Dissatisfaction against the Simla agreement in the country seems to be much more widespread than the Jana Sangh protest demonstrations would indicate. The criticism is subdued and it does not imply a lack of confidence in the Prime Minister’s ability to protect the nation’s interests in future negotiations with Mr Bhutto. But it is there and could have assumed serious proportions if Mrs Gandhi’s position was otherwise not impregnable. Mr Bhutto was not quite correct in telling her that she could sell any deal to her people.
Broadly speaking, the criticism centres on three points. It is said that contrary to her earlier insistence on a package deal, Mrs Gandhi has in effect accepted the step-by-step approach advocated by Mr Bhutto; that she has agreed to return over 5,000 square miles of territory in Sind and Punjab without securing in return recognition by Pakistan of the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir as an international frontier, and that she has acknowledged that there is a depute regarding the future of the state which needs to be settled with Islamabad.
The first point cannot stand the test of scrutiny at all. Mr Bhutto advocated an approach which was very different from the one that has been adopted. He wanted the consequences of the last war to be liquidated before the two governments began to tackle the longstanding Kashmir issue. If he could only manage it, he would have liked the Pakistani territories and prisoners-of-war to be returned to him without simultaneous progress on the Kashmir problem.
Not Flimsy
The second criticism is not as flimsy. But while it is true that Pakistan has not yet recognised the cease-fire line as an international border, it has accepted the new line of control resulting from the cease-fire of December 17, 1971 and simultaneously agreed to bilateral and peaceful settlements of all disputes between the two countries. Thus by implication if nor by direct statement, Mr Bhutto has endorsed the Indian view that neither the UN nor any other third party should intervene in Indo-Pakistani relations.
In a sense Mr Bhutto has only deferred to the new realities in the sub-continent. But in the process he has had to move away from his country’s old policy which always placed great store by third party mediation or arbitration and was firmly opposed to the Indian proposal of a no-war pact. That he has done so without much loss of time is a tribute to his pragmatism.
The last point of the criticism is obviously phoney. India cannot simultaneously ask Pakistan to accept the cease-fire line in Jammu and Kashmir as an international frontier and claim that there is no dispute between the two counties which needs to be settled once and for all.
New- Delhi has in fact never adopted this absurd position. It has only claimed that it has fulfilled its promise to give the people of the state a say in determining their future in that their duly elected representatives have had a chance to endorse or reject the Maharajah Hari Singh’s decision to accede to the Union. It has also more than once indicated its willingness to waive its claim to the Pakistan-occupied part of the state in the interest of a peaceful solution of this problem. Thus there is no contradiction between Mr Nehru’s and Mr Lal Bahadur Shastri’s stand on the one hand and Mrs Gandhi’s on the other. If there is a difference in emphasis it arises from the change in the situation which has given rise to the hope that it may at last be possible for the two countries to settle this problem.
The criticism in question is clearly the result of a lack of confidence in the Pakistan ruling elites, including Mr Bhutto’s own bona fides. This is fully understandable in view of all that Pakistani rulers have done in the last 25 years to harm this country. They have pursued the policy of hostility towards India with such complete single-mindedness that they have not allowed any other sentiment like anti-imperialism or Asian-ism to deflect them from it in the slightest degree.
Calculation
One of Pakistan’s Prime Ministers, Mr Suhrawardy, for instance, went so far as virtually to condone the Anglo-French-Israeli attack on Egypt in 1961 in the calculation that this would help him win Western support against this country. President Ayub Khan had at one point in decided to send an army brigade to South Viet Nam out of a similar expectation of firmly committing the United States to Pakistan’s side in its conflict with India. Fortunately for Pakistan, wiser counsels prevailed, and the decision was rescinded.
But while past experience does not justify easy optimism, it may be also wrong to ignore the fact that the situation both in the world as a whole and in the subcontinent has changed radically and that only a Pakistani leadership totally divorced from reality can think of pursuing the old policy of confrontation. Three points deserve attention in this connection.
First, the military balance in the sub-continent has shifted decisively in India’s favour and Pakistan cannot hope to reverse the position with external assistance. The United States alone could have helped Islamabad achieve sonic kind of parity with New Delhi. But Washington is neither sufficiently interested in rearming Pakistan in view of its own steadily growing detente with Moscow nor is it in a position to do so in view of strong opposition in Congress. Mr John Connally’s statement that the United States does not seek a sphere of influence in any country in south Asia perhaps illustrates the shift in Washington’s thinking. It may still make limited sales of military hardware to Islamabad from time to time either directly or through third countries. But that cannot change the status quo in the subcontinent.
China has been supplying military hardware to Pakistan in recent years and may continue to do so unless there is a marked improvement in its relations with India. But in the new framework of Russo-American detente which may soon lead to some measure of co-operation in West Asia for the sake of preventing another Arab-Israel war on the one hand and an aggravation of Iran-Iraq rivalry on the other, Islamabad itself may not find it too profitable to lean too heavily towards Peking. Moreover, it need not be assumed that China will go on raising its stakes in Pakistan.
Secondly, since more than two- thirds of the Muslim community in the sub-continent now lives outside the borders of Pakistan, Islamabad cannot claim to champion its cause. In plain words, the myth of the unity of Islam in undivided India, which somehow survived partition, has finally been destroyed by developments in Bangladesh leading to its emergence as a fully sovereign state there.
Thirdly, Mr Bhutto cannot possibly be oblivious to the fact that he cannot solve Pakistan’s domestic problems except in the context of friendly relations with India. This compulsion is not limited to the question of the size of Pakistan’s armed forces which will have to be drastically reduced if the country is to find the resources for urgent social welfare schemes, curb inflation and stabilise a democratic polity. It extends to the issue of the rights and aspirations of cultural and linguistic minorities.
Key Question
It is open to question whether the policy of hostility towards India helped to unite the people of even what is now Pakistan in the past. But even if it did, it can no longer play that role. On the contrary, if Islamabad’s relations with New Delhi remain strained, separatist forces are bound to arise in Pakistan.
Thus the key question is not whether Mrs Gandhi can trust Mr Bhutto but whether the Pakistan President has the capacity to recognise that co-operation with India is vital for his country’s wellbeing and the courage to reshape its policy accordingly. Though unqualified optimism will be premature and unjustified, his performance at Simla suggests that he is capable of looking reality in the face and coming to terms with it.
The critics of the Simla agreement are also not sufficiently sensitive to what Mrs Gandhi is seeking to achieve. She is not only proclaiming the essential unity of the sub-continent but also taking steps to create, as far as it is within her power, conditions which can effectively bar unhelpful external intervention in its affairs.
Evidently she cannot succeed in her grand design unless she is able to convince both Pakistan and Bangladesh, specially the former, that India docs not suffer from what the Chinese call big power chauvinism and that it will fully respect their interests. This task is as complicated as it is ambitious and calls for a combination of firmness and generosity which is not easy to achieve. But it has to be attempted if there is to be peace and progress in the peninsula which holds almost as many people as China – 700 million. Success is not assured but the circumstances are reasonably favourable.
The Times of India, 12 July 1972