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What Hardeep Puri got right – and wrong – about India's response to Pak-sponsored terror
In an interview published in this newspaper on May 10, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Puri stoutly — and correctly — defended Operation Sindoor and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's current Pakistan policy. The Pahalgam terrorist attack was dastardly and designed to destabilise India's social harmony. It had to be dealt with an iron hand. Modi did so. In the process, he sent a message to India's western neighbour and the international community that India would no longer tolerate Pakistani terrorism. Instead, it will combat it through the use of effective kinetic action.
Modi's current Pakistan policy and actions have the support of the Indian people. This was demonstrated in the nation endorsing Operation Sindoor. The seven all-party delegations, which travelled to over 30 countries, conveyed India's resolve that Pakistani terrorism will be met by force. The fact that both government and opposition party MPs travelled together showed the determination of the Indian people against Pakistani terrorism.
This said, it is obvious that Puri the politician has overtaken Puri's earlier avatar as an outstanding diplomat. Puri, the diplomat, would never have made this sweeping comment: 'The pre-Modi era of dealing with Pakistan was a theatre of the absurd'.
There are several problems with Puri's formulation. The foremost is that it ignores the evolution of Modi's Pakistan policy. It is an undeniable fact that Modi sincerely decided to normalise ties with Pakistan. To do so, he went beyond the policies and actions of those who, according to Puri, dealt 'absurdly' with Pakistan. These included not only non-BJP PMs but also Atal Bihari Vajpayee. He led the country in quashing the Pakistani intrusion into Kargil in 1999. However, after an interval of a few years, he again sought to improve ties with Pakistan and went to Pakistan to attend a SAARC summit in 2004. Vajpayee also went ahead with the Lahore visit of February 1999 despite a terrorist attack on its eve.
Modi began his innings as PM, demonstrating a genuine desire to establish cooperative relations with Pakistan. This led him to invite then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to his 2014 oath-taking ceremony. The Pakistani generals were furious with Sharif's decision. They got the LeT to launch an attack on the Indian Consulate General in Herat days prior to Modi's swearing-in. Its purpose was to embarrass Modi and compel Sharif to call off his India visit. It was the alertness of an Indian security guard that prevented a major terrorist incident. Modi's meeting with Nawaz Sharif in Delhi in May 2014 led to a decision to renew the bilateral engagement. Certain obstacles created by the Pakistan army prevented that from occurring.
Modi, however, persevered. He met Sharif on the sidelines of the SCO summit at Ufa in July 2015. The two leaders agreed that their National Security Advisors would meet to discuss terrorism. The Ufa Joint Statement was silent on Jammu and Kashmir. The Pakistani generals told Sharif that an exclusive meeting on terrorism could not happen. Modi relented. The National Security Advisors, along with the Foreign Secretaries, met in Bangkok in early December 2015. They apparently discussed some bilateral issues in addition to terrorism.
A few days after the Bangkok meeting, the late External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj went to Islamabad to attend a meeting on Afghanistan. On its sidelines, India and Pakistan decided to begin a Comprehensive Bilateral Dialogue which would address contentious issues, terrorism, cooperation mechanisms and humanitarian matters. To cement this process, Modi paid a historic stopover visit to Lahore on Christmas Day 2015 and to greet Nawaz Sharif on his birthday and also felicitate him on the marriage of his granddaughter. The Pakistan generals could not countenance that they were being ignored in this process. Within 10 days, they sponsored the Pathankot airbase attack.
Modi did not break off the engagement after the Pathankot attack. He tried to rescue the process. In this quest, he also allowed a Pakistani investigation team, which included an ISI officer, to visit Pathankot. Bearing in mind that none of Modi's predecessors had ever agreed to such a visit, what does Puri think of it? Was it 'absurd' that despite the Pathankot attack, Modi sought peace with Pakistan? Indeed, if Modi's predecessors had overlooked earlier terrorist attacks and did not want relations to break did Modi not act similarly after the Pathankot attack?
Indeed, the fact is that Modi showed far more flexibility towards Pakistan than his predecessors had done and if the late Sati Lambah is to be believed, he sought backchannel communications with Pakistan in 2017 too.
It was only after the Uri attack that Modi first authorised and publicised kinetic action. The Pulwama terrorist attack of 2019 led Modi to abandon the traditional Indian paradigm of dealing with Pakistan, which he had himself followed for over two years after becoming Prime Minister. In 2019, he took the historic decision to make fundamental constitutional changes regarding J&K. Pakistan reacted stupidly, and bilateral ties were downgraded.
It was gradually from 2016 to Operation Sindoor that Modi demonstrated the shift in India's approach towards Pakistan. He has to be given credit for this, but the fact that he pursued for over two years what Puri unfortunately calls the 'theatre of the absurd' cannot be denied. Perhaps, in future, Puri the politician's statements, especially when they dwell on recent history, will be tempered by the experience of Puri the diplomat.
The writer is a former diplomat
