This was partly as a result of he spent almost half his profession within the Indian Foreign Service in Pakistan as deputy head of mission after which excessive commissioner in Islamabad, additionally heading the Pakistan division for a number of years. And partly as a result of, after retirement, he helmed the back-channel talks on Kashmir throughout Manmohan Singh’s premiership. We at the moment are indebted to him for his posthumous publication, “In Pursuit of Peace” (Penguin/Viking, 2023). But greater than these skilled {qualifications} had been his deep household roots in Peshawar and his spouse, Nilima (Nina)’s, equally deep household roots in Lahore.

The two of them hailed from what had been arguably the 2 most influential Hindu households in what grew to become Pakistan in 1947. So distinguished had been their forebears that it gave them quick access to virtually everybody who mattered within the Frontier and Punjab, moreover their shortly making pals with immigrants into Pakistan like Nawaz Sharif and his spouse, Kulsoom. These hyperlinks helped lubricate his path into the best corridors of political and army energy, in addition to opened the doorways to doyens of social and cultural life just like the educationist, Syed Babar Ali, and creative geniuses like Sadequain.

The excessive level in his path-breaking profession was when he and his Pakistani counterpart advanced on the again channel, away from the general public eye, a “four-point” system for a breakthrough within the logjam over Kashmir. They had been instrumental in establishing that the 2 nations are solely able to mutually figuring out methods of managing even “core” points, which, for Pakistan, means Kashmir, and, for India, means ending cross-border terrorism (largely associated to Kashmir), offered solely {that a} honest try is initiated and carried by way of to the purpose of settlement, nevertheless lengthy which may take. That the cup was dashed from their lips by home political developments in Pakistan which pitted the best ranges of the judiciary towards the Pakistan President (and had nothing to do with the again channel) solely signifies that Fate must be on the facet of the negotiators for the end result to be topped with seen success. The lesson to be taught is that the reply lies in uninterrupted and uninterruptible dialogue, not uninterrupted distancing from mutual engagement and uninterruptible hostility, as is being fostered now.

Lambah elegantly lays out the situations required for such negotiations to succeed. First and foremost, the highest management and their key colleagues within the cupboard (in India’s case) and the military (in Pakistan’s case) should be totally on board. “Political leaders’ statements set the direction and act like guidelines”.
Second, the back-channel negotiators should be in frequent contact with the leaders on each comma and semi-colon. “Between 2005 and 2007, my diary recalls that I had sixty-eight meetings with Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh”. On the Pakistan facet, Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri’s huge tome, “Neither a Hawk nor a Dove”, particulars the intensive briefings he gave everybody who counted on the suggestions he obtained from Pakistan’s negotiator, Tariq Aziz, a confidant of the president, each within the civilian institution in addition to the armed forces and the intelligence group. As Lambah remarks, “… it is both expedient and essential to keep the Pakistan army on board while engaging with Pakistan”. Thus was a nationwide consensus inbuilt each nations to maintain the negotiating course of.

Third, crimson strains should be clearly drawn and mutually accepted. At the identical time, targets, goals and aims should be set with no ambiguity. Also, the agenda must be totally set out and agreed upon earlier than substantive negotiations start.

Fourth, “engagement has to be all-encompassing. Economic, commercial, and technological content, which are known to act as force multipliers, have to be accordingly built into it.” At the identical time, open, official engagement channels on all kinds of points, particularly people-to-people contacts, should be opened as much as complement the key back-channel negotiations on “core” points.

Fifth, the negotiating course of must be insulated from divisive home politics. Sati Lambah exhibits how, however terrorist disruptions such because the explosions on the Mumbai suburban trains and the Samjhauta Express, Manmohan and Musharraf stored the dialogue occurring the again channel. In placing distinction, “today, we are at a point where the process for dialogue, engagement and a broader peace process have never seemed more distant”.
He concludes — and I heartily concur — that “no country’s destiny is immune from its relationships with neighbours”. Drawing on his huge expertise in coping with the Soviet Union, now the Russian Federation, the place he served for a complete of six years, and his being an early Indian Ambassador to united Germany, and his intense involvement with Afghanistan when the Taliban was first overthrown, and his being within the first, and most gifted mission we despatched to Bangladesh within the speedy aftermath of Liberation, he sees the “central message” emanating from his life’s “journey” as that of “peace and reconciliation paying dividends in the long run”.

While serving as many as six Indian PMs, all of whom trusted the depth of his understanding and the maturity of his judgement on Pakistan, he units out with readability the curler coaster trajectory of India-Pak relations over 75 years, and attracts the conclusion that as a substitute of Pakistan “principally through the prism of religion”, and enmeshing hostilities “in domestic politics”, which solely revive “painful memories of Partition”, we should not be deflected from “continually seeking a path to healing, however difficult and arduous it might seem”.

The highest tribute the nation pays to his reminiscence and the immense contribution he made to overcoming the traumas of the previous could be to renew a “sustained” means of dialogue with Pakistan to transform the “near solution” he arrived at into lasting settlement on peace and tranquility between us “distant neighbours”. That, mixed with the same means of constructive engagement with China, alone would rework our place on the planet. Without that, goals of changing into the “Viswaguru” will stay empty fantasy.

The author is a former Union minister