Dear Mr. Sehgal,

Last year whilst on a short but wonderful visit to Pakistan my family and I decided to crown the trip with a trip to northern areas and based ourselves at Bhourbon. And there in the hotel room I found a copy of the Defence Journal. Since then I have been an avid reader of your internet additions. It is to your credit that you have managed to create a wonderful and possibly unique and open forum for discussion of the recent history of the South Asian Subcontinent and its security, from a Pakistani perspective. The likes of ZA Khan and AH Amin and so many other eminent contributors have made this possible by taking the discussion to a higher level in an area so often full of propaganda and hype.

Please allow me to explain, first, why I have written this e-mail to you. I have no burning desire to preach to Pakistanis who I am sure are more than capable and better positioned to analyse their situation than some ex-pats and foreigners who should know better than to propose simplistic solutions to complex problems. Most Pakistanis bear with this outrageous intrusion because they feel that the ex-pat Pakistanis contribute in a small way to the nations recovery and that their heart is mostly in the right place. For this reason my aim is not to see this letter in print but to make a hopefully positive suggestion to you. There are many points of view being expressed in your publication and yet I find that one important perspective has been missing.

The animosity between Pakistan and Hindustan has been the hallmark of South Asia’s recent history and its particularly low ebb at present is clear to most people. Hindustan is the larger and more powerful neighbour and has never been particularly well disposed to Pakistan over this period. I see repeatedly articles in the Defence Journal which allude to the cunning and deceitful nature of the Hindu, with particular reference to Chanakya. This may not be kind to a people who’s lives, perceptions and hopes are not much different to many Pakistanis. We saw lately the saga of a particular muslim clergy who, carrying a Portuguese passport, had lied to further his aims. What does that say about the present state of a once great religion. Worse still, in my view, this way of thinking has caused Pakistan to steer a totally disastrous route over the short history of Pakistan culminating in the present position of being belligerent without the capability of taking the fight further. Those with eyes to see in the Hindustan tani infrastructure have seen this and are pushing Pakistan to an inch of total collapse. This is not due to the clever Hindu and more to do with not so clever Pakistani strategy. The other side is that an episode like Kargil has shaken Hindustan’s self confidence and a reaction to their military’s loss of face and what that does to a proud country’s ego is something that should have been expected.

Over the years Pakistan has seen Hindustan inevitably grow in strength and discovered that it cannot hope to deal with it from a position of strength, only as an equal at best. Hindustan has equally realised that its superiority in numbers does not automatically translate into capitulation of the smaller neighbour. Pakistan does not have the strategic depth of Hindustan and its people of necessity put up a tough fight when confronted with arms. My concern in this thesis is to concentrate on what holds the differing people of Hindustan together. The present strength of Hindustan is due to its unity, which is not inherently there. I propose that this unity comes about due to outside pressures. In a country whose population is growing at a staggering pace lack of a unifying force can lead to fragmentationary pressures very quickly. Why this does not happen in Hindustan is thanks to mainly Pakistan.

In the period of the Raj the differing people of Hindustan united under a common goal of freedom. Here, there were Pandits, Gujaratis, Sikhs and Muslims. In the period of the Iranian revolution the common goal was to overthrow the Shah and there was great cohesion in this struggle. Once that had been achieved all manner of fault lines developed, and very quickly. Infighting between the hard line clerics and liberals caused a potentially prosperous country to become weak and insignificant. Is this not the fate of Hindustan if the country starts to drift in different directions. And yet again and again we see that these differing people are united in a cause which gives them common aim. It has been to Hindustan’s benefit that Pakistan has for so long not seen fit to terminate its grievances. Pakistan has provided the glue, the cup of ‘soumme-rus’ the life sustaining fluid to the Hindu gods, the secret weapon which the Hindus could not produce with or without Chanakya. In the process Pakistan has bled itself dry, its energy gone and its vision hazy. It is time, therefore, to take another look at the whole strategy.

The ex-pats perhaps have one perspective which indigenous Pakistanis may not. We see the Hindustani community as it lives outside Hindustan. Here the only common experience of the ethnics is that of being a minority. It is most clear to a patient observer that though the Asians do well for themselves there is no inherent unity. The divided surface to separate one Hindu Patel from another Patel because he may not be from the exact same caste family. One Hindu may not visit another’s temple. Where is the unity, where are the clever Chanakya dictums? They only come into being when one is faced with a common struggle. That perhaps is the fundamental rule in human psychology. There are a large number of Hindustanis in the US and Europe. Their influence should be quite strong and yet it isn’t, due to this lack of unity. However, the Hindustani government has seen the potential and is trying to mobilise this people by using Pakistani mistakes and strategic blunders.

Pakistan has shown itself to be a resourceful nation. It has built its capabilities with very little help from outside and without much funds. This should be of great worry to Hindustan. A peaceful forward looking Pakistan without the hang-ups of inferiority has the capability of a fast paced economic development which would enhance its standing in the world and give it the clout in world affairs which it simply has not had. Pakistan must decide where it wants to go. There is the pull of the clergy with no forward vision, the problems of Afghanistan and the issue of Kashmir. The people of Pakistan have never fully backed religious parties and yet these parties have such a hold on Pakistan’s internal and external affairs. Why should that be so? One should perhaps read Eqbal Ahmad’s articles on use of Islam by weak leaders. Is it not time to become wiser and play the bigger game with less risk and better gains. Skill is needed to educate the people so that they can see the alternatives. Wars are won in the mind. Let Chanakya have his place in history but leaders in Pakistan should perhaps keep the writings of Clausewitz and Sun Tzu close to hand and read them often.

One last point, can Pakistan survive intact without a belligerent Hindustan?

A.Ali

London, UK

I thought you might be interested in the following letter that I have sent to the editor of Foreign Affairs magazine.

[Comments on “Pakistan’s Never-Ending Story” by Sumit Ganguly (Foreign Affairs, March/April 2000) ]

Ahmad Faruqui

Professor Ganguly’s assessment of “what ails Pakistan” is vitiated by its incompleteness.  He correctly excoriates Pakistan’s feudal politicians for having failed to develop democratic institutions.  He also correctly faults the Pakistani military for expropriating more than its fair share of the national budget, and advises Pakistan to focus on the underlying problems of social and economic development.  Several Pakistanis including retired Lieutenant General Talat Masood and the late economist Mahbub ul Haq have spoken about the need to reduce defence spending.

But he stops short of getting to the root cause of Pakistan’s problems. This is India’s bellicose policy towards Pakistan.  Ganguly says that Pakistan is “stuck on Kashmir” and since its independence, “has sought to wrest Kashmir from India, at considerable human and material cost.”   He states that “unless Musharraf improves relations with India—and this means resolving Kashmir—the two countries will remain locked in a defense-spending race.”  He accuses Pakistan’s ISI of sponsoring terrorism in Kashmir but absolves India’s RAW from conducting terrorism inside Pakistan.

Such a partisan essay does not differ in content or tone from the memoranda that emanate routinely from South Hall, and will unfortunately have no impact on key decision makers in Pakistan.  To Pakistanis of all walks of life, India poses a grave threat to their national identity and survival.

Indian policy towards Pakistan borders on paranoia.  Citing the need to defend itself against Pakistan’s “cross-border terrorism,” it has announced the highest increase in its defence budget of 28%.  This increase will be used to pay for the acquisition of nuclear submarines, aircraft carriers, strategic bombers, and supersonic fighter aircraft.  These weapons are unlikely to be of much use against terrorists, and are designed to establish India’s hegemony in South Asia and beyond. 

Ganguly mentions Pakistan’s nuclear tests but does not state that these were triggered by India’s tests that were carried out at Pokran near the Pakistan border.  This is the same spot where India had exploded a ‘peaceful’ nuclear device, dubbed the Smiling Buddha, in 1974.  India has stated that its nuclear programme is meant to deal with the threat from China, to deflect criticism, that it is trying to intimidate Pakistan.

One cannot mention Pakistan’s incursion into Kargil in 1999 and not mention India’s incursion into the Siachen glacier in 1984.  That was the first violation of the Simla Agreement of 1972 where the two countries stated their resolve to settle their differences by peaceful means.  India maintains close to 700,000 troops in Kashmir, which exceeds the strength of the entire Pakistan army by a couple of hundred thousand.  

India has not followed the two UN Security Council resolutions calling for a plebiscite to be held in Kashmir.  While agreeing to hold a plebiscite in the early years after partition, India’s Prime Minister Nehru subsequently changed his position.  In the early sixties, Kashmir was absorbed into the Indian Union, against Pakistan’s protestations.  Bertrand Russell despaired of the Indian about face on Kashmir, and said that “the high idealism of the Indian government in international matters breaks down completely when confronted with the question of Kashmir.”

India has consistently rejected international mediation of the Kashmir conflict, and even President Clinton has been unable to effect a change in the Indian position.  Neither will India hold bilateral discussions with Pakistan till such time that Pakistan has withdrawn its troops from Kashmir. Such a “heads I win, tails you lose” negotiation strategy is precisely the type of hectoring that Ganguly says the US should not adopt toward Pakistan.

Ganguly refers to the “bloody divorce of the country’s eastern and western halves” as symptomatic of Pakistan’s ills, but does not mention that the divorce was heavily brokered by the Indian army. Field Marshal Manekshaw, then Chief of the Indian Army, has recently stated that he had begun preparing for war several months prior to the commencement of hostilities in December.  After the Indian victory, Mrs.Gandhi, India’s democratically elected Prime Minister and Nehru’s daughter, stated that India had finally avenged 1000 years of Muslim victories in the subcontinent.

In 1975, India sent paratroopers of its elite 1 Para. Bn. into the independent Himalayan kingdom of Sikkim and forcibly annexed it into the Indian Union.  In her first few years, she had acquired the princely states of Junagadh and Hyderabad through “police action.”

If these are the fruits of democracy then Pakistanis may be forgiven for embracing military rule.  Even Ganguly notes that General Musharraf “enjoys widespread support from the military and much of the public.” 

Unilateral disarmament will not work for Pakistan, just like it did not work for Carthage at the end of the Punic Wars.  As the dominant power in the subcontinent, India needs to make the first move towards peace by (1) offering to hold bilateral talks with Pakistan without any preconditions and (2) announcing a moratorium on defence spending.