The Prime Minister’s latest initiative on Pakistan, more specifically the joint statement he issued with his Pakistani counterpart in Egypt – delinking composite dialogue from action on terror, and a reference to Balochistan – has brought to the fore fault-lines in the Congress as it gets into its second term in office at the head of UPA.
Many in the government – and the Congress – had expected more tensions between the Prime Minister and the party this time round. For the simple reason that the vote in 2009 was also for the Prime Minister as much as it was for Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi and the Congress Party, particularly in Middle India. And it was said that Dr Manmohan Singh was in a mood to assert a little more than he had done in his last term as PM.
But tension surfaced sooner than expected: When the PM agreed to de-bracket composite dialogue from India’s earlier insistence that Pakistan must take action against those behind the Mumbai attacks. It threw the Congress in turmoil. What was even more difficult to swallow for party veterans was the inclusion of Balochistan in the joint statement at the insistence of Singh’s Pakistani counterpart. Both marked a break from the past.
Back home, Pakistan premier Yousuf Raza Gilani hailed it as a diplomatic victory for Pakistan and emphasised India’s role in fomenting trouble in Balochistan. It only made matters worse.
In Parliament the Opposition dubbed it as a sell-out, with BJP leaders attacking the government for “outsourcing” India’s foreign policy. Congress leaders were agitated about the impact this could have in the October elections in Maharashtra, Haryana and Jharkhand. The saffron party’s “soft on terror” charge against the Congress last year had not cut much ice in the Delhi polls or in the just held general elections but there was always the possibility that an otherwise demoralised BJP might get an issue to beat the Congress with.
Domestic poll imperatives apart, there is deep disquiet in the old guard of the Congress about the implications of what Dr Manmohan Singh agreed to, and some Congress leaders privately began to express their lack of trust in the PM’s judgement. Others spoke in whispers about the need for Rahul Gandhi to takeover soon. It was not as if there was a plan to enthrone Rahul Gandhi but it was a way of expressing unhappiness about the Prime Minister’s misjudgement.
Bengali newspapers were the first to break the story that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherji, till recently Foreign Minister, was unhappy with the joint statement. When reporters confronted Mukherji about the newspaper item, the Finance Minister did not deny it.
The normally silent AK Antony, who is known to keep his counsel and trusted by Sonia Gandhi, was also reported to be unhappy with the PM’s faux pas. Antony was reportedly uneasy on another front, shared by the defence establishment he heads, about the implications of the end user monitoring arrangement with the US which India agreed to during US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s recent visit.
As for Sonia Gandhi, the spokespersons of the Congress would not have taken a strictly “neutral” position about the joint statement, and made a public show of the party’s unease – normally the ruling party stands behind its PM – had Sonia Gandhi also not had some reservations.
Senior leaders privately questioned the need for issuing a joint statement in the first place. They also questioned how such a statement had gone past the Foreign Secretary, the National Security Adviser and then the PM himself. From all accounts, Pakistan was agreeable to a joint statement only if India agreed to the inclusion of Balochistan, which got clubbed with Mumbai. It talked about Manmohan Singh having expressed his concern about Mumbai while Gilani did likewise about what was going on in Balochistan, giving parity to the two.
Many Congress leaders saw the statement as a “gift” to Hillary Clinton who was visiting India shortly after the Egypt Nam summit, for the US has been pressurising India to resume dialogue with Pakistan so as to be able to quieten Pak’s eastern front. Middle class India no longer reacts to the government’s pro-American stance, despite the disquiet in government about the end user monitoring arrangement which is expected to give US inspectors access to India’s military bases, and would cover every defence purchase from the US in the future.
The joint statement however was about the perception of giving in to Pakistan, which does agitate middle India. While the Congress party favours dialogue with Pakistan and good relations with its neighbours, Sonia Gandhi has all along tread very cautiously, lest she, with her foreign origins, be accused of a sell out.
Given the onslaught by the Opposition, and difficulty of opposing its own prime minister, Sonia Gandhi moved in quickly for damage control, and when she met with Pranab Mukherji and AK Antony last Wednesday, she is believed to have asked her senior colleagues to quickly find a way out. Realising the reaction the joint statement had provoked, the PM backtracked quickly, first in Eqypt itself by calling an unscheduled press meet, and then during his statement in Parliament, where contrary to what was in the statement, he assured the house that composite dialogue could not be resumed without credible action by Pakistan against the perpetrators of terror. The Government also fielded Shashi Tharoor, Minister of State in the Ministry of External Affairs, who gave another spin to the controversy – that the joint statement was only a diplomatic statement and was not legally binding.
The government is now tying to get its act together for the discussion on July 29 on the Sharm-el-Sheikh statement in the Lok Sabha. While the government is toning down the idea of “de-bracketing”, and instead mooting the concept of a “limited dialogue” with Pakistan in the given situation, not expecting “too much” but “something” from Islamabad, it is more difficult to undo Balochistan. The PM’s spin doctors are letting it be known that by including Balochistan, Pakistan has admitted there is a problem there and has internationalised it, while India has nothing to hide.
Mukherji, the clear number two in government and till recently the Foreign Minister, has moved in tandem with the PM all through the first term of UPA. But curiously he was not invited to the small luncheon Manmohan Singh hosted for Hillary Clinton. The recent controversy may have a bearing on the PM-Pranab relations in UPA II. It may also make the PM more cautious about taking positions without checking with the party.