Pakistan Day Celebration in India : Major happenings

By Deepak Parvatiyar

March 26, 2015

The minister of state for external affairs, General (retired) VK Singh’s outburst against media is ignes fatuiafter he posted a series of five cryptic tweets with the hashtags #Duty and #Disgust following his participation in the Pakistan Day function at the Pakistani High Commission in New Delhi on 23 March.

Consider his tweets:
a) #DUTY A task or action that a person is bound to perform for moral or legal reasons
10:01 PM – 23 Mar 2015
b) #DUTY A job or service allocated
c) #DISGUST To sicken or fill with loathing
10:04 PM – 23 Mar 2015
d) #DISGUST To offend the moral sense, principles, or taste of
10:04 PM – 23 Mar 2015

His tweets even led to rumours that he would quit as minister that he vehemently denied thereafter.

At the onset, it did appear that General Singh was not able to reconcile between his new avatar of a junior external affairs minister and his army background. After all, Indian army had waged four wars with Pakistan and won all in the past. Reports suggested that Singh spent just about ten minutes at the function and though he posed for photos with the Pakistani high commissioner Abdul Basit, left without interacting with the guests.

The retired General’s perceived discomfiture could well be gauged by the fact that the Pakistani high commission had also invited Kashmiri separatists including the former commander of the Hizbullah militant group Masarat Alam, who was recently released from jail following the Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed’s decision to free “political prisoners”. (It is another thing that Masarat could not attend the function citing ill health).

Other separatists such as Hurriyat Conference’s hardline leader Syed Ali Geelani and Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front Chairman Yasin Malik, did attend the function and promptly used the occasion for their anti- India rhetoric.

Yet  only about seven months ago  in August  last year, the move by Basit to meet the Hurriyat leaders on the eve of the foreign secretary-level meet between the two countries had provoked India so much that it had even cancelled the  secretary level talks.

Consider that Basit had then defended his meetings with Hurriyat leaders on grounds that Kashmiris “are legitimate stakeholders” and that Kashmir is a “bilateral issue”, what if India called off the secretary-level talks with Pakistan in protest!

So why should India make this sudden climb down from its stated position?

Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh parried questions of reporters on Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit’s invite to Hurriyat leaders on Pakistan’s National Day.

On a more serious note, doesn’t it reflect on the inadequacies in the Bharatiya Janata Party- led National Democratic Alliance Government’s Pakistan policy?

There is no doubt that there has been a significant reconsideration in the government over its Pakistan policy ever since the BJP and the Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party alliance in the state.

Consider that India took the initiative of resuming foreign secretary level dialogues after the J&K PDP-BJP formed its government in Jammu and Kashmir. That Prime Minister Modi initiated cricket diplomacy, calling up his Pakistani counterpart on the eve of the ongoing cricket world cup!

Singh’s attending the Pakistan’s Day function, too, is an extension of such reconsideration. What prompted this shift needs to be analysed.
To begin with, the entire episode reflects on the inherent dichotomy within the BJP. The party is already under scrutiny of its support base of Hindu hardliners for diluting its ideology (which the Congress claims to be merely for the sake of power) after it refrained from its stated stand of abrogation of Article 370, which provides special status to Jammu & Kashmir, and even soft-pedalled the J&K PDP’s known Pakistan fixation.

Besides, consider how the BJP just had a knee-jerk reaction when the new Jammu and Kashmir chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed, immediately after assuming office, profusely thanked “People from across the border” for allowing the elections to take place in a “conducive” atmosphere.

The statement indeed was Mufti’s acknowledgment of Pakistan’s throttlehold on Jammu and Kashmir’s peace. Yet, it also undermined the Indian security forces’ successful efforts to foil the frequent attempts by Pakistani infiltrators to disrupt the election through terror strikes during the state elections.

Yet, this was expected of Mufti whose Jammu and Kashmir People’s Democratic Party contested the very elections on the issue of “greater autonomy and greater autonomy’’ and “making borders (with Pak-occupied Kashmir) irrelevant and creating complete connectivity”.That the BJP chose to look otherwise on the entire issue raises one significant question though—Hasn’t the J&K PDP ostensibly been interfering in or rather dictating on India’s foreign policy? Else, why should India pursue its policy of dialogue with Pakistan despite the latter warming up to Kashmiri Separatists?

One thing is clear though. There is no ambiguity on the theory that the Kashmir issue is inversely proportional to the India-Pakistan relationship and that the J&K PDP understands it well!

No surprise therefore that the Opposition has been quick to capitalise on Singh’s gaffe to target the government. The Congress advised Singh to quit rather than expressing disgust. It further linked the episode to the BJP’s desperate ways to hang on to power in J&K. The Aam Aadmi Party goes to the extent of holding Singh “guilty” of violating the fundamentals of diplomacy – “A diplomat never says NO, forget using harsh words with his enemy in public.”

The government has preferred to maintain a studied silence on the whole episode beyond what Singh stated in his hurriedly convened press conference after the episode wherein he blamed the media for the controversy and sought to clarify his position, saying he was “fully committed” to the party and government, “especially my PM”.

But why he tweeted at all in the very first place. He said this was in response to the media criticism of his participation at the function. However, it is a fact that the Indian Government always participated in the Pakistan Day celebrations at the Pakistan High Commission in the past. (Pakistan Day is celebrated in Pakistan to commemorate the adoption of the country’s first constitution on 23 March 1940. The Constitution though has been be reintroduced thrice in 1956, 1962 and 1973). So why the General should be so perturbed now? He knows the answer best
!