The Pakistan-India foreign secretary-level talks to have been held next week were supposed to mark the first meaningful engagement in the normalisation process between the two countries since Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi won power.

Now, the cancelled meeting has instantly become a symbol of the difficulty to even talk about talks when it comes to the two rivals.

To be sure, this time the blame must lie firmly on the Indian side. The suggestion that the Pakistan high commissioner to India, Abdul Basit, committed a grave diplomatic error by meeting a Kashmir Hurriyat leader is simply preposterous.

Leave aside that such meetings ahead of high-level talks between Pakistan and India have occurred in the past and are standard diplomatic fare, if Mr Modi’s government is really keen on starting over with Pakistan, then would it not make sense to bring on board as many stakeholders as possible when it comes to the Kashmir dispute?

Bizarrely, there have even been claims in some Indian quarters that the meeting in India would be akin to Indian diplomats engaging Baloch separatists in Pakistan.

Perhaps it is worth reiterating the basic facts here: Kashmir has been an internationally accepted disputed area from the very inception of Pakistan and India; there is absolutely no question about the legal status of Balochistan as part of the Pakistani federation.

Unhappily, latest events have underlined an old truth when it comes to Pakistan-India relations: if the political leadership on both sides appears weak, hawks and hard-liners emerge to try and scuttle the very idea of normalisation between the two countries.

Consider that on the Pakistani side, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif took the difficult decision of travelling to Mr Modi’s swearing-in ceremony despite no Indian prime minister having visited Pakistan in over a decade, even as hawks inside Pakistan openly questioned why Mr Sharif was giving Mr Modi a public relations boost without getting anything in return.

Without that kind of singular commitment at the very highest levels of political power, Pakistan-India relations will never truly be able to move forward.

Of course, if forward movement is difficult, it does not mean that a tenuous quiet is a permanent condition. Going in reverse is all too easy.

The Line of Control and the Working Boundary are tense and low-level violence in recent days could quickly escalate if the political environment also turns poisonous.

Mr Modi himself made some hard-hitting statements against Pakistan on a recent visit to Kashmir. The BJP has been in power at the centre in India before, but Mr Modi is for the first time directly in charge of the international dimension of India’s interests.

It is all too easy to see how Mr Modi could use a hard-line stance on Pakistan to reap domestic dividends. But, while interconnected, international relations should not become hostage to domestic concerns.

Published in Dawn, August 20th, 2014