There is often no sense of proportion involved when warring states get up to settle scores. And when the seeds of hatred are sown, the result is a perennial sore. TV footage of how Indian authorities, virtually all carders of government started singing elegies in praise of Sarabjit Singh, could not have been rendered in a better way. He was buried with state honours while the media was ablaze with a heroic farewell. The idea that he was a son of India was readily sold. On various channels average folks were seen calling for a boycott of entire gamut of ties as well as eviction of all Pakistani artists and visitors. A day after, what must have come as a shock even for the devil’s advocate was a leading newspaper, The Hindustan Times, which quoted an intelligence officer as admitting that the Sarabjit was their agent sent to ‘accomplish tasks’ in Pakistan. What this means is that New Delhi is almost making an official acknowledgment of the proxy warfare across the border for avenging Kashmir’s insurgency.
Meanwhile, the outburst of rhetoric is on. Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid’s statement that the death of Sarabjit has flared up tension on the border is a confirmation, if any was needed, that it can at times take just one convict to throw the entire peace process back to square one. The palpable sense of hatred was obvious when the friendship bus was stopped and pelted with stones in Amritsar amid anti-Pakistan sloganeering.
Perhaps that is the fate of the peace albatross; it is doomed to fetters. However hard it may try, it remains a caged bird held by the hate-mongers. Every time there is some prospect of a new era, it is squandered but it also squanders the future of the two neighbours. New Delhi could have listened to Pakistan or the UNSC resolutions in order to hold an impartial plebiscite. It could have at least, progressed with the bilateral dialogue process while refraining from calling it its ‘integral part’. It has, not surprisingly, done neither.