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| India-Pakistan |
| Peace, but only with honour |
| 2010-01-16 |
| By M. A. Niazi Apparently, there is a powerful lobby for peace in the subcontinent. It does not include the Indian chief of army staff, or the Indian government as a whole, but the peace lobby had recently stepped up its activity, giving the impression that Pakistan was ready for peace, on Indian terms if necessary. This is even though India and Pakistan are not at war with one another, and if there is a ‘hot peace, it is one-sided, with India interfering in Balochistan, even though India still claims, rather vaguely at this point, that Pakistan had a hand behind the Mumbai massacres, now more than a year old. The peace moves have to be seen in the context of an overwhelming US desire to end disputes between the two countries on any basis that would satisfy India, which is supposed to be the USAs main counterweight to China in the region. The USA does not grasp that the Indian establishment wants to achieve the freedom of action that is supposed to come with great-power status, and does not want the US tutelage beyond a certain point. Be that as it may, the USA wants Pakistan to settle its disputes with India, on Indian terms if necessary. The activists finally got down to tackling the main issue between the two countries, Kashmir, through a conference on the subject, where the main focus became the presence of Kashmiri leader Yasin Malik. Because of this, the conference did not provide as much ammunition to the peace activists as it was supposed to. Peace is a very beautiful concept, but Indian and Pakistani conceptions are different. Pakistan sees India as just another neighbour, while India sees itself as a great power in its neighbourhood, its hegemonic position accepted by all. While Pakistan, by its very nature as a new state, has been trying to find a role for itself, India sees itself as the inheritor of the British legacy of the Raj, with the difference that many of todays states did not exist, or were British colonies controlled from London through the India Office. The Indian task, to rule in the region and establish a true Hindu society, is made all the more difficult. Because of this disconnect, India has always looked askance at Pakistan, even after splitting it in 1971 and managing the secession of Bangladesh, and has always been suspicious of what is the second largest power on the subcontinent and in the region, even though much smaller than India. India wants Pakistan to stop doing what it has been doing since partition, which is exposing India as a regional bully, at international forums. It thought it had obliged Pakistan to do so in 1971, but it did not, and Pakistan has continued to raise the Kashmir issue wherever it could. This has grated on the USA because of three developments. First was the end of the Cold War, then was the overt nuclearisation of the subcontinents security environment, and then the War on Terror. The end of the Cold War has meant that India, which had previously pursued a Soviet alliance, was now free to join the USA to do down China, but its main meaning is that a USA-USSR nuclear exchange is highly unlikely. Yet, the overt nuclearisation of the subcontinent means that an Indo-Pak war may now well be nuclear, with all the disastrous consequences for the entire world that that will entail. Though both countries lacked world-destroying ability at the time they went nuclear, the demands of the situation ensure that they will do so sooner than later, and they may have already done so. The War on Terror saw both India and Pakistan scrambling for American favour. The USA needed both, but for different reasons. India it needs as a future counterweight against China. Pakistan it needs to prosecute the War. Thus, it does not want the two nuclear-armed countries from going to war. At the same time, it does not want a just solution, but one which would satisfy India. As a result, it will not call on India to honour the UN resolutions on the subject, even though it was India which first approached that body, and though the USA has a vested interest in making the UN work. However, its need to keep India on its side is more important. Since it has in Pakistan leaders who will take care of its interests, it need not care too much about the wishes of its people, who might want peace, but only with honour and dignity. Both countries peace movements have seen much progress since the two countries went overtly nuclear. Nobody wants to be at the epicentre of a nuclear holocaust. However, there seems to be little or no recognition of the fact that the ill feeling between the two countries goes back to the partition, which saw not just the biggest riot in history, but also its biggest migration, in which there was an exchange of population, mainly, but not entirely, in the Punjab, where most of the killing took place. One result is that about a quarter of Pakistans population comes from the refugee stock, from people whose families were shattered, not just neighbourhoods, by the partition, and who were brought up to regard this as the defining sacrifice of the creation of Pakistan. On the other hand, Indian refugees formed a much smaller proportion of the Indian population, and did not see it as Indias defining moment. If any Indian attitude towards the partition is to be discerned, it is that of Savarkar, Godse and others, who assassinated Mohandas Gandhi for letting it happen. However, while the Indian refugees regret a lost childhood, Indian refugees remember what they left behind, the material possessions. Those who went through the partition are dwindling in number, and even those who were children at the time are now in their 70s. However, though the generation in charge now does not remember the gory events firsthand, Pakistanis must not forget that, behind it lay a peculiar Congress hegemonism which is still unopposed in India because the opposition BJP is even more hegemonistic. This desire is to dominate the entire region, which might be defined as the Indian Ocean littoral. Even though oil is on its way out, India still wishes to dominate the Middle East as a major source. Thus, peace movements in both countries serve Indian purposes not just for Pakistan, but also for the entire region. Though the present government will probably not be fooled by the peace movement, it will suit it to go along, for one of its aims is a solution of the Kashmir problem. However, if it rubberstamps an unjust solution cobbled together in New Delhi and approved in Washington, with no input from Muzaffarabad or Srinagar, it will not solve the problem, but merely provide the grounds for another grievance. |
| Posted by:john frum |