The Way Forward with
Pakistan
By Dr. M.K. Teng
When the Indian Prime
Minister Dr. Manmohan Singh
stated in the Indian
Parliament that India could not
change her neighbours, did he
convey the message to the
Indian people that India could
not choose policies which its
neighbours did not approve.
How come that the Indian
Prime Minister did not know
that in the community of
nations there are no neighbours
and neighbourhoods but there
are independent and sovereign
states and their national
borders which are secure from
invasion only so long they are
defended? Evidently the Indian
Foreign office must have briefed
the Indian Prime Minister on
what the core concerns of the
Indian foreign policy are. Could
it follow from what the Indian
Prime Minister told the
Parliament,
that he was selling a
monitored lie to the Americans
and the people of Pakistan,
that India could be persuaded
to accept a settlement on
Kashmir which was acceptable
to the Muslims of Pakistan and
the Muslims of Jammu and
Kashmir? For, no one would
believe that the Indian Prime
Minister could ride roughshod
over the Indian people and the
Hindus, Sikhs and the Buddhists
in Jammu and Kashmir,
who have always formed the
main resistance to the Muslim
separatist movements in
Jammu and Kashmir.
The Indian Prime Minister
should have known that the
international relations are an
intricate interplay of the
national interests of the
members of the community of
nations irrespective and
independent of the geographical
distances among them. The
Americans are fighting a war
in Afghanistan and Iraq, both
the countries located, nowhere
near the American borders.
Infact Americans are fighting
in Iraq and Afghanistan to
defend their borders on the
American continent. The
Russians stuck out their neck
in the Bay of Pigs to deploy its
missile systems in Cuba in
order to secure a foothold on the
American cantonment. The
Chinese fought a relentless war
for a decade and a half against
the allied forces in Vietnam to
secure the Malacca Straits-the
waterway between the Indian
Ocean and the Pacific.
The Indian Prime Minister
has to realise that the problem
of India is not that created by
her recalcitrant neighbours.
The stark Truth is that the
Indian borders have for most of
the history of the independent
India, been left undefended.
Worst of it is that the
successive Indian Governments
have spared no efforts
to neutralise the
civilisational contours of
the Indian frontiers.
Right after the
annexation of Tibet, the
Chinese have been
insisting on the unity of
the "five fingers" of
China. But successive
Indian Governments
have insistently
disclaimed the Sanskrit
content of the Indian
frontiers in the north of
which the first citadels
were built by Maharaja
Ranjit Singh which
closed the routes of the
invasion of India in the
north.
The consequences
have been disasterous.
Jammu and Kashmir
was invaded in 1947. The
state was by no means a
personal preserve of
Pakistan, inspite of the
Muslim majority of its
population. It is a little
known historical fact
that when the partition
of India was on the anvil,
the British assured the
Congress leaders, who
harboured misgivings
about the future of the
princely states, that
after the British Indian
Princes were divided to
form Pakistan, no impediment
would be allowed to
come in the way of uniting
the rest of India, including the
Indian Princely States.
Pakistan did not have any
claim on Jammu and Kashmir.
Infact, Pakistan did not have
any claim on any Princely
State of India. The Princely
States were never brought
within the purview of the
partition of India. In a ceasefire
brokered by the Security
Council, the invading armies
retained their hold on nearly
half the territories of the state
including Pakistan and Gilgit
and the Gilgit Agency along
with the Dardic principalities
recognised as the
"Dependences" of the state.
Among the Dardic
principalities, Hunza, Nagar,
Pumial, Yasin, Ishkonan, Koh
Gizir, which stretched along the
northern fringes of the North-
West Frontier Province of
Pakistan and the southern
flanks of the Wakhan Valley of
Afghanistan were considered to
be strategically the most
important part of the northern
frontier of India.
Gilgit frontier apart, India
faced a debacle along the Mc
Mahon Line, the Indian frontier
with Tibet. When the Chinese
commenced the invasion of Tibet
the Indian Government
agreed to withdraw its
garrisons from the
Clumbi
Valley and end
its military
presence in Lhasa, unmindful
of the consequences involved. In
the political committee of the
General Assembly, where the
Tibetan complaint to the
General Assembly against the
Chinese invasion of Tibet was
being considered, the Tibetan
representative pleaded with
the world powers to protect the
freedom of his country. While
Britain and the United States,
virtually accepted the Chinese
claim over Tibet, the Indian
representative,
Jam Shahib of
Nawnagar, watched the proceedings
in dismay. For more
then a decade after the
subjugation of Tibet, India left
the McMahon Line
undefended. In 1962, the
Chinese troops swept across
the McMohan Line, more than
a hundred miles south,
occupying the most
strategic features of
the Indian frontier
and lay claim to
Arunachal Pradesh
and Sikkim.
The Indian borders
in the north have been
vulnerable to attack
because they were, for
most of the history of
the independent India,
left undefended.
The long sea-coast of
India, in the south,
has been guarded by
the waters of the
Indian ocean. Indian
problem with
Pakistan, or China, or
even Bangladesh has
not been that of unfriendly
neighbourhood.
The Indian
problem with these
countries has been
that of the borders
which India did not
defend.
In a solemn
statement after the
second world the
American President
Harry Truman said
that world had to be
made safe for the
United States. The
Americans spared no
efforts to make the
world safe for their
country and that is
exactly how they
survived the Cold
War. Truman
underlined the
commission of diplomacy as the
security of his country.
The
Indian leaders, never
realised that world has to be
made safe for India to live.
India cannot live in an
unsafe world. Manmohan
Singh's prescription to leave
India to the care of its
neighbours is a counsel of
despair, a state of mind,
which the Indian political
class has inherited as a
legacy of its colonial past.
The Islamic Republic of
Pakistan is an ideological
state. True to its commitment
to the unification of the Muslim
Umah into a Muslim
International and the
consolidation of its power into
an alternate polar-structure,
Pakistan has exported Islamic
Revolution, aimed at the
fundamentalisation of all
Muslim society everywhere in
the world including the
Muslim society in India. As an
Islamic State, Pakistan has
used the Jehad as the main
instrument of its foreign policy.
In waging religious wars,
Pakistan has resorted to
international terrorism,
guerrilla warfare and subversive
war. The military
intervention of Pakistan in
Afghanistan followed the
course of Jehad. The Taliban,
Pakistan helped to raise in
Afghanistan,
were as much committed
to Islam, as were the
soldiers of the Northern
Alliance, who also fought
against the Soviets. In Jammu
and Kashmir, Pakistan has
been waging a religious war
against India with the avowed
objective of liberating the
Muslims of the state, who it
claims, form a part of the
Muslim nation of Pakistan. For
the last twenty years, Pakistan
has been waging a Jehad in
India.
Both Pakistan and China
are seeking to demolish the
northern frontiers of India, de-
Sanskritise the Himalayas
and exclude India from any
future balance of power in Asia.
India is already caught in a
pincer-hold of the Anglo-American-
Pakistan Alliance and the
Sino-Pakistan Axis. Both Pakistan
and China are seeking
to drive India out of Jammu and
Kashmir, the central spur of the
northern frontier of India. The
Americans have an eye on Russia,
the real contender they face
in Asia, rather than China. For
them, a balance of power in
Asia, in which Pakistan and
China are on their side would
always be more favourable a
proposition, than a balance of
power, in which China is
arraigned against them.
Manmohan Singh's
exhortion that "India seeks
cooperation with Pakistan and
engagement is the way
forward", is decptively simple.
Engagement with Pakistan is
not the way forward to seek the
cooperation of Pakistan. The
present engagement with
Pakistan is the way forward to
seek the cooperation of
Pakistan. By its content it is a
way forward to the second
partition of India.
Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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