The news last week that Foreign Minister S Jaishankar will lead the Indian delegation to Pakistan for the meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s Council of Heads of Government on October 15-16 is welcome. This will be the first time that an Indian Foreign Minister will visit the neighbouring country after Sushma Swaraj had led a delegation for the Heart of Asia Ministerial Conference on Afghanistan in Islamabad in December 2015. The decision to send Jaishankar to the SCO summit is significant insofar as India could well have chosen to send a junior Minister for External Affairs. Of course, there was no question at any time of the Prime Minister going for the SCO meeting, though the invitation from Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif was addressed to him. Dispelling any hope of a breakthrough in the current stalemate in the Indo-Pak relations, the MEA spokesperson said that not much should be expected from the Jaishankar visit which was strictly to participate in the deliberations of SCO. The SCO was an important Eurasian forum, and it was only right and proper for India to play a vital role in its deliberations. Since Pakistan was hosting the SCO meeting as a rotational venue, India’s participation was duly warranted. Notably, the SCO forum discourages member-states from raising any bilateral issue, a bar that would naturally prevent Pakistan from chanting Kashmir as it is otherwise prone to do at all such multilateral forums. Indeed, a day after the announcement of his visit Jaishankar himself made it clear that there shall be no discussion on Indo-Pak relations. “I am going there as a good member of the SCO,” the Indian Foreign Minister asserted at an event in the capital.
In any case, given the circumstances in which the meeting is being held in Islamabad it will be unrealistic for the two countries to make a headway in normalising their relations. For instance, it was not lost on the Indian observers that Pakistan had rolled out the proverbial red carpet for the notorious preacher Zakir Naik who was wanted in India for money-laundering as also for hate- speech crimes. He had banished from India following the registration of a criminal case against him and taken permanent residency in Malaysia thanks to the then government of Mahathir Mohammad who needed to burnish his Islamist image. Since then Zakir Naiq has carried on his nefarious activities from the foreign soil. But Pakistan hosting him as a honoured guest clearly sent a negative message to India. If the Sharif government was mindful of Indian sensitivities it should have avoided the controversial Islamic preacher’s visit at this juncture. Given that the Sharif government is itself in the throes of an existentialist crisis, with the Imran Khan-led Opposition constantly knocking at its door, it would have been even otherwise futile for an Indian dignitary to talk normalising of ties with the tottering regime. Indeed, last week both Islamabad and its twin city, Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani army is headquartered, were under virtual curfew with internet services switched off in order to foil Khan’s call for a protest gathering in the Pak capital. Pakistan had downgraded its diplomatic mission in New Delhi following the abrogation of Article 370 and changing Jammu and Kashmir’s status from a State into a Union Territory in August 2019. Co-incidentally, India’s Foreign Affairs Minister will be in Pakistan while J&K may well be putting together its first democratically-elected government after the abrogation of Article 370. There is a poignant irony in this for Pakistan which is hardly familiar with a truly representative government elected by the people rather than nominated by the Rawalpindi GHQ.
