Abstract
The relations between India and Pakistan may be better understood in the backdrop of harsh legacy and bitterness of Partition and Independence in which about one million innocent people were killed by no one else but by their fellow brethren. Besides, there was a mass exodus of people across the newly carved out international boundaries in which people had to leave their centuries old ancestral residences and roots. And then there are some waxed issues such as Kashmir and cross-border terrorism. The two low intensity and two full-fledged wars between them further aggravated the situation. The vested interests of army and religious fundamentalists, too, in Pakistan have been keeping the issues alive. It is against this backdrop that all efforts to reach at some amicable solutions through diplomatic and political relations did not yield any meaningful results.
Though the genesis of the conundrum goes back to the pre-partition and immediately post-partition years, yet, the author preferred not to delve into those details. Nonetheless, the author has tried to give some reasonable space to some of the significant events and a passing reference to numerous other happenings which has been governing and determining the bilateral relations of these two neighbouring countries having a long and common history. The author’s first-hand account and experience of Indo-Pak relations, in his capacity as India’s Deputy High Commissioner (July 1995 to June 1999) and then as High Commissioner (April 2009 to June 2013) to Pakistan, is the essence of the book and provides much needed authenticity to the subject at hand. Since my PhD thesis on ‘Indo-Pak trade relations’ in 1985, I have been a keen student of Indo-Pak relations but it is after a long time that I have come across such a comprehensive writing on the complexities of the subject. The diplomatic handling of relations with Pakistan according to the author
has been like playing the board game of snakes and ladders. Every now and then, you climb a short ladder and feel elated that things are finally moving in the right direction. But just when you start getting this feeling, the roll of the dice takes you to a box, where a snake, usually much longer than the ladder that you might have climbed, bites you, bringing you crashing down to a point lower than where you started. (p. 93)
The author has aptly characterized and summed up the defining features of Indo-Pak relations by way of this example. A section of the people in diplomatic and international relations in India may be considering India’s engagement with Pakistan as a zero-sum game. However, the author is of the firm view that given Pakistan’s strategic geographic location (for the world powers including the USA and China), India must continue its engagement with Pakistan at multiple levels including the diplomatic and backchannel routes even during the heightened adverse scenario as it is most potent option available to India. The entire discussion and analysis in the book unambiguously brings home this point.
The subject matter of the book, besides the brief and crisp introduction, spans over 18 chapters which are divided into two parts. Part 1, consisting of 6 chapters, discusses various facets of Pakistan as a state. The book critically examines the role and relevance of various institutions and players (polity, army, ISI, religion and non-state actors, including the foreign countries) in the making or marring of Pakistan as a country and a state over time. The author also highlights that besides the above agencies, Pakistan always had a body of people who did not see eye to eye with the short-sighted security state paradigm. Part 2 dwells on the India–Pakistan relations and policy options for India. The discussion in part 1 has a direct bearing on issues discussed in part 2.
While discussing the religious extremism in chapter 1, the author highlights that the relevance of religious parties and groups in Pakistan has been mainly because of the active patronization by the army dictators and the civilian political leadership for their selfish ends. To substantiate his argument, the author writes
While creating Pakistan in the name of religion, its founders forgot that intolerance and hatred, once let loose in the name of ‘us’ vs ‘them’, knows no bounds and invariably rips apart the most cohesive-looking ‘us’ groups, leaving violence and misery in its trail for one and all. (p. 11)
The author further highlights that in view of deeply entrenched religious extremism in Pakistani society, it would be impossible to put the genie back in the bottle. The political parties in India and many other countries, too, must responsibly ponder over the above scenario before using religion and hatred to achieve their narrow political ends. Chapter 2 depicts the poor economic scenario of Pakistan which has mainly been due to misplaced development priorities, poor resource mobilization, their mismanagement and excessive dependence on external aid and borrowing, and over-spending on defence. Chapter 3 highlights that the army, being all powerful institution, is a ‘state within state’. It has created civil–military imbalance to the extent that nothing, especially security and foreign relations, moves in Pakistan without the approval of army. It is mainly because of such a scenario that there has hardly been genuine democracy even when there is ‘democratically’ elected government.
The conflict of interests and contradictions among the different ethnic and religious groups over various issues (designated as ethnic fault lines, chapter 4), including ownership and allocation of resources and imbalanced regional development, are some of the other constraints acting as serious drags on the socio-economic development of Pakistan. The author begins the chapter by quoting a young foreign-educated Pakistani (when terrorism by the Sunni–Deobandi groups was at its peak in 2010) saying that the Pakistani state seemed to exist only for the Sunni–Deobandi Punjabis. It was around that time when a young post-graduate Pakistani student, studying journalism in some University in Sweden, met the reviewer in Sweden and said ‘Pakistan has lagged much behind India in terms of economic development whereas the dead-snake of Kashmir is not freeing Pakistan’. Chapter 5 dwells on the drivers of Pakistan’s hostility towards India. A strong narrative in Pakistan has been that India is against the very existence of Pakistan which is not true as Pakistan is a sovereign country and a stable and peaceful Pakistan is in the interest of India. The author, however, highlights that sustaining the ‘Indian bogey’ is in the institutional interest of the Pakistani army to justify its over-arching role in the country. Under the circumstances the author concludes that Pakistan will continue to be highly dysfunctional state with widespread lawlessness and hence cannot be at peace with itself (Chapter 6).
The first chapter (chapter 7) in part two of the book dwells on Jammu and Kashmir, the touchstone of Indo-Pak relations. As a matter of fact, Pakistan’s rhetoric about ‘Kashmir first’ and India’s rhetoric about ‘terrorism first’ does not allow these two neighbouring countries to move forward. The author calls these two issues as the ‘fundamentals of the India–Pakistan relations’, which he asserts ‘cannot change significantly in the absence of change in nature of the Pakistani state, which is underpinned by its internal dynamics, that are well entrenched and immutable in the foreseeable future’ (p. 93). The author further adds that though the K-issue no more resonates with the people of Pakistan, yet it
has become essentially a tool in the hands of Pakistan’s security establishment to bleed India by periodically stirring up unrest in Kashmir. It is a sad commentary on India’s handling of the internal dimension of the Kashmir problem that Pakistan continues to retain the capacity to create trouble in the valley. (p. 94)
It is on these premises that the author concludes that ‘India’s challenge is to ensure peace in J&K, not only in the immediate, but durable peace, for the failure to do so would continue to invite external meddling’ (p. 111). The author very aptly writes that the only feasible non-military solution to K-issue would be converting the line of control (LoC) into international border. The issue was also discussed on similar lines at the Shimla Agreement of 1972. In my article, ‘Softening of borders between India and Pakistan’ (Ghuman, 2005), I also argued on similar lines. The fact of the matter is that the elected governments in both the countries are not daring enough to come up with such a solution for fear of political onslaught by the opposition and the institutions having vested interest in keeping the issue alive. Had it not been so, the issue would not have turned to be so waxed. While discussing terrorism (another waxed issue between the two countries) in chapter 8, the author has referred to a number of terrorist attacks in India and the constant trouble in J&K by Pakistan-patronized terrorism. As a matter of fact, J&K and terrorism are the two intertwined issues in India–Pakistan relations.
Many scholars, diplomats and foreign policy experts argue that strengthening trade and economic relations may prepare ground for normalization of political relations between India and Pakistan. The author too has discussed this issue in chapter 9; however, with a question whether trade can be a game changer as such attempts did not yield the desired results so far. Though natural trade partners, both the countries are not exploiting the benefits of their mutual trade potentialities. A short-duration war in 1965 led to a nine-year long trade-embargo, perhaps unparalleled in history. Since February 2019, there has been again a trade-embargo due to Pulwama incident. Paradoxically, the two neighbouring countries are not even learning any lesson from India and China who have not stopped their bilateral trade despite numerous conflicts. Even under the WTO trade regime, Pakistan has not so far accorded the most-favoured nation (MFN) treatment to India whereas India gave MFN status to Pakistan way back in 1996. In retaliation to Pulwama incident, India, too, withdrew MFN treatment to Pakistan in 2019. The restricted land route trade (despite the lower transport and transhipment costs), especially through Attari–Wagah border, is another serious constraint on their bilateral trade. Due to their not so good political and trade relations, the South Asian countries have not been able to reap the latent benefits from the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The author concludes that given the complexity of India’s relationship with Pakistan, trade by itself cannot be a game changer. Nonetheless, it remains an important policy tool.
In the following chapters, the author discusses some other outstanding issues such as Siachen and Sir Creek. One of the chapters dwells on the shared heritage and people to people bonhomie which can be an important channel to enhance understanding about each country. However, the real power centre is the Pakistan army according to the author and rightly so as nothing moves without army in the security and foreign policy, especially in the case of India. Besides, the army has been playing up the two prominent political parties (PPP and PML-N) against each other and can find new collaborators in the political class. Nonetheless, India may not have the option of military coercion to alter Pakistan’s behaviour as nuclear dimension is a constant deterrent and threat (chapter 14). In fact, there is very limited leverage for India to resort to coercion through the use of water, MFN and Pakistan’s fault lines to change its behaviour towards India (chapter 13). The author is also of the considered opinion that isolating Pakistan in the international community, especially on the issue of terrorism, may be a limited option but India must continue to focus on that. Nonetheless, the USA–Pakistan relationship and China–Pakistan nexus may come in the way (chapter 15). Pakistan–Islamic world relations also need to be treaded carefully.
Chapter 16 underlines some of the silver linings in Pakistan in an otherwise grim picture. The author sees hope in the rise of a growing and increasingly vocal constituency in Pakistan that realizes that policies pursued in the past are not sustainable. Information revolution, especially through social media, has weakened the security establishment’s control over the narrative in the past and the peace and saner constituency has access to an alternative narrative. Following the end of Musharraf regime, the media, civil society, political class and judiciary have increasingly started questioning the army’s predominant role. Besides, the Pakistani industry and business community is also looking at opportunities in trade and economic linkages with India. Nonetheless, these are just very weak silver linings in the face of all powerful army and die-hard religious fundamentalists. The author concludes ‘Pakistan army, its terror proxies and the politicians hanging on to its coat-tails regard India as eternal enemy and sabotage all peace moves’ (p. 211). While discussing the dialogue vs no dialogue (chapter 17), the author emphasizes that absence of dialogue and diplomacy between the two countries carries the risk of unintended flare-up.
The last chapter focuses on the way forward in managing the relationship as Pakistan is here to stay and being immediate neighbours, neither of the two can wish away the other. The role of emerging peace constituency questioning the army also needs to be acknowledged and ‘any policy that ignores the existence of this constituency would be unsound and not in India’s interest’ (p. 218). The author emphasizes that in the absence of a change in the ground realities the best option for India is managing the relationship with Pakistan at the lowest possible levels of violence and volatility by combining dialogue with deterrence and continue to explore the opportunities of nudging Pakistan in the right direction. However, the onus of finding a peaceful solution lies on both the countries and now it is high time to solve the waxed issues. The inordinate delay in reaching at some mutually acceptable and mature solution has already made the issues very complex and many new factors (especially the US and China) and vested interests have pitched in who are more interested to grind their own axe. Already the two countries have incurred huge financial and human loss due to their acrimonious relations and in the process, their important development issues such as education, health and poverty eradication have been at the receiving end. They must understand that peace is pre-requisite to development and peace needs to be given a chance by translating traditional enmity into friendship. The book would be very useful read for the diplomats, political leadership, students and researchers in international relations, especially in India and Pakistan.
Though the author has largely tried to depict a true picture of Indo-Pak relations yet it seems that the role of certain lobbies in India who seem to be less interested in reaching at some amicable solution has either been ignored or underplayed. The discussion about the role of such lobbies would have certainly given a balanced treatment to the discussion and added more value to the book.