If Pakistan cannot envisage 'long-lasting peace' with India unless the Kashmir problem is solved, as the country's Foreign Secretary Abdul Basit has said, the reason has less to do with its concern for the 'wishes of the (Kashmiri) people' than with the question of Pakistan's own survival as a nation.

Having already lost East Pakistan that became Bangladesh in 1971, the ruling establishment in Islamabad is scared of allowing Kashmir to slip out of its grasp as well. Hence, the persistent attempts to foment subversion in the valley and also organise large-scale incursions by both the mujahideen and the army, as in Kargil.

The jehadi attacks on the Indian parliament in 2001 and in Mumbai in 2008, apart from random acts of terrorism, are also intended to weaken India so that it will become easier to wrest Kashmir from it.

The fear in Islamabad is that if India succeeds in holding on to Kashmir, then Pakistan will slowly start unravelling. The reason is that, first, a 'long-lasting peace' based on the fading of hopes of securing Kashmir will undermine the army's dominance over Pakistan. If India is no longer seen as a major military threat, the army will lose its raison d'etre.

But the second reason is more potent. Pakistan had expected to make up for the loss of its eastern wing by annexing Kashmir. It would have been a great morale booster for a country which has always been paranoid about coming second to India, whether in cricket or in diplomacy.

The inability to make any headway in Kashmir will confirm the present-day reality that Pakistan can no longer claim parity with India. The earlier hyphenation, encouraged by America, is gone. India has forged ahead as a vibrant multicultural democracy while Pakistan is seen as the nursery of Islamic terror.

Not only that, it is also perceived to be coming apart at the seams with the army having to use helicopter gunships to retain control over its north-west while Balochistan is in the grip of an insurgency with or without India's help. It is worth recalling that even the religious extremists of the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) in the north-west had pointed out during their conflict with the Pakistan Army that India has never used helicopters to control the unrest in Kashmir. The difference between a democracy and a virtual military dictatorship was evident even to the fundamentalists.

There are other causes of disquiet in the Pakistani establishment. It is that a 'long-lasting' peace will enable India to exercise its 'soft' power via its cultural influence, of which the most overwhelming will be Bollywood movies and Hindi film songs.

There is a revealing passage in Pakistani author Mohammed Hanif's book, 'A Case of Exploding Mangoes', on General Zia-ul Haq's death, in which the hero (or anti-hero), Ali Shigri, is travelling in a car driven by Major Kiyani of Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).