Despite seven decades of enmity which has manifested itself in four wars, countless proxy wars and terror attacks in which thousands have been killed, unbridled hostile propaganda against India and unabashed hate-mongering against Hindus and Sikhs (including in public speeches and media), diplomatic campaigns to grievously damage India and cripple it—India continues to suffer a sort of national Stockholm Syndrome when it comes to Pakistan. The people, policymakers and most of all the press in India are ever ready to give Pakistan a free pass, push its past transgressions under the carpet in the fond belief that treachery will not repeat, and delude itself to imagining a rosy future.

India has virtually no expertise in Pakistan. We have more than a billion people who have an opinion on Indo-Pak relations but not even a handful who are experts in Pakistan. There is neither any sustained and systematic study of the enemy country nor any institutional structure to monitor every development in Pakistan. Our knowledge of Pakistani politics is superficial, our understanding of its power structure is pedestrian, our analysis of its economy is perfunctory, and our study of its society virtually non-existent. As a result, our capacity to undercut and undermine Pakistan’s hostility is severely circumscribed, partly by our leaders’ delusions of making peace, partly by our own diffidence, and partly because our policy is based less on reality on ground and more on fantasy.

An example of this is the oft-heard nonsense that peoples of both countries want peace and normalisation even though there is no empirical evidence to back this. Every U-turn by Indian leaders is suffixed by the stock phrase “our desire for peace shouldn’t be taken as a sign of weakness”, even though that is precisely how these flip-flops are taken by the Pakistanis. And yet, we keep repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

The fact that India has no Pakistan policy is because there is neither any clarity of thought nor any consistency of purpose in the Indian system on Pakistan. Small wonder then that we tend to place a lot of faith in, and even get readily taken in, by the “pleasant lies” (a phrase coined by the US academic Professor C Christine Fair) that Pakistani interlocutors speak in not just the official track but also the myriad other tracks of dialogues. But we don’t bother to measure these lies against the facts on the ground.

As compared to India’s cultivated ignorance of Pakistan, the Pakistanis take their enmity with India very seriously. The real rulers of Pakistan—the Pakistan Army—devotes enormous time, effort and resources to study India. We might scoff at their puerile, prejudiced and quite primitive understanding of India, but what cannot be denied is the Pakistani skill in exploring and exploiting India’s vulnerabilities and Indian politicians’ vanity and vaulting ambitions. Simply put, the Pakistanis know how to play the Indians and the Indian system. And the prime example of this is the Kartarpur corridor.

When the Pakistan foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi blurted out that India was wrongfooted by Imran Khan’s “googly” on the Kartarpur corridor, he did let the cat out of the bag. Pakistan’s initiative wasn’t so much out of the goodness of its heart—or out of respect for Sikh sentiment—but more as part of its plan to catch India off-guard and forward the agenda of inciting and instigating the Sikh community within India and the Sikh diaspora in the West.

But it isn’t only Qureshi. Leading up to the ground-breaking ceremony of the Corridor and after, other members of the current dispensation in Islamabad have alluded to and indeed revelled in having succeeded—or so they think—in winning over the Sikhs and perhaps opening another front against India. The Pakistanis calculated, possibly correctly, that their “chaal” would find Indian political parties in a quandary. Should they celebrate and claim credit for getting a long-standing demand fulfilled, or distance themselves lest the entire thing blow up in India’s face?

Of course, on their own, the Pakistanis couldn’t have managed this coup. For this, they needed useful idiots, of which there is no dearth in India. Wittingly or unwittingly, the cricketer-turned-comedian-turned-politician Navjot Singh Sidhu became the Pakistani Trojan. That he was a mere pawn in this game simply escaped his obtuse mind. If anything, he wallowed in the attention he received, especially in Pakistan. He heaped praise on Imran Khan even though anyone with even an iota of understanding of Pakistan would have known that the Corridor could never have been opened without the Pakistan military establishment’s nod. Quite like Sidhu, his “mate” Imran Khan too is at best a front for the nefarious designs of the Pakistani deep state.

Be that as it may, India should have seen through the game and blocked the “wrong one”. After all, the government has known for long the Pakistani efforts to resurrect the Khalistan movement. For at least half a decade, if not more, information and intelligence have been pouring in about how Pakistan is using the Sikh diaspora to reignite the flames of terrorism in Punjab. Radical groups have been funded and facilitated in Western countries like the UK, Canada, Germany and the even US to agitate on Khalistan. The entire Referendum 2020 is a Pakistani intelligence operation. Inside Punjab, agent provocateurs have desecrated the Guru Granth Sahib and created civic disturbances. Target killings of RSS leaders and other activists, as well as the recent attack on the Nirankari congregation, are also examples of the Pakistani game-plan. By trotting out and giving pride of place to a notorious Khalistan advocate—the Pakistan Gurdwara Prabhandak Committee is nothing more than an ISI front and its secretary general Gopal Singh Chawla is clearly an ISI tout—during the groundbreaking ceremony, Pakistan made its intentions very clear.

And yet India walked into the minefield. Although the Kartarpur offer was apparently made during Imran Khan’sswearing-inn, the move would have been gamed by Pakistan much earlier. In August last when the Corridor idea was made public, the Indian side didn’t bite. But it now transpires that something was cooking between the two governments behind the scenes. This happened even though relations had remained very strained, which raises the question as to why Pakistan continued to push with this “generous offer”. Was it to soften India, was it to intentionally create wriggle room, was it to use India to climb out of the hole Pakistan finds itself in? Given the past record of Pakistani treachery, one would have to take a leap of faith—as indeed seems to have been done—to think that this was a benign move.

Before agreeing to Pakistan’s offer, India should have considered all the pros and cons. While it is all very well to facilitate the Sikhs’ access to one of their holiest shrines, the flip side of assenting to the Corridor should have been taken into consideration and the modalities of how the Corridor would operate decided before giving the nod to it. Will access be free or will it be on basis of some documents? Will there be a time set to return (within a few hours or on the same day) or will there be no such limitation? Will it be only for Keshdhari Sikhs or also for non-Keshdhari Sikhs and for Hindus, many of whom are also followers of the Sikh faith in general and Guru Nanak in particular? Given that the Pakistanis have grand plans—hotels, markets and what have you—it isn’t clear if the Indian side knows the exact contours of the access that this corridor will give to Indian citizens.

If, as is inevitable, Pakistan uses the Durbar Sahib in Kartarpur to launch a massive propaganda campaign, how will India respond? Will it shut down the corridor—have the implications of such a move been worked out—or will it persist with the Corridor? In either case, there will be hell to pay. Also, as is the wont of many people in India, there is now a clamour for more such initiatives—Sharda Peeth in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir is one example. What if Pakistan demands similar concessions or corridors into India? Is India ready to accept these demands?

With the initial euphoria over the opening of the Corridor over, the realisation seems to be dawning that not only is the Kartarpur Corridor unlikely to change the fundamental dimensions and dynamics of the Indo-Pak relations, it will also be a bit of a millstone around India’s neck. Serious countries normally realise this before jumping into something like this. India, however, refuses to learn and almost craves inviting trouble for itself.