File photo of Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari
Speaking with press at the United Nations last week, Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari called Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi the “butcher of Gujarat” after his counterpart from Delhi accused Pakistan of being the “epicenter of terrorism.” Occurring at the global platform, the war of words highlighted again the almost-boring phenomenon of decades-old enmity between the rival states and followed the U.N. Security Council adopting a statement warning of the increasing dangers of terrorism.
Needless to say, the verbal back-and-forth didn’t end there. To Bilawal’s remarking that “Osama bin Laden is dead, but the butcher of Gujarat lives and he is the prime minister of India,” the Indian side responded with: “Islamabad harbored armed fighters who launched attacks on the Indian soil, including the 2008 Mumbai attacks that left 175 people dead, including nine attackers.”
It is fact that Narendra Modi was the chief minister of the state of Gujarat when religious riots in 2002 killed nearly 2,000 people—most of them Muslims. He was accused of turning a blind eye to the violence and was barred from entering the U.S. until his election as prime minister in 2014. The exchange likely pleased hawks on both sides used to staging such venomous encounters, but to anyone thinking “normally” of relations between the two states it served as a damper. Bhutto-Zardari offered some hope, however: “As a Muslim, as a Pakistani, as a victim of terrorism, I believe it is time that we moved away from some of the Islamophobic narrative framing of this issue that took place after the awful attacks of September 11, 2001, because what we witnessed from that date up until now is that terrorism, of course, knows no religion, knows no boundaries.”
The recent past is littered with attempts from within Pakistan to “normalize” with arch-enemy India, with proponents saying it is essential to secure the rights of Kashmiris living under Delhi’s control. Observers also fear that Pakistan would struggle to grow its economy so long as the fear of conventional or nuclear war persists and must bring India to the negotiating table to achieve internal security. That this “normalization” would precede resolution of pending disputes was implied in Islamabad’s support to regional projects such as the IPI and TAPI gas pipelines. Nonetheless, hawks on both sides have opposed normalization by putting forward “conditions” that the world no longer accepts.
The incumbent Indian government’s recent behavior does not inspire confidence in talks, but there was once growing opinion in India that the BJP would push for dialogue. Pakistan’s former foreign minister Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri had also hinted at this by advocating for a détente until Islamabad could normalize with Delhi with honor. India, too, has demonstrated “realism” in its relations with China, importing its largest amount of goods from there despite occasionally facing off on the border. There are clear gains: normalization would not only enable Afghanistan to participate in profitable trade on South Asian routes but also bring peace to Kashmiris on both sides of the border and allow the rival states to trade for mutual benefit.