Daily Times

Ever since the partition of India in 1947 by the British, India and Pakistan remain locked in an enduring self-destructive conflict. This conflict is tied to destabilisation of South Asia, including competition between India and Pakistan over influence in Afghanistan. Without a resolution of the conflict between India and Pakistan, the destabilisation will continue.
The reason why the conflict is so intractable has to do with a clash of identities between the two nation states. At the foundation of the conflict is the fact that the elite in colonial India contrived adversarial identities for political reasons. However, these identities were falsely sold as a clash of religions — that Hindus and Muslims constituted two antagonistic ‘nations’ — to common people. These identities were imposed upon the successive states that emerged after the British departure from the subcontinent. It is because of their oppositional identities that they are still mired in a conflict that encourages nothing but self-mutilating behaviour. The identities India and Pakistan assumed upon their independence have caused wars between them, intra-state separatism, radicalisation, and support of terrorism to achieve state objectives.
The first serious step towards etching of conflicting identities was provided by the British colonial power after the 1857 mutiny in the British Indian army when, in order to prevent future threats to their imperial rule, they changed recruitment policies by denigrating Bengalis and glorifying Punjabi Sikhs and Muslims as a ‘martial race’. The motive was simple. The British believed that the impoverished and uneducated agrarian communities of Punjab were less likely to engage in nationalism, thus making better soldiers for the imperial army; the negative impact was the creation of divisive identities.
After the mutiny, the Mughal rule came to an end and the power of the Muslim aristocracy greatly diminished. Since Muslims were a minority in India, Muslim aristocrats and the elite became concerned that they were going to lose political power further whenever the British left. There was also a fear of cultural flattening by the Hindu majority.
To preserve their political power, Muslim leaders asked for separate electorates to maintain parity between Hindus and Muslims in order to counterbalance the Hindu majority.
The British knew how to fight Indian nationalism well. It was they who actively provided support for the creation of the Indian National Congress in 1885 and the Indian Muslim League in 1906. The British contributed once again to the generation of oppositional identities with the Government of India Act of 1909. It allowed Hindus and Muslims to elect their own separate representatives based upon religion. That and its successor Acts removed any imperative for collaboration between the Hindu and Muslim communities. Community and cultural identities were transformed into religious terms by the British actions.
Though its foundation was already laid, the deeply confrontational religious identity developed only after the Muslim League (ML) failed miserably in the Indian provincial elections in 1937, when the party claiming to represent India’s Muslims received only 4.8 percent of the Muslim vote. The Congress party, dominated by Hindus, swept the elections, marginalising the ML.
The strategy to utilise the blatantly incendiary rhetoric of ‘Islam in danger’ during the 1945 provincial elections came only after the ML lost in 1937. Despite the mythology that goes with Pakistan’s creation, facts indicate that the separatist ML demand for Pakistan was more of a tool for negotiation when it was first put forward. The agitation based upon Islamic identity was a tool for political survival. The ploy however proved greatly successful as propaganda and a contrived ethnic conflict mobilised the Muslim population. The ML, in a short period of seven years, went from winning less than five percent to more than 75 percent of the vote in 1945. The exploitation of religion as identity, therefore, transformed what was positioning for political power in the post-colonial period, into the generation of adversarial identities with religious reference.
Unfortunately, the blatant use of religion to mobilise the masses had grave consequence for the future of South Asia. This was the turning point when the monster of religion-based oppositional identity was finally released from its confines. Within two years, the results were apparent in a devastating holocaust in 1947, when the departing British divided India.
The partition resulted in horrendous violence in which one to two million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs were butchered, tens of thousands of women raped and abducted, and more than 12 million became refugees. The contesting adversarial identities therefore turned irreconcilable, once the devastating violence and forced population transfers associated with the partition unfolded. The nascent states immediately went to war over Kashmir.
The war over Kashmir had less to do with territory and more with how India and Pakistan perceived their identities in the postcolonial period. Pakistan saw itself as the home for South Asia’s Muslims; India saw itself as a secular nation. These perceived identities, although flawed and inaccurate, became antagonistic state projects.
The enduring conflict over Kashmir is because each state seeks recognition and affirmation from the other of its ideational identity. To affirm its secular identity, India had to claim Kashmir because it was the only Muslim-majority state in India. Acceptance of India’s claim over Kashmir legitimises India’s foundational secular identity. On the other hand, Pakistan seeks Kashmir because in the eyes of its elites, the legitimacy of Pakistan’s existence relies on acceptance of the ‘two-nation’ theory. The existence of a Muslim majority state within India negates the grounds for Pakistan’s creation. Kashmir as part of India thus creates an existential dilemma for Pakistan. Thus, the battle is between the founding ideologies of the two nation states, which manifests itself over possession of Kashmir. And because of this battle, we have seen wars, support of radical groups, and terrorism. Pakistan’s reliance on non-state actors is simply because it has never been strong enough to win Kashmir outright in a direct battle.
Pakistan’s foundational identity has not only resulted in conflict with India, it has also created authoritarian treatment of Pakistan’s own populations. Pakistan in 1947 was a pluralistic society with multiple identities and linguistic, cultural, ethnic, regional, and historical differences between Bengal, Punjab, Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP. However, only one identity — Islam — was used by the state to justify its existence. This collided with natural pluralism, creating fierce conflicts. Forcible imposition of language and flattening of identities of indigenous populations created divisive forces. The insistence on Urdu as the language of Pakistan denied the existence of other native languages and people. Adherence to the state identity also caused repression and abuse, eventually resulting in the breakup of Pakistan in 1971.
Ironically, instead of realising that it was the forced imposition of identity by West Pakistan that had caused the fragmentation of Pakistan, Pakistan’s elite instead became even more reliant on Islam not only for identity but also for keeping the nation state unified. Under General Ziaul Haq, Pakistan’s Islamic identity was forged based on militant religious extremism.
India has had similar identity-related problems. Its secular-democratic identity was challenged by the existence of Pakistan as a Muslim nation. The two-nation theory was perceived as a challenge to India’s integrity as a substantial Muslim minority stayed on in India after the partition. Furthermore, with many more extant linguistic, ethnic, cultural and regional differences among the Indian population, the Indian elite believed that if Pakistan’s claim over Kashmir was accepted, or it seceded from India, separatist forces would gain force, leading to its disintegration. For this reason, India has stubbornly refused to compromise about Kashmir, while committing unspeakable atrocities upon the people of Kashmir.
Clash of identities is, therefore, at the root of India-Pakistan conflict. Kashmir contributes to self-conceptions of India and Pakistan’s identities. Additionally, national unity in Pakistan is maintained by sustaining conflict with India as that defines Pakistani nationhood. Understanding this is essential to understand and resolve the India-Pakistan conflict. Fortunately, identities are not carved in stone; they eventually change. Hopefully, the rivals would develop positive and non-adversarial identities, moving away from disastrous policies and conflicts that have characterised their last 65 years. For too long, the citizens of the two nations have suffered due to needless squandering of resources, stunted economic development, and misguided policies that have caused untold miseries to people, especially in Pakistan. The imperial yoke of adversarial identities that originated due to colonial manipulation must be overthrown; otherwise, blood will continue to be shed and treasuries frittered away on war and destruction.

The writer is a lieutenant with the LAPD. The opinions expressed here are solely his personal opinions