In the current standoff between India and Pakistan nothing is more striking than the spectacle of one-sixth of humanity - the combined population of both countries - dancing to international tunes and swaying this way and that to outside pressure.

But for United States intervention both countries might well have been at each other's throat this winter. Not sub-continental wisdom but outside urging has helped stop the slide to war.

This should be a matter of concern for both countries but is not. Having played games at each other's expense for half a century, they remain slaves to old habits. All the same, can't we settle our own affairs? Must outsiders compose our quarrels for us?

Forget history and cultural affinity. Climate, soil and the flow of our rivers dictate the need for peaceful relations. It is no more possible for Pakistan to think it can look to the rest of the world and ignore India than for India to pretend that size, numbers or a burgeoning economy entitle it to ignore the existence of Pakistan.

When scorching winds blow across the Rajasthan desert they touch Cholistan and Bahawalpur too. When the snows don't melt in the Himalayas the effect is the same on the Indus and the Ganges. It is strange though that the pain which soil and vegetation can feel is not felt by the leaderships of the two countries.

Take the latest incident in Kolkata. Before even the sounds of it had subsided, India's great hope, Mr Advani, had blamed Pakistan and the ISI. The same tendency is to be seen here, jumping to conclusions before any evidence is in. On both sides the outlook is the same: official loudspeakers working overtime not so much to spread hatred as to drown the last voices of sanity and reasonableness.

On the larger plane, every move made by both sides after September 11 has hinged in some respect on American pleasure or displeasure. No sooner had the attacks on New York occurred than India and Pakistan, competing furiously with each other, spread a red carpet for the US, offering their services with an alacrity that even paid satellites might not have shown.

To India's chagrin geography came in its way. The flying time from Balochistan to Kandahar being shorter than the air run from anywhere in Rajasthan, the Americans chose Pakistan as their principal base for the war on Afghanistan. The long view not being a subcontinental characteristic, India like a jilted lover went into a sulk.

And what did Pakistan do? It thought that the temporary advantage it had won over India was a lasting triumph. If good sense had prevailed General Musharraf would have been at pains to take India into confidence so as to lessen its mortification. After all, the make-or-break relationship we have is with India and no one else. But that was too much to ask. It was akin to expecting soon expect Mr Advani not to see a Pakistani hand behind every bush bending before the breeze in India. Instead of any statesman-like gesture then, General Musharraf said, "Lay off", words which he has had to eat as the short-term has stretched into the distance.

The blinkered view, however, is not sole prerogative of any one side. It is India's turn now to take advantage of Pakistan's discomfiture and delude itself into thinking that there's going to be no tomorrow. The problem between the two countries does not rest solely on militancy in Kashmir. Even if the last gun-fighter in the Valley is smoked out, Kashmir will remain a restive place and relations between India and Pakistan will remain poisoned because of a history of distrust.

Securing Indo-Pak relations on more solid foundations is thus the real challenge. But this will not happen unless on both sides the waters part. Pakistan has to get out of its India-is-danger syndrome while India has to look at Pakistan through spectacles other than those of the Mulla Omars of the Hindu right.

As bad as, or indeed perhaps worse than, the mullahs and pandits on either side are the professional diplomats, especially those who have served in the forward trenches of Islamabad and New Delhi. From them it is foolish to expect anything good because their minds have been shaped by the subcontinent's cold war. I say this from experience because over the years with some of the Dixits and S. K. Singhs (names which I use only as metaphors) I have supped and seen reflected in their eyes the wellsprings of an ancient hostility.

Similarly, from the Sattars on this side, with whom I take good care never to sup, no improvement can be expected. When that happy, although as yet remote, day of subcontinental sanity dawns, a gulag somewhere in the Himalayas will have to be created for these veterans of lost causes.

As for the squeeze India has applied to Pakistan post-Dec 13, it owes whatever success it has had to American collusion. Not the Indian army massed on Pakistan's borders but the US breathing down Pakistan's neck is what has made General Musharraf backtrack on militancy in Kashmir and remember Jinnah's vision of a progressive and modern Pakistan.

Similarly, it is the assurance of American backing which has emboldened India and lent a deeper note to the voices of its leadership. In other words, one-sixth of humanity, the children of the Quran and the Vedas, have been responding to an American tune.

In passing it may be noted that Colin Powell probably commands readier audiences in Islamabad and New Delhi than in Washington where after America's successful passage of arms in Afghanistan the Pentagon enjoys more clout than the State Department. Even so, if Powell feels bemused by reading lectures in responsibility to seeming adults he should not think he is entering virgin territory. In Field Marshall Wavell's Journal he would get a taste of the frustration other interlocutors have experienced while dealing with subcontinental leadership.

The Congress and League leaders debating the future of India were giants compared to the pygmies of today. Yet they often seemed more adept at quibbling over minor points than keeping their eyes on the larger picture.

Consider these Journal entries: "...Gandhi and Jinnah are behaving like very temperamental prima donnas...The Principals, Gandhi and Jinnah, are still engaged in manoeuvring for position, and I have sent them both telegrams...asking for a definite yes or no."

There is a revealing one about Nehru: "(it turns out) that what Nehru was thinking about was immediate independence, in the Interim period, in fact disclosed almost nakedly the real Congress objective - immediate control of the Centre, so that they can deal with Muslims and Princes and then make at leisure a Constitution to suit themselves." We need not accept Wavell's as the last word on the subject but as someone who saw the Indian leadership at close quarters, his comments give a flavour of the times.

Where titans failed to come up to the demands of statesmanship we are expecting lesser men to succeed. The task is daunting because on both sides there is an absence alike of vision and competence with leaders keeping their snouts to the trough and refusing to look up at the mountains or the moon. Hence the monuments we have raised to subcontinental folly: the arms race, Siachen (arguably the most senseless conflict in the world), the stand-off in Kashmir and, to crown everything, the nuclear razor that each country has to the other's throat.

The failure of Indian statesmanship in the period 1935-47 led to the partition of India. Pakistan's failure to heed the voices of East Pakistan discontent led to Bengali alienation and the birth of Bangladesh. India's failure to heed the voices of Kashmiri discontent has created a festering wound which has destroyed the peace of the subcontinent.

When post-Shimla the Kashmir issue for 17 years lay dormant between India and Pakistan, India, with a grand gesture, could have reached out to the Kashmiri people and won them over and, for all practical purposes, kicked Pakistan out of any Kashmiri reckoning. Its failure to do anything of the kind saw the rebirth of the Kashmir dispute.

The Jaish and Lashkar, or any other militant organization, are not to blame for this state of affairs. They merely walked into a situation created by Indian neglect. But far from heeding the lessons of the past, India once again is looking for a short-cut, hoping to bury the Kashmir dispute by beating Pakistan with the stick of terrorism. As this approach again demonstrates, the curse of the subcontinent is not to see the wood for the trees.