India-Pakistan relations: the view from Karachi

Mann baggia mein aag bhari thi phool kahaan se khilte (fire filled the heart; how could flowers blossom here?), crooned a rather in-tune whitewash man (an old Noorjehan number from the 1960s) as he applied layers of crushed limestone on the office wall outside my room. What an apt metaphor — the lyrics and the situation — for what’s been happening in Pakistan, and now its fallout on India since last month’s horrid events in Mumbai.

But first to India-Pakistan relations in the aftermath of that city’s siege by a handful of terrorists who took dozens of innocent lives. It’s more than just varying perceptions that dog India-Pakistan relations: neither fails the test of expecting the worse of the other. If the finger-pointing at Pakistan even as the crisis was unfolding was restrained, the situation perhaps would have been different today. If the rhetoric had stopped after Prime Minister Manmohan Singh asked for the ISI chief to be sent over for help with the investigations and President Zardari readily replied in the affirmative, posturing by the two sides perhaps would have been less antagonistic.

When Zardari went back on his promise the very next day for whatever reason, it sent relations spiraling down. Since then New Delhi and Islamabad have been talking at each other rather than to each other. The media war being fought in the two countries aside, Islamabad and New Delhi demand that the opposite side take the first step in defusing tensions. India wants concrete action taken against those it holds responsible for the Mumbai attacks; Pakistan wants concrete evidence before it takes any action. Had it been any country other than India, and in which case there perhaps would have been no allegations of ISI’s involvement in the matter, Pakistan’s response would have been different. When Gordon Brown or Condi Rice come to Islamabad and say that Pakistan must crack down against extremist groups, no eyebrows are raised; when India demands that so and so be handed over to it, all hell breaks loose. It’s simply bad blood that refuses to wash clean.

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