The myth of Indo-Pak unity!

Indians and Pakistanis should not focus on how the two countries were born together, but how they can avoid dying together

STATECRAFT BY HAPPYMON JACOB

It was during a closed-door Indo-Pak track-two meeting last year in Bangkok that I heard three interesting and yet deeply contrasting views about the similarities between India and Pakistan, and its politics. There was a senior Indian participant in the meeting who kept pressing the argument that India and Pakistan, after all, are one people and hence they constitute one nation. Nostalgic or patronizing, am not sure, he made the all-too-familiar argument…’we have the same culture, same religions, have the same cuisine, same languages etc. etc.’ The argument was evocative, emotional and found a certain level of acceptance among the senior participants from both India and Pakistan.

However, a young Pakistani journalist spoke up in response to the Indian participant. He argued that India and Pakistan are not the same. Pakistan, which came into existence in 1947, has its own unique history, political life, cultural edifice, philosophy, way of life and destiny. I sensed in him a level of aggressive disassociation from India, also a certain level of contempt for India’s poverty and underdevelopment: he was far more than being a proud Pakistani. He further argued along the following lines: ‘I don’t know about any similarities between us; but what I do know is that India is a dominant power in the region with territorial, military and economic predominance and harbours obvious negative intentions towards Pakistan’.

Another, younger, Indian participant retorted sometime later. He started off by agreeing with his Pakistani counterpart that there are indeed no great similarities between India and Pakistan. The Indian participant pointed out that India and Pakistan are dissimilar because the two sides made starkly different choices with regard to their political trajectories and hence different future destinies await them. While Pakistan is a terrorist-infested, friendless, failed state facing an uncertain future, India is the toast of the international community as it is home to high levels of economic growth, democratic and secular values, high tolerance levels, and inclusive governance. Moreover, even Pakistan’s traditional allies such as the United States are moving away from Pakistan towards India. Additionally, he argued that but for terrorism, Pakistan does not really matter to India and that most Indians are indifferent towards Pakistan, indifference mixed with hubris.

I would say that all three arguments are wrong due to different reasons. First of all, sometimes when Indians argue that India and Pakistan are one nation, it comes across as patronizing and could potentially mean that Pakistan does not have an identity of its own which the self-respecting Pakistanis would find very difficult to digest. For many Pakistanis such an argument refutes the two-nation theory, the founding principle of the state of Pakistan. Moreover, given the history of animosity that exists between the two countries, when Indians talk about Indo-Pak unity and similarities, Pakistanis feel that it is noting short of pursuing the ‘akhand bharat’ agenda of the Indian right wing. In other words, Pakistanis feel being engulfed and swallowed by a bigger neighbour when Indians go on making the ‘similarities’ or even ‘unity’ argument.

While the Pakistani response to such an Indian argument, as described above, is to be expected, even that is founded on misperceptions and misgivings. There are indeed a lot of cultural similarities between the two countries and, more so, India has a historical tradition of cultural assimilation. It is in our blood to look for similarities between us and others and that is not just limited to Pakistanis. So the more similarities we find between us and other, the more we are likely to press the cultural similarity argument. When an Indian-origin third generation American citizen becomes famous in the United States we like to keep harping on his/her Indian roots. It does not mean that India is trying to culturally engulf them. That said, when talking about Pakistan at least some Indians do want to deny Pakistan a sense of difference and identity, and take it upon themselves to invalidate the two-nation theory. While that is perhaps why the young Pakistani wanted to aggressively disassociate himself from India and felt that India is indeed a threat, not just militarily but also culturally, I think his argument is a misconceived one. Such views are a result of the images we have in us about each other, given to us by our text books and popular culture. The Indian response that India and Pakistan are completely dissimilar because we are good and they are bad is also an argument that we should discard. One reason why we should not focus on our history with Pakistan is because it is due to that history that we are antagonistic towards each other even to this day.

As a ‘young Indian’, I feel that too much focus on the similarities between India and Pakistan is counterproductive. Indeed, there is no point in aggressively pushing the argument that we are similar and one to the extent that the other side feels insecure. We should focus on reaching agreements and sustaining them than on our similarities. Rather than emphasizing historical and civilizational linkages we should focus on how we can deal with each other in future and solve our historical problems. More importantly, Indians and Pakistanis should not focus on how the two countries were born together, but how they can avoid dying together.

(Source: Greater Kashmir, March 11, 2012. URL: http://greaterkashmir.com/news/2012/Mar/11/the-myth-of-indo-pak-unity--35.asp )

South Asia as a dynamic whole

(Review of SOUTH ASIA — Beyond the Global Financial Crisis: Edited by Amitendu Palit in The Hindu)

HAPPYMON JACOB

SHARE · COMMENT · PRINT · T+

SOUTH ASIA — Beyond the Global Financial Crisis: Edited by Amitendu Palit; Foundation Books, 4381/4 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 495.

RELATED

TOPICS

books and literaturenon-fiction
political books

The region is at a historic crossroads and needs fresh ideas and visionary leaders

Political and economic developments are closely interlinked. And yet much of the mainstream academic scholarship on South Asia has tended to unfortunately bypass this important linkage. South Asia is often seen either as an economic powerhouse, a conflict-ridden region or as a poverty-stricken region: their significant inter-linkages are often left out by analysts. This is even more surprising considering the fact that the two potential futures of the region are either that of becoming a major engine of global economic growth or of turning out to be the epicentre of global instability. In other words, the nature of economic growth in the region can have a definitive impact on the extent of conflicts in the region and that, in turn, can have a defining impact on the economic growth potential of the region. This calls for nuanced multi-disciplinary analyses and problem solving research into the politico-economic life of South Asia as a dynamic whole.

South Asia: Beyond the Economic Crisis, edited by Amitendu Palit is, therefore, a welcome addition to the body of our knowledge on the politico-developmental trajectories of South Asia. Written in easy prose and full of insights, the central message that the book conveys is unambiguous: South Asia is in urgent need of visionary leaders and fresh ideas because the region is at a historic crossroads.The edited volume, product of a conference organised by the Singapore-based Institute of South Asian Studies, does have some extremely insightful and thought-provoking chapters, especially the ones by Mani Shankar Aiyar, Amitendu Palit, T. V Paul, Dilip Nachane and Rasul Bakhsh Rais.

IGNORED SUB-TEXT

Mani Shankar Aiyar does an excellent and well-researched job of producing a chapter on the various socio-economic developments in the region. In fact, I am tempted to say that Aiyar does a thorough ‘scholarly' job in terms of substantiating claims with empirical data and challenging established economic wisdom, and his chapter is clearly better than those of most academic scholars in the volume. Aiyar discusses the often ignored subtext of India's (and South Asia's) economic growth story. He makes the evocative argument that “South Asia is prospering; South Asians are not”. Comparing the GDP growth rates and HDI rates of South Asian states, he points out that “while GDP rates have soared from 5 to 9 percent, growth rates in HDI values in South Asia have ranged from a low of just over 0.5 percent to a high of just over 2 percent”. He says that both income inequality as well as the gap in access to basic human needs between the better-off and the worse-off is steadily growing. One of his policy suggestions, non-serious as it may sound to some, is a practical one: we need to have a Ministry of poverty alleviation which incorporates a department of Panchayat Raj to address the issue of inclusive growth and governance. In the chapter on the impact of the global financial crisis on South Asia, Palit argues that the major reason why the impact of global financial crisis was very minimal on the region was because of its “its patchy connectedness to the rest of the globe”. However, Palit argues, that “Domestic economic slowdown inflicted by partial setbacks experienced by trade and financial sectors on account of the financial crisis can create enabling conditions for further accentuation of the existing vulnerabilities” such as “poor governance, high poverty, deficient infrastructure, low literacy, malnutrition” among others.

What is the policy implication of such an empirical finding? If the argument is that the more you are connected to the international financial structures, the more you are likely to suffer in case of a global financial slowdown, then it is not a novel argument; but if some insights can be derived from such an argument about the desirable trajectories of South Asia's integration into the world economy, that would have been food for thought.

In his theoretically sound chapter, Canadian-Indian scholar, T. V Paul focuses on two critical dimensions for great power involvement in South Asia, the region's geo-strategic salience and the presence of several weak states with intense conflict dynamics among them. Pakistani scholar Rasul Bakhsh Rais rightly argues in his chapter on “Religious Extremism and Terrorism in Pakistan” that “the challenge Pakistan faces is where to situate religion in the state or in the society, and what can be an acceptable balance.”

INADEQUACIES

While the book does have some important insights for the reader, it also suffers from a number of inadequacies. The contents of the volume do not come across as belonging to one central theme. While there are some extremely well written chapters in the book, some of them are in the form of speeches delivered at the ISAS conference. Some other seem to be making tall intellectual claims without trying to substantiate them with evidence and arguments. For example, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, in his four-page chapter, talks about how India, Pakistan and Bangladesh have commonalities and potentials that could be positively developed through a policy of trilateralism. While this may or may not be a pipedream, there is no way he can tell us how it is possible in four pages!

SOUTH ASIA — Beyond the Global Financial Crisis: Edited by Amitendu Palit; Foundation Books, 4381/4 Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002. Rs. 495.

(Source: The Hindu, March 5, 2012. URL: http://www.thehindu.com/arts/books/article2963992.ece )