Understanding India–Pakistan Relations: Memory Keeps Getting in the Way of History

Introduction

More than 70 years after the Partition, India and Pakistan continue to wrangle on major political and strategic issues. ¹

Whenever an attempt is made by the two states to normalize relations, hawks on both the sides play spoilsport and impede any dialogue process that aims to lessen the historical hostility. For cordial relations to flourish, the Government of Pakistan particularly needs to discourage the hawks and other elements who have sabotaged the peace process many times in past. Besides this, both sides need to show the commitment to address a plethora of domestic political factors that define government policies and adversely affect the bilateral relations. Until and unless India and Pakistan address issues within their own states, the perception of looking at each other as eternal enemies will persist and will eventually cast a dark shadow over whole region.

There is a whole gamut of literature on the troubled India–Pakistan relations and the reasons that led the two countries to stick to their maximalist positions, even when the costs of doing so were too high. The literature produced from earlier Indian authors suffered from an evident subjective bias that offered a narrow perspective and created a skewed narrative of events. However, there are visible changes now. The latest scholarship on India and Pakistan is not tied to the subjectivity of memories; rather, it carefully subjects history to intense scrutiny to not only showcase what really went wrong but to suggest an alternative, less explored path.

The books reviewed for this article have been written by two prominent and seasoned diplomats of the India and Pakistan: T.C.A Raghavan and Husain Haqqani. These are a welcome addition to the literature on the dysfunctional India–Pakistan relations. Raghavan’s book The People Next Door: The Curious History of India’s Relations with Pakistan is an ‘anecdotal history’ of checkered India–Pakistan relationship. Although Raghavan tells his readers at the very outset that the book is an ‘Indian perspective’, he has managed to provide an honest and profoundly nonsubjective account of India’s relations with Pakistan during the last seven decades. Haqqani is a diplomat turned dissident public intellectual who does not shy away from raising uncomfortable questions and criticism about Pakistan. His book Reimagining Pakistan: Transforming a Dysfunctional Nuclear State is an attempt to change the narrative that has been operational for last 70 years in Pakistan.

‘Pakistan’s Uncertain National Identity’ and a Scope for Re-imagination

Haqqani argues that the fundamental reason for Pakistan’s dysfunction ‘is its evolution as an ideological elitist state’ (2018, p. 264). This evolution can be attributed to deliberate and ‘artful ambiguity’ of Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan. Although both of them had strong secular credentials, they did not really bother about the Islamic imagery that was invoked by pro-Muslim league Ulemas in pre-Partition period and which many Muslims of British India believed in. Initially, Jinnah was mainly concerned with the social and economic status of Indian Muslims and strived for constitutional safeguards to protect their interests. Later, after his growing perception that more Hindu symbolism had crept into the Indian national movement, Jinnah and many secular Muslim nationalists turned skeptical and took a different turn that later translated into a homeland for Muslims. Jinnah through and through was least concerned with Islamic identity or Islamic state for that matter, which relies on Islamic values and principles. Muslim separatism, spearheaded by Jinnah, as a form of nationalism was a ‘manifestation of the fear of loss of social and political status’ of Indian Muslims (Nasr 2006: 180). However, the movement moved far ahead of what Jinnah and his close aide, Liaquat had anticipated. They could not control the Ulema who were continuously and forcefully deploying the Islamic imagery that ultimately proved disastrous in the post-Partition period. The deployment of Islamic imagery no doubt successfully welded together the Muslims of various provinces of Indian subcontinent but it had its own costs as well. The mobilization of people along the lines of faith during 1945–1946 election with the intention of winning the election and securing homeland for Muslims had far-reaching negative repercussions which even Jinnah’s unambiguous statement on August 11, 1947, could not shed away. ²

Various scholars, who have written extensively on Pakistan, differ when it comes to the debate on ideology of Pakistan. Hamza Alavi saw the movement purely as secular and bereft of any communal leanings. For Alavi, it was only after 1952 that ‘unworthy’ successors of Jinnah ‘turned away from that secular ideal and began to exploit the worn out rhetoric of religion to restore their failing political fortunes’ (2002: 5119). For Ayesha Jalal, the intention of Jinnah was not to establish a separate sovereign state of Pakistan. For her, two-nation theory itself was a bargaining counter to use the power of regions where Muslims were in majority to create a shield of protection for those who were in minority (Jalal 1994; Qasmi 2017). Venkat Dulipala has subjected these views to a scathing critique in his book where he traces the origin of ideological state in Pakistan in the nationalist ideology that developed before Partition; post-Partition insecurities only strengthened this ideology (2015: 501). Dulipala believes that Pakistan was ‘plentifully’ imagined as ‘New Medina’ where Islamic utopia would be restored and reconstructed (Ibid.: 501). The remnants of euphoria generated by the Ulemas before the Partition can be found after 70 years in the form of Pakistan as the ‘citadel of Islam’ and the ‘laboratory of Islam’ which indicates that Jinnah, Liaquat, and other secular leaders who came afterward have utterly failed to shed the Islamic imagery of pre-Partition days.

The image of Pakistan as an Islamic State turned out to be a boon for Islamist parties and as architects of a new world view they radically changed the face of Pakistan’s political culture. The division of labor between the state and the society in the reproduction of Islamic ideology ultimately widened their appeal and influence in society (Pasha 2004: 114). The relational aspect of Pakistan’s identity further necessitated differentiation of right from wrong and creation of binaries of ‘us’ and ‘them.’ The heirs of Islamic imagination, instead of going some way to meet regional demands, under the shadow of Islamic slogans slated the recalcitrant regional voices as ‘internal other’ to be muzzled. They also declared India as an ‘external other’ to be fought with in order to protect the ideological and geographical frontiers of an Islamic state.

The silencing of regional voices was deemed necessary to ensure uniformity of opinion across the country and to demonstrate the independent existence of a new sovereign state. For this purpose, the weak and fledgling civilian authority relied on army to undermine multiple provincial power centers to the extent that only central leadership retains the monopoly over decision-making. Pakistan army’s direct handling of internal affairs in addition to dealing with the Indian threat strengthened their hold on power that remained a permanent feature of Pakistani politics. The implications of relying more on army were severe. Hasan Askari Rizvi enumerates three significant implications. First, army obtained direct experience of handling the political affairs which otherwise did not fall in their domain. Second, the inability of civilian government to perform was exposed and third, it created an impression that army can handle the situation better than civilian governments (2001: 24).

Haqqani blames the secular elite for forging an unholy political alliance with Islamists that established a bad precedent in the country (2018, p. 80). Here, he differs from Dulipala by claiming that ‘the process of defining Pakistan through Islam began soon after the country’s creation’ (Ibid.: 65). This helped Pakistan army more in staking claim to political power. The status of Pakistan as an Islamic state nurtures not only extremism within and obstructs evolution of the country as a normal functioning state but also fosters an image of India as a perennial ‘eternal enemy’. For Haqqani, the first step in reimagining Pakistan should be to abandon what he calls the ‘narrow ideological paradigm of Pakistani nationalism’ to free the people of Pakistan from a feeling of being constantly besieged and under threat (Ibid.: 61). In such a reimagined Pakistan, the practice of religion does not need to be restricted, but the argument is that the ‘society can be religious but the state should be non-confessional if it is to be different from what Pakistan has become’ (Ibid.: 120). This is the internal dimension of Haqqani’s re-imagination of Pakistan. The external dimension concerns the way India is imagined. Both of these dimensions need to be revisited in order to reimagine Pakistan because ‘the constant refrain of Islamizing a Muslim-majority country, coupled with the belief that this nation must always be in conflict with its largest neighbor because of religious differences, is in many ways at the heart of most of Pakistan’s current problems’ (Ibid.: 120).

The notion of being under constant threat gives Pakistan army a genuine excuse to expand its influence far and wide. Pakistan army was comparatively better placed in immediate post-Partition period. Haqqani lists three advantages.

First, it inherited a disciplined and well organized structure; second, it could call upon the nation to make sacrifices in its support because its purpose—defending the new country—was widely shared by the country’s leaders and people; and third, it had a higher degree of ethnic homogeneity resulting from British racist recruitment polic. (Ibid.: 164)

For Haqqani the political discourse led by army is the reason behind Pakistan’s obsession with real or imagined enemies (Ibid.: 194).

The policy of balancing the threat from India has remained unchanged in these tumultuous seven decades. India’s dominance of the region is an anathema for Pakistan and the latter has done everything to seek parity with India. The nuclear tests in May 1998, few weeks after Indian nuclear tests, were seen by Pakistan establishment as ‘great equalizer’. The policy of securing ‘strategic depth’ in Afghanistan and competition over securing nonpermanent membership in the United Nations Security Council are some cases that reflect Pakistan’s paranoia vis-à-vis India which Haqqani asks Pakistan to change if it wants to evolve differently.

A discussion on what Haqqani calls, ‘alternative imaginings’ is a must if Pakistan wants to improve its image globally. The ‘alternative imaginings’ need to be freed from ideological parameters and should not be led by the people trained to have a narrow definition of security. It should be led by people who favor Pakistan’s economic growth and integration with global markets. Haqqani accepts that it is not easy to accomplish such a big task because the current generation has been brought up in an education system that did not encourage respect for fields of science and empiricism (Ibid.: 236). Since the state wanted to invent a golden past and construct an image of new country as an Islamic state, reliance on, what Ayesha Jalal calls, ‘tendentious imaginings’ was unavoidable (1995: 74). It has bred national bigotry and produced a generation which is highly antagonistic to the idea of a secular Pakistan. To bring changes in the discourse that has been shaped over last 70 years, Haqqani suggests that civilian and military leaders would have to work together (Ibid.: 116) which is possible only when there is an ‘objective civilian control’ of the overall state apparatus. ³

Shadows of the Past and a Quest for Reconciliation

In his previous book, India Vs Pakistan: Why Can’t We Just be Friends?, Husain Haqqani shares an interesting conversation in which Jinnah, while strolling on the shores of the Arabian sea, tells the then US ambassador Paul Alling that ‘nothing was dearer to his heart than close relations between India and Pakistan’ and that he ‘wished for India and Pakistan to have an association similar to that between the United States and Canada’ (2016: 3). Jinnah had also spoken to India’s High Commissioner in Pakistan about returning back to his Mumbai house soon after the bitterness of Partition fades away which is taken as evidence that Jinnah never anticipated the path that India and Pakistan took in the immediate post-Partition period.

Jinnah’s unfulfilled wish gives an impression that India and Pakistan began their journey on a clean slate and that hostility between them is only post-Partition phenomenon which Raghavan in his book gently rejects by writing that ‘the bitterness and suspicion that had characterized the Muslim League—Congress negotiations from the late 1930s, in fact, carried over after August 1947 and now acquired international character’ (2017: 7). The hostility was further aggravated by accession of three princely states of Junagadh, Hyderabad, and Kashmir into Indian Union. These issues have not faded from the public memory of Pakistan. Kashmir in particular has remained a bone of contention over which India and Pakistan have already fought three wars. The first Kashmir war was a defining movement in a sense that it exposed these deep fault lines. Moreover, the assassination of India’s tallest leader, Mahatma Gandhi, on the grounds of insisting on releasing funds to Pakistan at the peak of Kashmir crisis and the Rawalpindi conspiracy in Pakistan immediately after the first Kashmir war was a grim reminder of how deeply divided the two countries were.

After the first Kashmir war, India and Pakistan relations have witnessed ups and downs and the controversies emanating from unresolved contentious issues of past have followed what Raghavan calls ‘cyclical pattern’ affecting in one way or the other both the countries. One specific characteristic of India–Pakistan relations has been that after severe provocations and obstructions, both have never shied in resuming the dialogue process. Raghavan has chronologically ordered the India–Pakistan engagements and has succeeded in his intended aim of bringing out its full flavor. He begins from the bitter memories of Partition and the first Kashmir war and tells us how such events and issues and the politics surrounding them did not deter the leadership from leaving the past behind and moving enthusiastically into what Badr-ud-Din Tyabji, who accompanied Jawaharlal Nehru to Karachi in 1953, referred to as ‘the golden period of India–Pakistan relations’.

He also talks about the Cold War chill when Pakistan, to the chagrin of India, became ‘the most allied ally’ of the USA and gives insights about ‘surrealistic thaw’ that returned in the late 1970s after the dismemberment of Pakistan. The late 1980s marked the beginning of insurgency in Kashmir, paving the way for what he calls the most ‘troubled decade’ when a ‘compound crisis’ unfolded and ‘a thousand year war’ rhetoric hauntingly returned back. The leadership from both the countries talked tough against each other and traded severe allegations and counter-allegations hastening the free fall in India–Pakistan relations and leaving less scope for resumption of a dialogue process. The twenty-first century, however, started with a positive note when Atal Bihari Vajpayee surprised many when he pledged to avoid the beaten track of the past and promised to be innovative designers of the future to reach a permanent settlement. These positive gestures led to exhaustive talks supplemented by back-channel negotiations bringing both countries very close to a solution only to be averted by changes in the internal politics of Pakistan.

Kashmir as Pivot

Despite continuous engagement, both the countries failed to make any headway and remained mired in older issues. Both remained entangled with the maximalist official positions without conceding anything in return which further widened the gulf and bred more suspicion and distrust. In last 70 years of distraught engagement, it has become clear that Kashmir is the pivot on which India–Pakistan relations hinge. Kashmir has been inextricably part of Muslim project and imagining of Pakistan, and ‘what value for normalization without Kashmir’ is still common refrain there. India on the other side is not ready to discuss Kashmir in isolation; rather, it wants other significant issues to be discussed first in bilateral meetings. The six rounds of Swaran Singh-Bhutto talks from December 1962 to May 1963 failed because of Pakistan’s insistence on discussing Kashmir and India’s insistence on discussing other significant issues.

After 1971, there was a visible change in India’s stance over Kashmir. Having reinstalled Sheikh Abdullah as Chief Minister in Jammu and Kashmir, the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, was in a powerful position to ignore any provocation from Pakistan. What perturbed India more was the idea of resolving Kashmir through the UN resolutions. India, after realizing the mistake of taking Kashmir issue to the UN General Assembly, had always sought to keep great powers away from subcontinent. Nehru had failed to do so and the Simla Agreement was thus a victory of sorts and India was not to entertain any third-party intervention and any attempt by Pakistan to do so was put down by India. Raghavan cites one anecdote in which Pakistan’s High Commissioner in Delhi, Fida Hussain, had to taste Indira Gandhi’s fury. The colleague accompanying Fida Hussain had noted:

He then said there was need to resolve the Kashmir dispute in accordance with the UN Resolutions. This comment produced a visible effect on Mrs. Gandhi. She more or less froze. The atmosphere suddenly became tense and there was an uncomfortable silence lasting at least a couple of minutes…. Then Mrs Gandhi spoke in a low voice. This is not what president Bhutto had told me at Simla. (Raghavan, 2017: 135)

India’s aversion to the mention of Kashmir can be gauged by its decision to postpone scheduled foreign secretary-level meeting in 1982 after Pakistan’s ambassador raised Kashmir issue at Human Rights Commission meeting and equated Kashmir with Palestine (Ibid.: 162). The secretary-level talks were again cancelled in 2014 when Modi-led government in New Delhi wanted to change the rules of the game and decided to draw a redline in order to send a strong message to Pakistan and also to separatists in Kashmir. This time, the Indian government had problems with Pakistan’s policy of meeting Kashmiri separatists that earlier during Vajpayee’s time was not considered wrong in anyway.

This chicken–egg conundrum of whether good relations or Kashmir settlement should go first has clogged India and Pakistan from making any progress in bilateral relations. Both the countries need to find an acceptable middle ground. Haqqani suggests that ‘Pakistan could adopt an approach to Kashmir similar to that of China over Taiwan. It does not need to give up its claim but it could move on other issues with India first’ (Haqqani 2018: 115). And India on the other side can build on what Raghavan likes to call ‘Salal mindset’ wherein India had not only accepted the third-party intervention but also compromised on design features to successfully reach a bilateral agreement in 1977 (2017: 278).

Conclusion

Both the authors have quite convincingly shown how important it is for India and Pakistan to shun the hostility and move forward without looking at each other through the parameters of security alone. Haqqani’s ambitious quest for a reimagined Pakistan and Raghavan’s desire to see hawks on both sides fading into insignificance speak volumes about their longing for peace. However, such things are easier said than done. Haqqani gives number of valid reasons for Pakistan to choose an alternate path but he has not dealt with the question of how to do that. Saying that Kashmir should be put on back burner and civilian government and army should come together to get the country out of morass is akin to oversimplifying what is rather a very complex issue. It is not easy to reverse the seven decades of ideological orientation that too in a country where sacralization of politics has become a norm and the current generation is separated from past by ‘half a century of lies’.

Haqqani at one point, consciously or subconsciously, enumerates ethnic homogeneity of Pakistan army as an advantage which is in contradiction to what Haqqani actually is known for. He tends to believe in secularism and plurality, yet he lists ethnic homogeneity as a huge advantage for the army. Thus, he implicitly believes that homogeneity, not heterogeneity and plurality, bestows strength. This is exactly how colonial masters and the Pakistani army thought for a few decades at least. Furthermore, the evidence is contrary to this assertion. Both the Indian army, through regular reorganization of its ethnic composition, and the Pakistan army after induction of more Pashtuns and other ethnicities after 1971 have grown stronger and more credible, not less.

Raghavan has given a detailed account of India’s relations with Pakistan but what is missing in his book are the insights which he was better placed to provide. He was Deputy High Commissioner in Pakistan when India and Pakistan through back-channel talks had almost reached a settlement and his insights, as an insider, about what actually transpired during that period would have made the book more interesting and useful.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.