New Delhi’s decision to highlight the atrocities by Pakistani forces in Pakistan occupied Kashmir (PoK) and in Balochistan, as >reported by this newspaper , is a clear departure from past practice. The difference can be gauged by comparing the strong reactions six years ago to the previous Indian government’s acceptance of Balochistan in the Sharm el-Sheikh statement, with how the Ministry of External Affairs now openly accepts in the context of Balochistan that India “is home to persecuted people everywhere”. Meanwhile, a spokesman of the Baloch Liberation Organisation — that faces a barrage of charges in Pakistan — has been speaking freely at public meetings in Delhi. Coming as they do a week after India highlighted suppression of protests and atrocities in PoK, these meetings make it clear that the government is on the “front-foot”, as officials have indicated, and that it intends to use PoK and Balochistan to counter Pakistan’s persistent allegations of human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. These allegations have been particularly sharp over the last year, perhaps owing to Islamabad’s discomfort over the progress India has made in pushing for a seat in the UN Security Council. It remains to be seen whether New Delhi’s new tack will help tone down Pakistan’s position on J&K. Or will it only serve to highlight international issues that India has preferred to keep in the bilateral space so far, and to flag Pakistan’s outrageous allegations that India is responsible for terrorist acts on its soil? In any case, with this turn of events, India-Pakistan relations, which have remained at a low ebb for decades, are worsening. Diplomacy is the loser.
What is perhaps more significant is that the government’s new policy indicates the growing space ceded to India’s security establishment in the external relations sphere. By engaging in a “spy-vs-spy” and “tit-for-tat” engagement, and seeking to answer Pakistan’s false claims on J&K with a series of counter-allegations, New Delhi has only stooped to the level of the neighbour that it seeks to contain. India’s actions have included the handing out of videos, and leaking of details from dossiers of wanted criminals and terrorists under investigation. More important, it is unclear how its efforts would play out on the international stage. There, Pakistan is already discredited on the issue of sponsoring and training terror groups, while India is seen as a powerful and responsible country waging war against terror. Eventually, diplomacy is a projection of a country’s own values, and must prevail over all other instincts. Former U.S. National Security Adviser Walt Rostow, credited with America’s original push into South East Asia in the 1960s, once said: “We are the greatest power in the world — if we behave like it.” That should hold true for India, too.
