Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, October/November 1997, Pages 44, 76

The Subcontinent

Fifty Years of India and Pakistan: Dual Histories of Lost Opportunities

By M.M. Ali

As both India and Pakistan celebrated their 50th anniversaries of independence in August of this year, there were obvious regrets. Most Indians acknowledge today that much precious time was wasted by Jawaharlal Nehru's socialist experiments that made little or no headway in terms of economic growth or betterment of the lot of the common man. Nor did India's vaunted "neutralism" in international affairs during the Cold War earn it useful friends or lasting respect among the nations of the world. For the past five years, therefore, New Delhi has been searching for ways to make up for lost time.

Similarly, Pakistan has discovered that it earned little gratitude from Americans and few friends elsewhere by aligning itself with the United States throughout the Cold War period. In fact, Pakistan now is on the brink of economic disaster unless someone bails it out. And, of course, Pakistan is only half the size of the country that became independent 50 years ago.

It is also true that 50 years is not a very long span in a nation's history, especially when it encompasses the formative years following a long period of colonial rule. Nevertheless, chroniclers in both India and Pakistan are seeking high points of the past half-century that deserve to be memorialized. Some feel so hard-pressed in this regard that they are eulogizing events of little significance. Unfortunately, it may be more fruitful to review the mistakes in order to profit from the lessons of the past.

India's Legacy of Caste

"Untouchability is prohibited and its practice in any form shall be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law" was the promise made in India's constitution to the more than half of its population that had been treated unfairly for more than 4,000 years. Fifty years later, however, India's upper caste tail continues to wag the dog. Brahmins, who constitute fewer than 5 percent of the population, but are perched on top of the caste pyramid, have controlled the politics, economics and the social framework of the country.

At the base of that pyramid, the lowest of the four castes, the Sudras, have suffered indignities for centuries. A July 16 Associated Press dispatch in the Baltimore Sun read: "Most are uneducated and live as landless peasants or shack dwellers. They are the women who sweep the streets, the men who collect garbage or polish shoes—jobs that caste Hindus consider unclean...Brushing against such a person or even glancing at one was considered enough to defile a Hindu of status."

The Hindu structure further subdivides the castes into 2,200 subcastes, each assigned a specific occupation, making upward mobility virtually impossible. That this curse is alive if no longer totally well in India was illustrated in July when miscreants in Bombay draped a garland of leather shoes around a statue of Baba Sahib Ambedkar, the lower caste leader who drafted the equal rights clause in India's constitution. The gesture of disrespect in a state where the government is headed by the right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) reignited old grievances, and disturbances broke out in several areas, causing the deaths of 12 persons at the hands of the police.

Nor was desecration of Dr. Ambedkar's statue new. It was reported in the July 21 issue of India Today that four such provocative incidents took place in 1996 alone, setting off disturbances in several Indian states.

Those who think that Indian Muslims are the only targets of such repeated gestures of Hindu arrogance should monitor the treatment that is meted out to the vast oppressed community that goes under such names as Dalits, Harijans, Untouchables and Scheduled Castes. None get a fair share of the national pie, and all are openly scorned by some of the ruling Brahmins.

Therefore, the election of K.R. Narayanan, a 76-year-old former vice president, scholar, diplomat and journalist who happens to be a Dalit, comes like a beam of light at the end of history's dark tunnel. It was not his pedigree that caused his election, however, but the tangled politics of Delhi, which needed a noncontroversial candidate who would not undermine the office of the prime minister in an age of minority coalition governments.

That Narayanan comes from the "untouchable" class is therefore largely incidental. Nevertheless it will be instructive to watch for the first Brahmin priest to welcome Narayanan to his temple. It will also be interesting to see whether this man who has fought the odds successfully at every step of his life avoids or welcomes a showdown with the entrenched Hindu orthodoxy that still pulls the strings of power in India.

"Coincidences" in Pakistan

The new Pakistani government of veteran Prime Minister Mian Nawaz Sharif risked severe domestic criticism to give American FBI agents a free hand in seizing Aimal Kansi, a young Baluchi from Pakistan whose alleged random killing of two CIA employees had earned him a place on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list. Kansi was surprised in a pre-dawn raid in a small provincial hotel and whisked off to the United States in a U.S. military aircraft. He now awaits trial in a Virginia court. Pakistani media have continued to complain, however, that this was an infringement on the sovereignty of the state, and that Kansi should be tried by Pakistani courts.

Pakistan has been in the throes of a severe financial crisis. Its foreign debts range into the billions. Internal debt was twice as much. The government needed $350 million immediately just to pay interest on external loans. But international agencies had declined to give more. And bilateral aid was not forthcoming. The United States, Pakistan's traditional and previously most generous ally, was restrained by congressional actions such as the Pressler and Symington amendments that had frozen all U.S. assistance to Pakistan because it had developed a nuclear weapons capability.

Things began looking up on July 23 when the International Monetary Fund (IMF) approved a $1.5 billion long-term credit to Pakistan. Described as an Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility (ESAF), it carries a very low interest rate (0.5 percent, versus the normal 5.5 percent).

In return, Pakistan agreed to structural reforms, tariff and taxation changes, increases in utility rates, reduction of the budget deficit from the current 6.3 percent to 4 percent by 1998-99, and to make a stringent financial commitment for the next three years. The $1.5 billion pledged by the IMF appears large but, in the face of Pakistan's huge indebtedness and its inability to raise revenues inside the country, the temporary relief may prove to be no more than a Band-Aid. What the IMF and the World Bank give to heavily indebted countries, they recoup via debt servicing costs.

Perhaps coincidentally, in a sudden change of heart, the U.S. Senate unanimously passed an amendment to the Symington law tabled by Senators Tom Harkin (D-IA), John Warner (R-VA), Robert Torricelli (D-NJ), Rick Santorum (R-PA) and Tim Johnson (D-SD) that called for immediate resumption of International Military Education and Training (IMET) and democracy building programs in Pakistan, along with Pakistan programs of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) and the Trade Development Agency (TDA). All sources in Washington indicated that the amendment should sail through the House as well. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and Undersecretary of State Thomas Pickering have strongly endorsed the proposed amendment, which signals that President Bill Clinton also will approve it.

In a long recommendation to the president, Senator Harkin recalled the 50-year history of Pakistan-U.S. alliances, tracing it down to 1995 when Pakistan returned Ramzi Ahmad Yousef, accused instigator of the World Trade Center bombing, and Kansi's return this year. Harkin described Pakistan as the "most tried and trusted friend we have in the Islamic world."

Whether all this is merely quid pro quo, a major and lasting change for the better, or both, in the zigzag Pakistan-U.S. relationship is anybody's guess. If the U.S. is just rewarding Pakistan for good behavior, much will depend on how the Pakistani government utilizes this re-opening to its long-term benefit.

Either way, Nawaz Sharif will have to bring law and order to all parts of the country before foreign investors feel confident. Right now the situation in Karachi and also in Punjab state is far from peaceful. Constitutional changes by themselves do not resolve the country's bread and butter problems.

Uncertainty in Afghanistan

The debacle of Mazar-e Sharif is proving costlier to the heavily armed, Sunni Muslim Taliban than what was initially anticipated. Having won and lost within a matter of hours the friendship of Abdul Malik Pahelwan, who had overthrown the Uzbek Gen. Abdul Rasheed Dostam, the largely Pashtoon Taliban forces were driven out of Mazar-e Sharif and pushed far south to Kabul.

Since then Tajik leader and former Afghan Defense Minister Ahmed Shah Masoud has made peace with Pahelwan, and also taken along the Shi'i Hazaras to relaunch an attack on the Taliban.

Once again Kabul is being evacuated by its battered civilians, who are caught in the cross-fire and becoming targets of the bombing raids. Tattered caravans of non-combatants are trekking back toward Khandar, in southern Afghanistan, and Pakistan for refuge. Unconfirmed reports indicate that Pakistan, which supports the Taliban, and Iran, which supports the Hazaras, are trying to negotiate peace.

The religious extremism and arrogance exhibited by the Taliban and the sharp ethnic divisions among all Afghans have so far made peace unattainable. In a fervent appeal to the U.S. secretary of state, Paula Newberg of the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy at Georgetown University, who has visited South Asia and Afghanistan several times, said: "The protracted Afghan war has kept south and central Asia unstable...U.S. policy is caught in long-standing mistakes and contradictions, and the time is ripe for Madeleine Albright to correct them."