Bully in the Saarc

Columnist Air Marshal (Retd) ARSHAD CHAUDHRY sees India as a hegemonic power in the region.

India is one country which has not truly appreciated her real importance. It is a large enough land mass to be classified as a subcontinent. Her population matches that of China; one sixth of the entire humanity. Her economy is strong enough to be rated number sixth in the world. She has a culture and civilization that is 5000 years old. Instead of deriving strength from all these positive factors, she chooses to compete her smaller neighbours at their level, like an eldest sibling who has not mentally matured. From Nepal to SriLanka and from Pakistan to Bagladesh she has running confrontation of one sort or the other.

In Nepal she wanted to install an agent in the royal family to keep the future King sympathetic to Indian needs and to curtail Pakistani and Chinese influence. She messed it up so badly that the entire royal family was wiped out and Nepal has been in a shock since then.

In SriLanka, she played an active role in the insurgency to obtain favourable posturing for herself. She botched it up so badly that she ended up losing a young, bright and moderate Prime Minister of her own in his prime. Despite the loss of Rajiv Gandhi and thousands of SriLankan citizens, the island nation remains in a turmoil. and no more friendlier than the starting point of Indian military meddling in their affairs. Little Maldives has not escaped her intervention and Bhutan practically stands absorbed in India.

India was so excited to create Bangladesh that she unashamedly and hurriedly involved herself in an overt manner in an internal strife of neighbouring Pakistan. She committed naked aggression against East Pakistan with total disregard to international norms. It seemed so that living with the memory of her miserable performance in 1965 Indo-Pak War was very difficult. In a systematic and planned move she created the refugee problem and publicised to a pitch that she could justify an aggression. No sooner she pulled out of Bangladesh she realized that instead of one Pakistan she had created two Muslim states and military powers in her neighbourhood with independent thinking and policy. Now compulsively, due to her  psyche to destroy what is good around her she is behaving as a bully to create water supply problems and accusing Bangladesh of her involvement in Assam Liberation Movement.

Her fixation with Pakistan has overshadowed her personality, which rightfully should emerge out of her own history, culture and civilization. She behaves like a bully who compulsively must look for punching bags. Being nervous and jittery while surpressing 17 different liberation movements of nationalities within her territory, she tries to divert the world attention to external crises of her own making. In this regard Chandar Shekhar’s recent interview is very pertinent. The former Prime Minister of India stated that to keep India united and save it from further division into independent states, it had become the dire need of ruling class in India to keep the scare and threat of Pakistan well projected beyond its actual dimensions. Her present moves are part of the same thinking.

Some strategists believed that to tackle 9/11 crisis involvement of India into anti-terrorist coalition would prove good for the geo-strategic dynamics in the region. It would bring both antagonists on one side for a change. The coalition of states bordering Afghanistan and the us would have been quite adequate to do the job but to give importance to the street bully, India was included despite not having a common border with Afghanistan. However, being big and magnanimous does not flow out easy from the Indian political leadership and psyche of their masses. Their entire fixation to negate any advantages to Pakistan has clouded their vision of the future.

Unfortunately, where the us acted in a hurry to obliterate the Afghan national government of Taliban, she set a precedence of a very dangerous nature. Foreign interference into the internal affairs of any country was "kosher". All you needed was a charge-sheet and circumstantial evidence to persecute innocent people and their political leaders. As another precedence, the us chooses to exercise her right to withdraw from 1972 abm Treaty. She ignores the treaty partner’s protestation and China’s advice.

India thinking high and mighty on the lines of us wants to persecute Pakistan by charging head long into an open flaggeration and on what basis? Only a flimsy charge of Pakistan being involved in the penetration of the security cordon around her Parliament. Most sensible countries would have gone into investigating the lapses of security around their vital points and try to improve their systems. They would have produced the evidence to the accused or any respected international body. Specially so when the President of Pakistan has promised action against the culprits if duly proven could be seen. In another parallel India wants to withdraw from the Indus Basin treaty. A treaty which has worked so well for her and Pakistan for the last forty years and is often qouted as the history of cooperation between the two countries.

Saarc was visualised as a home grown recipe to establish economic cooperation among the beleaguered nations of the region to usher in prosperity which was hitherto elusive to the miserable lot of one and half billion people. It has never functioned to the satisfaction of its original spirit because, there is a bully amongst us who is bent upon thinking in her peculiar way.