Daily Times

India has betrayed South Asia in the manner that once Sparta betrayed Greece. The peace dividend that could have altered the fate of one quarter of humanity in South Asia stands famished of an Indian munificence, a fact that has kept the region hostage to wars despite boasting one of the most plentiful human resources in the world.

After 1947 it was an Indian choice to nurture a positive peace in the subcontinent. Like Sparta leading its Peloponnesian League against an economically and culturally fecund Athens during Peloponnesian war (431-404 B.C) India has contributed quiet surrealistically towards spawning a culture of war and conflict in the region. By disowning existence of an independent and sovereign Pakistan she has sowed the seeds of perpetual conflict that has hung like an albatross around its great power pretensions. Why India chose such a self-defeating course and what would have been the shape of the region had she accepted Pakistan as a reality is a question worth pondering.

The answer to above might be found in a sociological and anthropological treatise on the Hindu mindset and belief system by the renowned Hindu writer, Nirad C Chaudhry whose magnum opus The Continent of Circe lays bare the contradictions and paradoxes of Hindu culture. According to the author, Hindus inhabit a continent that is under the spell of a goddess Circe. The magical spell has robbed the continent and its denizens of a rationality and equanimity of temperament. As a result misanthropy and megalomania rule the roost in a caste-based society where xenophobia is celebrated and inclusiveness shunned. The inward focus of a haughty and closed society is evidenced in the ancient Hindu scriptural commandments banning sea travel for Hindus. Contrary to later day pacifism espoused by the likes of Mahatma Gandhi, the Hindu culture is riven with implacable conflict and
concomitant militarism.

In the later versions of the above-mentioned book titled as Heart of India, the concept of militarism and dominance has been highlighted as Hindu social credo. The Indian author, Jaswant Singh, also very eruditely points out in his book Jinnah: India, Partition, Independence that the partition of India was a consequence of Indian political leadership’s shortsightedness and inability to accept the genuine demands of Muslims who under the leadership of Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah were ready to live in an undivided India under the constitutional guarantees of the Cabinet Mission Plan. It was the Indian obduracy and parsimony that bartered away the unity of the subcontinent for paltry supremacist gains. The motheaten Pakistan with the gerrymandered district boundaries in the Punjab was a result of Indian political leadership’s refusal to give a fair chance to peace.

Indian leadership did not realise then and it does not realise now what great responsibility devolves on its shoulders as the largest and strongest component of the South Asian community of nations. Had they cared to raise their heads above the miasma of prejudice they would have found from the historical records that what great region South Asia once was. The Indian subcontinent under Emperor Akbar counted for 25 percent of the world economy, and according to the economic historian, Angus Maddison, in his book, The World Economy: A millennial perspective, India was one of the world’s largest economies till 16th Century AD. Now per capita GDP-wise India, Pakistan and Bangladesh stand at 141st, 146th, and 150th position. In the Human Development Index (HDI) the same three countries stand 130th, 147th, and 142nd out of 188 countries of the world. What a fall from the halcyon days of the 16th century!

What is the cause of such economic enervation? It is the continual military standoff and a perpetual asymmetric warfare being waged by the two most important countries in South Asia. Today, our Line of Control in Kashmir is one of the most militarised regions in the world with a deployment ratio of 70 soldiers per kilometre in the region. With an annual defence spending of around $53 billion, India is exercising a reflexive control on the arms spending of smaller countries like
Pakistan that remain perpetually fearful of Indian aggression.

With a $36.5 billion defence budget how would India inspire confidence in its insecure neighbour that chafes under the shadow of Indian perfidy over UN Resolutions on Kashmir Conflict, a case that India itself took to the UN in 1948? The high defence spending and poverty have been correlated in a recent Human Security study by a renowned think tank, which concluded that emerging economies with defence spending more than two percent of GDP invite a vicious circle of poverty. 60 million poor in Pakistan and 180 million in India cry out for a deliverance from the structural violence imposed on them by the compulsions of a war economy.

The present Indian trade volume of $60 billion with China, $12 billion with Iran, and potential $10 billion with Pakistan promise a tremendous boost of $82 billion. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor that invests $46 billion in Pakistan opens promise of much more than $46 billion for a far bigger and economically attractive destination like India. The Indian economy that is hungry for cheap gas would get a big shot in the arm through TAPI and Iran-Pakistan-India gas pipelines. The Chinese are aware of these potentialities in this new Asian century. What is holding India back from reaping the full dividends of this economic bonanza? What can a US regional surrogate status bestow upon India that she is ready to spurn emerging regional economic incentives? If it is the nuclear largesse of the US and West that India is eyeing it would be its worst folly for the same nuclear technology can be offered by Russia and China along with a whole new package of regional connectivity incentives far cheaper than the US.

The above analysis would clearly convince any sane Indian policymaker of the economic and political advantages of “Look East” policy. For far too long India has denied itself the role of a respectable and effective regional actor due to its fractious relationship with China and Pakistan. India has tried the old route and has been fought to an economic standstill by China and Pakistan. It is time to try a new paradigm and to give peace a chance. It is time to tell the US that we are your friends as well but just as your affinity with your traditional and geographical allies overrides any other alliance we also need to make the most of our regional alliances. A surrogate status does not behove a state that recounts its glories in the fabled Continent of Circe. The subcontinent deserves better than the current fatuous pantomime of surgical strikes staged by a cornered state to placate domestic sensibilities drummed into a frenzy in the first place by her puerile posturing.

With Pakistan as a friend and China as an ally Indian could secure its long desired place in the Asian sun denied so far due to lack of statesmanship and hubris in managing interstate relations within the subcontinent. A resolution of Kashmir issue and regional integration would give India space to reach Central Asia and Middle besides a much-needed international respectability for an enhanced role in the comity of nations. It is time Pakistan and India sought security through an economic synergy reclaiming their rightful share of 25 percent of the world economy as in the days of Mughals. The onus therefore is on India to decide whether it would like to stay perpetually embroiled in an unwinnable war with a nuclear adversary or to cast off the spell of Circe to travel a new road of peace and prosperity.

The writer is a PhD scholar at NUST, and he can be reached at rwjanj@hotmail.com