Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Time
is a critical component of these conflicts. One or both parties may be
looking ahead to a moment when they can achieve some special advantage or
when the other side will collapse. Do long-term demographic trends, real or
imagined, appear to be threatening? Is your country, or your group, acquiring
some special advantage in terms of technology, alliances, or economics that will
change your relative position of power in the future? In brief, does the calendar
work for or against you? If either side believes that time is on its side, and
waiting will improve its position—or damage that of the other side—then 'step
by step' efforts to reduce suspicion or promote confidence are doomed to fail.
INDIAN INSECURITY
One of the most important puzzles of India-Pakistan relations is not why the
smaller Pakistan feels encircled and threatened, but why the larger India does. It
would seem that India, seven times more populous than Pakistan and five times
its size, and which defeated Pakistan in 1971, would feel more secure. This has
not been the case and Pakistan remains deeply embedded in Indian thinking.
There are historical, strategic, ideological, and domestic reasons why Pakistan
remains the central obsession of much of the Indian strategic community, just as
India remains Pakistan's.
Generations and Chosen Griefs
The first generation of leaders in both states—the founding fathers, Mahatma
Gandhi, Sardar Patel, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, and Jawaharlal Nehru—were
devoted to achieving independence and building new states and nations. With the
exception of Gandhi, they did not believe that partition would lead to conflict
between India and Pakistan. On the Indian side, many expected Pakistan to
collapse, but did not see the need to hasten that collapse by provoking a conflict
with Pakistan. On the Pakistani side, once Independence was achieved, Jinnah
hoped that the two countries would have good relations. In several important
speeches delivered after Independence Jinnah played down his earlier emphasis
on Hindus and Muslims constituting 'two nations'. He set forth the vision of a
predominately Muslim but still-tolerant and multi-religious Pakistan
counterpoised against a predominantly Hindu India—in effect two secular states,
in which religion was a private, not a public matter.
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Implicit in this arrangement
was that the presence of significant minorities in each would serve as hostage to
good relations.
A second generation of Indian and Pakistani leaders was unprepared to solve
the problems created by partition. Nothing in their experience had led them to
place reconciliation ahead of their own political advantage and the temptation to
'just say no'. They did reach several agreements that cleaned up the debris of
