Negotiating with Pakistan

Sometime last June, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi wrote to Yahya Khan, President and Martial Law Administrator of Pakistan, about the need for normalizing lndo–Pak relations, which have been in deep freeze since the war of 1965. Kewal Singh, who bore the letter, came back from Rawalpindi with undue optimism because no sooner had he mentioned a probable positive Pakistani response, than Rawalpindi reacted adversely. Once again, Foreign Minister Dinesh Singh voiced his optimism after a recent meeting with Pakistani diplomats at the UN, and Pakistan promptly came out with a totally opposite interpretation on the talks, even before he returned home. The Statesman of 10 July 1969 rightly gave the warning that ‘it is very easy to read too much in airport statements’. However, it would be rash to conclude from these two episodes that the Indian diplomats were so naive as to fall easy prey to Pakistan’s bluff and bluster. Nevertheless, it was not adequately appreciated that contradictions of a compulsively anti-India foreign policy operates far more sharply under Martial Law than during any other regime. No wonder, contacts between Indians and Pakistanis have been reduced almost to nothing by Yahya Khan removing the last operative contact of exchange of books and journals between the two countries.