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Pakistan: Road Blocks in Normalising Relations
A.K.
Verma
If
cross border terrorism ceases, facilitating a dialogue between India
and Pakistan, will a dividend of long term peace follow?
For
a proper understanding, a hark back to the late19th century is
necessary when, for the first time, an awareness about a muslim
identity in India started developing. At that time members of the
muslim community drew their identity from class, region and language
but not religion. Reformers like Syed Ahmed were the ones who sought
to bring about a common cultural identity on the basis of the
muslimness of the community. The grant of separate electorates in
early 20th century invested the community with a political identity
by recognising it as a constitutional minority. But the community
still did not develop for long a track record of political activity
and hence a homogenous political identity.
The
Muslim elite who were the principal beneficiaries of separate
electorates and who desired political power, used them for expanding
communitarian discourses. Religion then became the instrument to
establish identity. Nationalist Muslims were not interested in this
communal approach since their objective was independence of India
and not power community wise. A majority of the Muslim community of
India at this time were still more concerned with regional and local
issues and remained unresponsive to efforts to carve out a political
All India identity for them.
The
Muslim communalists were quick to realise that in independent India
true political power would not come their way without generating a
sense of common political identity and making a bid for power on the
strength of numbers in the Muslim majority areas. The theme that in
free secular India Islamic traditions and culture would be severely
stressed was used to promote a separate identity. Thus was invented
the Two Nation Theory to serve as an instrument for securing a
political division of India.
At
the heart of the Two Nation Theory laid religious communalism and
after the creation of Pakistan it took a new shape in the form of
the Islamic ideology of the State. Islamic ideology of Pakistan is
thus the post partition face of the earlier religious communalism
which had contributed to the creation of Pakistan. The conceptual
antagonism against secularism now stands revealed as the consistent
enmity against India. The Pakistani animus against India is not a
post 1947 creation. Its roots run deep into the cultural history of
the subcontinent.
Accepting
Islam as the ideology has created many more complications. The
following problems can be identified:
*
Identity: An Islamic identity was inadequate to create a sense of
nationhood. The people of Pakistan did not know who they were. In
order to know this they had to identify what they were not. Often
such a question gets answered by examining against whom one stands.
An enemy thus becomes essential and a role for India is found. The
Pakistani military establishment and conservative Muslim groups have
been hard at work to ground such a belief in the Pakistan psyche. If
there is the further identification as the progeny of Turk and
Mughal invaders of the past, Ghori Ghazni and Babar, an inborn
hostility becomes the characteristic. Shared ethnicity or language
get forgotten when choices have to be made on the basis of religious
identity as events in Serbia and Bosnia have demonstrated.
*
Religion: Religion accounts for the deepest fissures in the history
of human civilization. India, by promoting secularism as a state
policy, seeks to underplay religious differences. The Islamic
identity of Pakistan accentuates these differences. While in India
there is the belief in ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ (Earth is one
family) in Islam the concept of shared brotherhood is limited only
to Millat. The spirit of Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam is also negated by
Islamic acceptance of Darul Islam, land of Islam, and Darul Harb,
land of war. Such concepts promote ideas of “them vs. us” and
recall to memory the role of the sword in the relationship of
Islamic people with the non Islamic people.
*
Ideology: Ideology becomes the basis of the legitimacy of a state.
Such a criterion places India and Pakistan in fundamentally
differing camps. India’s secular nationalism and Pakistan’s
religious communalism have no meeting points whatsoever and
pre-partition commonalities such as shared coexistence, blood line
or languages pale into insignificance. In this sense the Pakistani
Muslim and the Indian Muslim also become a world apart. India’s
secular ideology dominates its political choices, Panchashila,
anti-imperialism, non-alignment, pragmatism, etc. In Pakistani
ideology Islamic concerns override all other factors. The salience
of ideology, therefore, acquires a role in the Indo Pak equation.
Normalization in the relationship will require a correction in the
ideological issue.
*
Islam: Political Islam is resurgent in Pakistan which is a
phenomenon it shares with many other Islamic countries. Its rise
negates nationalism and promotes mass mobilisation the nature of
which is generally influenced by religious and cultural standards.
Inevitably, its appearance in Pakistan has led to the emergence of
fundamentalism which cannot be easily controlled. Gradually, the
role of effective opposition to the regime in power in Pakistan
seems to be slipping into the hands of these forces, even though
popular support in their favour may appear to be lacking. There is a
paradox in operation here. People do not wish their political
destiny to be controlled by religious zealots but they seem to
prefer to live in a society of “Islamised modernity” rather than
“modernised Islam”. In the face of such developments, it is a
moot point whether western support such as is being given today to
the Pakistan Govt. can succeed in sustaining it for long. In the
event of its collapse, the successor Govt. is likely to be a more
pronounced Islamic Govt. Such a Govt. can be expected to be even
more non accommodative towards India.
* Universal values: Islam is not hospitable to the western universal
values. Democracy cannot flourish in an Islamic country. The belief
in the sovereignty of Allah and the pre- eminence of the Ummah over
the nation state, overshadows the primacy of the people’s will.
The Governments in Islamic countries, including Pakistan, have thus
tended to be authoritarian or military oriented. Democracies take
decisions on the basis of debates in Parliament or at public forums.
Authoritarian regimes do not have the benefit of widespread
consultations and their decisions are usually in- bred and reached
in a vacuum. The Pakistani decision making thus remains flawed and
subjective. It cannot evaluate what is in the best interests of
Pakistan. Pride and prejudices will therefore continue to prevent it
from taking correct and meaningful decisions about India. Imposition
of four wars by Pakistan on India, 1947, 65, 71 and 99 are proof of
Pakistan’s irrationality and its propensity towards violence. It
is not generally known that Pakistan had considered three other wars
( in early 1980s, 1987 and 1990) which were all nuclear oriented.
Such propensity is by and large a common feature of Islamic
societies. Samuel Huntington’s comment is that “Islam’s
borders are bloody and so are its innards”. He reaches this
conclusion after finding empirically that people from the Islamic
civilization have been involved in more wars with people of other
civilizations as compared to wars between people of other
civilizations.
The
foregoing will inform that Pakistan’s problems flow directly from
attitudes which have been shaped by cultural and religious
differences. In the multilayered identities which people or nations
can have, the one based on culture is the strongest and a key factor
in directing their antagonisms. Unlike other differences cultural
issues do not lend themselves to easy solutions, witness the
problems linked with Ayodhya and Jerusalem. In the Indo Pakistan
context any number of instances can be cited to bring out the deep
imprint of the context of the overarching cultural factor which
comes in the way of solving their problems in the near future. A
random sampling of such examples is listed below:
*
“If we were to make it clear that whatever nuclear deterrence we
might have is primarily meant to deter the use of nuclear weapons
from the otherside, then by saying so we will fail to deter a
conventional attack”. The other side must be led to believe that
“we are almost desperate to use our nuclear capabilities when our
national objectives are threatened, (as) for example, a major
crackdown on (the) freedom movement in Kashmir”.( Lt Gen Durrani (Retd),
former ISI Director and presently Pakistan Ambassador to Saudi
Arabia, as quoted in “Pakistan and the Bomb”, ed. Samina Ahmed
and David Cartright, Oxford University Press, 1998, pg. 71)
*
“ No real peace process has ever been started between India and
Pakistan which could decide against a military option and in favour
of peace” ( Gen (Retd) Jehangir Karamat, former Pakistani Army
Chief in an address to the Pakistan Professional Forum at Dubai on
Oct 26, 2000, quoted in POT from dawn, Nov 13, 2000, pg. 4675)
*
Shaking the hands of the Indian prime Minister at the SAARC meeting
at Kathmandu in early 2002 was described by General Pervez Musharraf
as one of the three most difficult decisions taken by him. This is
as good as saying that making peace with India is a very difficult
decision.
*
Musharraf is on record stating that even if the Kashmir question is
resolved, proxy war against India will not end. Such statements
signify that Pakistan regards a military option the more credible
one and even a nuclear strike could be triggered off without an
Indian attack on Pakistan. The emphasis on peaceful solutions as
contained in documents signed at Tashkent, Simla and Lahore for
Pakistan is then so much balderdash. Pakistani confidence about
support from most Islamic countries and its mutually reinforcing
relationship with China seem to strengthen its resolve to be
unaccomodative towards India. Islamic nations and people had
displayed a similar ideological solidarity during the Gulf war.
A
solution to the Kashmir problem has been informally on offer to
Pakistan from the early days of this trouble. Most observers believe
that conversion of the Line of Control (LOC) in Kashmir into an
international border can be the only possible way out of this
imbroglio. Such a solution neither involves transfer of population
nor surrender of additional land. The adherents of Kashmiriyat are
all left intact on the Indian side, creating no ethnic division. The
Mirpuris and the Muzzafarbadis who were linguistically and
culturally more identified with the pre- partition Punjabi Muslims
would continue to remain with Pakistan. The LOC also marked by and
large in 1947 the line dividing the influence of secular National
Conference and communal Muslim Conference of the J&K state. Thus
the LOC also qualified to be an ideological demarcator apart from
being an ethnic and linguistic frontier. The Pakistani Establishment
has consistently rejected this offer under the mistaken belief that
some day it will be able to make Kashmir its own through war, proxy
war or otherwise.
Peace
thus, stands effectively driven out because while we are ready to go
by principles of compromise and 20th century values of peaceful
co-existence, Pakistan prefers to be governed by yardsticks as
applied during the time of Muslim rule. Henry Kissinger has
commented that “ the compromises suggested by India are viewed as
amputations of cultural and theological patrimony” by Pakistan. It
is no wonder that Pakistan remains impervious to the idea of peace,
whether in abstract or otherwise. Whenever it has ostensibly
supported an agreement like Tashkent, Simla or Lahore, it had in
reality made only a tactical move, agreeing to just a stage on the
road to its final goal. Cries for Jehad have never ceased to be
uttered in the urban and rural areas of Pakistan. Pakistan,
therefore, seeks parity with India in strength just as parity had
been given by the British to the Muslim League vis-à-vis the Indian
National Congress in the pre partition India. In the process it
ignores the geographical and other realities of the subcontinent
which alone will decide a country’s position in the regional and
world equations.
To
quote Henry Kissinger again, there is a deep philosophical gulf
between how Pakistan defines peace and how India views it. Pakistan
cannot win because India is too strong militarily. India cannot win
because Pakistan will not give up the two nation theory.
he
two nation theory is, thus, at the root of problems between India
and Pakistan. Its post partition manifestation in the shape of
Islamic ideology of Pakistan has carried forward its challenges to
secular nationalism of India to the present day. Only by closing
this philosophical divide can a season of peace be brought to the
subcontinent. The policy of no discussions with Pakistan until cross
border terrorism ceases should be extended to demand a reassessment
of the two nation theory. Tackling this issue is of even more
fundamental importance than trying to resolve territorial and other
disputes.
Unless
religion is given a fresh look in Pakistan, we can wait till
doomsday for peace to descend to the subcontinent. The
responsibility for finding a new direction for themselves lies on
the Pakistanis citizens since they alone, by asserting themselves,
can display whether their genius is in accord with Jinnah’s dreams
of a secularised Pakistan or suggests submission to the whims and
fancies of an irresponsible militarised power Establishment.
Author
is a former Secretary of Govt. of India
By
arrangement with South Asian Analysis Group, New Delhi
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