The first visit by an Indian minister to Pakistan in eight years made global headlines, even though it was for a multilateral meet. Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar's visit to attend the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) meeting in Islamabad October 15-16, the first by an Indian foreign minister in nearly a decade, was eventful by itself, not just so much for what he said, but in the diplomatically restrained manner in which he conducted himself and, more importantly, the way both India and Pakistan stayed away from the finger-pointing of past meetings.

Both governments played down the conversations that took place over lunch and dinner, but there were at least two occasions when Jaishankar had unstructured chats with his hosts, first during the formal dinner for the SCO delegates and then the lunch the next day. 

During the dinner, Jaishankar had a pull-aside with his Pakistani counterpart Ishaq Dar. They were also joined by Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi.  While there was no official word on what was discussed there,  they certainly were a departure from the previous positions that both sides held, as they had avoided such informal meetings in multilateral forums, Pakistani media noted.  Information Minister Attaullah Tarar later termed the meeting an "ice-breaker", but confirmed no formal bilateral meetings had neither been sought by either side nor taken place. 

Often Pakistan and Indian leaders used such forums to accuse each other, like it happened at the last SCO conference in Goa, India, when both sought to play to their respective galleries. PM Shehbaz Sharif, as the host of the conference, opened the forum and did not mention India or Kashmir in his speech. When Jaishankar took the podium, he also avoided directly pointing a finger at Pakistan, and it was clear that both sides were trying to lower the rhetoric.   "The discreet messaging during the conference led to a seating arrangement that allowed Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar to sit alongside Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar during the luncheon hosted for the SCO delegates," noted Pakistan's The Express Tribune. 
India's Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) played down these mealtime conversations in order to lower expectations. “In Islamabad, you would have seen, the only bilateral meeting that our External Affairs Minister had was with Mongolia. Other than that, there were some pleasantries which were exchanged on the sidelines of the meeting, especially during lunch and dinner. That is all,” said MEA spokesman Randhir Jaiswal on Jaishankar's return.

Does cricket diplomacy work? 

However, since the visiting Indian journalists had reported that come cricket diplomacy did take place, based no doubt on calculated leaks from "informed sources", and there was some talk of Indian cricket team going to Pakistan for the Champions Trophy in February 2025, it led to renewed speculation among media and discussion circles of a possible thaw in the relationship between estranged neighbours that has remained in frigid for over five years.

"I am hopeful that India will participate in the Champions Trophy...I do know that if there is any one "non-official" force that could alter the patterns of behaviour that have locked our two countries into a rut of mutual suspicion, paranoia and conflict, it is cricket," wrote Vikram S. Mehta, chairman, Centre for Social Economic Progress, hopefully in The Indian Express. Mehta's  grandfather was an Indian high commissioner to Pakistan and his father was India's foreign secretary who led an Indian delegation to Pakistan in 1976 to restore ambassadorial ties after it was downgraded following the Bangladesh war. 
 
However, Mehta's hopes - as of millions of cricket fans on both sides of the border - seem to have been belied as reports came in of the Indian cricket board informing its Pakistani counterparts of its inability to send the Indian cricket to team citing security considerations. Pakistan has been expressing its keenness to host the Indian team, especially after Pakistan visited India in 2023 for the World Cup, and had even promised a convenient itinerary that could enable the Indian team to return to India after every match if they so wanted. 
 
Can resumption of cricketing ties really act as a unifier for the perennially feuding neighbours? Or is it a bridge too far for decades of mutual antipathy, political antagonism and ideological antithesis to be dissolved over a common sporting culture that is doubled-edged enough to create both friendship and hostility?
 
While there is a growing constituency in both countries for "normalization" of ties, including resumption of cultural and people to people exchanges, especially cricket, what many among the civil society in both countries do not understand is the deep ideological and identity divide that stands in the way of the "normalization" of relations. While the foundation of India's identity lies in its secular constitution which came into being in 1950, it took another 23 years for Pakistan to have its own constitution and create an identity as an Islamic Republic. This was because Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, died prematurely in 1948, a little more than a year after independence, and could never translate his vision of Pakistan into a blueprint for the new nation, unlike Jawaharlal Nehru who was able to implement his vision for India as a secular, democratic republic while governing the country for its first 17 years.
 
So here was a country unable to resolve its foundational identity of whether it wants to be define by its religion, ideology or by territory, but one thing it knows is that to preserve its identity it must distinguish itself from India in every way. 
 
So, as the story goes, when K Natwar Singh - who later was also foreign minister - was going to Pakistan as ambassador in 1980, he asked Abdul Sattar, then Pakistani envoy to India, and known as a hawk as far as ties with India went, as to one thing he should avoid saying in Pakistan. The answer was: "Avoid saying that you are like us; Pakistanis don't like it".
 
And therein lies the nub of the relationship - the continuous striving for ideological and political 'othering' of a country that was born from the same womb, shares a common ancestry and culture, speaks a common language, at least in the two Punjabis, and share common passions for cinema and cricket.
  
At a recent discussion on bilateral ties organized by the India Foundation in New Delhi, Tilak Devasher, a former intelligence boss who has authored four widely acclaimed books on Pakistan, chided a questioner who spoke about the many strands of commonality between the people of India and Pakistan. "There is little ground for mutual affinity  anymore," he shot back, explaining how in the quest for subcontinental distancing, Pakistani children were fed on government-prescribed textbooks that had uncharitable references to Indians and Hindus, with the result an entire generation grew up in Pakistan with only hatred towards India. 

Fundamental reality of Pakistan 

Opinions on how to deal with an adversarial neighbour widely vary naturally among policymakers on one hand and civil society activists on the other, with the latter constituency like South Asia Peace Action Network or Sapan (acronym means dream), a pan-South Asian collective of peaceniks who work, mostly online, with the lofty aim to  “restore some of the historical unity of our common living space, without wishing any violence on the existing nation states.”  

Even among the practitioners, some have been over the years lauded as hawks for playing tough with their subcontinental rivals and some derided as doves for seeking reconciliation and understanding only to be rebuffed. But one thing that Pakistan experts in India agree on, be they former diplomats, security officials, academics, or strategic analysts, is that the one single barrier to conciliation and friendship was the all-powerful Pakistan Army.
 
"Pakistan Army is just 5% of the country, but they control the other 95% through a chokehold on the country's policy, particularly with regard to India," says Ajay Bisaria, the last Indian High Commissioner to Pakistan who was expelled in August 2019 and the relationship downgraded after India revoked Article 370 of its constitution to strip Jammu and Kashmir of its semi-autonomous status and integrated it politically with India. 
 
Bisaria thinks that since the Pakistan Army was going to be the main determinant of Pakistan's India policy over the foreseeable future,  India must think of a way to engage with the Pakistan Army, "through quiet or direct channels" to keep some communication going if at least to maintain some kind of modus vivendi if not headway in the stalemated relationship. A democratically elected government in India has been inherently wary of dealing with the army in Pakistan, however powerful it may be, and with resumption of cricketing ties remaining a non-starter, it is anybody's guess in which direction ties will be headed. 

As far as Indian thinking is concerned, an opportunity for dialogue for India can come up potentially only, in the words of the late National Security Adviser J N Dixit, who had dealt extensively with Pakistan, "if there is a fundamental transformation of the power structure of Pakistan, not only in terms of military components but also in terms of the social background and political inclinations of the plutocratic and feudal leadership of the major political parties in Pakistan". Dixit had written this about two decades ago. It's unfortunately the ground reality that still holds true. 

(The writer is a veteran journalist and editor, international affairs commentator and currently Consulting Editor, South Asia Monitor. Views expressed are personal)