|
 So many accounts live on our bookshelves about the partition of India that there really is no space left for more. This ‘Partition' while separating left deep imprints on our sensibilities and on the memory templates of several generations, which is why it has become such a defining event. When language, cultural similarities, common social observances conjoined us; ‘faith', it was asserted, divided, and so it had to be. The tectonic plates of our existence, our collective identities and our geo-political unities then got fractured; this break even the plaster of time has not been able to repair.
With ‘Partition' the two countries - India and Pakistan - almost immediately got locked into contending camps of the cold war, which had just then frozen the globe into two halves. This deepened our divide, needlessly giving it a super-power coloring even as our contentions of the partition got adopted by the contestants of the Cold War. This divide has remained. The Indian sub-continent, with all its diversities, its differences, its various languages and other distinctions, has a fundamental geo-political unity. This, ‘oneness' of the countries that inhabit it gets disturbed by the advent of any, external element. This happened with the onset of the cold war. Then again in the decade of 1980 with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan which added foreign dimensions and divides. Now, with the advent of the 21st century and the arrival of U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan and Pakistan, we replay that same theme, sadly, more loudly this time. In such a milieu how has Pakistan fared? It has, as always, been accompanied by high drama, by dark shadows of history, also myths, consequently intense emotionalism. Sadly, the ‘idea of Pakistan', too, has got usurped, which is why Pakistan's ‘friends have so often become its masters', and which is also why the ‘state' of Pakistan continues to remain fragile, unsure and tense. Pakistan, founded on the notion of separateness, a ‘nation' distinctly apart from India, first chose Islam to affirm its ‘Islamic identity', then it adopted perpetual hostility and enmity against India as policy. There had to be consequences. A seemingly direct and logical evolution from ‘Muslims are a separate nation', to Pakistan as an ‘Islamic State' was not as direct or as evolutionary an idea as it might at first appear. In reality this has impeded Pakistan. From this root of an Islamic state, Pakistan has inevitably had to become a ‘jihadi state.' Then secondly, hostility to India. For a fledging Pakistan, a quick release from its problems lay only in a ‘confront India' approach; that was an obvious enough escape. That is where, with the benefit of hindsight, I believe, India needed to give more; it needed to accept with greater generosity that which had separated from its own body. No doubt this was, and is, an extremely difficult call; the trauma of a cruel partition having cauterized the sensibilities of an entire subcontinent; add to which the manner of carving out the land, the shattering of the psyche of several generations and that unprecedented uprooting of so many millions, all this has made accommodation so difficult. All true. But there was more: Pakistan was starting on its journey of nationhood neither with any abundance of options nor with the goodwill of an amicable settlement, a willing partition of assets amongst disputant brothers. That is why bilious discontent got added to what was already a very bitter partition. Under these circumstances could India have been more understanding? This now becomes largely an academic query. But for Pakistan, a major challenge lay in just standing on its own feet. It did do so, but in its own fashion, for in the process it acquired an identity of extremism; the lure of ‘terrorism' trapped it, thus an instrument of state policy invaded and captured ‘policy' itself. This was, initially, meant as an anti-India weapon. But this malevolent energy of terrorist extremism, has now turned into a Frankenstein monster, it will not leave Pakistan alone, and if not tackled, will devour the parent: for it carries the awesome impact of violence not feigned or cinematic but real; projected live, in front of so many eyes, with sickening frequency, to an extent that deadens our sensibilities. Though, every act of terrorism is also a reminder, a visually transferred trauma; terrorist violence always demonstrates, with each event, its destructive continuity. As for the use of ‘terrorism' against India, it is an aspect of our current history, now virtually an ideology, it has become a new tool of coercion in the conduct of internal and international relations. Terrorism has redefined both intra-state and inter-state dynamics. There are issues here that we have, sadly, neither sufficiently grasped nor addressed. That is a sure recipe for ultimate failure because terrorism has dramatically redefined patience, persistence, violence, conflict, killing, even death; and all these redefinitions are topped by a rejection of all restraints on means. Because cruelly, terrorism spreads terror by principally attacking the innocent. What now? It has been a long and obstacle-ridden journey for Pakistan. Some of the dissensions that impact on it today can be gauged by the existing demographic and social indicators, which ordinarily do not attract as much attention, as say the nuclear or terrorism aspects. These ‘indicators' act ‘concomitantly, when positive they can lead to impressive progress', and when negative, then Pakistan can, and has often spiraled downwards viciously. Take its population growth of around 3 per cent annually. It is the highest in the world and could reach around 220 million by 2015. Admittedly, it is a population with a ‘young profile' but one that simply will not find any opportunity for itself within Pakistan. The resultant frustrations have a predictable enough content: they are the fertile farmlands of political exploitation, already planted with seeds of hatred and anger. There is not sufficient appreciation of the magnitude of this problem. Attempts by some Islamists to assert that this, in reality, shows Pakistan is a populous nation of ‘Islamic warriors', backed by an ‘Islamic bomb', are deeply troubling. Pakistan born of an artificially-induced hostility to India, a deliberate policy of separateness, supposedly on account of irreconcilable differences, has now become the ‘operational code of Pakistan's Establishment', to borrow a phrase from Stephen Cohen. The central idea of it is that as India is the chief threat to Pakistan, therefore, it is India that must be checked in every possible way - militarily, strategically, and diplomatically. As military alliances are a ‘strategic necessity', therefore such ‘borrowed' power is justified, also has a continuing purpose. This excessive security consciousness has led to high militarization, where after - again as if preordained-the prominence that the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has acquired as the ‘guardian of national security', of the ‘ideological purity of Pakistan' adds to this military-security accenting of the country. This is the current balance sheet of the problems that assail the region. There is a positive side to it too: a realization that this cannot last, indeed must not be permitted to. Discourse must replace disputation, and dialogue must not be permitted to become hostage to ‘terrorism.' Jaswant Singh is a renowned Indian politician and has served as Minister of Defense, Finance and External Affairs.
|
Show/hide comments
Show/hide comment form
