Article: Re-emergence of Drama of conventional hatred

By: Shamsuddin Muhammad

India and Pakistan has a peculiar history based on the pattern of dog and cat fight as a response to Kotiliyan Paradigm, an eminent Indian ancient policy expert followed by former against the later right from the first day of independence. Some of the eminent psychologists like E.F.M. Durban and John Bowlby have agreed on hypothesis that human beings are inherently violent. This aggressiveness is incited by displacement and projection where a person translates his grievances into bias and hatred against other races, religions, nations or ideologies. Such is happening in case of both countries if applied on state level. Both countries have fought more than tree limited wars to settle the account of border disputes caused to nourish a sense of animosity, jealousy and mutual hatred with no reason except to degrade each other on every forum directly or indirectly . Most of the problems in the time of separation were caused by the haphazard, fast and unplanned withdrawal of British from the India-subcontinent. The major problems were geographical location of East and West Pakistan separated 1,600 kilometers by Indian territory, rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of those migrated from other side and to build institutions of all types including a vigilant army. Despite of financial instability due to lack of payment of amount pledged by India , Pakistan managed to get out of trouble in a decade gradually. While the crisis on trade reached climax in 1949 when Britain devalued the pound, to which both the Pakistani rupee and the Indian rupee were pegged. India followed Britain's lead, but Pakistan did not, so India severed trade relations with Pakistan. This was a formal beginning of confrontation between both countries on every level. Besides economic hurdles Pakistan experienced political instability as it was run without a constitution and intervention of administrative organ into legislative in early days of independence that transformed into military with the cope diet of General Ayub Khan vanished any hope of nourishment of democratic values. The country remained for more than four decades under dictator's rule with turmoil on borders as three out of four wars were fought with India in this period that brought nothing but penury, starvation, mutual trust deficit, atrocity and Burden on national economy as a large portion of budget directly went into defense sector-to facilitate unending war on terror and law and order situation. The negligence of other sectors like education, public welfare, health,, strategic human resource management, rising inflation, liberal mindset, gender violation, misuse of blasphemy laws ,scientific research and application, industrial growth, sustainable development, disaster preventions measures and effective Confidence building measures (CBMs) to reduce sense of jealousy and hatred to each other. There has been hardly any period when both countries succeeded to build better relations due to emergence of issues ranging from water to border disputes. The construction of dams on rivers conferred to Pakistan and ineffective role of global arbitrating institutions to place check on India has led further confrontation during last few years.
Many historians explains an interesting feature when talking about the bilateral relations. With the commencement of winter season when statements from the top brass leader ship from either side, mostly from India every year as crate panic aims to justify additional quota on defense and necessity of large number of forces. Despite of a paradigm shift from use of hard to soft power patterns to handle issues globally, both still rely on use of the farmer to response any move against so-called national interest. Amidst such a state of warfare a third party mostly USA or UK or any other country appears the scene to act as an arbitrator having its own axe to grind. Consequently, the situation goes toward normalization and heading towards dialogue sessions without any tangible outcome. Some of the analyst termed it a tactic to keep more emphasis of expenditure in the arm race that has benefited none. No one can deny expenditure on the security of state when faced with numerous challenges but that should be backed by growing national economies. Many times, irresponsible attitude and remarks of both Indian army and national governments served to divert attention on other issues of importance like socio-ecnomic, geo-political issues on one hand and extremism on the other during the first decade of the new millennium. The recent anti Pakistan statement published recently in an Indian news paper as quoted by Geo TV has further intensified the situation. The news Indian paper quotes Indian Chief of staff General Deepak Kapoor saying that his country is preparing for a possible two-front limited war with Pakistan and China, simultaneously; revising its last five years old strategy to effectively meet the challenges of war with both countries; deal with asymmetric and fourth generation warfare, enhance strategy reach and joint operations with Indian Navy and air forces. The strategy he further says, "aims to boost the capability to fight under the veil of recognition of threat perceptions and security challenges through Shimla based military training command headed by General A.S. Lamba. " India apparently may intervene from Afghanistan to create nuances for Pakistan. The paper further quotes Mr. Kapoor, whose tenure is about to end, saying India has identified some areas including professional preparation for conventional wars, create capability to counter both military and non-military facets of asymmetric and sub-conventional threats like terrorism, enhance reach strategy and out of area capabilities to protect their interests; interdependence and operational synergy among air and naval forces and to achieve technological edge over its adversities to gain advantage for integrated network certainty, decision support system, information warfare are under the way to achieve the ends, simultaneously. This can be a military tactic to shift the focus of Pakistan on North-Western borders to get double benefit: to engage on East and intervene from Afghanistan both in FATA and Baluchistan. What really painful is growing gulf between both countries headed on different lines. The main concern in this scenario is on the nature of immature economies of both countries still rely on foreign aids especially that of Pakistan hit by terrorism menace, problems of balance of payments, devaluing currency rate against foreign exchange and rising debt being borrowed from International Monitory Fund (IMF) on higher interest rates than before and hardly able to function without the aid of such profit oriented international giant organizations backed by a specific agenda. In other words India in pride of sustainable growth rate compared to Pakistan, willing to pressurize through propaganda. There are no two opinions as far as Mumbai attacks are concerned-no one can justify it but mudslinging on Pakistan will be unfair. Pakistan is on war with its own nurtured dilemma that can not repeat the policy to support Jihadist elements. Extremism in any form is fatal for humanity. Indian media created a hype that atomic programme of Pakistan is unsafe and can be overtake by militants despite the fact that Pakistani atomic programme is much more safer than that of India-evident from fire incidents, leakages and kidnapping and murder of a top nuclear scientist last year. The brutalities done by India in Jamu are also a kind of extremism as it aims to keep the masses quite against aggression.
One of the important component of emerging global soft power structure is the evolution of relationship between four states namely three Asian and one America has changed the dynamics of foreign policy while addressing issues on give and take basis. The visible pattern of new relationship is between China and US, China and India, Pakistan and China, India and Us and Pakistan and India and Pakistan and the US on certain dynamics. The recent developments: Obama's election as a US president, plan attack plot in Yaman and unrest in Afghanistan will bring a new pattern of the policy paradigm. Similarly, China which has gained a sustainable development may over take Japan in next two years-thus emerging as a main player to challenge US monopoly as super power in uni-polar structure. Both countries whether it is Pakistan or India should avoid such statements that generates tense between both that neither benefit masses of Pakistan nor of India except to the ego of few monarchical minds. There are host of outstanding issues to be tackle to avoid any future conflict. We hope the two countries realizing their real issues would make efforts to diminish tense to use the potentials in the welfare of their masses.







The writer is freelance researcher and HR practitioner and Editor of blog: Voice of Hunza, GB Echo, SR Times and Alshams. He can be reached at: jaashams@gmail.com