Rajiv Gandhi’s clear policy on Pakistan was inspiring

Following the Uri attack, there is a torrential rain of suggestions from the media, military strategists and many others on how, or how not to, deal with Pakistan. But the government, armed with all the multiple options available, is in the best position to decide the course of action. However, it may not be prudent to disturb the time tested Indus Water Treaty signed over half a century ago.

As the Pak-sponsored militancy in the Valley started soon after late Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi demitted office, it may be worth recalling the policy he adopted towards Pakistan. In a broadcast to the nation, on November 12, 1984, he stated: “We want to develop closer relations with each one of our immediate neighbours in a spirit of peace, friendship and cooperation. This is what we have offered to Pakistan. We have always believed that non-interference, peaceful coexistence should be the guiding principles of our relationship.”

Rajiv Gandhi became chairman of Saarc in 1986 and was invited by President Zia-ul-Haq to visit Pakistan. Rajiv accepted the invitation but took care not to visit the country as Zia-ul-Haq despite his “cricket-diplomacy” was playing a double game: training and financing Sikh militants while talking of peace. He had the patience to wait for two years before he did so. However, by December of his first year in office, Rajiv and Zia-ul-Haq had agreed to no attack on each other’s nuclear plants, expansion of trade and economics ties, and talks on a peace treaty to reduce border tensions. In the fall of 1986, Prime Minister Junejo of Pakistan raked up in the United Nations General Assembly the old issue of a Kashmir plebiscite. For the first time since 1982, India exercised her right to reply to the Kashmir question: the two countries, India stated, had agreed to settle the issue bilaterally.

Early in 1987, India conducted its largest-ever military exercise in the deserts of Rajasthan. It tested some of the modern warfare strategic concepts of then Army Chief Gen. K. Sunderji, which he had fashioned with the approval of Rajiv Gandhi. Operation Brass Tacks coincided with a similar exercise by Pakistan which, after its conclusion, regrouped on the borders of J&K and Punjab. India acted similarly by moving its troops from Rajasthan to the borders of Punjab and Jammu. This led to a confrontation with Pakistan. After talks in Delhi between foreign ministry officials the crisis was defused and a formula agreed for pulling back troops. This added to Rajiv Gandhi’s prestige and image as a world statesman.

While Rajiv preached peace and disarmament wherever he travelled abroad his politics towards Pakistan suggested he was much more ready than his predecessors to use the coercive power of India’s military might for foreign policy ends. Behind Rajiv’s statesmanship lay a steely determination to ensure India’s military rise following his illustrious mother and predecessor Indira Gandhi whose indomitable courage and political leadership in 1971 gave the country its greatest-ever military victory. He presided over the largest expansion ever of India’s defence forces. Defence expenditure doubled during his five years in office as his government strove to maintain and modernise the armed forces. The modernisation of armed forces involved the purchase of Howitzer guns (Bofors) from Sweden (which proved its mettle in Kargil), a second aircraft carrier (INS Virat) from the UK, Mirage-2000 from France besides the European Jaguar and Russian MiG-27. INS Chakra, on lease from Russia, made India the first non-nuclear power to operate a nuclear-powered submarine, thus making the naval force a “blue water Navy” capable of operating hundreds of miles from India’s shores. During Rajiv’s tenure, the Navy’s 99 vessels included two carriers, 12 submarines, 21 frigates and five destroyers, enough to deter any seaborne invasion. Rajiv himself stated, “the defence of India requires our undisputed mastery over the approaches to India by sea”.

The Brass Tacks crisis had strengthened Rajiv’s resolve not to hurry to Islamabad. It was to be December 1988 before he went there, making the first visit to the Pakistani capital by an Indian Prime Minister since Jawaharlal Nehru went in 1960 to sign the Indus Water Treaty. By the time of Rajiv’s visit, General Zia-ul-Haq had died in a plane crash, elections had taken place and Benazir Bhutto had become Prime Minister at the head of a minority government, the first truly civilian administration since her father, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was deposed in 1977.

Rajiv and Benazir got on a together extraordinarily well. Rajiv made it clear that it was as much the restoration of democratic government in Pakistan as the personal rapport he established that had made his first official visit to Pakistan a success. One concrete demonstration of this was that India no longer opposed the re-admission of Pakistan to the Commonwealth — it had pulled out after Commonwealth members recognised Bangladesh in 1972. Pakistan was readmitted in October 1989. Rajiv and Benazir met again the following July in Paris, during the celebration of the bicentenary of French revolution. Rajiv accepted Benazir’s invitation to stopover in Islamabad for a truly bilateral visit, albeit a brief one. At that meeting, they endorsed an understanding between the two countries’ foreign secretaries to try and defuse the tension that was regularly leading to fight between the two armies on the Siachen glacier. Benazir and Rajiv would have had another chance to demonstrate their new-found friendship at the 1989 Commonwealth Conference in Kuala Lumpur. However, the day he had been due to fly to Kuala Lumpur, October 17, Rajiv called the general election and cancelled his visit. It was, perhaps, just as well since by this time Benazir’s galloping detente with India was becoming a stick with which her own Opposition were trying to beat her. She returned home from Kuala Lumpur to defend herself in Parliament on a motion of no-confidence. While Benazir, who herself was assassinated a few years later, declared after she came to India to attend Rajiv’s funeral after his assassination on May 21, 1991: “With or, without us, that better world must be built, a world free of violence and hatred.” Twenty-five years later Bhutto’s Pakistan has moved much further away from that goal.

The writer, an ex-Army officer, is member, National Commission for Minorities. The views expressed by him are personal.