It used to be speculated that if another Mumbai-type terror attack was launched against this country from Pakistan, India would retaliate militarily. According to WikiLeaks, this was communicated by former British foreign secretary David Miliband to the Americans after his conversations in New Delhi. Today, however, we can’t be sure. At the foreign secretaries’ Thimphu meeting earlier this week, India agreed to restart talks with Pakistan on all bilateral issues, including Kashmir. The two countries earlier

called all-ranging talks a “composite” dialogue. These were suspended by India after 26/11 in Mumbai. New Delhi’s position was that the dialogue could resume once Islamabad provided concrete proof that it had taken meaningful steps to bring the jihadist authors of 26/11 to book. That has not happened. India has eaten crow and is gamely trying to move on. The hard fact is that elements of Pakistan’s ISI were associated with the Mumbai carnage in every meaningful way. Islamabad therefore will never be serious about pursuing the matter. Without acknowledging this publicly, Thursday’s announcement on resumption of the composite dialogue in all but name suggests that India has come to accept that Pakistan won’t move on Mumbai, and it has no option but to re-engage that country. If anything is said to the contrary, it is for the birds.
Madeleine Albright, US secretary of state under President Bill Clinton, once famously described Pakistan as a “headache”. Other than China, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, probably all countries which deal with Islamabad on a sustained basis are likely to endorse this view, and yet must continue engaging this rogue-type nation that is often called the “epicentre” of international terrorism run by dodgy intelligence services and the military, which is constantly doing deals, and deals-within deals, with the most nefarious elements conceivable. If they don’t, Islamabad often drops hints that it might do something outrageous that could just lead to a conflagration. The Americans, for one, even keep the Pakistani military well supplied with arms and cash so that it may not do the unthinkable. India, however, is a different category. Unlike other key powers, it is subjected to repeated jihadist attacks from Pakistan. How feasible is it then for this country to molly-coddle Pakistan all the time, which many might regard as another name for appeasement from a position of weakness?
In July 2010, external affairs minister S.M. Krishna was publicly insulted in Islamabad by his counterpart Shah Mehmood Qureshi (who was left out of Pakistan’s reshuffled Cabinet on Friday) for not agreeing to a composite dialogue straightaway but subscribing to a step-by-step approach (aimed at giving Islamabad time to pay more serious attention to bringing the Mumbai accused to book). On many occasions after that, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said India would readily re-engage Pakistan if the latter showed signs of taking steps to punish the Mumbai attackers. This has manifestly not happened, and yet India has returned to the talks table as though nothing happened. Does this give Pakistan any reason to move against the 26/11 attackers? Engaging even an adversary is an essential element of the toolkit of diplomacy, it goes without saying. But for that instrument to be used with some promise of success, a country must have a modicum of leverage with its interlocutor. India has none with Pakistan and has not cared to develop any. It is in no position to let Islamabad know that any hostile act would carry a greater than proportionate cost. Ergo, India has chosen to succumb. Composite talks have been broken even before the Mumbai attacks on account of terrorist acts such as the assault on the Indian Parliament. It is hard to see that Pakistan-bred terrorism won’t once again upset Indian public opinion. But this is par for the course for our rulers.