For all practical purposes, the composite dialogue between India and Pakistan has come to a temporary halt. Although India has postponed the foreign-secretary-level talks scheduled for this week, it is in no position to break the dialogue altogether.

There was a time when Pakistan was desperate and General Musharraf was willing to conduct the dialogue at any time and at any place. Now, India has a greater stake in continuing the dialogue because of international pressure as well as those of competitive politics at home.

Earlier, it was Islamabad which had to please the Americans. Today, it is India which has to placate them. The ongoing negotiations for civilian nuclear cooperation with the United States of America have made it virtually impossible for New Delhi to lead the region once again into a situation of high tension.

Calling off the peace process would also expose the Congress and Manmohan Singh to attacks from the opposition and the allies alike. New Delhi has also gone so far out in proposing a whole host of confidence-building measures with Islamabad that it is difficult for it to retrace its steps.

India?s difficulties have increased because it has, in effect, absolved Pakistan of the responsibility it undertook on January 6, 2004 to not permit any territory under its control to support terrorism in any manner. On April 18, 2005, Singh and Musharraf signed a joint statement, which, while making a perfunctory reference to the earlier statement, claimed that the peace process was now ?irreversible?.

India has thus willingly walked into a situation where it would be accused of disrupting the dialogue if it decided to re-link terrorism with the peace process.

The government has also narrowed its policy options by repeatedly giving good-chits to Pakistan on infiltration. However, a major reason for the decline in infiltration is that Islamabad has a wider set of options available today. A sufficient number of militants are already present in Jammu and Kashmir, sleeper-cells of terrorists are in place in the rest of India, and the option of operating through Nepal or Bangladesh is so easily available that there is no need to maintain previous levels of infiltration. There are, therefore, no quick and easy options available to India for dealing with Islamabad. But it may still not be too late to revisit the mistakes India has made vis-?-vis Pakistan.

India?s Pakistan policy is primarily the result of its failure to understand Islamabad. Pakistan has to be judged on the history of its past actions as well the totality of its approach towards India. Judge it through American eyes and Indian interests go for a toss.

Islamabad has been instrumental in creating the cadre of various Islamic terrorist groups targeting India, training them, providing them equipment and, most importantly, giving them a cause to fight for. Once this is recognized, then it is pointless to split hairs and ask whether the Pakistani state and Musharraf are directly involved in acts of terrorism or whether it is the handiwork of those over whom they have no control.

New Delhi must also view Islamabad?s approach towards it in totality. The fact is that Islamabad opposes India at every step. Most recently, it opposed the India-US nuclear deal. When India decided to field a candidate for the post of the United Nations secretary-general, its immediate reaction was to announce plans to also field a candidate. When the South Asia Free Trade Agreement was about to come to fruition, it decided that it would have free trade with all other countries in the region except India.

Subsequent denials notwithstanding, when the Mumbai blasts took place, the first reaction of its foreign minister was to justify them and link them to Kashmir. The examples are endless. The point they illustrate is that Islamabad has sought open diplomatic confrontation with India at every opportunity it gets.

New Delhi must recognize that it is a mindset that it is dealing with in Pakistan. That mindset is defined negatively vis-?-vis India. It seeks to foster a Pakistani identity that is defined as the sum-total of anti-India emotions. Appeasement will neither change the beggar-thy-neighbour mindset of Islamabad nor its attempt to create a Pakistani national identity defined by negativism towards India. Pakistan is an abnormal nation-state on India?s borders ? an irrational neighbour, whose psychological complexes are very difficult to deal with.

While it is true that there is a significant constituency for peace among the Pakistani people, it does not influence the Pakistani state. The undemocratic nature of its polity does not permit that. The stranglehold of the army on Pakistani society marginalizes, if not de-legitimizes, the influence of civil society.

How then does India deal with Pakistan? India?s long-term strategy has to be one of containing Pakistan?s irrationality, obscurantism and simmering hate of Western civilization within its own borders. In the short run, however, the so-called ?measured? responses would not suffice because such responses are always judged against past actions. The Pakistani establishment has sized up what India can do and cannot on the basis of its past record. After the terrorist attacks on Ayodhya, Delhi, Varanasi and Bangalore, the Indian government mouthed the same platitudes as it is doing now.

India would need to fashion a more aggressive public posture against Pakistan. At the same time, it would have to decide on what messages it wants to convey through diplomatic back channels.

Publicly, New Delhi would have to forcefully reiterate and remind Islamabad of its commitment to not allow support for terrorism from its soil in any manner. Indian leaders must emphasize that the terrorist attacks in Mumbai are a continuation of what has been happening elsewhere in India ? the same groups with same training, same motivation and same ideology have been responsible.

Yet no explicit conditions for continuing the dialogue should be laid down publicly. That would make restarting the dialogue process very difficult in the future, as Islamabad is unlikely to meet any of the conditions laid down easily. Through back-channel diplomacy however, New Delhi must pressure Pakistan to effectively ban the terrorist organizations in the territories under its control, destroy their infrastructure, close down their offices, arrest not only the heads of these organizations in Pakistan but also the perpetrators of flight IC 814 hijacking and those responsible for the 1993 Mumbai bomb blasts.

There is not a single instance of Pakistan extending any cooperation to India on the issue of terrorism. Those involved in the hijacking of flight IC 814 roam freely in Pakistan. Not one of them has been extradited to India. Any other country, which claims to be against terrorism, would have at least moved an inch in that direction ? but not Pakistan.

While delaying the dialogue may not be sufficient to push Pakistan to act, continuing it even after 200 people have died and 750 injured in Mumbai would send completely wrong signals. On balance, the composite dialogue with Pakistan would have to be postponed, whatever the consequences. And the responsibility for the delay will be Islamabad?s.

The aim should be to see some action on the ground. Until then, it would be pointless to restart the composite dialogue.