Each time steps are attempted towards a more comprehensive peace, unforeseen events get in the way. Meanwhile, imposed divisions risk driving fascist factions in both countries.
It depends on from whose standpoint you perceive India in Pakistan — hawks or doves, religious extremists or moderates, nationalists or internationalists. Despite being part of the Indian subcontinent for thousands of years, the two states were carved out on the basis of religion in a bloody partition. Most brutal were the partitions of Bengal and Punjab and the unscrupulous drawing of an arbitrary border. An elitist national liberation leadership failed to handle a tedious minority question and axed the unity in diversity of our helpless subcontinent.
Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif receives Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Wagah border in 1999. (AP)
Caricaturing Indo-Pak relations, a Pakistani hawk, in an address to students at Jammu University, once observed that “they are like Tom and Jerry”, a combination of mutuality and hostility. Regardless of this love-hate relationship, India was the inheritor of the British empire in the region, and was supposed to set the direction and standards for itself and the broader region around it.
A “moth-eaten Pakistan”, a byproduct of the Two-Nation Theory, had to struggle with a dilemma of terrestrial nationhood or a celestial brotherhood. Separation from Hindustan had its own consequence of searching for an image different from the mother country — a reverse self-image, however self-damaging. Suffering from the wounds of separation of its own geographical limbs, the Indian leadership could not reconcile with the division that coalesced in the Partition Plan. Starting with the first Indo-Pak war over the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, partisanship continued to be regimented.
The Republic of India did show a secular, democratic and non-aligned path, which was not traversed by a fearful Pakistan deeply suspicious of a Monroe Doctrine being coined by the “Big Brother”. A strong Centre, authoritarian regime, Islamic moorings defined the distinct route, which was characterised by a nationalism-in-adversity, duly reinforced by India as the adversary. The Cold War period provided a unique opportunity for an authoritarian Pakistan to seek the umbrella of Western alliances to balance an increasing asymmetry in conventional forces. Another opening was created with the India-China War of 1962 for Pakistan to take refuge from its eastern neighbour’s “hegemony”.
While safeguarding its north-eastern “soft belly”, Prime Minister (PM) Indira Gandhi did succeed in drowning the Two-Nation Theory in the Bay of Bengal by dismembering Pakistan and unburdening it of the internal colonisation of its eastern wing. It helped create yet another nation on the basis of Bengali nationalism, but Bangladesh, because of its Muslim majority, was to remain a nation separate from West Bengal.
The dramatic change in the balance of forces in what was left of Pakistan also paved the way for the passage of the 1973 Constitution in Pakistan, and the signing of the Shimla Agreement between India and Pakistan. But then came Operation Smiling Buddha, the 1974 nuclear tests, sending a chilling signal to the tarnished security apparatus of a dismembered State. An inherently escalating nuclear and conventional arms race followed, to ensure the potential for a mutually assured destruction of our subcontinent.
The wages of the Cold War between the two superpowers were quite deceptively rewarding for the military junta, headed by a most reactionary General Zia-ul-Haq. While fighting the US Central Intelligence Agency’s not-so-clandestine war, Pakistan became a pawn in the American fight against the Soviet Union for the former’s exclusive imperial hegemony. As a consequence, Pakistan turned into a client- jihadi State. In the interests of democratic continuity and civilian ascendancy, the four short-termed civilian governments somehow lowered the anti-India rhetoric and looked towards India for reconciliation in the 1990s.
The demolition of the Babri mosque in 1992 triggered xenophobic communal politics not only in India but also reinforced already rising Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan. The Lahore peace process between AB Vajpayee and Nawaz Sharif was subverted by the Kargil misadventure and its perpetrator, General Pervez Musharraf, staged a fourth military coup. The terrorism of 9/11 allowed Musharraf to run with the hare and hunt with the hounds.
But, with PM Vajpayee in 2004 and PM Manmohan Singh in 2007-08, General Musharraf set in motion a most conclusive composite dialogue process which was to culminate in a pragmatic settlement of the Kashmir dispute. But that was not to be. The Mumbai terror attack of November 2008 disrupted the peace process, despite the continuation of a fragile democratic transition in Pakistan.
The rise of Muslim religious extremism in Pakistan found its corroborating counterpart in the Hindutva revivalism in India. With the rise of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh or RSS-driven Hindu Rashtra, India is, unfortunately, drifting away from its secular basis, which tends to reinforce Muslim fundamentalism in the region and vice-versa.
The Partition of the subcontinent on a religious basis and communal politics complement each other across the borders as religiously majoritarian States continue to target their minorities and, in turn, drive their majority communities towards fascism. That is most devastating and must be prevented.
(Imtiaz Alam is a veteran Pakistani journalist and peace activist)
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