As the fallout from a recent volley exchange between the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan continues to play out in the public sphere, analysts say both officials made a “performance” for their respective domestic audiences.
During his visit to India for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit, Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari urged member states not to use “terrorism” as a diplomatic tool.
“Terrorism continues to threaten global security,” the foreign minister said in his address to the SCO. “Let’s not get caught up in weaponizing terrorism to score diplomatic points.”
He also criticized India’s decision to remove the special status of the disputed region of Kashmir, saying New Delhi’s unilateral move in 2019 had undermined the climate for holding talks between the neighbours.
“It is up to India to create a conducive environment for talks,” said Bhutto Zardari.
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar strongly objected to Bhutto Zardari’s statement, calling him the “spokesperson of a terrorism industry”.
“Victims of terrorism do not sit with perpetrators to discuss terrorism,” Jaishankar said at the SCO summit in the Indian city of Goa, referring to deadly attacks on Indian soldiers in Indian-administered Kashmir. New Delhi has accused Pakistan of supporting rebels in Kashmir – a charge Islamabad has denied.
India’s foreign minister also said Kashmir’s special status was “history”, rejecting Pakistan’s demands to reverse the abolition of the region’s special status.
In remarks during an interview with the India Today news channel, Bhutto Zardari later said that Islamabad was ready to address and address any concerns raised by India, but added that New Delhi will have to address Islamabad’s concerns as well.
Despite the multilateral nature of the summit, the broad side between Bhutto Zardari and his Indian counterpart Jaishankar shifted the focus from regional security issues to the stalemate between the two South Asian neighbours.
The two countries held no bilateral talks during the summit, which was also attended by China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Russia and Uzbekistan.
Two days after the conclusion of the summit and Bhutto Zardari’s return to Pakistan, India’s foreign minister continued to express indirect criticism saying “he [Bhutto Zardari] talked about everything including India’s role in Kashmir, the G20, India’s foreign policy, except for the finer details of the meeting he was invited to.
Playing for the public
Hosting the summit, India’s Hindu nationalist government reluctantly invited Bhutto Zardari, who became the first Pakistani foreign minister to visit India in 12 years amid heightened tensions between the neighbors, who had fought two of their three wars over Kashmir fought.
Analysts say the indirect public exchange between the two officials has gone “completely along the lines expected”.
“Both foreign ministers were more concerned about internal politics in their own country than making any progress on their foreign policy issues,” Sushant Singh, a senior fellow at India’s Center for Policy Research, told Al Jazeera.
Before leaving for India, Bhutto Zardari said his country is committed to bringing peace to the region and urged those present to isolate terrorism from “geopolitical partisanship”.
According to Singh, Jaishankar’s comments reflect Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s attempt to show that Pakistan does not matter to India.
“Modi’s dominant narrative has been to portray India as an emerging major world power, and to portray Pakistan as insignificant to India,” Singh said.
India’s narrow-minded behavior will limit its potential
Bhutto Zardari’s statement that Islamophobic wolf-whistling will not be an effective “terrorism” strategy is welcomed by the Pakistani media.
“It is important for Pakistani leaders to continue to highlight and underline the wild levels of hatred that mainstream Indian public discourse and policy can shape,” Mosharraf Zaidi, of Pakistan-based think tank Tabadlab, told Islamabad-based Al Jazeera.
Zaidi said India’s “petty behavior” will limit its potential as a major world power, but that should not stop Pakistan from “resisting India’s hegemony”.
#WATCH | EAM dr. S Jaishankar welcomes Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari to the meeting of the SCO Council of Foreign Ministers in Goa pic.twitter.com/TVe0gzml1U
— ANI (@ANI) May 5, 2023
The brief meeting between the two ministers, when Bhutto Zardari walked towards Jaishankar and was greeted by his Indian counterpart with a Hindu greeting of “namaste” with folded hands, has been subject to social media analysis in both countries.
However, Zaidi said that while not much attention should be paid to the nature of the physical involvement as the greeting was “respectful”, the way Jaishankar spoke about Pakistan should be scrutinized.
“India can afford to misbehave like at the conference because its powers and commitment far exceed the cost of this kind of behavior,” he said.
India’s ‘twofold’ problem
Singh, the Indian expert, noted that Jaishankar and India may have chosen to stay away from bilateral talks with Pakistan because they don’t want to “be on the fence” with India’s western neighbour.
“India is under pressure because of its border crisis with China, and it would be very difficult for it to meet a two-pronged challenge by engaging with Pakistan,” he said.
Twenty Indian soldiers and four Chinese were killed in a clash between Indian and Chinese soldiers in the Ladakh border region three years ago. It turned into a protracted standoff in the rugged mountainous region, where each side has stationed tens of thousands of military personnel backed by artillery, tanks and fighter jets.
Last month, India’s defense minister accused China of eroding the “entire base” of ties between the two countries by violating a bilateral agreement.
According to Zaidi, the conflict between India and China is political and territorial.
With Pakistan, however, the stalemate has continued since a bloody partition separated the two countries in 1947.
“India’s hatred of Pakistan is existential and affects all political parties, but is especially stark and deep when it comes to the Bharatiya Janata party, of which Jaishankar is a representative,” Zaidi said.
Despite the apparent lack of attention to Pakistan, Singh predicted that India “could summon Pakistan at any time”.
“Pakistan can always be taken out of the way by Modi as and when he pleases, and it can be used as a proxy for Indian Muslims or to reinforce Hindu nationalist tendencies in the country.”