Daily Times

Sixty-seven years into independence, one of the issues Pakistan is still fighting is the nature of its relationship with neighbouring India. On the one hand lies the vision of people who, building on the desire of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, want India and Pakistan to have relations like the US and Canada do. On the other is the vision that sees India as an enemy and sees continuous confrontation as the only way to deal with the country. Between these approaches of peace-lovers and warmongers, Pakistan is stuck. The sides of war and peace have become so entrenched in their respective positions that they fail to realise how neither of the two approaches is working and that we need to start looking for some new approach to deal with the issue. The only viable option for Pakistan vis-à-vis India is indifference.

I do not need to delve into the argument that war and constant hostility are in conflict with Pakistan’s economic and geopolitical interests. India and Pakistan both fought wars with each other and have also funded proxy militant struggles against each other. Neither has changed the regional balance of power much. The military equation between the two remains a stalemate. Even on indicators of per capita income or human development, there is not much difference between the two. The geopolitical reality of India and Pakistan has always remained the same with a larger India not powerful enough to tame Pakistan into accepting its dominance because of the latter’s geopolitical, diplomatic and military role in the regional and global order.

Peace between India and Pakistan is deluded as well. For one, the raison d’être of both India and Pakistan contradicts the other’s existence. Pakistan adopted the cause of its existence to be Islam and for it to accept an India, claiming to be a secular, all-inclusive state, would undermine its claim of being a separate state on the basis of religion. On the other hand, India’s raison d’être is that India has been a state and power since time immemorial. So, if India accepts that a state could be carved out on the basis of religion or ethnicity, it severely undermines this raison d’être. The narrative of India being a unified state, again, is a misrepresentation. India has never been a unified polity and all three attempts at unified India, Ashoka, Aurangzeb and British India have been followed by a period of disintegration, chaos, bloodshed and further polarisation between various areas and ethnicities of the subcontinent. Being founded on flimsy reasons, both India and Pakistan have ideological obstacles to peace.

Marred by these ideological obstacles, India and Pakistan have tangible issues in the form of water, Kashmir, Siachen, etc, that always pop up and will keep popping up as and when anyone starts moving towards peace. These issues have no definitive solution in sight in light of the relative strengths of each state but they are serious enough to undermine progress on any other front.

Based on its size, population and ‘perceived’ sense of history, India wishes for and demands a dominant role in the region. Pakistan on the other hand is sceptical of India and also realises that because of its size, population, relative military strength and its ability to strike deals with other regional players like China, it does not have to be dominated by India. India thinks Pakistan needs access to its large market to revive its economy while Pakistan believes it sits on a much bigger economic opportunity for India because of India’s need to get connected with Central Asia and the Middle East. India is a potential global power while Pakistan believes that, despite India’s potential and aspirations to be a global power, it exists in a region containing the influence of historic global powers China, Russia and Iran, making the region a power black hole. India thinks that, for a just settlement, Pakistan is asking for too much. Pakistan thinks, keeping in view its relative positioning, it should not settle for any less. Among competing ideologies and the power calculus, a peaceful settlement between India and Pakistan is unlikely.

We cannot fight and we cannot have peace, and so the best thing to be is indifferent. It is time to dissociate ourselves of this India-obsessed, India-centric narrative and start solving our problems assuming there is no India. For instance, for water, rather than blaming India for worsening the floods or drought, we should start finding solutions to the hand we are dealt with through water conservation, storage and innovative agriculture.

India had historically been the market for produce in the areas now comprising Pakistan. Since independence, the closing of that market is one big economic challenge we face. For that, we need to increase our trade with our immediate west, north and northwest. When we start moving in that direction, our reliance or potential reliance on India will decrease and that will make us more secure, more productive and more innovative. We can choose to waste energy on confronting India or making peace with it, or we can use it elsewhere to be more secure and prosperous.

The author can be reached on twitter at @aalimalik