To be sure, Indo-U S relations are much stronger today to suggest a return to the discordant early 1990s, when Kashmir topped the bilateral agenda. Yet, New Delhi cannot ignore that Pakistan is likely to be at the very top of a President Obama’s national security agenda and his perception of a linkage between Kashmir and Afghanistan.

India’s chattering classes may be carried away by Obama’s talk of ‘change’ in Washington. On Kashmir at least, India badly needs ‘continuity’ with President George W Bush’s deliberate hands-off approach.

Although his historic civil nuclear initiative got all the attention, President Bush’s Kashmir policy has contributed even more significantly to the transformation of Indo-U S relations.

Despite relentless pressures from Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Bush refused to inject the U S into the Indo-Pak conflict. By ending the traditional American meddling in Kashmir, Bush created the conditions for purposeful bilateral negotiations between New Delhi and Islamabad. India would not want Obama to disrupt this positive dynamic in the subcontinent.

India does not disagree with Obama that a Pakistan secure within its own borders is good for the whole region. That indeed is the basis on which Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his predecessor Atal Bihari Vajpayee explored solutions to the Kashmir dispute on a bilateral basis.

India’s problem with the Obama thesis is in the simplistic trade-off it sets up between Kashmir and Afghanistan. More than seven years after 9/11, Washington has begun to understand that the source of the problem in both Kashmir and Afghanistan is the Pak Army and its instrumentalisation of extremism to achieve political objectives.

... contd.