Kashmir is not the only bone of contention between the neighbours. The Siachen glacier and Sir Creek are other territorial disputes between India and Pakistan that have defied a solution over the years. While the former was captured during military conflict, the latter is a boundary dispute due to differences of perception. Thanks to strategic and geopolitical reasons, India is not keen on vacating the Siachen glacier, the world’s highest battlefield. Its continued occupation gives India a distinct military edge although it has been at a huge cost in terms of the money spent to hold it and the lives of our soldiers that are regularly lost due to the extreme weather conditions prevalent up there.
Sir Creek is a marshland that separates the Kutch region in Gujarat from Sindh in Pakistan. Demarcating a maritime boundary in the 60-mile long estuary in the desert of Kutch has been a problem. India has always asserted that the Sir Creek boundary lies in the middle of the channel whereas Pakistan claims that it is on the east bank. These mutually incompatible positions have made it difficult to find common ground and resolve the longstanding dispute. And, such issues are constant irritants in all official discourse and dialogue between the two countries.
Other than these territorial disputes, there are certain obstacles that emanate from the Pakistani establishment itself that make peace with India difficult to attain. The political setup of Pakistan is very different from that of India. Its democracy is a sham. Its political leaders are weak and generally occupy positions of power only so long as they keep the army in good humour. Every democratically elected leader who became too powerful for the army to handle has been ousted in a military coup. External affairs and the nuclear doctrine of Pakistan are shaped and driven exclusively by the Pakistani army. The elected representatives of the people of Pakistan have absolutely no say.
The military establishment of Pakistan is totally hostile to India. It has continued to perpetuate a self-serving myth that India has not accepted partition and continues to pose a threat to the very existence of Pakistan. This makes it extremely difficult for the political class to build bridges with India. This was best demonstrated during the Nawaz Sharif regime when Vajpayee undertook that famous bus journey to Lahore from Amritsar. Despite that successful tour to Pakistan and all the bonhomie that was witnessed between the two leaders, Kargil happened. And, let us not forget Musharraf was busy planning the Kargil invasion while our prime minister was still on Pakistani soil and being feted by his own prime minister.
* To be continued...
Friday, August 27, 2010
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 7)
Kashmir has kept the wounds of partition from healing. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to the Indian Union when its Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh, signed the Instrument of Accession with the Indian Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, and under the watchful eyes of Lord Mountbatten who was still around at the time. The Maharaja had initially entertained the thought of retaining the independence of his state and transforming it into some kind of a “Switzerland of the East”. Meanwhile, Jinnah felt that the state had to be integrated into the new nation of Pakistan as it had a Muslim majority.
Jinnah had watched how Sardar Patel had got more than 500 princely states in the Indian subcontinent to become a part of the Indian republic. These included Hyderabad and Junagadh, which were Muslim-majority states. In any case, these states could not have become a part of Pakistan because they were small in size and were not geographically contiguous with the new Islamic nation that had been carved out of British India. However, the case of Jammu and Kashmir was different. According to the partition plan, it had been decided that all geographically contiguous areas that had Muslim-majority populations would be grouped together to constitute the new nation of Pakistan.
Kashmir met both these conditions. And yet, it had acceded to India, felt Pakistan, entirely due to the whim of its Hindu king, and the guiles of Nehru and Mountbatten who had enticed him into doing it. One must not forget Kashmir forms a vital part of the very idea of Pakistan. In fact the letter ‘K’ in the name Pakistan stands for Kashmir. Yes. Rahmat Ali, a student at Oxford, had first mooted the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent through pamphlets that were widely circulated in Britain. He had suggested a name for the new nation. He called it PAKSTAN. It did not have the ‘I’ in it then, which was added later. P stood for Punjab, A for the Afghan province (Northwest Frontier Province) K stood for Kashmir, S for Sindh and TAN were taken from Baluchistan.
Hence, there is no way Pakistan will ever give up its claim on Kashmir. It considers the entire state as disputed territory and its accession to India illegal. If Pakistan ever accepts the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a part of India, it would amount to surrendering the very raison d'être for its existence, which it can never do. That is why despite its much smaller size and military inferiority vis-à-vis India, Pakistan has dared to engage India in three wars over Kashmir. Meanwhile, India cannot afford to surrender Kashmir to Pakistan either for its own ideological and geo-political reasons.
Kashmir is a test of Indian democracy and its secular credentials. India does not have an official state religion like other countries in its immediate neighbourhood do. The Indian Constitution guarantees to all its citizens equality of status before the law and the freedom to profess, practise and propagate their religion. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution accords the state of Jammu and Kashmir special status within the Indian Union. This was done to accommodate the legitimate, democratic aspirations of this Muslim-majority state and allay the fears of some who thought they would be unsafe in Hindu-majority India. It is another matter that despite such extraordinary Constitutional safeguards, Kashmiris have felt alienated and the insurgency in the Valley has continued unabated. Perhaps, successive governments at the Centre have failed to integrate the state with the rest of India.
* To be continued...
Jinnah had watched how Sardar Patel had got more than 500 princely states in the Indian subcontinent to become a part of the Indian republic. These included Hyderabad and Junagadh, which were Muslim-majority states. In any case, these states could not have become a part of Pakistan because they were small in size and were not geographically contiguous with the new Islamic nation that had been carved out of British India. However, the case of Jammu and Kashmir was different. According to the partition plan, it had been decided that all geographically contiguous areas that had Muslim-majority populations would be grouped together to constitute the new nation of Pakistan.
Kashmir met both these conditions. And yet, it had acceded to India, felt Pakistan, entirely due to the whim of its Hindu king, and the guiles of Nehru and Mountbatten who had enticed him into doing it. One must not forget Kashmir forms a vital part of the very idea of Pakistan. In fact the letter ‘K’ in the name Pakistan stands for Kashmir. Yes. Rahmat Ali, a student at Oxford, had first mooted the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent through pamphlets that were widely circulated in Britain. He had suggested a name for the new nation. He called it PAKSTAN. It did not have the ‘I’ in it then, which was added later. P stood for Punjab, A for the Afghan province (Northwest Frontier Province) K stood for Kashmir, S for Sindh and TAN were taken from Baluchistan.
Hence, there is no way Pakistan will ever give up its claim on Kashmir. It considers the entire state as disputed territory and its accession to India illegal. If Pakistan ever accepts the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a part of India, it would amount to surrendering the very raison d'être for its existence, which it can never do. That is why despite its much smaller size and military inferiority vis-à-vis India, Pakistan has dared to engage India in three wars over Kashmir. Meanwhile, India cannot afford to surrender Kashmir to Pakistan either for its own ideological and geo-political reasons.
Kashmir is a test of Indian democracy and its secular credentials. India does not have an official state religion like other countries in its immediate neighbourhood do. The Indian Constitution guarantees to all its citizens equality of status before the law and the freedom to profess, practise and propagate their religion. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution accords the state of Jammu and Kashmir special status within the Indian Union. This was done to accommodate the legitimate, democratic aspirations of this Muslim-majority state and allay the fears of some who thought they would be unsafe in Hindu-majority India. It is another matter that despite such extraordinary Constitutional safeguards, Kashmiris have felt alienated and the insurgency in the Valley has continued unabated. Perhaps, successive governments at the Centre have failed to integrate the state with the rest of India.
* To be continued...
Monday, August 9, 2010
Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 6)
Even Jinnah did not expect to see the creation of Pakistan during his lifetime. However, after World War II circumstances changed rapidly. Churchill lost the elections in Britain and Clement Atlee became the new resident of 10, Downing Street. Atlee was favourably predisposed to granting India independence and sent Lord Mountbatten to New Delhi with the specific purpose of expediting the transfer of power. Mountbatten held last-minute parleys with leaders of the Congress and the Muslim League to explore the possibility of averting partition. However, irreconcilable differences between the two parties coupled with the lack of feasibility of the alternatives he presented made partition ultimately inevitable.
Dividing British India along communal lines was not at all easy. There were Hindus and Muslims in every city, in every village of India. So, Muslim-majority areas were demarcated to constitute the new state that was proposed. Even this proposition presented its own problems. Muslim-majority states were at two opposite ends of the geographical expanse in the north of India. However, Jinnah was adamant. He insisted on his Pakistan, no matter what. Even a last-ditch attempt to make him the prime minister of an undivided India by Gandhi failed. In any case, Nehru and Patel were also totally opposed to any such move. They felt they could not trust Jinnah and feared they would not be able to work with him. Further, in their opinion the move would be very unpopular among the people who had stood solidly behind the Congress.
The Radcliffe Line became the border between India and Pakistan on 17th August 1947. The line was decided by the Border Commission chaired by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was to divide equitably 1,75,000 square miles of territory with 88 million people dwelling in it at the time. It was a stupendous task that the man was called upon to execute at very short notice. Naturally, everybody was not pleased with the outcome. Jinnah labelled the Pakistan he got as a “truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan”. Actually, Jinnah had dreamed of getting the whole of Punjab and both East and West Bengal. Furthermore, he also eyed Assam although the region did not have a Muslim majority in it. Besides, he assumed that the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir would fall into his lap eventually, any way, given its demographics.
Unfortunately, things did not go as he had hoped, and perhaps, even calculated. The states of Punjab and Bengal got divided on the basis of religious identities, and the Hindu-majority areas remained with India. What is more, eventually, even Kashmir acceded to India. In the runup to partition, Jinnah had tried to carve out a much bigger Pakistan than we see today on the map of the globe. He had even tried to weave together a larger coalition of all non-Hindu populations in the Indian subcontinent to make this dream come true. With this in mind, he had even reached out to the Akalis. However, despite his obvious intellectual ability, Jinnah betrayed a shallow knowledge of history. Sikhism had originated as a bulwark against the march of Islam, and avowedly to "protect" and "purify" Hinduism. With the result, there was no way, the Sikhs would have preferred the Islamic Republic of Pakistan over a secular India.
From the outset, from the time Pakistan came into existence, Jinnah was an unhappy and bitter man. He blamed everybody from Mountbatten to Gandhi to Nehru. He did not even attend Gandhi's funeral and chose to stay put in Karachi, which was initially the capital of Pakistan. He merely sent a condolence message to the Indian Government stating rather caustically that “India had lost a great 'Hindu' leader”. The atmosphere was further vitiated by the large-scale communal carnage that ripped apart the very fabric of the Indian subcontinent. The ill-will that was generated during those turbulent times kept many a wound festering. The psychological scars left indelible marks in the minds of people on both sides of the divide.
* To be continued...
Dividing British India along communal lines was not at all easy. There were Hindus and Muslims in every city, in every village of India. So, Muslim-majority areas were demarcated to constitute the new state that was proposed. Even this proposition presented its own problems. Muslim-majority states were at two opposite ends of the geographical expanse in the north of India. However, Jinnah was adamant. He insisted on his Pakistan, no matter what. Even a last-ditch attempt to make him the prime minister of an undivided India by Gandhi failed. In any case, Nehru and Patel were also totally opposed to any such move. They felt they could not trust Jinnah and feared they would not be able to work with him. Further, in their opinion the move would be very unpopular among the people who had stood solidly behind the Congress.
The Radcliffe Line became the border between India and Pakistan on 17th August 1947. The line was decided by the Border Commission chaired by Sir Cyril Radcliffe, who was to divide equitably 1,75,000 square miles of territory with 88 million people dwelling in it at the time. It was a stupendous task that the man was called upon to execute at very short notice. Naturally, everybody was not pleased with the outcome. Jinnah labelled the Pakistan he got as a “truncated and moth-eaten Pakistan”. Actually, Jinnah had dreamed of getting the whole of Punjab and both East and West Bengal. Furthermore, he also eyed Assam although the region did not have a Muslim majority in it. Besides, he assumed that the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir would fall into his lap eventually, any way, given its demographics.
Unfortunately, things did not go as he had hoped, and perhaps, even calculated. The states of Punjab and Bengal got divided on the basis of religious identities, and the Hindu-majority areas remained with India. What is more, eventually, even Kashmir acceded to India. In the runup to partition, Jinnah had tried to carve out a much bigger Pakistan than we see today on the map of the globe. He had even tried to weave together a larger coalition of all non-Hindu populations in the Indian subcontinent to make this dream come true. With this in mind, he had even reached out to the Akalis. However, despite his obvious intellectual ability, Jinnah betrayed a shallow knowledge of history. Sikhism had originated as a bulwark against the march of Islam, and avowedly to "protect" and "purify" Hinduism. With the result, there was no way, the Sikhs would have preferred the Islamic Republic of Pakistan over a secular India.
From the outset, from the time Pakistan came into existence, Jinnah was an unhappy and bitter man. He blamed everybody from Mountbatten to Gandhi to Nehru. He did not even attend Gandhi's funeral and chose to stay put in Karachi, which was initially the capital of Pakistan. He merely sent a condolence message to the Indian Government stating rather caustically that “India had lost a great 'Hindu' leader”. The atmosphere was further vitiated by the large-scale communal carnage that ripped apart the very fabric of the Indian subcontinent. The ill-will that was generated during those turbulent times kept many a wound festering. The psychological scars left indelible marks in the minds of people on both sides of the divide.
* To be continued...
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 5)
Pakistan was created as a safe haven for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent, more specifically, those who were inhabitants of British India. This is what Pakistani historians, intellectuals and journalists pointed out to Rafique Zakaria who had come up with a biography of their Quaid-e-Azam, Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Zakaria had sought to expose Jinnah for never having been a practising Muslim for a better part of his life. It is a well-known fact that the Oxford-educated barrister ate pork and drank liquor.
It may not be so well known that the man was an agnostic till he began to identify himself with Islam and the Musalmans of British India as the leader of the Muslim League because it was politically expedient to do so. Anyway, Zakaria’s biography raised serious questions about Jinnah’s locus standi in taking up the cause of Islam when the man was, for the most part, hardly a practising Muslim himself. This was, prima facie, a perfectly logical argument. However, the Pakistanis were up in arms and quick to point out that Jinnah did not create Pakistan as he thought Islam was in danger, but to protect the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
It was another matter altogether that the most vociferous demand for Pakistan came from the Muslims of Muslim-minority states of the erstwhile British India. However, ironically, it was precisely these Muslims who were left out of the orbit of Pakistan when it came into existence. And, that is what triggered the mass exodus of Muslims from this side of the border northwestwards after partition, which vitiated the communal atmosphere irrevocably and resulted in the bloodbath that followed. So, the very birth of Pakistan was a difficult one. It left indelible scars on the psyche of people on both sides of the border even though the wounds healed with time.
These scars have never allowed the people of both countries to forget the horrors of partition. While Jinnah got demonised in India and the separatist movement he so ably spearheaded consistently denounced in the history text books succeeding generations have read in India, Pakistani historians have not lagged behind in blaming the Indian National Congress and its ‘Hindu’ leaders for making Pakistan necessary. This one-sided, tendentious account of historical events on both sides has ensured that every succeeding generation in both countries is bred on suspicion and hatred of the other. Is it any wonder that even a stalwart like L.K. Advani had to pay a political price for praising Jinnah in Pakistan? Is it any wonder that Jaswant Singh was even expelled from a national party for his book on the founder of Pakistan?
* To be continued...
It may not be so well known that the man was an agnostic till he began to identify himself with Islam and the Musalmans of British India as the leader of the Muslim League because it was politically expedient to do so. Anyway, Zakaria’s biography raised serious questions about Jinnah’s locus standi in taking up the cause of Islam when the man was, for the most part, hardly a practising Muslim himself. This was, prima facie, a perfectly logical argument. However, the Pakistanis were up in arms and quick to point out that Jinnah did not create Pakistan as he thought Islam was in danger, but to protect the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent.
It was another matter altogether that the most vociferous demand for Pakistan came from the Muslims of Muslim-minority states of the erstwhile British India. However, ironically, it was precisely these Muslims who were left out of the orbit of Pakistan when it came into existence. And, that is what triggered the mass exodus of Muslims from this side of the border northwestwards after partition, which vitiated the communal atmosphere irrevocably and resulted in the bloodbath that followed. So, the very birth of Pakistan was a difficult one. It left indelible scars on the psyche of people on both sides of the border even though the wounds healed with time.
These scars have never allowed the people of both countries to forget the horrors of partition. While Jinnah got demonised in India and the separatist movement he so ably spearheaded consistently denounced in the history text books succeeding generations have read in India, Pakistani historians have not lagged behind in blaming the Indian National Congress and its ‘Hindu’ leaders for making Pakistan necessary. This one-sided, tendentious account of historical events on both sides has ensured that every succeeding generation in both countries is bred on suspicion and hatred of the other. Is it any wonder that even a stalwart like L.K. Advani had to pay a political price for praising Jinnah in Pakistan? Is it any wonder that Jaswant Singh was even expelled from a national party for his book on the founder of Pakistan?
* To be continued...
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