This is not the time for India-Pakistan peace moves as Pakistan’s politics is in flux and India holds national elections next year

His mother accompanied her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to India in July 1972 when the two countries negotiated the Shimla agreement. Benazir was then a tall, lanky teenager and she generated a lot of interest in India. Photographers captured her every move in Shimla, strolling around the mall, looking at Indian handicrafts and waving to those who had gathered to watch her. Though India and Pakistan had fought a full-fledged war the previous year when Indian troops went into, then known as, East Pakistan, to help the Mukti Bahini’s efforts to liberate Bangladesh, there was both curiosity and affection for the young Benazir.

On Thursday, her son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari reached Goa for the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation meeting of foreign ministers but is unlikely to receive the same kind of affectionate welcome as his mother did nearly three decades ago. That is because positions have hardened, especially in India, since the 2008 Mumbai terror attacks.

That attack took place at a time when a fresh bid at breaking the India-Pakistan logjam was initiated. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s then foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, at that time a member of the Pakistan Peoples Party, was in India on that fateful day. National elections in 2008 had led to Pervez Musharraf losing the elections. The new PPP-led government sent Qureshi to New Delhi to meet with Indian leaders and lay the groundwork for a fresh bid at normalising ties between the two nuclear-armed countries. The gunmen were still at large, people in Mumbai hotels were still in hiding waiting for rescue teams to take them out of danger, while the Pakistan foreign minister was in Delhi.

Qureshi was in the Indian Women’s Press Corps addressing a press conference when an aide interrupted the minister and handed over his mobile to Qureshi. It was India’s external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee on the line. Qureshi excused himself and went to an adjoining room to take the call. What was said was not known to us then but the minister must have got a talking to, as he came back wiping his face which was flushed. The presser ended quickly as Qureshi said he had to rush somewhere. Pranab Mukherjee recalled in his memoir that he had read out a prepared statement to the minister and asked him to immediately leave the country.

“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. But it would be desirable if a decision is taken as quickly as possible,” Mukherjee recounted in his memoirs. Qureshi thanked India for the offer to fly him home, but Islamabad sent a Pakistan air force jet to carry the embarrassed minister home. Qureshi excused himself from the dinner he was scheduled to attend, hosted by Mukherjee, and said he had a meeting with his high commissioner.

A few more attempts at peace talks were tried, the last when Prime Minister Narendra Modi stopped by on his way back from Kabul, to call on Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Christmas Day, which happened to be his birthday. That was 2015. But in January 2016, there was a terror attack on India’s frontline air base in Pathankot. Since then, the situation has steadily deteriorated with terror strikes in Uri and Pulwana. The rest is well known. India’s decision to scrap Kashmir’s special status on August 2019, was another turning point, with India and Pakistan recalling respective high commissioners. The situation has remained tense with both sides taking unnecessary swipes at each other mainly to impress their home constituencies.

In New York last year, Bilawal Bhutto hit out at Prime Minister Modi, calling him the “butcher of Gujarat”. His grandstanding reminded people of his grandfather who had thundered at the UN that “We (Pakistan) will eat grass, even go hungry, but we will get one of our own (Atom bomb) .... We have no other choice!”

The BJP government is unlikely to forget the insult to the Prime Minister and is likely to give the young man the cold shoulder. A bilateral meeting between the two foreign ministers appears remote. Bilawal has been criticised in Pakistan for attending the Goa meeting. But as the Pakistan foreign ministry has made it plain that this is not a visit to India, he is attending the SCO foreign ministers meet where India is the host. India’s external affairs minister S Jaishankar has also made it plain when he said in Panama City on Tuesday in reply to a reporter’s question, “Where this particular meeting is concerned, we are both members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, so we typically attend its meetings. We are the chair this year, so the meeting is taking place in India this year.” Pakistan’s foreign ministry statement echoed the same sentiment.

This is not the time for any breakthrough in India-Pakistan relations. The political situation in the neighbouring country is fluid, and India has national elections next year. Peace-making is certainly not on the cards at the moment. Bhutto is likely to raise Kashmir again to play to his domestic audience. Jaishankar is unlikely not to respond.

“The peace process can realistically begin only after a new government takes power in Islamabad, and Indian elections are held next year, but small confidence-building measures can be implemented soon. No breakthroughs are expected in Goa, but a pleasant change in direction, and a more nuanced narrative are very much possible if both states want that,’’ Pakistan’s reputed national daily Dawn said in an editorial. However, even this bare minimum appears remote at the moment.