For nearly two decades the challenge of Pakistan and the troubles in Jammu and Kashmir have been the staple of prime ministerial speeches from the Red Fort. On Independence Day last year, which came barely weeks after the July train bombings in Mumbai, the PM had to devote a large part of his speech to the threat of terrorism and the political agenda in Jammu and Kashmir.

This time around, the PM chose to focus exclusively on the domestic agenda of education and jobs. Without naming Pakistan, the PM could simply state that “in the prosperity and well-being of our neighbours lies the key to our own security and progress”. Amidst the current charged political debate over the nuclear agreement with the United States, it is all too easy to forget that a non-violent relationship with Pakistan is a rare political luxury for the nation. Or the fact that US President George W. Bush has made it a lot easier for India to deepen the bilateral engagement with Pakistan without the fear of third party intervention.

Through the eight years of the Clinton Administration, all that New Delhi heard from the US was relentless lecturing on Kashmir. Can you recall President Bush hectoring us on J&K? Even once? In the current obsession with the 123 Agreement and the opportunist posturing on India’s nuclear sovereignty by the CPM and the BJP, it is rather tempting to ignore how valuable the transformation of Indo-US relations has been to Indian diplomacy on J&K.

This respite with Pakistan, tenuous and temporary as it well might be, only underscores the extraordinary domestic and external benefits that could accrue to India if we are able to bury the bitter legacy of Partition once and for all.

Imagine for a moment an early settlement of the Jammu and Kashmir question, a reasonably open border and freer trade between India and Pakistan. Imagine, too, what a lasting peace in the subcontinent would do to the international standing of India and Pakistan. Consider how Indo-Pak reconciliation might recast the question of religion that has hobbled the subcontinent for so long.

This imagination need not be a fantasy. It is quite well-known that the back channel negotiations between India and Pakistan on J&K have already made immense progress. Holding up the big moves on J&K are not insurmountable difficulties in the sensitive negotiation, but the fact that Pakistan has been preoccupied with its internal political turmoil since March. If President Pervez Musharraf does reconsolidate his position in the next few months, the Indo-Pak peace process will be ready for prime time all over again.

Getting to this unprecedented peace interlude with Pakistan has not been easy. From the late 1980s to the early years of this decade has been the worst period since Partition marked by repeated military confrontations on the border, the nuclearisation of the subcontinent, a limited war in Kargil and the brutalising impact of terrorism and religious extremism. A lot of credit goes to former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee for laying the foundation for this peace process amidst all the viciousness at the turn of the decade. Even more credit goes to Manmohan Singh for building on this foundation despite the fears within his own party and enduring self-doubt within the national security establishment. Since 2004, when the peace process was relaunched, more positive developments have occurred between the two nations than in the many previous decades. If the PM does succeed in taking the Indo-Pak peace process to the next stage, his triumph will far exceed the government’s nuclear accomplishment with the US. The nuclear deal, big as it might be, does little to ease India’s principal national security vulnerability since the Partition and Independence — the unsettled Kashmir dispute with Pakistan and the persistent Hindu-Muslim divide within the nation.

Yet, the CPM is threatening to pull down a government that is on the verge of a historic settlement with Pakistan and a redefinition of the subcontinent’s political future. Worse still, it is the BJP that will reap the political benefits from the CPM’s tactics of whipping up ultra-nationalism and xenophobia dressed up as anti-imperialism. Given its utter opportunism in opposing the Indo-US nuclear deal, the BJP will have no hesitation in disowning Vajpayee’s legacy of peace with Pakistan and attacking any settlement on J&K as a sell-out.

For unlike the current deal with the US, real issues of territorial sovereignty are involved in the negotiations with Pakistan on J&K. Forget for a moment the CPM’s demand for a constitutional amendment to give Parliament the power to ratify treaties. You can take it for granted that no talks with Pakistan will succeed, if they were to be measured against the unanimous 1994 Parliamentary resolution on J&K.

In his statement to Parliament, Manmohan Singh confidently asserted that history will judge him right on his nuclear engagement with the US. History will be even more generous to the UPA government for its bold negotiation on J&K with Pakistan.

History, however, has not been kind to the Indian Communist movement on its knack to get the big moments in our history, including Independence and the Partition six decades ago, invariably wrong. It will be particularly harsh on the current leadership of the CPM if it carries out the puerile threat to pull down the UPA government that is all set to elevate India’s position in the region and the world.

The writer is professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore