Relations with India

Ever since the establishment of Pakistan on 14, August 1947 its relations with India have been at best cold and at worst hostile. All attempts by both the civilian and military governments and all shades of political parties of Pakistan have not broken the ice with either of the two main political groups in India; the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha (BJP).

On June 3, 1947 both the All India Muslim League led by Jinnah and the Indian National Congress led by Nehru agreed to the partition of British India into Pakistan and India. In order to understand the genesis of the hostility between India and Pakistan it is essential to examine the resolutions passed by the two main political forces of India.

The All India Congress Working Committee met on June 14, 1947 and after the first day’s debate resolved to accept the Partition Plan. However, the acceptance also included the assertion that: “Geography and the mountains and the seas fashioned India as she is, and no human agency can change that shape or come in the way of her final destiny. – The All India Congress Committee earnestly trusts that when the present passions have subsided, India’s problems will be viewed in their proper perspective and false doctrine of two nations will be discredited and discarded by all.”

The Congress, true to form, exhibited their hostility even in this resolution that they earnestly trusted that the concept of Pakistan being a separate nation ‘will be discredited and discarded by all’. This clearly showed that the Congress in reality did not accept the establishment of Pakistan as an independent country and wanted to undo it. This became visibly apparent in the policy and the actions of the Indian Government subsequent to August 15, 1947.

THE WORKING COMMITTEE OF THE HINDU MAHASABHA PASSED A RESOLUTION STRESSING: “India is one and indivisible and there will never be peace unless and until the separated areas are brought back into the Indian Union and made integral part” This resolution clearly shows that the Hindu Mahasabha did not accept the establishment of Pakistan and actually want to undo Pakistan by force.

THE FIRST OVERT ANTI-PAKISTAN ACT OF INDIA After the bombing of the special train carrying Pakistan government servants (between Bhatinda and Bahawalpur) in East Punjab on August 9, 1947 Pakistan arranged with Tata and Orient Airways for the transfer of their personnel and families stranded in Delhi by air to Karachi but, after only 18 flights the Indian Government requisitioned all the aircrafts of the two airlines. This was the first overt anti Pakistan action of the Indian Government which was designed to hamper the functioning of the Pakistan Government in Karachi. Mountbatten, the Governor General of India, took no action to stop this anti Pakistan act of India.

During 1947-48 India made every effort possible to engineer the collapse of Pakistan. Large scale massacres of Muslims were organised in East Punjab to overwhelm Pakistan with over seven million refugees. Lord Ismay met the Quaid on September 11, 1947 and records in his book:-

“He looked very dignified and very sad, and spoke as a man without hope. ‘There is nothing for it but to fight it out.’ How could any one believe that the Government of India were doing their utmost to restore law and order and to protect the minorities? On the contrary, the events of the past three weeks went to prove that they were determined to strangle Pakistan at birth.”

Right after the establishment of Pakistan India initiated a policy of confrontation by refusing to transfer its share of financial, military and other divisible (movable) assets of British India. They stopped the export of coal (on which the Pakistan railways depended), sugar, textiles and all manufactured goods and induced the Hindu bankers to migrate to India, in the hope that it would hasten Pakistan’s collapse. Somehow Pakistan managed to import coal from China, sugar from Cuba, paper from Sweden, established its own banks and so on. The railway engines were converted to burn fuel oil. When the collapse did not happen; Nehru in the Defence Committee meeting on 28th October, 1947 proposed that the defence services should consider plans to meet the contingency of war between India and Pakistan. This is documented in Mountbatten Papers in British Library. These plans were frustrated because the British C-in-C and the British officers stated “that the preparation of plans for war with another Dominion is not part of their contract”. The Indian Army would have been paralysed without the British officers. At that time most of the battalions and almost all the brigades were commanded by British officers and all the division commanders were British. Furthermore, all the supporting arms were commanded by British officers. Brigadier Cariappa and Brigadier Thimayya were the highest ranking Indian officers. It was, therefore, impossible to prepare plans for a war without the active participation of the British officers.

The departure of Hindu and Sikh bankers and money lenders from Pakistan did not result in the collapse of the financial structure but in the total wiping out of the agricultural debt. This gave a tremendous boost to the agriculture and resulted in bumper harvests and a surplus first budget burying with it the theory of economic breakdown. In frustration India stopped the supply of canal water to Pakistan. The head-works of some of the major canals were in India. The result was that Pakistan, which was a major exporter of wheat till then had to import large quantities.

The history of negotiations between these two neighbours from 1947 to date clearly shows that they have been unable to improve the relations and solve any of the problems souring their relations. The basic impediment is the fact the successive generations of Indians do not accept an independent Pakistan and continue to strive for “Akhand Bharat”. They don’t seem to tire of saying; “We are one”, “We have a common culture” and so on totally ignoring the fact that Muslim literature, music, art, architecture, dress and cuisine are poles apart and has nothing in common with the Hindu literature (even the scripts are totally different) art, architecture, dress and cuisine are poles apart (even the method of serving food is different). .

In July 2001 during the hype created by the Agra summit the Indian media continuously harped on confederation, especially the Jain-TV and Doordarshan. Some of the commentators said if the Berlin wall could be demolished and North and South Vietnam could unite why cant India and Pakistan? In fact this view was supported by the BJP-led Indian Government. Vajpayee the Indian PM met the political leaders of various political shades before the summit to arrive at a political consensus. M. S. Yadave (ex-PM) immediately after the meeting talked of Confederation. Even L. K. Advani proposed Confederation between the two countries a few days before the summit.

Once again the Indian media is harping upon the same old theme though in subdued terms. The fact is that the Indian leaders even after 63 years do not accept partition and consider the establishment of Pakistan a great tragedy. Jaswant Singh in his book states;

“There are some other to my mind, equally important aspects of this great tragedy of India’s Partition deserving our reflection. Did not this Partition of India, vivisecting the land and its people question the very identity of India itself.” (page 6 & 7, Jinnah India-Partition Independence by Jaswant Singh, 2009)

For Jaswant Singh and almost all Indians even today the partition of British India was a mistake and a great tragedy. In fact the real tragedy is that Indians cannot seem to get out of this mindset. The Indian media also does not seem to get over the so called ‘tragedy of partition’. In fact it is this mindset which is the real tragedy and the real impediment in the normalisation and improvement of relations between India and Pakistan.

On December 20, 2001 after the attack on the Indian parliament India mobilised bulk of their forces on Pakistan’s borders in Punjab, Rajasthan and Indian occupied Kashmir. The Indians realised that there was a grave danger of the use of nuclear deterrent by Pakistan. Consequently after ten months confrontation they ended the eye ball to eye ball confrontation. As a result of the failure of this massive confrontation the Indian army officially unveiled the Cold Start Doctrine on April 28, 2004 at the Army Commander’s Conference. Since then Indians have held 11 exercises to operationally debug it.

This doctrine is Pakistan specific and it’s officially stated objectives are:

a) India now plans to act offensively against Pakistan for any perceived acts of strategic de-stabilisation of India, proxy war and terrorism.

b) India has in declaratory terms enunciated it will undertake offensive operations against Pakistan, short of the nuclear threshold.

c) India could initiate offensive operations either as pre-emptive strikes or initiate offensive operations straight away without giving Pakistan, the time to bring diplomatic leverages in play.

d) Indian Army’s combat potential will be fully harnessed for offensive operations at the outset by eliminating the differentiation between “defensive formations” and “offensive formations”.

e) Implicit in this Doctrine is that the Indian Army will no longer concentrate on capturing strategy and holding Pakistani territory as leverage for post-war negotiations but the new operational will aim at destroying the combat potential of the Pakistan Army and its war-fighting capacity.

f) The above is to be achieved by fast moving armoured and mechanised operations supported by preponderant artillery fire power and even more preponderant combat fire-power of the Indian Air Force.

Only a few weeks ago the Indian army and air force held a combined exercise involving over 50,000 Indian troops only 70 km from our border in Rajasthan. Today over 70 percent of the Indian army is mobilised against our borders and the headquarters of their Strike Force and Rapid Force are being shifted from Central India to Punjab. The threat from India is real the Pakistani political leaders, journalists, analysts and our ‘American friends’ should look at cold facts on the ground before making irresponsible statements.

(The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of the newspaper)