India Pakistan Relations: Recidivism or a New Dawn?

India Pakistan Relations: Recidivism or a New Dawn?

The warming up of relations between arch rivals-India and Pakistan- has elicited parallels with the détente between the former Soviet Union and the United States. While the parallel may be inexact and debate continues to rage over the nature and consequences of détente between the USSR and the United States, the dimming of the structural rivalry between India and Pakistan is a welcome development. This warming up of relations naturally has consequences over the dispute over Kashmir- a sticking point that has led to a series of wars between the two nation states. In the main, this development raises a set of questions that ought to be addressed. The salient of these are: how should this ‘détente’ be sustained? How can forward momentum be generated and crystallized or set in stone? What could potentially derail the momentum and drift of the relationship? And how can these forces be given short shrift?

The answers to the questions necessarily take us into nature and ideational premise of Pakistan. For, it is Pakistan that could be said to be a revisionist state in the region, bent on disrupting the status quo and therefore encouraging the forces of irredentism. Its ideational premise-roughly a homeland for South Asian Muslims- in turn premised on the two nation theory which posited that Muslims constituted a separate nation and could not either co-exist or live in ‘Hindu’ India-rendered revisionism and irredentism inherent to it. It also meant that Pakistani nationalism was negative nationalism. That it, it drew sustenance from positing India as its ‘Other’. The consequences of this were that Pakistan deemed itself incomplete without Kashmir and devoted its national energy to wresting Kashmir from India. This led to three and a half wars, initiated almost all the time by Pakistan and a proxy war meant to bleed India and make it compromise on Kashmir through attrition. Despite these adventures or misadventures, the status quo –Kashmir as part of India-has prevailed. However, this has come at a great price and cost both in terms of men and materiel. Thousands have lost their lives in Kashmir, and the Pakistani state instead of bleeding India has itself succumbed to the forces that it harnessed to wrest Kashmir from India.

In this schema, Pakistan viewed the dispute over Kashmir in zero sum terms and imbued it transcendence- a condition that rendered the dispute or conflict into an all or nothing bargain. As such it was impervious to either suasion or compromise. In the process and on account of the ideational premise of Pakistan, raw emotions defined the Pakistani people’s orientation to the dispute. In this sense, the state and society of Pakistan were in unison.  On account of these factors, the dispute over Kashmir then gradually and inexorably became intractable-impervious to any reasonable conflict resolution method.

 In the recent or current warming up  the core issue appears to be have been frozen and a modus vivendi arrived at other issues-Siachen, trade and investment- that do not have the same significance as Kashmir appears to form the gravamen of the ‘détente’. That is to say, other amenable issues appear to have been delinked from the core issue of Kashmir. This starting point can potentially be salubrious if it is informed by sincerity and good will on account of powers that be on both sides of the divide.

What is of significance here is that if indeed the Pakistani state is willing to modify its stance on Kashmir, then this is truly historic. It presupposes the fact that the Pakistani state or what forms the Pakistani state is rejigging its core premises and dropping the negative nationalism it is defined by. That is, it is disavowing its historic animosity toward India. This process, marked and defined by gradualism means that a review of the Pakistani state is underway. This can only be an unalloyed good. It will allow the Pakistani state to consolidate itself and face the immense internal challenged that it is facing. Insofar as the dispute over Kashmir is concerned, it perhaps implies that Pakistan is willing to countenance India’s sovereignty over Kashmir and accept the demarcation of the Line of Control as the border between the two states.

It is this process, more than anything else , that needs to be sustained. Again the Pakistani state becomes crucial in this scheme. The state must educate its people over the pitfalls of rendering Kashmir central to Pakistan’s identity and present a modified, secure and secular version of Pakistan to its people. Undoubtedly, this will incur resistance. But it is here that bold and beautiful leadership is required. This leadership should lead the people of Pakistan in directions that are salubrious for Pakistan. Weaning Pakistani’s off the Kashmir obsession or syndrome should be the animating principle of this leadership. They may have to pay a price in terms of being shunted out of power or even the ultimate price but for the sake of Pakistan and its longevity as a healthy functioning state respected in the comity of nations, these prices have to be paid. It may be only this approach that can generate forward momentum on the détente between India and Pakistan. Of course, India as the status quo power and the regional hegemon has to play a supportive role. This means that it respond positively to overtures by Pakistan and not be obstructive. This can then encourage the Pakistani state to take head on its own obstructive and extremist forces who potentially can throw a spanner into the momentum generated by the warming up of relations.

  The need of the hour then is prudence and sagacity. Not only Kashmir but the future of the Pakistani state is at stake here. It behooves the power structures of both India and Pakistan to  to stick to the course and take recourse to wisdom and foresight.  The subcontinent may be on the cusp of history. It is about time that the nettle be grasped and a peaceful and prosperous future be accorded to the people’s of the subcontinent.