The most common distinguishing characteristic between BJP Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and Congress Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh, is that both these noble political leaders reversed their firm decisions not to enter into a peace dialogue with Pakistan until it abjured Jihadi terrorism against India and went to the other extreme of Pakistan-appeasement policies. Both these Indian Prime Ministers advanced no cogent strategic or political advantages that would accrue to Indian national security interests by a sudden reversal of their substantially correct earlier decisions. Both these Prime Ministers without awaiting Pakistan to make amends for their disruptive strategies and unmindful of hundreds of Indian lives lost to Pakistani- facilitated terrorist attacks, resumed peace dialogues with Pakistan. In both cases these Indian Prime ministers set a pattern which Pakistan perceived as political timidity of India. Sadly and regrettably one is led to conclude that their personal craving for the Nobel Peace Prize and leaving their imprint on history prompted both Vajpayee and Dr Singh to take recourse to Pakistan-appeasement steps better put as ‘Peace With Pakistan At Any Costs’.

Both these Indian Prime Ministers had taken their earlier firm decisions in the wake of dastardly Pakistan-facilitated attacks on India’s sovereignty and national honor, the first on the Indian Parliament and the latest terrorism mayhem in Mumbai 26/11. After both these incidents of sullying India’s national honor, Pakistan continued merrily with terrorism attacks in major cities of India fed by its belief that its continuance of terrorism against India would soon tire out the firm resolve of Indian Prime Ministers and that their propensity for ‘soft options’ and their vulnerability to external pressures would prompt them to seek a peace dialogue with Pakistan.

Indian Prime Ministers and their aides who egg them on with Pakistan-appeasement policies and feed their cravings for a Nobel Peace Prize need to realize that India-Pakistan peace is strategically not possible. With India-Pakistan peace prospects not existent even over the horizon, then how can Indian Prime Ministers and their aides even think that a Nobel Peace Prize is realistically possible for grabs even with the best of intentions.

The Nobel Peace Prize craving of Indian Prime Ministers leads to an avoidable distortion of India’s foreign policies, national security planning and defense postures since the predominant determinant of Indian policies emerges as ‘Peace With Pakistan At Any Cost’ rather than a cold-headed and surgical assessment of what is good for India’s national security.

This Indian syndrome carries also in itself the dangers of generating confusion in the minds of Indian security forces who are embattled day in and day out in combating Pakistan’s challenges to India’s external and Indian security. In the military mind it would be hard to comprehend as to how one could compromise with India’s enemies like the Pakistan Army which has displayed a marked propensity to indulge incessantly in armed aggression against India, resort to asymmetrical warfare against the Indian State and with state-sponsored terrorism of the Jihadi type led to a loss of hundreds of innocent Indian lives.

It is unbecoming of Indian political leaders in the process to beseech foreign countries to restrain Pakistan’s terrorism war against India and tame the Pakistan Army. It is not only strategically unrealistic but also politically demeaning.

Peace is a noble aspiration and something to be striven for by all civilized societies and there one is not in dispute. What is being disputed is a craven obsession for peace at any cost with a Pakistan where the driving force is the Pakistan Army which has never articulated or professed any slightest overtures for peace with India. What is also being disputed is that India’s political leaders can persuade India to accept an externally-imposed peace at the cost of her national security interests.

Indian Prime Ministers can forget about their cravings for Nobel Peace Prize as long as the Pakistan Army is in control of Pakistan and its foreign policy towards its neighbors.