Unbecoming at Amritsar

India and Pakistan have taken it upon themselves to vitiate each multinational conference by settling scores with each other. The Heart of Asia meeting staged for the first time in Amritsar went the way of the SAARC Ministerial meetings and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation summit in Russia. At all the three regional summits, an impression got created that all that took place was sparring between India and Pakistan. It is not that other participating countries don’t notice. At a SAARC summit in Bhutan, the other six members made bold to publicly plead with India and Pakistan not to reduce every multilateral summit to a fencing match to the exclusion of all other participants.

In Amritsar, India tried to even the score for the treatment meted out to Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh at a SAARC Ministerial meeting in Islamabad. Singh’s access to media was barred and he was made to suffer several other petty indignities. At Amritsar, India blocked Pakistan foreign policy adviser Sartaj Aziz’s attempt to visit the Golden Temple on security grounds, never mind that the same arrangements were good enough for Prime Minister Narendra Modi to make an impromptu visit. The real reason was to deny him access to media just as Rajnath Singh was prevented from addressing media in Islamabad.

India thus lost an opportunity to confer at length with Aziz, who had already signalled interest in resuming dialogue by arriving a day early. It also gave a poor account of itself as the host of an international meet. Pakistan is not as isolated as India’s spin doctors would have us believe. The Indian media made much of the Amritsar Declaration naming two Pakistan-based militant groups as grave security threats to Afghanistan. But it glossed over the naming of several other groups targeting Pakistan, besides Iran and several other Central Asian countries. It even missed the special pat to Pakistan and Iran for shouldering the burden of millions of Afghan refugees. In the end it was a pyrrhic victory. Except for a section of the domestic audience, none was left impressed by the host’s bad grace.