At its party conclave in Lucknow, the BJP predictably unveiled its quiver of arrows for the forthcoming elections to the Uttar Pradesh assembly. Amidst the local issues for combat with the state’s ruling Samajwadi Party was a question asked of the UPA government at the Centre. Could its silence to comments by Pakistan’s foreign minister, Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri, be construed as accepting a return to the pre-1953 position in Jammu and Kashmir? It is to be hoped that the government and the Congress party will be drawn into talking Kashmir with the Opposition, and see the BJP’s gauntlet for the opportunity it could be.

This is an especially urgent moment to prepare a bipartisan consensus on Kashmir. Back-channel negotiations between India and Pakistan are said to be enlarging the middle ground for the first time since the early 1960s. The need to settle the Kashmir dispute cannot be overstated. The Iran hiccup notwithstanding, the deal with the US has already liberated India from decades of defensiveness on its nuclear status. Removing acrimony and semantic debates accruing from Pakistan’s relentless spotlight on J&K would bring dividends many times more than that. A post-Partition political reconciliation is necessary not just for the regional good. Domestically, it would take away a lot of lingering bitterness. The Centre must know that on Kashmir or on talks with Pakistan it cannot gain any breakthrough without carrying a political consensus domestically. There is, for instance, Parliament’s unanimous resolution claiming Pakistan-occupied Kashmir.

The Congress, however, has yet to show the heart for fielding the kind of inter-party dialogue that would ensue if its government were to show its hand on J&K. Each time President Musharraf and his officials have talked of new ways to solve the Kashmir dispute, the party’s diffidence has meant two things. Islamabad keeps the opportunity to score diplomatic points and set the parameters for debate. And domestically, no initiative is taken to work out political clarity. The BJP, while in power, promised to consider out-of-the-box solutions. It, after all, started talks with the Hurriyat without listing limiting preconditions for talks on autonomy. Now with the party raising the issue once again, the Congress must show more transparency and also hold the BJP to its old latitude on negotiations.