Doubt everything

Today the PM is in the best possible position to lift the veil on the Parliament attack. He needs to doubt the system he heads 
Jawed Naqvi New Delhi

The Indian prime minister has said that the only way to approach relations with Pakistan was to trust it, but with requisite verification. If there is a genuine inclination to mend ties, doubt rather than trust could be a more positive approach. 

India can legitimately continue to doubt Pakistan's overt and covert doings provided Indian policymakers also learn to introspect. They should diligently verify and crosscheck actual as distinct from imaginary factors that give rise to their doubts. The same holds true for Pakistan's often misplaced worries about India's motives. 

Verified doubt is scientific and it lays the foundation for merit-based trust. Karl Marx was not cynical when he proclaimed his motto was to 'doubt everything'. There can be no denying that Pakistan by omission and commission has been a source of religious fanaticism and terror among its neighbours and, just as worryingly, also for itself. 

The leaders of India and Pakistan recognised this reality in 2005 when they agreed that their peace process was irreversible.They came to the conclusion because they could identify, verify and isolate those they felt were hostile to their quest for durable friendship, as the Mumbai bombers no doubt were. 

Yet bilateral talks have continued to run out of steam periodically ever since a serious effort was made in Lahore in 1999 to put them on the rails. The slide back was possible because subsequent efforts were anchored in mealy-outhed tokenism rather than in a healthy, uestioning spirit. The advantage of a questioning spirit is that it is the opposite of an inquisition. 

A true questioning spirit is usually introspective in nature, not accusatory. Take one recent example. Since four Pakistani prisoners were ordered to be released ahead of Indian Home Minister P. Chidambaram's recent visit to Islamabad, a worthwhile question to ask him was how many similar prisoners had remained behind in Indian jails? But the Indian media went to town about the generous gesture, turning the Indian home minister into a Roman emperor celebrating his daughter's birthday. Pakistan periodically indulges in similar tokenism. A new list of each other's prisoners will be exchanged on July 1. That should give a glimpse into the enormity of the mutual bilateral crimes that Dr Manmohan Singh wants to airbrush with trust. 

Perhaps the most important question that craves an answer from the recent confabulations between the two sides is that why have the talks resumed? What has changed between November 2008 and now? When did the Indian prime minister decide that trust with verification was the best policy towards Pakistan and why could this not have been said in December 2008? The essence of the question really lies in the cynical suspension of the talks after Mumbai. Why were the talks suspended and what was achieved by that? Is another attack now ruled out? 

Dr Singh was in the opposition when the Parliament attack took place in December 2001. He and some of his current cabinet colleagues had asked some probing questions of the government of the day. The courts have given their verdicts and now TV-sponsored 'people' are busy debating how the lone death row convict Afzal Guru can be denied presidential pardon (given to seven convicts last week).