I must confess that my reaction to Prime Minister VP Singh’s statement on the possibility of war with Pakistan in Parliament last Tuesday is different from the general welcome it has received in the Indian print media. I am a little disturbed by it because I do not see in it evidence of a coherent and viable Pakistan policy.
The statement, one of the toughest by any Indian Prime Minister since Independence, is, without doubt, a response to the highly bellicose utterances of Benazir Bhutto and other Pakistani leaders, on the one hand, and the Pakistani military movements, on the other. But that is precisely my objection. The Indian Prime Minister should not just react to Pakistani provocations from day to day. He should evolve a clear cut policy and implement it quietly and efficiently. I see no signs of such an effort.
Pakistan, on the statement of its own army chief of staff, has ordered ‘red alert’. This leaves us no choice but to respond in kind. We have to match Pakistani preparations and border deployments. But it does not follow that VP Singh has to match Benazir Bhutto’s bellicosity as well. On the contrary, he should respond to her hysteria by a display of calm confidence.
General Beg has said that the initiative for raising the ante on the border has been taken by India. New Delhi has denied the charge and spoken instead of Pakistan’s military moves, especially in the Jammu and Kashmir sector. But the truth or otherwise of the rival positions is no longer a particularly relevant issue. The pertinent point now is that neither country can afford to be taken by surprise. Indeed, lack of adequate preparation on the part of either can tempt the other to engage in a pre-emptive strike. It does us no credit to pretend that only the Pakistanis engage in pre-emptive strikes and we are helpless victims of their aggressiveness.
It is, however, necessary to add that not only do we have nothing to gain by provoking an armed conflict with Pakistan but also that we have nothing to gain by allowing ourselves to be provoked by Pakistan. So it should be our effort to do what we can to prevent an escalation of tension. We can begin by letting Pakistan know that we are prepared for talks to ensure that the two countries do not drift into war without either of them wanting to.
I am inclined to share the view that the two forces are more or less evenly matched. Thus, even if it is assumed that it is within our capacity to inflict a defeat on Pakistan, it cannot be assumed that we are in a position to achieve so decisive a victory as can enable us to achieve ‘our objective’, to use the Prime Minister’s words. More important, we have, as I hope to establish, a great deal to gain by being patient.
VP Singh has not defined ‘our objective’. But that objective cannot be anything short of creating conditions in which the Pakistani leaders and people finally feel obliged to accept for their country a status in the region which is appropriate to their size and resources and to give up claims of parity with, if not superiority over, India eight times its size, and efforts to promote armed secessionist movements in Punjab and Kashmir.
The Prime Minister perhaps recognises that the achievement of such an objective would, even if things go according to our calculations, call for a prolonged war. That would probably explain his appeal for psychological preparation on the part of the Indian people. But he must also know that the international community, represented by the UN, would not permit a prolonged conflict in the subcontinent; that unlike Iran and Israel, Indians are not inclined to defy international pressure; and, finally, that Pakistan will in all probability quickly accept a UN call for a cease-fire and thus successfully put India in the dock.
All major world powers are so preoccupied with the upheaval in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe that they will take a particularly dim view of whoever precipitates serious trouble anywhere else. That does not necessarily preclude the possibility of a surgical strike by Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir and Punjab if it thinks it can get away with it, or of a similar effort by us in Sind on a similar calculation. But a prolonged war is a different proposition. This the major powers are not going to countenance even if we assume, which I for one do not, that the economies of the two countries can bear the strain.
All in all, I cannot over-emphasise too much the need for us to convince the world that despite growing provocations by Pakistan in the shape of open support to the terrorists in Kashmir and Punjab, we do not intend to widen the scope of the conflict with it. That can help us achieve to some extent the isolation of Pakistan.
Pakistan placed itself in the wrong with western public opinion in 1971 when it unleashed a reign of terror in what is now Bangladesh and it is about to place itself in the wrong with the major powers by publicly espousing the cause of the terrorists in Kashmir and Punjab. Needless to add, we benefitted to no small extent from Islamabad’s follies in 1971 and we can benefit from its present lack of understanding of realignment of world forces if only we can summon the necessary patience and skill.
As a necessary step in that direction, we have to place the current upheaval in Kashmir in a wider framework than we have done so far. We have up to now seen it in the context of Pakistan’s long-standing desire to grab the state. We should also view it as part of the larger Muslim resurgence. We have talked a great deal of Islamic revivalism and fundamentalism in recent years. But most of us have been slow to recognise that the explosion of violence in the valley is the product not only of Pakistan’s support to the militants but also of the wider movement of Muslim revivalist assertion.
This Muslim assertion has not yet provoked a sufficiently strong reaction in the West. But it is only a matter of time that it does so. While the indications are not loud, they are reasonably clear, the most important of them being the lack of support in the West for the cause of independent Muslim republics in Soviet Central Asia and the erosion in the US support for the Pakistan- backed fundamentalist faction led by Gulbuddin Hekmetyar among the Afghan mujahideen.
The Muslim resurgence is matched by divisions among Muslim governments. Iran and Iraq have not settled down to peace even after an 11-year war. The rivalry between Shia Iran and Wahabi Saudi Arabia is too patent to need to be listed. As Iraq resumes its moves to impose its leadership on the Gulf states, it is bound to provoke resistance by Syria as well as Saudi Arabia. These divisions do not cancel the Muslim assertion. But they facilitate the task of containing it.
On top of it all is the issue of the survival of Israel which has assumed a new urgency in view of the introduction of long-range missiles and chemical weapons. The issue here is not the justice or injustice of rival claims. The issue, as I see it, is that the West as a whole is going to remain concerned with the security of Israel if only because it fears that, in an extreme situation, Israel will use the nuclear weapons it undoubtedly possesses. This concern must in turn strengthen the West’s desire broadly to preserve the status quo in West Asia and the adjoining South Asia.
India cannot be part of this anti-revivalist struggle in view of the size of its own Muslim population and proclivities. But it cannot be indifferent to its outcome either. It would be rank dishonesty or naivety on the part of any Indian to suggest that India can maintain its territorial integrity if the Soviet Union was to disintegrate, or if Israel was to be overwhelmed. We have a stake in the integrity of the Soviet Union, and indeed, of the Chinese People’s Republic in respect of Xinjiang. Similarly, we have a stake in the security of Israel. We would wish that this security does not entail continued denial of the rights of the Palestinians. But we cannot, in Jawaharlal Nehru’s words, be non-aligned against ourselves.
The international scene, in its entirety, is so fluid that we have to wait for it to settle down a little before we can attempt any kind of projection into the future. But, on the whole, I regard it reasonable to take the view that Pakistan will find the going tougher in coming years than it has the past decade, thanks largely to the disastrous Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan, and that India will be better placed to cope with both Pakistan and the terrorists once international opinion begins to turn more firmly against Muslim governments which sponsor and practise terrorism.
Sunday Mail, 15 April 1990