The prime minister and his advisers could hardly have failed to
anticipate the reaction that the statement would provoke. But they went ahead
and accepted Pakistan’s request because while the critics of every concession to
Pakistan base their arguments solely on the experience of the past, Dr Manmohan
Singh’s eyes are set firmly upon the future. More than any other Indian
politician, Dr Singh has understood that Pakistan is at a watershed in its
development as a nation. Which way it goes will depend to a large extent on the
direction in which India pushes it. Therein lies not only the most serious
potential threat to our country but also its greatest opportunity.
The threat is easy to identify. Pakistan is at war with a
section of its own people on its western border. The war is not popular: nine
out of 10 Pakistanis say openly that they are being forced to fight America’s
war. An equal number believe that America cannot even win over sections of, let
alone subjugate, the Taliban. They are convinced that one day domestic public
opinion will force the US and its NATO partners to leave Afghanistan. The
resulting Taliban ‘victory’ will finally extinguish Pakistan’s efforts to become
a moderate, democratic society and turn large parts of it into a safe haven and
recruiting ground for al-Qaeda-linked Islamist groups. After November 26
(26/11), one need hardly point out that the first target of these groups will be
Kashmir and the Indian state.
The opportunity, by contrast, is less easy to identify, which
may be why it so diligently evades the understanding of the Pakistan specialists
in Delhi’s think tanks. To see wherein it springs from we need to understand the
internal struggles that have shaped Pakistan’s development as a nation state and
the role India has played in this evolution. Only then can we understand how
critical India’s role could prove in the future.
For Pakistan, nation building has been a thankless task from its
very outset. Unlike India, it did not inherit a settled identity. It did not
even inherit people bound by a settled ideology. At the beginning of 1947 the
Pathans of the North-West Frontier Province were stoutly against partition;
undivided Punjab was still a determinedly secular province with a government
composed in equal parts of Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs; the real votaries of
Pakistan were still sitting in Aligarh and Deoband in the heart of ‘Hindu’ India
and the only other converts to the idea of Pakistan were a thousand miles away
in East Bengal.
The new state had only two ways to forge a viable political and
economic union out of such motley elements. The first was to keep emphasising
their Islamic unity and the threat it continued to be under from ‘Hindu’ India.
The second was to build a hard state on the European model by imposing a common
cultural identity and a strong centralised state.
Both met with some initial success but at an exorbitant price.
The first did somewhat homogenise West Pakistan but led to the secession of
Bangladesh. The second, which did more lasting and insidious damage for the
pursuit of a strong centralised state, delivered the country into the hands of
the army. Military rule not only throttled the development of democracy but also
prevented the accommodation of diverse ethnic identities within a federal system
– the only sure recipe for political stability in Pakistan as in India.
As happened elsewhere during the cold war, Pakistan’s military
rulers looked to an alliance with the US to cure their insecurity at home.
Although weakened and persecuted, Pakistan’s democrats were not willing to give
in. So in the face of ever strengthening democratic sentiment, as the cold war
waned, Pakistan’s military rulers began to look for other sources of support and
legitimacy within the country. This led to their alliance with the radical
religious parties and the formal installation of Islam as the state religion.
In a manner similar to the late Solomon Bandaranaike’s Faustian
alliance with the Sinhala Buddhists in Sri Lanka to promote Sinhala nationalism,
every facet of Pakistan’s current crisis can be traced back to the alliance of
convenience forged by General Zia ul-Haq. It gave birth to the policy of
creating ‘defence in depth’ against India by converting Afghanistan into
Pakistan’s backyard. This made the army and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
back first Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and then the Taliban. In doing so they plunged
Afghanistan into an endless civil war. What followed the Taliban’s victory in
1996 is now history. Suffice it to say that Osama bin Laden’s arrival in
Afghanistan started a chain reaction of events that has finally precipitated
Pakistan’s long simmering crisis of identity. When the Pakistan army lost
control of its erstwhile protégés and had to fight them, it had to come to terms
with the failure of five decades of increasingly reckless military stratagems
designed to shore up the nation’s security (and its own pre-eminence).
The development of the army’s internal crisis of confidence was
paralleled by a steady growth of democratic sentiment within the country.
Pakistan’s defeat in the Kargil war dented the army’s credentials as the
guardians of national security. In the years that followed, as Pakistan’s
economy ground to a halt under the weight of post-nuclear international
sanctions and the continuing burden of financing the military, more and more
politicians, businessmen and opinion makers began to refer to the 1990s as a
lost decade. They pointed out that four decades of ruinous military spending had
not enabled the Pakistan army to win a single war against India. With the
ultimate safety granted by nuclear weapons they began to voice demands for a
reduction of the military budget.
The unprecedented civil society interaction between India and
Pakistan that began in 2004 allowed them to see for themselves how far India had
progressed in the meantime. The warmth of these interactions further
strengthened the advocates of democracy. More and more Pakistanis became
convinced that a moderate, relatively secular democracy was the only sure
antidote to the sectarian violence that was threatening to tear their country
apart. The rise of the Taliban-linked organisations within Pakistan and the
links these have developed with al-Qaeda-linked sectarian organisations already
present in the country have completed the disillusionment with military
proactivity.
But the transition is in its infancy. The 2008 elections did not
convert strong democratic sentiment into a strong government. President
Zardari’s government has therefore neither been able to resist American pressure
to deepen its involvement in the Afghan war nor to prevent the Pakistan army
from trying to create a confrontation with India by instigating, or assisting,
terrorist attacks to avoid having to move troops from the Indian to the Afghan
border.
The strengthening of democratic forces in Pakistan and the
crisis of confidence in its army has provided India with a once-in-an-epoch
opportunity to shape the future of the entire subcontinent. It can do this by
ceasing to think of the state of Pakistan as a single undifferentiated entity,
recognising that it is a very young state still struggling to be born, and
avoiding actions and gestures that can adversely affect the outcome of the
struggle by reinforcing the perception of threat to Pakistan from India.
Dr Manmohan Singh has been doing this ever since he became prime
minister. His restraint was evident after the suicide bombing of the Indian
embassy in Kabul which was traced back to serving members of the ISI and even
more so after 26/11 when he studiously refrained from suggesting that the
Pakistani government had had any hand in it.
When radio intercepts showed that the masterminds behind the
Mumbai attack had close and continuing links with the ISI, Dr Singh hardened his
tone but still continued to draw a line between the army and the civilian
government. He has continued to do so in his talks with Zardari and then with
Prime Minister Gilani at Sharm el-Sheikh.
His decision to include Balochistan in future discussions is
born out of his awareness of the need to strengthen the hands of the Zardari
government in bringing the Pakistan army to accept closer cooperation with
India. This is not the place to discuss whether India has indeed been aiding the
Baloch insurgents. But if putting all one’s cards on the table and reassuring
Islamabad on this score helps to build trust and strengthen the Zardari
government’s hands in its struggle to control policy by reducing the Pakistan
army’s perception of a threat from India (or depriving it of this excuse for
obduracy) then the price will be a small one to pay.