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South Asia Peace and security

Great rivers emanate from the Hindu-Kush, Karakoram and Himalayan ranges as well as the Naga Hills that binds South Asia as a homogeneous region, making for a vast fertile delta land where crops grow easily but are inordinately susceptible to natural and man-made disasters. Various delta regions, all economically compatible, are divided into identifiable nation units on cultural, religious and political lines all of which show a significant divergence from each other. India shares common borders with almost all the other States, this largest State of South Asia having a history of confrontation and conflict with all its smaller neighbours, none of whom have any problems with each other.

India is clearly expansionist, the only country after World War II to have increased its territory by one-third by force and/or subterfuge, the world having shown a remarkable and unquestioning indifference to the blatant aggressions of the world’s “largest democracy”. India’s list of real-estate acquisitions start with Hyderabad, Junagarh and Manawadar, Kashmir, Goa and Pondicherry, etc. This expansionist mode came to an abrupt halt in 1962, when flush with having run the Portuguese ceremonial guard out of Goa, Defence Minister Krishna Menon and his favourite soldier, Lt Gen Kaul, another general who had not heard a shot being fired in anger (“War hath no fury like a non-combatant”), convinced Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru that India’s date with destiny as a Superpower had arrived and the Chinese could be easily dispatched further north of the McMohan Line. Nehru duly ordered “Jawans to throw the Chinese out”, to quote “The Statesmen” and a host of other newspapers in their issues during September 1962. The Indians concentrated troops near the McMohan Line prior to carrying out their PM’s bidding, were badly mauled and soon in full retreat barely two months later, yelling to high heaven that the Chinese had staged a surprise attack. Since it suited the US to (1) open another proxy front with China and (2) to try and wean the Indians away from the Russian camp, massive aid in the form of mountain warfare equipment was pumped in by air and sea to shore up the Indians. The Americans were a little embarrassed, if not perplexed at the Indian request for submarines to contain “the Chinese drive south of the Himalayas”. Much before the arms and equipment actually started to land, the Chinese unilaterally packed up and withdrew to the McMohan Line on which they remain even today, signalling that they had no territorial ambitions in the sub-continent, three decades have seen no change in their stance. Despite our gravest apprehension during the height of the Afghan War that the Russians would move south to seize a corridor to Gwadar and the “warm waters of the Indian Ocean”, we now know that this Czarist dream was never a serious Soviet option. Except for the odd rantings of “clown prince” Zhirinovsky, there is no real threat to the South Asian sub-continent from beyond its frontiers, either by land or by sea. In sum, vast armies are maintained as a defence against each other or as in Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, to contain the mischief planted by India. Certainly the Indian blue water navy has no other reasonable objective than gunboat diplomacy, to blockade countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Its expansionist mode and direct involvement in provoking civil strife in its neighbouring lands notwithstanding, India remains a country riven with internal strife. The internationally known conflicts within India, other than ethnic and religious strife, are in Kashmir and Punjab. The entire eastern part of India has been virtually in a state of war since 1947. These include Nagaland, Mizoram and Manipur which are better known than the not-so-well publicised Gorkhaland, Bodoland and United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), but still bloody nevertheless. All these revolts and insurrections have one single economic overtone, the locals are frustrated and fed up with the economic subjugation by non-local Indian “carpetbaggers”. Actively supporting terrorism and civil disorder in the peripheral nations, “LTTE” in Sri Lanka, “Al-Zulfikar” and “Jeay Sindh” in Pakistan, “Shanti Bahini” in the Hill Tracts of Bangladesh, etc, India has taken over Sikkim lock, stock and barrel, turning the Maldives and Bhutan into no better than protectorates. As regards Maldives and their President’s request for Indian help to put down a Coup, a time and space evaluation clearly shows that Indian paratroops out of Agra were actually airborne for a full 3 hours before the coup supposed to be put down actually took place. Today India’s Research and Analytical Wing (RAW) surpasses by far everyone in the business of state terror, Mossad and successors of KGB included.

In the presence of such naked Indian ambition for hegemony, is there any hope for peace and security in South Asia? For the past 50 years, the handful (or less than 1% of the population) who make up the Indian ruling clique have been feeding the masses the visions of Akhund Bharat, India as it once was thousands of years ago. Whenever delusions of grandeur are mixed with inflammatory rhetoric lined with religious overtones the resultant mix is volatile. The Indian threat perception can be measured by the focus of their Armed Forces, numerically and materially representative of their ambitions, maintaining more than a 3 to 1 attack ratio with Pakistan, against the so-called Chinese threat they maintain a 1:1 parity (now even less since they moved most of their mountain divisions from NEFA to Kashmir). That the Indian tutelage did extend from Iran down to Indo-China and Indonesia is a fact of history, old and as dead as the statues and idols that personified that era. As do the militant BJP and RSS, Hitler lived in the dreams of an Aryan past, a menace not only to his neighbours but also to the world.

The imperfect democracy left to South Asians as an heritage by the British has shown up a solution by accident of nature rather than by any design of man, one that can bring peace and security to the region. In the 50th year after independence of South Asia, economic imbalance weighted heavily against the majority poor has resulted in a reaction at the polls, breaking the stranglehold of the monolithic Congress Party in India and sidelining the Hindu revivalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) as an influential and effective opposition. Since none of the other parties want to have anything to do with BJP ambitions in and out of the country, this has emasculated their ambitions as a future ruling party. The Congress Party of 1947 has divided into (1) many factions of the original party, the largest led by Narasimha Rao (2) BJP, representing the militancy of the Hindu religion (3) Janata Dal, representing the moderate, soft and secular image of the original Congress and (4) representing a host of regional parties awakened by the economic realisation that inflammatory rhetoric and visions of imperial grandeur do not feed empty stomachs. For the first time, regional parties from South India, East India and Northwest India, hardly ever represented at the Centre, have emerged to hold sway in a loose coalition. The coming elections in Uttar Pradesh (UP) may complete the entire process of regionalisation, the turning of the mass psyche from empire aspirations to one of economic amelioration. The Hindu religion being a class-ridden society, the small ruling coterie has been primarily a Brahman contingent with support of the Kashtriya (warrior) and Vaish (business) classes that have never come to terms with the second largest religion in South Asia, Islam. Since the bulk of Muslims (and Christians) converted from Hinduism were of the lower class, mainly because of their mistreatment at the hands of the so-called “superior” classes, resentment is widespread against the ruthless and savage economic domination by the “superior” classes. Once Pakistan had come into existence, not only due to religious affinity but an economic realisation by the Muslims that they risked economic subjugation by the majority Hindus, the bulk of Indian Muslim vote remaining in India went to Congress by default of fear of what parties like BJP and Jan Sangh would do to them if they ever came to power. This preference of the Indian voter for his economic situation must be encouraged as a ray of silver lining in a dark bank of clouds looming over South Asia.

We must replace imperfect democracies in South Asia by the real voice of the people, one that is devoted to economic mores. This can be done by ensuring that electoral process is legitimate only when (1) majority of the voters elect any candidate i.e. more than 50% of those voting (in a run-off vote is necessary) and (2) Proportional Representation, to accommodate women and minorities and (3) all posts are directly elected ones, obviating the chance of manipulation. This would make it much more difficult for a small minority coterie to get elected and influence the destiny of nations by thus “democratically” getting control over the majority. Unless the real will of the people is manifested by exercising their right of franchise to get control over their own destinies and turn their attention towards core domestic economic issues, a small handful of motivated people will always keep the masses enthralled by diverting their attention towards external glory.

In the spirit of compromise, let us be fair and look at our own failings. Two extreme emotions govern over relationships with India, one is of vengeance and the other of appeasement. Pakistan was the finest experiment of nationhood of its time. Left to ourselves, having one faith and complementary economies, we could have perhaps worked out our problems and survived as a nation if India had not resorted to exacerbating the deepening tension by blatant interference, ultimately resorting to armed force, though by this time an irreversible separation had already taken place in the minds of the people. For East Pakistan, Kashmir and Siachen and a host of other myriad reasons, not the least being the thousands of explosive devices of Indian origin planted by Indian and Indian-trained terrorists that have killed and maimed innocent Pakistanis over the years, the emotion to avenge ourself remains strong and, therefore, a strong prohibiting factor towards peace. There is also a school of thought which believes in accepting India’s hegemony in order to reduce defence spending and re-directing it to socio-economic purposes. They would rather risk being a colony in the hope that there would be peace. This policy of appeasement was best illustrated by handing over lists of Sikh militants to Rajiv Gandhi, putting paid to the logistics supply route to the Kashmir militants and in consequence the Kashmiri independence movement. What did Pakistan’s appeasement get in return? Munich and appeasement go together, Chamberlains’ folly led to Hitler deciding that since England was weak, he could go on with his further aggressions, net result World War II.

South Asia’s prosperity lies in making an economic compromise somewhere between the extremes of vengeance and appeasement. The progress in East Asia has shown that economic aspirations have overwhelmed the potential for conflict. Creeping confidence-building measures have no future, unless we come to a mutually acceptable solution on the crucial issue of Kashmir, the relations between India and Pakistan will remain tense. The economic world will leave us standing in the relatively dark ages. Whatever we do, howsoever long a road we may travel in the search for peace and security in South Asia, the requirements of fulfilling destiny demand that India and Pakistan take the route of compromise in the pursuit of economic prosperity, without that there can be no peace and security in South Asia.

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