Virendra Pandit
New Delhi: The day Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in the last Cabinet meeting on Sunday, directed the ministers and bureaucrats to draft a 100-day future-ready plan for implementation after his government returns to power in May 2021, his Pakistani counterpart Mian Mohammed Shehbaz Sharif told his past-ready lawmakers that it will be business as usual on the same Kashmir issue.
For, after his army-manipulated ‘selection’ to be the PM again, in his very first speech on Sunday, Shehbaz raked up Kashmir equating it to war-ravaged Palestine and pledging to improve ties with all leading nations, including neighbors.
He re-rolled out the all-too-familiar Pakistani rhetoric and doublespeak on India, the media reported, ignoring New Delhi’s tough stance that terror and talk cannot go together.
“Let’s all come together… and the National Assembly should pass a resolution for the freedom of Kashmiris and Palestinians,” he said.
Pledging to improve ties with all leading nations, without mentioning any country, Shehbaz said: “We will keep ties with neighbors based on equality.”
For him — at the head of an uneasy coalition — this is a safe standard formula to follow: it does not rock the shaky boat internally and not much is expected to change in the Indo-Pak dynamics in the immediate future as India heads for a general election in April-May 2024
As expected, India did not take the bait and ignored Shehbaz’s rhetoric equating Kashmir with Palestine and calling for the freedom of both.
Even during his first stint as Premier (April 2022-July 2023), the status quo ante prevailed on the India-Pakistan front. New Delhi is unlikely to make any moves in a hurry.
Realizing that he is heading a nearly bankrupt country, Shehbaz’s political outfit, the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), is inclined towards improving ties with India — primarily for business reasons. The PML-N mentor and his elder brother Mian Nawaz is even more keen to do so.
But, unlike Nawaz, the younger Sharif is more amenable to and in the good books of the army, which always has the final say in relations with India.
In his first short stint as the PM, Shehbaz had called for talks, but it was soon followed with an official rider, and clarification, that negotiations with New Delhi were not possible without the reversal of India’s abrogation of Article 370 in August 2019, after which Pakistan unilaterally downgraded diplomatic relations with India by recalling its high commissioner.
The two countries have since functioned without a high commissioner in either capital since then.