What is President Zia-ul-Haq seeking to achieve in pushing his no-war pact proposal on India? To prove that he is acceptable to India and thereby improve his standing with the Pakistani people, especially the intelligentsia which is said to be opposed to military rule? To demonstrate his desire to live in peace with this country in order to silence American critics of the Reagan administration’s decision to arm Pakistan? To establish a genuine basis of peace with us? To buy time so that he can build up his military strength and then feel free to activate the Kashmir dispute? To create an atmosphere in which he can pursue his programme of giving Pakistan a so-called Islamic identity and making it, in co-operation with the United States and Saudi Arabia, the Gulf’s gendarme?
This list of President Zia’s possible objectives should suffice to show that it is not easy to say what exactly he wants out of us. The difficulty is compounded by our failure to answer other related questions. We are, for instance, not in a position to assess whether President Zia is acting out of a feeling of weakness or strength, whether or not he takes the view that the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan has come to stay, whether in his opinion the situation in the Gulf can be stabilised as a result of various American moves, whether he looks upon Pakistan’s ties with Saudi Arabia and, indeed, the United States as a temporary expedient or a long-term arrangement.
No Idea
There are other questions which remain, unanswered. We do not, for example, have the ghost of an idea of how Gen. Zia and his colleagues assess India. Do they think that we are a reasonably stable polity, economy and society? Do they think we can master the problems we face? Do they feel we are heading towards a crisis which can become unmanageable when Mrs. Gandhi is no longer around? Do they regard us as Russia’s allies? Do they genuinely believe that the Kremlin is launched on an expansionist programme and that we are a party to it?
Indeed it is doubtful whether President Zia and his associates in the junta have posed these and other relevant questions to themselves. On the contrary, it seems that Pakistan does not now possess a conceptual framework which can enable it to pursue a well-defined policy towards this country. Its approach towards us must, therefore, be opportunistic, that is, it must shift from time to time, depending on its ruling group’s perception at the moment of its compulsions and of the Indian reality. This inevitably makes it extremely difficult for us to evolve a stable and long-term Pakistan policy. We cannot decide whether or not we should take seriously its protestations of peaceful intent. But that apart, do we, on our part, possess a conceptual framework for dealing with Pakistan?
On the face of it, we do. The language we use is different from that the British used when they were ruling the sub-continent. There is also a difference in the substance of the two policies. Unlike the British, independent India has not looked upon Russia as an expansionist power determined to get to the warm water ports of the Gulf through the direct conquest or subordination of countries south of it. But in the quintessential sense, the two policies are identical. Like their British predecessors, policy-makers in independent India have looked upon south Asia as a distinct geographical, cultural and economic entity which is entitled to be spared external intervention. This has been the basis of all Indian policy formulations since independence, especially since 1954 when the United States decided to arm Pakistan in disregard of our protests.
Great Hold
So great has been the hold of this assumption of the “unity” of south Asia that hardly any Indian has questioned it. But this only demonstrates how we have allowed our wish to influence our thinking and how we have ignored the reality on the ground. Two points deserve attention in this connection.
The first is obvious enough. Pakistan has not shared India’s perception and successfully brought in outside powers – first the US and then China as well – for the specific purpose of offsetting India’s natural pre-eminence in south Asia. Indeed, it regards itself more as a member of the Arab-Muslim-Gulf fraternity than of the south Asian one.
The second point has been equally obvious despite our steadfast refusal to recognise it. In this age, only the superpowers have the capacity to compel others to recognise their spheres of influence. In fact, that, too, has come into question. Witness Cuba, El Salvador and Nicaragua on the one hand and Poland on the other. As for the others, even China has failed to carve for itself a sphere of influence in either the far east or south-east Asia.
New Delhi will, of course, deny, in a sense quite justifiably, that it has sought to convert south Asia into its sphere of influence. It has not, as an act of deliberate policy. But that only shows that we have allowed vague notions inherited from a different era to dominate our thinking.
We have long convinced ourselves that the absence of external interference in south Asia would have stabilised a natural power balance in the region and would ensure peace. We have also had no doubt in our minds that given our political culture which recognises the right of all peoples to order their lives according to their genius, we would not have sought to dominate our neighbours. Since 1971 we have been in a position to quote the fact of our immediate withdrawal from Bangladesh after its liberation as evidence in support of our claim. But all this is beside the point. Superpowers must by definition seek influence all over the world and deny regional powers the status the latter consider their due in their respective areas. The Soviet Union has done so it regard to China in Indo-China just as the United States has done it in respect of us in Pakistan.
There is then the fact of the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir between us and Pakistan which was bound to make nonsense of our concept of south Asia being capable of keeping out external intervention in its affairs. Indeed, given the circumstances of the birth of Pakistan, the proposition would have been untenable even if the Kashmir dispute had not arisen and had not remained unresolved at the battlefield, in the UN and across the negotiating table. Pakistan would have invited an outside power into the region in order to redress the power balance which would otherwise have tilted in India’s favour. The conflict over Jammu and Kashmir made it certain that it would pursue such a course of action.
If it is acknowledged that India, too, does not possess a viable framework for dealing with Pakistan, it becomes necessary to try and outline one. This is easier said than done. Indeed, it is impossible to suggest a policy frame which is not open to serious objections. Even so it seems to me that India should have behaved as if Pakistan were that part of the subcontinent which had drifted away.
Such an approach would have been inconceivable before the secession of East Bengal from Pakistan in 1971. But when the opportunity arose in 1971, we were not ready to seize it for the simple reason that we had not thought in those terms. The Simla agreement is a testimony not only to the fact that we were prepared to end the war without settling the central issue in the conflict between the two countries but also to our hankering after close co-operation with Pakistan. Why else did we take upon ourselves the thankless task of persuading Sheikh Mujibur Rehman to abandon his proposal to try a number of Pakistan army officers on charges of crimes against humanity?
Taken In
Not only President Zia but also Indian commentators who have been to Pakistan in recent months would have us believe that things have changed. Even those among the latter who are not convinced that the military regime means well by us are taking the view that the people want friendship with us. I find this proposition incredible except in a most superficial sense.
The attitude of the people of Pakistan towards us has always been ambivalent and it will not be surprising if it remains so. It is also possible that they are wary of another armed conflict or even an arms race with us. But it is difficult to be persuaded that they can hope to define their identity except in anti-India terms or alternatively they have become so reassured as not to need a definition of their identity.
Much of this special pleading for Pakistan is the result of the cold war. Those who hate the Soviet Union and are inclined to support the United States or China regard it as a self-proven proposition that the Soviet military presence in Afghanistan constitutes a threat to the region, including India, even if in the long term. And so they jump to the conclusion that the US is justified in supplying highly sophisticated weapons to Pakistan and Islamabad in acquiring them, and that instead of objecting to this development, India should extend cooperation to Pakistan in its efforts to save the region from “Godless” Communism and Soviet “expansionism.” But even non-cold-warriors have been taken in by Gen. Zia’s well-orchestrated peace offensive.
(To be concluded)
The Times of India, 10 February 1982