ON the historic occasion of the 6th Kazan BRICS gathering, held from October 22-24, 2024, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Foreign Ministers, and elite diplomats engaged in thoughtful discussions over three days. Optimistically, this meeting introduced a new model for resolving disputes among member nations. Notably, China and India have agreed to strengthen mutual understanding, increase contacts, and enhance efforts to address their longstanding border disputes.
Reports emerging from Kazan indicate that both President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi have directed their concerned officials to expand their talking contacts paving the way forward for settlement of disputes pinned around Himalayan region for the past 76 years. In July this year the Foreign Ministers of both countries in their meeting had agreed to deescalate border tensions to open a new phase of mutual negotiations. In relation to Sino-India cracked relations one thing is extra noticeable that despite chronic tensions both countries are presently doing billions of dollars of bilateral trade and commerce.
Earlier, at the 2022 G-20 meeting in Bali and the BRICS meeting in Johannesburg in August 2023, both leaders had met formally. Although different versions of statements from both sides emerged in the media after these meetings, one aspect stands out: they met, talked, and discussed. Modern existential science suggests that, despite serious disputes, leaders of conflicting nations should seek opportunities for mutual meetings and dialogue—even if nothing concrete results. Sometimes, simple gestures like eye contact and handshakes can work wonders. Earlier on an occasion both leaders had met in the Mamalapuram town in southern India in October 2019. The chronology of their meetings shows both China and India are psychologically convinced of the fruitfulness of their mutual meetings even in the midst of a dispute flare. What I wish to stress by this example is that even in the presence of political or geographic nature of disputes the opposites must meet.
Chinese media has not thus far made any commentary on the Kazan venue meeting of President Xi Jinping and Prime Minister Narendra Modi. But the Indian broadcasting outlet ‘Doordarshan’ has said that during his meeting with President Xi, PM Modi underlined importance of mutual confidence, mutual respect and mutual sensitivity for the healthy growth of mutual ties. Both countries have recently reached an understanding and accord over their border issues. Neighbourhood relations count much in the complex engineering of diplomatic politics; contrastingly, despite the permanent fact both Pakistan and India live in neighbourhood New Delhi in August 2019 had diluted the distinctive status of her occupied parts of Jammu and Kashmir state by unilaterally abrogating special constitutional provisions of Article 370 and 35-A that had given a distinct status to Jammu and Kashmir; the disputed nature of J&K state is not a bilateral agenda of Pakistan and India: the UN Security Council’s (UNSC) series of Kashmir resolutions are irrefutable evidence of Kashmir being international dispute; both Pakistan and India have an international case on J&K pending in the disputes-solution dossiers of UN Security Council since the year 1948 when India had referred the dispute to the UNSC. In response the UNSC, on the Indian Kashmir complaint, had delivered back their recommendation for an international UN supervised plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir, accepted both by India and Pakistan as parties to the Kashmir dispute within the UN arbitration international system.
As the global powers relations are being reconfigured on the international plane the Kashmir dispute affected region’s malaise justifies mutual approach by leaders of both Pakistan and India, of course with pre-meetings consultation the direct affectees of Kashmir dispute; solution effort means augmenting the mass of pending regional peace, security and progress. Peace and progress should top any prospective meeting agenda; both Pakistan and India as separate states are co-birthed countries, both the peoples of Pakistan and India fully know their respective national psychologies and bents of minds since centuries back. Kashmiris of both parts of J&K state direly want restoration of statehood to J&K. In recent ‘look-electoral exercise’ in India occupied J&K the pro-statehood political forces have emerged to the fore; New Delhi should give due weight to their wishes and restore the seized statehood by undoing the post-2019 bifurcation of the region.
—The writer, a retired Secretary in AJK Govt, is a senior columnist, based in Rawalpindi.
