chief
interlocutor in Pakistan as foreign secretary and I had a sound working
relationship with her, despite having had several difficult conversations.
I knew she would stick to the talking points but would not take any
impetuous decisions to subvert procedures at the HRC.
To fine-tune our strategy, we brainstormed with veteran multilateral
diplomats in the UN bureaucracy on the lessons of the past. From the 1994
experience, we knew we needed to prepare for multiple scenarios. Veteran
456 ange r m anage m e nt

UN diplomat A. Gopinathan confirmed to us that in 1994, if Iran had not

persuaded Pakistan to withdraw the ‘resolution’, India would have faced
a close vote. We also needed to make a realistic tabulation of support.
In case a resolution was moved, we would not engage in discussions on
text. However, draft amendments would be kept ready just in case. We
also met with the human rights commissioner, Michelle Bachelet of Chile,
and got a chance to brief her at length, armed with maps of Kashmir,
explaining both India’s and Pakistan’s point of view and giving a picture
of the current ground realities. We decided to acknowledge transparently
that the detention of leaders, as also the communication blockade for
maintaining a security grid were essential measures, but not desirable.
These measures were temporary and would be reversed soon. This was
in stark contrast to Pakistan’s alarmist narrative about rivers of blood
flowing in Kashmir, unmarked graves, and 8 million people herded in an
open-air prison like animals.
In our narrative, which evolved after listening to our Geneva
interlocutors, we rebutted each of the arguments the diplomats were hearing
from Pakistan’s teams. It helped us that delegates were hearing both points
of view and could contrast the conversations.
Secretary (East) Vijay Thakur led our delegation to the opening plenary
session and delivered a strong statement defending India’s position. This
was the first global statement we issued after 5 August and it was again
a huge contrast to the vitriol that came out of Foreign Minister Qureshi.
As the session unfolded, only two countries mentioned Kashmir in their
plenary statements. This was all reassuring.
Mid-campaign, we realized that both the EU and OIC were divided on
the J&K issue, and were unlikely to vote as blocs. Most countries were
reluctant to take sides, especially given our strong demarches.
The three mechanisms available at the forum to Pakistan, to highlight
the Kashmir issue, were a special session, an urgent debate or a resolution.
Soon, Pakistan had given up hope on calling a special session, the strongest
mechanism offered by the HRC, since that would need to be triggered by
support of at least one-third of the member states (16); more importantly,
for an ‘outcome’ of the session, Pakistan would need a simple majority of
those present and voting (24).
For a request for an ‘urgent debate’ to be admitted, a minimum support
from 24 nations (simple majority) was required. But the ‘urgency’, of a
grave crisis, had to be established. A resolution could be introduced, but
had to pass with a majority of those present and voting. Most delegations
were rejecting the idea of an urgent debate because the council in session
already provided a forum for such conversations. In any case, India was
likely to win any vote to block an ‘urgent debate’ or a resolution.
It was clear that Pakistan did not have the required majority for a
 kas hm iriyat 457

resolution either. Pakistan’s reluctance to invoke these mechanisms or to

call for a ‘resolution’ also stemmed from the fact that a failure during
voting would be a bigger embarrassment. Pakistan did not want a reprise
of 1994 when it withdrew a request for a resolution, because it did not
have the numbers; the resolution would have failed.
Pakistan was now informally circulating drafts of clever resolutions
that did not really criticize anyone but asked for an early resolution of the
issue peacefully. But this was to the UN diplomats a familiar multilateral
gambit—produce the mildest text to give it a chance of being approved
by the largest number of members. It was clearly not something that the
world community would buy.
Based on India’s global diplomacy during the course of the month-long
Human Rights Commission meeting, we had assessed that a resolution,
if brought to vote, would get over 10 votes for India and under 5 for
Pakistan. Any substantive or procedural vote would not go in Pakistan’s
favour. Pakistan’s UN team had come to similar conclusions and decided
to spare itself the embarrassment of a defeat in the vote. It did not move
any resolution.
India’s global equities were strong, we realized, and so was its case on
Kashmir. India had come a long way from its diplomatic vulnerabilities
of the 1990s. The friendships in West Asia, with OIC countries, and the
understanding in the larger West had ensured that no unfair resolution
could be passed against India, simply because Pakistan felt aggrieved and
made allegations.
Geneva 2019 had ended with even greater success than Geneva 1994.
Pakistan realized that there was little international traction for its version
of what was happening in India, much less any resolution on Kashmir.
India’s diplomacy had come together in Geneva, New Delhi, and in multiple
global capitals to stymie the attempt to create a narrative of a bleeding
Kashmir. In fact, the occasion provided an opportunity for India to explain
clearly to the world the measures it was taking to normalize a wounded
part of its country. India’s focus now had to be within. As Vajpayee had
advised the country in 1994, when basking in the glory of a diplomatic
victory: ‘Let us now use this reprieve to clean up our act in Kashmir or
there will be a Geneva every few months.’17

THE CORRIDOR OF FAITH

The Kartarpur agreement was finally signed by India and Pakistan before
its November 2019 deadline and the approaching birth anniversary of
Guru Nanak. The process went off surprisingly smoothly both on the
diplomatic table and on the ground in Punjab. Miraculously, the project
had survived the diplomatic crises of Pulwama, Balakot, and the August
animosity over Article 370. All other people-to-people links had been
458 ange r m anage m e nt

paused. A few sticking points had remained in the talks; a twenty-dollar

fee that Pakistan was imposing and India was opposing; visas for Indian-
heritage holders of Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cards; whether
passports would be done away with as a condition for entry. India had
stoutly opposed Pakistan’s attempts to allow only Sikh pilgrims from India,
but insisted the corridor should be open to Indians of all faiths. Both
countries eventually agreed to allow visa free travel for Indian passport
holders and OCI card holders seven days a week. They expected about
5,000 pilgrims to visit the Kartarpur Sahib Gurudwara each day. This
appeared to be a reasonable guess, given that the holiest Sikh shrine in
Amritsar, the Golden Temple, hosted more than a 100,000 visitors daily.
In my public comments, I had called Kartarpur the corridor of faith. As
if steered by a divine hand, the process had chugged along in a landscape
littered with trouble. As it happened, India was confident that the security
risks of this gambit could be plugged and the corridor seen as a gift to
the people of Punjab, along with a host of other measures, for a grand
celebration of the 550th anniversary of Guru Nanak.
The corridor was inaugurated in November 2019. It had been built
rapidly in India and at a furious pace in Pakistan by the army’s Frontier
Works Organisation (FWO.) A turbaned Prime Minister Modi inaugurated
a huge terminal in India on 19 November and flagged off the first group
of yatris to go across. PM Imran Khan inaugurated the Pakistani facilities
and welcomed the special Indian delegation with a rambling speech about
Pakistan opening up the Sikh Mecca and Medina. As noted earlier, the
delegation included Punjab CM Amarinder Singh, and two Sikh central
ministers, Hardeep Singh Puri and Harsimrat Kaur, Navjot Sidhu, and
various leaders from Punjab.
Even after the inauguration, Pakistan painted a narrative of the birth and
resting place of Guru Nanak at Nankana Sahib in Lahore and Kartarpur
Sahib in Narowal being for Sikhs like Mecca and Medina for the Muslim
faith. To security analysts, the Kartarpur initiative was also Pakistan’s
strategic attempt to shift the centre of gravity of Sikhism from eastern Punjab
to its west. Tourism promotion and goodwill were the ostensible reasons.
Why did Pakistan, some cynics asked, not promote Buddhist heritage with
the same fervour? Because it had an interest in Khalistan not Buddhistan.18
X
But the Kartarpur project became a case study of a successful people-to-
people and confidence-building project at a time of diplomatic stress and
security suspicions between adversarial neighbours. If 2019 had not seen
the shocks of Pulwama and Pakistan’s overreaction on Article 370, India’s
prime minister could well have walked across to Kartarpur to meet his
Pakistani counterpart. More importantly, for many pilgrims who would
 kas hm iriyat 459

reach the holy lands through the corridor, it did not matter why the border
was opened, it was simply a blessing, gratefully accepted, from the first
Sikh guru, 550 years after he was born.

POLYCRISIS
With an acting high commissioner manning the Indian mission in
Islamabad, I technically remained the Indian high commissioner to
Pakistan till February 2020, even when on ‘temporary duty’ in Delhi.
Bilateral relations remained deadlocked, with neither side in a rush to
repair ties. India was still exhibiting ‘strategic patience’ with Pakistan,
when I left Delhi in March, on an assignment as high commissioner of
India in Canada.
In late 2020, a year after Kashmir’s special status was extinguished,
India revived quiet conversations with the Pakistan Army. The first fruit
of the engagement came when a ceasefire was suddenly announced on the
LoC by both sides on 25 February 2021. For six years before that date,
the ceasefire of 2003 had been frequently violated. India was now busy on
the northern front with China, Pakistan using up its military bandwidth
on its western front. The ceasefire suited both sides, but it had needed
quiet diplomacy to get to that point.
On 15 August 2021, as the 75th year of Independence began for
India and Pakistan, the Taliban seized power in Kabul, after running an
insurgency for two decades. The US-backed Afghan government led by
Ashraf Ghani shockingly dissipated in a blink, the Afghan national army
surrendered in one afternoon. As US troops withdrew from Afghanistan,
America’s longest war came to a chaotic end. Civil war loomed and the
security situation in the city deteriorated, as the US evacuated all personnel.
Most countries, including India, shuttered embassies and left. But Pakistan
stayed. It seemed to rejoice in the arrival of the Taliban regime. PM Imran
Khan suggested that Afghanistan had broken the ‘shackles of slavery’. And
the DG ISI Faiz Hameed visited Kabul soon after the departure of the US
forces, to have tea with the Taliban, in a public assertion of ownership
of the regime.
But Hameed’s proximity to his civilian boss Imran Khan precipitated
an internal crisis for Pakistan. The hybrid Khan–Bajwa regime in Islamabad
had begun to unravel by the end of 2021, reinforcing India’s view that
business would need to be done through quiet channels to the army. As
the Pakistani army turned ‘neutral’, Khan floundered. His government fell
in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, held past midnight on 10 April
2022. A new coalition regime of the Sharifs and Bhuttos emerged from
the political debris, again enabled by the army, with Shehbaz Sharif as
prime minister and Bilawal Bhutto as finance minister. Pakistan’s shaky new
coalition did not seem to have the power to make any major departure
460 ange r m anage m e nt

in the India policy, with Imran Khan snapping at their heels.

Pakistan’s attention had by now turned firmly inward, as it fell deeper
into the vortex of multiple crises—the cumulative impact of the faulty
choices and misgovernance of past decades. The pain of an economic
meltdown had been worsened by political confrontations, severe security
challenges, and devastating floods in 2022 that submerged a third of the
country. Even as Asim Munir asserted himself as army chief, the legacy
of his predecessor, General Qamar Bajwa, was debated on both sides of
the border. Bajwa had spent six years in power, effectively ousting two
elected prime ministers. He had not been averse to seeking a third term
for himself in 2022, but dropped the idea when the political situation
spiralled out of control.
The ‘Bajwa doctrine’ needed to be updated. It initially spelt out a
strategic reset towards a ‘normal’ Pakistan, at peace with its neighbours. It
later spoke of the primacy of geo-economics, which meant that the army
was deeply worried that the economic crisis would damage its capacities
and hence Pakistan’s security and foreign policy. Bajwa also claimed a
move towards a ‘neutral’ or ‘apolitical’ army. In describing his legacy,
Bajwa had made sporadic attempts to rein in terrorism and make peace
with India, but had seemed to give up abruptly on these objectives, when
his relations with Khan soured in 2021.
The passing of former dictator Pervez Musharraf in February 2023,
brought attention within Pakistan to another army chief’s dubious legacy.
When Musharraf breathed his last in Dubai, the former dictator was
perhaps unaware of the complex crisis that gripped his country fifteen
years after he left power. Musharraf’s own contribution to Pakistan’s misery
was monumental; the four (military-overseen) civilian governments since
had been unable to reverse the damage inflicted by him and his uniformed
predecessors. The reign of Pakistan’s last dictator was assessed mostly
negatively in Pakistan—he was forced into exile as a fugitive in treason
and murder cases, including the killing of Benazir Bhutto and later even
sentenced to death. He received little applause for engineering the Kargil
conflict or for the coup of 1999. But for India, he had somewhat redeemed
himself by his later attempts at stemming terrorism and by the backchannel
efforts on his watch to forge an agreement with India sealing the territorial
status quo on Kashmir.
In 2023, after consolidating some power, Pakistan’s new army chief,
Asim Munir grappled with a collapsing economy and a major security
challenge from the western periphery. Pakistan’s quest for strategic depth
in Afghanistan was denied by the Taliban as it gave sanctuary to the
anti-Pakistan TTP. Effectively, Pakistan’s Afghan policy which had been
carefully crafted with extremist proxies was not starting to unravel. With
little success in managing the economic and security challenges, Pakistan’s
 kas hm iriyat 461

army focused on the easier task of directing the country’s politics. The
army began to dismantle Imran Khan’s PTI; Khan himself was tossed into
jail in August 2023, like Nawaz Sharif had been in 2017. With the return
from exile in London of Nawaz Sharif in October 2023, the army’s Project
Imran was replaced by the latest edition of Project Nawaz, grooming the
three-time PM for another shot at power in 2024. As Pakistan began to
make an uncertain journey towards elections with a caretaker government,
the paths of the two countries seemed to diverge more than ever.
While India grew in heft, powered by the world’s fastest-growing large
economy, Pakistan seemed to have reverted to familiar army-dominated
structures to address its debilitating polycrisis. And the differential between
the two countries in terms of comprehensive national power seemed even
more pronounced. Young observers within Pakistan were fervently hoping
that the crisis would help Pakistan move towards becoming a ‘normal’
country. Even if their futures look decidedly different, and even if relations
are troubled, India and Pakistan will be unable to shake off a common
history and geography.
The next twenty-five years, till the centenary of Independence, hold
both promise and peril for bilateral ties. The countries could find newer
pathways, or tread old ones that had brought them so often to conflict
or its brink. To pick the right path, it is important to look back deep,
hard, and often at the journey thus far, to avoid the grievous mistakes of
the past. A reimagined Pakistan and a reimagined relationship between
the two sibling nations is critical to bringing coherence and prosperity to
South Asia. In the conclusion that follows this chapter, I look at some
ways in which the bilateral relationship might be reimagined.
As this book went to press, the diplomatic relationship remained
downgraded and my successor in Islamabad had not yet been appointed.
I look forward to this situation being corrected, just as I hope the two
neighbours will find better ways to manage this troubled relationship. I do
not wish to remain listed as the last Indian high commissioner to Pakistan.
 Conclusion

HISTORY’S AMBI GUOUS L E S S ONS

I n dissecting relationships between nations, especially those between

hostile neighbours, a fair occupation for scholars and analysts is to tease
out patterns from history. The past is after all prologue to the present
and shines a light on the future. But parsing a troubled past can be tricky.
Interpreting the antagonism between neighbours is even more so because
the variables at play tend to be multiple and complex, while we tend to
favour convenient, univariate explanations.
This temptation particularly afflicts those observing India–Pakistan
relations, where opposite lessons are often drawn on either side of the
border, and where experts abound but seldom agree. The lessons within
borders also tend to be debatable, contentious, and all too often, motivated
and self-serving.
What does the story of the diplomatic relationship between India and
Pakistan tell us? We have seen that across the decades, both practitioners
and observers have drawn conflicting lessons. They have made varying
policy prescriptions for the future, not just depending on what side of the
border they are on, but also on their ideological predilections within borders.
Nevertheless, the broad messages from the past are critical to
determining our approaches to the future. Are these two neighbours destined
to fight? Is it inevitable that the ties should periodically snap? Can we
drive around the potholes? Can the few happy episodes of the past provide
some pointers for a policy that could guide us to peace? Can India and
Pakistan erase the past and become like today’s Germany and France? Or
will they remain uneasy rivals like North Korea and South Korea?
More than three quarters of a century after their birth, India and
Pakistan have failed to develop, jointly or separately, a viable model for
dealing with each other. Their interaction and diplomacy of the past years,
as we have seen, has been angry, turbulent, troubled.
Not that diplomats have not engaged in finding solutions. For the
practitioners of the art, it would be crucial not just to revisit the past but
also to avoid repeating the mistakes of their predecessors.
Looking back at the end of seven decades of diplomacy, one former
Indian envoy to Pakistan reflected on the words of a predecessor, who
was himself looking back at three decades. Natwar Singh offered a cryptic
assessment in 1980, that the future of India–Pakistan relations lay in
the past. These remarks came when Singh was beginning his tenure as
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 463

ambassador in Islamabad in 1980, just as the Zia era was beginning to

take shape. The burden of history, of Partition, of territorial and identity
issues, was real and immediate then. T. C. A. Raghavan echoed Singh’s
remark, in the seventh decade. And diplomats going about their business
in both countries carry this burden to this day. Singh’s weary wisdom
suggested at once that the current diplomats were prisoners of a past
created by their predecessors, at the bidding of political masters. And that
they were mostly condemned to repeat history.
But the past is not always the best predictor of the future. We know that
all too well in the age of global disruptions, when black swan events have
hit us all too often. The 2008 financial meltdown and the 2020 pandemic
had little historical precedence, just as Europe’s post-war integration and
German unification in the 1990s had no close parallels or precursors.
So, what do the years of our story since Independence tell us?
One, security matters. The Indo–Pak relationship has been heavily
‘securitized’, not just by four major conflicts, but also by all the minor
ones that unfolded every day. Pakistan’s unsettled quest for an identity that
drove India–Pakistan diplomacy at Partition is still relevant in informing its
approach to its larger neighbour. The relative importance of the themes of
ideology, territory, and security may have ebbed and risen in their influence
on the bilateral relationship. But in the twenty-first century, the quest
for security became the key driver of diplomacy between the countries.
Pakistan’s continued obsession with the India threat and India’s lowered
tolerance of terrorism ensured that bilateral diplomacy will keep security
issues at the centre of the grand strategy that the two countries define
and deploy to deal with each other.
Both countries accept that security is their dominant concern. With the
army in Pakistan having primary control on India policy, India’s security
establishment now plays a greater role in determining the shape of Pakistan
policy and diplomacy, albeit under the guidance of elected leaders. For many
in India, Pakistan is to be seen as a key internal security threat through
its proxy wars in Jammu and Kashmir primarily, but also in Punjab. For
Pakistan, the growing military strength of a rising India, the vast power
differential, the widening economic gap, are all cause for concern and
indeed key drivers of policy and diplomacy.
Terrorism in the last three decades has derailed détente processes.
Many in India believe that Pakistan is now to be approached with the
policy of ‘active defence’ to counter terrorism. To some, India’s Pakistan
policy for the moment should be a counterterrorism policy rather than
a neighbourly foreign policy. Acts of terror over the decades, particularly
in the twenty-first century, have set the dialogue back by years and are
often timed to derail major meetings between the countries. Frequently,
the terrorist would wield the veto. But the distinction between a Pakistan-
464 ange r m anage m e nt

based terrorist and the Pakistani state is no longer a valid one for India.
After the Simla Agreement was signed, in July 1972, former high
commissioner Shivshankar Menon observed in 2016 the two countries
fell into a ‘repetitive pattern or dance’ of engagement and disruption. But
when breakthroughs seemed near, ‘there is a big disruption, most often a
terrorist incident or attack, and then negotiators start the cycle all over
again, first tentatively and then a little more surely.’ This pattern has
continuously frustrated Indian policymakers.
For India, the strategic restraint exercised during Kargil in 1999 and
after the Parliament attack of 2001 has now been replaced by a sophisticated
counterterror and active defence policy. A credible counter-factual to ponder
over is that if the air strikes on Pakistan had taken place in 1999 after
Kargil, if Uri and Balakot-like actions had been executed by India, and
had been factored into Pakistan’s security calculus, the attacks of 2001 and
2008 could perhaps have been prevented. Strategic restraint was vital for
India after turning nuclear in 1998, not just for security reasons but also
for its international reputation. Arguably, such restraint was unnecessary
after the Mumbai 2008 attacks. A Balakot-like strike after Mumbai could
have prevented more attacks subsequently. Going further back, if India
had found an effective military response to the proxy war of the 1980s
that inflamed Punjab, it could conceivably have prevented the conflagration
of the 1990s in Jammu and Kashmir; if India had placed a heavy and
unacceptable cost on the Pakistan Army in response to the terror of the
1990s in Kashmir, it could have created a deterrent for the terrorism that
mounted from the turn of the century.
Two, leadership matters. In India’s case the buck has always stopped
with the elected prime minister—from Nehru to Modi and every PM in
between. They have been personally responsible for Pakistan policy, for
judgements that led to war or peace. For Pakistan, these decisions lay
with the army, with varying degrees of consultation with civilian regimes.
We need the coincidence of strong governments on both sides to make
peace diplomacy effective, to ensure that any significant breakthroughs are
sustainable. It was in an era of relative political stability and confidence that
Nehru could go to Ayub Khan in 1960 to sign the Indus Waters Treaty.
Conversely, Rajiv Gandhi’s attempt at peace with Benazir Bhutto could not
be sustained beyond 1989 because her regime was unstable, tripped up
by an army deeply suspicious of her. Vajpayee’s visit in 1999 and Modi’s
foray in 2015 were goodwill visits by confident Indian leaders, but came
at a time when Pakistan was not strong enough, when the civilian leader
in both cases Nawaz Sharif was at odds with the army. Just like it took
a Nixon to go to China, a Republican to make tactical friends with the
dreaded communists, it has taken politicians from a muscular political
party, the BJP, to tango with Pakistan’s army. Any peace initiative, most
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 465

observers now agree, would need to be actively owned by the BJP in India
and the army in Pakistan, irrespective of the political components of the
governments of the day.
Changes in government provide occasion to attempt changes in policy.
Vajpayee defied conventional wisdom on the Pakistan file several times in
his career. In 1978, he visited Pakistan when it was concerned about the
Janata regime’s attitude to Pakistan. In 1999, he defied expectations again
by making the bus trip to Lahore. Modi’s visit to Lahore in 2015 was
similarly unexpected, as was the initiative to invite Nawaz Sharif for the
oath-taking of the new Indian government in May 2014. Modi, in fact,
pointed out in public remarks that Sharif’s visit to India in 2014 and his
own return visit to Lahore in 2015, demonstrated India’s sincere desire for
dialogue; these engagements made it easier to explain subsequent tough
actions against terrorists to the world.
The flawed choices of the past by Pakistan’s leaders, both army and
civilian, have at critical moments altered the trajectory of ties. The flaw
in Jinnah’s foundational two-nation theory was exposed within a quarter
century of Pakistan’s birth. The creation of Bangladesh confirmed that
Jinnah erred in assuming that a common religion could erase identity
markers like language and ethnicity, and even geography and history. The
endorsement by Pakistan’s founders of Akbar Khan’s scheme to send raiders
into Kashmir in 1947 led to an avoidable war, adding to the trauma of
Partition. Similarly, Ayub Khan’s failed attempt to grab Kashmir in 1965
with Operation Gibraltar soured a relationship that was headed into positive
territory. Yahya Khan made a terrible choice in 1970, of disrespecting an
electoral verdict of 1970 favouring Mujib, which led to the dismemberment
of Pakistan. In 1999, Musharraf’s Kargil misadventure negated the benefits
of the boldest peace initiative from India—Vajpayee’s bus ride to Lahore.
Similarly, allowing terrorists into Pathankot was a choice of Pakistan’s
army leaders that derailed the diplomacy of 2014–15. An inexperienced
Imran Khan’s overreaction to the August 2019 moves by India reduced
the space for détente. On its part, India perhaps paid a price as its leaders
failed to craft an effective response to Pakistan’s terrorism.
Three, diplomacy matters. We saw across the decades that while overall
national policy postures emerged organically from national objectives, the
diplomats of the day could often influence events through their actions.
In the 1960s, Rajeshwar Dayal managed to persuade Nehru to give
Ayub Khan a chance, despite Nehru’s instinctive suspicion of the dictator.
Natwar Singh became an advocate for Zia in the 1980s despite Mrs
Gandhi’s aversion to him. Pakistan’s envoy Jehangir Qazi, through his
quiet diplomacy with Advani, managed to get the Agra Summit of 2001
in place giving Musharraf a chance to make his case. Leaders were often
putting a personal stamp to the diplomacy. Nehru was himself his foreign
466 ange r m anage m e nt

minister and India’s chief diplomat of the 1950s, Vajpayee’s diplomatic

forays into Pakistan defined India’s sincerity and balanced approach. Zia
was perhaps the most consummate diplomat for Pakistan who tried to
sweet-talk India while running a nuclear programme and a jihad in Punjab,
modelled after the Afghan jihad that he successfully ran for the Americans.
Diplomacy, conducted at whatever level, has unquestionably shaped the
trajectory of ties.
To some observers, Indo–Pak diplomacy has mostly focused on conflict
management rather than conflict resolution. Diplomats have engaged in
fighting fires, managing the furies, rather than in looking for long-term
sustainable solutions for good neighbourliness. The nature of diplomacy
has also changed. Personal intimacy between leaders and diplomats in India
and Pakistan defined their interaction till the 1970s. In later times, it was
more the professionals pitted against one another, even if the innate South
Asian cultural affinity often came into play. Overall, the space has shrunk
for quiet diplomacy, for the traditional and classic secret conversations,
away from the public glare. In the age of social media scrutiny, a lot
needs to be shared in real time; quiet diplomatic manoeuvres are rare,
not least because they are harder to pull off. More importantly, the public
postures of populist politicians reduce the space further. Imran Khan and
his government’s demand to reverse India’s move on Article 370 as a
precondition for a conversation with India painted Pakistan into a corner.
The age of the jhappi pappi diplomacy between Punjabis or North Indians
has also gone, with each country needing to treat the other as foreign. Rikhi
Jaipal, a diplomat dealing with Pakistan in the 1970s, would famously
identify himself as a ‘Madrasi’ who spoke no Punjabi in dealing with his
Pakistani counterparts.
Four, global forces matter. Major powers have started playing a larger
role, as global geopolitics itself has entered a period of churn, particularly
in the twenty-first century. ‘Great’ powers pursuing their global interest
impinge on the relationship in various ways. At their creation, it was
British national interest that determined the fate of India and Pakistan.
Subsequently it was the US and Russia fighting the Cold War, which made
them choose partners who could further their cause. The Chinese made
no secret of befriending the adversary’s adversary.
The Cold War between the US and the Soviet Union has thawed into
a new one in the twenty-first century with Ukraine as its primary theatre
between Russia and the larger West. It runs in parallel with the new
contestation between the US and China as also the West Asian conflagration
that derails peace processes in the region. For some scholars, the new era
is one of South Asia seeing a resumption of hard power geopolitics as the
US withdraws from the region, China becomes more belligerent, India’s
tolerance of terrorism diminishes, and Pakistan’s economy nosedives. The
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 467

US withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, and its robust contest with China
has deepened Pakistan’s dependence on China, as also India’s concerns of a
two-front collusion and military challenge. For military experts, the power
differential between India and Pakistan has widened, and will continue to
do so, leaving Pakistan more dependent on alliances and more vulnerable
to the seduction of sub-conventional means to challenge India.
Five, multilateral institutions play a role. Aside from the major
powers, the UN has tried since its inception to help sort out the Indo–Pak
territorial issue, just as the World Bank successfully mediated the waters.
The bilateralism of diplomacy between the countries is supplemented by a
nod to specialized multilaterals. They play a role, not just in contests over
territorial boundaries and minorities or in the traditional UN bodies like
the UNSC and HRC. After being wary of ‘internationalizing’ the Kashmir
issue for what it saw as decades of propaganda, India has shown greater
confidence and flexibility in approaching the International Court of Justice
to discuss imprisoned citizens; FATF for terror; ICAO for aviation disputes;
or the World Bank again to amend the Indus Waters Treaty. Traditional
multilateral instruments like the IMF and newer ones like the FATF have
now put Pakistan under intense scrutiny and forced it to modify its
behaviour in various ways.
Six, people matter. Popular opinion, particularly in Pakistan, was mostly
shaped in the early decades by official narratives amplified by the media.
Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore in 1999 seemed to create an emotive positivity
among the people that was not acceptable to the Pakistani state. The
period which began with Vajpayee’s visit in 2004, and accelerated in the
Manmohan Singh years, saw people not having to pay for cabs when
they visited for cricket in the golden period of 2004 to 2006. But popular
goodwill is often overestimated; it is easily poisoned by state narratives.
The newer phenomenon of social media run by young ‘influencers’ has
allowed a large section of young people in Pakistan to express themselves
fairly independently and their young audiences to consume opinions they
never had access to earlier. While social media can be a toxic multiplier
of hostility and fake narratives, it also democratizes the expression of
opinion, removing the monopoly on information with a propogandist state.
Cross-border connections between young influencers in the virtual space
gives an indication of times to come.
Seven, the territorial disagreement will never really go away, but can
be put on the back burner. The hardened positions on Kashmir make
an explicit territorial compromise impossible. Any solutions will have to
work around this issue. In the 1970s, bilateralism was accepted as the
guiding principle for engagement on the Kashmir question. In the 1990s,
India reiterated its claim on POK, the western and northern parts of
the erstwhile princely state occupied by Pakistan. In this century, both
468 ange r m anage m e nt

countries tried to make borders ‘irrelevant’ and accept the LoC as a

de facto reality. But the heightened terrorism in Kashmir has hardened
India’s position. What is required by both is a process of negotiation
about borders while continuing conversations on other tracks. Army chief
Bajwa’s reported proposal of a twenty-year freeze to territorial disputes
offers hope for a modus vivendi.1
Eight, Pakistan’s structure matters. The structural issue of the
domination of Pakistan’s army is perhaps the single largest challenge to
bilateral diplomacy, as indeed to Pakistan’s economic survival. Even though,
arguably, the Pakistan Army under Bajwa struggled to change and redefine
its role in Pakistan, any conflict brings it back to the default position, which
to India is of continuing the proxy war. The military will continue to be
Pakistan’s most important political institution that will continue to matter
even if it goes ‘neutral’ or apolitical. Pakistan’s garrison state may adopt a
different form, say, the pre-Erdoğan Turkish model (of withdrawing to the
barracks but emerging if the civilians don’t deliver) or the Thai model (of
a military dominated elite overseeing elected civilian politicians) but the
essential architecture will be military-led. Pakistan’s democracy with fifteen
years of civilian faces in the front office at the time of writing, is holding
but the institutions continue to be weak, subverted by the deep state.
Populist civilian leaders like Imran Khan are no guarantors of improved
relations with India, nor can such leaders pull off feats like Erdoğan did,
of bottling up the Turkish army. From India’s point of view, while civilian
leaders of the past, like Nawaz Sharif, had defied the army to improve
ties with India, they could also exhibit behaviour like Imran Khan, picking
up the convenient prop of right-wing religious ideology, new narratives
of ‘Islamophobia’, backed by the revival of a distrust for India and the
deployment of extreme rhetoric. While civilian leaders could potentially
derail peace initiatives or equally lead them, no such initiative would be
sustainable without a buy-in by the army.
While the structural reality of Pakistan’s security state is accepted by
analysts, the other structural fact of its Islamic state is often overstated in
assessing bilateral tensions with India. These cannot be framed in religious
terms as a contest between an Islamic state with a predominantly Hindu
neighbour. India’s excellent ties with Islamic West Asian countries, and with
Bangladesh, challenge any religion-based hypothesis. With Bangladesh, a
predominantly Muslim neighbour with 170 million people, India has over
five decades, resolved water and land boundary disputes. It now has a
trade level of over $18 million, multiple weekly flights, lines of credit of
over $8 billion, and a robust exchange of high-level visits. Indo–Bangladesh
ties, not without irritants, can serve as a model for future Indo–Pak ties.
Nine, the economic aspects of the relationship matter less. For India,
a conversation on trade is more a confidence-building measure, an element
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 469

of foreign policy, rather than a plank of an economic blueprint designed

to promote prosperity in the region. Successive prime ministers in India
have articulated the exalted objective of jointly or separately addressing the
challenge of bringing prosperity to the poor. Vajpayee said this in letters to
Nawaz Sharif and Musharraf and Modi said it to Sharif, as also to Imran
Khan in his congratulatory calls. India’s ‘no talks with terror’ policy has a
corollary for some—of no trade with terror. In Pakistan, in contrast, trade
links were traditionally regarded as a ploy by India to distract bilateral
attention from the core Kashmir issue. But with Pakistan’s economic
downturn, serious voices—particularly in Pakistan’s pharmaceutical and
textile sectors—have asked for trade and connectivity with India as part
of efforts to improve ties with India.
Trade can thus be both a CBM and a low-hanging fruit for a diplomatic
revival. Analysts feel that Pakistan’s army no longer sees trade with India
as a dilution of the Kashmir cause but a means to longer-term security
benefits.2 The previous serious attempts to normalize trade in 2011–12
were questioned by ‘vested economic interests (such as the agriculture,
automobile, and pharmaceutical lobbies)’, not the army. Since the army
now pushes for geo-economics in the context of an economic collapse, it
would be more amenable to trading with the traditional enemy.
In a more fundamental sense, Pakistan’s India policy has cost it its
economy. An exaggerated India threat led to a bloated role of the army
in domestic power structures, foreign, and security policy. But perhaps
most corrosive was the army’s role in the domestic economy. The current
economic collapse was triggered in part through the army’s choices: its
capture of the economy through Military Inc., the proxy terror wars in
India and Afghanistan that damaged Pakistan’s global reputation. Also,
Pakistan can no longer benefit from monetizing its strategic location, the
geopolitical rents seem to have dried up, particularly after the US exit from
Afghanistan. Even the Chinese seem wary of further infusions of capital,
with CPEC funds drying up. A reimagined Pakistan would perhaps need
to reinvent its India policy. That would be true geo-economics.
Ten, minority issues continue to matter. The highly emotive issue of
the treatment of minorities continues to inform contemporary diplomacy
and ties. Aggression against minorities in Pakistan is a cause for concern
in India; but the Hindu and Sikh minorities within Pakistan are now
microscopic. And with barely a voice within Pakistan. Minority relations
within India come up for major comment in Pakistan for an existential
reason. It is important for the Pakistan state to tell its people that despite
their myriad problems, contrasted with India’s rise and prosperity, they are
the more fortunate ones to live in a Muslim homeland compared to India’s
over 200 million Muslims. Identity issues of religion continue to define
the politics in both countries to varying degrees and therefore continue
470 ange r m anage m e nt

to matter in their diplomacy.

While these issues, ranging from security to leadership to diplomacy
to minorities, have mattered to define the trajectory of ties, longer-term
relations have become more resilient to shocks. Curiously, the cycles of
engagement and hostility have become shorter, particularly in the fast-
paced twenty-first century. The pattern of interest to policymakers should
be of micro-cycles within the cycles. The traditional view of the India–
Pakistan engagement has been that it is cyclical, with periods of peace and
dialogue alternating with war or conflict or high hostility. Even in times
of ‘unpeace’, within extended periods of hostility or absence of dialogue,
there have been some positive moments. India and Pakistan signed an
agreement on travel for pilgrims in 1974, when they had no diplomatic
engagement or missions. In recent times, the Kartarpur corridor came up
in 2019, despite the animosity of Pulwama, Balakot, and the dismantling
of Article 370. A ceasefire was accomplished in 2021, despite the absence
of high commissioners or a structured dialogue. Periods of recovery from
conflict have shortened in the current century. It took five years to resume
missions after the 1971 war, but I was back in office as high commissioner
in Islamabad within three weeks of the Balakot strikes.
Even in periods of a fraught diplomatic relationship, feelers have quietly
been sent across the border for improving ties at the worst of times.
Changes in government, absent disruptive events or violence, give that
brief opening. And sometimes so do less happy occasions like funerals of
leaders or natural disasters like earthquakes and pandemics, provided the
countervailing forces are not overwhelming.
Some years become seminal, profoundly impacting the relationship.
Shifting alliances between the major powers, particularly the US–China
dalliance, impacted the 1971 India–Pakistan war. 1979 saw a global churn,
with events like the Iran revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
a backdrop to the India–Pakistan thaw of 1979–80. In 1989, we saw the
end of the Cold War, as also the Rajiv–Benazir thaw: 1998 was when
the countries went overtly nuclear. 2001 was the year of the Musharraf
Agra summit, it was also the year of 9/11 and the Parliament attack in
India which changed security paradigms for both the US and India. 2012
was the year when Osama bin Laden was found, eroding US trust in
Pakistan. And 2019 was when Pulwama, Balakot, and the abrogation of
Article 370 were bunched together. This tells us that larger global forces,
more than human agency—diplomatic or political, seem to be at play at
some critical junctures, impacting the bilateral relationship in unpredictable
ways. These can provide headwinds or tailwinds to diplomacy depending
on how they play out.
To create a future substantively different from the past, we need to
learn from that history, not repeat its mistakes; to manage the anger and
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 471

create new pathways. For that, we need strong and wise leaders aided by
smart diplomacy.

SHOOTING FOR A CENTURY?

As much as looking back to reflect on how two neighbours got into this
troubled, angry, often fratricidal relationship, we need more perhaps to
look ahead and see how they could head to a better place. Can we create
a future different from the past? Will centennial Pakistan and centennial
India continue to be adversaries with the same degree of mutual hostility
as now, or can the future bring normalcy, if not bonhomie? Will 2047 bring
greater wisdom with smarter technologies and newer aspirations for close
to two billion people inhabiting the countries then?
In a volatile relationship, predicting events in distant decades is a risky
game, as much astrology as futurology. This has not stopped analysts and
scholars from trying to divine the future. And that’s where our gaze must
now turn.
The eminent South Asia expert Stephen Cohen had argued a decade
ago that Pakistan and India could be ‘shooting for a century’, embroiled
in worse hostility in 2047 than at present. Cohen had painted a picture
of ‘conditional pessimism’ arguing that neither country had demonstrated
any interest in resolving issues.3 On the fringes of the mainstream discourse
are the outlandish fantasies that sometimes confuse analysts—an Islamic
conquest of India with Ghazwa-e-Hind, or an Akhand Bharat stretching
west to Afghanistan as an undivided cultural space.
Some experts have argued that India should not worry about territory
(Kashmir) since it would be the third largest economy by GDP by 2050
and therefore its grand strategy should go beyond territory to a more
comprehensive projection of national power. This was a ‘net assessment’
based on strategic analysis.4 Others have argued that India has no long-
term vision in place with respect to Pakistan, since it lacks a coherent
grand strategy to manage Pakistan’s animosity, making it the most
dangerous bilateral relationship India has.5 This is more an indictment
of Pakistan, which thanks to army predominance, thinks more tactically
than strategically.

POLICY CHOICES
If policymakers have agency, what would be the optimal policy path to fix
this broken relationship? That question leads to more fundamental ones.
How do practitioners look at policy? Is it determined by political realities
or is it something that organically evolves on the ground? While diplomats
implement foreign policy determined by a political leadership, they never
seem to lack views on what that policy should be.
Indian high commissioners in Pakistan have made their opinions well
472 ange r m anage m e nt

known, certainly quite articulately internally, but also often enough in

the public domain. While they seem to broadly agree on the diagnosis of
the problem, they have offered varying prescriptions across the decades.
India’s first HC in Pakistan, Sri Prakasa, had famously offered Nehru a
radical solution for a ‘neutral’ Kashmir, with common Indian and Pakistani
citizenship.6 Many of his successors had proffered their views as well.
Given the propensity of the media to classify those pronouncing on policy
as ‘doves’ or ‘hawks’, Pakistan’s former foreign minister Khurshid Kasuri
defensively classified himself as ‘neither hawk nor dove’. But when Natwar
Singh, his Indian counterpart was asked to define himself, he shot back,
‘We are running foreign policy here, not an aviary.’7 The advice from
practitioners on the way forward has nevertheless covered the entire range
of the dove–hawk spectrum.
Satinder Lambah, the Indian diplomat born in pre-Partition west Punjab,
who led the backchannel talks for a modus vivendi on Kashmir, wrote in
his 2023 book8, published posthumously, that India and Pakistan needed
‘purposeful engagement directed towards attainment of realistic outcomes’.
This way forward could be achieved through a ‘mutually agreed template
for an overall understanding on managing the Kashmir issue’. This was the
basis of the backchannel understanding of giving the LoC the ‘characteristics
of a permanent border’, with an end to violence, a demilitarized region
and porous borders. All this required ‘engagement’, a globally accepted
essential tool of diplomacy resorted to by all ‘inimical countries’ in history.
India could defend itself against hostility from Pakistan, Lambah felt, but
instability in Pakistan could have unanticipated consequences for India
and thus engaging with the neighbour was essential.
Another (Lahore-born) Indian diplomat, Mani Shankar Aiyar, argued
that contact between the peoples of the two countries was key to the
diplomacy, and the reason to have an ‘uninterrupted and uninterruptible’
dialogue. Aiyar felt that ‘sustaining distrust between the governments’ was
easier than the patient building of trust between people. Former high
commissioner Mani Dixit gently chided Aiyar for propagating an excessively
optimistic ‘Pollyanna view’ since ‘tough stands and tough action, not treacly
sentimentality, is what the professionals believe, counts in diplomacy’.9
In his last week as consul general in Karachi in 1981, Aiyar sent his
assessment to the government, since declassified, advising a three-pronged
peace initiative and goodwill blitz to deal with Zia’s Pakistan10, that included
strong people-to-people connections, an ‘interlocking web’ of relationships
in diverse spheres, and persistent bilateralism that would make Pakistan
resist the temptation of becoming part of ‘global strategic entities’.
Yet another pre-Partition Punjab-born Indian high commissioner, Satish
Chandra, came to a different set of policy prescriptions. Chandra felt
Kashmir was a symptom of the persistent hostility of Pakistan towards India,
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 473

not its cause. Chandra, who finished his tenure in 1998, recommended in a
monograph, a ‘punitive policy’, based on a vigorous diplomatic campaign to
project Pakistan as a terrorist state; an act of Indian parliament declaring
it as one; pursuing global sanctions against the terrorist state; renegotiating
the Indus Water Treaty to get a fairer share of the Indus waters and
linking its continuation with Pakistan’s action against terrorism; exploiting
Pakistan’s fault lines in Balochistan, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Sindh, and
POK, the way Pakistan did in India; covert action and focused strikes
like Balakot against terrorist elements; targeting the crumbling Pakistan
economy for further damage rather than assisting it; and better relationships
with Pakistan’s neighbours, Afghanistan, and Iran, to corner the country.
Chandra advocated sustained adherence to this ‘get tough policy’, given
the Indian tendency to periodically lapse into sentimentality.11
Between the hawks and the doves is a more centrist view, that India
needs to be pragmatic in ‘managing’ the difficult relationship. India’s high
commissioner to Pakistan till 2013, Sharat Sabharwal argued12 that the
way forward lay in the twin tracks of ‘countering and containing’ those
threatening India’s security and engaging the ‘constructive constituency’.
His message to Pakistan was to stop terror and promote trade; and for
India to include Pakistan in a more regional approach to ‘co-prosperity’,
thus engaging its constructive constituencies.
While Pakistan has tended to engage with the Indian government
of the day, India’s policymakers need to be mindful of multiple strands
within Pakistan. Former high commissioner Shivshankar Menon argued that
India ‘must deal with several Pakistans’ and ‘run several Pakistan policies
simultaneously, engaging civil society, business, and civilian politicians and
containing or answering what the ISI and others attempt’. This complex
environment invites accusations of inconsistent policy ‘because we are
engaging in several policies and policy modes simultaneously—talking,
doing business, and attempting to counter cross-border terrorism from
Pakistan, all at the same time.’ Several practitioners, including Menon, have
warned that ‘thanks to Pakistan’s secular decline into irrelevance, Indian
motives to address India–Pakistan issues are diminishing,’ with Pakistan
‘increasingly becoming a single-issue country in Indian discourse, and that
issue is the zero-sum one of security.’13
Another layer of complexity to policy choices came after both countries
became declared nuclear powers in 1998. Nuclear escalation had to be
factored in by policymakers in any conflict situation. Also, the threshold for
political intervention by external powers was lowered. Nuclear weapons,
Menon argued, ‘changed the interstate dimension of conflict in South Asia...
lowered the nuclear threshold and therefore diminished the likelihood of
large-scale conventional war.’ The Kargil War of 1999 was a surprise
exception early in the subcontinent’s nuclear journey and that too ‘was
474 ange r m anage m e nt

brought about by General Musharraf and his small coterie by stealth as

a closely held secret within the Pakistan Army.’ More importantly, one of
the few things ‘both Pakistani and Indian establishments are agreed on is
that nuclear weapons have stabilized the subcontinent.’14
Former HC Sharat Sabharwal agrees that while the nuclear dimension
has not completely ruled out the use of conventional military power by
India to inflict pain on Pakistan, it has ‘placed a serious limitation on
India’s ability to coerce Pakistan’s military into altering its behaviour.’15
For the militaries, a nuclear environment meant the need to fashion newer
doctrines to get the better of each other. While India’s undeclared ‘Cold
Start’ doctrine (swift, short, shallow thrusts into Pakistani territory by
integrated battle groups) is sought to be countered by Pakistan’s ‘full
spectrum deterrence’ (tactical nuclear weapons to deter the ingress of an
enemy army), these are tactics for the conventional realm of conflict. The
Balakot air strikes of 2019 demonstrated room in the sub-conventional
domain for an escalation, but the diplomatic implications were that the
impulses for de-escalating a crisis would be strong, particularly with the
rapid intervention by external powers.16
To several diplomatic observers (and practitioners like Sabharwal)
India’s policy approach should go beyond security, factoring in multiple
strands including the nuclear environment. Bilateral relations thus can only
be ‘managed’ rather than significantly altered in the foreseeable future,
particularly given Pakistan’s structural dynamics.
In my view, while a structured dialogue with Pakistan would have to be
calibrated with actions on its terrorism ecosystem, a sustained engagement
with the Pakistan Army, through quiet or direct channels, is critical, given the
reality that the army would be the primary determinant of Pakistan’s India
policy over the next decade. India would need to inflict disproportionate
costs on the army’s interests for every bit of terror mounted from Pakistan’s
soil. And, whenever democratic regimes are in power, India will need to
triangulate all understanding with civilian regimes, to confirm that the
deep state and the army establishment are on board. In other words, to
be sustainable, Pakistani civilian initiatives would need to be verifiably
approved by the army, formally or informally. Even if it works the other
way round in India or in other normal polities.
In the snakes and ladders board game of India’s engagement with
Pakistan, the snakes have been not just the major conflicts, but also major
terrorist incidents which have set back the diplomacy by years. 1965, 1971,
and Kargil were setbacks, but so were the different attacks in Mumbai
(1993, 2006, 2008) or Delhi (2001) or Pathankot (2015) or Pulwama
(2019). Other minor snakes have been smaller actions or terrorist incidents,
firing on the border or ugly rhetoric against Indian leaders. The ladders,
on the other hand, have been periods of relative terrorism-free peace; and
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 475

elections, bringing new regimes attempting fresh thinking or geopolitical

pressures on Pakistan. Arguably, while strong Indian governments have
looked for ways to bring about neighbourly peace, Pakistan has looked
to forge peace only when it was weak, hoping to fight another day. What
Indian needs is a structurally normal Pakistan, one that does not support
terror and looks to gain from, and not always compete with, a larger
neighbour.

GRAND STRATEGIES
To many security analysts, both India and Pakistan have been bereft of
grand national strategies of dealing with one another. Both countries
have been guilty of short-term measures to deal with crises rather than
attempting broader visions of dealing with this critical adversarial
relationship.
Pakistan in 2021 articulated a strategy of the primacy of geo-economics,
that to many was an acknowledgement, at least on paper, of the failure
of earlier approaches and a recognition of being faced with a collapsing
economy. This nod to the shift from geopolitics to geo-economics seems
to be a cry from within the power structure, to reform and locate the
India factor in a broader vision of reform. To some in India, it was an
acknowledgement that the Pakistani grand vision of jihadism that had
prevailed since the 1980s had failed.
India has been experimenting with a broader plan to alter Pakistan’s
behaviour, based on a rising power differential and a strategic neglect of
Pakistan. As the countries head towards a century of Independence, India
is veering towards a Pakistan strategy based on ‘active defence’, which
would need a sophisticated counter-terrorism strategy accompanied by a
diplomatic strategy of calibrated engagement. This has to be located within
a broader vision of an India on the path of rapid economic growth, aided
by strong global partnerships and a calm neighbourhood.
The two grand strategies of the neighbours are often at odds. In
a military sense, Pakistan has not been able to fulfil its grand strategy
objectives of parity with India or revisionism in Kashmir on either end
of the military spectrum, through nuclear weapons or jihadism. With its
professed policy of geo-economics as the key to saving Pakistan, it tries
to emulate India’s vision of getting to the centennial year through an
economic pathway of sustained growth. But security is a pre-condition
in both visions.

GAMING 2047
How will the future decades unfold?
Scenarios of the medium to long term not only provide opportunities
for scholars to hypothesize, but are important pegs for policymakers to
476 ange r m anage m e nt

wargame different approaches. We could perhaps look at three broad

scenarios when we peer at August 2047, when India and Pakistan celebrate
their hundredth anniversary. These could be: business as usual; conditional
optimism; and conditional pessimism.
The first scenario would imply a continuation of the tension with
periodic episodes of working towards normalcy. This would basically mean
that India and Pakistan would continue in an unsteady equilibrium of
low-level tension, an ‘unpeace’ not leading to any major breakthrough but
with a risk of eruptions of conflict.
The second scenario, with poor diplomatic and policy choices, or
structural failures within Pakistan, would see the two countries move
along the path of aggravating tension with significant risks of further
conflict or worse, nuclear Armageddon. This could be triggered by acts of
terrorism, unilateral attempts to change the territorial status quo, possibly
by Pakistan in collusion with China. Within the pessimistic scenario would
be the possibility that Pakistan fails to ‘normalize’, or even ceases to exist
as we know it. A Pakistan that breaks up into four or five parts would be
looking inward at its own woes and may drop its hostility to India. But,
some analysts worry, in a scenario where Sindh, Balochistan, and Khyber
Pakhtunkhwa break away from a Punjabi rump, that Punjab with nuclear
weapons may be an even bigger threat for India. Even worse would be a
situation of some nukes falling into the hands of terrorist tanzeem or a
rogue army splinter. In another possibility of extreme economic collapse,
Pakistan could send millions of refugees India’s way across the borders;
fences and troops may not be able to hold back the flow and India would
need to deal with a humanitarian crisis.
In the third scenario, India would hope that Pakistan hastens its journey
to ‘reimagined’ and corrected structures and move towards becoming a
‘normal’ state that does not rely on proxy terror to achieve irredentist
ambitions. In this scenario, India would continue to move towards
improving relations as part of a larger strategy of preparing to share
prosperity in its South Asian neighbourhood, as it moves to claim its
position as a global leader and the third largest global economy. Both
states would need to realize that the long-term interest of bringing safety
and prosperity for their peoples would lie in moving from a securitized
hostile relationship to a normalized neighbourly, if not friendly, one. The
flexibility and creativity that the two countries adopt can take them towards
a future of becoming more trusting neighbours. The diplomacy would
need to move from anger management to interest management, to bring
prosperity to 2 billion inhabitants of a common South Asian homeland.
 Epilogue

A NORMAL KAS H M I R

I gazed at the stunning colours of tulips in full bloom, more than a million
of them, swaying gently in the breeze. It was a spectacular setting in the
heart of the Kashmir Valley, in the spring of 2023. As the happy buzz of
thousands of tourists, many of them locals, filled the air, it was hard not to
be filled with a sense of hope for the future of this land.
This was Ground Zero of the India–Pakistan contestation, the coveted
land that became the reason for bloodshed and broken ties. It had been
five years since my last visit, and four after the constitutional changes that
had shifted the paradigm in the valley and ended my tenure in Pakistan.
I could sense that much had changed since; the infiltration numbers, the
incidents of terrorism and violence, had all gone down, cautious optimism
hung in the air, an almost desperate hope that we would see normalcy,
the end of three decades of grief and pain. Srinagar now had a new
multiplex cinema. A shiny new mall was coming up. Foreign investment
was poised to come in. The road and tourism infrastructure was being
furiously upgraded, as in many other cities in India, to prepare for an
onslaught of foreign tourists and delegates—Srinagar was one of the host
cities for a global event in the summer, a G20 meet on tourism.
The sense that the agony of Kashmir might be slowly easing held a
personal resonance for me. It was the land of my birth.
I was born in Srinagar in a summer long ago, a few months before a
brutal war to the north. It was a cold winter that year; the Dal Lake had
frozen over. The next winter was even colder, with jeeps running on the
frozen Dal Lake, and I was one of the kids playing with snowballs. But
the prevailing mood had turned ominous. Suddenly, one day, the rumours
went, the hair of the Holy Prophet, a revered relic of the Hazratbal Mosque,
had been stolen. This led to agitation and riots. The Regal Theatre was
burnt down.
Prime Minister Nehru was obliged to address the nation on the radio
and urge Kashmiris to remain calm. My father was then working with All
India Radio, which innocently broadcast a Kashmiri song of celebration,
‘Chakri’. Soon a group of protesters with black flags marched up shouting
slogans against the radio station, which had desecrated the mourning over
the loss of the holy relic. The team at the radio station did some quick
thinking and hurriedly assembled a black flag, which they flew on the roof
of the radio station to express solidarity with the protesters. Five days
later, the ninth day after its disconcerting disappearance, the holy relic
478 ange r m anage m e nt

mysteriously reappeared, found in a bottle floating on the Jhelum. My

family left Srinagar when I was three. I had always wanted to go back,
but managed to make it to my birthplace only in the new century, when
the violence ebbed somewhat.
Less than a hundred miles west of Srinagar lay the fabled hill town of
Murree. It was Pakistan’s hill resort favoured by the British; it lay on the
other side of the LoC from India, on the eastern edge of Pakistan’s Punjab.
The Indian high commission traditionally rented a property in Murree in
the fond hope that staff of the high commission could go across there
to decompress from the tensions of Islamabad. I got there in July 2018,
along with a high commission team, after badgering the foreign office for
official permission. We were allowed to stay in a hotel, but could not visit
our rented holiday home.
Murree also held some personal meaning for me. It had to do with a
summer years before Independence. For a shy twelve-year-old in pigtails,
the summer of ’42 was special. The girl had just moved to Lahore a year
earlier from Delhi. Pakistan’s birth was still five years away; the Muslim
League’s ‘independent countries’ resolution of Lahore was just two years
old. The girl hadn’t heard of this idea of a new country to be carved
out of India. What she did catch was the steady drumbeat of freedom
from the British yoke and the war the British empire was fighting, with
the help of Indian soldiers, in distant lands. Her father, a civil servant
from the colonial audit and accounts service, was packed off to Lahore
on an assignment, possibly related to procuring supplies for the British
war effort. She was in Lahore when the Quit India movement began in
August 1942, when noisy protestors marched in jaloos, shouting slogans
demanding Bharat Chhodo.
My mother, who this girl later would become, recalled these events
fondly and vividly in her ninetieth year, when I was stationed in Pakistan.
My grandfather, she told us, loved travelling. And the family holiday in the
summer of ‘42 took them to Murree. My mother remembered being struck
by Murree’s charm, especially the fancy cottages belonging to maharajas
of princely states like the Kapurthala, and those housing British officers
escaping the heat and dust of the Punjab plains.
Destiny had sent me seventy-five years after that summer to represent
India in Islamabad. As I had walked into Pakistan, I carried this sliver of
history, this little bit of family baggage, along with the heavier burden of
subcontinental history. Amidst all the debate on war and peace, terrorism
and Kashmir, diplomacy and discord, I reminded myself of the steps my
mother and her family had taken all those decades ago, of a South Asian
space more connected than it is today. I wondered if the borders of the
future could be more open and welcoming.
I thought of all this as I stood in the valley of Kashmir amidst the
 his tory’ s am biguous l e sso n s 479

tulips and I allowed myself the cautious hope that the day would come
before long when the confidence of Kashmiris would be restored, when
soldiers would not be required to guard every nook, when the borders
could be opened up once again without the fear of terrorists and bloodshed.
If newer generations reject the flawed choices of the past, such a future
does seem possible.
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I had little idea that writing a book requires such a high degree of
consistent effort and discipline. This one started as a Covid project, with
social distancing suddenly giving me space to read deeply and reflect on the
India–Pakistan story. In researching and writing this story over four years, I
have accumulated several debts.
The triumvirate of Prime Minister Modi, the late External Affairs
minister Sushma Swaraj, and then foreign secretary S. Jaishankar packed
me off to a diplomatic adventure in Pakistan in 2017. I am filled with
gratitude for the trust they reposed in me to represent India in Pakistan in
challenging times. I also feel indebted to the late prime minister, Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, in whose office, from 1999 to 2004, I got a ringside view of the
shaping of India’s Pakistan policy, of the vision of a twenty-first century
India, and of counterintuitive policy choices at critical times. Vajpayee’s
closest counsel, the late Brajesh Mishra, a consummate strategist, became
my guide and mentor.
I am grateful to my twenty-four predecessors, the Indian heads of
mission to Pakistan, most of whom told their stories and recorded their
experiences in Pakistan. I could immerse myself in their times, revel in
their stories, and walk in their shoes. I gained unique perspectives from
the accounts of Sri Prakasa, Rajeshwar Dayal, Kewal Singh, Natwar Singh,
and J. N. Dixit. I hugely benefited from a crop of more recent books,
supplemented by several insightful conversations with their authors: the late
Satinder Lambah, Satish Chandra, Shivshankar Menon, Sharat Sabharwal
and T. C. A. Raghavan. These former diplomats, gave me generously of
their time to speak about their experiences in Pakistan. Natwar Singh
gave me a flavour of Zia’s early days in the 1980s. Sati Lambah became
a mentor, explaining to me the intricacies of Pakistan in the 1990s. He
also armed me with some diplomatic hacks, including to never discuss
Kashmir in Pakistan after 6 p.m. Satish Chandra’s autobiography came just
in time for me to gain insights into the late 1990s; he read early drafts
and gave me valuable feedback. Raghavan took the time to critically read
the manuscript and discuss Pakistan over several rounds of golf.
I also benefited hugely from conversations with Sharat Sabharwal,
Deb Mukharji, Pinak Chakravarti, Ronen Sen, Ramu Damodaran, Asoke
Mukherji, Mani Shankar Aiyar, Sudhir Vyas, Rajeev Dogra, Vivek Katju,
Rakesh Sood, A. S. Dulat, and many others who shared insights and
anecdotes. I wish to especially thank Ajay Atal, son of J. K. Atal, Indira
Gandhi’s wartime ambassador to Pakistan in 1971, who generously shared
his late father’s papers and memories of 1971.
 acknow l e dge m e n t s 481

I salute Avtar Singh Bhasin for his efforts in creating the monumental
documentary study on Indo-Pakistan relations till 2007. I learnt much
from some excellent scholarship on South Asia, particularly the works of
Ian Talbot, Ayesha Jalal, Tilak Devasher, Srinath Raghavan, Ramachandra
Guha, Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, Gary Bass, and Happymon Jacob. Several
journalists and academics shared perspectives to deepen my understanding
of Pakistan, including Jyoti Malhotra, Suhasini Haider, Sushant Sareen,
and Shalini Chawla. Valuable feedback on early drafts came from Roli
Asthana, Ravi Rajan, Suresh Shankar, and Shivam Shekhawat at ORF.
My team in Islamabad during my tenure in Islamabad made light of
challenging times and helped me decipher Pakistan. I am grateful particularly
to J. P. Singh, Gaurav Ahluwalia, Avinash Singh, Akhilesh Singh, Vipul
Dev, Shubham Singh, and colleagues from the forces—military attaché,
Sanjay P. Vishwasrao; naval attachés Amit Gurbaxani and Peter Varghese;
and air attachés, Joy Kurien and Manu Midha. Numerous colleagues at
headquarters supported my innings across the border, particularly Foreign
Secretary Vijay Gokhale and Joint Secretary Deepak Mittal.
Across the border, many Pakistani diplomats and friends shared insights.
My thanks to Shahid Malik, Hussain Haqqani, Ayesha Siddiqua, Raoof
Hasan, Fakir Aijazuddin, Khurshid Kasuri, Aziz Khan, Asad Kazmi, Zulfi
Haider, Nilofer Qazi, and Zainab Khan. Many others will have to remain
unnamed.
I was contemplating trying my hand at fiction, but publishing guru
David Davidar persuaded me in August 2019 to tell the stranger-than-fiction
story of India–Pakistan diplomacy. David spurred me to write this book,
guiding me not just with brilliant editorial suggestions but also by shaping
my words into a coherent account. Aienla Ozukum at Aleph proved to be
a superb, eagle-eyed editor, ably assisted by Amrin Naaz.
I am grateful to my late uncle, the writer in the family and Hindi
poet, Raj Narayan Bisaria, who brought out his last book past the age of
ninety, and constantly goaded me to write about my experiences. Finally,
this book would not have seen the light of day without my closest friend,
companion, wife, and partner-in-crime in Pakistan, Bharati Chaturvedi.
Also an early reader, she morphed into a fierce in-house critic and brutal
editor, indulging my anti-social writing behaviour, while pushing me to
complete this project.
 I ND IA N H IGH COMMI SSI ONERS / A M B A S SA D ORS
PO ST ED I N PAKI STAN FROM 1 9 4 7 – 2 0 2 0

HC Sri Prakasa (1947–49)

HC Sita Ram (1949–51)
HC Mohan Singh Mehta (1952–55)
HC C. C. Desai (1955–58)
HC Rajeshwar Dayal (1958–62)
HC G. Parthasarathi (1962–65)
HC Kewal Singh (1965–66)
HC S. Sen (1968–69)
HC B. K. Acharya (1969–71)
HC Jai Kumar Atal (1971)
Amb. K. S. Bajpai (1976–80)
Amb. Natwar Singh (1980–82)
Amb. K. D. Sharma (1982–85)
Amb. S. K. Singh (1985–89)
HC J. N. Dixit (1989–91)
HC Satinder Kumar Bajpai (1992–95)
HC Satish Chandra (1995–98)
HC Gopalaswami Parthasarathy (1999–2000)
HC Vijay K. Nambiar (2000–01)
HC Shivshankar Menon (2003–06)
HC Satyabrata Pal (2006–09)
HC Sharat Sabharwal (2009–13)
HC T. C. A. Raghavan (2013–15)
HC Gautam Bambawale (2015–17)
HC Ajay Bisaria (2017–20)

PA KISTA N I HI GH COMMI SSI ONERS / A M B A S SA D ORS

PO STED I N I NDI A FROM 1 9 4 7 – 2 0 2 0

HC Zahid Hussain (1947–48)

HC Khawaja Shahabuddin (1948–48)
HC Muhammad Ismail (1948–52)
HC Raja Ghazanfar Ali Khan (1953–56)
HC Mian Ziauddin (1957–58)
HC A. K. Brohi (1959–61)
HC Agha Hilaly (1961–63)
HC M. Arshad Hussain (1963–68)
HC Sajjad Hyder (June 1968–71)
Amb. Syed Fida Hussain (1976–78)
Amb. Abdul Sattar (1978–82)
Amb. Riaz Paracha (1982–83)
Amb. M. Humayun Khan (1984–88)
Amb. Niaz A. Naik (1988–89)
HC M. Bashir Khan Babar (1989–90)
HC Abdul Sattar (1990–92)
HC Riaz H. Khokhar (1992–97)
HC Ashraf Jehangir Qazi (1997–2002)
HC Aziz Ahmad Khan (2003–06)
HC Shahid Malik (2006 –12)
HC Salman Bashir (2012–14)
HC Abdul Basit (2014–17)
HC Sohail Mahmood (2017–19)
 I N DIAN PRI ME MI NI STERS & FORE I G N M I NI S TE RS
FROM 1 9 4 7 –20 2 3

PRIME MINISTERS FOREIGN MINISTERS

Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–64) Jawaharlal Nehru (1947–64)

Gulzari Lal Nanda (1964) Gulzari Lal Nanda (1964–64)
Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964–66) Lal Bahadur Shastri (1964)
Swaran Singh (1964–66)
Gulzari Lal Nanda (1966) Swaran Singh (1966)
Indira Gandhi (1966–77) M. C. Chagla (1966–67)
Indira Gandhi (1967–69)
Dinesh Singh (1969–70)
Swaran Singh (1970–74)
Yashwantrao Chavan (1974–77)
Morarji Desai (1977–79) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1977–79)
Charan Singh (1979–80) Shyam Nandan Prasad Mishra (1979–80)
Indira Gandhi (1980–84) P. V. Narasimha Rao (1980–84)
Indira Gandhi (1984–84)
Rajiv Gandhi (1984–89) Rajiv Gandhi (1984–85)
Bali Ram Bhagat (1985–86)
P. Shiv Shankar (1986)
N. D. Tiwari (1986–87)
Rajiv Gandhi (1987–88)
P. V. Narasimha Rao (1988–89)
V. P. Singh (1989–90) V. P. Singh (1989–89)
I. K. Gujral (1989–90)
Chandra Shekhar (1990–91) Chandra Shekhar (1990–90)
Vidya Charan Shukla (1990–91)
Chandra Shekhar (1991)
P. V. Narasimha Rao (1991–96) Madhavsinh Solanki (1991–92)
P. V. Narasimha Rao (1992–93)
Dinesh Singh (1993–95)
Pranab Mukherjee (1995–96)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1996) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1996)
Sikander Bakht (1996)
H. D. Deve Gowda (1996–97) I. K. Gujral (1996–97)
I. K. Gujral (1997–98) I. K. Gujral (1997–98)
Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998–2004) Atal Bihari Vajpayee (1998)
Jaswant Singh (1998–2002)
Yashwant Sinha (2002–04)
Manmohan Singh (2004–14) K. Natwar Singh (2004–05)
Manmohan Singh (2005–06)
Pranab Mukherjee (2006–09)
S. M. Krishna (2009–12)
Salman Khurshid (2012–14)
Narendra Modi (2014–to present) Sushma Swaraj (2014–19)
S. Jaishankar (2019–to present)
 PA KISTAN I HEADS OF STATE/P RI ME M I NI S TE RS &
F O R EIGN MI NI STERS FROM 1 9 4 7 – 2 0 2 3

HEADS OF STATE/PRIME MINISTERS FOREIGN MINISTERS

Mohammed Ali Jinnah (Governor General 1947–48) Mohammad Zafarullah Khan (1947–54)
Liaquat Ali Khan (PM: 1947–51)
Khawaja Nazimuddin (GG: 1948–51, PM: 1951–53) Muhammad Ali Bogra (1954–55)
Ghulam Mohammad (GG: 1953–55) Hamidul Haq Chowdhury (1955–56)
Iskander Mirza (GG: 1955–56) (President: 1956–58)
Muhammad Ali Bogra (PM: 1953–55)
Chaudhary Muhammad Ali (PM: 1955–56)
Huseyn Shaheed Suhrawardy (PM:1956 –57) Malik Feroz Khan Noon (1956–58)
Ibrahim Ismail Chaundrigar (PM: 1957)
Malik Feroz Khan Noon (PM: 1957–58)
Ayub Khan (President: 1958–62, 1962–69) Muhammad Ali Bogra (1962–63)
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1963–66)
Sharifuddin Pirzada (1966–68)
Arshad Hussain (1968–69)
Yahya Khan (President:1969–71) Yahya Khan (1969–71)
Noor ul-Amin (PM: 1971)
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (President: 1971–73) Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (1971–77)
Fazal Ilahi Chaudhry (President: 1973–78)
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto (PM: 1973–77) Aziz Ahmed (1977)
Zia ul-Haq (President: 1978–88) Agha Shahi (1978–82)
Yaqub Khan (1982–87)
Muhammad Khan Junejo (PM: 1985–88) Yaqub Khan (1988–91)
Benazir Bhutto (PM: 1988–90)
Ghulam Ishaq Khan (President: 1988–93)
Ghulam Mustafa Khan Jatoi (Caretaker PM: 1990–90)
Nawaz Sharif (PM: 1990–93)
Balakh Sher Mazari (Caretaker PM: 1993–93)
Nawaz Sharif (PM: 1993) Abdul Sattar (1993)
Farooq Leghari (1993)
Moin Qureshi (Caretaker PM: 1993)
Wasim Sajjad (Acting President: 1993)
Benazir Bhutto (PM: 1993–96) Aseef Ahmad Ali (1993–96)
Malik Meraj Khalid (Caretaker PM: 1996–97) Yaqub Khan (Caretaker) (1996–97)
Farooq Leghari (President: 1993–97)
Nawaz Sharif (PM: 1997–99) Gohar Ayub (1997–98)
Wasim Sajjad (Acting President: 1997–98) Sartaj Aziz (1998–99)
Rafiq Tarar (President: 1998–2001) Abdul Sattar (1999–2002)
Pervez Musharraf (President: 2001–08)
Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali (PM: 2002–04) Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri (2002–07)
Chaudhary Shujaat Hussain (PM: 2004–04)
Shaukat Aziz (PM: 2004–07)
Muhammad Mian Soomro (Caretaker PM: 2007–08) Inam ul-Haq (2007–08)
Muhammad Mian Soomro (Acting President: 2008)
Asif Ali Zardari (President: 2008–13) Shah Mahmood Qureshi (2008–11)
Syed Yousaf Raza Gillani (PM: 2008–12) Hina Rabbani Khar (2011–13)
Raja Parvaiz Ashraf (PM: 2012–13)
Mir Hazar Khan Khoso (Caretaker PM: 2013)
Nawaz Sharif (PM: 2013–17) Nawaz Sharif (2013–17)
Shahid Khaqan Abbasi (PM: 2017–18) Khawaja Muhammad Asif (2017–18)
Mamnoon Hussain (President: 2013–18) Khurram Dastagir Khan (2018)
Nasir ul-Mulk (Caretaker PM: 2018) Abdullah Hussain Haroon (Caretaker) (2018)
Imran Khan (PM: 2018–22) Shah Mahmood Qureshi (2018–22)
Arif Alvi (President: 2018–incumbent)
Shehbaz Sharif (PM: 2022–23) Bilawal Bhutto Zardari (2022–to present)
Anwaar ul-Haq Kakar (PM: 2023–to present)
 NOTES

PROLOGUE: THE EXIT

1 Pakistan Foreign Office statement, 8 August 2019, <https://mofa.gov.pk/transcript-of-the-press-briefing-by-
spokesperson-on-thursday-8th-august-2019-2/>; Imtiaz Ahmad, ‘Pakistan asks India to ‘halt and reverse’ its
J-K move on Article 370’, Hindustan Times, 10 June 2020; Asad Hashim, ‘Pakistan summons Indian envoy
on Kashmir, reaches out to allies’, Al Jazeera, 5 August 2019.
2 Article 370 of the Indian Constitution of 1950 gave special status to the former princely state of Jammu and
Kashmir, allowing it to function as a state of the union of India, initially with a separate Constitution and
state flag; later with significant autonomy in internal administration.
3 ‘Parliament unanimously passes resolution condemning India’s ‘unilateral move’ on Kashmir’, Dawn, 7
August 2019.
4 Pakistan Foreign Office statement, 8 August 2019.
5 MEA India spokesman, Ministry of External Affairs, Media Center, ‘On Pakistan’s Unilateral Decision
in respect of Bilateral Relations with India’, 8 August 2019, <https://www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.
htm?dtl/31722/On_Pakistans_Unilateral_Decision_in_respect_of_Bilateral_Relations_with_India>.
6 ‘Pakistan orders tit-for-tat expulsions’, CNN, 8 February 2003; Rajeev Sharma, ‘India expels Pak diplomat
Islamabad retaliates with tit-for-tat’, Tribune News Service, 9 February 2003.

INTRODUCTION: A QUEST FOR IDENTITY

1 The two-nation theory was a concept that was born of religious nationalism and advocated separate
homelands for Indian Muslims and Indian Hindus within a decolonized British India. It asserted that
Muslims and Hindus were two separate nations, with their own customs, traditions, and ways of life.
2 Tilak Devasher, The Pashtuns: A Contested History, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2022.
3 Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State, Gurugram:
HarperCollins India, 2018.
4 Christophe Jaffrelot (ed.), Pakistan: Nationalism Without a Nation?, London: Zed Books, 2002.
5 See, for instance, Venkat Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina: State Power, Islam, and the Quest for Pakistan
in Late Colonial North India, Cambridge University Press, 2015.
6 Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan.
7 Ibid.
8 Shashi Tharoor, The Battle of Belonging: On Nationalism, Patriotism, and What it Means to be Indian, New
Delhi: Aleph Book Company, 2020.
9 Graham Allison, ‘The Great Rivalry: China vs. the U.S. in the 21st Century’, Paper, Belfer Center for Science
and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, 7 December 7 2021.
10 Since the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648.

SECTION 1: 1947–1957: BUILDING STATES

1. MIDNIGHT’S NATIONS
1 Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘Tryst with Destiny’, Speech, 15 August 1947, <https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=2Cudc5Mhlcc>.
2 Sri Prakasa, Pakistan: Birth and Last Days of Jinnah, Meerut: Meenakshi Prakashan, 1965.
3 Prabhash K. Dutta, ‘Why Pakistan celebrates Independence Day on August 14 a day before India does’,
India Today,15 August 2020.
4 Ayesha Jalal, The Sole Spokesman: Jinnah, the Muslim League and the Demand for Pakistan, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985.
5 Prakasa, Pakistan.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid., p. 9.
8 Pallavi Raghavan, Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History of the India–Pakistan Relationship, 1947-1952,
Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2020.
9 Ibid.
10 Prakasa, Pakistan.
11 Ibid.
486 ange r m anage m e nt

12 Ibid., p. 11.
13 Ayesha Jalal, The Struggle for Pakistan, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014.
14 Salman Rushdie in his book Shame, described Pakistan as ‘that country divided into two Wings a thousand
miles apart, that fantasic bird of a place, two Wings without a body, sundered by the land-mass of its
greatest foe, joined by nothing but God...’; The geographical contours of Pakistan did not entirely match
its conception by Choudhry Rahmat Ali, an activist, who in 1933 first defined it (originally as ‘Pakstan’
which in Urdu meant the land of the pure) in a pamphlet ‘Now or Never’. Rahmat Ali had put together the
acronym ‘from the names of all our homelands’ viz Panjab, Afghania, Kashmir, Sindh, and Baluchistan. He
also proposed the name ‘Banglastan’ for the Muslim areas of Bengal and ‘Osmanistan’ for Hyderabad State,
as well as a political federation between the three.
15 Prakasa, Pakistan.
16 In 1974, Pakistan’s parliament adopted a law declaring Ahmadis to be non-Muslims, allegedly because of
religious beliefs at variance with the tenets of Islam; the country’s constitution was amended to define a
Muslim ‘as a person who believes in the finality of the Prophet Muhammad’.
17 Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi, HarperCollins, 2007, pp. 30-32.
18 Kuldip Nayar, Scoop!: Inside Stories from The Partition to the Present, Gurugram: HarperCollins India,
2006.
19 Ibid., p. 213.
20 Narendra Singh Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India’s Partition, Gurugram:
HarperCollins India, 2009
21 Ibid., p. 17.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid, p. 18.
27 Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir,1947-48, New Delhi: SAGE Publications India,
2002.
28 Ibid., p. 19.
29 Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game, p. 25.
30 Ibid., p. 413.
31 Ibid., p. 16.
32 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
33 Shahryar M. Khan, The Begums of Bhopal: A History of the Princely State of Bhopal, London: I. B. Tauris,
2002.
34 Sumantra Bose, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21-st Century Conflict, New Haven/ London: Yale
University Press, 2021, p. 3.
35 Sandeep Bamzai, Princestan: How Nehru, Patel and Mountbatten Made India, New Delhi: Rupa
Publications, 2020.
36 Ibid, p. 11.
37 Prakasa, Pakistan.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p. 6.
40 Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game, p.94.
41 Ibid.
42 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath: Memoirs of an Ambassador, New Delhi: Vikas Publishing, p. 87.
43 K. S. Bajpai, ‘Oral History’, Indian Foreign Affairs Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3. http://www.associationdiplomats.
org/publications/ifaj/Vol1/1.3/1.3-OralHistory-KSBajpai-The_Evolution_of_the_Indian_Foreign_Service_
Establishment.pdf.
44 Prakasa, Pakistan.
45 Ibid.
46 Ibid.
47 Ibid.
48 Ibid.
49 Ibid., p. 62.

2. PARTITION PAINS
1 Tilak Devasher, Pakistan: Courting the Abyss, Gurugram: HarperCollins, 2016, p. 28.
2 Ian Talbot, Pakistan: A Modern History, London: C. Hurst & Co., 1999, p. 101.
3 Ibid.
 not e s 487

4 Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jinnah: His Successes, Failures, Role in History, New Delhi: Viking, 2020.
5 Ibid.
6 The Majithas were an extended family of Sikhs that originated from the region of Majitha, near Amritsar in
Punjab.
7 Talbot, Pakistan.
8 Prakasa, Pakistan.
9 Guha, India After Gandhi, p. 31.
10 Prakasa, Pakistan.
11 Ibid.
12 Ibid.
13 Ibid.
14 Ibid., p. 82.
15 Ibid,. p. 80.
16 Ibid., p. 27.
17 Ibid.
18 The statue was vandalized and broken during riots in Karachi around 1950. It was deposited in pieces with
the Indian Consulate in the city three decades later, in 1981. It now stands restored and greets visitors at the
Indian High Commission in Islamabad.
19 Prakasa, Pakistan.
20 Ibid., p. 105.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid, p. 118.
23 Devasher. Pakistan: Courting the Abyss.
24 Dhulipala, Creating a New Medina; Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jinnah.
25 In this telling, Jinnah would have only tactically conceded the Cabinet Mission plan that called for an
undivided India with a loose confederation of provinces classified as ‘largely Hindu’, ‘mainly Muslim’ and
‘the princely states’. An early biography of Jinnah by Stanley Wolpert, named Jinnah of Pakistan, had made
a similar argument. Wolpert had in fact admiringly made the argument, which became a familiar quote in
the state narrative of Pakistan: ‘Few individuals significantly alter the course of history. Fewer still modify
the map of the world. Hardly anyone can be credited with creating a nation-state. Mohammad Ali Jinnah
did all three.’
26 Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition: The Making of India and Pakistan, New Haven, Yale University Press,
2007, p. 10.
27 Anam Zakaria, The Footprints of Partition, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2015.
28 Yasmin Khan, The Great Partition.
29 Dhulipala argued with Creating a New Medina that Partition was more an idea of Muslim elites of UP,
than of the Muslim-majority provinces, that it was more Aligarh than Lahore driving the argument in
the twentieth century. Similarly, political scientist Ishtiaq Ahmed has argued in his 2021 tome Jinnah that
Pakistan’s founding father was firmly wedded to the two-nation theory and the idea of a separate Muslim
homeland. His occasionally expressed liberal views may have been aberration or expediency given the
nature of his audiences.
30 Some writers have argued that even if Jinnah knew of the Pakistan he was creating, he did not articulate
the plan well enough. Recent scholarship, like that of Nisid Hajari in Midnight’s Furies, argues that while
Gandhi and Nehru were prolific and transparent and left vast reams of works and views at different times
in their life, Jinnah was more of a mystery and did not write a book or share a larger vision. The writing
around Jinnah’s central views is largely speculative. The Cabinet Mission plan was the crucial last-ditch
effort by the British for a loose confederation that Jinnah had agreed to. However, Nehru and the Congress
leadership favoured a strong Centre and a strong state. Several contemporary writers have chipped in,
emphasising their own takes on the partition story. M. J. Akbar has argued that the politics of separation of
1906 became the language of partition later. The seeds of partition were in fact sown in 1739, with Nadir
Shah invading India at the end of the Moghul reign. The idea was reinforced for the British in 1857. Jinnah
had in 1906 opposed separate electorates. He had worked for communal harmony. It was at this point that
the idea of separation was truly born.
31 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 129.

3. THE KASHMIR CONUNDRUM

1 Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir, Srinagar: Rebus Publishing House, 1975.
2 Husain Haqqani, Reimagining Pakistan; Pakistan had in fact inherited 17 percent of the population, 19
percent of GDP, but 33 percent of the armed forces of independent India. The British Indian army’s northern
HQ in Rawalpindi became the powerful GHQ of Pakistan’s army. Pakistan thus had to create a threat to
488 ange r m anage m e nt

match the military machine it inherited.

3 Akbar Khan, Raiders.
4 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, p. 38.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid., p. 200.
7 Ibid., p. 201.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid., p.203.
10 Ibid., p. 206.
11 Abdul Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy 1947-2019: A Concise History, Karachi: OUP Pakistan, 2011.
12 Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy, p. 210.
13 Ibid, p. 28.
14 Ibid, p. 29.
15 Ibid.
16 Arjun Subramaniam, India’s Wars: A Military History, 1947-1971, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2016;
Guha, India after Gandhi, p. 51.
17 Avtar Singh Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations 1947-2007: A Documentary Study, New Delhi: Geetika
Publishers, 2012, p. 2.
18 Ibid., p. 208.
19 Ibid., p. 128.
20 Ibid., p. 90.
21 Talbot, Pakistan, p.118.
22 Ibid., p. 119.

4. DECOUPLING
1 Fortnightly report from M.K. Kirpalani, Deputy High Commissioner for India in Lahore, 17 September
1948, File No. 8-15/48-Pak I, NAI, cited by Pallavi Raghavan in Animosity at Bay: An Alternative History
of the India–Pakistan Relationship.
2 Ibid.
3 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
4 Ibid.
5 Ibid.
6 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 100.
7 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
8 Ibid.
9 Vinay Sitapati, Jugalbandi: The BJP Before Modi, Gurugram: Penguin Random House, 2020.
10 Prakasa, Pakistan, p. 83.
11 Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jinnah.
12 Prakasa, Pakistan.
13 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
14 Talbot, Pakistan, p. 137.

5. THE FORMATIVE FIFTIES

1 Guha, Indian After Gandhi.
2 Ibid., p. 134.
3 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
4 ‘Pakistan Incited Riots, Says Nehru; India Leader Says Anti-Hindu Propaganda in East Bengal Led to
Migration of 24,600’, New York Times, 24 February 1950.
5 Proceedings of the inter-dominion Conference on 18th April 1948 at Writers Building, Calcutta’; File No.
F. 8-15/48-Pak I; MEA, Pak I Branch; NAI, cited by Pallavi Raghavan in Animosity at Bay: An Alternative
History of the India–Pakistan Relationship.
6 Ibid.
7 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
8 Ibid.
9 T. C. A. Raghavan, The People Next Door, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2018.
10 Ibid.
11 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay; Also: During the early 1950s, the question of migration and refugees
represented a substantial threat to the political stability of both governments. As refugees and migrants
streamed in in uncontrollable numbers in search of rehabilitation, employment and security, the issue also
became politically charged, which could be hurled between the central and provincial governments in India
 not e s 489

and Pakistan as accusations of incompetence, corruption, and neglect.

12 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
13 Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jinnah.
14 Talbot, Pakistan, p. 139.
15 Ibid., p. 136.
16 Ibid., p. 143.
17 Tharoor, Battle of Belonging.
18 Devasher, Pakistan: Courting the Abyss, p. 108.
19 Ibid., p. 167.
20 Raghavan, People Next Door.
21 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 101.
22 Ibid.
23 Raghavan, People Next Door, p. 50.
24 Ibid., p. 51.
25 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p.104.
26 Nirupama Rao, The Fractured Himalaya: India Tibet China 1949-62, Gurugram: Penguin India, 2022, pp.
166-168.
27 Bose, Kashmir at the Crossroads.
28 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 106.
29 Ibid.
30 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy.
31 Ibid., p. 108.
32 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough, New Delhi: Rupa Publications India, 2021, p. 121.
33 Ibid., p. 32.
34 Ibid., p.188.
35 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 29.
36 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.

SECTION 2. 1957–1967: DICTATORS AND DEMOCRATS

6. THE GARRISON STATE
1 Talbot, Pakistan, p. 146.
2 Muhammad Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters, A Political Autobiography, New York: Oxford University
Press, 1967.
3 Ibid., p. 74.
4 Rajeshwar Dayal, A Life in our Times, Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan, 1998, p. 257.
5 Ibid., p. 263.
6 Ibid., p. 268
7 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 59.
8 Ibid., p. 79.
9 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
10 Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters.
11 Ibid.
12 Ishtiaq Ahmed, The Pakistan Garrison State: Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), OUP Pakistan,
2013; Harold Lasswell, ‘The Garrison State’, American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 46, No. 4, January 1941,
pp. 455–468.
13 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
14 Dayal, A Life in Our Times, p. 258.
15 Ibid., p. 279.
16 Ibid., p. 140.
17 Author’s conversation with Khurshid Mahmud Kasuri, the former Foreign Minister of Pakistan.
18 Sharat Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, Routledge, pp. 167-173.
19 Raghavan, Animosity at Bay.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid.
22 Brahma Chellaney, ‘Dragon’s water weapon against India’, DNA, 11 September 2018.
23 K.V. Padmanabhan, ‘How the Indus Treaty was signed’, The Hindu, 28 September 2016.
24 Dayal, A Life in Our Times, p. 318.
25 Ibid., p. 301.
26 K.V. Padmanabhan, ‘How the Indus Treaty was signed’.
27 Ayub Khan, Friends not Masters.
490 ange r m anage m e nt

28 P. Raman, ‘When Opposition asked… PM Nehru answered the questions on China in Parliament’, Indian
Express, 15 November 2020.
29 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 163.
30 P. Raman, ‘When Opposition asked’.
31 Kewal Singh. Partition and Aftermath.
32 For a detailed account on the India-China border talks, see Nirupama Rao’s The Fractured Himalaya.
33 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 86.
34 Rao, The Fractured Himalaya.
35 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy.
36 Ibid., p. 86.
37 Ibid., p. 93.
38 Prasar Bharati Archives, ‘Jawaharlal Nehru’s last TV Interview - May 1964’, YouTube, 14 May 2019.

7. DIALOGUES OF THE DEAF

1 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, page 143.
2 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 89.
3 Ibid., p. 90.
4 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p.143.
5 Ibid., p. 153.
6 Ibid.
7 ‘When Atal Bihari Vajpayee delivered emotional speech after Jawahar Lal Nehru’s death’, Economic Times,
17 August, 2018.
8 K. Shankar Bajpai, ‘Tashkent syndrome’, Indian Express, 9 January 2016.
9 Sumantra Bose, Kashmir at the Crossroads, pp. 41-43.
10 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.

8. A GRAB AT KASHMIR
1 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
2 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy.
3 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 160.
4 Ibid.
5 ‘Golden Jubilee Commemoration of Indo–Pak War, 1965 is a Befitting Tribute to Gallantry & Sacrifice of
our Soldiers - Vice President’, Press Information Bureau
6 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 106.
7 Ibid.
8 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p.166.
9 Ibid., 169-172.
10 Ibid., p. 173.
11 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy
12 Ibid., p. 113.
13 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p.186.
18 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 118.
19 Ayub Khan, Friends Not Masters.
20 Ibid., p. 117.
21 K. Shankar Bajpai, ‘1965, the forgetting’, Indian Express, 9 September 2015.
22 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p.189
23 Ibid., p. 191.
24 Bajpai, ‘1965, the forgetting’.
25 The writer, a former ambassador to Pakistan, China, the US and secretary, MEA, was political officer in the
Indian High Commission in Karachi, 1962-65, and secretary to the Indian delegation to Tashkent, 1966.
26 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 223.
27 Debora Ann Shea, Escape from Pakistan: The Untold Story of Jack Shea, Gurugram: Penguin Books, 2021.
 not e s 491

SECTION 3. 1967–1977: A SUBCONTINENT REDRAWN

9. JOI BANGLA
1 Ishtiaq Ahmed, Jinnah
2 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, Harvard University Press, 2013;
Chandrashekhar Dasgupta, India and the Bangladesh Liberation War, New Delhi: Juggernaut, 2021.
3 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
4 Mahbub ul Haq, ‘System is to blame for the 22 wealthy families’, London Times, 22 March 1973.
5 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
6 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 262.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Dasgupta, India and the Bangladesh Liberation War.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid.
12 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
13 Dasgupta, India and the Bangladesh Liberation War.
14 Deb Mukharji interviewed by the author, New Delhi, July 2023.
15 Deb Mukharji, ‘For Indian Diplomats in Pakistan, the Run up To the 1971 War Was a Very Tense Time’, The
Wire, 26 March 2021.
16 Deb Mukharji interviewed by the author.
17 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
18 Rukun Advani, ‘A Little Outside the Ring’, The Telegraph, 8 February 2002.
19 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
20 Deb Mukharji interviewed by the author.
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Gary Bass, The Blood Telegram: Nixon, Kissinger, and a Forgotten Genocide, New York: Penguin Random
House, 2013, p. 48.
28 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 55.
29 Bass, Blood Telegram, p. 46.
30 Ibid.
31 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 47.
32 Ibid., p. 49; Dasgupta, India and the Bangladesh Liberation War, p. 33.
33 Bass, Blood Telegram.
34 Ibid., p.58.
35 Ibid.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid., p. 61.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p. 64.
40 Ibid., p. 66.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid.
43 Ibid., p. 75.
44 Ibid., p. 76
45 Ibid., p. 79.
46 Ahsan I. Butt, Secession and Security: Explaining State Strategy against Separatists, Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 2017.
47 ‘Role of MOFA in Liberation War’, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangaldesh,¸< https://mofa.gov.bd/site/
page/3164add5-f0b4-432e-99e3-342057675660/nolink/Former--Advisers>.
48 Deb Mukharji, ‘For Indian Diplomats in Pakistan’.
49 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
50 Ibid., p. Page 70.
51 Bass, Blood Telegram.
52 Ibid., p. 105.
53 Ibid., p. 106.
54 Ibid., p. 107.
492 ange r m anage m e nt

55 Ibid., p. 114.
56 Ibid., p. 116.
57 Ibid., p. 100.
58 Ibid., p. 173.
59 Ibid., p. 178.
60 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 104.
61 Ibid., p. 198.
62 Ibid; Bass, Blood Telegram.
63 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
64 Ibid., p. 196.
65 Ibid.
66 Ibid., p. 209.
67 Deb Mukharji interviewed by the author.
68 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
69 Ibid., p. 117.
70 Ibid., p. 224.
71 Ibid., p. 227.
72 Bass, Blood Telegram, p. 228; Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
73 Bass, Blood Telegram, p. 5; Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
74 Ibid.
75 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 228.
76 Ibid., p. 204.

10. A SECOND PARTITION, A THIRD COUNTRY

1 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations, p. 1620.
2 ‘Foreign Relations of The United States, 1969–1976, Volume Xi, South Asia Crisis, 1971’, Office of the
Historia, Washington, 29 November 1971.
3 ‘Yahya is not an ogre’, Dawn, 24 January 2017.
4 Sydney H. Schanberg, ‘Mrs. Gandhi Bids Pakistan Remove Forces From East’, New York Times, 30
November 1971.
5 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., p. 250.
9 Ibid., p. 251.
10 Ibid.
11 Ibid., p. 255.
12 Ibid., p. 233.
13 Ibid., p. 256.
14 Ibid.
15 Ibid., p. 258.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 261.
18 Baqir Sajjad Syed, ‘Army has resolved to shun politics, assures Bajwa’, Dawn, 24 November 2022.
19 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 262.
20 Ibid., p. 261.
21 Ibid., p. 262.
22 Ibid., p. 262.
23 Ibid., p. 263.
24 Ibid., p. 8.

11. LINE OF CONTROL

1 K. N. Bakshi, ‘Simla Agreement: From Military Victory to a Diplomatic Defeat? (1972)’, Indian Foreign
Affairs Journal, Vol. 2, No. 3, 2007, p. 105-119.
2 Humayun Khan and G. Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, New Delhi: Roli Books, 2004, p 44.
3 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 313.
4 Ibid., p. 315.
5 Ibid., pp. 317-318.
6 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh, p. 265.
7 Ibid., p. 268.
 not e s 493

8 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 317.

9 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
10 Ibid., p. 267.
11 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
12 Ibid, p. 333.
13 Ibid., p. 334.
14 Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power, Gurugram:
HarperCollins India, 2001.
15 Ibid., p. 201.
16 Ibid.
17 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 340.
18 Ibid. p. 345.
19 Ibid.

12. LIMPING BACK

1 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 349.
2 Ibid., pp. 350-51.
3 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, pp. 357-361.
4 T. C. A. Raghavan, People Next Door, p. 130.
5 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations, p. 2,533.
6 Ibid., p. 2,513.
7 Ibid., p. 2,361.
8 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
9 Ibid.
10 Raghavan, People Next Door, p 138.

SECTION 4. 1977–1987: FIVE BLOODY RIVERS

13. THAWING TO DECEIVE
1 Prasar Bharati Archives, ‘1977 - Then Foreign Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee as 1st Indian leader to address
UNGA in Hindi’, Speech, YouTube, 24 October 2021.
2 Sagarika Ghose, Atal Bihari Vajpayee: India’s Most Loved Prime Minister, New Delhi: Juggernaut Books,
2021, p. 158.
3 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
4 Ghose, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, p. 155.
5 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
6 Ibid., p. 2,410.
7 Ibid., p. 2,425.
8 Ibid., p. 2,581.
9 Ibid., p. 2,580.
10 J. N. Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace, Routledge, 2002, p. 120.
11 Ibid., p. 121.

14. PUNJAB AFLAME

1 G. B. S. Sidhu, The Khalistan Conspiracy, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2020.
2 Ibid.
3 Terry Milewski, Blood for Blood, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2021.
4 Ibid., p. 23.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Mani Shankar Aiyar and Indian Foreign Affairs Journal, ‘The (Hi)Story of One Lakh Visas’, Indian Foreign
Affairs Journal, vol. 5, no. 4, 2010.
9 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations, p. 2623.
10 Ibid.
11 Srinath Raghavan, 1971: A Global History of the Creation of Bangladesh.
12 John Lamberton Harper, The Cold War, Oxford University Press, 2011.
13 Yashwant Raj, ‘US knew of Pak N-plan but did not act: Declassified documents’ Hindustan Times, 30
August 2021.
14 Mohammad Islam, ‘Pakistan-Us New Connection: An Evaluation’, Pakistan Horizon, Vol. 36, No. 2, 1983,
494 ange r m anage m e nt

pp. 31–44. JSTOR, <http://www.jstor.org/stable/41394188>.

15 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough, p. 189.
16 Ibid., p. 188.
17 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 88; Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
18 TCA Raghavan, People Next Door, p. 159.
19 Mahesh Sachdev, ‘Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the Night of Power, Hindustan Times, 13 May 2021
20 K Natwar Singh, ‘Profiles & Letters’, Sterling Publishers, 1997.
21 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath, p. 394.
22 Dilip Bobb, ‘Pakistan President Zia’s no-war pact offer to India described as a ‘sucker punch’, India Today,
15 February 1982
23 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough.
24 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 89.
25 Ibid, p. 91.
26 TCA Raghavan, People Next Door, p. 166.
27 Prabhu Dayal, Karachi Halwa, Gurugram: Zorba Books, 2015, p. 83.
28 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 17.
29 Ibid., p. 24.
30 Dayal, Karachi Halwa, p. 86.
31 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 27.
32 Dayal, Karachi Halwa.

15. AUTUMN IN KASHMIR

1 Sumantra Bose, Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21-st Century Conflict, p. 51-60.
2 Arjun Subramaniam, Full Spectrum: India’s Wars, 1972-2020, Noida: HarperCollins India, 2020.
3 V. R. Raghavan, Siachen: Conflict Without End, New Delhi: Viking, 2002.
4 Lt. Gen. D. S. Hooda, ‘Many good reasons to demilitarise Siachen. But India–Pakistan ties too torn to allow
it’, The Print, 17 January 2022.
5 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 40.
6 Ibid.
7 Subramaniam, Full Spectrum.
8 Inderjit Bhadwar, Dilip Bobb, ‘When Indian and Pakistani forces positioned themselves along J&K and
Punjab borders’, India Today, 15 February 1987.
9 Subramaniam, Full Spectrum.
10 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough.
11 Ibid.
12 Ramindar Singh, ‘Pakistan President Zia-ul-Haq comes to Jaipur, sees some cricket and conquers the media’,
India Today, 15 March 1987.
13 Subramaniam, Full Spectrum.

SECTION 5. 1987–1997: TROUBLE IN PARADISE

16. EXPLODING MANGOES
1 S. K. Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace: India–Pakistan Relations Under Six Prime Ministers, Gurugram: Penguin
Viking, 2023; Ronen Sen told the author via a telephonic conversation, 2022.
2 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
3 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 78.
4 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations, p. 3,095.
5 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 77.
6 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid., p. 3,095.
9 Ibid.
10 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
11 Ibid., p. 79.
12 Kallol Bhattacharjee, The Great Game in Afghanistan: Rajiv Gandhi, General Zia and the Unending War,
Noida: HarperCollins, 2017; Declan Walsh, ‘Ex-US diplomat blames Israel for Pakistani dictator’s death’,
The Guardian, 5 December 2005; Ronen Sen to the author.
13 Kallol Bhattacharjee, The Great Game in Afghanistan.
14 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough.
15 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations, p. 3,322.
 not e s 495

16 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Biggest problem is that Zia perpetuated his rule by fragmenting the nation: Benazir Bhutto’,
India Today, 15 September 1988.
17 Mohammed Hanif, Case of Exploding Mangoes, Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 2008.
18 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, pp. 80-81, Ronen Sen to the author.

17. A THOUSAND CUTS

1 Prabhu Dayal, Karachi Halwa.
2 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
3 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 81.
4 C. Christine Fair, In Their Own Words: Understanding Lashkar-e-Tayyaba, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press, 2018.
5 Kewal Singh, Partition and Aftermath.
6 Ramindar Singh, ‘Redeployment of forces at Siachen glacier to be worked out between India, Pak’, India
Today, 15 July 1989.
7 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 79.
8 Ibid., p. 82.
9 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
10 Ibid.
11 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
12 Bose, Kashmir at the Crossroads.
13 Ibid.
14 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
15 Shekhar Gupta, ‘Modi shouldn’t trivialise nuclear weapons. His Diwali taunt at Pakistan is loose talk’, The
Print, 23 April 2019.
16 Madhu Jain, ‘Nobody wants war but political compulsions restrict the options’, India Today, 28 February
1990.
17 ‘Karachi stands with Kashmir in solidarity’, The News International, 6 February 2018.
18 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
19 Shekhar Gupta, ‘By using the Kashmir card Benazir Bhutto is playing with fire’, India Today, 31 May 1990.
20 Shekhar Gupta, ‘How Indian armed forces can defeat Pakistan in less than a week’, The Print, 1 February
2020.
21 Sushant Singh, ‘25 yrs after Gates Mission, 3 stories and one mystery’, Indian Express, 21 May 2015.
22 William Burrows, Critical Mass: The Dangerous Race for Superweapons in a Fragmenting World, New
York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.
23 Asad Durrani, Pakistan Adrift: Navigating Troubled Waters, Context, 2018.
24 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
25 Ibid., p. 85.
26 Vinay Sitapati, Half-Lion: How P.V. Narasimha Rao Transformed India, Gurugram: Penguin Random
House, 2016.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
30 Dalia Dassa Kaye. ‘Regional Security Dialogues in South Asia’,’ Talking to the Enemy: Track Two
Diplomacy in the Middle East and South Asia’, RAND Corporation, 2007, pp. 75–104.

18. FROZEN TRUST

1 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
2 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
3 Ibid.
4 Ibid.
5 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
6 Ibid.
7 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
8 Dixit, India–Pakistan in War and Peace.
9 Sanjaya Baru (ed.), P.V. Narasimha Rao: Architect of India’s Reforms, Issued by the Government of
Telangana on the occasion of the centenary year of former Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, 2021
10 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 103.
11 Baru (ed.), P.V. Narasimha Rao.
12 Sitapati, Half-Lion.
13 Baru (ed.), P.V. Narasimha Rao.
496 ange r m anage m e nt

14 Ibid.
15 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p.109.
18 Rajiv Dogra interviewed by the author, 2022.
19 A previous resident of that diplomatic residence, Prabhu Dayal reflected later that seemed to have picked
up the curse of the Bhutto house that was across the street from it. Zulfikar Bhutto, the man who built the
house, was hanged in April 1979; his younger son died in mysterious circumstances in July 1986. Soon, his
elder son Murtaza would be killed in a police encounter near the house in 1996, and of course his eldest
child, Benazir, would be assassinated in 2007; Prabhu Dayal observes that power in Pakistan often came to
be soaked in so much blood.
20 ‘How the 1993 blasts changed Mumbai forever’, BBC, 30 July 2015.
21 On 9 March 1993, three days before the bombings took place, a small-time criminal from the Behrampada
slum in Northeast Mumbai named Gul Noor Mohammad Sheikh (Gullu) was detained at the Nag Pada
police station. A participant in the communal riots that had rocked Bombay the previous year, Gullu was
also one of the 19 men handpicked by Tiger Memon, whose office was burnt in the riots. Tiger was a silver
smuggler and chief mastermind of the bombings, for training in the use of guns and bomb-making. Gullu
had been sent to Pakistan via Dubai on 19 February 1993 and upon completion of his training returned to
Mumbai on 4 March. In his absence, the police had detained Gullu’s brothers to encourage him to surrender,
which he did. He confessed to his role in the riots, his training in Pakistan, and a conspiracy underway to
bomb major locations around the city, including the Bombay Stock Exchange, Sahar International Airport
and the Sena Bhavan. However, his conspiracy claim was dismissed by the police as a “mere bluff”. The
arrest of Gul Mohammed spurred Tiger Memon to advance the date of the bombings which had originally
been planned to coincide with the Shiv Jayanti celebrations in April 1993.
22 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
23 ‘Crime Syndicate Responsible for 1993 Mumbai Blasts Given State Protection, Enjoying 5-star Hospitality:
Jaishankar’, News18, 12 January 2021.
24 ‘Harkat ul-Ansar’, South Asia Terrorism Portal.
25 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy, p. 43.
26 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
27 Ibid., p. 115.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid., p. 94.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid., p.124.
32 Satish Chandra, A Life Well Spent, New Delhi: Rupa Publications India, 2023.
33 Sitapati, Half-Lion.
34 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
35 Ibid., pp. 125–27.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p.140.
39 Ibid.
40 Ibid., p. 149.
41 Ibid., p. 153.
42 Chandra, A Life Well Spent.
43 Ibid., p. 176.
44 Prasun Sonwalkar, ‘When Narasimha Rao rejected Benazir’s ‘tea diplomacy’ in London’, Hindustan Times, 2
January 2020.
45 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 115.
46 Prabhu Dayal, Karachi Halwa.

19. TALKING OF EVERYTHING

1 Chandra, A Life Well Spent, p. 192.

SECTION 6. 1997–2007: NUCLEAR GAMES

20. STRATEGIC PARITY
1 Hussain Haqqani, ‘The Legacy of Partition’, Wall Street Journal, 15 August 1997.
2 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
 not e s 497

3 Peter Popham, ‘Royal visit hits India’s raw nerve’, The Independent, 13 October, 1997.
4 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum.
5 Chandra, A Life Well Spent, pp. 196-197.
6 ‘The Insiders: Interview with Brajesh Mishra’, NewsX, < https://dai.ly/x738ghn>.
7 Natwar Singh, One Life Is Not Enough, p. 294.
8 Sitapati, Half Lion.
9 Shakti Sinha, Vajpayee: The Years That Changed India, Gurugram: Penguin Random House India, p. 100.
10 Sitapati, Half Lion.
11 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 180.
12 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 135.
13 ‘The Insiders: Interview with Brajesh Mishra’, NewsX; Sinha, Vajpayee, p.105.
14 ‘Pm Calls For N-Weapon Convention’, Business Standard, 28 May 1998.
15 Omar Farooq Khan, ‘Bill Clinton offered $5 billion to not conduct nuclear test in 1998: Nawaz Sharif’,
Times of India, 20 July 2017.
16 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum.
17 Under the bilateral agreement active since 1992, prohibiting attacks against the nuclear installations of each
other.
18 Chandra, A Life Well Spent, pp. 197-198; Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p.181.
19 Brajesh Mishra, ‘Annual Krishnaswamy Memorial Lecture by Shri Brajesh Mishra’, < http://www.
globalindiafoundation.org/Speech_Brajesh_Mishra%51B%5D.pdf>.
20 Adrian Levy and Cathy Scott, Deception: Pakistan, the United States, and the Global Nuclear Weapons
Conspiracy, Atlantic Books, 2008.
21 ‘The Insiders: Interview with Brajesh Mishra’, NewsX.
22 ‘A look at the zeroes of 1998’, India Today, 4 January 1999
23 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour: In Service of Emergent India, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2006, p.
283.
24 Ahmed Rashid, Descent into Chaos: The US and the disaster in Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Central Asia,
London: Penguin Books, 2009, p. 277.
25 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 115-116.
26 J. N. Dixit, India’s Foreign Policy, 1947-2003, New Delhi: Picus Books, 2003, p. 452.
27 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 116.
28 Celia W. Dugger, ‘Indian Leader Accepts Pakistani Offer to Take a Ride to Lahore’, New York Times, 4
February 1999.
29 Sinha, Vajpayee, p. 222.
30 Ibid.
31 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour.
32 Ibid., p. 226.
33 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, pp. 106-135.
34 Sinha, Vajpayee, p. 239.
35 Ibid., p. 240.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid, p. 245.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid., p. 247.

21. HEIGHTS OF TROUBLE

1 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour, p. 202.
2 Naseem Zehra, From Kargil to the Coup: Events that Shook Pakistan, Lahore: Sang-e-Meel Publications,
2018. Arjun Subramaniam, Full Spectrum: India’s Wars, Gurugram: HarperCollins India, 2020.
3 V. P. Malik, Kargil: From Surprise To Victory, Noida: HarperCollins, 2020; Sinha, Vajpayee.
4 Dixit, India’s Foreign Policy, 1947-2003, p. 461.
5 Sinha, Vajpayee; Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 119.
6 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 119.
7 Ibid.
8 Bruce Riedel, ‘American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House’, Policy Paper Series, Center
for Advanced Studies of India, p. 4.
9 Strobe Talbott, Engaging India: Diplomacy, Democracy and the Bomb, Viking, 2004, p. 157.
10 Sinha, Vajpayee, pp. 300-302.
11 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 121.
12 Talbott, Engaging India, p. 159.
498 ange r m anage m e nt

13 Ibid.
14 Bill Clinton, My Life, New York: Random House, 2004, p. 864.
15 Talbott, Engaging India, p. 158.
16 Ibid., p 158.
17 Ibid., p. 160.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour, p. 226.
21 Talbott, Engaging India, p. 162.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Ibid., p. 163
25 Ibid., p. 161
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Ibid.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 Ibid.
35 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
36 Ibid.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid.
39 Ibid.
40 Subramaniam, Full Spectrum.
41 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
42 Raj Chengappa, ‘Controversy over secret negotiations during Kargil war begins to hurt Vajpayee and Sharif’,
India Today, 27 September 1999.
43 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
44 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 123.
45 Ibid, p. 82.
46 Ibid, p. 124.
47 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations
48 Ibid.
49 Khan and Parthasarathy, Diplomatic Divide, p. 130.
50 Ibid.

22. MILLENNIAL DIPLOMACY

1 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
2 Karan Thapar, Devil’s Advocate: The Untold Story, HarperCollins India, 2018; L. K. Advani, My Country,
My Life, Rupa Publications, 2008.
3 A. K. Cronin, Attacking Terrorism, Elements of a Grand Strategy. Georgetown University Press, 2004.
4 U.S. Government Publishing Office, ‘Address by His Excellency, Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Prime Minister of
India’, Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 146, Part 13, 2000.
5 The temple planned on the site of the razed Babri Masjid structure.
6 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ‘Musings From Kumarakom’, Outlook (reproduced), 3 February 2022.
7 Ibid.
8 Karan Thapar, Devil’s Advocate.
9 L. K. Advani, My Country, My Life.
10 B. Muralidhar Reddy, ‘The message from Musharraf’, Frontline, 9 June 2001.
11 Prabhu Chawla, ‘Indo–Pak Summit in Agra turns out to be a PR disaster for India’, India Today, 31
December 2001.
12 Sattar, Pakistan’s Foreign Policy.
13 Ibid., p. 377.
14 Ibid.
15 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour, p. 258.
16 Pervez Musharraf, In the Line of Fire: A Memoir, ‎ Free Press, 2008.
 not e s 499

17 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour, p. 259.

18 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
19 Ibid.

23. THE TERROR FACTOR

1 Musharraf, In the Line of Fire.
2 L.K. Advani, ‘Aimed To Wipe Out The Entire Political Leadership Of India’, Outlook, 3 February 2022; Lok
Sabha Debates, 19 December 2001, p. 305.
3 Riedel, American Diplomacy and the 1999 Kargil Summit at Blair House.
4 Jawed Naqvi, ‘Delhi blames Lashkar for attack: India wants militants’ arrest’, Dawn, 15 December 2001.
5 ‘Statement made by Shri L.K. Advani, Union Home Minister on Tuesday, the 18th December, 2001 In Lok
Sabha in Connection with the terrorist attack on Parliament House’, Media Center, Ministry of External
Affairs, Government of India, 18 December 2001.
6 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
7 Ewan McAskill, ‘New Delhi recalls its man in Islamabad’, The Guardian, 22 December 2001.
8 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
9 ‘Text of the Statement made by the External Affairs Minister, Shri Jaswant Singh’, Media Center, Ministry of
External Affairs, Government of India, December 27, 2001.
10 Atal Bihari Vajpayee, ‘Full text of Vajpayee’s New Year message’, Times of India, 1 January 2002.
11 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
12 ‘Pakistan’s leader comes down hard on extremists’, CNN, 12 January 2002.
13 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
14 ‘Nambiar’s Total Recall’, Times of India, New Delhi, 31 January 2002.
15 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
16 Ibid
17 Ibid.
18 Karan Thapar, Devil’s Advocate.
19 Yashwant Sinha, Relentless: An Autobiography, New Delhi: Bloomsbury, 2019.

24. A HAND OF FRIENDSHIP

1 ShivshankarMenon, Choices: Inside the Making of Indian Foreign Policy, Gurugram: Penguin Random
House India, 2016; Vinay Sitapati, Jugalbandi..
2 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
3 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 207.
4 K.J.M. Varma, ‘Pak to lift ban on Indian overflights’, Tribune, 1 December 2003; ‘Musharraf offers
resumption of overflights: Four-step approach on Kashmir proposed’, Dawn, 1 December 2003.
5 Jaswant Singh, A Call to Honour.
6 ‘Abdul Qadeer Khan: Nuclear hero in Pakistan, villain to the West’, AlJazeera, 10 October 2021.
7 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
8 Ibid.
9 Ibid.
10 Ibid.

25. ESSAYS IN MUTUAL COMPREHENSION

1 ‘PM turns philosophical’, The Tribune, 24 September 2004.
2 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 294.
3 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
4 Ibid.
5 ‘PM, Pervez address Kashmir issue’, The Tribune, 24 September 2004.
6 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
10 Steve Coll, ‘The Back Channel’, New Yorker, 22 February 2009.
11 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
12 They also agreed to operationalise additional routes including that between Poonch and Rawalakot. They
called for an early start of the bus service between Amritsar and Lahore and to religious places such as
Nankana Sahib. They agreed to re-establish the Khokhrapar-Munnabao rail route in the Rajasthan desert by
1 January 2006.
500 ange r m anage m e nt

13 On way to Jakarta to participate in the Bandung Golden Jubilee conference, Prime Minister told the
journalists (22 April 2005) accompanying him on board the special aircraft.
14 Advani, My Country, My Life
15 Ibid.
16 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations
17 Shyam Saran, How India Sees the World: Kautilya to the 21st Century, Juggernaut, 2018.
18 Ibid.
19 Ibid.
20 Subramaniam, Full Spectrum
21 Ibid.
22 Ibid.
23 Ibid.
24 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations
25 Ibid.
26 Ibid.
27 Ibid.

26. DOWN TO SEMICOLONS

1 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
2 Lambah In Pursuit of Peace, p.320.
3 A. G. Noorani, ‘A step closer to consensus’, Frontline, 15 December 2006.
4 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 310.
5 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
6 Ibid.

SECTION 7. 2007–2017: KILLING AND CHILLING

27. REVENGE OF THE SNAKES
1 ‘Justice (r) Rana Bhagwandas passes away’. The News International, 23 February 2015.
2 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
3 Ibid.
4 Owen Bennett-Jones, The Bhutto Dynasty: The Struggle for Power in Pakistan, New Haven: Yale University
Press, 2020.
5 ‘HT Edit: The light goes out’, Hindustan Times, 27 December 2007.
6 Bhasin, India–Pakistan Relations.
7 Saurabh Shukla, ‘Dangerous designs’, India Today, 12 January 2008.
8 Author’s conversation with Malti Rao, New Delhi, September 2023.
9 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 179.

28. MASSACRE IN MUMBAI

1 Shahid Malik interviewed by the author, October 2023.
2 Pranab Mukherjee, The Coalition Years: 1996-2012, New Delhi: Rupa Publications, 2017, p. 117.
3 ‘Jailed militant`s hoax calls drove India, Pakistan to brink of war’, Dawn, 26 November 2009.
4 Salman Masood, ‘Chief of Pakistan intelligence to visit India to help in investigation’, New York Times, 28
October 2008.
5 Mukherjee, The Coalition Years., p. 118.
6 Ibid.
7 ‘TEXT - Prime Minister’s statement on Mumbai attack’, Reuters, 27 November 2008.
8 Menon, Choices.
9 Satyabrata Pal, ‘Dialogue is the only option’, The Hindu, 2 September 2013.
10 Satyabrata Pal, ‘Engaging Pakistan’, India Quarterly, Volume 65, No. 4, 2009.

29. DIPLOMATIC DOODLES

1 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p 119.
2 Ibid.
3 Ibid.
4 Menon, Choices.
5 Ibid.
6 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 47.
 not e s 501

7 Ehsanullah Ehsan, ‘Pak military wanted me to lead its hit squad: Ex Taliban commander’ Sunday Guardian,
3 July 2021.
8 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum.
9 Ibid.
10 Farhan Bokhari and James Fontanella-Khan, ‘Pakistan envoy accused over “Memogate”’, Financial Times,
12 June 2012.
11 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 49.
12 Shiv Aroor and Gaurav C. Sawant, ‘Siachen demilitarisation: Could PM gift away to Pakistan what Army
has won?’, India Today, 14 May 2012.
13 ‘US professor’s anti-Pak agenda?’, The News International, 7 February 2016.

30. DELHI DURBAR

1 ‘PM hopes of visiting Pakistan in coming months’, Times of India, 3 January 2014.
2 Natwar Singh, One Life is Not Enough.
3 Abdul Basit, Hostility: A Diplomat’s Diary on Pakistan-India Relations, Gurugram: HarperCollins India,
2021.
4 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, pp. 136–40.
5 Ibid, p. 307
6 Ibid, p. 293-298
7 T. C. A. Raghavan interviewed by the author in 2022.
8 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
9 ‘Prime Minister Narendra Modi`s letter to Nawaz Sharif - Full Text’, Zee News, 13 June 2014.
10 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace, p. 314-315.
11 Basit, Hostility.
12 Basit, Hostility; ‘Full Text: Abdul Basit on Nawaz Sharif ‘Pandering’ to India and Being Sidelined By Pak
PM’, The Wire, 26 March 2021.
13 ‘Modi: Peshawar attack a senseless act of unspeakable brutality’, Hindu Businessline, 16 December 2014.
14 ‘Unfortunate that Uri happened, but my Pak visit created a positive vibe for India: PM Modi on Nawaz
Sharif meeting’, India TV, 4 May 2019; India TV, ‘I went to Lahore out of goodwill because Nawaz Sharif
had come to my swearing-in, says PM Modi’, YouTube, 4 May 2019.
15 Shubhajit Roy and Anand Mishra, ‘Nawaz Sharif’s praise for Burhan Wani soured relations with Pakistan:
Sushma Swaraj’, Indian Express, 4 August 2017.
16 ‘India pulls out of Saarc summit in Pak’, Deccan Herald, 28 September 2016.
17 ‘Kashmir attack: India ‘launches strikes against militants’’, BBC, 30 September 2016.
18 Cyril Almeida, ‘Exclusive: Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military’, Dawn,
6 October 2016.
19 Ibid.
20 ‘Predecessor used ‘Dawn leaks’ to get extension, claims Gen Bajwa,’ Dawn, 30 March 2023.
21 ‘Pakistan sacks judge accused of ‘blackmail’ in ex-PM Sharif case’, AlJazeera, 12 July 2019.
22 Ibid.
23 ‘Pakistan’s ex-Army chief Bajwa claims his predecessor sought 3-year extension: Report’, Economic Times,
30 March 2023.

SECTION 8. 2017–2023: TOUGH TALKING

31. LIES, DECEIT, AND DIPLOMACY
1 Jayanth Jacob, ‘New Indian envoy for China could be delayed’, Hindustan Times, 30 June 2017.
2 Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump), X.com, 1 January 2018, <https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/
status/947802588174577664>.
3 ‘Donald Trump warns Pakistan against providing safe havens to terrorists: Full text of his speech’, Indian
Express, 22 August 2017.
4 Pak Defence—PMLN (@PakDefencePMLN), X.com, 1 January 2018, <https://twitter.com/
PakDefencePMLN/status/947843255286353921>.
5 PTI, ‘China defends Pakistan after Trump tweet’, The Hindu, 2 January 2018.
6 ‘After Indian Diplomats Complain of Harassment, Pakistan Protests Unfair Treatment of Its Officials’, The
Wire, 11 March 2018.
7 Ibid.
8 ‘G. Parthasarathy, ‘Booted and roasted’ during Indo–Pak chill’, Times of India, 25 January 2003.
9 Chandra, A Life Well Spent, p. 174.
10 ‘Pakistan prevents Sikh pilgrims from meeting Indian High Commissioner and staff’, Media Center, Ministry
502 ange r m anage m e nt

of External Affairs, Government of India, 15 April 2018.

11 ‘India lodges strong protest at denial of access to the Indian High Commissioner and consular officials of
the Indian High Commission to the visiting Indian pilgrims’, Media Center, Ministry of External Affairs,
Government of India, 23 June 2018.
12 The Constitution (Eighteenth Amendment) Act, 2010, passed after Musharraf’s political demise, overhauled
Pakistan’s 1973 constitution to promote devolution and federalism and to deter further army coups. It
altered about a third of Pakistan’s Constitution and was periodically criticised by the army for devolving too
much power and resources away from the centre.
13 Suhail Warraich, ‘The Bajwa Doctrine: from chauvinism to realism’, The News International, 18 March
2018.
14 ‘The “Bajwa doctrine”’, Dawn, 25 March 2018.
15 Sushant Singh, ‘In bilateral chill, small steps towards thaw, says Indian envoy to Pakistan Ajay Bisaria’,
Indian Express, 22 May 2018.
16 The situation on the LOC stood in stark contrast to the one on the Chinese border (LAC) that had been one
of relative peace and tranquillity, with not a shot having been fired and not a life having been lost for four
decades.
17 Happymon Jacob, Line on Fire: Ceasefire Violations and India–Pakistan Escalation Dynamics, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press, 2019.
18 For his book, The Line of Control: Travelling with the Indian and Pakistani Armies, a professor at
Jawaharlal Nehru University, Happymon Jacob, travelled on both sides of the LOC and got to be embedded,
in a sense, with both armies.

32. NAYA PAKISTAN, OLD TRICKS

1 ‘Congratulating Imran Khan, Modi hopes democracy will take deeper roots in Pakistan’, The Hindu, July 30
2018.
2 After returning in 2019, General Bajwa spoke informally to several journalists. Several stories appeared in
Pakistan’s media including reports by journalists Javed Choudhry and Shahid Maitla. See also: ‘IHC issues
notices to Gen (r) Bajwa, Gen (r) Faiz Hameed for ‘misrepresenting events’, Daily Pakistan, 9 October 2023;
Hamid Mir, ‘Dirty game: Untold story of Imran Khan and Gen Bajwa’s love-hate relationship | OPINION’,
India Today, 1 August 2023.
3 The South Asia Portal hosts credible data and assessments on terrorist incidents and infiltration in Jammu
and Kashmir, <https://www.satp.org/datasheet-terrorist-attack/fatalities/india-jammukashmir>.
4 ‘Pakistani singer Shafqat Amanat Ali stokes controversy with Kashmir song’, WION, 3 August 2020.
5 ‘Won’t engage with talent from neighbouring country in future: Karan Johar’, Hindustan Times, 19 October
2016.

33. PULWAMA
1 ‘India Withdraws Most Favoured Nation Status To Pakistan After Pulwama Attack’, India Today, 15
February 2019.
2 ‘PM Modi Condemns Pulwama Blood Bath, Says Sacrifice Will Not Go In Vain’, India Today, India Today,
16 February 2019
3 Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global inter-governmental watchdog for terror financing, had put
Pakistan on its ‘list of jurisdictions under increased monitoring’, or ‘Grey List’, in 2018, impacting funding
for Pakistan’s economy. The country managed to get off the grey list only in October 2022.
4 Sabtain Ahmed Dar, ‘Pulwama Attack: Another Indian “False Flag” to frame Pakistan’, Global Village Space,
15 February 2019.
5 ‘Pakistan will address actionable evidence if shared by Delhi, PM Khan tells India after Pulwama attack’,
Dawn, 19 February 2019.
6 ‘India’s response to remarks by Prime Minister of Pakistan on the Pulwama Terrorist Attack’, Media Center,
Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 19 February 2019.
7 The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1267 adopted in 1999, creating a sanctions regime of
travel bans, arms embargos and asset freezes for individuals and entities associated with Al-Qaida, Taliban,
and others. It saw decade-long diplomatic efforts led by India and supported by its friends at the UNSC, to
list Jaish-e-Mohammad founder Maulana Azhar.
8 ‘DG ISPR reiterates “talks, not war” proposal to India, distances Pakistan from Pulwama’, Dawn, 22
February 2019.
9 The Kumbh, a religious gathering associated with Hinduism, is held every six years in the city of Prayagraj,
at the confluence of the Ganga, Yamuna, and the mythical Saraswati River.
10 ‘Statement by Foreign Secretary on 26 February 2019 on the Strike on JeM training camp at Balakot, Media
Center, Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, 26 February 2019.
 not e s 503

11 Sunetra Choudhury, Jimmy Jacob (ed.), ‘Opposition Backs Air Strike At All-Party Meet, But Warns Against
Anti-Kashmiri “Jingoism”’, NDTV, 26 February 2019.
12 In the author’s conversations with western diplomats, particularly with the P5, later pieced together the
Pakistan end of the diplomacy that accompanied their reaction to the Balakot air strikes.
13 Shishir Gupta, Rezaul H Laskar and Yashwant Raj, ‘India, Pakistan came close to firing missiles at each
other on February 27’, Hindustan Times, 23 March 2019; Sanjeev Miglani, Drazen Jorgic, ‘India, Pakistan
threatened to unleash missiles at each other: sources’, Reuters, 17 March 2019.
14 ‘PM: Pakistan returned Abhi or it would’ve seen ‘qatal ki raat’, Times of India, 22 April 2019.
15 Mike Pompeo, Never Give an Inch: Fighting for the America I Love, New York: Broadside Books, 2023.
16 ‘Foreign minister Qureshi’s legs were shaking as he said India could attack over Abhinandan: Pakistani MP’,
Hindustan Times, 29 October 2019.
17 Details in Section 6, Chapter 21.
18 Shishir Gupta, ‘Only seven people knew of the timing of air strike on Balakot’, Hindustan Times, 15 June
2020.
19 The ‘ladder of escalation’, conceptualized by American strategist Herman Kahn, in his book On Escalation
(1965) Kahn controversially presented a ‘generalised (or abstract) scenario’ made up of 44 ‘rungs’ that the
world might climb to pass from crisis to Armageddon.
20 In August 2020, the NIA filed a charge sheet with ‘irrefutable evidence—technical, material and
circumstantial—on Pakistan’s role in the attack.’ It charged the JeM chief Masood Azhar and eighteen
others in the Pulwama attack, citing details like chats, calls details of terrorists. In September 2020, an
NIA court declared Masood Azhar, his two brothers—Rouf Asgar and Ammar Alvi—and three others as
absconders in the case. It revealed that the JeM called off another planned attack due to the global scrutiny
following the Balakot air strikes.
21 Francesca Marino, ‘As many as 170 JeM terrorists killed in Balakot airstrike: Italian journalist’, India Today,
8 March 2019.
22 ‘Pakistan accuses India of plotting fresh military attack, BBC, 8 April 2019.
23 Cyril Almeida, ‘Exclusive: Act against militants or face international isolation, civilians tell military’, Dawn,
6 October 2016.
24 ‘Masood Azhar ban, Dawn, 3 May 2019
25 ‘Pakistan kills over 17,600 militants in counter-terrorism ops: Foreign Office’, Indian Express, 2 February
2018.
26 Ashley J. Tellis, ‘View: Pakistan will not change, India has to prepare better’, Economic Times, 25 February
2019.
27 C. Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan Army’s Way of War, New York: Oxford University Press,
2014; Fair, In Their Own Words.
28 Ibid.
29 Sarral Sharma, ‘The new Pakistan army chief faces an uphill task of ensuring stability ‘, Observer Research
Foundation, 22 December 2022.
30 ‘Infiltration in Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) 2001 – 2019*’, South Asia Terrorism Portal.
31 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum.
32 T. C. A., ‘Guest Column | Kartarpur: The context of a Corridor’, India Today, 5 August 2019.

34. KASHMIRIYAT
1 ‘Vajpayee formula of insaniyat, kashmiriyat & jamhooriyat is the only way for J&K: PM Modi’, India
Today, 27 April 2019.
2 ‘Pakistan PM Khan: Kashmir issue ‘cannot keep boiling’, BBC, 10 April 2019.
3 PTI, ‘Pakistan PM sees better chance of peace talks with India if Modi’s BJP wins election’, Economic Times,
10 April 2019.
4 Kallol Bhattacherjee and Mehmal Sarfraz, ‘Pakistan PM Imran Khan calls up PM Modi, expresses desire to
work together’, The Hindu, 26 May 2019.
5 ‘Zakir Musa: Thousands mourn India’s ‘most wanted’ militant’, BBC, 24 May 2019.
6 Shishir Gupta, ‘Pak army tries to corner Supreme Court’s tough judge. It is worried about 2023’, Hindustan
Times, 3 August 2020; Hasnaat Malik, ‘No proof Justice Isa’s wife, children are his dependents: SC’, The
Express Tribune, 28 October 2019.
7 PTI, ‘Imran Khan sacked Gen. Munir as ISI chief for raising his wife’s corruption PM Sharif’, The Week, 22
May 2023.
8 PTI, ‘Pakistan’s large-scale terrorism industry prevents it from behaving like normal neighbour:
S Jaishankar’, India Today, 26 June 2019.
9 The report was called Pakistan@100, trying to create a long-term vision for where Pakistan should be headed.
10 ‘Pakistani airspace closure after Balakot strike cost Islamabad Rs 688 crore’, Business Today, 3 July 2019.
504 ange r m anage m e nt

11 ‘Trump’s Kashmir ‘mediation’ claim: MEA S Jaishankar says “no such request has been made by PM Modi
to US Prez”’, Times Now, 23 July 2019.
12 ‘Pak court sentences JuD chief Hafiz Saeed to over 15 years in jail in one more terror financing case’,
Hindustan Times, 24 December 2020; In December 2020, JUD chief Hafiz Saeed would be sentenced for
a collective imprisonment of more than twenty years on terror financing charges in four cases, a move
analysts knew was an attempt by Pakistan to wriggle out of the FATF’s grey list. Three other JUD workers
were sentenced under Pakistan’s Anti-Terrorism Act, 1997, but the most wanted man for India and the US
remained Saeed, already in jail since 2017, was a UN designated terrorist with a USD 10 million bounty on
his head as a ‘Specially Designated Global Terrorist’ of the US. To Indian security analysts, all it meant was
that the seventy-year-old ISI asset would be kept in a safer safe house, away from the public glare.
13 Mohammad Khan, ‘Post-370 options?’, Dawn, 11 August 2019.
14 ‘Pakistan and India trade angry accusations at the UNGA’, AlJazeera, 25 September 2021.
15 Details in Section 5, Chapter 18.
16 Ibid.
17 Shekhar Gupta, ‘India shows the world it means business on Kashmir issue at Geneva meet’, India Today,
31 March 1994; Geeta Mohan, ‘Pakistan misses deadline to file resolution on Kashmir in UNHRC’, India
Today, 20 September 2019.
18 Sushant Sareen, ‘The corridor is a trap that Pakistan has set for India | Opinion, Hindustan Times, 11
November 2019.

CONCLUSION: HISTORY’S AMBIGUOUS LESSONS

1 Ershad Mahmud, ‘Freezing Kashmir’, The News International, 22 January 2023.
2 Sanjay Kathuria, ‘Pakistan’s Missing Market’, Foreign Policy, 5 October 2023.
3 Stephen P. Cohen, Shooting for a Century: The India–Pakistan Conundrum, Washington: Brookings
Institution, 2013.
4 Admiral Raja Menon and Rajiv Kumar, The Long View from Delhi: To Define the Indian Grand Strategy
for Foreign Policy, New Delhi: Academic Foundation, 2009.
5 Rahul Shewakarmani, ‘Does India have a Grand Strategy?’, Report on former US Ambassador to India
Robert Blackwill‘s lecture, Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations, 27 September 2010.
6 Prakasa, Pakistan.
7 Mani Shankar Aiyar, ‘A Friend And A Gentleman’, Outlook, 5 February 2022.
8 Lambah, In Pursuit of Peace.
9 Mani Shankar Aiyar, Memoirs of a Maverick: The First Fifty Years (1941-1991), New Delhi: Juggernaut
Books, 2023 p. 232.
10 Mani Shankar Aiyar, Pakistan Papers, New Delhi: UBS Publishers’ Distributors, 1994, p. 38.
11 Chandra, A Life Well Spent.
12 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum, p. 219.
13 Menon, Choices.
14 Ibid.
15 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum.
16 Sabharwal, India’s Pakistan Conundrum; Ashley J. Tellis, Striking Asymmetries: Nuclear Transitions in
Southern Asia, Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2022.
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 I NDEX

Abbasi, Shahid Khaqan, 372 IC-814 Indian Airlines aircraft (1999),

Abbottabad, Pakistan, 355 288–90, 305–6
abducted women, rescue of, 53 exchange terrorists for passengers, 289
Abdullah, Farooq, 192, 196, 219 Pakistan’s role in, 288
Abdullah, Omar, 354 Indian Airlines Fokker aircraft (1971), 119
Abdullah, Sheikh, 33, 40–1, 57, 85, 87, 163, Pakistan-related hijacking, 290
167, 354 Air India ‘Kanishka’ Flight 182, 196
National Conference, 192 air services agreement, between India and
rift with Nehru, 41 Pakistan, 49
Abida Sultan, Begum, 14 air-space violation, by military aircrafts, 206
Acharya, B. K., 43, 52, 115, 116–17, 135 Aiyar, Mani Shankar, 179, 187, 204
Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL), 216, 357 Akali Dal, 178, 397
Advani, L. K., 258, 292, 300, 304, 353 Akbaruddin, Syed, 275, 450
emotional trip to Pakistan, 322 Akhand Bharat (Undivided India), xxi, 271,
endorsing of Jinnah, 322–3 471
meeting with Kashmiri separatist Hurriyat, Akhtar, Rizwan, 369, 370
316 Akhund, Iqbal, 164, 212, 217, 218
resignation as president of the BJP, 323 Akram, Wasim, 267
Afghanistan Albright, Madeleine, 260, 278
Brzezinski’s Islamist ‘freedom fighters’ in, Ali, Arshad, 231
182 Ali, Hossain, 127
‘Heart of Asia’ conference (2015) on, 366 Ali, Shafqat Amanat, 402
international coalition against terrorism in, Ali Sher Nawai Theatre, 102
303 Al Jazeera, 340
Pakistan’s proxy battles against US interests All India Radio, 159, 176
in, 378 Alling, Paul, 49
Pakistan’s support for war on terror in, xxiii All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), 237
Soviet invasion of, 181 Almeida, Cyril, 370
US drone attack in, 342 al-Qaeda, 264, 356, 377, 429, 438
US engagement in, 349 Altaf, Tariq, 275
withdrawal of al-Zawahiri, Ayman, 356
Soviet troops, 264–5 Ambani, Dhirubhai, 272
US troops, 265 Ambedkar, Bhimrao Ramji, 5
Afghan Taliban, 289, 303, 335 Amin, Hafizullah, 181
promoting jihad in Kashmir, 264 Amin, Nurul, 141
training of Kashmiri militants in Ansari, Hamid, 390
Afghanistan, 264 anti-Ahmaddiya riots, 56
Afridi, Shakil, 355 anti-defection law of 1989, 453
‘Agartala conspiracy’ case, 112 Antiterrorism Act (ATA, 1997), Pakistan, 446
Agra Summit (2001), 301, 465 anti-terrorism mechanism, in Pakistan, 329
Ahluwalia, Gaurav, 407–8 Arab–Israeli conflict, 280
Ahmad, Qazi, 221 Arab Spring (2010), 354
Ahmad, Shamshad, 256, 260, 265, 285 Armitage, Richard, 299
Ahmad, Uzma, 390 Arora, J. S., 150
Ahmed, Aziz, 52, 90, 96, 168 Arthashastra (Chanakya), 349
Ahmed, Shamshad, 255 Article 370 of the Constitution of India, 41,
Ahmed, Tajuddin, 121–2 59, 61, 87, 386
aircraft hijacking call for a referendum on, 451
508 ange r m anage m e nt

revoking of, 447–8 appointment as the chief of army staff of

Pakistan’s overreaction on, 458 Pakistan, 371
situation after the dismantling of, 454 Bajwa doctrine, 383–5, 429–32, 460
as temporary and transient provision, 453 Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad (Elimination of
Asquith, Dominic, 416 Strife, 2017), 371
Association of South-East Asian countries overhaul of the ISI, 436
(ASEAN), 187 treason charges against Nawaz Sharif for the
Atal, Jai Kumar ‘Makhi’, 140, 144–6 Dawn leaks, 371
as prisoner of war in Pakistan, 146 Baker, Noel, 35
tenure in Pakistan, 140 Bakshi, K. N., 120, 152, 154
Atlantique, 285 Baksh, Ilahi, 18
Atlee, Clement, 9 Balakot terror camps, 386, 421
Attari–Wagah border, 396 Balkanization of India, 15
Attlee, Lord, 34 ballistic missile tests, 270
Auchinleck, Claude, 12, 34–5 Balochistan Awami Party (BAP), 392
Awami League, 107, 112, 116, 142 Bambawale, Gautam, 367, 375, 446
as traitors and enemies of Pakistan, 123 Banerjee, S. K., 118
Awami National Party, 403 Bangladesh
Awan-e-Sadr, 395 creation of, xxiv, xxvii, 29, 121, 465
Awan, Safdar, 391 declaration of independence, 123
axis of evil, 263 formation of, 179
Ayyangar, N. Gopalaswami, 80 Indian government recognition of, 146
‘Azad Jammu’ (Pakistan-occupied Kashmir), Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 188
450 official status to the Bengali language, 112
Azhar, Maulana Masood, 290, 370, 405, ties with India, 468
408–9, 412, 417, 420, 422, 428, 433 Basit, Abdul, 360, 363–4, 427
Azharuddin, Mohammad, 267 criticism of Nawaz Sharif, 364
Azim, Tariq, 335 Hostility: A Diplomat’s Diary on Pakistan-
Aziz, Mohammad, 277 India Relations (2021), 360
Aziz, Sartaj, 277, 285, 365 invitation to the Hurriyat leaders to the
Aziz, Tariq, 308, 311, 319, 322, 328, 361, Pakistan high commission, 365
401–2 Bedi, Bishen Singh, 180
Beg, Aslam, 208, 215, 266
Babar, M. Bashir Khan, 220 Begum, Bushra, 440
Babar, Naseerullah, 238 Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) project, 372,
Babri Masjid, demolition of (1992), 227–8, 444
234 Bengali nationalism, 111, 120
Bachelet, Michelle, 456 Bengal, partition of (1905), 111
backchannel engagement, between India with Berger, Sandy, 280
Pakistan, 328–9 Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC), 160
communication, xxvi Bhagat, H. K. L., 188
on issue of J&K, 328 Bhagwandas, Rana, 336
Badal, Harsimrat Kaur, 397 Bhagwat, Mohan, 361
Badal, Parkash Singh, 178, 271, 396 Bhakra Nangal Dam, 61, 75
Baghdad Pact, 42, 58, 148 Bharatiya Jana Sangh, 54, 173, 175
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), 54, 166, 246,
Bagh, Liaquat, 338 302, 345, 428, 464–5
Baig, Sikander Ali, 77 election manifesto of 1998, 258
Bajpai, Girija Shankar, 19, 44 post-Pulwama actions against Pakistan, 436
Bajpai, K. S. Shankar, 86, 93, 100, 104–5, 172, return to power, 433
174, 182, 376 Bhasin, Harsh, 310
Bajpai, Uma Shankar, 105 Bhati, Munawwar, 308
Bajwa, Ayesha, 395 Bhat, Maqbool, 192, 221
Bajwa, Qamar, General, 370, 376, 395, 401, Bhattacharya, Ranjan, 315
418, 425, 445, 447, 449 Bhindranwale, Jarnail Singh, 178
 inde x 509

Bhutto, Benazir, xx, 209, 210, 216, 244, 271, Bush, George W., 317, 319
331, 338–9, 464 bus service, between Delhi and Lahore, 267–72
assassination of, 339, 460 list of eminent persons for the inaugural bus
demands for free elections, 207 ride, 269
house arrest of, 187 message of peace and friendship, 269
leadership of the PPP, 187
Movement for Restoration of Democracy C–130 Hercules aircraft, 208
(MRD), 207 Cabinet Committee on Security (CCS), 258
PPP, 335 Cabinet Mission Plan (1946), 29, 112
Bhutto, Bilawal, 338, 356 Camp David, 294
Bhutto, Shah Nawaz, 37 Carter Doctrine, 181
Bhutto, Zulfikar Ali, xx, 37, 77, 90, 152, 163, Carter, Jimmy, 182
210, 339, 393 ceasefire agreement, between India and
commitment to bilateralism in Simla, 177 Pakistan, 388
tenure as foreign minister, 100 ceasefire violations, by Pakistan, 388, 414
Bibi, Bushra (Pinki Pirni), 391, 395 Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF), 405
bilateral diplomacy, xxvi, 432 Central Treaty Organization (CENTO), 58, 99
bilateralism, principle of, 270 Chagai hills of Baluchistan, 261
BIMSTEC group, 437 Chakravarty, Pinak, 243
bin Laden, Osama, 182, 266, 283, 287, 347, Chanakya, xxv
355, 413, 420 Chander, Rajiv, 455
as guest of the Pakistan State, 355–6 Chandra, Naresh, 216, 222
Bishkek summit, 439 Chandra, Satish, 204, 249, 256–8, 260, 266,
Bishop Cotton School, Simla, 189 381
Black, Eugene, 75 charter of democracy, 335
Blair, Tony, 256, 263, 307 Chaudhry, Aizaz Ahmad, 369
blasphemy law, in Pakistan, 424 Chaudhry, Iftikhar Muhammad, 330, 337, 351
Blood, Archer, 122–6 Chauhan, Jagjit Singh, 178
Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Chautala, Om Prakash, 273
369 Chib, Ashok, 146, 154
Bogra, Mohammad Ali, 56–7, 59–60, 72 Chibber, M. L., 193–4
joint defence policy with India, 57 Chidambaran, R., 258
meeting with Nehru, 57 China
Mutual Defence Agreement with the US, 58 Aksai Chin Road, 80
as prime minister of Pakistan, 57 attack on the Galwan Valley in Ladakh, 80
Bokhari, Fasih, 266 border talks with Pakistan, 85
Bolton, John, 418 claims against India across the McMahon
Bombay, explosions in (1993), 236–7 Line, 71
Border Security Force (BSF), 231, 376 Cultural Revolution in, 133
Bose, Surjit, 52 hostility towards India, 84
Boundary Award, 8–10 invasion of Vietnam, 180
Boundary Commission, 10, 32 relation with India, 80
British Cabinet Mission Plan (1946), 13 settlement of border dispute with Pakistan,
British colonialism, Quit India agitation (1942) 79
against, 4 split with Soviet Union, 81, 128
British Commonwealth, 9, 14 suppression of the revolt in Tibet, 71, 80
British Raj, 11, 33, 256 views on Ayub’s joint defence proposal with
Brohi, A. K., 74, 79 India, 71
Brown, William, 38 war with India, 133
Bucher, Roy, 39–40 China–Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC),
Buddha’s Smile, 159–61 372, 444, 454
Bulganin, Nikolai, 60 Chirac, Jacques, 263
Burrows, William, 222 Churchill, Winston, 11, 15
Bush administration, 316 CIRUS nuclear reactor, 160
Bush, George, 263, 302, 307 civil–military consensus, in Pakistan, 425
510 ange r m anage m e nt

Clinton, Bill, 258, 278, 291 Dacca University, 107

coercive diplomacy against Nawaj Sharif, Dalai Lama, 71, 80
283 Dalmia, Ramkrishna, 47
mediation and crisis management, 284 Damodaran, Ramu, 226, 229
plan to visit South Asia, 283 Dandi March (April 1930), against British salt
re-engagement with India after 1998 nuclear laws, 16
test, 264 Danish newspaper cartoon case, 340
rejection of Sharif’s depiction of India, 281 Das, Bhagwan, 6
resolution of Dasgupta, Chandrashekhar, 11–12, 35
Kargil crisis, 281, 284 Dasgupta, Shekhar, 140
Kosovo crisis, 278 Dawn, 18, 92, 219, 360, 369–72, 379, 385
role in the Kargil endgame, 284 Dawngate, 370
Code of Conduct for the treatment of Dayal, Naresh, 154
diplomatic/consular personnel in India and Dayal, Rajeshwar, 67–70, 76–8, 465
Pakistan (1992), 382 D-Company, 236
coercive diplomacy, 279–80, 303–6, 369 Dean, John Gunther, 208
Cohen, Stephen, 471 decolonization, process of, 15
Cold War, 13, 58, 128–30, 198 demilitarized zones (DMZs), 216
diplomacy between the US and the Soviet deradicalization, Saudi model of, 425
Union, xxv, 466 Desai, C. C., 51
Nixon’s reliance on Yahya Khan during, 263 Desai, M. J., 77
Pakistan’s status as a US Cold War ally in Desai, Morarji, 166–7, 184, 208
South Asia, 70, 263 Dev, Kapil, 192, 395
Commonwealth summit (1997), 257 Dewars, Frank, 94, 105
communal killings, in Pakistan, 22 Dhar, D. P., 135, 136, 144, 148, 154, 158
communal violence, 6, 9, 24 Dhar, P. N., 144
anti-Ahmaddiya riots, 56 Dhillon, Ganga Singh, 206
in Bengal, 52 DIME (diplomatic, information, military, and
in East Pakistan, 22, 52 economic), xxv
in Gujarat, 294 diplomacy
in Punjab, 52 backchannel communication, xxvi
in Sindh, 52 in closed rooms, xxvi
stories of Muslim mobs killing Hindus, 52 coercive, 279–80, 303–6, 369
competitive populism, 273 cricket diplomacy, 322
Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), 268 cultural, 403
confidence-building measures (CBMs), xxiv, disaster, 323
224, 232, 250, 262, 263, 265, 315, 320–1, funeral diplomacy, 190
407, 426, 458, 468 humanitarian, 389–90
conflict management, Indo–Pak diplomacy for, between India and Pakistan, xxv
466 jhappi pappi diplomacy, 466
Cook, Robin, 256, 278 musical, 403–4
Cotton, Sidney, 38 nuclear diplomacy, 262–3
counter-terror diplomacy, 425 religious, 356
cricket diplomacy, xxiv, 231–3, 322 state-building, xxvi
crisis management, 408 track two diplomacy, xxvi
cross-border infiltration, 298, 313, 386, 398, between US and Soviet Union, xxv
401–2, 433 Western notion of, xxv
cross-border terrorism, 265, 302, 320, 368, diplomatic deficit, creation of, xxvi
402 diplomatic harassment, 380–3
cross-LoC trade, 407 diplomatic immunity, 145
Cuban missile crisis (1962), 81, 282 diplomats and leaders, agency of, xxiv–xxvi
Cuba’s Castro revolution, 90 disaster diplomacy, 323
cultural diplomacy, 403 ‘Divide and Quit’ policy, 11
cultural intimacy, xviii, 404 Dixit, Mani (J. N.), 214–15, 229, 234, 249,
currency devaluation crisis (1949), 45 319–21
 inde x 511

Dixon, Owen, 42 Federally Administered Tribal Area (FATA),

Dogra, Rajiv, 243 331
Dominions of India and Pakistan, creation of, Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce
9 and Industry (FICCI), 328
double taxation avoidance agreement (1947), Fernandes, George, 258, 292
46 Feroze Shah Kotla stadium (Delhi), 267
Doval, Ajit, 365, 442 Financial Action Task Force (FATF), 406, 409,
Drew, Tom, 416 435
Dubey, Muchkund, 227 Asia–Pacific Group of, 446
Dulat, A. S., 310 issue of blacklisting Pakistan, 442
Dulles, John Foster, 56, 163 US–Pakistan discussion on process of, 446
Durrani, Asad, 223 foreign office bureaucracy, 358
Dutt, Subimal, 52 Freeman, John, 88
Frontier Gandhi, 203, see also, Ghaffar Khan,
Earth Summit (Rio de Janeiro), 232 Khan Abdul (Badshah Khan),
East Pakistan. see also Bangladesh Frontier Works Organisation (FWO), 458
accounts of the atrocities in, 124
genocide in, 127, 134 Galbraith, John Kenneth, 81
influx of refugees in India, 127, 131 Gandhi, Indira, 105, 114, 119, 140, 161, 165,
Mukti Bahini fighters, 146 339
Operation Searchlight (1971), 122 Alexei Kosygin letter to, 135
Pakistan army crackdown in, 122, 134 assassination of, 190, 207
India’s diplomatic efforts against, 126 authorization of full-scale attack on East
India’s military action against, 134 Pakistan, 143
Mukti Bahini armed resistance against, defeat in 1977 elections, 171
134 diplomatic blitzkrieg, 137–9
US response to, 122–5 Emergency rule, 164
rogue missions, 126–8 Indian Airlines Fokker aircraft hijacking
separation from West Pakistan, 117–20 case (1971), 119
Soviet support for the secessionist movement meeting with
in, 135 Kissinger, 131, 137
economic liberalism, 50 Zia ul-Haq, 184, 187
Economist, The, 435 military intervention in East Pakistan, 128
egalitarian democracy, 113 neighbourhood policy, 182
Ehsan, Ehsanullah, 354 Operation ‘Bluestar’ (1984), 190
Eisenhower administration, 148 rejection of Yahya’s five-point peace offer,
Eisenhower, President, 56, 58, 137 141
electoral democracy, in India, 51 return to power, 178
Elizabeth, Queen, 256–7 visit to Moscow, 136
ethnic cleansing, in Kashmir, 455 Yahya’s letter to, 141
EU Parliament, 453 Gandhi, Mahatma, 6, 26, 27, 256
European Union, 329 150th birth anniversary celebrations, 402
evacuee property, dispossession of, 47–9 as ambassador of Hindu–Muslim unity, 27
exodus of the Hindus, of Sindh from Karachi, assassination of, 26–8
25 Dandi March (April 1930) against British
expulsions, of high commission staff, 49–50 salt laws, 16
as president of the Congress, 27
F-16 Fighter Aircraft, 180, 186, 261, 415 return to India from South Africa, 27
Fair, Christine, 359 Gandhi, Rajiv, 195, 198, 203, 206, 216, 268,
Faisal, Mohammad, 417 362, 464
Faiz, Faiz Ahmed, 54 assassination of, 225
Falah-e Insaniyat Foundation (FIF), 425 corruption allegations in the purchase of
Farakka Barrage, 135, 174 Bofors guns, 218
Farland, Joseph, 124, 129, 142 meeting with Zia ul-Haq, 196
Fatemi, Tariq, 370 plots to kill, 207–8
512 ange r m anage m e nt

visit to Islamabad, 216 Gupta, Shekhar, 210, 267–8

Garibi Hatao (Eradicate Poverty), 121 Gurudwara Dera Baba Nanak, at Kartarpur,
garrison state, xx, xxii, 72 Sialkot, 360
Gates Mission, 223, 227
Gates, Robert, 222 Haider (2014), 367
Gavaskar, Sunil, 192, 395 Haider, Moinuddin, 270
Geneva accords (1988), 205, 206, 214 Haider, Salman, 249
Geneva Conventions, 275 Haider, Suhasini, 343
Geng Shuang, 378 Haig, Alexander, 149
genocidal violence, 10 Haji Pir pass, 92, 102–3
genocide, 131 Haksar, P. N., 19, 118, 121, 132–3, 148, 151,
geo-economics, xxiii, 349, 469, 475 157–8
George VI, King, 7 Hale, David, 377
Ghaffar Khan, Khan Abdul (Badshah Khan), Hameed, Faiz, 439, 459
203, 403, see also Frontier Gandhi Hammarskjöld, Dag, 77
Ghani, Ashraf, 459 Hanif, Mohammed, 210
Ghanshyam, A. R., 289 Haq, Naeemul, 393
Ghazi, Abdul Rasheed, 410 Haqqani, Hussain, xxv, 348, 354, 378
Ghazwa-e-Hind, 471 Haqqani, Sirajuddin, 356
Gidwani, Choithram, 3 Haque, Amjadul, 126
Gilani, Yousaf Raza, 339, 365 Haque, Naeemul, 400–1, 440–1, 444
Gilgit Baltistan, 37–8, 450, 454 Hari Singh, Maharaja, 32, 41
Gilgit Scouts, 37–8 Harkat ul-Ansar, 237
Glenn and Symington Amendments, for Hayat, Zubair, 371
checking nuclear proliferation, 265 Hazratbal Mosque, Srinagar, 85
global financial crisis, 349 Hekmatyar, Gulbuddin, 204
global geopolitics, 466 Hersh, Seymour, 355
global war on terror, 299, 341, 378, 425 High-Altitude Warfare School (HAWS), at
Gokhale, Vijay, 375, 405, 408, 416, 449 Gulmarg, 193
good and bad terrorists, era of, 331
Goods and Services Tax (GST), 453–4 ‘Hindu-Jewish-Christian’ conspiracy, against
‘good Taliban, bad Taliban’ debate, 425 Pakistan, 261
good terrorists, notion of, 430 Hindu Mahasabha, 5
Gopinathan, A., 456 Hindu–Muslim riots, in Uttar Pradesh, 17
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 214, 223 Hindu–Muslim unity, 322
Government of India Act (1935), 15 Hindu nationalist movement
government of Pakistan, 53, 142, 162 in India, xix
governor general of India, 28 political rise of, xix
Gowda, H. D. Deve, 247, 249 Hindustan Court, 93–4
Gracey, Douglas, 35, 40, 68 ‘historical inevitability’ hypothesis, xxv
Grafftey-Smith, Lawrence, 8 Hizbul Mujahideen, 196, 219, 226, 439
Graham, Frank, 42 Hodgson, Robert D., 194
Great Britain ‘hostage populations’ theory, 22
pro-Pakistani tilt in Kashmir, 13 hostage population theory, 53
support to Pakistan at the UN, 13 Hotel Serena (Islamabad, Pakistan), 437
Great India Game, 8, 10–14 humanitarian assistance, to Pakistani prisoners
Gromyko, Andrei, 102, 136 in Indian jails, 389
Gujral, I. K., 219, 247, 250 humanitarian diplomacy, 389–90
doctrine of good neighbourly relations, 250, Human Rights Commission, 457
257 Human Rights Council (Geneva), 449, 451,
meeting with Nawaz Sharif, 255 456
Gul, Hamid, 207, 287 India’s success in blocking Pakistan’s
Gul, Mast, 244 resolution on Kashmir in, 452
Gupta, K. C. Sen, 116, 121–2 Pakistan attempt to raise Kashmir issue at,
Gupta, Sen, 120 451
 inde x 513

Indian diplomacy in countering of, 451–2 resumption of cricket ties with Pakistan, 180
Hurriyat, 316, 364 stance of being a responsible nuclear power,
Hussain, Abid, 229 265
Hussain, Arshad, 103 threat of a ‘combined front’ war, xxiii
Hussain, Mian Arshad, 101 ties with
Hussain, Syed Fida, 166–7 Bangladesh, 468
Hussain, Zahid, 43 Islamic West Asian countries, 468
Hyderabad, 15, 37, 38–9 tilt towards the Soviet Union, 264
Hyderabad House, 343 tolerance of terrorism, 331, 426, 433
US presidential visit to, 291
Ibrahim, Dawood, 236–7, 305 as victim of relentless terrorism and
Ijaz, Mansoor, 355 militancy, 260
Ilahi, Chaudhary Fazal, 159 India–ASEAN Summit, 311
‘imagined’ communities, xviii India–EU Summit, 311
imprisoned Indian fishermen, cases of, 390 India House, 340, 351, 401
Inderfurth, Rick, 278 India League, 13
India Indian Air Force (IAF), 275
American sanctions on, 264–5 airstrikes against training camp of JeM in
anger against colonial oppression, 14 Balakot, 412–16, 417
backchannel engagement with Pakistan, Atlantique (Pakistani naval aircraft),
328–9 shooting of, 285
ban on Pakistani overflights, 162 Kargil operations (1999), 420
British betrayal during Kashmir War, 35 Pathankot terrorist attack (2016) on, 367,
Cabinet Committee on Security, 407 431
concerns over Sino–Pakistan axis, 79 Indian Army, 69, 273. see also Pakistan Army
Constituent Assembly of, 51 Operation ‘Bluestar’ (1984), 190
control of Sikkim, 177 Operation Brasstacks (1987), 196–9
decision to grant asylum to the Dalai Lama, Operation Meghdoot (1984), 194
80 Operation Parakram (2001–2002), 301–2,
diplomatic exchanges on the Punjab 307, 346
militancy with Pakistan, 205 Operation Shakti (1998), 259
Five-Year Plan, 60 Operation Vijay (1999), 274, 276, 284
granting of most favoured nation (MFN) role in 1971 War with Pakistan, 146
status to Pakistan, xxiv surgical strike on Pakistan, 367–9
Himalayan War of 1962, 80 Uri terrorist attack (2016) on, 368, 405, 413
Kashmir crisis, 34 Indian Chambers of Commerce, 269
‘Look East’ policy, 311 Indian Civil Service (ICS), 18, 55
Muslim-minority provinces of, 21 Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA),
nationalism in, xxi 162–3
non-proliferation protocols, 342 Indian diplomats in Pakistan, harassment of,
‘no talks with terror’ policy, 399, 469 381–3
nuclear deal with US, 342 Indian Foreign Service (IFS), 19
nuclear test in 1998, 464 Indian High Commission in Karachi and
political risk of high-level engagement with Lahore, 43
Pakistan, 432 Indian Independence Act (1947), 5, 9, 15
post-election rapprochement with Pakistan, Indian mission, in Islamabad, 459
437 Indian movie industry, ban on all Pakistani
post-nuclear global diplomacy, 311 actors, actresses and technicians working in
post-Pokhran engagement with the world, India, 369
292 Indian National Congress, 3–4, 16
protest against building of the Karakoram demand for complete independence of India,
Highway, 113 14
recognition of the government of Round Table Conferences in London
Bangladesh, 146 (1930–32), 16
regional economic hegemony, 184 Indian Peacekeeping Force (IPKF), 217
514 ange r m anage m e nt

India Office Library, London, 68 Indo–Soviet treaty, 154

India–Pakistan CEO forum, 312 Indo–Soviet Treaty, 135
India–Pakistan cricket tour, 267 Indus Water Treaty (1960), xxvii, 46, 74–9,
India–Pakistan relationship, 376, 379, 398, 135, 172, 185, 324, 409, 432, 464, 467, 473
462 Baglihar project, 321
agreement on travel for pilgrims, 470 Kishanganga project, 321
on agricultural cooperation, 343 signing of, 321
anti-terrorism institutional mechanism, 326 information warfare, 400
Balakot crisis, 421 Institute of Defence Studies and Analysis
Bishkek meeting, 436–7 (IDSA), India, 127
‘composite dialogue’ process from 2004 to Instrument of Accession (1947), 15, 59, 453
2008, 337, 357 Integrated Programme of Action (IPA), 188
on conflict management, 466 intelligence gathering, 43
diplomacy, 8, 421–3 International Civil Aviation Organization
diplomacy at Partition, 463 (ICAO), 162, 308
diplomatic rapprochement, 326 International Court of Justice (ICJ), 285, 432,
expulsion of envoys, 306–7 450, 467
formative years of, xxiii International Cricket Council (ICC), 369
gaming 2047, 475–6 International Monetary Fund (IMF)
Geneva battles, 238–43 bailout package for Pakistan, 443
impact of US alliance with Pakistan on, 58 extended fund facility (EFF) arrangement,
Indian dossier on terror in J&K to Pakistan, 443
337 International Red Cross, 98, 146, 275
issue of Abhinandan Varthaman, 416–21 Inter Services Intelligence (ISI), 380, 399, 410,
joint defence policy, 57 416, 428
Kumbh diplomacy, 411 fuelling of conflict in Kashmir, 430
on people-to-people game, 267 involvement in planning Uri attacks, 369
Sharm El Sheikh agreement of July 2009, nurturing of Afghan Taliban, 335
352–3 Operation Tupac (1988), 215
use of Jordan channel for improving, 207 promotion of an insurgency in India beyond
on visit of Queen Elizabeth, 256–7 Kashmir, 178
#IndiaWithPakistan, 365 proxy terror against India, 384
Indira–Sheikh accord of 1974, 163 role in the Cold War in neighbouring
Indo–Pak conflicts, 31 Afghanistan, 187
in 1965, 35, 90, 114, 129 support for Khalistan 2020 referendum, 435
in 1971, 134–5, 143–7, 470 Inter Services Public Relations (ISPR), Pakistan,
announcement of a unilateral ceasefire by 383
India, 150 Iqbal, Mohammad, 16
Kargil conflict of 1999, 38, 464 Iranian revolution, 182, 470
Kashmir War (1948), 32–5, 40, 90, 453
Operation Gibraltar (1965), 90 Isa, Qazi Faez, 439
Operation Grand Slam, 92 Islamic caliphate, creation of, 196
Operation Meghdoot (1984), 194 Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), 363
Operation Nusrat, 90 Islamic national identities, xix
prisoners of war, 150 Islamic nuclear weapons, 316
Rann of Kutch (1965), 76 Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI), 236
in Siachen Glacier (1984), 193–6 Islamophobia, 468
signing of the Instrument of Surrender by Ismay, Lord, 36
Pakistan, 150 Iyer, Chokila, 300, 306
Tashkent Declaration (1966), 102–4
three-nation solution, 152–3 J
US tilt towards Pakistan in, 147 Jacob, Happymon, 388
Indo–Pakistani joint commission, establishment Jadhav, Kulbhushan, 432
of, 187 Jaipal, Rikhi, 466
Indo–Pak trade talks, 167 Jaishankar, S., 237, 366, 442, 451
 inde x 515

Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM), 302, 368, 370, 405, Janjua, Tehmina, 377, 381, 406, 417, 422, 426,
407, 430, 441 455
attempt to assassinate Musharraf, 330 Jarrings, Gunnar, 62, 88
fidayeen suicide squad, 299 Jashn-e-Jamooriyat, 436–7
founding of, 290 Jassal, Raminder, 293
Indian airstrikes on training camps of, 412 Jaypee Palace Hotel, Agra, 295
Pulwama terrorist attack (2019), 407–8 Jethmalani, Ram, 74
Jaitley, Arun, 406, 410 Jha, Lakshmi Kant, 121, 151
Jalal, Ayesha, 17, 29, 398 Jha, L. K., 135
Jamaat-e-Islami (JeI), 18, 270 jhappi pappi diplomacy, between Punjabis or
Jamat ul dawa (JUD), 425, 427, 430 North Indians, 466
James, Morris, 88 jihad, 264, 425, 431, 466
Jamia Hafsa madrasa, 330 Jilani, Jalil Abbas, 305, 308
Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF), Jinnah, Fatima, 113
192 Jinnah House, Mumbai, 307–8
Jammu & Kashmir (J&K), 16, 37, 87, 303 Jinnah Institute, in Islamabad, 398
abatement of Pakistan-sponsored separatism Jinnah, Mohammed Ali, xvii, 4, 6, 16–18, 48,
in, 223 307
arrest of Syama Prasad Mookerjee by J&K 11 August speech to Pakistan’s Constituent
Police, 57 Assembly, 17
Article 370, 41, 59, 61, 87 Advani’s endorsement of, 322–3
revoking of, 447 death of, 27
bloodshed of 2016, 454 disappointment with Radcliffe’s lines, 8
border with Pakistan, 35 ‘objectives resolution’ for Pakistan, 18
Britain’s pro-Pakistani tilt in, 13 regret for his decision to create Pakistan, 18
Burhan Wani summer, 388 resentment of Gandhi, 27–8
case for the UN, 39–40 speech at Dacca University in March 1948,
Constituent Assembly of, 61–2 111
crackdown on local terrorists, 410 two-nation theory, 465
cross-border dynamics in, 308 Johar, Karan, 403
demand for the abolition of special status joint defence, notion of, 71
of, 57 Jones, Paul, 416, 449
demilitarization of, 366 Joshi, B. L., 118
exodus of Kashmiri Hindus from, 219–21 judicial activism, 330
global diplomacy on, 41 Junagadh, 15, 34, 36–7
Governor’s Rule in, 388 Karachi’s policy on, 36
imposition of Section 144 in, 454 nawab’s decision to accede to Pakistan, 36
Indian dossier to Pakistan on terror in, 337 Juster, Ken, 416
under India’s administrative control, 41
ISI fuelling of conflict in Kashmir, 430 Kabalis (tribal militia from Khyber
maharaja’s accession to India, 37 Pakhtunkhwa), 448
massacre of Sikh villagers in Chittisinghpura Kahuta nuclear lab (Pakistan), 316
in, 291 Kalam, Abdul, 244, 258–9
Muslim-majority state of, xix Kao, Rameshwar Nath, 118
Operation Gulmarg, 32 Karachi Ceasefire Agreement of 27 July 1949,
Pakistani agenda of violence and sabotage 193
in, 89 Karachi Litfest, 378
plebiscite in, 60 Karakoram Pass, 193
proxy war in, xxvii Karamat, Jehangir, 246, 266
targeted killings of Kashmiri Hindus in, 219 Kargil conflict of 1999, 38, 274–5, 381, 464,
tribal invasion in 1947, 30 473
UN Observer group on, 58 bilateral diplomacy for resolving of, 277
UNSC intervention in dispute over, 62 border conflict, 276
Janata Party, 166 Clinton strategy on, 281–3
Janjua, Azif, 398 coercive diplomacy for resolution of, 279
516 ange r m anage m e nt

communications between India and Pakistan Khan, Akbar, 32–3, 54, 465
during, 286 adventure in Kashmir, 34, 74
crisis management strategy, 279 failed attempt to grab Kashmir in 1965, 465
downing of two Indian MiG fighters, 275 military coup against Liaquat government,
impact of US coercion on, 278–84 54
India’s objectives in, 280–1 Operation Gibraltar, 465
losses suffered by Indian Army, 276 Rawalpindi Conspiracy, 54
Operation Vijay, 276, 284 Khan, Ansar Hussain, 56
Pakistan’s ingress into Kargil sector, 276 Khan, Asghar, 93, 114
Pakistan’s objectives in, 280 Khan, Ayub, xxvii, 14, 17, 59, 69, 77, 111,
Sharif’s position on, 277 203, 331, 464
Karokaram Highway, 113, 454 American backing in dealing with India, 70
Kartarpur corridor, 271, 406–7, 426, 442, 444 ‘Basic Democracy’ scheme, 107
as corridor of faith, 457–9 as chief guest to India’s Republic Day
Imran Khan’s inauguration of, 397 parade, 86
inauguration of, 458 concerns about China’s expansionist
opening for Indian pilgrims, 395 policies, 71
Sikh demand for easier access to, 396 declaration of war with India, 94
Kartarpur Sahib, 10, 22, 396 defence agreement with the US, 71
Karzai, Hamid, 342, 378 as democratic dictator, 114–16
Kasab, Ajmal, 349–50 meeting with Nehru, 78
Kashmir-directed militancy, 432 military dictatorship of, 67, 393
Kashmir files, 402 obsession over Kashmir, 79
Kashmiri Brahmins, 119 as Pakistan’s defence minister, 68
proposal for a ‘joint defence’ pact with
‘Kashmiri volunteers into India-held Kashmir’ India, 71
scheme, 91 proposal to resume overflights, 105
Kashmiriyat, 433–61 settlement of border dispute with China, 79
Kashmir peace plan (2014), 361 Tashkent fiasco, 102–4, 106
Kashmir Solidarity Day, 221 Khan, Aziz Ahmed, 303, 314
Kashmir war of 1947–48, 32–5, 90 Khan, Fawad, 403
ceasefire agreement, 40, 42 Khan, Ghulam Ishaq, 215, 236
UN resolutions of 1948, 40 Khan, Humayun, 189, 196–7
Kasuri, Khurshid Mahmud, 393 Khan, Imran, 180, 224, 287, 358, 385, 393,
Katju, Vivek, 269, 291, 293 395, 405, 408–9, 413, 418–19, 426, 428,
Katyal, Rupin, 288 434, 440, 458, 461, 469
Kaul, Prakash, 94–5 ‘Afghan model’ of diplomacy, 440
Kaul, T. N., 131, 135 demand to reverse India’s move on Article
Kaur, Harsimrat, 397 370, 466
Kayani, Ashfaq, 338, 347, 356, 370 denial of any Pakistani involvement in
Kayani doctrine, 384 Pulwama terrorist attack (2019), 408
Keating, Kenneth, 123 discussion on FATF process with US, 446
Kennan, George, 13, 126 as a fundamentalist ‘Taliban Khan’, 393
Kennedy, Edward, 125 inauguration of Kartarpur corridor, 397
Kennedy, John F., 81, 102 meeting with President Donald Trump, 442,
Kerry Lugar Bill (2009), 353 445
Khaliquzzaman, Chaudhry, 45 Naya Pakistan, 408
Khalistan 2020 referendum, 435 phone call to Modi, 437
Khalistan movement on tragedy of Pulwama, 419
blowing of Air India ‘Kanishka’ Flight 182, victory in election, 393
196 visit to the US, 445–6
idea of, 178, 188 Khan, Khan Abdul Ghaffar, 203
Operation ‘Bluestar’ (1984), 190 Khan, Khurram Dastagir, 360, 377
Pakistan support to, 189–90, 196 Khan, Liaquat Ali, 7, 12, 18, 24–5, 32, 37, 42,
Khan, Abdul Qadeer, 195, 197, 263, 316, 331 46, 53, 55, 220, 338
 inde x 517

Khan, Muhammad Zafarullah, 41, 45–6, 61 323, 325, 344–5, 350, 370, 409, 425, 441
Khan, Munir Ahmad, 161 Lehman Brothers, 349
Khan, Nawab Hamidullah, 14 Levy, Adrian, 263
Khan, Reham, 391 Line of Control (LoC), 41, 155, 298, 313, 328,
Khan, Riaz Mohammad, 324, 362 417
Khan, Sahabzada Yaqub, 217 ceasefire by India and Pakistan along, 365
Khan, Shahryar, 14, 232, 249, 267 cross-LoC consultative mechanism, 329
Khan, Sultan, 135, 138, 142 de facto realignment of, 284
Khan, Syed Ahmed, 28 India’s engagement with Pakistan at, 387
Khan, Tanvir Ahmed, 221 Pakistan’s casualties on, 388
Khan, Tikka, 120, 122 restoration of, 283
Khan, Yahya, xx, 115, 116, 117, 128, 132, Lockhart, Rob, 34, 40
140, 142, 331, 465 Lodhi, Maleeha, 450
crackdown in East Pakistan, 122 Lok Dal Party, 273
democratic elections, 116–17 ‘Look East’ policy (India), 292, 311
Latin American style despotism, 120
letter to Indira Gandhi, 141 Mahmood, Sohail, 381, 398, 418, 422, 434,
meeting with Zhou Enlai, 128 441, 446
Operation Searchlight (1971), 122 Major, John, 246
power-sharing agreement with Mujib, 120 Malhotra, Aanchal, 30
Khan, Yaqub, 213, 219, 220, 222 Malhotra, Rashpal, 343
Khan, Yasmin, 30 Malik, Akhtar Hussain, 91
Khattak, Afrasiab, 403 Malik, Arshad, 372
Khokhar, Riaz, 249 Malik, Nasim Zehra, 398
Khomeini, Ayatollah, 181 Malik, Shahid, 343, 344, 345, 348, 358
Khrushchev, Nikita, 60 Malik, V. P., 273
Khuhro, Mohammed Ayub, 17 Manekshaw, Sam, 100, 128, 143
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, 335, 392, 394 Mangla Dam, 75
Kirpalani, M. K., 43 Mao Zedong, 132–4
Kissinger, Henry, 118, 124, 128–9, 147, 149, Marino, Francesca, 424
160, 162 maritime boundary demarcation, issue of, 172
meeting with Marriot Hotel bombing of 2007, 342, 351
Indira Gandhi, 131
Yuli Vorontsov, 148 Mascarenhas, Anthony, 130
secret flight to Beijing, 132 Maududi, Maulana, 18
tour to Pakistan, 132 Mazari, Balak Sher, 236
Kohli, Virat, 392 Mazhari, Shirin, 393–4
Kosygin, Alexei, 102, 135 McMahon Line, 71, 80
Kulkarni, Sudheendra, 293 McNaughton, Andrew, 42
Kumar, Kishore, 403 Mehta, Jagat, 51, 167, 173, 174, 312
Kumar, Narendra ‘Bull’, 193–4 Mehta, Mohan Singh, 51
Kumbh diplomacy, 411 Mehta, Rajesh, 340
Kumbh of democracy, 411 Mehta, Satish, 269
Kurien, Joy, 420 Mehta, Vikram, 395
Memogate, 355
Lafitte, Raymond, 321 Memon, Tiger, 236
Lahore bus service, 407 Menon, K. P. S., 205
Lahore Declaration of 1999, 270, 455 Menon, Krishna, 19, 61, 73, 80–1, 330, 343,
Lahore Resolution (23 March 1940), 112, 385 352
Lall, K. B., 143, 148 defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir, 61
Lal Masjid administration, 330–1 as Hero of Kashmir, 61
Lambah, Satinder, 238, 245, 313, 321–2, letter to Mountbatten, 13
328–9, 361 role as defence minister during the Chinese
Lambah, Satinder Kumar, 229, 230 aggression of 1962, 61
Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), 216, 265, 300, 302, Menon, Meena, 361
518 ange r m anage m e nt

Menon, Shivshankar, 323, 326, 464 111th ‘coup-maker’ brigade, 337

Menon, V. P., 15, 36 Agra Summit (2001), 465
Mhatre, Ravindra, 193, 232 assassination attempt by JeM, 314, 330
Milošević, Slobodan, 278 cricket diplomacy, 322
Minar-e-Pakistan, 271 decline in popularity of, 330
exit from power, 360
minorities, management of, 44–5 fall of, 330–1
Mir, Hamid, 390 four-point formula on Kashmir, 328, 348
Mirza, Iskander, 51, 59, 67–8, 73 hawkish positions on Kashmir, 297
Mishra, Brajesh, 132, 258–9, 269, 274, 283, Kargil misadventure in 1999, 286, 465
285, 288, 295, 298, 308, 310, 312, 317, In the Line of Fire, 299
320, 328, 346 meeting with
Mishra, R. K., 272, 277, 312 Bill Clinton, 291
Misri, Vikram, 309 Manmohan Singh, 319–20, 322
Mission Pakistan (2017), 375–7 Vajpayee, 296–7, 303–4, 312, 331
Mittal, Rajesh, 231 military coup against Nawaz Sharif, 286
Modi, Narendra, 204, 361, 379, 392, 402, 411, military reign of, 359
418, 433, 435, 437, 442 obsession on Pakistan’s right to capture
Balakot air strikes, 437 Kashmir, 266
flagging off the first group of yatris to go as president of Pakistan, 294
across to Kartarpur Sahib Gurudwara, removal from office as army chief, 286
458 views on India’s pre-emptive action of 1984
initiative to invite Nawaz Sharif for the in Siachen, 266
oath-taking, 465 visit to
meeting with Nawaz, 364, 365 New Delhi, 322
‘Modicare’ healthcare programme, 437 Taj Mahal, 294–8
victory in 2014 elections, 437 musical diplomacy, 403–4
visit to Muslim League, 11, 16, 22, 27, 112, 385
Lahore, 365–7, 465 idea of Pakistan, 17
UAE, 451 Muslim national guards, 22
Mohammad, Ghulam, 45, 56, 59 Muslims of India, 29, 53
Mohammed, Bakshi Ghulam, 99 Muslim ummah, 452
Mookerjee, Syama Prasad, 5, 54, 57 Muttahida Majlis–e–Amal, 185
most favoured nation (MFN), xxiv, 246–8, Mutual Defence Agreement (Pakistan and US),
354, 357 58
Mountbatten, Edwina, 24 mutually assured destruction, 263
Mountbatten, Louis, 4, 6, 10, 30, 33, 34, 37,
39, 46 Nachiketa, Kambampati, 275, 420
Mountbatten Plan, 9, 11 Naheed, Khanum, 67
Movement for Restoration of Democracy Naik, Niaz, 272, 277, 312
(MRD), 207 Najibullah, Mohammad, 214
Muhammad, Ghulam, 52 Nambiar, Vijay Kumar, 291
Mukharji, Deb, 117, 119 Nanak, Guru, 395–7
Mukherjee, Pranab, 328–9, 337, 340, 342–3 Nanak Shah Fakir (film), 383
Mukhtar, Naveed, 401 Nanavatty, Rustom, 325
Mullah-Military Alliance, 185 Nanda, Gulzari Lal, 89
multilateral diplomacy, idea of, 183 Nankana Sahib, 10, 22, 179, 189
Mumbai terror attacks (2008), xxvii Narayanan, K. R., 258, 294
Mumbai train blasts (2006), 348 Narayanan, M. K., 337
Munir, Asim, 401, 417, 428, 439–40, 460 Nasir, Javed, 272
Munnabao border, 389 Nasir, Javid, 232
Murree encounter, 77 National Conference, 33, 192
Musa, Zakir, 438–9 National Counter-Terrorism Authority
Musharraf, Pervez, 319, 326, 335–7, 341, 351, (NACTA), Pakistan, 427
460, 474 National Defence University of Pakistan, 398
 inde x 519

National Democratic Alliance (NDA), 362 non-initiation of combat operations (NICO),

defeat in the general elections, 319 292
handling of Pakistan-related hijacking, 290 Noon, Feroz Khan, 67, 70, 76
Vajpayee-led, 319 Noorani, Zain, 197
national identity, xvii, xviii North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),
National Investigation Agency (NIA), India, 58
410, 423 no-war pact, idea of, 44, 46
Nawaz, Maryam, 371 ‘no-war’ peace deal, xxvii
Naya Pakistan, 391, 399–400, 412 nuclear accidents, 270
Nayar, Kuldip, 10, 197, 269 nuclear diplomacy, 262–3
Nazimuddin, Khawaja, 56 nuclear reprocessing plant, 172
nuclear test
necessity, doctrine of, 177 Buddha’s Smile, 159–61
Neemrana dialogue, 227 by India
Nehru–Ayub summit, 78 in 1974, 264
Nehru, Jawaharlal, 3, 7, 26, 28, 52, 68, 119, in 1998, 257–64
220 Operation Shakti (1998), 259
concerns over Sino–Pakistan axis, 79 by Pakistan (1998), 262, 285, 316
differences with Pakistan over conduct of Pokhran blasts, 258
plebiscite in Kashmir, 57 nuclear umbrella, 263, 272
dismissal and arrest of Sheikh Abdullah, 57 Nye, Archibald, 40
meeting with Ayub, 78
meeting with Mohammad Ali Bogra, 57
nationalization of the armed forces, 12 Oakley, Robert, 221, 222
oath in the Constituent Assembly, 11 Omar, Mullah, 356
‘Panchsheel’ principles, 59, 80 Operation ‘Bluestar’ (1984), 190
policy of non-alignment, 55, 57, 59 Operation Brasstacks (1987), 196–9
resolving of the border issue of land enclaves Operation Desert Storm (1991), 225
in Bengal, 76 Operation Gibraltar (1965), 90, 465
role on the Suez crisis, 55 Operation Grand Slam, 92
seeking of US assistance against Chinese Operation Gulmarg, 32
aggression, 81 Operation Hammerhead (1987), 199
Soviet affair, 59–61 Operation Meghdoot (1984), 194
taking of the Kashmir issue to the UN, 34 Operation Nusrat, 90
‘tryst with destiny’, 5 Operation Parakram (2001–2002), 301–2,
visit to Karachi, 74, 76 307, 346
Nehru–Liaquat Pact (1950) 46, 53, 107, 235 Operation Polo, 38
Operation Radd-ul-Fasaad (Elimination of
Niazi, A. A. K., 146, 150, 159 Strife, 2017), 371
Niazi, General, 275 Operation Searchlight (1971), 122
Nimitz, Chester W., 58 Operation Shakti (1998), 259
Nisar, Saqib, 371 Operation Tupac (1988), 215
Nishtar, Abdur Rab, 7 Operation Vijay (1999), 274, 276, 284
Nixon administration, 129 Operation Zarb-e-Azb (2014), 371
Nixon, Richard, 125, 128, 137–8 Organisation of Islamic countries (OIC), 115
meeting with overflights, bans on, 49
Vladimir Muskievich, 147 Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) cards, 458
military aid to Pakistan, 129
policy on Pakistan, 129 P5 countries, 417, 452
silence on the killings in East Pakistan, 129 Padmanabhan, K. V., 76, 78
tilt towards Pakistan during 1971 War, 147 Pakhtun Tahaffuz Movement (PTM), 380
‘no first use’ nuclear posture, 342 Pakistan
Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), 180, 326 abetment of the Punjab insurgency, 205
summit in March 1983, 187 action against terrorist groups, 430
non-alignment, concept of, 56 Afghan policy, 460
520 ange r m anage m e nt

aggression against minorities in, 469 identity crisis, xxix

alliance with ideology of, xx–xxi
China, xxiii incentive package of F-16s from US, 260
United States, xxiii Independence Day, 5
American violation of sovereignty of, 355 Indian terrorists enjoying sanctuary in, 433
‘anti-India and anti-Hindu’ propaganda influx of Muslim refugees into, 23
in East Bengal, 52 Information Ministry, 361
anti-India propaganda, 164 internal turmoil in 2007, 331
anti-terrorism mechanism in, 329 joining of SEATO alliance, 58
appealed to the UN Security Council on as major ‘non-NATO ally’, 317
the Kashmir matter, 85 military pact with the US, 58
A. Q. Khan episode, 317 most favoured nation (MFN), xxiv
assault on Indian diplomats, 231–2 moving of its capital to Islamabad, 111
attempts to revive Sikh radicalism in National Action Plan, 365
Punjab, 336 National Assembly of, 85, 262, 329
battle of a thousand cuts with India, 214 national budget allocated for defence, 42
bilateral defence cooperation agreement nationalism, xviii
with the US, 70 National Security Council, 266
border talks with China, 85 no-war proposal, 70–4
British military officers in, 12 nuclear capability, 182
British support at the UN, 13 nuclear command authority, 415
China-supported gas centrifuge-based nuclear doctrine, 261, 347
nuclear enrichment plant in Kahuta, nuclear proliferation record, 263
182 nuclear scapegoat, 316–18
civilian leadership in, 344 Operation Gibraltar, 90
civil–military debates in, xx peacetime dynamics of India’s engagement
closure of airspace for Indian aircraft, 436 at LoC with, 387
commitment to the Simla Agreement, 166 perception of India’s new government, 174
communal killings in, 22 plight of migrant labour in, 25
concerns about the Chinese, 71 political economy of defence, 42
Constituent Assembly of, 18 portraying of India as an existential threat,
Constitution of 1956, 67 271
corridor of debt, 444–5 proxy battles against US interests in
counter-terror campaign, 450 Afghanistan, 378
covert action in Kashmir in Kargil, xxvii quest for identity, xvii
covert nuclear weapon state, 260 quest for territory, xxi–xxii
creation of, xix reaction on revocation of Article 370 by
criticism of the Chinese suppression of the India, 447–8
revolt in Tibet, 71 refusal to devalue its currency, 54
‘daftaries’ (bureaucrats) of, 63 regional identities, xviii
decision to accord MFN status to India, 360 role as the ‘epicentre’ of terrorism, 299
despatch of raiders into Kashmir, 90 safe havens for terrorist organizations, 377
destruction of democracy, 55 search for security, xxii–xxiii
diplomatic corps, 55 sinking economy of, 443–4
dismantling of the terrorist infrastructure, status as a US Cold War ally in South Asia,
435 70
earthquake of 2005, 323 strategy based on ‘active defence’, 475
economic survival of, 468 strategy of nuclear coercion, 431
ethnic divide between East and West support for the movement in Kashmir, 354
Pakistan, 107 support for war on terror in Afghanistan,
foreign and national security policy, xviii xxiii
foreign direct investment from China, 444 support to an insurgency in Punjab, 324
‘full spectrum deterrence’ tactics, 474 support to Khalistani terrorism, 205
as garrison state, xxii Supreme Court of, 336
idea of, xviii termination of CENTO membership, 180
 inde x 521

torching of the US embassy in Islamabad, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), 113, 163, 342,
181 356
transfer of Shaksgam Valley to China, 83 Pakistan Rangers, 376
use of terrorism as an instrument of state Pakistan’s diplomats, in India, 101, 380, 382
policy of, 408 Pakistan Taxation Service, 312
US military and economic aid to counter Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), 352
India, 58, 181, 377 Palestinian intifada, 196
Pakistan–Afghanistan border, 363 Pal, Satyabrata, 326, 335, 339, 340, 343, 348
Pakistan–Afghanistan relationship, 440 engagement with Zardari, 349
Pakistan Air Force, 92, 185, 307, 413 Panama papers (2016), 371
retaliation against IAF Balakot air strikes, ‘Panchsheel’ principles, 59, 80
415 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 19
role in 1971 War, 144 Panetta, Leon, 355
Pakistan Army, 32, 92, 155, 354, 357, 387, Panikkar, Sardar K. M., 19
396, 399, 406, 424 Panja Sahib, 189
allegations of treason against Nawaz Sharif, parliamentary democracy, 5
370 Parliament attack (2001), 299–301, 346, 431
‘APS moment’ for, 425 Parthasarathi, Gopalaswami, 79, 101, 187,
Ayub’s rule, 56 268–9, 272, 275, 286–7
under Bajwa, 468 Parthasarathy, G., 243
crackdown in East Pakistan, 122, 134 Partition of 1947, xvii, 68, 111
dependence on China, 445 borders and butchery, 23–4
DGMO for conventional warfare, 399 communal violence related to, 22
Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) (see Inter debate on, 28–31
Services Intelligence (ISI)) genocidal violence, 10
under the leadership of General Ayub Khan, horrors of, 21, 46
56 Jinnah’s role in, 353
non-coup coup, 385 massacres and migrations, 21
persistent revisionism, 431 state-driven narratives of, 29
pre-election engineering, 391 tragedy of, 28
Project Imran, 376, 391, 461 partition payments, balance of, 46
Project Nawaz, 461 Pasha, Ahmed Shuja, 353, 356, 391
quelling of rebellion in Punjab against the Pasha, Shuja, 344
Ahmaddiyas, 56 Patel, Vallabhbhai, 5, 7, 12, 15–16, 26
revenge for the Siachen surprise, 195 Pathankot terrorist attack (2016), 367, 431
safe house operated by, 354 Patiala Gharana, 402
Strategic Plans Division (SPD) for nuclear Patil, Pratibha, 339
weapons, 399 Patwardhan, Arun, 204
strikes on militant groups in North Pearl, Daniel, 290, 305–6, 344
Waziristan, 363 Peer, Basharat, 367
support of India-focused militant groups, Permanent Indus Commission (PIC), 76
347 Philip, Snehesh Alex, 361
support to the democracy project, 384 Pickering, Tom, 278
take on Sharif’s India policy, 367, 369 Piploda, 16
Pakistan Day parade (23 March), 385 Planning Commission of India, 264
Pakistan Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee, Pokhran, India, 258–9, 262
272 Pompeo, Mike, 414, 418
Pakistani Coast Guard, 387 positive neutrality, doctrine of, 32
Pakistani ‘Gandhians’, 403 Powell, Colin, 299, 317
Pakistani Hindus, 53 Powers, Gary, 70
Pakistani nationalism, 50 Prakasa, Sri, 3–4, 6, 8, 16, 23–4, 26, 39–40, 44,
Pakistan India People’s Forum (PPIF), 244 47, 51–2, 68, 111
Pakistan International Airlines (PIA), 119 communal relations with Jinnah, 17
Pakistan Muslim League (PML), 86 diplomatic assignment in Pakistan, 16
Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (POK), 91 ideological differences with Jinnah, 17
522 ange r m anage m e nt

as India’s first high commissioner to Raghunath, K., 286

Pakistan, 18 Raghunath, Krishnan, 255
minorities, management of, 44–5 Rahman, Sheikh Mujibur, 107, 112, 152, 183
visit to the Kashmir valley, 40 7 March speech in Ramna, 121
Prasad, Rajendra, 7, 53 ‘Agartala conspiracy’ case, 112
Primakov Doctrine (1999), 263 arrest of, 123
Primakov, Yevgeny, 263 as ‘Bangabandhu’, 114
Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), 118 declaration of the independence of
Princestan, 14–16 Bangladesh, 123
prisoner of war, 145, 150, 155, 420 message to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi,
pro-Chinese Marxists, 117 122
pro-Pakistan movement, 99 power-sharing agreement with Yahya Khan,
Provincial Congress Committee, 3 120–1
public debt, of undivided India, 68 scheme to ‘divide Pakistan’, 112
Public Safety Act (1978), 192 six-point programme, 112
Pulwama terrorist attack (2019), 405–32 Rai, Lala Lajpat, 9
impact on Pakistan’s global credibility, 410 Ram, Sita, 51
India’s diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, Rann of Kutch, conflict over (1965), 76, 86–8
408, 412 Rao, Narasimha, 204, 217, 258–9, 262, 357,
India’s response to, 408 381, 452
air strikes on Pakistan, 412–16 ‘Look East’ policy, 292
diplomatic offensive against Pakistan, Rao, Nirupama, 297
408, 412 Rao, Sanjay Vishwas, 387
French support to, 412 Rao, Venkat, 340
issue of Abhinandan Varthaman, 416–21 Raphael, Arnold, 208
mastermind behind, 410 Raphel, Robin, 238
nuclear sabre-rattling by Pakistan, 414 Rashid, Pervaiz, 370
‘peace and security’ issue, 422 Rawalpindi Conspiracy, 54
Pulwama dossier, 423–9 Rawat, Bipin, 388, 409–10
and reviving of diplomacy between India Ray, Siddhartha Shankar, 229
and Pakistan, 421–3 Razakars (pro-nizam militia), 38
role of Jaish-e-Mohammed in, 408 Red Cross, 420
terror diplomacy, 407–12 refugee crisis, 26, 43
Punjab insurgency, 184 refugees and minorities, problems of, 44
Punjabi Pakistanis, 112 Rehman, Sherry, 398
Punjab’s Maintenance of Public Order (MPO) Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), 118,
ordinance, 446 310
Puri, Hardeep, 397 Revolt of 1857, 111
Putin, Vladimir, 311 Revolutionary Guards, takeover of US embassy
in Iran, 98
Qadir, Manzur, 77–8 Rice, Condoleezza, 317, 319
Qasim, Mir, xvii Riedel, Bruce, 300
Qazi, Ashraf Jehangir, 255, 291–2 right-wing religious ideology, 468
Qazi, Jehangir, 306, 465 Riyasat-e-Medina, xviii
Quaid-e-Azam, 72 Rogers, Bill, 125
Quit India agitation (1942), 4 Roy, Prannoy, 326
Qureshi, Shah Mahmood, 343, 390, 393–4,
409, 418–19, 426, 434, 455–6 SAARC, 184, 196, 211–13, 265, 288, 303, 341,
368, 392, 407, 434, 437
Rabin, Yitzhak, 281 Sabharwal, Sharat, 260, 351, 353, 355, 357,
Radcliffe, Cyril, 8, 10, 376 473–4
Radcliffe Line, 30, 76, 396 Sadat, Anwar, 181
Rafi, Mohammed, 403 Saeed, Hafiz, 352
Raghavan, Pallavi, 43, 53, 63 Saiyid, Ameena, 378
Raghavan, T. C. A., 308–9, 344, 359, 463 Salal hydroelectric project, 163, 172
 inde x 523

Salman, Mohammed bin (MBS), 405, 408 the oath-taking, 465

Samjhauta Express, 407 pleadeding to Bill Clinton for his personal
terrorist attack on, 329–30 intervention in Kargil crisis, 279
Saran, Shyam, 320, 324 PML-N, 335
Sarila, Narendra Singh, 10–11 return to Pakistan, 335
Sarkar, Jaideep, 322 sentence of life imprisonment, 291
Sattar, Abdul, 183, 226, 237, 287–8 visit to
Sayeed, Hafiz, 427–8 China, 285
Sayeed, Mufti Mohammed, 218 India, 465
Sayeed, Rubaiya, 218, 219, 289 Sharif, Raheel, 367, 370, 384, 391
Schanberg, Sydney, 124 Sharif, Shehbaz, 271
Sen, Ronen, 204, 207–8, 211, 215, 218, 229, sharing waters, issue of, 75
287 Sharma, Anand, 358, 361
Sen, Samarendra, 106, 111, 115, 154 Sharma, Shankar Dayal, 246
Sen, Sukumar, 52–3 Sharm El Sheikh agreement of July 2009,
separate Muslim homeland, demand for, 22, 28 352–3
Sethna, Homi, 160 Shastri, Lal Bahadur, 86
Shah, Amit, 447 Shea, Jack, 105
Shahbuddin, K., 52 Shehabuddiun, K. M., 126
Shah, G. M., 193, 196 Sheikh, Ahmed Omar Saeed, 305
Shahi, Agha, 130, 163, 171, 173, 176, 186 Sheikh, Hafeez, 443
shahidi jathas (martyrs’ military detachments), Sheikh, Khalid, 76
22 Sheikh, Omar, 290, 344
Shah, Ijaz, 306 Shekhar, Chandra, 225
Shaikh, Khalid, 77 Shivaji Court, 93, 95
Shaikh, Najmuddin, 249 Shiv Sena, 267, 403
Shaksgam Valley, 83–4, 194, 454 Shoaib, Mohammed, 92
Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), short-service commission, 268
441 Siachen Glacier, 41, 356, 366
Regional Anti-Terrorist Structure (RATS), Actual Ground Position Line (AGPL), 357
387 conflict between India and Pakistan (1984),
summit in Yekaterinburg, Russia, 352 xxvii, 193–6
Ufa summit in Russia, 365 demilitarization of, 324, 356
Sharan, Devi, 288, 290 Operation Hammerhead (1987), 199
Sharif, Nawaz, 221, 235, 266–7, 275, 331, Operation Meghdoot (1984), 194
358–9, 362–3, 368, 376, 385, 391, 393, 424, Saltoro mountains, 207
439, 461, 464 Saltoro Ridge, 194
appointment of Qamar Bajwa as the chief of secretary-level talks on, 324–5
army staff, 371 Teram Kangri II peak, 194
Basit criticism of, 364 Zia’s ‘Kargil plan’, 195
conduct of Pakistan’s nuclear tests, 262 Sibal, Kanwal, 307
Dawngate, 370 Sidhu, Navjot Singh, 395–7
disqualification as prime minister, 371 Sikh militancy, 189
elected as prime minister of Pakistan, 249 Sikh radicalism, in Punjab
favouring of stronger relationship with Pakistan’s attempts to revive, 336
India, 359 Simla Agreement (1972), 155–8, 217, 270,
forcing retirement of Jehangir Karamat, 266 287, 324, 448, 454–5, 464
four-point proposal on Kashmir, 365 Singh, Amarinder, 396–7, 458
meeting with Singh, Arun, 301, 306
Bill Clinton, 255, 279 Singh, Buta, 204, 207
I. K. Gujral, 255 Singh, Ghansara, 38
Modi, 364–5 Singh, Jaswant, 259, 264, 270, 277–8, 284–5,
US ambassador, 369 289, 293–8, 301, 304, 306–7, 353
Vajpayee, 269–70 Singh, J. J., 324
Modi’s initiative to invite Nawaz Sharif for Singh, J. P., 385, 390, 393
524 ange r m anage m e nt

Singh, Karan, 41 de-Stalinizing of, 60

Singh, Kewal, 19, 31, 88, 89, 91, 94–8, 101–2, India’s dependence on, 132
105–6, 114–15, 155, 158, 164, 186 India’s tilt towards, 264
Singh, ‘Kunwar’ Natwar, 182 influence in South Asia, 135
Singh, Manmohan, 204, 319, 336–7, 348, 360, invasion of
365, 467 Afghanistan, 181, 470
address to the nation, 345 Hungary, 61, 71
Amritsar speech (2006), 329 Primakov Doctrine (1999), 263
idea of soft borders, 328–9 role as a peace conduit between India and
meeting with Pakistan, 135
Musharraf, 319–20, 322 shooting of U2 planes, 70
Yousaf Raza Gilani, 341 split with China, 81, 128
Zardari, 342, 354 strategic triangle of Russia, China, and
new foreign policy, 319 India, 263
responsibility towards fighting terrorism, support for Indian sovereignty over Kashmir
325–7 and Goa, 60
Singh, Manvinder, 389 support for the secessionist movement in
Singh, Natwar, 182, 185, 197, 209, 217, 320, East Pakistan, 135
360, 462 Treaty of Friendship with India, 135
working relationship with Zia ul-Haq, 183 US policy of containment towards, 42
Singh, Rajnath, 406, 410–11, 414 veto over UNSC resolution over Kashmir
Singh, R. P., 300 issue, 62, 85, 100
Singh, Sampuran, 23, 43 views on Kashmir was part of India, 60
Singh, Sardar Baldev, 24 withdrawal from Afghanistan, 264–5
Singh, Sardar Gurcharan, 115 Spanta, Rangeen, 341
Singh, Sardar Swaran, 136 ‘Spice 2000’ bombs, 413
Singh, Shailendra Kumar, 195, 198, 203 state-building process, in India, 33
Singh, S. K., 197, 206, 209, 216, 229 Stevenson, Adlai, 85
Singh, Sujata, 364 Subrahmanyam, K., 120, 127, 134
Singh, Swaran, 76, 99, 106, 141, 154, 172 Subramaniam, Arjun, 325
Singh–Talbott dialogue, 264 Sufi Charar-e-Sharief shrine, Kashmir, 244
Singh, Tara, 22 Sufi music, 402
Singh, Vishwanath Pratap, 218 Suhrawardy, Huseyn Shaheed, 70
Singh, V. P., 219, 220, 222 suicide bombers, 339–40, 407
Singh, Zail, 187 Sundarji, Krishnaswamy, 196
Sinha, Shakti, 267, 269 Sunderlal, Pandit, 26
Sinha, Yashwant, 259, 307, 312, 317 Swaraj, Sushma, 366, 368, 375, 389, 390, 397,
Sino–India clash (1962), 31, 79–80 402, 411, 413, 434, 436
Chinese attack on the Galwan Valley in
Ladakh, 80 tactical nuclear weapons, 474
US and USSR support to India against Taj, Nadeem, 338
China, 81 Talal, Hussein bin (King of Jordan), 207
Sino–Indian border, delimitation of, 80 Talbott, Strobe, 260, 264, 279, 281
Sino–Pak alliance, xxiii, 73–4 Taliban, 339, 351, 384, 406, 459
deal on Himalayan territory, 84 Tandon, Ashok, 294
Sitharaman, Nirmala, 420 Tarar, Rafiq, 294
skies, sharing of, 49 Tarbela Dam, 75
Sood, Rakesh, 269 targeted killings, of Kashmiri Hindus, 219
Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO), Tashkent agreement, 155
42, 99 Tashkent Declaration (1966), 102–4, 114,
Pakistan’s membership of, 58–9 135
Soviet Union, xxiii, 59–61 Tehreek-e-Insaf Party (PTI), 287
Cold War defence barrier against, 58 Tehreek-e-Labaik (TLP), 424
Commonwealth defence against, 11 Tehreek-i-Taliban Afghanistan (TTA), 430
Cuban missile crisis (1962), 81 Tehreek Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi, 339
 inde x 525

Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), 335, 347, tweet about Pakistan’s lies and deceit, 384
354, 363 trust and trade, between India and Pakistan,
Tellis, Ashley, 431 54–5
Tendulkar, Sachin, 392 Tulbul navigation project, 239
terrorist attack two-economies theory, 107
9/11 attacks (2001), 266, 299, 355 two-nation theory, xvii–xviii, xx, xxiv, 29, 32,
in Beslan, Russia (2004), 364 107, 465
explosion at Tyabji, Badruddin, 57
Danish embassy located in Islamabad,
340 ul Haque, Moin, 446
Indian high commission in Islamabad, ul Islam, Zaheer, 391
340, 405 Umar, Asad, 443
Kabul blasts on the Indian embassy of UN Charter, 39
July 2008, 348 UN General Assembly (UNGA), 131, 171, 320
Marriott Hotel (2007), 342, 351 United Assembly of Action (MMA), 185
global support for India’s position on, 431 United Bengal, 117
India’s diplomatic options in dealing with, United Front, 112
411 United Jehad Council, 449
killing of children in the Army Public School United Nations (UN), 69, 274
of Peshawar (2015), 364, 425 Chinese blocking of moves against banning
massacre of Sikh villagers in of Maulana Masood Azhar, 428
Chittisinghpura, J&K (2000), 291 Comprehensive Convention on International
Mumbai 1993 and 1996 blasts, 236–7, 431 Terrorism, 410
Mumbai attacks (2008), 343–50, 356, 409, counter-terrorism sanctions list, 428
431, 464 creation of, xviii
Mumbai train blasts (2006), 348 Indian peacekeeping contingent at, 77
National Action Plan (NAP) of Pakistan Kashmir dispute, 39–42
against, 426, 430 mission to the Congo, 77
Operation Parakram (2001), 346 P3 members of, 428
from Pakistan-based terrorist groups, 349 P5 members of, 261, 408
Pakistan’s connection with, 411 positions taken by Indian diplomats at, 55
Parliament attack (2001), 299–301, 346, resolutions of 1948, 40
431 resolutions of 1949–50 on Kashmir, 102,
Pathankot attack (2016), 367, 431 106
Pulwama attack (2019), 290, 386, 405–32 Soviet veto over Kashmir issue, 62, 85, 100
on Samjhauta Express (2007), 329–30 terror sanctions committee, 410
in South Asia, 349 United Nations Commission for India and
Uri attack (2016), 368, 405, 413 Pakistan (UNCIP), 40
Thakur, Vijay, 456 Karachi Agreement, 41
Thant, U, 91, 102 United Nations Security Council (UNSC), 60,
Thapar, Karan, 292 147, 164, 408, 449–50
Thar Link Express weekly service, 389 closed door consultations on abrogation of
Tharoor, Shashi, 55 Art 370 by India, 453
Track II Neemrana dialogue group, 227, 244, intervention in the Kashmir dispute, 62, 450
367, 382, 387, 432 listing of Masood Azhar and others, 432
TrackII diplomacy, xxvi Resolutions 39 and 47 (of 21 April 1948) on
trade liberalization, process of, 358 Kashmir, 454
trading, with the enemy, 50 United Progressive Alliance (UPA), 345
Trudeau, Pierre, 131 Congress-led, 319
Trump, Donald, 372, 378, 442, 445 United States (US)
electoral promise of a rapid US exit from aid to Pakistan, 377
Afghanistan, 372 bilateral defence cooperation agreement
offer for mediation between India and with the Pakistan, 70
Pakistan over Kashmir issue, 449 coercive diplomacy with Pakistan, 284
trolling of Pakistan, 377 Cold War reliance on Pakistan, xxiii
526 ange r m anage m e nt

Cold War strategy of containment of the charm offensive, 174, 273

USSR, 13 conduct of Pokhran nuclear test (1998),
containment policy against communism, 56 259–60
Cuban missile crisis (1962), 81 delivering a UNGA speech in Hindi, 171
declaring Pakistan as major ‘non-NATO dialogue with Clinton administration, 264
ally’, 317 doctrine of ‘Insaniyat, Jamhuriyat and
drone attack in eastern Afghanistan, 342 Kashmiriyat’, 433
economic sanctions on India, 264–5 ‘G8 plus’ summit of rich economies, 311
financial aid and military supplies to IC-814 Indian Airlines aircraft hijack crisis
Pakistan, 181 (1999), 288–90, 305–6
Imran Khan visit to, 445–6 Islamabad Summit of 2004, xxvii, 314–16
Kerry Lugar Bill (2009), 353 Kargil operations, 274
military pact with Pakistan, 58 Lahore–Islamabad peace process, 319
moratorium on nuclear trade with India, Lahore visit of 1999, xxvii, 396, 432, 465,
342 467
nuclear deal with India, 342 making India a nuclear weapon state, 260
policy of containment towards the Soviet meeting of the National Development
Union and China, 42 Council, 273
rapprochement with China, 182 meeting with
relation with Pakistan, 445 Bill Clinton, 264, 291
response to Pakistan army crackdown in Musharraf, 296–7, 303–4, 312, 331
East Pakistan, 122–5 Nawaz Sharif, 269–70
Revolutionary Guards attack on US embassy musings of, 293–4
in Iran, 98 no-confidence motion against, 273
secret intelligence base at Badaber near peace initiative from bus ride to Lahore,
Peshawar, 70 367, 396, 465
support to India against China, 444 as prime minister of India, 286
tilt towards Pakistan during 1971 War with rapprochement with Pakistan, 316
India, 147 talks with Pakistan over issue of Farakka
‘use and throw’ Pakistan policy, 265 Barrage, 174
violation of Pakistani sovereignty, 355 vision of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakum, 171
war on terror in Afghanistan, xxiii visit to
withdrawal from Pakistan, 176, 465
Afghanistan, 265, 459, 467 US, 292
Vietnam, 128 ‘Vande Mataram’ 3
universal franchise, 55 Vankwani, Ramesh, 411
Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), Varthaman, Abhinandan, 416–22
India, 410 Vasudev, C. M., 321
UP legislative assembly, 51 Venkataraman, R., 209, 231, 233–4
Uri terror attack of 2016, 405, 413 Venkateswaran, A. P., 198
Uri: The Surgical Strike (film, 2016), 413 Verma, A. K., 207
US Congress, 130, 342 Verma, A. N., 226
US–India relationship, 317–18 Versailles effect, 157
on Kargil crisis, 278–84 Vienna Convention, 94, 145, 381
on nuclear programme, 264 Vohra, N. N., 233
US-Pakistan relations, 181 von Clausewitz, Carl, xxv
Vorontsov, Yuli, 148
Vajpayee, Atal Bihari, 85, 166, 240, 303, 366 Vyas, Sudhir, 308
Agra summit of 2001, xxvii, 331
approach to Pakistan, 367 Wadia, Dina, 307
authorization to launch of Operation Vijay, Wadia, Nusli, 269, 307
274 Wagah–Attari border, 118, 390, 396, 407
Ayodhya temple, issue of, 293 Waldheim, Kurt, 154
bus diplomacy to Lahore, 267–72, 290, 367, Walla, Hussain, 118
396, 465 Walsh, Declan, 359
 inde x 527

Wani, Burhan, 367–8, 388, 439 Zargar, Mushtaq Ahmed, 290

Warraich, Suhail, 384 Zhao Lijian, 429
Wavell, Lord, 11–12, 15 Zhou Enlai, xxv, 59, 80, 85, 128, 132
weapons of peace, 263 Ziauddin, General, 286
Wells, Alice, 448 Zia ul-Haq, General, xix, 161, 167, 174
Western security alliance, 180 acquiring of nuclear capability, 195
West Pakistan, 13, 116, 146 Cold War Western bloc affiliations, 180
West Pakistani racism, 112, 126 countering of Vajpayee’s charm offensive,
Wijyekhoon, Wickrama, 95 174
Wilson, Harold, 81 death of, 208
Windrem, Robert, 222 deferential diplomacy towards India, 212
‘wolf warrior’ diplomacy, xxv dream of parity with India, 195
Women’s Press Club, New Delhi, 344 era of military dictatorship, 189
World Bank, 75–6, 432, 443, 467 flight to democracy, 208–10
World Trade Organization (WTO), 247 funeral diplomacy, 190
World War I, 132 hanging of Bhutto in 1979, 185
World War II, 4, 9, 19 idea of the no-war pact to Natwar Singh,
186
Xi Jinping, 444 Islamization policy, 195
Kargil plan, 195
Yang Kungsu, 133 martial law, 180
Yao Jing, 429 meeting with
Yaum-e-Pakistan (Pakistan Resolution Day), Indira Gandhi, 184, 187
385 Khalistani leaders, 188
Yeltsin, Boris, 263 Rajiv Gandhi, 196
Young Presidents Organization (YPO), 313 Zail Singh, 187
military coup against Bhutto, 167, 177
Zaidi, Ijlal Haider, 216 Nusrat views on, 187
Zakaria, Anam, 30 policy of ‘low intensity conflict’ with India,
Zarb-e-Azb (a sword strike), 363 184
Zardari, Asif Ali, 338, 342, 347 regime of the mid-1980s, 189
meeting with Manmohan Singh, 342, 354 visit to India, 185, 187, 198
trade talks, 356–8 Zindagi (TV entertainment channel), 369
unpopularity of, 358 Zinni, Anthony, 279
visit to Dargah Sharif in Ajmer, India, 356 zone of disengagement, 234