As Pakistan and India grope their way towards normalization, lost in the heat and confusion of the moment is the awkward fact that what both countries are trying to restore are links cut arbitrarily and, as time is proving, somewhat foolishly by India in the first place.

When a group of terrorists struck the Indian parliament in December 2001, India was quick to point the finger of blame at Pakistan. Not a shred of evidence was produced. None has emerged since, the smoking gun of Pakistani involvement proving as elusive as weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

But just as America attacked Iraq on trumped-up charges, India went jingoistic without letting facts stand in its way. Air, road and rail links with Pakistan were snapped, the Indian high commissioner recalled from Islamabad. Pakistan kept its cool. It also kept its high commissioner in Delhi, recalling him later only when India made it plain he couldn't stay.

These measures were the usual suspects. More serious was the massing of troops on the border. As the headlines shrieked 'eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation', the newest buzzword was nuclear flashpoint. The world was alarmed. Or perhaps having a fair measure of subcontinental courage, it feigned alarm.

Anyhow, with its hands full in Afghanistan, America wanted no distraction elsewhere. So it asked both countries to cool it. But India, following the December parliament attack, making an almighty fuss, and terrorism after all having become the number one issue globally, India half-succeeded in putting the label of terrorism on the Kashmir insurgency. Pakistan came under pressure to end "cross-border terrorism".

Pakistan could be forgiven for feeling baffled. Here it had lent vanguard support to America for its war on Afghanistan and here it was swallowing the humiliation of being told by America to allay Indian concerns. Against this backdrop of dismay, General Musharraf declared war on religious extremism in mid-January 2002. While he denounced the mullahs, his real message was for Washington.

But Pakistan tided over that ticklish moment and things are much calmer today. As if Afghanistan wasn't enough, America is also mired in Iraq. It really has no time for anything else.

The essential prop for India's post-parliament-attack bellicosity towards Pakistan was American support, expressed typically in US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage's less-than-subtle muscle-toting diplomacy. With that prop withdrawn, India's belligerent posture has sagged for want of support. The Indian army has been pulled back from the border. High commissioners have been exchanged and peace proposals have been aired at well-calculated press conferences.

Forgive Pakistan for being bemused. It had done nothing to merit jingoism. It has done nothing startling to earn Indian goodwill. India has blown hot and cold, with no prompting either way from Pakistan. In Mr Vajpayee's rediscovered role as apostle of Indo-Pak understanding, it's less the peacemaker on view than the shrewd judge of a policy of diminishing returns.

Yet because of our less-than-perfect internal situation, we get no credit even when reasonable while India, because of its good-good international image, gets kudos even at its most perverse. Lesson: fix up the internal situation. It's doing us no good.

Anyway, let's be under no illusion. It's not a great leap forward into the future India is proposing. Merely a 'creative' return to the status quo as it existed in December 2001. Creative because it comes with some new icing: free health-care for 20 Pakistani children, a bus ride across the Line of Control, etc. Even when we try to be good, we can't help being clever. This is a subcontinental privilege: behaving like monkeys even in serious moments. Free treatment to 20 children is a propaganda ploy smacking of condescension. Offering scholarships to Kashmiris and free treatment to Kashmiri victims of Indian repression is just the right Pakistani response.

I heard S. K. Singh, former Indian foreign secretary and one-time high commissioner in Islamabad, squealing on BBC radio that by bringing in treatment for Kashmiris Pakistan was showing a lack of seriousness. In Indian hands flippancy is statesmanship; with Pakistan it is, well, a sign of immaturity.

Pakistanis can be hyper-critical of their country. Scratch a Pakistani, especially a Punjabi with a glass in his hand at a diplomatic do, and he'll paint you a picture of doom. Not because he is without patriotism or because the whisky is taking effect but because Pakistanis are like that, self-critical to a fault. Indians never much care to see the mote in their eyes.

But the dialectics of competitive monkeyism apart, it's a good thing even if we are restoring ties sacrificed to expediency. Pakistan foreign secretary Riaz Khokhar has hit the right note in responding to the Indian proposals. We are prepared to discuss the others while some we consider play-acting. But India disappoints when it does not point the way to talks on Kashmir.

This is India's biggest psychological problem: the refusal to concede that it has a problem in Kashmir. Most Indians, especially the educated young, blame Pakistan and the ISI for Kashmiri unrest. Kashmir is an integral part of India and India will never give it up is the mantra they chant. Put it to them that India formally recognizes it as a dispute, an issue whose status has yet to be settled, and they genuinely seem stumped.

No one is saying Kashmir will be settled tomorrow. This wasn't even the issue at Agra. Pakistan just wanted an acceptable form of words and despite all the mythology that has overtaken the event since, India, when the crunch came, got cold feet and wriggled out of any verbal commitment.

The Simla Accord, a victor's document, itself gives Kashmir the status of a dispute. Vajpayee's Agra invitation to Musharraf mentioned Kashmir as an issue to be discussed. How can Kashmir be discussed if it is an integral part of India? So what is India afraid of, especially when it knows that negotiations, composite or any name you give them, will mean no change on the ground?

Pakistan may have a million problems but in a crucial respect it has moved on while India is regressing. India is no longer an issue which plays domestically in Pakistan. There are no takers for a thousand-year war with India. "Crush India" is a slogan of the hoary past.

Pakistan, however, seems to be a necessary ingredient of the domestic Indian scene, a bogey to whip up patriotism or nationalist hysteria. Does anyone in Pakistani politics or the press caricature Vajpayee? Among India's political class "Mian Musharraf" is a theme invoking a thousand variations. What's the Bollywood flick I saw on the Delhi-Lahore bus? Rani Mukerjee says her beau is talking like Musharraf at Agra. If Pakistan did not exist India would have to invent it.

Furthermore, religious fundamentalism in Pakistan is the exclusive preserve of the mullacracy, the passions fuelling it not shared by the chattering classes. But Hindu fundamentalism of the Vishva Hindu Parishad variety gets its most powerful stimulus not from any fringe group but from the English-speaking middle classes. Untutored fundamentalism of the kind we have is easily dealt with. Educated fundamentalism is near-kin to fascism, the kind that took Germany into the dark world of racial superiority.

TAILPIECE: One contrast at Wagah you can't help noticing. Our coolies tend to be thin. Some, you think, could do with more nourishment. By contrast, most of the Sikh porters across are strapping fellows, tall and broad, a raffish look about them. Clearly our chaps, piety on their side, will inherit the earth. The Sikhs meanwhile, for whatever reason, seem to be having the better time of it.