As India embarks on two important negotiations in the next few days — one on Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan and the other with China on the boundary dispute — one big new idea is at the heart of the Government’s diplomatic play.

Put simply, India’s new approach is about shifting focus from territorial exchange to open frontiers and cross-border consultative mechanisms. External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee is travelling to Islamabad on Saturday for two days of intensive discussions with the Pakistani leadership on a range of bilateral issues, especially Jammu and Kashmir.

Next week, National Security Adviser M K Narayanan is hosting the Chinese Vice Premier, Dai Bingguo, for a crucial round of talks on the boundary dispute.

Potential breakthroughs in both these sensitive negotiation— this is the first time in decades that India is holding purposeful negotiations on Jammu and Kashmir with Pakistan and the boundary dispute with China hinge on a brave re-imagination of the frontiers.

Ultra-nationalism, which ran amuck in the early decades of the newly constituted nations of India, Pakistan and China, prevented their leaders from a practical resolution of the territorial disputes that confronted them in Tibet, between India and China, and in Jammu and Kashmir, that involved all the three nations.

Today, the diplomatic challenge for the three large Asian nations lies in tempering past obsessions about acquiring additional territory, finding “out of the box solutions” to put these disputes behind them, restoring once vibrant trans-frontier cooperation in the disputed territories, and moving on.

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