Diplomacy on the edge

Weaving in global geopolitics over India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, former Indian High Commissioner Ajay Bisaria explores the complex tapestry of Indo-Pak relations with humour and insight

Anger Management: The Troubled Diplomatic Relationship between India and Pakistan

Author: Ajay Bisaria

Publisher: Aleph Book Company

Pages: 527

Price: Rs 999

It is almost de rigueur for an Indian High Commissioner in Pakistan to write a book after he leaves office. And the appetite for books that help Indians understand its western neighbour better seems insatiable. Sharat Sabharwal and T C A Raghavan are just two who have written about their tenures most recently. Ajay Bisaria’s elegantly written, systematic, and rigorously researched book joins this group. It is an absolute delight. That Mr Bisaria has a lively appreciation of the absurd and a self-deprecating sense of humour is a bonus.

The initial chapters in the book are about how we — India and Pakistan — got here. And no, it was not Jawaharlal Nehru alone who was responsible. Pakistani diplomat and journalist Husain Haqqani has argued that the terms of Partition, which gave Pakistan 19 per cent of British India’s population, 17 per cent of its revenue resources and 33 per cent of the army set the stage for what happened later. He says the lack of preparation for a new country by the Muslim League led to the circumstances that made the Pakistani army the central institution of the country. If the nation was spending nearly 40 per cent of its first Budget on the upkeep of the armed forces, the armed forces needed to invent a reason to exist. The author illustrates this reality with many examples of instances when diplomacy was derailed.

Mr Bisaria describes the tenures of the first two or three Indian envoys in Pakistan — Sri Prakasa, a Congress politician from Uttar Pradesh, who never stopped hoping that the creation of Pakistan and Partition was a horrible dream from which everyone would wake up soon; Rajeshwar Dayal, who put a peace-keeping mission to Congo above Prime Minister Nehru’s visit to Pakistan (that could have arrested the downward spiral in relations); and Kewal Singh, who went to Pakistan amid high hopes —  which was to last exactly three days as Pakistan operationalised Operation Gibraltar that led to the 1965 war.

There is an absorbing description of what happens to diplomats in the “enemy” country when two nations are at war — how Kewal Singh and families of diplomatic staff inside the Indian High Commission were kept under house arrest, unable to communicate with the outside world. This was to recur over the years and is one among the many layers of the history of antagonism and anger between the two countries.

Weaving in global geopolitics over India, Pakistan and Kashmir, Mr Bisaria describes the world as it played the Great Game. The Tashkent Declaration and Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri’s death, the even-handedness of the US, which disappointed Pakistan, coupled with India’s loss of strategic heights such as the Haji Pir pass lent a new edge to India-Pakistan relations and more anger that was to be managed. Indian policy makers at that time did not visualise the infiltration threat through the Uri-Poonch bulge. So, it was decided to return Haji Pir Pass to Pakistan and ask them to withdraw from the Chhamb sector since it would not have been advisable to let Pakistan point a dagger at Akhnoor and thereafter at Jammu. Later military strategists have criticised Shastri for that decision.

Mr Bisaria further describes the 1971 war and the events leading up to it. It was clear to the Indian foreign office that the Awami League was heading for a victory in the 1970 elections called by Yahya Khan. What would a shift in the balance of power from West Pakistan to East Pakistan mean for Pakistan’s India policy? External factors were in flux, conspiring with internal factors in the move towards the creation of a new state. As for those in the Indian High Commission in Pakistan, the author’s extensive interviews with then Second Secretary in the Indian High Commission, Deb Mukharji are crucial sources of oral history about what was happening in Pakistan as India unscrambled the signals from East Pakistan and readied itself for war.

The author records that it was K Subrahmanyam, father of current Foreign Minister S Jaishankar, who first used the W word publicly. Signs of the impending upheaval were everywhere — from the support for Bengali intelligentsia in India to the US Administration split down the middle on the position that country should take on Yahya Khan’s regime and the rise of Mujibur Rahman. As war broke out, India’s envoy in Pakistan, J K Atal, was taken prisoner of war. The description of the travails of Atal and the diplomatic staff, closeted in the embassy with no electricity or food and limited access to information, is enthralling. Everyone knows how that ended.

Equally interesting is the author’s account of another phase of India-Pakistan relations: The rise of General Pervez Musharraf, the famous Agra summit and the events that followed. Mr Bisaria had been drafted into Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s PMO by then, so he was a first-hand observer of events. He records then External Publicity chief Raminder Jassal’s remark when then Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh announced that the government would invite Musharraf to India. “Good grief,” Jassal said, reflecting the view in the foreign office. The book also describes the Modi era, the Balakot bombings and India’s use of coercive diplomacy, leading to a panicked midnight call by then Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan to Prime Minister Modi to avert a military crisis.

Interestingly, although the official establishment in Pakistan has rubbished Mr Bisaria’s account, a review of the book by Pakistani historian and businessman F S Aijazuddin in Dawn says, “Personal chemistry between subcontinental leaders has often raised their people’s hopes. He quotes Mr Bisaria: “A lesson all In­­­dian envoys to Pakistan learn at some point or the other: Pakistan policy in India is dri­ven personally by India’s prime minister”.

In India, as in Pakistan, there is intense curiosity, even longing, among the people to know each other’s countries better. This is reflected in so many ways: Not the least in the fact that the Bollywood film Gadar: Ek Prem Katha, an India-Pakistan love story, was an all-time super hit. But the author’s gentle message about India-Pakistan relations is that it all boils down to management. Of anger.