“India-Pakistan: Understanding the Conflict Dynamics”- Speech by Foreign Secretary, Shri Shivshankar Menon at Jamia Millia Islamia

Vice Chancellor Murshirul Hasan,
Prof. Rashmi Doraiswamy,
Faculty and the Researchers of the Academy of Third World Studies,
International participants,
Students,
and Friends

Thank you for asking me to speak to your seminar on ‘India-Pakistan: Understanding the conflict dynamics’. From the abstract of the papers and the agenda that I have seen, you would have had a stimulating discussion over the last two days. Perhaps I can offer you the limited view of a practitioner, of someone who tries to practice what you analyze.

2. Let me begin with the fundamental premise that India seeks a peaceful and prosperous periphery. We do so in our own self-interest. Without a peaceful and prosperous neighborhood, we cannot concentrate upon the urgent task of improving the lives of our people through continued and rapid social and economic development. It therefore follows that good-neighborly relations with Pakistan, or at least normalized relations and a modus vivendi, are in India’s interest as a part of durable peace and stability in the sub-continent.

3. In seeking this goal, we have indeed moved forward considerably in the last three years, making progress through high level visits, the composite dialogue and other institutional mechanisms such as the Joint Commission. As a result trade and travel have been partially normalized, a ceasefire is in place and holding since November 2003, and, for the first time in sixty years over four thousand people have been permitted to travel across the LOC. Our formal bilateral trade has increased to just over one billion dollars last year and possibly three times that amount informally. Differences and issues between the two countries, including Jammu and Kashmir, are being discussed by both countries in a dialogue that is unprecedented in its depth and quality.

4. And yet, as we all know, India’s relations with Pakistan at present are not normal, let alone good neighborly. We have yet to achieve our objective of durable peace and stability.

5. I would therefore like to examine why India-Pakistan relations have been so unsatisfactory for so long, and what we might do about them. To clarify my standpoint at the outset, I believe that thanks to the peace process we stand at a moment of opportunity to remake our relations fundamentally, breaking out of past patterns, and that we need not repeat the past if we learn from it.

6. While both India and Pakistan feel that India-Pakistan relations are unsatisfactory, each of our societies has its own received wisdom on why they are so. To an outside observer these ideas might appear as self-reinforcing and self-perpetuating myths, or self-fulfilling prophecies.

7. In Pakistan, for instance, I have heard three kinds of arguments that seek to explain the unsatisfactory nature of our relations:

• One might be called the foundation myth. This believes that India wants to undo Partition, is inveterately hostile to Pakistan, and attempts through hegemonic behavior to destroy Pakistan. I am afraid that this argument flies in the face of the reality of the last sixty years and of India’s evident self-interest. No political party or responsible or influential person in India wishes to undo Pakistan. Just thinking through the political, demographic, and other consequences of any such attempt proves that it would be against India’s self-interest.

India has quite enough to do trying to develop herself and to transform her own society without adding a complicated attempt to re-integrate portions of the sub-continent that were separated sixty years ago. Instead, India needs a stable, prospering Pakistan, at peace with herself, on India’s periphery. India sincerely believes that a stable, prosperous and moderate Pakistan is in the interest of India and the sub-continent. When our neighbors live in peace, we live in peace. I would assume that the same is true of Pakistan. A stable, prospering India could actively assist Pakistan’s quest to develop herself.

• The second argument might be called the national security myth. This argues that the asymmetry in size, power and development between the two countries makes India-Pakistan hostility inevitable. This is a rather strange argument since no two states in the world are evenly matched or identical. In fact it is the differences between them that create the complementarities that allow them to work, live and trade together. Nor do much greater asymmetries with Pakistan’s other partners like the US and Western Europe and China prevent Pakistan from working with them. If, however, despite the possession of nuclear weapons and India’s no-first-use policy there are feelings of insecurity in Pakistan, India is ready to discuss these issues in a dialogue on nuclear doctrines, military-to-military contacts, and military CBMs, both conventional and nuclear, either officially or through think tanks and other less official means. A small beginning has been made in the last two years, but we would be ready to build on this rapidly if Pakistan wishes to.

• Thirdly, the Kashmir issue is sometimes used to argue that India-Pakistan hostility is inevitable. Kashmir is sometimes even described as the unfinished business of Partition, or as a reflection of a fundamental religious divide between two communities that cannot live together. This is patently false, as over thirteen centuries of Islam in the sub-continent prove. The social practice of religion in the subcontinent is in no way mutually antagonistic, whether it is Islam or Hinduism or Christianity or Buddhism or any of the myriad religions that have coexisted peacefully in India for centuries. It is the mixture of politics in the sphere of religion that has made differences over issues like Kashmir incendiary.

8. This is not to say that no inaccuracies are purveyed in India about Pakistan.

• One of them is that Pakistan has a fundamental identity problem and can therefore only define herself in anti-Indian terms. This is clearly not the case in reality. There are several instances which one can cite which show that at the popular level there is no instinctive hostility or revulsion towards each other in either Indian or Pakistani society. This suggests that there is no real identity problem in the populace, whatever some intellectuals may like to think. In fact what one sees when Indians and Pakistanis are together is a common and spontaneous celebration of cultural affinities formed by a common history and geography rather than fear of the other.

• The other argument that one hears in India questions the role of Pakistan Army, arguing that the Pakistan Army needs hostility towards India in order to justify its hold on power in Pakistan. To me this too does not seem a sufficient explanation. The Pakistan Army’s dominance over Pakistan’s internal political space has now lasted for so many years, and is so complete, that it seems no longer to need an external threat to justify its rule. The leaders of Pakistan themselves acknowledge today that Pakistan does not face external threats and that the real threats to Pakistan are internal.

• As in Pakistan, there are also some in India who present India-Pakistan hostility as somehow a reflection of the communalism versus secularism paradigm. As I said before, this ignores the social reality of the sub-continent, the history of religious tolerance, and the current reality where it is a small handful of organizations and people who attempt to communalize politics and the situation in each of our countries.

9. I have gone through this in some detail in order to show that none of these purported reasons is a wholly satisfactory explanation for a sixty year long unhappy relationship. It is therefore necessary for us to dig deeper and perhaps to think a little more seriously about the causes of this situation. I would be very happy to hear your views on this. To start off a discussion, I would like to suggest four aspects that seem relevant to me.

10. Though India and Pakistan differ in how we make foreign policy in our countries, it is clear to me that our national goals and grand strategies need not necessarily be in conflict. There is, however, an asymmetry that operates here, or what might be called a vision deficit in the relationship. India has been relatively clear and open since the forties in enunciating a grand strategy for her foreign policy that attempts primarily to develop her own society and economy and seeks to use foreign policy to maximize this welfare function, creating strategic autonomy. When it comes to Pakistan, it has also been the Indian practice to attempt to outline a broader vision of the relationship and to describe the sort of relationship that India would like to enjoy with Pakistan. The most recent examples are a series of speeches and statements by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, particularly that in Amritsar on March 24 2006, when he outlined his vision of a cooperative relationship between India and Pakistan which would benefit both countries and the region. I am not aware of a similar description of Pakistan’s larger or longer-term vision for a relationship with India apart from Jinnah’s wish that Pakistan should be to India as Canada is to the USA. Does this vision deficit matter? It matters because even the issues that divide us would be easier to solve if one had a common goal or purpose or vision of the sort of relationship that we wish to build in the future. In theory, one can envisage several futures for India and Pakistan, ranging from a cold peace to active cooperation to regional economic integration. It would certainly be useful if we had a shared vision of where we wish to be on that spectrum of choices.

11. Real peace is more than an absence of violence. And to be secure, peace must be based on shared interests and common prosperity. I think that we already have some common interests, even in what now divides us. Unfortunately much more remains to be done by Pakistan to curb cross-border terrorism, which continues, despite some fluctuations and variations over time. In fact, the tragic earthquake in 2005 saw the rehabilitation and increasing public prominence of terrorist organizations in Pakistan and J&K. Even on the river waters that we spend so much time arguing about, the Indus Waters Treaty itself envisages a cooperative future of joint development of the river basin by both countries.

12. It therefore seems to me that we already have common interests. We could also have common prosperity if we chose to make that our goal. As Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has said, instead of looking at each other as adversaries, we must have the courage to see each other as supporting the other for the realization of a better tomorrow.

13. Secondly, the vision for India-Pakistan relations that I speak of enjoys consensus across the broad political spectrum in India. Hence the surprise that is often expressed in Pakistan when opposition politicians from India sound like members of the government. This occurs not just because of the opposition’s expectation, which is reasonable in the Indian system, that they may form the government one day. It is due to the consensual basis of foreign policy that we work to create and maintain in India. The point I am trying to make is that India’s domestic politics do not make India-Pakistan hostility inevitable. (One cannot say the same for Pakistan.) This requires that India-Pakistan relations should not become a subject of intra-party dispute or grandstanding in domestic political competition in either country. That is only possible if, as I said, there is an overarching vision of the sort of a relationship that one seeks with the other. It also requires strict non-interference in each other’s internal affairs.

14. Thirdly, each of us has a tendency to project upon the other our own political experience and attitudes. For instance, I have often heard Pakistani leaders speaking about Indian intelligence agencies in terms of respect and awe that no Indian would use. We need to learn to recognize the differences in our systems and in the way we work, and the effect that this has upon our ability to handle the relationship. Otherwise, these projections become self-perpetuating. Over the last sixty years we have had very little experience of working together successfully to solve problems. This needs to be built up and can only be done if we are willing to accept the differences in our approaches while building on our commonalities. For instance, we have heard a great deal from Pakistani commentators recently of some form of India-Pakistan competition in Afghanistan, using outdated nineteenth century notions from the Great Game. These reflexive reactions fail to reflect today’s reality. India’s commitment to the peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan is considerable, extending to a US $ 750 million cooperation programme. India, Afghanistan and Pakistan have a common interest and should actually be working together to bring peace and defeat extremism in our periphery. And we have an opportunity to do so together now that Afghanistan is also a member of SAARC.

15. Lastly, it seems to me that for too long a limited military strategist’s view of the relationship has prevailed, which reduces it to a zero-sum game. National sovereignty and territory have always been the hardest terms in which to resolve issues. To deal successfully with our issues involves changing the terms in which we think and approaching them flexibly, or thinking outside the box. We have begun doing so. Over the last two years both leaders have started a process of dialogue and contact which has led to widespread debate in both our countries on a solution to the Kashmir issue. Contact across the LOC has resumed. Opening a new bus route between Poonch and Rawalakot, beginning truck traffic between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad, and for meeting points on the LOC are being implemented. India is also ready to open the Gilgit-Skardu bus route.

16. If we define our own security in the broader terms of people’s welfare rather than the hard power of the state, many of the issues that divide India and Pakistan would be much easier to resolve. This is a lesson that India, China and other states have come to through experience over time, which we can see being implemented in our neighborhood. Every successful experience of overcoming differences and resolving problems in the rest of the world suggests that issues are easier to resolve when a cooperative atmosphere exists between the parties. If we were to grasp the opportunity that rapid economic growth in both our countries has created, opening up trade and transit, we would be enlarging constituencies for peace.

The experience of the last three years suggests that the people of India and Pakistan are actually ahead of their establishments, and have provided the driving force for the peace process. People-to-people contacts and CBMs should continue unconditionally and whole-heartedly if the harder issues are to be resolved. Let us move step by step, doing much more to create an environment in which we can move forward. As the old saying goes, “A road is made by walking.”

17. You would notice that I have made no mention of the rest of the world in looking at India-Pakistan relations. You might find this strange from a diplomat. The reason is simple. Even as we are more integrated with a globalised world, our dependency on the world is less today than before. Today India and Pakistan have more independent agency in the world system than ever before. I hope and expect that this will grow in the future. The outside environment, regional and global, is supportive to our attempt to remake India-Pakistan relations, to an unprecedented extent. But in the final analysis, it is for India and Pakistan to take responsibility for our own relationship and our future.

18. I have raised these issues honestly with you because I do believe that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it. There would be nothing worse for India and Pakistan than to repeat in the future the sterile pattern of hostility of the last sixty years. Thanks to the peace process, we today have an opportunity to break out of this pattern. I do hope that we will take it.