The role of emotions in interstate relations: Using an interpersonal conflict model to reconceptualize Pakistan’s obsession vis-a-vis India

Introduction

India and Pakistan have been locked in open hostility since their inception. They have fought four conventional wars, and regularly display their nuclear capability to outpace and undermine each other (Cohen, 2013). Ever since their birth as two separate countries in 1947, India and Pakistan have been psychologically obsessed with their assorted mutual conflicts. From the outside, it resembles nothing so much as a family feud – and psychologically speaking this a very apt analogy.

By the time of partition, the two sides had lived together in one society for more than a millennium. South Asian Hindus and Muslims shared not just a cultural gene pool and biological ties, but common kinship institutions: the extended family group joined by marriage, which is called Khandan in Pakistan and Pariwar in India, or the lineage group with common descendants, known as Biradari in Pakistan and Jati in India. Across the Indian subcontinent, family and lineage are the most influential institutions in people’s lives, and people tend to transpose the psychological moral structure of their kinship relations onto every other institution in the outside world. Neighbours are also treated as family members; as one famous South Indian proverb puts it, after living together for six months, “they” become “we” and “we” become “they”. Also, respecting your seniors and expecting care and nurture is the norm, and it holds sway in various forms across every sphere of life (Kakar and Kakar, 2009). This article proposes that it is the violation of these cultural norms that underpins the modern India-Pakistan (or Hindu-Muslim) rivalry, making it so emotional in nature.

Viewed this way, the rupture between the two nations can also be traced to what happened within India’s predominantly Hindu Congress party in the pre-partition period – the party which represented both communities against the British Raj in the years before the partition in 1947. As partition neared, the reservations of Muslims were not properly considered, and their demands were thus not met. The Muslim minority was excluded from most decisions, which created in them a fear of not mattering. The Muslims, suddenly the “junior” family members, felt neglected and, as younger siblings often do, they became extra-competitive and began to support the two-nations doctrine presented by the All India Muslim League; another political party trying to attract Muslim voters by claiming to be the champion of Muslims’ rights. However, the India-Pakistan conflict owes more to historical and psychological nearness than to mere competition for resources or territory. And that much is clear in the language they use to talk about each other (Kadir, 2019).

In many parts of India and Pakistan, especially in both Punjabs, the word used for the 1947 Partition of British India is “Batwara”, which literally means “the distribution of ancestral land” between brothers or patrilineal cousins. The word comes with resonances that the English word “partition” simply doesn’t carry: harmonious family, painful division, cousin rivalry, and love-hate competition for generations to come. These are the psychological dynamics that also play out in the dispute over Kashmir. Both India and Pakistan claim Kashmir as if it were their ancestral property, and people on both sides feel a deep emotional attachment to it. In the subcontinent, to give up a claim to one’s ancestral property brings dishonour to one’s family and group, and is considered a weakness (Kadir, 2018).

For Pakistanis, the rivalry against Indians is driven by a deep sense of being humiliated and wronged at the time of partition, the corollary being a desire to compete with and trump Indians at any cost. It is this bitterly competitive urge that drives Pakistan’s leaders, army officers and populace to defy India’s obvious demographic, economic and military supremacy, and to do so with such intensity. As William Blake (1757-1827) said, “it is easier to forgive an enemy than to forgive a friend” Ratcliffe (2011: 177). Whoever we are, it seems we can all feel a special kind of enmity for the enemies we most resemble – whether a sibling or a neighbour, we simply cannot accept “them” as “us” despite our obvious similarities, nor we can remain isolated from them (Blok, 1998).

This article uses a cross-disciplinary approach and seeks to clarify the theoretical mechanism through which family-level emotions are mapped onto the wider societal/national level sentiments and obsessiveness for another nation. India-Pakistan relations are flooded with emotions and both countries adopt policy standpoints clearly showing an acute anxiety towards each other. While the study of emotions in world politics to analyse diplomacy, statecraft and alliances, sovereignty and peacebuilding is now a widely recognized phenomena (Crawford, 2000; Holmes, 2018; Reus-Smit, 2014), fewer efforts are found to explain India-Pakistan rivalry by probing into the construction mechanism of emotions between them. Emotions cannot be removed from their mutual relations; as they lie at the very core of human existence (Elster, 1999). This article explains this causal link by drawing upon two interpersonal conflict models presented by Weingarten (1993) and Kadir (2019). The cognitive neuroscience explanations have also been borrowed to explain how the dynamics of an idealized family model become the source domain for people to conceptualize the functioning of their nation and state. People tend to analogize and conceptualize the difficult or more abstract concepts e.g. nation, nationalism, state, and intergroup conflict in terms of relatively easier and concrete concepts e.g. family and family conflict. People also use metaphors usually reserved for the domain of the local, easier and concrete concepts of family conflicts to reason about relatively more difficult and abstract concepts such as intergroup or interstate conflict.

The conceptualization of nation in terms of a family model

Logically enough, an analysis of a nation’s behaviour towards other nations requires exploring first how people conceptualize and perceive each other. Therefore, this article presents an interpersonal conflict model to interpret interstate relations between India and Pakistan due to an acute emotional nature of their rivalry. While trying to test the different levels of conflict identified in family settings to that of the levels of conflict in world politics, several inferences emerge from a causal effort to analogize the typology of family conflicts to world politics: first, while conflict between families and states is inevitable, it is important to differentiate between different levels of conflict in both settings. Secondly, as families are systems, so are states (Zimmerman and Jacobson, 1993). Third, it is disputant parties’ intentions that matter while perceiving the “other” and interpreting reality (Kadir, 2019).

Weingarten (1993: 177) presented an interpersonal conflict model elaborating a five-level scheme – that nicely emphasizes the sentiments, the intensity of conflict, the intentions of the participants, and the likelihood of cooperation. The model examines the major objectives of the participants, the motive or aim of the participants, the emotional climate in the dispute, and the negotiation styles.

The interpersonal conflict model was first developed and applied in an organizational context (Leas, 1985), then extended and refined to resolve family disputes (Weingarten and Leas, 1987). It has now contributed to understanding and adopting effective strategy for conflict management in international disputes. The key to employing this model is in using its attributes to analyse/resolve international disputes and to provide disputants with a framework to re-assess their conflicts. While the intervention strategies that work with marital partners in conflict have been found equally effective with business associates or neighbours, it is anticipated that additional strategies will be needed in international conflict situations in which language, culture, and political ideology and structures radically differ (Weingarten, 1993: 180).

In the context of family conflicts, practitioners long ago abandoned the assumption that people render decisions rationally. They favour the proposition that people select means and goals primarily on the basis of their values, emotions, and social bonds. So, the assumption that people choose to maximize their utility in their intergroup conflict (usually identified as group or national interest) has been replaced by the proposition that people have multiple objectives that include, but are not limited to, needs to solve problems, to maintain self-esteem, to win, to control others, to stabilize power, and to enact revenge (Weingarten and Leas, 1987).

Rationality is also a by-product of emotions which always shape the way we feel and develop our perceptions. Rationality necessarily contains emotions, just as thinking does feeling. Emotions, in turn, are deeply embedded within the social structures that underpin societies and their politics (Barbalet, 2001). Political science and anthropology provide ample evidence that the degree to which different cultures depend on competition to organize and structure their political, economic, educational, or recreational systems varies broadly (Kohn, 1986). Therefore, rather than being merely innate or biological, emotions can also be socially and culturally constructed (Lutz, 1988). Emotions are deeply interwoven with the cultural environment. This implies that the processes of decision-making, policy development, and practices of cooperation or resistance are developed through how individuals and communities have been socialized to feel. By accepting this social nature of emotions and rationality, we can change the way we theorize interstate relations (Hutchison, 2016). This involves concepts from psychology, social psychology, neuroscience, sociology, and cultural theory. Consequently, this article typologizes national emotions by using two interpersonal conflict models as analogies.

This article does not reject that the factor of rationality in conflict is always denied. However, a working definition of rationality based on emotions-as-end, as an efficient choice of means to advance one’s goal, is presupposed. The conflict models clarify the factors that influence the exercise of rationality in conflict interaction, and identify the motives, goals, emotions, and cognitions that play a critical role in shaping conflict behaviour. It is individual differences in motivation and their worldviews that systematically influence approaches to dealing with contested issues.

According to Weingarten (1993), the five phases or levels in family conflict are: problems to solve, disagreements, contests, fights, and war. Each level has different emotions and characteristic attributes. For example, in a level-I conflict, the disputants remain emotionally hopeful of resolving their mutual issues, and open, direct, clear communication between the parties takes place. In a level-II conflict, the key focus is on self-protection, but compromise is also considered necessary while the emotional climate is one of uncertainty. In the next stage (level-III conflict), the desire for winning comes to the surface due to the climate of frustration. In level-IV conflict, the players aim to hurt each other as they feel that winning over the other is impossible. In family war stage (level-V conflict), the destruction of the enemy – usually, one's family members – becomes the main goal, force may be used, and the relevance of specific issues disappears. The dispute becomes one about the opponent’s personality, and indeed the opponent is seen as less human than oneself (Zimmerman and Jacobson, 1993).

Notably, the interpersonal conflict model only provides general guidelines for how to develop macro-level conflict models in different societies to resolve conflict at different levels. It is appropriate to mention here that our values and behaviour are shaped through early cultural experiences (Triandis, 1989); the conflict dynamics learned within the native institution of the family remain at the core of peoples’ cognitive interpretations of wider events and subsequent emotional responses (Ross, 1995). In understanding the emotional side of intergroup conflicts, we must consider the dynamics of the family amongst the people of a particular area. For this reason, an indigenous family conflict model known as Sharike-Bazi in the Indian subcontinent (Kadir, 2019) has also been borrowed to compare with Weingarten’s model, in order to examine the emotional climate and interpersonal conflict dynamics among the ordinary people and leading political figures in the Indian pre-partition and post-partition periods.

This indigenous model presented by Kadir (2019) highlights the segmentation process of a harmonious joint family in the Indian subcontinent and thus the demands of separation by one branch of the family from the other – the demands arising out of being neglected and not being accommodated and respected in the joint family setup. It disrupts the harmony of relations between branch members of the same family. This usually happens after the demise of the father(s) or other elder figures in the joint family who would have been responsible for maintaining the integrity of the family. Usually, a departing brother (or brothers) perceives that he has been denied a fair share and has been wronged and cheated over resource distribution, including wealth as well as status. The “wronged” brother then becomes extra competitive to right the wrong done to him and to get back his lost prestige. He might seek help from outside his family or lineage to settle scores with his family members. The remaining family block, on the other hand, always tries to undermine the new identity of their departing brother. They blame them for sowing the seeds of disunity in the family. Furthermore, this bitterness passes onto future generations, engaging them in turn in a sort of intimate rivalry. The key point to consider in this model is that, even after parting their ways, the different branches of the family remain obsessed with one another.

Arguably, within both these models, the presence of conflict per se is not viewed as a sign that a relationship or organization or nation is in trouble; rather, it shows the conflictual/cooperative nature of a social system. It is how people handle the conflicts that inevitably arise that strengthens or weakens their relationships, and the social systems of which they are a part (Weingarten, 1993: 178). Simply put, people’s selection of approaches to deal with the conflict (their conflict behaviour) is determined by socio-cultural norms to which they are a part. It is not always the substantive part of the conflict that matters; other non-substantive parts, or the passions associated with the conflict, can also be crucial in the selection of the future path by the principal disputants.

Pakistan-India conflict: An ethno-religious conflict or a family split

It is appropriate to mention here that the metaphor of family cannot be excluded from the inquiry if we wish to study the affective side of India-Pakistan rivalry, as the family (joint family to be specific) is the most salient, initial, emotionally powerful, functional, and enduring institution in this region (Lieven, 2012). Traditionally, the India-Pakistan conflict has been explained by assigning both nations fixed rather diametrically opposite ethno-religious categories, i.e. Hindus and Muslims, which is theoretically problematic and does not explain the emotional side of this conflict. The term ethno-religious itself is an amalgam of two different cultural identities: religion and ethnicity. There has always been a paradox of identity for both Hindus and Muslims in the subcontinent due to a complex criss-crossing of their common caste identities as well as the massive assimilation process due to mass conversion from one religion to another. They were caught in the web of deciding between different cultural identities, religious and kinship identities being top of the list. The fact must not be ignored that despite having different religions, large numbers of people belonged to the same ethnic groups and castes. For example, the Punjabi and Bengali populations were divided on religious grounds during partition despite belonging to the same ethnic group. In spite of different religions, people having similar ethnic, religious, linguistic, and even kinship ties that have co-existed for centuries. This is the case mostly in India, and to some extent in Pakistan.

Primarily, there are two distinct ways in which the term “ethnic” has been used by political scientists. In its narrower sense, it means “racial” or “linguistic” (Varshney, 2003: 4). This is the sense in which the term is widely understood in popular discourse. However, in British India, the term “communalism” has been used more often to mention conflicts between Hindus and Muslims based on religious differences because of both groups’ overlapping racial, ethnic, and linguistic roots (Varshney, 2003). The term “ethnic” could not therefore differentiate between Punjabi Hindus/Muslims and Bengali Hindus/Muslims. Therefore, we will have to subscribe to another, broader sense of defining ethnic groups in the social sciences. All conflicts, Horowitz argues, based upon ascriptive identities – race, language religion, tribe, or caste – can be called ethnic. Even the groups differentiated by nationalities come under this wider umbrella of ethnicity (Horowitz, 2001: 53). In this wider concept, ethnic conflicts range from the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland to the Hindu-Muslim conflict in the post-partition and pre-partition periods. The black-white conflict in the United States and South Africa also comes under this rubric (Horowitz, 2001). Using this wider criterion of defining ethnicity is also problematic because not only the interstate Pakistan-India conflict or the intra-state Tamil-Sinhala conflict in Sri Lanka but also the Shia-Sunni sectarian conflict in Pakistan can be regarded as ethnic conflicts.

According to Weingarten’s conflict model, the disputants at level-I tend to express a sense of individual responsibility and tend to resolve the problems themselves. They are able to focus on substantive issues and to differentiate between the problem and the people involved in it. An optimistic climate makes direct communication possible between the parties. Level-I of Weingarten’s model resembles to the Harmonious-Family phase presented by Kadir (2019) in which family members are able to reconcile their differences by talking.

In the Indian context at this stage, the wonderful efforts on the part of two individuals cannot be overemphasized while reconciling the differences between the Hindu and Muslim communities in the early 20th century. Mr. Bal Gangadhar Tilak (a Hindu) and Mr. Jinnah (a Muslim) were the leading members of the Indian National Congress. They succeeded in resolving the Hindu-Muslim problem with the Lucknow Pact of 1916. Mr. Jinnah also represented the All India Muslim League during the proceedings of this agreement. The agreement provided the Muslim minority with the safeguards of a separate electorate and meaningful representation in the central legislature. Both the leading parties held their meetings together to discuss their common interests, and the substantive parts of the Hindu-Muslim dispute, to resolve them accordingly (Wells, 2005).

At level II, the focus on substantive solving changes to concern with establishing a safe and trustworthy relationship. The emotional climate of uncertainty develops, making trust a critical dynamic at this level. Therefore, the principal actors avoid confronting one another directly about their concerns and disagreements. Direct communication diminishes and people start looking for help and enlisting friends to discuss problems and seek advice. However, third party intervention can easily escalate into interpersonal mistrust (Weingarten, 1993). Although the parties are ambivalent about the compromises, they are willing to resolve their differences from a defensive standpoint.

Level II was the period when the trust deficit between the Hindu-Muslim or Congress-Muslim League grew during the late 1920s and early 1930s – after the honeymoon period of the Khilafat movement (1919—1924) between the two communities. ¹ Several attempts were made by both parties to resolve their issues. The Delhi Proposals presented by Jinnah in 1927 and the Motilal Nehru Report in 1928 can be regarded as such attempts at brokering agreement between the communities. Mediation from the colonial masters was also sought during this period (round table conferences, 1930–1932), which actually escalated the intensity of the conflict. This time period can be seen as a war of succession in the Congress family, when the prominent leaders struggled to attain the Congress headship after the demise of its father figures such as Gokhale, Tilak, Naoroji, and Pherozesha Mehta. Their interpersonal conflicts did not allow them to think about the combined threat to both communities they were leading.

At level-III contest, the emotional climate is one of frustration and resentment, and hope diminishes that the problems can be solved. Anger erupts easily – often over issues the disputants themselves view as trivial – and dissipates slowly. Disputants lose sight of their potential common interests and interdependence. This level stresses the right of persons to act independently. The issues are piled up and are hard to disentangle. People no longer find it easy to talk to one another informally. While the contestants are profoundly concerned with control and power, they recognize that it will be impossible to achieve these ends if their relationship to one another is entirely severed. This is the phase when one branch of the family in the indigenous family settings of the Indian subcontinent starts thinking of separation from the other branch. This is the level of conflict in which disputants identify freedom and independence as their most cherished values and then wonder why the victories they achieve at the other’s expense seem hollow (Weingarten, 1993: 185).

In the India-Pakistan context, level III indicates the time period after 1937 when Congress assumed power and outclassed the Muslim League in their claim for representing the Muslim population. Muslim Leaguers felt cornered, and mobilized their supporters in pursuit of Azadi (independence). During this stage, trivial religious issues could engage both communities into fatal clashes. Popular leaders such as Jinnah, Gandhi, Nehru, and Azad from both parties were not on good speaking terms during this period. They preferred to address and criticize one another through the medium of newspapers. They had lost sight of their common future. However, they collaborated with each other in the interim government, in 1946, in order to achieve their individualistic goals. After achieving their diametrical opposite goals, both parties felt that victory was far from what they had thought. There are many statements on the part of leaders from both groups which reveal that no one was ready for such devastation at the time of partition. A very famous Urdu poet, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, depicts a gloomy picture of the emotional climate generated after parting ways from each other. Faiz is equally cherished in both the countries. He says that in the name of independence, people had lost everything:

At level IV and afterwards, contestants often feel satisfied by getting rid of the other. The emotional climate of antagonism as well as alienation from the other group surpasses all the other realities. The outsiders are enlisted not to save the relationship between the parties at this level but as allies to change the status quo. Each side believes that the other side cannot or will not change. Indeed, when the other side attempts to modify its position, its motives are questioned and charges of hypocrisy or manipulation are levelled. Groups or individuals who wish to become part of the ingroup have to prove their loyalty. Individuals become fixed on ideology and their own personal (or subgroup) agenda. Commonly they lose sight of the importance of community, diversity, and the relationship. Charismatic group leaders often emerge at this stage who are comfortable with the leadership role and the exercise of power. The contestants at this level envision themselves as guardians of fundamentally exclusive principles (Weingarten, 1993: 190).

The level-IV phase can be seen when the Pakistan movement was at its peak in the mid-1940s. The Muslim League was claiming to be the sole representative of the Muslims. A separate homeland was set as a final goal. All the Muslims were asked to join the Muslim League; otherwise their loyalty could become suspicious. The Muslim leaders not in line with the demand of a separate homeland were considered dishonest to the Muslim cause. Subsequently, the slogan “Muslim ha to League me aa” (join Muslim League, if you are a Muslim) became popular during this period. An emotional climate was present among the Muslim league workers to get rid of Hindu leadership at any cost. It was an era of charismatic leaders such as Gandhi, Jinnah, Bose, and Jawaharlal Nehru among both parties. The famous Gandhi-Jinnah talks of 1944 failed owing to suspicion of each other. Gandhi used the analogy of the family feud among brothers for the Hindu-Muslim conflict, and tried to resolve it. Jinnah was not ready to modify his position at any cost because it was too late and the magnitude of mistrust had reached irreversible heights. At this level, the sincere reconciliatory efforts of Gandhi were suspected by certain quarters of Muslims and charges of hypocrisy were levelled against him.

This is not to say that the entire Muslim leadership was in favour of partition. Many Muslim leaders, including top Muslim clergy such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad (Congress), Maulana Muhammad Hassan Madni (Jamiat Ulma-e-Hind), Maulana Maududi (Jamaat-e-Islami), and Ata Ullah Shah Bukhari (Majlis-e-Ahrar), had rejected the idea of Muslim nationalism presented by the Muslim League and equated it to a “curse” (Hussain, 1982; Talbot, 2003). The first-rank Muslim clerics blamed the Muslim League leaders for protecting the British Raj, and called the Hindu-Muslim conflict “nothing more than friction between two brothers over the distribution of their father’s property” (Misra, 2001: 235). A rejoinder to the Muslim League’s Lahore Resolution demanding a separate state was given by the then Congress President Maulana Abul Kalam Azad:

Eleven hundred years of common history [of Islam and Hinduism] have enriched India with our common achievements. Our language, our poetry, our literature, our culture, our art, our dress, our manners and customs, the innumerable happenings of our daily life, everything bears the stamp of our joint endeavour…These thousand years of our joint life [have] molded us into a common nationality…Whether we like it or not, we have become one Indian nation, united and indivisible. No fantasy or artificial scheming to separate and divide can break this unity. (Guha, 2007: 41)

In the final phase, the conflict becomes intractable, as is the case of India and Pakistan now. The claims of one party are perceived by the other party as a threat to its ontological security. ³ Enemies during this phase experience high anxiety, which they believe can only be assuaged by defeating or eliminating the other. The disputants are neither able to understand their issues clearly nor they can disengage themselves from each other. The final phase depicts the picture of post-partition Pakistan-India conflict where both nations are obsessed with each other and each nation has acquired the status of eternal enemy for the other. Pakistan’s ontological security comes under threat if someone strives to seek better relations with India and vice versa. To compete with the other has become the foremost policy objective for both nations; an emotional cricket rivalry is only one of many examples. In connection to this, a note to US Secretary Dulles from President Eisenhower in 1953 is very interesting, in which he remarked that in South Asia “emotions rather than reason seem to dictate policy” (Kux, 2001: 58). The US often had to choose between India and Pakistan. Dulles’ reply showed the extent to which the American administration understood the problem: “It is difficult to help one without making an enemy of the other” (Kux, 2001: 58–59). It became a daunting task for the US administration to keep both India and Pakistan happy, as any support it gave one country was seen in a negative light by the other.

The final phase of the interpersonal conflict model also owes to the disputants’ contradictory views regarding the distribution of assets between them. The parties develop the perception that they were wronged by the other. Similarly, the major argument of “parity” advanced by Muslim League for an independent Pakistan was that, irrespective of population, Hindus and Muslims should be treated as two separate and equal nations. The Muslim League referred to this demand as a doctrine of parity. On the other hand, some Congress leaders such as Sardar Patel were unwilling to concede parity to the Muslim League even at the cost of sacrificing the dream of a united Indian family. Patel had categorically informed the last Viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, that: “If you raise the question of parity you will incur the everlasting enmity of Congress; that is the one thing we have been fighting against and will never agree to” (Mansergh, 1970: 407, cited in Pande, 2011: 13).

After the creation of Pakistan, Pakistan wished to have economic and military parity with India in terms of the united India’s assets. However, being wronged at the time of partition has always been the Pakistani narrative. One Pakistani prime minister, Zulfikar Bhutto, complained about unfair distribution of assets thus:

The British Government could not have done more to tilt the balance of advantage in India’s favour…. No attempt was made to provide Pakistan with the minimum requirements for administration, defence, and finance. The country was left to fend for herself. In the maintenance of law and order, the division of assets, military stores, and sterling balances, and even in the transfer of funds, India was given a stranglehold over Pakistan. (Bhutto, 1969: 140-145)

The family metaphors used in Pakistan-India partition

This section delves into the language used by both parties, which is always directly connected to unconscious conceptual systems and metaphors (Lakoff, 1999). How we talk matters; one can learn a lot about how people frame situations from how they talk. The language that common people and political leaders in both India and Pakistan use against each other is particularly related to local family dynamics. The case of utilizing an indigenous family model is also strengthened by finding the heavily familial language used by both parties. For example, two terms (or metaphors) broadly used by people on both sides to memorize and explain their split are Qaum and Batwara. The term Batwara is used about the Pakistan-India partition in 1947, and is a term reserved for a split or asset distribution between blood brothers or cousins. An overwhelming number of people across much of the northern part of the subcontinent recall the event of partition as Vibhajan or Batwara rather than freedom or Azadi (Tan and Kudaisya, 2000: 30). They do not take the great tragedy of partition just as the creation of two nation-states; the meaning they attach to this tragic event is derived from the emotional connotation of Batwara.

The meanings and fantasies people attach to different words in different cultures are always relevant to understand objective realities. Only translating different words to foreign languages might be misleading. The meanings attached to the word Batwara for British India’s partition open new vistas for understanding how Indian and Pakistanis are obsessed with this rivalry. The frames, scripts, memories, and meanings attached to the metaphor of Batwara used for the Pakistan-India conflict (unconsciously) guide people to be engaged in a sort of intimate family rivalry. These metaphors create heavily familial images in people’s minds and act as a source domain while conceptualizing the other. The phrase “partition of British India” cannot give readers the exact concepts and fantasies attached to the word Batwara, which brings the conflict dynamics of partition of a joint family into play, not of two ethnic, religious, or national groups.

Similarly, the term Qaum has been widely used to categorize Hindus and Muslims as different nations, and was originally used for the Biradari (Jati, Brotherhood) lineage group in the subcontinent. Both these terms (Qaum and Batwara) serve the purpose of conceptual metaphors for both groups to situate their identity in difference to each other. Here, the word Qaum needs explanation as it serves more than one context. An examination of the term lets us see that both groups had conceptualized their nations or Qaum in terms of a larger family group.

The basic usage of the word Qaum has been to represent Biradari (Jati) in the Indian subcontinent for centuries. The terms Qaum, Biradari, and Jati are synonyms which denote a group of people of common descent; a sort of large paternal family group (Alavi, 1972). Sadly, there is no other appropriate word in Urdu to translate “nation” other than Qaum. Therefore, the term Qaum is used both for a Biradari and the nation. The term Vatan is also used to represent one’s country. It should not be confused with the term Qaum, as the term Vatan represents the country’s territory; a homeland, but not the population. Vatan stands for “home country”, a territorial connotation; a place to be shared by the people belonging to one nation or Qaum (in the indigenous sense).

The word Qaum was not used to demand a separate territorial state because the modern western concepts of the nation, nationalism, state, and communalism were quite unfamiliar in the Indian subcontinent up till the late 19th century – and ideally these foreign concepts were to be digested by local people after situating them along with their indigenous and mundane concepts. Hence, they were conceptualized in relatively easier and concrete concepts; for example, family and Biradari. Sadly, neither the culture-oriented theories of Robinson (1974) nor the instrumentalist theories of Brass (1974) to explain the Hindu-Muslim split explore the indigenous conceptualization of nation in terms of family.

The Subaltern school of thought holds British rulers responsible for fostering and concretizing the communal identities of both sister communities for their political gain. ⁴ Pandey suggests that the Muslims in South Asia were linguistically and culturally so diverse that they could not identify a water-tight “Muslim” identity for themselves only by shared beliefs or religion (Pandey, 1990). Interestingly, the Subaltern notion of “British conspiracy” is shared by both nations but from different emotional standpoints: Indians believe that the British supported the Muslim League to counter the Indian National Congress during their Raj, while the Pakistanis blame the British rulers for their injustice to Pakistan while partitioning British India and distributing the combined resources. A different view is explained by Hutchins from a soft perspective that an illusion of permanence was purposefully generated by the British elite in the name of their civilizing and democratization mission in India – the elite whose authority and status were in decline due to the increasing democratization of English politics (Hutchins, 1967). Such an illusion worked both ways; for the rulers as well as for their subjects, who were made to believe that certain quarters of Indian society were a hurdle in the way of enlightenment, and that independence for an unreformed India was unthinkable.

For these reasons, even the leading Muslim ideologues such as Sir Syed Ahmad Khan could not imagine a separate state for the Muslim nation (Qaum). Khan was not even in favour of country-wide Muslim organizations, and never mentioned the word Qaum to express Muslim solidarity across borders. He disapproved of the Muslim Ottoman Caliphate’s claim to be commander of the faithful throughout the world (Devji, 2013: 54).

Khan believed that India was home to both Hindus and Muslim communities:

Just as the high caste Hindus came and settled down in this land once, forgot where their earlier home was and considered India to be their own country, the Muslims also did exactly the same thing – they also left their climes hundreds of years ago and they also regard this land of India as their very own. (Jaffrelot, 2016: 47)

It can be argued therefore that although for the Muslim elite the tracing of their racial roots to the wider Muslim world could be a source of prestige, the source domain for the conceptualization of nation (or Qaum) was related to its indigenous sense which is akin to a lineage group. Khan did not see Muslims and Hindus as two separate nations, but as communities destined to work together to build the Indian nation. Therefore, it can be argued that ethno-religious nationalism associated with him does not bear even minute traces of separatism other than in the electoral sense (Jaffrelot, 2016: 48). In his 1883 speech, he also declared:

…my Hindu brethren and Muslim co-religionists breathe the same air, drink the water of the sacred Ganga and the Jamuna, eat the products of the earth which God has given to this country, live and die together…. I say with conviction that if we were to disregard for a moment our conception of Godhead, then in all matters of everyday life the Hindus and Muslims really belong to one nation [Qaum]. (Muhammad, 1972: 160)

It can be surmised, therefore, that the idea put forward by Syed Ahmad Khan was of a distinct Muslim Biradari along with Hindu Biradari; both to live side by side in a grand Hindustani or Indian Biradari. Logically enough, the conflict dynamics between both groups developed similar to that of inter-family or inter-Biradari conflict dynamics replete with deep-seated anxieties.

The conceptualization of nation-as-family in Pakistan-India relations

This section sheds light on how the conceptual metaphor of family shaped the relations of both groups in the pre-partition period and how they conceptualized themselves as parting members of a family-as-nation after partition in 1947.

In inter-national relations, the nation-as-family metaphor is very powerful and is always conceptualized while dealing with other nations. Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, the first Indian Prime Minister, aptly remarked that because of their very close contacts, India and Pakistan could not be indifferent to each other. They can either be more than friends or become more than enemies. Soon after the creation of Pakistan, Jinnah, the founding father of Pakistan, held a meeting with the US ambassador Paul Alling in Karachi. Jinnah expressed that nothing was dearer to him than close relations between India and Pakistan and that he wished for them to have an association similar to that between Canada and the Unites States, which could allow the two neighbours to have largely unguarded borders, shared defence, free trade, and freedom of movement (Kux, 2001: 25). ⁶ In fact, Jinnah had kept his houses in Bombay and Delhi and had shared his desire of returning to India after retirement with Indian ambassador Sri Prakash. He even continued to pay his income tax as an Indian and managed his stock business there through his manager. In his presidential address to Pakistan’s first Constituent Assembly on 11 August 1947, Jinnah showed his optimism by saying that the mighty revolution of partition had resolved India’s constitutional problem of one religious community being a majority and another being a minority and that it was now time for cooperation and forgetting the past (Jinnah and Ahmad, 1947: 399–404). While being emotionally so much attached to India, however, Jinnah was sceptical about Indian’s complex of superiority when he was asked if India and Pakistan would use peaceful means to resolve their disputes. He replied: “Yes, provided the Indian government will shed the superiority complex and will deal with Pakistan on an equal footing and fully appreciate the realities” (Ahmed, 1970: 81).

The All India Congress always viewed Jinnah’s two-nations doctrine as false and pledged in its resolution while approving the partition plan that: “after the subsiding of present passions, India’s problems would be viewed in their proper perspective and the false doctrine of nations will be discredited and discarded by all” (Sayeed, 1960: 175). Moreover, it was an unexpected catastrophe and incalculable violence that accompanied partition, confining both countries to water-tight borders. Both of the newly-born states had to bear an enormous influx of refugees who were full of grievances and anger towards the other state. Although the founding fathers of India such as Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru gave statements to set Pakistani fear of dismemberment aside, this did not pacify the atmosphere of high anxiety on both sides. In 1948, Nehru categorically stated that India had no desire of disintegrating Pakistan: “if today by any chance I were offered the reunion of India and Pakistan, I would decline it for obvious reasons. I do not want to carry the burden of Pakistan’s great problems. I have enough of my own” (Nehru, 1948: 337-339). Gandhi, using the metaphor of family, as he always did, requested of the Indians that Pakistan be treated like members of a family who had moved out to their own home; Pakistanis needed to be won over, not cut off further from their estranged clan (Haqqani, 2016: 11). Ironically, such statements only added to Pakistani paranoia and mistrust towards India as the parting family members always strive to build their distinct identity in contrast to the previous one. First Pakistani Prime minister Liaqat Ali Khan said that “the truth of the matter is that the leaders of India have not accepted Pakistan and keep on devising methods of undoing it. But Pakistan is an unalterable fact” (Razvi, 1971: 51).

The Hindu-Muslim grouping in the subcontinent can be explained by assuming them as groups that were once one and may have split centuries before, with each of the resulting groups remaining largely endogamous, thus producing opposed but physically similar populations. Ethnic groups that are regarded as fundamentally different from or opposed to each other have drawn on the same gene pool. In part, the group disparity reflects recognition of individual group membership by criteria other than birth – conversion, intermarriage, passing, as well as the merger of subgroups (Horowitz, 2001: 53). All these characteristics can be seen as the reason for the rise in the Muslim population over the centuries in the Indian subcontinent.

There is confusion regarding ascribing ethnic separators to the Hindu-Muslim conflict in the subcontinent. This puzzle can be less confusing if we regard ethnic affiliations as being located along a continuum of ways in which people organize and categorize themselves along kinship patterns. The Hindus and Muslims had shared a common fate for more than a millennium. Religion and geography did not divide them. Hindus lived under Muslims’ rule. Muslims lived under Maratha and Sikh rulers. Later, after the mid-18th century, both were subject to the British Raj. Both rebelled against their British masters in 1857 but failed. Religion was never a big issue. Many Hindus converted to Islam but kept their caste identity intact. In many settings, conquerors destroy all or a part of the religion of the indigenous people. This leads to adopting of the beliefs and practices of the conquerors, especially when the success of the conquerors is associated with the superior strength of their gods. The religion thus formed in this process is often neither precisely that of the conqueror nor the traditional one of the conquered. It is a new one using elements of both, created through a process known as syncretism, or the conscious adaptation of an alien idea or practice in terms of some indigenous counterpart (Garner, 1953: 49–54).

The existing caste-system (Varna) helped indigenous people not only to absorb Muslims but also many different religions, as another caste. Moreover, the local kinship structures and common lineages soothed the development process of a grand Hindustani family, Qaum, or Biraderi comprising people from different religions. This is not to say that people had no religious differences at all, but the beauty of this society remained in the absence of an acute communalism among different religious groups. Despite adopting Islam as religion, local people never abandoned their caste identity. Put simply, the Indian subcontinent had evolved into an Indian family, Qaum, or Biradari with several extended family groups (on religious bases). The partition of India was, therefore, literally taken as Batwara of the Indian subcontinent by the local people.

It is an admitted fact that the Biradari system (kinship groups) had stronger bonds for people than religion. People never abandoned their Biradari and the honour attached to their descendant lineages. People in the subcontinent still feel more pride in their lineage than in their religion. Often the Muslim Rajputs are heard saying that they converted to Islam just a few hundred years ago, but they have been Rajputs since the known world history. Rajputs, Jats, and Brahmins carried on with their lineage identity even after changing their religions. Although the supposedly egalitarian concept of Islam about treating all human beings equally attracted local people from lower castes, these people never achieved the highest status within Muslims. The converts tried to abandon their previous lineage identities but in vain. This lineage bond is still the strongest in the subcontinent. One can find Muslim Jats in Pakistan and Hindu Jats in India; especially in the Punjab region found in both states. Sir Denzil Charles Ibbetson, a Lieutenant Governor of British Punjab in the early 20th century, also noted that most of the agricultural castes of the Punjab identified among Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims shared the same kinship lineages (Ibbetson, 1981).

Based upon their lineage ties, the emotional attachment between Hindus and Muslims can be gauged from the following story narrated by an interviewee to Ishtiaq Ahmad who has compiled first-hand accounts of people who observed Indian partition. The interview of Rao Abdur Rashid, ex-Inspector General of Police in Punjab-Pakistan, reveals the emotional climate of British India just before the cataclysmic events of 1947. He narrates:

Our hamlet Kalanaur [now in India] was the stronghold of Muslim Rajputs. We had blood relations with Hindu Rajputs. We belonged to the same Biradari. In the Panchayats [village councils], Muslim and Hindu Rajputs would sit together and make decisions and give verdicts.…However, as the Pakistan movement gained momentum, Hindu-Muslim relations also developed. In one village, Hindu Rajput boys set a mosque on fire. The Hindu Rajputs begged forgiveness and offered to repair the mosque. So, again the fraternal spirit was restored. However, a Hindu Rajput said in an emotional manner: “we are the descendants of the same mother. A revolution took place and we took different paths [that is some converted to Islam while others remained Hindus]. Now again another revolution is about to take place. Why don’t we become one again? Why do you want to leave your blood relatives and go to another country?”. (Ahmed, 2011: 45)

Conclusion

The interstate relations are nothing but relations between individuals on a wider scale. States are hierarchically organized groups of people – full of emotions, and with national interest as the highest level of social as well as psychological aggregation. States cannot ignore popular sentiments regarding aggression and, oftentimes, formulate their policies based upon its society members’ “spirit” and “psyche” (Lebow, 2008: 122). State actions mostly depend on “conceptualization” of the situation by the individual actors responsible for decision-making. To reason about such difficult and abstract concepts involving statecraft, people as well as policy makers have recall to more easy and concrete concepts, e.g. indigenous family models. On that account, the obsessive Pakistan-India relations are heavily influenced by the emotions associated with their indigenous family dynamics.

Pakistan presumes itself to be the wronged party after Batwara. Therefore, unconsciously, it exhibits the characteristics of a weak family member in this family dyad; always determined to right the wrong done to it. Therefore, there are two conflicting emotions: one is to undermine the former partner and second is all about fearing to be assimilated back by the powerful family member. The fear to be merged back into Indian territory was an outcome of the statements given by prominent Indian leaders soon after partition. Sardar Patel, the then Deputy Prime Minister of India, publicly doubted Pakistan’s prospects for survival as a separate country, insisting that sooner rather than later both countries would again be united. He never hesitated to remind his citizens that the creation of Pakistan had cut the limbs of Mother India (Guha, 2007). Such statements from the Indian side created an atmosphere of perpetual fear for Pakistanis, but there remained certain nostalgic feelings attached to their relations that perhaps both groups could live again as one unit.

Although the explanation of India-Pakistan rivalry in terms of a sibling rivalry or stepbrother rivalry is not new, it has remained an unexplored subject through theorizing of their emotions. Conceptualizing other religions in terms of Jati or Biradari is not a new concept in the Indian subcontinent. The ancient caste system (Varna) dates back to the Bronze Age, and the Aryan invasion in the India subcontinent resulted in granting the local Dravidians the lowest status in Varna, i.e. Dalit or Harijan. The invading Aryans classified themselves into four major types on the basis of labour of division: the pious class (Brahimins), the warrior class (Ksatriya), the merchant class (Vaisya), and the servant class (Sudra). Later on, local people always used to absorb incoming people including the Muslims in the shape of a loose Varna or Jati (Zat or Biradari). Such a continuous assimilation process bound them into a sort of fictive kinship structure, and the fracture in this structure at the time of partition engaged them in a rivalry flooded with deep-seated emotions. To sum up, a few verses from Indian poet and novelist Amrita Pritam’s famous poem “Ode to Waris Shah” are reproduced here. Legend has it that Amrita wrote this poem after witnessing the bloodshed of partition, on her migratory train ride from Pakistan to India in 1947. She was deeply moved by witnessing the people cutting each other’s throats who had been like a family a few days before: ⁸