Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
partition, and there were trade and transit treaties, hotlines, and other confidence-
building measures (CBMs) installed as early as the 1950s.
However, two great post-partition traumas aborted the process of
normalization. For India, it was the humiliating defeat by China in 1962, and for
Pakistan, the vivisection of their country by Indian hands in 1971. The ten-year
difference is important: the present generation of Indian leaders are further away
from their national humiliation than are their Pakistani counterparts, even though
the rise of China as a major economic power rekindled anti-Chinese fears in New
Delhi.
In each case, the other side denies the seriousness of the other's grievances,
and doubts the sincerity of the other side's claim.
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In 1962, Ayub Khan stated his
skepticism that there was a real India-China conflict, and Pakistanis still belittle
Indian obsessions with Beijing. Indians seem to assume that Pakistanis have
more or less forgotten the events of 1971 and cannot understand why Pakistani
officials remain suspicious when New Delhi professes its good intentions.
Further, these two conflicts had profound domestic consequences, not a small
matter in a democracy. No Indian politicians have been able to admit publicly
that the Indian case
vis-à-vis
China is flawed.
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None have dared suggest, as
V.K.Krishna Menon once did, that the two states exchange territory. As for
Pakistan, there have been few scholars or journalists—and no politicians—bold
enough to suggest that Islamabad settle for anything short of 'self-determination',
or a plebiscite, leading to accession, lest they be attacked for being pro-Indian
and anti-Islamic.
Finally, each trauma led directly to the consideration of nuclear weapons and
the further militarization of the respective countries. In India's case, the lesson of
1962 was that only military power counts and that Nehru's faith in a diplomacy
that was not backed up by firepower was disastrously naïve. The linkage between
the trauma of 1971 and the nuclear option is even tighter in Pakistan—and, for
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, a nuclear weapon had the added attraction of enabling him
to reduce the power of the army. Ironically, Pakistan has wound up with both a
nuclear program and a politically powerful army.
Traditions: New and Invented
While many Hindu and Islamic traditions suggest ways of reducing differences
and ameliorating conflict, each also has elements that contribute to the idea of
what Elias Canetti terms a war-crowd. Indians and Pakistanis draw selectively
from these traditions and point to those aspects of each other's traditions that
seem to 'prove' that the other intends to conquer and dominate. For example,
Pakistanis like to cite the
Arthashastra
as 'proof' of an Indian/Hindu approach to
statecraft that emphasizes subversion, espionage, and deceit.
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For their part,
Indian strategists, especially on the Hindu nationalist end of the spectrum,
