Fall 2005’s cautious thaw: Is the ‘peace process’ becoming a peace process?

Ever since shrill hostility gave way to an effort at dialogue between India and Pakistan, every little perturbation has been viewed as a potentially fatal blow to the tenuous engagement. The so-called 'composite dialogue' between the two governments, covering a diverse range of issues, has been little more than a desultory series of talks going nowhere, punctuated by both public euphoria and bitter mutual recriminations. However, recent events suggest that the engagement between the two sides may just have become more sustainable and substantial.

If there has been any dominant motif in the 'peace process' between India and Pakistan, it is undoubtedly its ability to generate public mood swings of epic proportions. Though the term is relatively new, the 'peace process'  was properly set in motion in 1997, under the guise of a 'composite dialogue'. The dialogue did not quite measure up to the appellation of a 'peace process', since it descended on one occasion into outright war in Kargil, and, on at least two others, into the possibility of wars in which the use of nuclear weapons was discussed with studied casualness. If 'peace process' continued to be used, it was largely a consequence of both the lack of a suitable alternative-term and of the extravagance of hope bumping up against the compulsions of reality.