India-Pakistan Relations Show Little Promise for 1995

By M.M. Ali

Past tensions between India and Pakistan could be attributed in part to the fact that the two subcontinental neighbors took both inspiration and sustenance from two mutually unfriendly sources—India from the former Soviet Union and Pakistan from the United States. It is sad and ironic, however, that the end of the Cold War has done little to dispel those Indo-Pak tensions, as attested by the dismal record of 1994.

After allegations of a Pakistani role in the bombings that rocked Bombay more than a year ago, the Indian government ordered the closure of the Pakistani consulate there. In turn, following serious disorder in Karachi, the Pakistani government accused India of fomenting the violence, and ordered it to close its consulate in that city. India responded by ordering Pakistan to cut the size of its embassy staff in Delhi.

To most Americans, this diplomatic tit-for-tat between two major South Asian powers may appear ridiculous. Unfortunately, however, this is one of the less destructive ways in which civilized countries express discomfort in bilateral relations. Nevertheless, between India and Pakistan such ruptures create major inconvenience. Hundreds of thousands of people have personal ties across the India-Pakistan borders. Many travel each year to maintain those links while their personal allegiance remains firmly with their own country. Such travel necessitates visas, and the closures of consulates make it difficult, if not impossible, to get them.

In the subcontinent, such incremental erosion of bilateral relations leads to an accumulation of tensions that have a propensity to spin out of control. This is attested by the history of three fierce wars that settled nothing between India and Pakistan in the second half of this century.

Perry and Brown Visits

It was in this political climate that U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry and Commerce Secretary Ronald Brown visited the subcontinent. The potential for embarrassment posed by Indo-Pak rivalries and deep-rooted suspicions was not lost on either of the visiting American officials. Every effort was made by the U.S. Departments of Defense and State to depict the trips as essentially exploratory and non-political, oriented toward closer commercial and military ties. While Perry visited both countries, Brown's trip was confined to India.

Secretary Brown, who took with him a party of American investors, found the red carpet rolled out for him wherever he went in India. The Indian media gleefully reported that close to $7 billion worth of deals were struck between India and the United States, all in the private sector.

Secretary Perry had to tread much more carefully. He knew that, notwithstanding his early and repeated pronouncements of U.S. evenhandedness, tension-charged issues would arise such as current U.S. thinking on nuclear non-proliferation, U.S. military assistance to the two countries, the U.S. holdup of delivery to Pakistan of F-16s it already has paid for, and the Kashmir dispute. All of that happened.

Press reports that appeared coincidentally during the Perry visit on a U.S.-Russian agreement to share nuclear data did not help in counseling India and Pakistan on non-proliferation. The releases quoted the Natural Resource Defense Council (NRDC) in Washington as estimating that "the U.S. military is planning to keep as many as 3,500 strategic or long-range nuclear weapons on reserve, in addition to the 3,500 weapons it is allowed to retain in an active arsenal of missiles, bombers and submarines under existing arms treaties." NRDC added: "Each nation [Russia and America] is estimated to have 7,000 to 9,500 nuclear weapons activated now."

Perry skirted the issue by saying that the U.S. position on the non-proliferation treaty remains "unchanged." In Pakistan he revived the 1984 U.S.-Pak Consultative Group—a forum for the discussion of security issues. In India he signed agreements that would open up military and civilian exchanges between the two countries and explore further possibilities of joint military exercises. On the question of Kashmir he offered the good offices of the United States, if invited by both India and Pakistan, a position that the U.S. State Department has taken all along.

While Pakistan has welcomed U.S. mediation, India has yet to ask formally for American help. Recently retired Indian Foreign Secretary A.P. Venkateswaran, in a strongly worded article in the Jan. 6, 1995 Financial Express of New Delhi, observed: "The U.N., which once held out the hope of building a global community, has increasingly tended to become an instrument in the hands of a few major powers who are cynically using it to pursue their own agendas...Unfortunately, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the much hoped for changeover from a bi-polar to a multi-polar world has so far not taken place. Instead, the uncomfortable reality today is a uni-polar world dominated by the United States."

Indian complaints about foreign dominations have an ironic ring for the 120 million Pakistanis, who remain ever mindful of India's 880 million population. By contrast, Indian leaders seem oblivious to the consequences of raising fears and expectations among their smaller neighbors. India, it seems, has the ambitions but is unaware of the rules by which nations must play in the senior league. New Delhi, for instance, listed as its first two national policy priorities for 1995 "expansion of economic and security relations with the United States" and "managing the increasingly adverse relationship with Pakistan." Such attention may be flattering for Pakistan, but India needs to learn to live harmoniously with its smaller neighbors and reconcile with the post-1947 subcontinent.

Inside India

When P.V. Narasimha Rao was called back from retirement to become prime minister after the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi, the Congress party assumed it was to be an interim arrangement until a permanent prime minister was found. Serious contenders for the office were N.D. Tiwari, Arjun Singh and Sharad Pawar. Meanwhile Rao, who had expressed no great love for the prime ministership, found himself surrounded by men who feared the other three—especially with Sonia Gandhi, widow of Rajiv, reluctant if not totally unwilling to step into the political arena. So Narasimha Rao stayed on, and still does not seem ready to give up despite the recent dismal electoral performance of Congress in the south, including his own state of Andhra Pradesh.

In elections scheduled for February and March, the mostly northern "Hindi-belt," with Uttar Pradesh as its hub, is challenging Rao. Both Tiwari and Singh have resigned and left the Congress high command. Pawar, now the chief minister of Maharashtra, is busy with electioneering and has had several closed-door meetings with his lieutenants to evaluate the power struggle now underway in Delhi.

If Congress loses more states, Rao will not be able to retain power, or even keep Congress from splintering. His last best bet might be to entice Sonia to enter the fray, deploying the still potent Gandhi legacy and charisma. However, she has shown no signs of entering politics and, as a politically unknown quantity in India, she perhaps retains more weight if she stays outside.

While Rao is using the privatization and foreign investment card as his proof of performance, everyone is reaching out for support from the large economic and ethnic underclass. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the main opposition right-wing religious grouping, did not expect the breach in the Congress party to come so fast. BJP leadership is also scrambling for the vote of the poor and the minorities.

Periodic Hindu-Muslim violence frequently has besmirched the "democratic and secular" face of India. An even more pernicious underlying problem is that of the ancient caste system. A.S. Abraham, writing from Bombay in the Nov. 29, 1994 Wall Street Journal, correctly observed: "Caste is becoming the determinant of what kind of education or job one gets, and how quickly one is promoted." To remedy this centuries-old socio-economic anomaly, India sought the constitutional route. In 1950 it was legislated that 22.5 percent of government jobs would be set aside for the "untouchables," a figure based upon their percentage in the population. Census data showed, however, that "other backward classes" (OBC) constituted more than 50 percent of the Hindu population. In 1990, V.P. Singh's government reserved for them an additional 27 percent of seats in schools and the work place, but it cost him his job.

Despite these "affirmative action" measures in government and educational institutions, the lot of the underclass has remained pathetic. Casteism is built into the Hindu Brahmin-dominated socio-economic fabric. Especially in rural India, where the majority still lives, the Brahim still is lord. Caste killings are frequent and denigration of the lower classes is the norm. Dealing with this harsh reality is a major challenge facing Finance Minister Manmohan Singh's national development programs. The concentration in Delhi, Washington and London on the projected economic growth rate affects primarily the wealthy upper class and the middle class. Unfortunately, these two categories together are very small compared to the large underprivileged majority, which is likely to remain under-serviced for a long time to come.

Inside Pakistan

More than 95 percent of Pakistan's population is Muslim. Therefore, in a country that was created on this religious basis, there should be harmony. However, that certainly is not the case. Religion is not to be faulted. The problem lies within the people. Pakistan's leadership apparently is not given to broader thinking, and is afraid to allow broader participation. Also, much of the power in the country still lies not with the politicians but with men who essentially were trained to stay in the barracks or mind the national frontiers. To this uninspired leadership matrix the weak, the bigoted and the parochialists also have made their contribution.

The bleak picture is a reminder that Pakistan paid a very heavy price in 1971 when it split in two, with its other half becoming the independent state of Bangladesh. Within what remained of Pakistan there was no post-mortem, no public debate, and no acknowledgement of guilt or even of responsibility.

Incessant recent reports of violence in the country's largest metropolis, Karachi, therefore can be explained but not justified. This largest industrial city of Pakistan is a bubbling cauldron of Mohajir (Urdu speaking immigrants from India), Sindhi, Pathan and Punjabi elements. Instead of being the catalyst for a harmonious blending, the religious affinity that brought all these elements together in the past has been destroyed, at least for the time being.

To this indigestible mixture has been added a sizable dollop of a poisonous ingredient from the distant past—Shi'i and Sunni Muslim discord. Accentuated by the Kalashnikov culture that was introduced into the area by the Afghan war, killings in Karachi are attributable to any or all of those elements.

It is probably too early to say that democracy, as understood in the West, has come to stay in Pakistan. The purpose of the government and the role of the opposition still are not clearly defined in the minds of the voters. What may be taking hold, however, is the conviction that it is better that political change come about through the ballot than through the barrel of a gun.

Even here, however, constitutional procedures are not always followed. In very recent times popularly elected governments have been toppled either by the machinations of a president, by the dictates of a general, or by mass agitations. Both present Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto and the leader of the opposition, former Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif, have been so deposed in the recent past. In fact, over the past 30 years not a single elected government has served its full term.

Bhutto has been in office since late 1993, and has another couple of years to go. However, opposition leader Sharif has not wasted a single day in trying to find ways to short-circuit the system and bring Benazir's government down. Graft, bribery and even kidnappings have been used to achieve political majorities in the legislative bodies. Guilt in this regard is non-partisan. It can be ascribed accurately to all.

M.M. Ali is a professor at the University of the District of Columbia.