Hope burns bright eternally in human hearts. And not just India but the world would hope that Nawaz Sharif, poised to become prime minister of Pakistan again after a jail term and a long exile, would restart the peace process with India and initiate the process to dismantle the terror machine which has been playing havoc in the region for decades now. In his hour of electoral victory, Sharif is claiming that the army will no longer dictate terms, as it did in his previous stint in office. The eternal hopefuls in India are taking his words at face value and many of them have come to believe that things are bound to take a turn for the better and India must seize the initiative. But is this optimism justified? Is it not difficult to swallow Sharif’s claim that Kargil was of the army’s making, specifically of Pervez Musharraf who was then the army chief? Of course Musharraf himself has boasted of his role in Kargil, including his claim that he spent a night with his men in the Kargil heights that they had stealthily occupied. Sharif was the prime minister then and if the army had pushed into Kargil all by itself, he did not show the courage to enforce his authority over the army. The withdrawal by Pakistan came only after Sharif’s plea to Washington and Beijing to intervene found no takers. The blame game following the Kargil fiasco led to Musharraf ousting the elected prime minister. Sharif did not denounce the army’s misadventure so long as he was in office. He sought to distance himself only after Musharraf exiled him and the two became bitter enemies. Observers of the Pakistani scenario, particularly in India, would love to believe that the army there had been sufficiently softened by the events that led to the popular agitation that brought the army rule to an end and compelled Musharraf to go into exile. Evidence does not, however, support this view. Only the other day reports came that over 70 officers had called on the acting prime minister warning him against ill-treatment of Musharraf on his return to Pakistan. The political analysts are hoping Sharif will push the army back into its barracks. This hope is based on the assessment that the civil society’s anger that ended the military regime and sent Musharraf scurrying to London to save himself was an abiding one. That Musharraf’s party failed to make any dent in the electoral scene is quoted to bolster this hope. This, however, ignores the basic structural deficit of democracy in Islamic countries, not just in Pakistan. If the recent events in Egypt are anything to go by, religion dominates political thinking in these countries and more so in Pakistan. In the latter, the military had been promoting it to perpetuate its share of the power pie. That fundamental situation remains unchanged. Public anger towards the military regime might wane soon. More so, if Sharif fails to deliver. Besides, the army needs to constantly remind the Pakistanis its justification for partition and its role as their saviour against “infidel” India. Kargil-like situations are the justifications it invents to retain its importance in the scheme of things. Sharif’s assurance that the 2008 Mumbai attack will not be allowed to be repeated from Pakistan’s soil is likewise to be taken with a pinch of salt. The silver lining, however, is at last a leading politician in that country has confessed that the Mumbai attack was staged from and by Pakistan. However, we cannot ignore the fact that the Pakistani spy agency, ISI, uses terrorists for its own purpose, as it did in Mumbai. Terrorist organisations like LeT have proliferated since 2008. One of their key figures, Hafiz Saeed, is moving around freely and the Pakistani government is claiming that the evidence against him given by India is not adequate. It is a smokescreen that Islamabad regularly uses not to act against the terror master and his cohorts who regularly call for destroying India. In our enthusiasm to look for some positive signs from across the western border we tend to overlook that hatred towards non-Muslims was central to the ideology which motivated the Muslims to fight for a bloody vivisection of India. As a result of that divisive and exclusive paradigm responsible for the birth of Pakistan the jihadi mindset is endemic in that country and the clerics endorse terrorism as a legitimate weapon in the arsenal of their religion. Look at the huge number of protesters who assembled to hail killers of the Pakistani leaders who dare to speak in favour of moderate Islam and justice to minorities. To believe that this will change overnight is but political romanticism. The structural weakness of Sharif’s majority should not be overlooked in his hour of electoral triumph. His party is basically based in Punjab, the most populous province of Pakistan. In the election to the provincial assemblies, the division has been sharp with Sharif’s ML-N winning the Punjab provincial government, Imran Khan’s PTI taking the Pakhtoon areas and Sindh captured by the Bhuttos’ PPP. The army too is dominated by the officer cadre from Punjab. The benefits of parliamentary majority for Sharif are offset by the sharp political divisions along the provincial lines. The first test for Sharif to prove to the world he means business is in appointing a new army chief, a new chief justice and getting the army to crack down on the jihadis whom the army itself uses against neighbouring India and Afghanistan. It is no secret that the army is eagerly awaiting the American pullout from Afghanistan in 2014 to recapture the “defence in depth” that is part of its strategic thinking in influencing government in Kabul. The Afghan Taliban nurtured by the Pakistani army is set to push its way, after the American forces leave. That push will give the Pakistani army clout to counter the political power derived by Sharif from the electoral victory. The aura of electoral victory is not long-lasting as civil society finds itself helpless against the mob that the clerics could manoeuvre in the name of religion. Sharif’s power to be real would demand breaking the hold of the clerics-cum-army (the mullah and military combine as many commentators characterise it) over the people. And Sharif has to attempt this break-up. The real challenge will come for him when he attempts it. Sooner than later.