Empress of Elegant Evasions

Nirupama Menon Rao’s diplomacy of denial collides with the ugly reality of Pakistan’s history of sponsored terror against India.

There is a particular kind of Indian diplomat – one who is retired, refined, erudite and reliably detached from consequence - who resurfaces from time to time with the same prescription to mend bridges with Pakistan.

This prescription advocates restraint, dialogue and a fresh process to ensure that nothing fundamental changes. Nirupama Menon Rao has now offered the latest, and perhaps most jarring, iteration of that tradition.

In a series of posts on the micro-blogging site X, Rao lamented that India and Pakistan were trapped in a “single script” of territory, terror and recrimination. Her solution was to move towards “parallel tracks” of engagement, including energy cooperation, diaspora welfare, maritime stability, and, astonishingly, a “women’s caucus.”

A question that immediately forces itself to the surface, and refuses to be buried under diplomatic phrasing is how, exactly, does one propose a “caucus” with Pakistan in the aftermath of a horrific massacre like Pahalgam last year, where 25 Hindu women watched their male relatives being gunned down by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists for failing to recite the kalma?

What can a “women’s caucus” say to the women who watched their husbands being shot in the head? What does “parallel engagement” mean to those whose lives were shattered in minutes by terrorists trained, armed and enabled across the border?

Does a veteran diplomat of the stature of Rao genuinely believe that Pakistan’s behaviour is a product of insufficient dialogue? That what decades of back-channel negotiations, summits and confidence-building measures failed to achieve can now be unlocked by thematic ‘tracks’ and symbolic caucuses?

The introduction of gender into this argument is not merely naïve but is grotesquely misplaced. Terror in Kashmir has never been gender-neutral in its cruelty. Women have not been insulated from violence; they have been made to live with its consequences in their most intimate form. To suggest that a shared womanhood can bridge a divide rooted in the deliberate use of terror as state policy is evasion.

History offers little support for Rao’s premise. Benazir Bhutto, lionised globally as a liberal icon, had presided over the early escalation of militancy in Kashmir and lent legitimacy to forces that would go on to destabilise the region for decades.

If Rao’s proposal strains credulity in India, its reception in Pakistan is far more revealing. Within hours, Hina Rabbani Khar applauded it, praising its “strategic clarity” and expressing nostalgia for an earlier phase of engagement. Nostalgia for what, precisely? For a time when dialogue flourished while terror infrastructure remained intact?

Khar’s endorsement is not incidental. It tells us exactly who benefits from such thinking. Pakistan has long preferred an India that is willing to talk endlessly but reluctant to impose costs.

Every attempt to compartmentalise engagement with Pakistan has collapsed under the weight of events. From Agra to Mumbai to Pathankot to Pahalgam, the pattern is unbroken. Why, then, does Rao persist in believing that a new vocabulary can succeed where old frameworks failed?

There is also a deeper question of instinct. During the years when Rao and her contemporaries shaped India’s diplomatic posture, the bias towards engagement was almost reflexive.

Even in the shadow of mass-casualty attacks, the system leaned towards reopening channels, exploring cooperation, and treating scepticism as a failure of imagination. That unchastened instinct is on display once more.

Critics increasingly locate this mindset within a broader ecosystem of globally networked think tanks and policy circles - institutions such as the International Crisis Group, often associated with transnational funding networks including those backed by George Soros. Rao’s suggestion of parallel tracks is not just tone-deaf but morally unserious.

What, then, is Rao really arguing for? That India should continue to absorb violence while searching for new formats of engagement? That accountability must wait until the atmospherics improve?

Her absurd suggestions are the logical endpoints of her position. And they demand an answer.

For decades, under previous Congress-ruled governments, India has experimented with the kind of diplomacy Rao now repackages - process-driven, and perpetually hopeful. The results are written in the names of its dead who were massacred without pity by Pakistan-sponsored terrorists – from Kashmir to Mumbai.

To persist with that approach, in the face of repeated evidence, is gross denial and a regrettable tribute to the memory of innocent civilians who lost their lives in Pakistan-instigated terror attacks.