Despite our obsession with Pakistan, official and political India have not yet reacted to Islamabad's latest political move that has serious implications for India's very conception of its territoriality in Jammu and Kashmir.

In finally giving the so-called 'Northern Areas' a name, Gilgit-Baltistan, and offering the region a measure of political autonomy, Islamabad is promising to end the constitutional limbo that the region found itself in after the Partition and Pakistan's occupation of parts of the state of Jammu and Kashmir.

The question at the moment is not whether Islamabad will deliver on its promises to the long-oppressed people of Gilgit-Baltistan. It has been compelled to act amidst the growing unrest in the Northern Areas that has legal, political, ethnic, sectarian and geopolitical dimensions.

India, one would have thought, is obliged, by its claim for the entire state of Jammu and Kashmir, to affirm its locus standi with Gilgit-Baltistan at this important moment in its political evolution.

Unlike China which never misses even the most minor and seemingly trivial occasion to declare its territorial claims with all countries, India's interest in the vital regions of J&K under the control of Pakistan seems episodic.

The question is not whether a particular territorial claim can be enforced at the moment. Beijing knows quite well that it is not in a position to forcibly take the Tawang tract in Arunachal Pradesh away from India. In relentlessly affirming its claims, Beijing keeps the issue alive, makes it an important part of the bilateral, regional and global agenda, and develops diplomatic leverages. India must do the same with the parts of Jammu and Kashmir that are now under Pakistan's control.

... contd.