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BOOK
REVIEW
India and Pakistan: The ever-ever
antagonism
India-Pakistan in
War & Peace, by J N Dixit
Reviewed
by Sreeram Chaulia
 I once witnessed a pitched debate
between former Indian foreign secretary J N Dixit, alias
"Mani", and peace activist Praful Bidwai on the pros and
cons of India going nuclear in May 1998. Bidwai argued
emotionally and rhetorically against India "losing its
soul in Pokhran" (in a theatrical style which has now
been popularized by novelist Arundhati Roy), as Dixit
proceeded to professionally and dispassionately
adumbrate the security requirements and milieu in Asia
that necessitated the Indian nuclear tests.
I
came out with the distinct impression that whether one
agreed or not with Dixit's defense of "Smiling Buddha
II" - as the nuclear device is popularly called - the
man was a walking, talking encyclopedia who could rattle
off facts and incidents at will and at apposite moments
on any subject pertaining to South Asian politics and
foreign relations.
A prolific writer and speaker
since retirement from the Indian foreign service, Dixit
has come up with this volume covering the entire breadth
of India-Pakistan animosity, adding another feather to
his plume as the one foreign secretary who never went
out of vogue, long after superannuation.
If
anyone still has doubts whether Mani Dixit is a one-man
think tank, this anecdotal and racy survey of the
"ever-ever" enmity between India and Pakistan, to borrow
a phrase from author Francis Fukuyama, is the clincher.
In depth of knowledge and foresight, India-Pakistan
in War & Peace pleases, endears and also fills
crucial gaps in understanding of recent and
not-so-recent events of sub-continental history.
Present backwards
Dixit has chosen an
anticlockwise narrative, beginning with the IC-814 plane
hijacking and the Kargil war (May-July 1999), and then
returning to the historical developments of
India-Pakistan tussles from independence in 1947. A
"gradual, logical and chronological approach would
diminish the sense of urgency with which India should
assess and react to Pakistani antagonism, which goes
beyond territorial disputes or strategic worries". (p
19)
The author, a member of India's National
Security Advisory Board, presents behind-the-scenes
information about the involvement of Pakistani
authorities in the Indian Airlines hijacking of December
1999. In Kathmandu, as a prelude, senior Pakistani
diplomats and Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI)
officials went to the Tribhuvan airport departure lounge
and "had some last minute discussions with the leader of
the hijacking group".
Refueling of the hijacked
plane en route to Kandahar in Afghanistan was done at
Lahore, with Pakistani military officers present at the
air traffic control tower. After the Taliban gave safe
passage to the terrorists released by India in exchange
for civilians in the plane, they proceeded with fanfare
to Pakistan. Maulana Masood Azhar's triumphant march
throughout his home province had the blessings of local
Pakistani government authorities. Pakistani officials
were present at Bahawalpur, where Azhar swore to raise
an armed cadre of half a million people to continue the
jihad against India. What worries Dixit most is that
"the common people of Pakistan did not react to the
hijacking in a manner influenced by humanitarian
considerations". (p 33) They felt it was "incidental"
and part of the general support that the ISI gave to
terrorist cadre.
The Kargil war must be seen as
a continuation of the unalterable objective of the
Pakistani power structure: forcibly wresting Kashmir
from India. Dixit's evaluation is that the single most
important factor propelling Kargil was the personality
of warmongering army chief, General Pervez Musharraf.
"He believed that a sustained campaign of subversion and
military intrusion would result in Pakistan achieving
its objective of annexing Kashmir," and staunchly
defended jihad as a "tolerant concept embodying
commitment to Islam". (p 38). Like specious defenses of
innocence in the IC-814 episode, Pakistan's claim that
Kargil did not involve regular troops but only
mujahideen was disproved by the fact that "irregulars,
barring foreign mercenaries, were used as porters and
logistical support personnel by the Pakistan army". (p
51) Every foreign government, including Pakistan's ally
China, acknowledged that the Line of Control that
divides Kashmir had been violated by Pakistan as a
unilateral provocative act and that Pakistani infantry
troops were directly involved in the aggression.
Again, disappointingly for those who imagine
that people-to-people relations are the panacea for the
India-Pakistan conflict, Pakistani public opinion
(except in Pakistan-administered Kashmir) swallowed
government propaganda during Kargil that the
misadventure was "launched substantially by Kashmiri
militants". (p 75) The lesson for India from Kargil and
IC-814, according to Dixit, is that bilateral dialogue
at any level should not be undertaken with any excessive
expectation and should not be predicated on the
sincerity of Pakistan.
Wellsprings of
hatred
While there are theories that Muslim
separatism and antipathy to "Hindu India" dated back to
medieval times or to the anointment of Aurangzeb as
Mughal emperor instead of Dara Shikoh, Dixit thinks that
the half century from 1803, when Muslim political power
crumbled before the British onslaught, was the cementing
factor in raising anxiety among undivided India's Muslim
intellectuals. The operational styles of both Tilak and
Gandhi, not to mention British policies, crystallized
suspicions about the Hindu majority in the psyche of
Indian Muslims. Partition and its attendant horrors were
"seeds of communal antagonism, sown over the previous 50
to 90 years, which were sprouting through the ground as
poisonous saplings". (p 108) The moment Pakistan's
founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah complained of
receiving a "moth-eaten and truncated Pakistan" in 1947,
the seeds of hostility based in religion took on
territorial identity. General Akbar Khan, who led the
Afridi invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947, laid down
the golden rule that has caused untold bloodshed for 55
years: "The accession of Kashmir to Pakistan was not
simply a matter of desirability but an absolute
necessity for Pakistan's separate existence." (p 114)
Existing contradictions were compounded from
1958 by a "major ideological chasm" with India's
commitment to democracy and Pakistan's transformation
into a military-bureaucratic authoritarian state. Field
Marshall Ayub Khan's era (1958-1965) was characterized
by ups and downs in bilateral relations, with a few
positive elements like the Indus Waters Treaty and
proposals for a mutual defense pact, but a steep
escalation in Pakistani war plans over Kashmir.
Then foreign minister (later president) Zulfikar
Ali Bhutto's basic hypothesis that the Kashmiri people
would rise in support of guerrillas and the Pakistan
army in the 1965 war fell flat as locals supplied steady
information about infiltration routes and hiding places
to the Indian army. Pakistan's usage of code names such
as "Operation Gibraltar" (in memory of the Arab invasion
of Gibraltar in AD 711) and "appeals to the collective
historical and assertive Islamic memory of a conquest
nearly [a] thousand years earlier" did not shake the
basic secular fabric of India in 1965, although Chinese
ultimatums and diplomatic pressure prevented a decisive
result in the war. Interestingly, again, though Indian
premier Lal Bahadur Shastri made strategic concessions
of Haji Pir, Kargil and Uri-Poonch at the Tashkent, it
was Pakistani public opinion which was inflamed, led by
Bhutto slamming the peace agreement as a "surrender and
a betrayal".
The rearrangement of
Pakistan
Bhutto's jingoism and communal
anti-Indian mentality were unmatched even in the hard
core of Pakistan's armed forces. His top secret
memorandum to Ayub Khan after the 1965 debacle advocated
revenge by not just acquiring Kashmir by force, but also
by the dismemberment of India in its eastern extremities
with Chinese assistance. As the Bangladesh movement
picked up momentum, he accused the Awami League of
Mujibur Rehman to be a "pro-Hindu organization that was
going to affect the Islamic identity of Pakistan". (p
172) The 10 million refugees who fled genocide and
reached India were labelled "rebels", "secessionist
miscreants" and "majority Hindus".
An
interesting sidelight of the 1971 war that led to the
birth of Bangladesh was that when Henry Kissinger and
high-level American missives warning India not to take
military action for Bangladesh did not convince Indira
Gandhi, the US ambassador to Delhi threatened stoppage
of economic assistance to India. Mrs Gandhi, without
batting an eyelid, suggested "immediate closure of the
USAID mission office in Delhi". Another lesser known
incident before the December war was that during the
visit of famous foreign dignitaries to the Bangladeshi
camps in West Bengal, French author Andre Malraux was so
moved that he wrote about his desire to mount an Indian
army tank and wage war against the military oppressors
of Pakistan. Dixit also recounts the delightful episode
of Mrs Gandhi chiding General Manekshaw for drinking
during military briefings, to which he replied, "Madam,
the brand name of the whisky is Black Dog, which
[President] Yahya Khan drinks. I am quite sure that I
shall overdrink him and outfight him. Please do not get
angry." (p 210) One of the Pakistani myths broken in
1971 was that "India as a pacifist and soft state
dominated by the Hindu ethos could not match Pakistan's
martial traditions". (p 223)
At Simla, Bhutto
pleaded with Mrs Gandhi not to publicly disclose his
commitment to convert the LoC into a de jure border over
three to five years, but quickly reneged on the oral
promise by starting a covert nuclear program in 1972 and
embarking on a grand strategic Islamic alliance to
counter India's influence and stature in Asian, West
Asian and Gulf politics. Most ominously, "Bhutto was
accurate in this perception about Mujib's subconscious
Islamic inclinations and innate reservations about
India." (p 231) While crowds jostled around Bhutto's car
on his first state visit to independent Bangladesh,
shouting "Bhutto Zindabad" and "Pakistan-Bangladesh
friendship Zindabad", Dixit, who was the Indian High
Commissioner, was harassed and booed with anti-India
slogans. The Islamization and anti-India postures of
Bangladesh reached full crescent with Ziaur Rehman's
military coup and have not ceased ever since.
Zia to Musharraf: The deepening
cleavage
General Zia ul-Haq planned a thorough
refashioning of India-Pakistan relations in a manner
whereby compromises made by Pakistan since 1971 could be
reversed. From 1979-1980, Pakistan established
connections with extremist Sikhs in Punjab for fomenting
the Khalistan movement against India, adroitly using
Sikh pilgrimages to Pakistan for recruiting top level
commanders (some of whom are state guests to this day,
cocking a snook at the Indian government's "20 most
wanted" demand). Zia had a two-track policy from 1981
onwards, "An apparent peace offensive, while encouraging
covert moves to erode India's unity, influence and
strength." (p 248) Concurrent with the total
Islamization of Pakistani society, Zia appointed himself
a spokesman for Indian Muslims, claiming "my heart bled
for them when they are victimized". Dixit's riposte to
establishment claims from Islamabad that India was
engaging in "uncivilized behavior" against minorities is
that "this criterion should be suitably applied to
Muslim rulers, beginning from Mahmud Ghaznavi to
Aurangzeb and latter-day rulers of Pakistan". (p 254)
Operation Brasstacks (1987), the nearest the two
sides had come to war since 1971, was a classic example
of the heightened mistrust between India and Pakistan
that emerged out of Zia's machinations. Pakistani
nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan's "revelation" to
Kuldip Nayar in March 1987 that Pakistan possessed the
atomic bomb was an orchestrated attempt at coercive
diplomacy by Zia, further warning India that Pakistan
was going the nuclear route to change the dynamics of
the Kashmir contest. Zia also used nukes to develop
South Asian allies, telling them that Pakistan's nuclear
weapons capacity served the purpose not only of its own
security but also to save the smaller neighbors from
Indian hegemony.
Benazir Bhutto took Rajiv
Gandhi's apolitical past and genuine desire to improve
relations for weaknesses and hoped that she could get
him to compromise on the Kashmir issue in December 1988.
When Rajiv firmly stood by India's interests, Benazir
upped the ante in clandestine activities, which
coincided with and whetted the 1989 tumult inside Indian
Kashmir. Benazir's highly militant and aggressive
postures on Kashmir led to speculation about a new war
in 1990, which was the first instance of American
diplomatic mediation through the Gates mission of what
could have been a nuclear confrontation.
Prime
Minister Nawaz Sharif sent positive signals to India
assuring that Benazir-style bravado would give way to
"change in the ground situation" (read cessation of
armed support to mujahideen). But whether civilian or
military, no Pakistani ruler was able to extricate
Islamabad from its religio-communal compulsions
regarding Kashmir. Dixit says that "regardless of their
political affiliations, Pakistani leaders remain
prisoners of an all-embracing anti-Indianness". (p 282)
The ill-treatment of diplomat Rajesh Mittal in 1992 also
showed how Pakistani public opinion accepted official
media portrayals of Indian lies and conspiracies to be
behind acts of wanton violence and violation of
international law. So vehement is the public opinion
angle to anti-India policies, that Dixit recounts
Pakistani Foreign Secretary Shamshad Ahmad "reminding"
Nawaz Sharif in 1997 before Indian premier Inder Kumar
Gujral that a proposed gas pipeline from Turkmenistan
through Pakistan to India "could not be undertaken as
there would be opposition from Pakistani public opinion
unless the Kashmir problem was resolved first". (p 301)
From 1992-93, Pakistan's rhetoric on Kashmir
shifted from "self-determination" to "violations of
human rights by Indian security forces", allegations
which were effectively rebutted at various world forums
by Dixit and his successor foreign secretaries. Islamic
terrorism emanating from Pakistan was successfully
presented by Indian governments in the 1990s as the core
problem, not human rights. In the late 1990s, the Gujral
Doctrine of magnanimity did not yield any quid pro quo
from Pakistan, leading Dixit to comment that "the
doctrine was not rooted in reality". Even Atal Bihari
Vajpayee's much-heralded visit to Lahore in February
1999 was bound to fail, as no sooner had he visited the
Minar-i-Pakistan, Islam-pasand parties washed its entire
platform in a public ceremony "to purify it from the
malign impact of the visit of an infidel prime minister
of the enemy country". (p 304) Uncontrolled Islamization
and Talibanization of Pakistan were the strongest
anchors backing the Kargil invasion which followed.
General Musharraf's statements as late as
January 2002 that Pakistan would not accept any solution
of Kashmir based on the LoC and his repeated warnings
that Pakistan will use "all means available" (ie
nuclear) in a conventional war have taken the story of
India-Pakistan squabbles into familiar territory of
mistrust and tension. Daredevil attacks on the Jammu
& Kashmir assembly, the Red Fort and Indian
parliament and countless acts of terrorist infiltration
and violence in Indian Kashmir have added to the sting
of mutual bitterness.
Psychological hurdles
to normalization
Towards the conclusion, Dixit
identifies a series of Pakistani traits that refuse to
live amicably with India. First, "artificially nurtured
memories of Muslim superiority and a subconscious desire
to rectify the unfair arrangements of partition".
Second, a certain envy Pakistanis would not acknowledge
openly about the failure of their civil society to
solidify democratic and tolerant traditions in
comparison to an India where khakis and bayonets follow
popularly elected representatives. Third, assumption by
Pakistan of the role of protector and overseer of the
welfare of Indian Muslims, who in the words of Maulana
Azad, could be exploited from forces across the border
owing to their "socio-political schizophrenia" since
partition. Fourth, avenging the military defeat of 1971,
which is a formal objective declared in the official
oath-taking ceremony of every Pakistani officer-cadet
when he graduates. Fifth, irrational faith in the
"profound capacity for commitment to jihad amongst the
momin", as was publicly declared by Foreign Minister
Gauhar Ayub Khan at a press conference in Delhi. Sixth,
confidence that Pakistan's nuclear weapons program is an
instrumentality to further geopolitical objectives in
Kashmir. Seventh, widespread belief in the Pakistani
establishment and media circles that India is getting
exhausted in Kashmir and would not be able to hold on to
it for long (a presumption of Musharraf in Kargil).
Eighth, and most significantly, "the unarticulated
ambition and hope that if India broke up, Pakistan will
emerge as the strongest and most powerful political
entity in South Asia". (p 392)
For all the
Vajpayee government's "bold and dramatic" initiatives
since 1998 to break the log jam with Pakistan (the
latest Agra Summit of 2001, incidentally, was L K
Advani's brainchild, according to Dixit), unless there
is an alteration of the above eight fault lines, no
permanent peace can be expected. Unless there is a
"fundamental transformation of the power structure in
Pakistan, not only in terms of its military components
but also of the social background and political
inclinations of the plutocratic and feudal leadership"
(p 437), the "ever-ever" antagonism will persist.
Mani Dixit's tome is decidedly an Indian version
of the causes, symptoms and course of India-Pakistan
fencing, but the fact that he was in the thick of
diplomatic wrangles and peace initiatives since the
1970s, and the illuminating anecdotes and personal
impressions he packs into this book will make it a
primary reference guide for students of South Asian
history and politics. For one, if Indian politicians
understood as much as Dixit about Pakistan, there may be
hope for more realistic and problem-solving policies.
India-Pakistan in War & Peace,
by J N Dixit, Routledge Publishers, London, 2002. ISBN
0-415-30472-5. Price US$27.50, 501 pages.
(©2002
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
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