 We just wait for another 15-20 seconds to make sure all the attendees are with us. Good afternoon, everyone. My name is Avinash Pallival. I am the Deputy Director of the SOAS South Asia Institute and I would like to welcome you all this afternoon to the third webinar in the series of webinars on South Asia that we are hosting this term on India-Pakistan Relations Retrospect and Prospect. Having covered some ground on the domestic politics of Pakistan and the political economy of Bangladesh, in this session the idea is to really kind of look at some of the most enduring challenges, geopolitical challenges that South Asia faces and one of which of course is this continuously tormented relationship between India and Pakistan which always keeps its followers quite busy and quite hectic as we have seen in the past one week where there is increased firing at the line of control, there are allegations and counter allegations from both sides but there's no visible outlet or at least an emerging outlet for a conversation between the two sides. To discuss this bilateral relationship it's immediate and longer history but also where it is really headed. We have two really distinguished speakers with us today and for anyone who's following South Asian geopolitics none of them actually requires an introduction but I would be honored to introduce both of them. Dr. Happyman Jacob is an associate professor of diplomacy and disarmament at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. He's a columnist with Hindu and hosts a weekly show on national security at thewire.in. He's also a celebrated author of two recent books which he authored on the dynamics of the line of control called the line of control and line on fire, highly recommended. Our second speaker of course is Dr. Raisha Siddica. She is a research associate at the Center for International Studies and Diplomacy right here at Sylas. The PhD in war studies from King's College London and an author of two books on Pakistan's security military, Pakistan's arms procurement and military build-up. There are very few fruitful conversations that can be had about Pakistan's civil military relationship without referring to or without acknowledging the insights the deep insights that Aisha has offered to all of us especially on her on the military economy and the mill bus of Pakistan. Without further ado I would now request our first speaker who will speak for about 15 minutes Dr. Aisha Siddica to kind of lay out her thesis following which I'll request Dr. Jacob to come in. Once they have given their their their page once they have made their presentations we will open up the floor for questions and at that point you can feel free to either speak up raise your hand or you can put your questions in the questions and answer chat box at the bottom of this page but on that note Aisha the floor is all yours and thank you for joining us this afternoon. Thank you Avinash. Thank you Avinash Palival and thank you South Asia Institute of Sylas for holding this conversation on a on a topic which is not fashionable at the moment. I mean nobody talks about India, Pakistan peace at this point in time everybody's busy doing something else but definitely there is not the environment or mood at this point in time to talk about India, Pakistan relations or peace definitely not but let me very quickly then move on to say that why is I mean Pakistan and India used to talk we were I mean I'm definitely the generation which is used to seeing a conflict being talked about there would be these spurts of anger and violence and then you would suddenly have those troughs or valleys where there would be peace that come together and we've seen India, Pakistan talk to each other but what is it that makes today different today and let me tell you today I feel is different it's not the 80s it's not the 90s I mean I remember 1980s the entire 1980s it was either military exercises which created tension there was you know the the sea consurgency in in in Punjab in India's Punjab you know there was seha chin that happened then so there was a lot of activity and yet there was conversation now there isn't conversation why we're having an issue with conversation I think there are four fundamental changes that are they're taking place two are domestic two pertain to you know the domestic environment and two to political and geopolitical and let me state them both now the two domestic issues which I think are critical is that India and Pakistan are both changing India is shifting from a secular India to a very religion religious identity based a Hindutva based India Pakistan had never dealt with this India before we would talk about a Hindu India but never a Hindutva India so Pakistan is not used to that and it's a very critical change that that has come in in in many ways which is inspiring a lot of park Islamic nationalism it's not Islamism it's a different park Islamic Islamism it's it's a category in its own and I can talk about it in q&a so it's invoking this a different kind of a religious nationalism on both ends which then kind of super imposes and it it it strengthens the the the historical historic phenomena of the two nation of two nation theory in fact if generations of Pakistanis were not convinced that there was something like a two nation theory or that it was something I mean I've heard arguments while growing up that no no two nation theory actually people have lived together and and people have communicated yet now this two nation theory is making a lot of sense it is convincing a lot of people you can't walk beyond that at the moment I cannot many others cannot it's there culturally what is happening which is the second domestic shift that I'm talking about that for for Pakistan Pakistan and India were kind of despite the conflict they were culturally connected as well I mean Indian Pakistan made for a very interesting case study where culture has not a common culture has not helped them traverse the conflict and the divide it has the cultural the conflict has happened despite the cultural connection and yet what we've also seen that now what I think makes it a very kind of tedious highly problematic is that now there is that a cultural disconnect is very slowly happening in Pakistan side there is you know there is turkey Turkish dramas which are which are happening Turkish music I mean we are the we are the people who would sing and dance to I mean I've had I've heard instances where military men getting married fighting on borders would come back you know attend their weddings and dance to Bollywood music being played so that could happen now Pakistan is searching for slowly searching for a new identity a much more Islamic identity a more kind of European liberal Islamic tradition of sorts and and and therefore I think for me that is something to look at very carefully that that disconnection means that it's going to kind of further so sorry further reduce possibility of what we are talking about we can sit still go to the conversation and have conversation but what the question is what now geopolitically two important shifts have happened and this cultural and political domestic political feeds into it so geopolitically the one major shift which has happened is article 370 India's change off of the status of Kashmir it's a huge one now maybe from time to time we know that historically Indian Pakistan have come together tried to have a conversation on Kashmir try to solve it I mean from Tashkent to Shimla to you know to Lahore declaration there have been times when governments have thought about all right let's talk trade first Kashmir later try to solve Kashmir through trade and and other ways of communication have a comprehensive dialogue or you know Shimla and Tash can talk about Kashmir itself but here's a situation when Kashmir in a way from India's perspective has been the issue has been put to rest on Pakistan side it has come as of course as a surprise but it's taken almost taken an initiative away and it's and it strikes at the existential issue of Pakistan of Pakistan's existence as a Muslim state in South Asia has been so dependent on Kashmir and this is despite that in Pakistan's part of Kashmir the changes that we see in India now with 370 and all has happened in a different style in for example Gilgit Baltistan in case of Gilgit Baltistan I can talk about it more during Q&A and how you know how Pakistan did it but anyway it has struck at a very significant court Kashmir is a major the change in Kashmir is major the second shift that is taking place is the power arrangement the geopolitical global geopolitical power arrangement in the form of you know the Indo-Pacific strategy off of the US and Europe and how it connects with with South Asia now there is China which is you know which is Pakistan China had had traditionally they've had relations since I would say 1955 and now despite that it's like putting Pakistan in a box Pakistan doesn't want to be in a box yet it has to be in a box and there is and and and there is this larger Indo sorry US China conflict which will kind of draw in both India and Pakistan you know in a in a fundamental way and what impact does it have this is something which is much larger which is much bigger and it's going to have impact on how we perceive each other and how we have a conversation now with all these changes happening I think the possibility of conflict is much higher and conflict is not just going to war I mean the possibility where we are kind of inches away I mean we have a new environment in which Delhi seems to be much more eager or much more forthcoming in striking back when when when there is any you know when whenever there is action from from Pakistan's side of the divide be it militants or be the military we see the increase in tension on the LOC all of that is happening now there is that factor and then you know there is so conflict has increased but also the war of narratives has exacerbated what we see recently you know Pakistan the DJI SI and and sorry DJI SPR into service public relations and the foreign minister gave a press conference in which they talked about a dossier dossier containing evidence what Pakistan considers evidence of India's involvement in in in uh in breeding terrorism in in in Pakistan now that dossier is basically uh you know whatever the details may be there and whatever the meat may be in a dossier but here is evidence of a Pakistan ready to fight a war of narratives which it had never done before it's ready to do that it's ready to go out into the world and say look you think I'm bad I'm not the only one bad in this region there is India as well doing similar thing uh so both countries are ready for conflict some form of conflict be through uh words and or be through guns where is talk where is conversation and all of that uh sadly uh and interestingly this is not even a time when you have a fruitful track to or a back channel uh dialogue and what we saw again very recently through um this famous uh or notorious whatever term you may use for it interview uh of uh Pakistan special assistant to prime minister national security with Yusuf his interview with Karan Thapar uh very clearly the message that came out was Pakistan is not interested in talk um I mean I would I would really want to engage happy man in in that conversation uh he probably may know more than I do because it seems that some kind of tiny conversation was happening like a background music somewhere um you know was it with the Americans was it independently India and Pakistan but what SAPM a national security did was scuttle any possibility that there could be uh for a conversation how do we get on to a conversation Indian Pakistan our neighbors you can't you can't get away from that reality how do you get back to the table uh and the question I think I would want to ask is myself and and others on happy man and you know I hope we can have this conversation is how do you start a conversation is track to the way is the track to that we've had traditionally the way I mean these track tools for whatever their worth have not actually brought in anything meaningful we have people who sat on track tools may have learned a bit more about how the other side felt but then how do you move from point a to b forget about point a to z how do you move from point a to b there's so many issues that that are happening um is it is it is it ever possible to think about getting well meaning people from both sides together on a table you know maybe through zoom or some something uh have them talk about what are the doables take responsibility for uh you know for for peace uh what we've seen in track two is that those actors who were involved in track two would never kind of utter a word despite that they were not part of track one they have behaved like track one when the need arose so how do you kind of move on from there uh so so I think essentially I would have learned a lot today if we could have a discussion and and figure out that in this environment where conversation has seems difficult how do you start a conversation uh we are stakeholders we are stakeholders in a joint future even that may it may be disjointed uh pakistan and india have had you know historically from 1948 onwards pakistan india have had 10 agreements shimla tashkin liakat nehru uh agreement then you have had non-nuclear agreement of uh 1988 several then the latest being kartarpur agreement yet uh should we be just satisfied and happy and sit back and say all right the times when we when when peace returns when conversation returns to the table we can have agreements this is not the time the question is how do you then with these structural changes taking place in south asia how do you get back to the table is it even worth it and if it's worth it then how should we carry forward i shall thank you so much for such a comprehensive sort of outlay of of the contemporary history and the issues that are really kind of defining this relationship both at a domestic level uh in pakistan and india but also the geopolitics a bit happy there's a lot of food for thought here especially also as as aisha kind of you know very importantly mentioned the role of various platforms and which platform may or may not work but i don't want that i mean the floor is all yours we can come back to the issue of track two and various other processes and platforms you know and they're efficacy but for now the floor is all yours thank you avinas i'm really very grateful to be so as south asia institute and avinas yourself for this very kind invitation i'm also thankful to you for the very generous introduction that you gave um i must say i'm honored to be on the panel with the asia syndica who i consider to be one of the best analysts of our region or the finest minds in our region on geopolitics and on on india pakistan relations in particular asia actually gave us a very historically balanced and informed big picture so i'm going to focus more on the sort of contemporary state of affairs and again as she sort of drawn this picture i think this is probably one of the lowest points in india pakistan relations and it's it's it's it's sort of increasingly getting worse as days pass what started in the 2019 august in some ways is it's sort of still playing out and i think this will continue to shape india pakistan relations for the foreseeable future much of the much of 2020 was spent by the two countries in name calling each other and i think again i just pointed out there has been very little contact bilaterally nor is there any appetite for any contact bilaterally there are no high commissioners in each other's countries there is no formal dialogue process going on between the two sides mind you between two nuclear capable countries there are absolutely no dialogue happening no high commissioners and no back channel dialogue since 2014 since the time bjp government came to power in delhi we have not had any back channel contact with the pakistani side barring a few instances of some some conversations and pakistan has also up the ante by releasing a new map of pakistan and and now currently accusing india of carrying out terror attacks within within within pakistan and as far as kashmiri is concerned there seems to be little appetite in delhi to reach out to the aggrieved kashmiris um on the one hand uh and as i said pakistan has up the ante in kashmir and i have in front of me the data um on c-spire violations on terror infiltrations on terror attacks etc etc just to give you a sense of what i'm trying to say in the year 2011 we had just 62 c-spire violations in the year 2014 we had 583 violations and in this year until october 23 we have had 3800 violations um just to clarify what is c-spire violation it's a c-spire violation is um what happens within a 24-hour period in a 40 to 70 kilometer area between the two sides it could be hundreds of thousands of shots by any kind of weapon so that's what we are talking about so into 3800 that's the data for this year kashmir in many ways is the mother of all india pakistan context so let me focus on kashmir for a minute before i uh go forward is there that does delhi have a theory of wikli or an end game in kashmir uh if s what does it look like um now before i sort of explain if there is a theory of wikli or not let me also make it very clear that i i think the uh 2019 august decision which meant two things withdrawing the special status that was given to kashmir traditionally and um dividing the state of jibu and kishmir into two union territories and bring them under the indian union government uh i think this is a domestic indian decision a contested one and that's something that many of us in india deeply disagree with but i am not so sure that pakistan really has a local standard on this particular issue um and i'm happy to go through each part of the decision uh should there be any question during the question answer session but let me let me sort of very briefly try and uh address what i think are the indian strategies in kashmir at this point of time uh number one i think there is a um active um um you know attempt in the uh on the indian side to sideline the moderate separatists and mainstream politicians in kashmir and we've seen tweets by various indian ministers and the actions of the indian state and secondly i think there is an attempt at creating new political formations and political narratives in in kashmir this is for the for the government of india a battle of narratives so you you've seen the mushrooming of parties like the apni party in jibu and kishmir to sort of create a new narrative and formation within jibu and kishmir and the third i think strategy is to sort of shift the focus uh um from kishmir to the what what is what what is called in india the pakistan occupied kashmir uh so the focus is on that so the government of india says if we have to talk about kashmir we will talk about pakistan occupied kashmir and not on the indian kashmir uh and there is of course a slow withdrawal of restrictions as far as uh kashmir is concerned of the releasing of political prisoners or reinstating internet access etc um and what these strategies um so what what what can this if i may if i may sort of characterize these strategies i would say that these are clearly clearly unilateral strategies from the indian side they certainly do not take on board the popular kashmiri demands uh and and definitely not pakistani sensitivities on the kashmir question uh nudely's vision for kashmir um at this point of time seems to be a short term one to contain violence and manage the narrative within within kashmir and on kashmir uh to that extent therefore this is a non-conciliatory and winner takes all theory of victory which i think would have long-term strategic implications there is absolutely no grand strategic plan to pacify kashmiris sensitivities more so to less more more so to settle the kashmir conflict in general now let me sort of try and turn my attention towards what i think the pakistani strategies in kashmir i think it's become very obvious in the recent past that um pakistan wants to kashmir shame india in various international forums and coordinate condemnation of india in in the nationally right i mean it has not really met with much success but there is a lot of coordination happening with with malaysia irki china iran etc etc but i would say this has not really met with much success the important that i think the most dangerous part of this strategy is really casting doubt on the shimla agreement um retired pakistani officials um close to the establishment having the recent past made the argument that the indian decision in august 29 um has basically nullified the shimla agreement of 1972 which actually forms the basis of india pakistan bilateral relations including the management of the line of control in kashmir that it is no more valid to my mind this certainly has definite and long-term strategic implications clearly the pakistani strategy also involves increasing the heat in kashmir um that means clearly aiding and abetting infiltration across the line of control and coordination among various federal groups within the kashmir valley um now if you look at these two sets of strategies what you see is that you are the two sides are adopting zero-sum positions which i think is clearly unsustainable in the long run um the situation in in kashmir may actually become too hot to handle for the indian government when the restrictions when the double lockdown as it were the kashmir lockdown and the covid lockdown sort of get lifted increasingly and they might they will have to happen of course um at some point of time let me also very quickly um sort of try and focus a little bit on the potential for escalation between the two sides um you have had a number of terror attacks in the recent past and even before um um 2019 um august but the indian response to these uh terror attacks in kashmir have been uh has been i would say muted um that's of course because these are small scale attacks on the one hand and have not really enjoyed high visibility so um logically therefore in my opinion if the intensity of these attacks and the visibility of these attacks were to increase i would say balakot like strikes cannot be ruled out why do i say that um for two reasons one i think the lesson learned by the indian decision makers in some in some sense from the balakot episode of early 29 seems to be that thanks to its superiority in conventional weaponry india can carry out limited military conventional military strikes against pakistan even across the international border without provoking perhaps a tactical nuclear response from pakistan um now on the other hand pakistan seems to be um emboldened by the loc lsc standard with the between india and china right i mean um the the the pakistani perception about this seems to be that china has put india in its place um on the line of actual control uh and it might actually provide a lot more confidence to pakistan to increase the heat um on india in in in in in kashmir um the problem is this modi's loss of phase on the line of actual control um domestically because modi said nothing has happened with the line of actual control which a lot of people do not believe uh may actually force him to take radical steps which are with pakistan should pakistan try something uh drastic and high visibility um on the line of control so i think there is a real issue when it comes to escalation because the lesson learned in balakot is that we can do it and get away with that and secondly the loss of phase on the china front may actually prompt mr modi and the vgp government to take more forceful steps on the line of line of control so what next for india pakistan relations um i think um uh kashmir will come in the way of any potential india pakistan conversation as i pointed out earlier from the pakistani point of view uh discussing kashmir is an absolute must for india kashmir is not on the agenda for any potential conversation with pakistan one due to domestic political reasons and and and perhaps also due to the sankh course was too much has been invested by the vgp government uh vis-a-vis kashmir and it would be difficult for them to go back on that uh and secondly the government of india also from from a from a sort of naja institutional point of view believes that past attempts at creating peace in kashmir really haven't really provided any dividends and therefore there's no point in talking to pakistan on the kashmir question um so i think because kashmir is the mother of all india pakistan conflicts um the this the potential step will have to be taken on on kashmir by the indian side or for the india and pakistan the question is will that happen well one way to perhaps go about this is to sort of fly and return the statehood to jammu and kashmir which may uh which may alleviate some pressure uh from the local kashmiris which could also potentially prompt the pakistani to sort of reach out to the indian side through the back channel and say all right now you have you have returned statehood to kashmir you have brought about that a certain amount of normalcy to kashmir um and we can perhaps think of revisiting the musher of manmohan formula uh in in some shape or form through the back channel this is perhaps the only in my opinion where forward is it easy to get to that stage i don't think it is easy easy to get get to that stage simply because there is absolutely no appetite as it were but before i end i sort of want to say um that this is not only the um what really one of the lowest moments in india pakistan relations uh but also importantly india pakistan relations have reached a crossroads of sorts for a number of reasons um the appetite for improving bilateral relationship is very limited to non-existence a non-extent non-existent uh while pakistan seems to be grouping with china russia and perhaps countries like iran and turkey as i shall point it out from a larger broader strategic point perspective india is going towards um further towards united states and western powers so they are they are sort of um in many ways in the opposing opposing camps to put it very loosely we do not know how the new administration in washington dc will approach the situation in the region but one thing is for sure us is unlikely to push india on talks with pakistan or on kashmir or on the human rights issue certainly not publicly given dc stakes vis-a-vis china and how dc sees india's role vis-a-vis china in the region so from a uh broad international structural point of view what we are witnessing is a major shift uh wherein two distinct two world views and camps are getting solidified and this will impact how conflict resolution takes place in the region the growing cultural disconnect that isha pointed out is also very very significant in this context this will further skew the um uh sort of space that we have in india towards reconciliation with pakistan and the space that pakistan has within pakistan within the civil society of pakistan for building peace with india also the pakistani allegations recent allegations about india carrying out terror attacks against pakistan or funding terror attacks against pakistan i think you know they have not really gone down well in daily and this will be a bigger stumbling block in the in the days to come and one doesn't know the sense of triumphalism in pakistan about the afghan question and and and the repair of daliban to Kabul in some shape or form how that will impact its own its own view of regional politics as it were so i'll conclude with this one one statement avinash so in my opinion this means the following um international pressure to talk in general um on kashmir or terrorism or bilaterally in general i think will be fended off pretty easily by both india and pakistan um and the pressure is not going to be that much in any case the united states and the and and the west's ability to influence mediate shape um the bilateral conversation is drastically decreasing today uh washington this is ability to mediate during a crisis should there be a crisis between the two sides would be much less compared to the previous crisis um several the the cargo crisis for example so this could also mean therefore if there is no pressure or ability to mediate from the international community side this could also potentially lead to more risk taking tendencies on either side and the potential for accidental escalation etc i know i'm not this is certainly not a rosy picture but i just wanted to put these facts on the table as i see them i'm happy to sort of take any any questions thank you so much avinash thank you so much for that it really kind of you know brings to to call for the the central issues that are that are that remain salient to both the countries and as you said kashmir is the mother of all issues here that we are talking about and of course historically we have seen both countries have very different perceptions about the issue and very different radically different strategies and you mentioned india and pakistan are at crossroads uh but they are in opposing camps it kind of really kind of you know what the cold war scenario is also to some extent in in front of me where there is a history of india and pakistan actually navigating through global shifts without actually changing what is central to their interests right during the cold war india was talking to the soviet union even if there was a whole idea of non-alignment which was which was influential in india's policy thought whereas you pakistan had taken a very clear alliance you know with with the west with united states in many ways we can see that these region of this right this tribal india pakistan rivalry is actually endured all these geopolitical shifts whether it is the cold war whether it's the 1990s unilateral moment of power you know global power for the united states the so-called global war on terror post 2001 and over the past five years this resurgence of nationalism and this you know the so-called new cold war 2.2 as some are calling it between china and its regional and global adversaries both of you have given a lot really to kind of unpack here both from a domestic perspective and from a geopolitical regional and international perspective before we open the session before we uh before i request our audiences to kind of you know bring in the questions and comments and i can see already in the q and s box there are already questions and comments one quick points one quick questions to both of you aisha and happy then you can take it in conjunction with with other questions we can have more than one question at a time what is it if tomorrow the leaderships of these countries decide that this is unsustainable as both of you have underlined that given the situation between india and china new deli realizes it cannot fight or even comprehend in earnest a two and a half front conflict as is common to debate in deli that there is some pacification of you know relationships that needs to happen either with china or with pakistan and it seems that pakistan is more doable than china given the given the intensity the global intensity of the sino-indian rivalry how is it that the leadership especially a bjp leadership which has banked so much on the rhetoric and the practices espouse within the rubric of hindu to our hindu nationalism wherein you know there is very kind of partisan communal flavors to its electoral logics to its kind of mass appeal in india how does it go to its core constituencies and explain to them and kind of seek their support to actually have that kind of a conversation because aisha mentioned this cultural disconnect that is happening between the two countries i you i agree with you happen in that back channel perhaps is the only way the manohan musher of back channel is perhaps the only way but to my mind that's only the first step that is not the end point for an end point of this relationship to stabilize we need to have a larger conversation between the public's of india and pakistan how does bjp build on a particular kind of back channel if let's assume it takes place and aisha similarly in the case of pakistan we have known through your scholarship and various other kind of works that we have read there is a very abiding interest in ensuring you know this whole idea of pakistani identity and the centrality of kashmir in there how is it that pakistan tomorrow would go and convince its own constituencies you know whoever the military leadership sees as its constituents whether it's the co-commander whether it's their own military rank and file whether it's the larger public how do they convince them that whatever conversation they're having with india is actually you know may or may not lead towards peace you know how do the how do the shape their own public perceptions in one way i would say given mass communication and given the kind of social media communication and various kind of this community this technological revolution it might be easier for them to put their narratives this in this war of narratives but can they really convince people to come together and actually solve these issues if and when they wanted to go do you think that ship has sailed and now it's too late i'll keep i will i will now also open the floor for for any questions to all of you who are there thank you again for joining us this afternoon we have a couple of you actually quite a few questions now coming up in the q&a box but if you want to speak up please raise your hands i'll be happy to invite you to speak up your question to articulate it but if you write it down i'll introduce your name and i'll spell out the question to aisha and happy man so so aisha okay let's let's start with these these points the domestic politics of india pakistan relations and do you think anything you know they can move ahead fruitfully even if there is a back channel in the making draw your attention to words which is that there is a structural shift much bigger than what we saw in the past now for the back channel to start the back channel has to start on the basis of some interest amongst the people uh and an argument or a narrative uh out in the public that there is actually a benefit from india pakistan conversation what i'm trying to say is that that conversation in itself that you know let's meet we've not known each other we've fought each other for so long but let's meet let's test each other let's see where we can uh you know narrow the uh the divide now that interest seems to be receding it's almost not there uh india is it's talked about it brings out pakistani nationalism yet it's not the main interest uh you know in the past and where the board seems to have sailed away is that in the past you've had a political system where politicians could bring bring back i mean i think the last high point was when navash Sharif was was pakistan's prime minister and he started off with uh his his he's he actually started off his third tenure by talking about i'm i want to have trade with india uh and and this is a conversation and he what he was doing was adding on to the conversation that had gone on between manmohan singh and musharah i mean let's not forget that even before uh you know there was before musharah there was the lahore declaration so havash sharif vajpayee then we move on to musharah musharah who did kargil yet he realized somewhere that no he had to make build those bridges we now have a generation of uh military commanders who do not who are much more organic that way uh who do not have i mean i remember that uh something which strikes me is that when musharah was the army chief was probably the last time uh the the indian army chief on the other hand was somebody whose family had migrated from pakistan what is now pakistan so that was the last time that we had generals at the top who were from each other's country right now there is lesser interest there is that disconnect coming now the change that has happened in pakistan which needs to be understood which is further being solidified by how deli has dealt with uh you know kashmir issue and others is that pakistan is saying no i'm not going to shy away the pakistani establishment saying i'm not going to shy away from saying that india is equally responsible for everything bad that's happening i'm not the only criminal in the room or i'm not the only uh you know person to be to be blamed for for for all these uh changes so there's a new narrative which is setting in so back channel for just to for so for any regime in islamabad to sell back channel would now be a much harder world than it used to be and let's suppose now let's suppose an imagine in imaginary that navasharif manages to come back even for him to restart the dialogue will be a much harder task he would have come i mean the the geopolitical uh realities the the regional political realities are now also very dependent on your domestic they have a domestic constituency the domestic audience and they're they're connected with domestic realities so if for example the opposition uh you know and and by opposition political opposition i mean navasharif manages to get back to power uh on the back there'll always be this argument of i mean the narrative has been built to the extent when it will become that will be difficult actually it will be difficult for him to restart the lord the dialogue or uh the later dialogue he'd have to be much more cautious much more careful i would argue that perhaps there is a need for people uh you know for for experts for people who interested in this india pakistan uh reprochma or or a more positive relationship to actually think out of the box for how do you despite this disconnect how do you keep that interest intact in each other i mean today i can live without not going to his india uh i can live without being disconnected from india we've had a period when this was not the case now it's different and now it's connecting with realities i mean there there is terrorism there is this war and and and the fact is that now there is much less push external push on on the region i mean i've been talking to people uh since uh you know american elections trying to figure out who's going to be doing what uh in the biden administration and the answer that i get from washington is that look listen um south asia is somewhere really low uh on on biden's priority first it will be covered america domestic then it will be europe south asia is really down so despite that there is this china thing uh it's also fact that south asia is not significant but which also then means that there will be less pressure on pakistan and india to have a dialogue to actually look into their existing attitudes and uh their perspectives and and do something else one last point uh that i would i would make to what happy mon was saying about uh possibility of of of uh another bala court i think what bala court pulwama bala court uh taught uh india and pakistan what are we what we can learn from that is that both countries went away with very different uh lessons from that conflict and it is pakistan's what pakistan has learned is not that uh india could unilaterally take any action that pakistan the lesson is that india could take a unilateral action but then pakistan could forcefully respond as well and in fact if we tie it in with emerging geopolitics the lesson for pakistan is that look it would be in america's greater interest to uh actually avoid that kind of uh a conflict from from happening especially if it wants india on its side if america wants india on its side to fight china so to contain conflict would be of international interest and therefore that's where what pakistan one of the lessons that pakistan has learned through decades of conflict with india that you will raise the stakes regionally in order for international community to come in and and and save the moment uh and this time it's not wouldn't be just saving the moment for the region between south asia but also for uh you know global politics i mean i think the the the problem is that um you know earlier on the governments in india and i'm sure in pakistan engaged in a certain rhetoric about each other um for public consumption right and yet they had a certain policy of engaging each other in a particular manner towards conflict resolution etc there was a there was an underlying desire to go to the negotiating table to discuss outstanding issues and perhaps you know reach a rapprochement so there was a there was a you know difference between rhetoric and policy and i think that is changing to the today rhetoric is policy and your policy is informed by your rhetoric there is so even though the a lot of indians and pakistanis were not really you know happy with each other the governments knew at some point of time that they have to talk to each other as man wants and put it you can't change your neighbor that was the underlying belief that belief is changing today today there is a feeling that you can't do without open to pakistan you can't do without resolving your outstanding conflicts with pakistan and i think so there is this this this fundamental difference in the well done show in in pakistan and india i think that again isa isa pointed towards that when she talked about the cultural disconnect etc feeding feeding to that in some way i think that the the diminishing returns from a certain peace building process uh to me to my mind that is why having said that you know if i were to sort of simulate um and build a scenario as to sort of how the two sides could potentially get back on the negotiating table i would say if i were to be a decision maker in india i would say hey wait a minute we have a you know so-called two and a half two and a half front situation today what do we do about that i mean this is this is this is china on the one hand it's a huge military power rising superpower on the one hand in the eastern front and you have pakistan on the western front we have a situation in kashmir so from my national interest point of view i need to break that up i need to break that two point two point five uh two and a half front situation how do i do that i do that by way of reaching out to the kashmiris and pacifying the situation in kashmir and engaging pakistan in a back channel conversation the trouble with that is at this point of time the decision makers in delhi um haven't really reached that conclusion that it is useful to break up that two and a half two and a half front situation and that is useful for national interest for several reasons one as i said earlier too much has been invested towards the rhetoric on kashmir right a certain myth building has been done from a military point of view of the central term too many sunk calls we saw in kashmir so it's not easy to sort of go back from that and that if you do go back then there are audience calls which the government of india is not sort of keen to accept at this point of time given the kind of uh given the nature of the government that is in power um i i on the other hand uh you know if when you look at when the government of india looks at pakistan uh it gets mixed messages um will it be possible for the government of india to get into a negotiation negotiation and then sustain that negotiation without any hindrances very briefly in in terrorist circles i'll take you back to 2014 onwards um i would say the uh mr modi started out quite well in 2014 he invited the washery for this wedding ceremony in 2015 december he went to uh lahore in an for an impromptu visit um and even after the potankot attack um you know he sort of played it down in fact he invited the pakistan investigation team to come to potankot etc and no return invitation was received by india i think things started changing after the uri attack in many ways so it is not as if mr modi did not give it a try uh from the government of india's point of i'm not i'm not spokesperson i'm an analyst i'm trying to understand from this point of view he gave it a try it didn't work because terrorism continued unabated in his sort of understanding so for him to sort of um he changed the ones from 20 50 2014 to 2016 a part a certain part was followed and 2016 to 2020 a different part is followed now for him to go back to the 2015 2014 mood there has to be there will have to be assurances that hey if you take a certain path and that path will take you somewhere otherwise it is going to be very difficult for modi to say we face domestically to get into another conversation which is either fruitless or counterproductive um so i think given the given the recent accusations and the the recent recent statements by the pakistani side my own feeling is that and by staying as as aisha correctly pointed out um the s a p m on the pakistani side um said that india reached out for conversations and we said no which is preempting any potential contact with the pakistani side any potential including uh a back channel conversation uh with with the pakistani so now too you got to be very careful why making such statements why because you are basically saying that even if you come back for a conversation tomorrow we are not interested that that is closing the door so on the indian side there seems to be a certain thinking developing about a dialogue and on the pakistani side they seem to have closed the door so i think we are we are in dire straits as it were uh as far as the back conversation is concerned it would take a lot of courage and statesmanship on both sides even if they were to engage in a back channel conversation i mean thank you so much for that point now in terms of opening up the flow what i'll do is i'll we take questions in the sets of three if that's fine by both with both of you because there are quite a few questions and i want to give as many of our participants a chance to be able to ask the question what i'll do is i'll read out two questions which are literally listed from the top on the q and a session and i'll once i've listed those questions i'll invite professor guru bal Singh whose uh mentioned here highlighted here as team know-how to spell out come and speak up his question so the first question here is by ramesh balakrishnan and he mentioned something what you know happy man you just ended your your point with is this uh preempting of a dialogue by by the sapm of pakistan moid use of ramesh's question is that he did not moid use of did not entirely do loud dialogue but he did mention that pakistan wants india to fulfill two conditions before talks can possibly begin of course reinstatement of article 370 and removing of restrictions in jamu and kishmir given that india is unlikely to go back on either of these issues broadly speaking can a track to dialogue tackle this thorny problem of how the two sides can step back from the brink you mentioned happy when you mentioned that it would take a lot of far sight of you know kind of strategic foresight and courage among the leadership of both countries to take a process forward but as someone who is very who has been intimately involved in the track to processes for many years do you think that is something that can help and i i i just you know i shall mention that there were problems there were issues with that kind of that that kind of track to what are your thoughts on that the second question is more directed towards aisha by ragav and his question is that with imran khan resorting to the kind of personal attacks and modi and the government of india do you see any scope or feasibility of engagement and has general bhajwa's tenure extension weakened the edifice of the pakistani army a very important question because we often forget that it's not just the civil military relationship but also the politics of the the politics within pakistan security establishment which is often very consequential thank you to ramesh and raghav for that for those very interesting questions uh professor goodhead paul singh can i invite you to now spell out your question as well thank you so much yeah can you hear me yes um okay my question i'm sorry it's coming up as team know how it's a new computer from curry so it's not a university computer um my question is to both both presenters it's namely that india and pakistan are regional powers albeit with nuclear weapons and that they only get onto the global scene when they are a nuisance when they threaten world peace and so in that sense um you know whatever the cultural similarities and other factors which have been mentioned it's partly it's only a only a crisis will bring them to their senses as it were so can i ask the contributors to reflect on that because i think you know states act in their interests and other factors are largely irrelevant thank you so much for that question goodhead paul happy man this time can i request you to take the first tab and the questions right um thank you avinash um you know on this question that mr christian raised um about about the two preconditions that uh dr use of uh put forward in his um interview with current popper i think in my in my personal opinion as an analyst and i've known you so dr use of for a very long time um i think this is not this is not great statecraft um if you do want a conversation if you do want a dialogue with india um you don't put out these preconditions publicly um i think that is not useful these preconditions if any have to be conveyed through the proper channel in a proper manner that states are used to so i thought i so my opinion therefore this piece of a was not genuine this was point scoring at the best and therefore um not not very not very um useful um you know the i you know sometimes people make a um do not make a distinction between back channel dialogue and the track to conversation right a back channel dialogue is um done by um representatives appointed by the government for example you had um Tariqa sees mr Tariqa sees on the pakistani side and mr patin the lamba on the indian side negotiating um um on behalf of manmohan singh and musharov on kishmir from 2004 to 2008 and and many others came on board thereafter um including riyaz pomekan etc so they directly report to their prime minister slash president and taking puts from the highest leadership in order to carry on a conversation and the 2004 2008 conversation actually uh did lead to a sort of a quasi agreement in 2007 june mr dr manmohan singh was supposed to visit pakistan to sort of agree to a certain understanding on kishmir but unfortunately the lawyer lawyer's agitation against mr general musharov spoiled the uh spoiled the party as it were so it is not as if back channel conversations cannot um achieve anything back channel conversations can achieve a lot of things should there be desire um on on both sides to do that but at this point of time the question is not about the existence of non-existence of a back channel uh the non-existence of a back channel is indicative of the fact that there is no desire for um any rapprochement any conversation at this point of time as far as uh track two is concerned you know track two is a very very different animal altogether you know track two is carried out by uh retired civil servants as aisha pointed out um some academics uh people who are assumed to have a certain fraction within the government the objective is not to be radically different from what the governments believe at a certain point of time but to sort of feed into the possibility of a you know conversation between the two sides rather than completely opposing the two governments narrative as it were so um in many ways therefore the track to create a certain normative framework create a certain um you know environment in in each country um which could potentially promote a dialogue between the two sides it also very importantly may i say um track two also sustains the space and constituencies on either side or in a future conversation uh with again as aisha pointed out with the cultural disconnect that we have today if we proceed on this path there will be nobody left tomorrow in India or Pakistan who are willing to understand each other or talk to each other and also this this also helps in many ways to sort of provide fresh ideas and recommendations to either government as and when they are willing to take on board some of these suggestions i can tell you for instance um some of us have been talking about the line of control of firing for the last five years and we have remember there is no ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan it's only a telephone conversation between the two armies so we have prepared several pages of recommendations on how a ceasefire agreement between India and Pakistan should look like retired army officers on the Indian side and Pakistani office of Pakistani side and some civilian academics we've sort of put these things together when the governments wants to governments want to sort of take a look at it they can do that but coming coming to the second point that professor Singh made i'm not so sure i quite get the question i got his argument which is India and Pakistan sort of become a matter of discussion in the international community only when they create problems how when there when there is a crisis between the two sides Kargil parliament Mumbai etc i'm not so sure what is the question here so perhaps i can revisit this question after Aisha answers this yeah um let me try to kind of respond to professor Singh's question and i kind of suspect that you know probably i've got what he's trying to say uh yes unfortunately it's only in a crisis that Indian Pakistan come to international attention uh but uh there is a change which is happening uh or uh this is a change that deli assumes is happening uh for the first time south asia which was and and and in within south asia india which was kind of secondary i mean firstly south asia was always secondary for the international community for the for the western political world geopolitical world now it's for the first time that india is becoming central to it so it's uh to answer the question it's going beyond crises uh so south asia could would be looked at during crisis but from indian perspective this is probably the first time that it's beyond the crisis that world is looking at it but yes of course crisis brings back attention to to india and pakistan um and and and and as a region in in some ways in as a region together india and pakistan uh and uh what has happened in the past uh decade uh the warrant era that somehow pakistan got disjointed from india de-bracketed from india by by western debate and discussion and it got bracketed with afghanistan so instead of indopark what we had we were we have afback uh and it has had uh you know uh it has had a play over thinking of of uh international politics on on the region how the region was kind of uh thought about uh but i think unfortunately at at at it's it's also a very uh you know lack of leadership limited thinking i think uh the one time we've had under manmohan Singh and and later later even under Narendra Modi uh we we did uh you know and and nabashri from on pakistan's side uh we did have a leadership which for momentarily thought about rising uh above the crises in actually resetting the relationship in pakistan's case it was also a paradigm shift so to speak uh i mean interestingly the period that again is not that well studied when needs more attention in pakistan is that the third tenure of of of nabashiris it was for the first time that uh he was talking about not just cpec which is china pakistan economic corridor which means political economic relations with china which pakistan has not had with china before uh pakistan has had military strategic ties with with china but this was uh political economic ties with china but at the same time having a very serious conversation on economy and trade with india and if that had worked it would have been a major paradigm shift for pakistan uh and and and so to kind of uh finish on answering uh professor singh's question i think there was a moment when we could have the region could have done beyond crisis but we are back to the same cycle uh you know we we are uh you know at the best of times we tend to behave uh you know like a second world war veteran militaries and and and post colonial states who cannot reimagine relationships differently unfortunately going to the the the second question that way um you know the second question about bhajwa's extension and all uh yes pakistan is going through this uh an inner dialogue as well uh i'm not saying that there guarantees of its success of opposition parties including pmln and some ways the ppp and and juif trying to push back uh bhajwa's extension is for me is not the issue here for me uh it is how uh military leadership is negotiating its internal relationships i mean if if if uh it's it's almost become like a like a habit that every general tends to now ask for an extension um i i think this is a serious dialogue pakistan should have internally you know uh a dialogue with the between the military in the parliament and within the military itself how long should be the tenure of a of finamiji three years five years what instead of running after instead of hiding behind extensions extension should be done away with um and but even with or without extension i think there is uh a uh a powerful uh narrative that the military has which has become further strengthened with article 370 on the one hand and the other uh you know the whole new narrative that is now will now emerge from pakistan that india is engaged in serious terrorism in pakistan uh so irrespective of who gets an extension or not this will be the new narrative and that's how it should be seen um the the the question on very brief comment on on on the first question about 370 and what moid yusuf was was trying to do um and the point is that uh you know even i think i where i think i didn't agree with you know uh dr yusuf's uh strategy or tactic uh at all was that you know there are times when countries need back channel and they seriously need back channel for their own benefit not for the other forget about india pakistan peace uh they needed for themselves and to actually put conversation of that back channel in the public uh domain uh is i think was not being fair to pakistan itself pakistan might need that back channel for its own purpose and therefore uh that's why i think it was scuttling a dialogue not starting a dialogue uh putting conditionalities is is uh is is another uh whole problem in itself and and so and i think what the the problem with the track two and and there i would kind of uh you know i hope happy mon uh doesn't kind of uh minded but i think that's where i have an issue with track two uh track two was theoretically not meant to be track one or an extension of track one uh we've had experience of track two uh you know in the middle east uh you know palestinians uh with israelis um and you know this has happened with with egypt and israel many other places where where track twos have happened now track twos are meant to be glued into uh into the conversation of track one they can they they're you know they're supposed to listen to what track one is saying where they have to be independent of track of track one in india pakistan's case track two has been really replicating they've been replicating track one and therefore uh so what we have is i mean i've seen uh and and this was a study which was done for foundation initially united states um they financed the track two and then they did an audit of the track two and they figured out that it was actually not being useful and i think uh british fco and others need to really think how track twos uh in case of indian pakistan to finance by the fco how they are actually uh doing what are they what benefits are they providing are they giving new ideas at all uh and i think it's very important and and i think for me the biggest failure is that whenever there is a crisis between india pakistan those stakeholders that are track two who shouldn't be part of the track one exactly behave begin to behave like track one uh you know there's no condemnation there's no uh statement there's nothing to kind of give one hope that track two is thinking very further away from from uh track two is thinking further away from track one so perhaps a different set of dialogue needs to be sought out uh people are engaged i mean people uh indian pakistan will remain relevant despite the different for each other despite different narratives and i think this is a moment when no dialogue seems possible that something needs to be dug out thank you i shall thank you happy man uh what i'll do now is uh we have 15 odd minutes left i'll take some questions also from facebook live that are coming in and then i'll invite one of the participants who's raised his hand so there are the two broad categories of these questions i'm clubbing them together you know the first is more against continuing on the element of the domestic and the structural like his arasad who mentions that there's a recurring historical phenomenon where political polarization happens during times of economic hardship do you think that this kind of economic hardship plays some role in determining how governments in india and pakistan deal with each other i mean this is a larger kind of theory of kind of you know uh deflecting attention from issues that are central to the well-being and the development of these countries do you think this do you buy into this argument of deflection at a moment of economic crisis and similarly there's a question by javaria seher from facebook live who says in that situation i mean does a change in leadership really matter would the narrative really change tomorrow if we are assuming suddenly navashari is back and there is a non-bjp government in delhi some really important questions structural in nature there's a question which takes us away from the domestic aspect by akib javid is on the issue of and this question is directed towards hapiman is on the current sino-indian crisis and happy when again this i find it very interesting you mentioned in your presentation that kashmir has no locus tandai on the issue of the revocation of article 317 india it's a domestic issue and i appreciate where you're coming from on that issue but as is often the case with issues which are conflicted or contested right the implications may not necessarily be domestic as is the case in this and it's not just the reaction that we are seeing from pakistan to india's move but also according to many china specialists as well from what i've been reading there is some degree of you know there's some metal in in in this argument that the decision on article 370 featured into chinese calculus on the kind of operations that did earlier this this year in east india so how do you tackle these issues and do you think the the entry of china i mean you have addressed this partly in your presentation has really kind of fundamentally altered the calculus for new delhi and that's perhaps one reason why delhi is not even willing as you mentioned earlier to recognize the fact that talking to pakistan may be an option because it's so polarized these are the two broad questions on the domestic issue aspects and china tarun if i may request you now to kind of spell your question out please thank you hello hello tarun we can hear can i ask the question yes and please introduce yourself as well if you can hi i'm tarun upadhyay i'm a contributor for outlook india and i was earlier working with hindus and ties i'm based in jambo thank you please go ahead yeah can i ask the question to aisha i think my question is that uh what i personally what i believe is that uh revocation of article 370 is a new reality in india an indian establishment believes that this new reality has to be a starting point with pakistan if this is being accepted in pakistan and secondly if this anti-muslim atmosphere which is prevailing in india if it tempers down can that also temper down the hostility between india and pakistan and the two countries can start working out at least to have a certain semblance of dialogue and secondly and i want to ask aisha that uh pakistan military establishment i believe is still still in a feudal mindset so to accept the democratization of pakistan itself and the dialogue which is a manifestation of democrat democratization also can accept these two realities thank you torun for your questions i shall request you to come in first in this round of questions and both to aisha and hapiman given the time constraints that we had and in the interest of having at least one more round of of questions could i request you to both to be as concise as possibly can i know the the difficulty of that given the the the breadth and depth of the questions but please aisha the floor is yours right the first question on on on the economy and whether uh you know that's that's to deflect from the economic reality i would argue that uh you know that tactical benefits and and and uh of uh you know of of of this conflict uh deflecting attention from uh what the economy how the economy is doing uh that's just one but despite having that uh and and and conversely one could argue that when india was doing well uh economically uh there was also a dialogue there with propensity you know manmohan singh government congress government which wanted to have a dialogue uh yet i don't think that this is a factor which is which stands alone in dictating you know the the the course of of india pakistan relations or whether it's going to be uh seen in very conflictual terms or peace terms so it's independent it's it's it's it's kind of related it's it's it's cause and effect uh it's it's more of effect than than a cause in itself uh to tyrant's questions about uh 370 uh i think we have just started with with with 370 and at at this point in time the strategy pakistan strategy would be to push to that extent where uh india realizes the cost now traditionally how india's cost was raised was through militancy allowing militants to cross over uh you know allowing for uh you know war war to come come to india and in fact uh you know one of the militant organizations jesh muhammad had recently been talking about uh uh you know uh this being there's there being a land mine you know um in in um movement the kashmir movement being a land mine buried underneath which will suddenly blow up uh and in fact uh this is this is this is the uh this is the parameter through which islamabad continues to think that 370 will certainly blow up in in in uh india's face and india will have to kind of not settle down with 370 now the parallel uh so so so one pakistan is not accepted it it is yet maybe at a later stage what will happen what will there be series of crises before we come to that that's one question the other is that uh will reduction of empty muslim rhetoric i think the two issues are independent firstly i think a question a counter question that i would want to ask is that is for example bjp uh capable of of delinking the two uh right now there is peace in there's relative peace and in kashmir through different means force coercion whatever whatever uh but but you know shots are not being fired but and and then there is also the the empty muslim rhetoric in india now let's imagine if if uh there is cooling down on one or if uh you know the situation improves but if 370 doesn't change i don't think that these are two independent matters that get connected as well and i don't think that pakistan would go uh is is willing to go beyond that thank you i shall happy thanks very quickly i think again i agree with isha's argument about you know whether it is a deflection or a diversity tactic from the economic realities i i think this is not a uni causal you know phenomena as it were i think there are there are several things that sort of feed into uh why there is this um you know standoff between india and pakistan on question of kashmir there are there are there are the historical realities that there is the rhetoric that both sides have sort of built over the years that have come back to sort of bite them in the back there is of course the electoral angle to it in india certainly and for for pakistan perhaps its army gains a lot of legitimacy by upping the ante in kashmir and clearly there is um there there is there is the utility in um diverting attention from domestic economic and other realities i think i think it would be wrong to sort of give it a you know monocosal explanation as it were i think there are there are multiple aspects to um be this this particular issue what i thought i think this was this is an important question whether um a change in government uh make a difference um to india's pakistan policy and and vice versa let me sort of talk about uh how i see as far as the indian side is concerned i think it's a biggest and a small no uh the biggest because i think if the congress party or a non-vegetarian government is in power in daily tomorrow their uh desire to reach out to pakistan and have a rapport with pakistan will be far more than uh what currently exists in daily number one number two even vis-a-vis kashmir i think uh the no small no because i don't think these the withdrawal of the specialist status is going to be reinstated even if um there is going to be a new uh non-vegetary government that's somewhat of time in future even under the congress government it will be difficult for the congress government to return the uh special status well a lot of other things can happen vis-a-vis kashmir and vis-a-vis pakistan so i think governments and the men and women who are in government do make a difference when it comes to bilateral relations and foreign policies of states um kashmir is i i i made the argument that kashmir uh what happened in kashmir in 2019 august is a uh a domestic um uh development yes it was meant to be a domestic development but sometimes um you know sometimes your rhetoric um creates a lot of problems right for example the indian rhetoric at that point of time about uh aksai chin also belongs to um the jammu and kashmir and that that that that belongs to us may have ruffled the feathers in in in beijing and that may have i have argued in my writings earlier on that may have actually prompted prompted to some extent the chinese reaction on the line of access control so when i say it is a domestic development what i'm simply trying to say is that uh hey wait a minute whatever india has done we have the jammu and kashmir um a lot of the same has been done by the pakistanis on the question of pok or gilgid pakistan so um you know so this is not really something that deserved this kind of attention except for the fact that a lot of things that happened inside the paili perhaps required a certain amount of attention from um well meaning people within within india um and if people desire outside india so be the case but the pakistani state making a big issue after the constitutional changes in kishmir i think that was perhaps unnecessary i'll just take 30 seconds um to to to um come back on the issue of uh track 2 um simply because i run one of the uh track 2s in south asia um on the indian side the child fire dialogue you know sometimes and i i would say that the uh these dialogues do not represent uh government opinions beyond their points now let me put it this way sometimes the funders come back and ask us wait a minute you have you don't have enough traction within the government so sometimes it is the objective of these dialogues to have that traction within the government for what in order to in order to channel suggestions recommendations shape help shape policy etc to do that you cannot be um a completely um you cannot be completely divorced of how the government views or what the government's view the reality is on the ground sometimes you go to uh work with them in order to change their policies number one number two people come back up come and ask sometimes wait a minute you have been running these strategies for so many years what have you achieved i say wait a minute the governments have been talking to each other for so many years what have they achieved right so it is not possible for track 2s to make policy changes when governments simply refuse to make those policy changes we can only aid and abit and recommend right uh and and thirdly if you shut down these these minimal contacts that exist today uh in the in the track 2 forums what contacts will you end up having at the end of the day uh you don't have track one you don't have like 1.5 you shut track 2 what will you be left with nothing i think that would be a mistake to mistake to uh therefore that would be a mistake i think i think sort of i leave it at that thanks thank you apelman thank you aisha one last round of questions i am very one one one okay please okay very quick just just one second uh just very quickly i think on on india pakistan peace i think and and its connection with with china i think at this point in time when you know the temperature is heating up between china and india i think that in itself makes it very difficult for pakistan to to retract itself and to say that i'm going to go and have this dialogue and have this peace talk with with india that even dampens down the possibility uh and very quickly uh to have him on i think i'm not against track 2 what i'm saying is that probably there is a need for a different kind of a conversation thank you aisha last round very quickly and let me before i open i mean before i said spell the questions out apologies to some of the participants unfortunately we'll not be able to take all questions some of the questions are very fascinating very important but given that we've covered quite a lot of ground i'll focus on some of the questions which i think might help us expand this this this conversation there are questions especially on the recent elections in gilgit baltistan from alveysha rey who's joined us through facebook live from st raza but i think partly that has been covered you know by happy man uh if you want to take it please you know either of you feel free to take that how does the change how does that these elections change the narrative for a settlement but then there are questions there's a question by ronik betacharji on the issue of you know it's a very military studies defense studies related question on the issue of the scope for interoperability between the pa la and the pakistani army of the pakistani military now historically a military which has been more gravitating towards the west in terms of at least its weaponry and only recently has to open up its arms and ammunitions to to kind of chinese stockpiles do you think there are doctrinal and cultural challenges in that kind of interoperability especially given the situation that we see on the lsc and loc happy man please feel free to come on that one as well and one last question perhaps uh this is you know by barzain vadma who's at soas and is also equaled to some extent by participant shubham you mentioned aisha that pakistan is adopting sort of a european style liberal islam ala turkey right according to barzain if anything adhugan is turkish modi so how what what exactly do you mean by that and how is it that the different kind of islamism that you spoke about how is it different from the other strains of islamic kind of thought and islamist practices perhaps uh is is is that kind of thing coming from pakistan different really or is it we are talking more of the same in a different context thank you so much for all these very important questions in this case now i think i asked aisha to step in first earlier i'll ask i'll request happy man to take take this tab and thank you so much happy man the floor is all yours uh thanks avinash i am not going to speak much it's already of 90 minutes so what i basically do is that address this question about the interoperability but i'm sure aisha is going to comment on that what i just want to say is that i think it's going to be not so easy for that interoperability to sort of kick in except you know the indian fear really is not about the pakistan army and the chinese army operating together simultaneously in a different war within the i think that's overstated i think the concern in many ways is the indian sharing or satellite imagery the sharing of satellite indians etc so i i mean sitting in delhi i don't think the worry is really about the increasing interoperability between china chinese army and the pakistan army which in my understanding um you know there needs to be a lot more improvement if that were to come to fruition on the other hand you have a lot more i would say interoperability between the indians and the united states for example with all the new agreements that are being signed but i think i shall be able to throw more light on the the ground level interoperability between the two arms i leave it at that thank you thank you very quickly firstly with right firstly with gilgit baltistan elections uh there's nothing new about the gilgit baltistan recent gilgit baltistan elections what we've learned from these elections is one whoever makes the government in islamabad tends to go and win the elections in in gb earlier on it was the ppp now then now now it's pti which which has and and they're more independent more independent candidates have also won which means that they can go either way which means that pti will probably get to make make the government at best it has impact on how pakistani politics will be conducted now but the underlying thing which has been happening is that military has been asking uh it has had separate conversations with all political parties to make them to agree to specials to giving gb uh the status of independent province fifth province of pakistan that is huge that's that's big uh now what pakistan is of course going to argue is that it's not it has been forced its hand has been forced by indian action in kashmir that it's not the one which is violating uh the un resolution that it's india and it has to do because of it had to make gb a separate province because of the wishes of of the people the the matter is unresolved i think the the the story of gb goes back even further i mean it was during 1974 i mean look what 70 what did article 370 do 370 do in india it kind of uh it kind of uh brought a shift in in the issue of state kashmiri as kashmiris as state subjects so kashmir the indian part of kashmir was part of indian kashmir yet they were independent they were state subjects they were subjects of the state of kashmir so that status had had continued the same goes goes to the pakistani side because this was a unresolved dispute therefore kashmiris had the independent status india changed it with three article 370 pakistan changed it for gilgit baltistan somewhere in the 1970s so gilgit baltistan the id card the national id card everybody in pakistan has a national id card the id card for kashmiris says uh citizen of azad jamu and kashmir uh now that is called state subject being a state subject gilgit baltistan which is part of the larger uh kashmir uh state of jamu kashmir also had that status until i believe 1974 that was changed then so this status the state subject status with the government of pakistan had given to gb was then suspended for gilgit baltistan uh it's interesting that india never talked about it but for gb this had already been suspended in the 1970s so what the government of pakistan will probably do by making gb a separate province so what we see here is indian indian side pakistani side seems to be kind of drifting towards a kind of solution so to speak lack of better word of of kashmir independently instead of sitting on a table they're independently making moves which actually i mean i've been talking to some kashmiris from the pakistani side who are kashmiri nationalists and they for the first time have said look we recognize that kashmiris who was pretty much dead uh the way not just india where india is going but also where pakistan is going uh i mean gb has a huge impact now uh is the second question on paul and pakistan military pakistan military pakistan army had been shifting towards uh chinese weaponry much more since the 1990s but now for the first time you have pakistan navy and the pakistan air force which are also shifting towards china and there's much they're far more uh military officers who are now going to china for different training um yet i think what is important is yes there will be uh but but they they are training in each other's ways there is interoperability that they're learning uh about each other user weapons etc etc uh but i don't think that we will come to a point where pakistan allows pakistan sees the risk of also understands the risk of interoperability with a bigger power like china uh and and therefore i think it's going to be much more cautious uh it would want to do things on its own seek help uh military hardware etc um but not uh you know interoperability man-to-man uh engagement that that's that's not i i don't think that's uh short term or a short to medium term possibility now about liberal islam and and i know that was a naughty statement i made um and and my intention was to kind of provoke a conversation now what i meant was that pakistan's islamism is different from the islamism that you've seen in south arabia or other parts uh pakistan islamism is can be both liberal and conservative at the same time uh it's it's it's that way that independent model which has pragmatism sown into it uh so it will for example recognize the times that it will recognize uh you know the the significance of sharia yet it would also be able to push back sharia where it wants to uh and and for me this pragmatic and and and and it was it you know it was a very quick it was uh lack of a better word with and and that's why i said you know it's a more liberal islamism that way because there are portions of liberalism that pakistan uh can kind of uh can can offer uh or has offered uh it's it's a mix and match uh and i and i realized that the whole discussion on islamism uh how does it compare with different islamisms one final point i mean it it it needs a session itself so i won't get into details of it but one final point that i want to make is that uh in in many ways uh pakistan's islamism is very different from for example south islamism uh pakistan south arabia can think of i mean it's it's it's not easy for it as well despite what uh Muhammad bin salman uh uh you know prince mbs is is is doing uh the changes he's bringing a he can imagine those changes yet uh his changes kind of uh hide uh the resentment and and the pushback that that that is uh and and so you know it's it's a complex model in itself south arabia but with pakistan uh mbs is different one minor point that i want to uh draw attention towards is mbs can bring that about the change because mbs can always draw on the arab nationalism there is arabism that uh uh as an as an ethnic category that he can depend on pakistan cannot depend on any ethnic category for pakistan islam is this ethnicity so it has to fill the canvas with different colors which includes bits of conservatism bits of liberalism and that's what i meant that it's a it's a different model uh and you know someday uh post-covid we can sit down and and chat about it absolutely uh aisha said the god of christ i said the god of happy man jakep thank you so so much for taking the time out and really kind of unpacking uh this issue of india pakistan bilateral relations from you know in a very 360 degree perspective both from a domestic uh from a bilateral but also from a global perspective and and also discussing the structures domestic structures of the economy and politics in both the countries i'm sure that our audiences certainly i for sure have learned a lot and have a lot to kind of think about and take away i would also like to thank all our audiences too for joining us this afternoon this was the second we have one more webinar coming a coming up on what is the other kind of hot boundary issue in in the region and that's the china india boundary issue that has escalated over the past few months uh of course it's a long-standing issue but has really kind of taken a dimension of its own we'll be discussing that in early december so please please you know join our emailing lists follow us on facebook follow us on twitter and keep uh you know keep engaging with us the questions today were really really helpful uh really thoughtful working questions so thank you for that and on that note i would like to wish you all a very good evening and looking forward to seeing you again for the next webinar thank you so much thank you avidash thank you thank you