When it comes to Pakistan, India’s Prime Minister, Dr Manmohan Singh refuses to recognize ground realities and revise his misplaced rosy perceptions that India can turn around Pakistan to be a more peaceful neighbor. In the last 60 years, more illustrious Indian Prime Ministers than Dr Manmohan Singh have failed to erase Pakistan’s adversarial postures towards India and there is no reason to expect that Dr Manmohan Singh can succeed where the entire Nehru-Gandhi dynasty Prime Ministers failed. Unlike them he has no personal charisma to carry along an India which is in a serious state of disconnect with the Prime Minister on his fixative obsession of peace at any cost with Pakistan. Nor is he an elected Prime Minister like them. Despite the failed Foreign Secretaries Meeting in New Delhi last month and followed by the suicide bombing attacks on Indian doctors in Kabul by Pakistani terrorists outfits, the Indian Prime Minister continues to recite his favorite “peace mantra”. India-Pakistan peace is now like a dead horse and any amount of “peace mantra” recitation by the Indian Prime Minister cannot restore life to it. It amounts to flogging a dead horse.

India is puzzled at what impels the Indian Prime Minister to persist on this course and in the pursuance of which India’s national security interests get swept under the carpet. India is abuzz that the Prime Minister is being pressurized by the United States to continue a peace dialogue with Pakistan. In a recent debate in the Parliament Dr Manmohan Singh bristled prickly when his attention was drawn to this fact by BJP leader Shri L K Advani.

Instead of coming out with a reasoned response to assure the country as to what strategic gains accrued to India by persisting on ‘unilateral peace initiatives’ by India, the Indian Prime Minister skirted the issue by stating that he was under no US pressure and that the US President had assured him that there was no change in US policies. Elsewhere the Prime Minister has been asserting that there is no alternative to a peace dialogue with Pakistan. On both counts the Indian Prime Minister can be seriously faulted.

Many US Presidents in the past 60 years have given similar assurances to India and every time Pakistan flagrantly flouted pledges it gave to the United States on peace with its neighbors, the United States shirked from disciplining Pakistan. On the contrary, the United States rewarded Pakistan’s strategic delinquencies with more military largesse. The Prime Minister’s advisers on Pakistan need to go back to reading the history of Pakistan’s relations with India.

Equally puzzling is the very subtle propaganda being carried out by Pakistan that Dr Manmohan Singh as the Indian Prime Minister is the best bet for Pakistan for resolution of India-Pakistan contentious issues, and that the rest of the Indian establishment is hawkish on Pakistan. What is the message being projected by Pakistan with such a propaganda? Is Pakistan trying to propagate that Dr Manmohan Singh is politically vulnerable and would attempt for peace at any costs for political gains? Or is Pakistan trying to propagate that Dr Manmohan Singh as a man of peace can be pressurized to give in to the Pakistani agenda?

When the Indian Prime Minister asserts that there is no alternative to peace dialogues with Pakistan, he seems to have not explored other strategic and diplomatic options, short of war, which could be adopted by India to dilute Pakistan’s proxy war against India. These options seem to have not been explored by his advisers otherwise the Prime Minister would not be making such assertions.

India is demeaned internationally when the Indian Prime Minister continues to recite his favorite and obsessive “peace mantra” for peace at any cost with Pakistan and Pakistan in tandem accompanies this chanting with the explosive music of terrorism, suicide bombings and peace-scuttling against India.