As New Delhi grapples, once again, with the question on when and whether to talk to Islamabad, here are four lessons that stand out from the recent history of Indo-Pak diplomacy.

The first lesson is that the Prime Minister of India must rely on his own instinct rather than the assessments of either the bureaucracy or his Cabinet colleagues. To generate progress with Pakistan, the PM must be prepared to defy the conventional wisdom within his own government.

The second lesson is that the formal mechanism for engaging Pakistan may be necessary but not sufficient to move forward. The so-called composite dialogue between India and Pakistan has produced many useful outcomes in the last few years, but has been difficult to sustain. It has been accident prone and an easy target for the opponents of the peace process in both countries. Every time there is a major terrorist attack on India, it has somehow become New Delhi’s political burden to decide whether to continue the dialogue or not. The only way out is to reduce the salience of the official negotiations.

The third lesson is that India can’t talk Pakistan out of supporting anti-India terrorist organisations. The composite dialogue for example was premised on a simple bargain. Pakistan would create a violence free atmosphere and India would negotiate purposefully on Kashmir. This bargain held for a couple of years during 2005-07, but has collapsed since.

The fourth lesson is to stop treating Pakistan as a coherent whole. The many institutions and political formations across the border have different views on the peace process with India.

Instead of being perpetually torn by the question whether we should engage Islamabad or not, India must maintain open contact with all the potential partners across Pakistan.

Partition happened so long ago. It was a result of distrust between the majority communities in these regions. Divide and conquer has often led to unfortunate consequences. The British perhaps sowed the seeds of distrust to maintain control on the colony. If we can somehow compute the cost both nations have suffered on account of the conflicts it would perhaps be many folds higher than cost of useful land in Kashmir and substantially improved the GDP of this region.