Close to Peace

Ambassador S.K. Lambah’s book would be useful for all future interlocutors whenever India-Pakistan decide to resume the dialogue

Pravin Sawhney

Relations between India and Pakistan have been on a roller coaster ride with wars and hopes of peace. This has created scores of specialists with umpteen books entering the market each year. Ambassador S.K. Lambah’s book In Pursuit of Peace on these bedevilled relations stands apart. Having spent most of his foreign service career associated with Pakistan and having sought ways for peace under six Prime Ministers, Lambah’s observations are worth cogitation. Moreover, having been the Indian interlocutor in the back-channel talks with Pakistan from 2005 to 2014, Lambah provides exceptional insights on Pakistani mindset and perhaps some dots for the way forward.

I found Lambah’s suggestion for India to interact with the Pakistan army interesting and useful. He writes, ‘India finds itself in an awkward position because it has not yet grasped the art of fully tapping the army channel, and to that extent, is at a disadvantage.’ Why the Pakistan army? ‘The (Pakistan) army’s march to power came to be formalised in 1954 after Pakistan became an ally of the United States. It was from this point onwards that the role of the Pakistan Army as a stakeholder in the governance of the country was firmly established and acknowledged,’ he writes.

Since the writer was a diplomat, he failed to appreciate that it was the creation of the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir on 1 January 1949, which formalised the Pakistan Army as the key stakeholder in Pakistan. T