Ties with Pak: Start to put it on track again

Late on Saturday, India’s official spokesman said the people of Pakistan “had reposed their faith in democracy through general elections”. This is a mature, considered, reaction. It signals an easy acceptance of PTI leader Imran Khan as the next Prime Minister instead of cavilling about the fairness of the larger poll exercise, which the military had skewed in favour of Mr Khan’s party, as an Opposition party or a media observer might.

Naturally, the messaging here is that New Delhi will be perfectly at ease doing business with the elected government after Mr Khan has taken the oath. The reference to the people of Pakistan reposing their “faith in democracy” is evidently also a nod to the rout of the candidates of the terrorist outfits in the polls and the failure of the Pakistan military’s mission to “mainstream” these extremists.

It’s also not unlikely that the comments of former chief election commissioner S.Y. Quraishi, who was in Islamabad recently as part of a Commonwealth observer group, to an Indian television channel from Pakistan, that the voting was free, fair and transparent, was in tune with the understanding that New Delhi sought to advance to the government and the people of Pakistan.

In the final analysis, this is a way of informing Pakistan that India would like the ice to break. The timing, of course, is another matter. Very soon the election cycle will begin in India and that imposes its own domestic dilemmas for the ruling party here, chiefly due to its traditional ultra-Hindu stance.

At any rate, even if both sides are agreed, Islamabad would appreciate that serious discussion with New Delhi will be impractical until the next government is in place.

Nevertheless, it will be important for New Delhi as well as Islamabad to not muddy the waters here on. The Pakistan high commissioner to India, Sohail Mehmood, has said that after the Pakistan election an opportunity presents itself for getting ties back on track. Pakistan’s presumptive PM Imran Khan conveyed the same impression in his first televised address once it became clear that his party would be forming the government.

Two things should happen to ease the path, though: first, there should be no terrorist strikes from the Pakistani side, and if there is one, someone at the top in Islamabad should condemn it; and second, there ought to be no communal provocation from an extremist outfit here, and if there is one someone important here should take the offenders to task.

There has been an interesting tweeted suggestion tagging PM Narendra Modi and Congress president Rahul Gandhi from Ballooning India chief Vishwa Bandhu Gupta, the president of the All India Newspaper Editors Conference and a former MP. The idea is that Mr Khan and Mr Gupta fly a peace balloon from Lahore to Amritsar. Does this fly? It may be worth exploring.