Why criticise Modi's trip to Pakistan? It was just a Hindu and a Muslim having lunch on Christmas

The attitude of the Opposition parties in India to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s spontaneous visit to Pakistan is uncharitable. If more leaders made such gestures, global peace might even have a chance to make a comeback. Watching those Congress guys creating hassles on the streets seemed so absurd against the backdrop of a happy little tweet leading to these two leaders getting together. Much better than cold shoulders and chillier agendas. It does not always have to be summit meets and two month-long run ups replete with analyses and projections of doom and gloom. Neither Modi nor Nawaz Sharif lost face, lost ground or any of those vitally important elements that comprise the Indo-Pak equation. One was the friendly visitor bringing greetings and the other a gracious host. Modi’s timing was exquisite: Sharif’s granddaughter’s wedding and the Pakistan PM’s birthday, what better way than to disarm him. A Hindu and Muslim leader breaking bread on Xmas day…super duper. [caption id=“attachment_2560600” align=“alignleft” width=“380”]  Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif at a meeting in Lahore. PTI[/caption] I also think there is no case to be made for seeing it as a betrayal of Parliament when it probably was the most natural and convivial meeting since Benazir Bhutto went shopping for books at The Mall in Shimla in 1972. We don’t know what these leaders discussed but two hours at home with the Sharif family, a home-cooked meal and Modi spraying charm, the atmosphere could hardly have been glacial. A house of marriage is a wonderful place in the context of the subcontinent and the organised chaos is warmly infectious. The odds are their conversation made more progress than half a dozen of those stiff backed, stern, mean-spirited horseshoe table meets that pockmark 70 years of unease and three wars in this relationship. Must be the first time two leaders from these countries have discussed family and what’s for dinner, not Jammu and Kashmir. And as a security nightmare it was a pleasant dream. Nobody knew he was coming, so no hostile entity could get an act together. You give folks like that two months of warning then you have to spend a fortune in getting security measures into place and spiralling concern. Advance parties, sanitisation of the area, commandos and snipers in place, the hassles for the public, the whole nine yards in making bandobust… Tweet you are en route and can you pop in and the other guy can scarcely say, don’t. Instead, Sharif’s biggest concern is he has to send someone shopping to get sarson ka saag. It was the cheapest summit ever in our history. A tweet, a change in the flight plan and a stopover, period. Five minutes in Paris in silent snarls and a hundred minutes in Lahore chewing the fat. What’s more likely to succeed. The way I see it that was a diplomatic win and Sharif responded with equal savoir faire. What is there to make such a song and dance about? Everyone who is peeved is peeved because they got upstaged. No one is wrapping themselves around a flagpole in Pakistan and taking on Sharif, why are we spoiling it…uh oh, talk about nazaaar, sections of the Pak media want to know how Modi came without a visa. He could have been arrested as an illegal alien. Now that would have been a story.