K N Pandita
History has its measuring rod to evaluate individuals, organizations or nations as a whole. About Afghans, it is said they have never been subdued and overpowered. India is said to be a nation enslaved by foreign hordes for more than a millennium.
Another evaluative criterion associated with India is that it loses the gains on the table that it has won on the battlefield. Why is it so, I wonder.
Long back around 1994-95, I was at the UN Human Rights Commission in Geneva preparing for an intervention in the session. I caught sight of T.N. Kaul (Tiki Sahib), former ambassador and foreign secretary of India, in the lounge. I wished him well and sat by his side. After a while, I said to him that I had a question disturbing me for long and I would like his answer. What is the question, he asked. “Sir, in Bangladesh war of 1972, we made Pakistan surrender taking 93 thousand Paki soldiers as PoWs and captured nearly five thousand square km of Pak territory. But in Shimla talks, we freed the PoWs and returned the captured territory of Pakistan. However we failed to permanently resolve the Kashmir issue. How would you explain this situation as you were very much part of our negotiating team at Shimla.?”
Tiki remained silent for a moment and then said,” When you are back in New Delhi, see Haksar and put this question to him.” P N Haksar was the Principal Secretary to Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. I knew that when a discussion on Kashmir was opened in the Shimla conference, the Pakistani deputy foreign minister had refused to answer the question of T N Kaul saying he was not supposed to answer a question from a bureaucrat. Kaul had taken it an offence and stood up to leave the hall out of disgust but Haksar held him by his coat and made him continue sitting in the meeting.
I will not comment on Kaul but I have no hesitation in saying that Haksar was a sycophant who knew which side of his toast was buttered.
There seems to be no dearth of sycophants around Prime Minister Modi. That apart, we know that Indira Gandhi at the Shimla conference succumbed to the threats of President Richard Nixon of the USA. We lost on the table what our valiant soldiers and martyrs had gained on the ground.
Have we repeated that story in the case of Operation Sindoor? Perhaps yes, partially, if not fully. The Sindoor operation ceasefire story is far more mysterious, bizarre and fatally decisive than any such story in our post-independence history.So many questions arise. Who will answer these or will these be answeredever? Perhaps never.
For the last seven decades of the life of the Kashmir issue, our stand is that we accept no third-partymediation because we can resolve our problems. How did Donald Trump pop up on the 10th of April and make the loud claim that” we worked hard all night to foster ceasefire in the sub-continent.” Had not only a day before the Vice President of the US said publicly that the US would help facilitate a resolution of the issue between the two countries and that the US had no role beyond that?
Facilitating two contending parties to come to an amicable solution is one thing and announcing that as a result of one night-long effort, we have succeeded in fostering ceasefire on the parties is something else. In forthright language it is dictating the terms.
If India accepted ceasefire on its terms, the term should have been made public there and then. How would it affect us if the terms were humiliating to Pakistan resulting in a civil war in that country. That was the precise meaning of striking at terror.
What are the terms, is not known. No side speaks about that. India has not spelt out what are the terms of ceasefire. Will India maintain same stoicism in the parliament when a debate on punitive action against Pak terrorism is brought up for discussion.
We know nothing of what was discussed, what was agreed, and what was rejected. We do not know what was the response of our DGMOP to the call from his Pakistani counterpart. Obviously, our DGMOP must have passed on the message to the higher authorities who took the decision of responding positively to the Pak DGMOP’s message. But why the secrecy and Sphinx-like demeaner?
How come, President Donald Trump, took the initiative and announced at about 4.45 PM on May 10 that the ceasefire had been accepted by the two parties? Was Trump overdoing or just blackmailing India, whose representative had walked out of an IMF meeting when members voted in support of granting Pakistan a loan of three billion dollars? Did he hurry up to subtly convey to India that the ceasefire had been bought by endorsing the grant of an IMF loan to Pakistan? Was it not a potent expression of confidence to resume missile attacks on Indian targets within three hours of the declaration of a ceasefire?
One comment frequently circulated was that India had warned she would consider the repetition of Pak terrorist attacks as an act of war against India. This sounds like a childish statement. Is New Delhi so naïve as to believe that Pakistan will dismantle its terroriststructure and stop attacks in Kashmir? India is too prosaic to be a match to antics like this.
And what about the much-touted claim of destroying Pak-based terror lock, stock and barrel? Has India’s bombardment of the terrorist headquartersof Jaish in Bahawalpur and LeT in Muridke finished terrorism in Pakistan? Pakistan got the IMF loan (thanks to Trump) and before the ink on the ceasefire dries up, Pak authorities will rebuild and repair the damaged headquarters much stronger than before. Not only that, dozens of new terrorist camps will come up closer to the Indian border in J&K.
Yes, all three wings of the Indian armed forces performed an excellent job in 3-4 days on the ground. Let us salute them. But remember the nativity shown by our political class on the table of discussion has always been a disappointmentfor our armed forces. Recall the scurvy treatment meted out to General Thimayya, one of the greatest soldiers of independent India – the hero of Zoji La – when he insisted on not accepting a ceasefire on the night of December 31, 1948, in Kashmir.
Had not Modi ji accepted unconditional ceasefire on 10 April 2025, the history of the sub-continent would have taken a different and historic turn. India would have registered her territorial security for one thousand years. God only knows how many centuries our nation will need for understanding its neighbour to the west.
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