Time to activate other channels

India has collectively heaved a sigh of relief after the International Court of Justice (ICJ) provisionally stayed the death sentence on Kulbhushan Jadhav till its final verdict in August. This `victory’ should not waterproof India against the harsh reality that even if Jadhav escapes the noose, he would spend his lifetime in Pakistani prisons. The Indian appeal was limited to ensuring Jadhav gets all due courtesies enshrined in the Vienna Convention. At some stage, New Delhi will have to consider the staple recourse in such situations – backchannel diplomacy – to get our man back. That option suffered a setback when two Indian security personnel were beheaded on the border with Pakistan. The general wisdom is that the calculated mutilation was its army’s response to sabotage Prime Minister Narendra Modi‘s attempt to open back-channel negotiations with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif, via an industrialist.

Prime Minister Modi will reap the benefits of popular adulation because the Indian media treated the entire process at the ICJ like a 20:20 cricket match. In sports parlance, India is leading at half time. Foreign Minister Sushma Swaraj has indicated that much when she said while the verdict has brought relief to Jadhav’s family, India will leave no stone unturned to save him. Pakistani prisons are notorious for their rough treatment of Indians. Jadhav’s wellbeing could be in danger because Pakistan has labelled him a spy and tried to hang a number of numbing terrorist incidents around his neck even though the Tehrike Taliban Pakistan had earlier taken responsibility for them.

Sooner or later, India may want to try its hand at exploring creative possibilities of diplomacy to resolve a number of issues, including the Jadhav case. After the legal arguments are over, its soft power will have to take charge. It is hard to predict when this will take place because Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh has indicated that India is yet to settle the scores for the beheading of its two security personnel. Time is always a great healer. Once Jadhav is let off the death row, as it seems he might well be, a quid pro quo may become a workable proposition.

(The Tribune)