It cannot be seriously disputed that General Akram’s recent articles “Shadows Over South Asia” in The Muslim, Islamabad, deserve the attention not only of Indian policy makers who would no doubt have read them but of commentators interested in the Pakistani perceptions of this country.
General Akram is of the Institute of Regional Studies in Islamabad. This cannot be a frightfully important position in itself. He is supposed to be close to General Zia-ul-Haq and may therefore be reflecting as well as influencing his thinking. But one cannot be too sure that this is the case. For Pakistan is not the kind of closed society where only the big brother speaks and the others only echo what he says.
There is another difficulty. We do not know how representative the general is of those who shape and/or influence Pakistan’s India policy. The whole tenor of his articles certainly goes against the spirit of what we have been told of the dominant mood among the Pakistani intelligentsia by those Indian journalists and commentators who have visited the neighbouring country. While they have said that Pakistanis have reconciled themselves to India’s pre-eminence in South Asia; General Akram is at pains to emphasise that Pakistan can never accept such a claim by this country.
We face yet another problem in discussing the articles. For it is not quite clear whether General Akram holds mainly Mrs Gandhi responsible for Pakistan’s difficulties with India as he sees them or whether he thinks that it is committed to an anti-Pakistan position by virtue of being the kind of country it is.
‘Urge To Glory’
In one of his articles sub-titled “Quest For Glory”, he writes:
“The main factor in the Indian spirit or psyche which gives substance and strength to Indian policy is the urge to glory…, a desire for recognition… with its image of itself as the greatest power of Asia, eclipsing even China… India seeks to be a great power and wants the world to know it and say so…
‘The Indian draws from history the strength and will needed to fulfil his grand design. He is the offspring of one of the greatest cultures the world has been privileged to see… the Hindu today, particularly the Brahmin (who rules India) is conscious of his heritage, takes pride in it, wishes to re-establish its glory…
“This complex, related to the cultural (Hindu-Muslim) conflict of the past, has led to the status consciousness of India.
“The Indians regard themselves as the inheritors of the glory of British India which was the most powerful single unit of the British empire… “Nehru, having assumed the mantle of the British in India, saw his new India cast in the same glorious mould…”
In another article, however, he writes:
“…Mrs Gandhi is hostile to any power which refuses to accept India’s pre-eminent position and in this the chief culprit is Pakistan about whom the Indian prime minister has a fixation bordering on the pathological. She must strain every nerve to cut Pakistan down to size, to force it into a subservient position … she will allow no hurdle or obstacle to deflect her from this purpose.
“It was Indira Gandhi who was the architect of the upheaval of 1971, who prepared the stage and finally sent in her army for the coup de grace which culminated in the disintegration of Pakistan.
“The hostility which bedevils relations between India and Pakistan and sustains India in its anti-Pakistan role exists more in the mind of the political leadership than the people of India who would gladly live in peace with Pakistan. And in the political leadership it exists more in the mind of Mrs Gandhi than of other leaders, many of whom do not share her anti-Pakistan prejudice, not to the same degree.”
An Alleged Doctrine
We can perhaps resolve this difficulty if we conclude that what General Akram is telling his leaders in Pakistan is that while all Hindus (who became “paragons of intrigue, subtlety and cunning” during the period of the Muslim rule) are possessed by the ambition to become the greatest power in Asia. Mrs Gandhi is the worst of us all. Thus while he is not wholly assured that a change of government in New Delhi will lead to a change of policy towards Pakistan, he does not rule out the possibility.
“It is very possible that only the present government of India feels committed to the rash ambition of seeking greatness for itself at the cost of the well-being of its neighbours… India will, we hope, throw up a political leadership which does not wish to sacrifice the peace and well-being of South Asia for its own selfish, egoistical ends.” he writes in the final summing up.
But as soon as we have resolved this difficulty, whether satisfactorily or unsatisfactorily, we are confronted with still another. We are unable to figure out the provocation for the apparently carefully planned articles.
On the face of it, the provocation is the supposed enunciation by Mrs Gandhi of “a new doctrine asserting India’s right to interfere (in the affairs of its neighbours) and claiming what can only be called hegemony over South Asia – a new Indian doctrine of regional security.” But has Mrs Gandhi in fact enunciated such a doctrine?
General Akram sums up the so- called Indira doctrine as:
(a) “India will not accept any external intervention in the South Asian region with anti-Indian implication;
(b) “India will not tolerate any regional country calling for external assistance with an anti-Indian bias;
(c) “Any South Asian state, requiring external assistance to solve internal problems, must first ask for assistance from regional countries, including India. India’s exclusion from regional assistance requested by a South Asian country for the solution of internal problems would be regarded as an anti-Indian move on the part of the government concerned.”
To be fair to General Akram, he is not the criminal author of the proposition that Mrs Gandhi’s statement on developments in Pakistan and Sri Lanka constituted a new Indian doctrine of regional security a la the Monroe doctrine or the Brezhnev doctrine. This honour goes to some Indian commentators. That is, however, a relatively minor issue, the more pertinent being whether Mrs Gandhi has said or done anything new. The answer must be in the negative.
India has regarded South Asia as one region ever since it achieved independence in 1947; it has been consistently opposed to interference in its affairs by all external powers, including China; that was the rationale of Mr Nehru’s opposition to the US-Pakistan security pact in 1953 and rejection of the US offer of military assistance; if South Asia is one region, as it is in the Indian view, it follows that its members should in a difficulty and emergency turn to one another for assistance and not to foreign powers with very different interests and perspectives; and India has stood for democracy and respect for the rights of minorities, ethnic, linguistic and religious, both at home and abroad.
There can be a difference of opinion on whether South Asia is one region or only so many different countries. Indeed, the position of all countries in South Asia other than India has been, to say the least, ambivalent on the issue. They talk of the need for cooperation on a regional basis but lose no opportunity to bring in external powers in one way or another to offset the advantage India’s size, resources and potentiality give it. India has not found a solution to this problem all these years and is not likely to find one in the future for the obvious reason that the two superpowers (and China) will not agree to keep out of this region, or, for that matter, any other where they consider their presence vital to their interest.
Wrong Results
That, however, is a different (and an old) problem. The issue for our immediate consideration is whether Mrs Gandhi has enunciated a new doctrine. General Akram has offered bits of evidence which just do not add up. And surely it is rather odd that he should object to the Indian “interference” in Sri Lanka which President Jayewardene has accepted in his country’s best interest and which no other great power has opposed for the same reason – that India’s good offices can help narrow the gap between the Tamil-speaking Sri Lankans and the Sinhalese and thus save the island a prolonged upheaval.
Why then the outburst? We do not know and we do not wish to rush to any conclusions. We would only wish to make two points. First, if General Akram is addressing himself to us in India as well and wants us to know that Pakistan will not accept India’s, to us natural, status, he has not told us anything which most of us have not known. And if he is appealing to those of us who have acquired a softness towards Pakistan, he might well have hurt his own and their cause. His formulations, if widely circulated, can help Mrs Gandhi sell her present line better than she has managed to do so far.
Secondly, General Zia has conducted his peace offensive with a skill which would be the envy of experienced politicians. He has no reason to feel grateful to his friend.
Times of India, 25 January 1984