It is nobody's case that Nawaz Sharif's mere presence at the swearing-in of Narendra Modi as India's 14th prime minister at the presidential palace in New Delhi today is enough to usher in an era of peace and prosperity in the subcontinent. It is even possible to argue that there was nothing unusual in Modi's gesture toward Pakistan's prime minister because other leaders from the South Asia Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) are also on the guest list. Once Modi decided to invite the leaders of SAARC, he had no option but to invite his Pakistani counterpart. It is even possible to argue that Modi was using SAARC to shield himself from any criticism of his decision to invite Sharif because it was not long ago that he attacked the Congress-led government for maintaining high-level contact with Pakistan despite the clashes on the border in Kashmir, saying, “Heads of our soldiers are cut, but then their prime minister is fed chicken biryani.” Still Sharif's no to Modi would have put both him and his country in a bad light. Pakistan would have appeared to have spurned an offer for a new beginning in South Asia, even if the offer from India's new leader was symbolic. Sharif would have appeared a prisoner of the military establishment, unable to take a step as harmless as attending the inauguration of a prime minister in India without the consent of the military. So his decision to travel to New Delhi is all the more welcome because the man who invited him is the very unlike of all his predecessors including Atal Behari Vajpayee of his own Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The ideologues of Hindu parties like BJP and its predecessor Jan Sangh were vehemently opposed to the vivisection of India to create the new nation of Pakistan. So BJP and its leaders have always taken a hard-line position toward Pakistan but the fact remains that it was during BJP's years in power that Indo-Pak relations witnessed some slight improvement, especially after BJP assumed office in 1998 under Vajpayee. It was again Vajpayee as foreign minister in the Janata government (the first non-Congress administration) who took the first concrete steps toward breaking the stalemate in Indo-Pak relations. On the contrary, Congress, which has governed India for 54 of the 67 years since independence, was always looking at its back when dealing with Pakistan because it did not want to invite charges of weakness or sell-out from the BJP. But Modi was a provincial politician when Vajpayee was prime minister. We don't know much about his thinking on foreign policy issues. Surprisingly there was very little debate or discussion about foreign policy during the election campaign except some inflammatory rhetoric about Pakistan and Bangladesh by Modi. So we should take Modi's gesture toward Sharif as indicating a new thinking on Pakistan. Let us hope this and Pakistani leader's presence in India today and the projected meeting between the two leaders tomorrow will mark a turning point in the relations between the South Asian neighbors. Given the bitter past and some unhappy developments in recent years, we should be guarded in our optimism. We know how a tentative effort to build economic and diplomatic ties under outgoing Prime Minister Manmohan Singh fell apart last year, following deadly skirmishes along the contested border in Kashmir. Modi and Sharif should begin where Manmohan stopped, ignoring the elements on both sides of the border who have a vested interest in keeping tension alive.
