Is Spring affecting India-Pakistan relations? I wondered, despite the cynicism spawned by 41 years of journalism, as I watched on television the final of the recent one-day international cricket series between the two countries in Lahore on March 27. I had by then heard of the Pakistani warmth that had overwhelmed Indians-even those travelling to watch the matches, to say nothing of the cricketers. I had seen on the small screen Pakistani crowds cheering in exemplary display of sportspersonship whenever Indians played well.

Nevertheless, the final, I had thought, would be rather different and rivalry on the ground and in the Gaddafi stadium might lead tension. Instead, I saw Pakistanis cheering the Indian side as it crafted a convincing victory, joining Indians who ran around the stadium carrying Indian flags, and celebrating victory with fireworks and dancing on the streets. There was no expression of hostility even in Pakistan's hour of defeat. Of course, Indians and Pakistanis tend to get on very well as individuals. But a spring in India-Pakistan relations will depend greatly on the ties between the two Governments that have either been locked in war, direct or proxy, or have dealt with each other with measured correctness. Why it has been so has to be understood in its historical context for assessing the long-term significance of the cricket bonhomie.

The bitterness bequeathed by the Partition and the riots that accompanied it was intensified by Pakistan's invasion of Kashmir in 1947 and recurring communal riots in both countries. The emergence of Kashmir as a major source of acrimony between the two countries aggravated it. Pakistan's alliance with the United States in the Cold War, membership of military treaties with which the US tried to contain the Soviet Union and China, American arms aid and western assistance to Islamabad to raise the Kashmir issue at the UN, made things worse. So did worsening India-China, and growing China-Pakistan, ties. India's rout in the 1962 border conflict with China and the way Jawaharlal Nehru panicked over it-almost writing off Assam to the Chinese in a radio broadcast that the entire Northeastern India would remembers with anger-convinced Pakistan that it could win a military conflict with this country which did not have the stomach for a fight. New Delhi's failure to react strongly to its incursion into Indian territory in the Rann of Kutch in April, 1965, tended to confirm the impression. This encouraged it to send infiltrators into Kashmir, which led to the second India-Pakistan war in September, 1965.

If India fared better than Pakistan in that, it routed the latter in the one in 1971 that led to Bangladesh's liberation. This left Pakistan, which thought that this country had premeditated its dismemberment, extremely bitter. The urge to avenge a humiliating defeat merged with the fear that India wanted to further dismember Pakistan to produce two responses: to develop a nuclear arsenal to neutralise India's superiority in conventional warfare, and an attempt to dismember India itself. Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) Directorate, established following a decision in 1948 (B.Raman, Intelligence: Past, Present and Future), was assigned the second task. It began by fomenting and assisting the secessionist Khalistan movement in Punjab and then spread its tentacles to Jammu & Kashmir (J&K) where cross-border terrorism emerged as a major menace towards the end of 1989.

India-Pakistan relations have steadily deteriorated since then. Pakistan's continued sponsorship of cross-border terrorism, not only in J&K but also elsewhere in this country, the Kargil War of 1999 and the terrorist attack on Parliament on December 13, 2001, which prompted New Delhi to undertake Operation Parakram, pushing its troops into the forward areas in full mobilisation, all contributed to the process.

Given this long history of antagonism one wonders what explains the present explosion of warmth, and its durability. Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee has, of course, always stood for India-Pakistan friendship and had not only gone to Lahore in February, 1999, in search of it but had also invited President Pervez Musharraf to the Agra summit in July 2001 despite the Kargil War and continuing terrorism. Notwithstanding the fiasco that the summit became and Pakistan's continued sponsorship of cross-border terrorism, he announced in his historic public meeting in Srinagar in April, 2003, that he was extending his hand of friendship to Pakistan. The question is: What made General Musharraf respond positively for the first time after becoming President?

Neither he nor Pakistan's military establishment could be unaware of Kashmiri disenchantment with terrorism and intense desire for peace-a fact underlined by their large-scale participation in the Assembly elections in the State in October 2002 despite savage terrorist violence. Simultaneously, far from being bled to a collapse by cross-border terrorism and insurgency, India had responded with a proactive counter-insurgency strategy that was taking an increasingly heavy toll of the lives of cross-border jihadis. With popular support dwindling, and India's military response becoming increasingly formidable, it was a matter of time before cross-border terrorism was crushed.

Meanwhile, an increasingly large number of people in Pakistan have began realising not only that their country could not snatch Kashmir from India by force but the sponsorship of cross-border terrorism against the latter could not be separated from terrorism within Pakistan and of the global variety practised by the Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their affiliates. Of course, a section of Pakistan's military establishment, the ISI and the fundamentalist Islamist political parties and other organisations in the country still want to persist with cross-border terrorism.

But post-9/11 Americans made it clear to President Musharraf that failure to act resolutely against the Al Qaeda and the Taliban could have very serious consequences for his country, and he himself realised that to crush these organisations he had to crack down on terrorist outfits like the Jaish-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Toiba (LeT) which, set up to perpetrate cross-border terrorism in India, were sheltering their men.

Again, President Musharraf, while by no means averse to using fundamentalist Islamist terrorist against India, is clearly not a fundamentalist himself. A look at his family makes this clear particularly his rather forthright mother and his dogs, makes this clear.

He could not have been very comfortable with the ascendancy of Islamist fundamentalists, which, as indicated by the reactionary rule of the fundamentalist alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal in the North-weatern Frontier Province, might turn Pakistan into a country like Afghanistan. If he still hesitated, afraid that a strong offensive might prompt fundamentalist Islamist groups of all varieties, and sections of the armed forces and the ISI, to respond violently, perhaps plunging Pakistan into civil war, the two attempts on his life in December last year, must have further convinced him that softness could be as fatal as riding the tiger.
If one had in any case to crush terrorists, why not combine it with good relations with India? That would please the Americans, who are paranoid about a nuclear war in the Indian subcontinent, immensely (which will bring more aid) and win the support of a very large section of Pakistanis who want improved ties with India? The logic, which is convincing, has to contend with mutual hostility dating back to more than 50 years.

Neither India nor Pakistan can make any concession on Kashmir today. Their bilateral relations need to be taken to a level of friendship where give and take will be possible. For lasting friendship, both countries should think in terms of a couple of decades devoted to a conscious promotion of friendly neighbourliness. President Musharraf's reported statement that Pakistan would pull out of the bilateral talks with India if no progress was made on the Kashmir by July, does not help the cause of India-Pakistan peace.