Daily Times

“You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love.” – Leo Tolstoy. The above quote sums up succinctly the Indo-Pak peace dilemma. While the populations across the international border share cultural, linguistic and in some cases religious affinity, the governments share a visceral hatred begotten out of the violent memories of the cataclysm of the partition. So will the divine love come down to help us win over our enemy?

Who will deliver the long suffering multitudes in the subcontinent from the clutches of a structural violence of a negative peace? Will it be the economic insolvency or the Malthusian spectre of human insecurity that would act as the main catalyst of a peace revolt by the masses, or the things will continue the way they have continued till now?

The answer to above questions might lie in the vision of our founder who envisioned Indo-Pak relations as the Canada-US relations with shared culture, economy, commerce and politics. Could any of us for a moment visualise the Niagra Falls on the US-Canada border as anything but the world class tourist attraction?

If the answer is no, one can easily imagine a scenario where the US and Canadian troops faced off each other training their lethal guns jutting out of bunkers built across the Niagra River.

The above being the harrowing prospect indeed, that had the potential of enervating the social and economic vitality of the two leading industrialised democracies of the world. In our neck of the woods, the sylvan beauty of Kashmir would have attracted the multitudes of tourists had the staccato sound of the machine guns not regularly intoned the funeral dirge for the peace and prosperity of the people on both sides of the Line of Control. How would we all survive in this world with one of the lowest human security indices in the world?

India and Pakistan have remained hostage to their fossilised narratives of national security as the bouts of irredentism and revanchism have kept the two countries in an adversarial time warp, failing to solve any of their intractable conflicts.

Kashmir would have attracted the multitudes of tourists had the staccato sound of the machine guns not regularly intoned the funeral dirge for the peace and prosperity of the people on both sides of the Line of Control. How can the people of this region survive with one of the lowest human security indices in the world?

It does not take much wisdom to figure out the magnitude of the peace dividends accruing to the two inveterate foes, yet the mutually debilitating standoff continues imposing heavy socio-economic costs on both. History points out towards the need for a path breaking peace initiative on part of the stronger protagonist in the conflict equation, to break the ice.

The weaker protagonist obviously suffers fear psychosis and needs a reassuring peace gesture to be able to bury the hatchet. It defies logic and reason that India with clear geographical and economic size advantage fails to take note of the immense possibilities of the peace dividends by refusing to show a generosity of spirit while attempting to resolve the intractable conflicts between the two countries.

Indian attempts to latch on the US bandwagon of strategic fallacies is an insult to the land that gave that classic treatise on statecraft, military strategy, and economic policy ie ‘Arthashastra’ to the world. India one day would rue the role it played in strategic servitude to a hyper power, that had its own interest to advance in a region that is so full of economic promises that even centuries of loot and plunder has not failed to arrest its fecundity.

Once the British, French and the Portuguese came on their colonial mission, salivating for the riches of India, now they come in new garb of strategic partnership but with the same old aim. While the white man’s alliance has replaced the white man’s burden, little else has changed.

The Indians have repeatedly failed to see the role they could play as the strategic ally of a rising regional power instead of hanging on the coat tails of a strategic ally, out of sync with the prevalent zeitgeist of the world. Cooperation and non confrontation is the new reality of this geo -economics driven century. Those who have lured India towards a false dawn of geopolitical confrontation have done a great disservice to a country whose founding fathers’ credo of non-violence and peaceful coexistence was once the toast of the global diplomacy.

India somehow has failed to outgrow the fear psychosis vis-à-vis China since 1962 and an ideological neurosis vis-à-vis Pakistan since independence, despite its impressive economic and industrial growth

India somehow has failed to outgrow the fear psychosis vis-à-vis China since 1962 and an ideological neurosis vis-à-vis Pakistan since independence, despite its impressive economic and industrial growth. It still seeks comfort in being a regional gendarme of a distant global power out of unreasoned pique vis-à-vis China and Pakistan, the two nations that could have helped India climb the socio-economic ladder with celerity due to geographical advantages.

The Indian proclivity to play the role of the regional surrogate instead of acting as a strategic bridge between a rising China and a chafed US is dragging the region into a perpetual cycle of conflict and violence. The Indian attempts to woo the Afghans away from Pakistan by offering economic and military support and stoking anti-Pakistan hatred is no secret now.

The above fact is evidenced by the Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval’s Kabul visit and meeting with Afghan National Security Adviser Hanif Atmar and President Ashraf Ghani in October 2017 after which a spate of allegations and sabotage incidents shook Pakistan.

Despite claims of Indian Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharamala of not sending any Indian troops to fight in Afghanistan, the Indians are providing gunships, saboteurs and commando training to Afghan forces which unfortunately have not gelled as an effective and motivated force against the rag tag bands of well-motivated Taliban.

India and Pakistan have tried wars and failed. Perhaps it is time they tried the peace route and forswore the chimerical wars of cold and hot starts under a mutually annihilative nuclear overhang. Instead of continually threatening each other with nuclear weapons that cannot be used, both the countries need to move away from their stated positions on intractable conflicts to create space for diplomatic solutions.

The irrational antipathy and an unreasoned hubris will not win over Pakistan. It is a fact India should understand in the interest of its own socio-economic prosperity. With India on the peace path, immense potentialities of a China-India-Pakistan economic cooperation emerge. India stands to gain the most through this regional cooperative engagement compared to the piddling gains envisioned through its confrontationist strategy vis-à-vis Pakistan and China.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST; e mail rwjanj@hotmail.com

Published in Daily Times, January 5^th 2018.