Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Accommodation
If Pakistan cannot rejoin India, many Indians expect it to eventually
accommodate Indian power. Such a Pakistan would not challenge India militarily
or in internal fora, it would tone down its Islamic identity, and it would settle the
Kashmir dispute by making major concessions to New Delhi. It would also
acknowledge India's regional economic dominance, and would not impose
restrictions on the import of Indian films and other cultural artifacts.
However, Pakistani strategists view the accommodating strategies of Nepal,
Sri Lanka, Bhutan, and even Bangladesh as precisely the wrong model for
Islamabad. These states have lost their freedom of action, they have been
penetrated by Indian culture, and New Delhi has undue influence on their
domestic politics, even intervening by force, where necessary. The absorption of
Sikkim is often cited by Pakistani strategists, as is the Indian intervention in Sri
Lanka and its military presence in Bhutan.
The view of many Pakistanis is that because Pakistan is larger and more
powerful than any of these states it does not need to accommodate India. This
resistance to accommodation or compromise with India is especially powerful in
the Pakistan armed forces. Pakistan, its officers argue, may be smaller but it is
not weaker. It is united by religion and a more martial spirit than India, and need
not lower its demands of India, especially on Kashmir.
Altering Perceptions
From time to time, there have been attempts to change perceptions of Indians or
Pakistanis. A number of outside countries, foundations, and private individuals
have supported efforts to change the perceptions of Indians and Pakistanis, to
promote better understanding between the two. Over the past ten years, there
have been at least 100 programs to bring together students, journalists,
politicians, strategists, artists, intellectuals and retired generals from both
countries. Much of the goodwill created by such efforts was washed away by the
hawkish television coverage of the Kargil war and the Indian Airlines hijacking
in 1999.
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Most of the India-Pakistan dialogues, intended to promote understanding,
wind up rehearsing old arguments, often for the sake of non-South Asian
participants present. History is used—and abused—to emphasize the legitimacy
of one's own side, and the malign or misguided qualities of the other. Such
dialogues take the form of a duel between long-time adversaries, each knowing
the moves of the other and the proper riposte to every assertion or claim. Any
discussion of the way in which India can work out its differences with smaller
neighbors is likely, sooner or later, to lead to certain issues (nuclear proliferation,
trade, water, and so forth), or to the responsibility of outside powers for regional
