When the Indian prime minister and the Pakistani generalissimo met to talk in Agra, the leaders, spin-managers and commentators on both sides forgot one critical point: that both countries are nuclear-tipped nation- states just a trigger-pull away from Subcontinental Armageddon. The failsafe mechanism hangs by a telephone hotline between the two capitals, and other than this, there is no "confidence-building measure" should there be a rapidly spiralling crisis. South Asia is a very dangerous place indeed, and de-nuclearisation might have been the right place to begin the talks.
Instead, at Pakistan's insistence, Kashmir held everything else at bay. Pervez Musharraf was unwilling to call off the mujahid infiltrators and Atal Behari Vajpayee would not acknowledge the militarisation that keeps the Valley sullen but subdued. As always, the Agra summit was guided by the politico-bureaucratic elite (India) and politico-military establishment (Pakistan). With similar worldviews and psycho-social upbringing—they even speak English with the identical northern accent—these elites ignore the interests of the silent majorities of their own countries, as also of the rest of South Asia.
In Pakistan, the Punjabi-dominated military is in the cockpit, and it will not make space either for the mercantilist therefore cosmopolitan demands of Sindh's Karachi, or for the more insular instincts of Balochistan or the North West Frontier Province. In India, the Delhi-centricism of the power structure speaks firstly for the Hindi belt, and it is worth considering whether there would have been more flexibility shown on Kashmir had the summit been held, say, in Calcutta or Madras rather than Agra-on-Jamuna.
Even more than Pakistan with its handful of provinces, however, India tends to forget its own physical size and demographic diversity. The powerful of New Delhi fail to realise that India's continent-sized territory and myriad identities can hardly be moulded with the American-style schlock patriotism now sold on satellite programming that everyone watches from Quetta to Kathmandu. Whereas some of the other smaller countries of South Asia may find their national unit-of-governance to be functional, India is a different cup of chai altogether. It is many "regions" masquerading as a "country" ruled from New Delhi centre, and the historical "Indianness" is actually a heritage of the surrounding nation-states as well.