Author: Harold A. Gould
Publication: The Indian Express
Date: July 21, 2003
URL: http://www.indianexpress.com/archive_full_story.php?content_id=27990
Probably the most significant utterance
made by General Pervez Musharraf made at his Camp David meeting with President
George Bush last month went unnoticed by the press. At one point, after
US President Bush declared that he is "hopeful that the two countries will
deepen their engagement on all issues, including Kashmir", the General
dutifully intoned his hope that this will be the case but nevertheless
felt constrained to reiterate that Pakistan has "our sovereign equality
to guard, vis-a-vis India". It was his way of saying that Pakistan's obsession
with the "India threat" remains alive.
What is the India Obsession? The
political divide between Hindus and Muslims originally arose from the fact
that for centuries a Muslim minority had enjoyed political hegemony over
the subcontinent's Hindu majority. Over the last century, as the power
of the demographic majority ramified, the Muslim elites found their political
dominance increasingly challenged. Many perceptive Muslims - such as Sir
Syed Ahmad Khan - realised the importance of Muslims achieving a relationship
with the emerging Hindu majority.
While the struggle against British
colonialism was taking root, a sub-plot of political manoeuvring was simultaneously
occurring between the subcontinent's increasingly strident Muslim leadership
and a determined Hindu-based leadership, whose differences were so intractable
that Partition was the only way that imagined Muslim fears of Hindu demographic
inundation could be assuaged. Unfortunately, however, the fear of Hindu
inundation did not end with Partition. The Kashmir conflict provided a
context for propagating the Hindu Threat on both sides of the LoC, but
especially in Pakistan. In part this stemmed from what can only be called
the deleterious consequences of a prolonged, communally-driven political
psychopathology.
In part it also stemmed from the
successful exploitation of this political bugaboo by the Pakistani military,
in concert with the civil service cadres inherited from colonial rule,
and the feudalistic landed elite in the western and northwestern provinces,
to justify preventing the evolution of a viable secular parliamentary democratic
system of government. Claims on Kashmir enabled this authoritarian cabal
to create a military machine out of all proportion to Pakistan's strategic
requirements which was and continues to be employed to make war on India,
ostensibly in the name of Kashmir. In reality, however, it is nothing more
than a quixotic perpetuation of the old separatist thirst for political
parity with a dominant India. Kashmir could be settled overnight if there
were not a section of a Pakistani elites that feeds off it for domestic
political reasons.
America's tragedy was its decision
to nourish the megalomaniacal fantasies of Pakistan's anti-democratic elites
by sucking Pakistan into its militarised Cold War grand strategy. This
is an old story which need not be elaborated here. But the aid packet US
President George Bush made available to Musharraf during his visit to Camp
David follows the same misguided pattern as all of its predecessors. At
least half of the amount will go for military assistance, the very thing
that economically desperate and politically frail Pakistan needs the least.
President Musharraf's assertion
that any concessions made to US concerns does not mean Pakistan will abandon
its obsession with the mythical Indian threat has an ominous ring. It reeks
of the self-aggrandising preoccupations and jingoistic political illusions
which continue to pervade the ranks of the extra- parliamentary junta who
rule Pakistan. Washington Post columnist Jim Hoagland, in one of his recent
columns, has referred to the placatory pursuit of Musharraf as "fool's
gold". It is an apt phrase.
The Bush-Musharraf tryst reveals
that Cold War baggage remains embedded in US diplomatic culture. Certainly
it survives in the Pentagon and undoubtedly in the ranks of the neoconservative
set that has settled in around President Bush. In the circumstances, India
will be compelled to adopt a wait-and-see posture pending some indication
of whether Musharraf will, one, keep his promises and, two, be able to
survive the slings and arrows of political dissent, jihadism and economic
collapse. The inevitable wait will provide India with an opportunity to
test its own political maturity and formulate policies that will maximise
its own regional and global interests. This can be achieved from a position
of strength, as India has now reached the level of a mature nation-state.
(The writer is Visiting Scholar,
Center for South Asian Studies, University of Virginia)