The Hindu : Escalating absurdity

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Jan 25, 2003

Opinion

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Escalating absurdity

A COMPLETE BREAKDOWN of diplomatic relations is a serious matter since it signals that the countries involved are not interested even in the hope of a future where they might live together in friendship. But India and Pakistan appear to be moving inexorably towards such an outcome — without stating it in so many words and without firmly intending it either — as they whittle down the diplomatic establishments of the other that they have each agreed to host. Whereas India and Pakistan each had over a hundred personnel posted in the other's capital till just over a year ago, the numbers were halved after the December 13, 2001, attack on Parliament. Now, after New Delhi expelled four Pakistani diplomats and Islamabad retaliated in equal measure, it is down to 51 each and the cycle of deductions has probably just begun. The absurdity of the whole process becomes starkly evident when its possible and alarming denouement is compared with its origin, which was so mundane that it should have been easily managed. Insofar as this unedifying drama has been played out in the public sphere, it began with the blatant harassment of the Charge d'Affaires at the High Commission of India in Islamabad by personnel belonging to Pakistan's intelligence agencies. Instead of responding in sober fashion to India's legitimate protest over this affair, Islamabad countered with the charge that New Delhi had initiated the slide towards a deeper degree of embitterment by allowing its intelligence agencies to intimidate Pakistan's top diplomat in this country. Such a response left New Delhi with no option other than to look for effective steps. But it is debatable whether the expulsion of the personnel from the High Commission of Pakistan was the wisest of moves since it blurred India's claim that it was the aggrieved party and since it was predictable that Pakistan would respond in exactly the same manner.

It is difficult to imagine a spectacle more ridiculous than that of two countries taking out their spite on each other by targeting the very mechanisms that are intended to keep animosities within control and reverse hostile trends when possible. The rest of the global community was concerned about the capacity of the Subcontinent's nuclear-armed rivals to keep their animosities in check even before the latest confrontation broke out. However, the deeper-lying cause for hostility between India and Pakistan has a definite content which third parties could at least recognise, even if they could not really understand. It should be no surprise if the rest of the world were to treat the latest contretemps as providing cause for enhanced alarm since both sides seem prepared to discard self-restraint on the narrowest of provocations. If India and Pakistan can run the risk of rupturing all contacts merely because they cannot manage the provisioning of hospitality to each other's diplomats what might they do in the event of serious damage being inflicted? There is a tendency in both New Delhi as well as Islamabad to dismiss such projections as being unduly alarmist, especially when made from quarters outside the Subcontinent. But a dispassionate overview of the manner in which the latest confrontation has unfolded must lead to the conclusion that external perceptions of the perils of the subcontinental situation cannot be so dismissed.

It is all the more unfortunate that India and Pakistan have allowed what is essentially a petty wrangle to assume such major proportions when there are far more serious developments unfolding in their not-so-distant neighbourhood. The present is a period in which the strategic situation of the whole world, especially that of energy-poor countries such as India and Pakistan, could be changed drastically if oil supplies get disrupted by a war in Iraq. It is also a period when the rest of the world is too pre-occupied to be able to help restore calm in the Subcontinent if India and Pakistan cannot do so by themselves.

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