Daily Times

A few days ago, Sudheendra Kulkarni, peace activist and a friend to Pakistan in India, for whom I have great respect, proposed a confederation between India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. This — he suggested — was an idea endorsed by both Jinnah and Gandhi. This is partially correct. Jinnah did. Gandhi did not.

The idea of a confederation was very much acceptable to Jinnah throughout the Pakistan Movement. Indeed he went one step further — by accepting the Cabinet Mission Plan Jinnah accepted a three tiered loose federation, a constitutionally tighter bond than a confederation. Gandhi, however, considered it a solution worse than partition and Nehru ultimately laid the groundwork for wrecking it. That two of the greatest Indian founding fathers were unwilling to consider a loose federation, let alone a confederation, makes one question this hypothesis that Gandhi would endorse a three-nation confederation between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.

The underlying sentiment that led to the partition of India was that Muslim majority provinces wanted autonomy from an all India centre where Muslims would be outvoted 3 to 1. Muslim intelligentsia’s response was to come up with creative solutions proposing a zonal federation to a confederacy that redistributed India in a way that Muslim areas — old and new — would be able to gain some semblance of self-rule and agency. History had given Muslims contiguous majorities and that formed the basis of their claim to a national home. It was this sentiment that needed to be dealt with by the Pan-Indian nationalists. The Pan-Indian nationalists wanted a unitary centre with as much power centralised in Delhi as possible. The power in their estimate had to flow from Delhi downwards. This is precisely why Muslims wanted to dismantle the Delhi centre and refashion India around multiple zones or federations. That would give Muslims effective self-rule in their imagined national home. A confederation would have made sense in the circumstances. A confederation is usually a transitional period. It is either a transition to full separation or a transition to full integration. A confederation between Muslim majority areas and the Hindu majority areas could have gone either way but in case of separation it would have led to perhaps a more peaceable division of India than the horrors Punjab and Bengal experienced in 1947.

The thing with sovereignty is that once it is given, it can hardly be taken back. In 1946-1947 a confederation between what are now Pakistan, India and Bangladesh would have worked because there were no sovereign states but rather two nations within a state — based on religiously informed cultural identities — which were in the process of negotiating sovereignty for themselves. The creation of Pakistan in 1947 and Bangladesh in 1971 were irreversible events. The very fact that Bangladesh did not join India’s West Bengal state after throwing off the West Pakistani yoke adds permanence to both those partitions. Sovereignty can be subdivided but two separate sovereignties cannot be made whole. Obviously the European Union is an example of nation states ceding some of this sovereignty but any student of international law will appreciate that European Union is neither a confederation nor a federation but a treaty union — an association of states by a multilateral treaty. Even there the Brexit vote last year has proved that suspicions of a super state run deep.

Given this background is the proposal for a confederation between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh realistic? The answer is no. Very little in this scheme commends itself to India as a state. While Indian leadership under Gandhi and Nehru were not willing to accept a loose federation calling it worse than partition, why would India under Modi want a confederation with two Muslim majority nation states where 1.2 billion Indians would have 1/3rd of the votes. The only appeal such a confederation would have in India will be based on the deception that it would undo the partition of 1947. This great “undoing” would appeal to the Akhand Bharat sentiment but it would be precisely the reason it would be unacceptable in Pakistan. Besides what would be the purpose of the confederation? Would it be a step to full integration into a federal South Asian union? If so why would 200 million Pakistanis or 180 million Bangladeshis voluntarily subject themselves to a Delhi centre? More importantly why would Indian Hindu majority, which stands at 83 percent, accept a further injection of 350 million Muslims as equal citizens? 1947 was messy but the reunification is a messier proposition.

So while such a confederation is a non-starter there are other limited ways in which this proposal can be useful. Instead of a confederation between Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, think of a limited and specific confederation between Pakistan administered Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir State. The elected legislatures of both regions can form a governing council of a Kashmir confederation, while each part separately aligned to Pakistan and India. Even outside of Kashmir, Pakistan, India and Bangladesh can form South Asian human rights mechanism for minorities, based specifically in the Liaquat-Nehru Pact 1950, which is still a valid international bilateral pact. Another way is to strengthen the SAARC but that requires rethink on part of India which sabotaged the Summit in Islamabad. Imaginative international law experts and political scientists can come up with several ways the South Asian region can be integrated for mutual benefit without derogation of any country’s sovereignty or any desire to undo irrevocable facts of history like the division of British India.

The writer is a lawyer based in Lahore and the author of the book Mr Jinnah: Myth and Reality. He can be contacted via Twitter @therealylh and through his email address yasser.hamdani@gmail.com