Eternally painting a picture with no brush

For some reason an old Talat Mahmood song has been humming in my mind: Tasweer banata hoon, tasweer nahin banti, tasweer nahin banti…(I paint, but the picture never forms). And then this line morphs in the mind, almost without permission from the brain: Kashmir banata hoon, Kashmir nahin banti, Kashmir nahin banti…

Since we have exhausted all options, and failed, when finding the way forward by starting from the beginning, let us try a different route map. Let us begin from the end. Is there an endgame? Indeed, is there any end to this utterly dangerous game?

Common sense - or should we redefine common sense as rank optimism? - suggests that any journey should end in peace. Is that the real intention of all concerned? It is necessary to address this basic dilemma at the start, because if there is any confusion about the end then every effort will be only another exercise in volatile confusion, with all its attendant consequences.

Let me declare my personal interest in the matter, unambiguously and without the clutter of any higher virtue. I have two children in college; the elder has just completed her studies, the younger has two years left before he graduates.

I would like both my children to return and live in their country, India, rather than in England or the United States. And I would like my India to be a peaceful home to them for the rest of their lives, where they can prosper, succeed, and, most important, enjoy the sheer fun that life offers to the fortunate in my country.

I do not want them to live in the penumbra of nuclear war. I must work on the hypothesis that this is a perfectly sane desire, and that everyone who is sane on the subcontinent, and everyone sane in the rest of the world with an interest in the subcontinent, shares this hope.

If peace is the objective, then long before it happens on the ground it must take root in the mind. This is tricky, because war, or at least confrontation, has been the dominant fact of minds fixed in the past.

India and Pakistan have always gone to their messy, uncertain, tripartite origins in their search for solutions to any present problem. They have never permitted the future to shape the present.

The difference is considerable. Are we still going to fight battles started in the 19th century, or are we going to look ahead to the rest of the 21st century?

Take one look at an imagined future and visualise the difference if there is, may I dare say it, peace and economic and military cooperation between India and Pakistan. Suddenly every equation from the Andamans to Arabia and Iran changes.

This becomes the largest economic market in the world, with a potential bigger than Europe or China, and the capability of raising living standards to the levels of the 20 richest countries.

Together, the subcontinent can harness and use the greatest natural resources, from the Caspian, Iran and central Asia to the eastern waters of the Indian Ocean.

If there is military cooperation, then even the United States might feel a slight twinge at having encouraged friendship between India and Pakistan, just as some Republicans might wonder today about whether helping China join the world did not actually provoke a potential that might have been best left dormant. This will never happen as long as we are defeated by the hatreds of our past.

To change a set mind is not easy. Two bits of evidence will suffice. Take, first, the Congress reaction to the statement made by Colin Powell in Delhi, that Kashmir was on the world's agenda.

The principal Opposition party reacted as if Powell had insulted India. What else has the world been doing for the whole of last year except treating the problems arising out of Kashmir as part of its agenda?

Why did Colin Powell turn up in Delhi in the first place? Not because he wanted to ease his jet lag on the way to the Asean meeting. Why did we accept the commitment made by General Pervez Musharraf on reducing support to cross-border terrorism and brought to us by Richard Armitage? Why are we holding Pakistan to that commitment, and doing so consistently, if we do not accept that the world has a role to play in the pursuit of peace on the subcontinent? Why was Donald Rumsfeld in Delhi and Islamabad? Why was Jack Straw in both capitals? It is extraordinary to suggest that Kashmir has never been discussed by any of these men on their visits to the subcontinent.

If Kashmir was not on the international agenda India and Pakistan would probably have blown each other to nuclear bits by now. We may have argued for decades that we do not need international mediation, but the only aeroplanes that scurry to and fro between India and Pakistan these days are the government aircraft of leaders from Britain and the United States.

Did the Congress object to Powell's visit? Or Straw's? There is a new reality that must be recognised: a nuclear war is not a bilateral issue. The world does not want to talk on our behalf; that in fact would be stupid. But the world does want India and Pakistan to talk to each other when a million men are battle-ready on the border and nuclear arsenals are primed for assault.

As it so happens Washington believes that these talks must be held in the framework of the Simla Agreement of 1972, which is consistent with India's position and which in turn will shape the nature of the dialogue. Delhi welcomed this statement when it was made in Washington.

It is clear that something is needed to end the dangerous stagnation in which this problem is trapped. There has to be change; equally change cannot be artificially engineered. It must emerge from a logic that is acceptable, not least to public opinion in India.

The September elections, a Constitutional requirement of democracy, are the obvious key to change. Delhi's responsibility is to ensure that they are free and fair in the sense that there is no King's Party that must be protected by rigging if it cannot win a legitimate mandate.

Both Prime Minister Vajpayee and his deputy, L.K. Advani, have given such a commitment, and done so repeatedly. The world will watch and make sure that they deliver on this commitment. But free elections are not going to be possible under a hail of jihadi bullets either.

And this is where we return to basics: does Pakistan want peace in Kashmir and over Kashmir or not? If it does then Islamabad will cooperate with Delhi in ensuring, to the best of its ability, that the September-October elections pass off with minimum violence and maximum participation. It will tell the Hurriyat that a boycott is not an answer; it is an irresponsible waste of a rare and possibly historic opportunity.

If the Hurriyat believes that it represents the will of the people, then it must prove this in the elections in order to claim a legitimate place at any future table. There cannot be progress if all sides do not move forward.

There will be a table. This much is obvious, whether anyone admits it or not. By October the process of elections in Jammu and Kashmir as well as in Pakistan, and conditions can be created, if all goes reasonably well, for a structured dialogue, this time beginning at the bottom and going up rather than the other way around (the fa