New Delhi, Dec 20: If wishes were horses monkeys would ride' would be an apt description of verbalised sentiments of top policy-makers about the roadmap to a prosperous, united South Asia, at a recent seminar in the Capital. Every leaders' imagination ran wild while dealing with the harsh reality of a conflict-ridden South Asia. Only Ms Madeleine Albright, former US Secretary of State, was correct when she described it as the "most dangerous and tragic place in the world" and brought noise-makers to their senses by suggesting "...plebiscite can be a logical way to solve the issue. There is no other way to get Kashmiris to vote for which way they want to go". South Asian countries are a product of a specific history of wars and violence and this history of "partitioned" minds and hearts is central to the inter-state conflicts in the region. The last full-fledged war between India and Pakistan was fought in 1998 around Kargil in Kashmir, and Ms Benazir Bhutto informs us that from Kargil to 2003, nuclear India and Pakistan would have been fighting wars but for American dictations and intervention.
Relationship between India and Bangladesh are far from friendly and if Pakistan has been waging low-intensity war against India in Kashmir since 1989, Bangladesh has a basketful of grievances against India. India has accused Bangladesh of allowing the hated ISI of Pakistan to operate from its soil against India. Also the Vajpayee Government has launched a full-fledged attack on illegal Bangladeshi migrants to India and has also given a communal message to Bangladesh by repeatedly saying that Hindu illegal migrants can stay on because they feel persecuted in that country. Should Bangladesh accept India as a friend, which is also characterising Bangladeshi state as a practitioner of anti-minority policies? How, under such circumstances, can India expect supply of gas from Bangladesh?
Then the Sri Lankans are involved in a violent civil war against one another and interlocutor for peace between the two warring communities is a neutral Scandinavian country; India is "necessary evil" for Sri Lankans because it is the Big Brother. A complicating factor in normal India-Sri Lanka neighbourly relations is the role of certain Tamil groups which openly support the liberation movement of Sri Lankan Tamils from the Indian soil. How would India react if a neighbouring country like Bangladesh or Sri Lanka allowed a section of its own citizens to demand independence for Jammu & Kashmir from India? Relationships among South Asian countries, even at bilateral levels, require a journey of many miles before distant neighbours can be brought nearer to one another.
It is essential to identify the major road blocks which are obstructing the way to peace in South Asia. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh are a product of common history which is continuing to keep these three countries not only territorially separated but also antagonistic to one another. If EU is projected as a future model for South Asian unity, the lessons learnt by warring Europeans should also be brought into sharp focus in South Asian societies. Europe has a long history of wars and it is only since the mid-90s that Europeans have settled their territorial boundaries and decided to keep their territoriality under the umbrella of an integrated EU. South Asia can learn lessons from Europe or go through the process of historically defined hostilities and forget about peace and development of the South Asian region.
The greatest obstacle to peace is the politics of India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hindu India and Muslim Pakistan cannot come together because the history of looking at separate religious identities has been used to keep these countries politically separated. The history of India was very deftly constructed by the British on the basis of religious identities of Hindu India and Muslim India and all other factors and forces which went into the making of a very ancient society to the modern phase were subordinated to religious divisions between the two major communities of India.
This is the genesis of South Asian hostilities and animosities because this definition of separate Hindu and Muslim India was taken to its logical conclusion by the colonisers and their collaborators like the Hindu Mahasabha of VD Savarkar and Muslim League of Mohammad Ali Jinnah for Partition of India on the basis of the Two-Nation theory. A very powerful democratic and secular anti-colonial national movement for independence failed to defend the unity of India - the colonisers, and their Hindu and Muslim collaborators, succeeded in institutionalisation of religion in politics by granting independence to a partitioned India.
While the Indian secular national leadership continued its struggle against domestic communal and anti-secular forces, Pakistan's raison d'etre was its assertion as a Muslim state. The Indian leaders took political decisions to achieve the integration of a democratic, secular and plural India. Pakistan launched its agenda of completing the unfinished task of bringing Muslim inhabited areas of India under the control of the Pakistan state and the Muslim rulers of Hyderabad, Junagadh, and Bhopal were asked by the Pakistani rulers to secede from India. All that is history. The Pakistani ruling class is determined to fight wars for their claim to annex Muslim majority Kashmir Valley in spite of the fact that J&K have a legal "accession" to India.
The Kashmir dispute is linked with the question of change of borders of India and Pakistan by seceding the territory of Muslim majority Kashmir valley from India to Pakistan. During the last 55 years, in spite of wars between the two countries, the Kashmir dispute remains a bone of contention and neither "violent" nor "democratic" solution can be found in the foreseeable future because Indian public opinion has been nourished on the belief that Kashmir valley is a testimony to Indian secularism and Pakistani ruling classes have been fed on the ideology that Muslim Kashmir valley has to be liberated from Hindu India. Instead of learning a lesson from post-Partition holocaust that religion-based identity politics leads to war and violence in a multi-religious South Asia, South Asians are continuing with religion-based politics.
Islam could not keep Pakistan united and the lesson from 1947 and 1971 is very clear: That in multi-cultural regions, a monolithic religion like Hinduism or Islam cannot be a uniting factor because history of religious separatism has not been completely buried by the South Asians. While India has a record of practicing state-led secular policies and politics, some other nation-states of the region are openly pursuing anti-minority state policies. Every South Asian country is involved in internal firefighting measures to resolve its inter-community conflicts. The colonisers not only "disrupted" the natural internal geographical mobility of goods and peoples of South Asian communities, they left "borders built on hatred".
Internal democracy as a political mechanism can provide multiple democratic spaces for multiple identities to resolve their inter-identity disputes, but military regimes of Pakistan and Bangladesh and constricted democracy of Sri Lanka have to work on the basis of an "an officially defined identity" for the whole country. How can countries with different political systems operate an institutionalised common system of South Asian regional cooperation? EU is a homeland of "democracies" and it is only after the collapse of erstwhile socialist state system that Hungary, the Czech Republic and Poland thought of joining the EU.
South Asians, including Indians, have to forget their history which was brought into politics by the "rulers" and it is only the "people's history" which can act as a guide to prosperous South Asia. History in politics has been a tragedy for South Asia and the journey of history as a weapon in the hands of ruling political groups has not ended and it refuses to end. This is our tragedy.