Author: M.D. Nalapat
Publication: The Times of India
Date: June 22, 2003
On August 15, 1947, India became
free. But the day before, nearly a third of the country had been cut away
from it to form Pakistan.
Since 1948 Pakistan has conducted
a continuous war with India, from overt conventional assault as in 1948,
1965 and 1971, to the covert war that has engulfed Kashmir since 1989.
The bigger neighbor has exhibited all the hesitation and restraint typical
of a democracy, while Pakistan, where the army has been in effective control
since the first declaration of martial law in 1958, has shrewdly played
its limited cards to great effect, combining with the United States "against
communism," and with Communist China against India, getting repaid with
weapons for use against one of the only three consistently democratic countries
in Asia, together with Israel and Japan.
After India's first nuclear test
in 1974 China began funneling technology to Pakistan which, by the end
of the 1980s, made it the only Muslim country with a nuclear device, together
with missiles that could hit large parts of India. The US, which after
the Soviet collapse had bought the Saudi argument that Pakistan could be
a bridge into Muslim Central Asia, looked the other way while this cross-border
proliferation took place, while putting a virtual technological quarantine
on India.
By creating a state with an ideology
totally opposed to that of its neighbor, Britain condemned India to a constant
state of external conflict and internal insecurity. Looking at the present
meltdown in Pakistan, it does not seem likely that peace will break out
anytime soon.
The constant chatter about an "imminent"
India-Pakistan conflict has resulted in a flow of foreign investment to
India that is less than 10% of that going to China. Most of the diplomatic
interaction between New Delhi and the European Union or the US is an endless
rehash of formulae for "resolving" differences between the two countries.
For that to happen, either Pakistan
or India would have to give up its core ideology, for Pakistan is an Islamic
republic where jihad is the official motto of the army, while India is
a democracy.
WERE AN independent state of Palestine
to be established alongside Israel, the latter would be condemned to the
same fate that India has faced for the past 55 years a permanent state
of insecurity. Just as Pakistan believes it is the successor to the Mughal
Empire and that therefore historical justice demands it reestablish Muslim
rule over the whole subcontinent, almost every Palestinian believes that
the entire territory "from the river to the sea" belongs to him by right.
Yet just as the "Pakistani" identity
was a fiction brought to life by the colonial power, so was the "Palestinian"
identity. In reality, there is no "Palestinian people" with features distinct
from the other Arabs of the region.
Were an independent state of Palestine
to be created, Arab Israelis might suffer from dual loyalty. Just as Pakistan
tries to establish its influence over India's 156 million Muslims by posing
as their champion, elements within the proposed Palestinian state would
try to create an allegiance between Arab Israelis and the new country.
In brief, the creation of an independent
Palestinian state on the lines laid out in the road map would not bring
peace. Instead, it would condemn Israel to decades of conflict with its
new neighbor.
If Israel tries to please the US,
the UK, the rest of the EU, and assorted busybodies around the world by
failing to ensure that it has defensible borders, and if it agrees to the
creation of an entity that by its very nature will be hostile to it, its
present leaders are creating a monster that will certainly emaciate, and
may even devour, their nation.
What needs to be done is for Israel
to annex the territory required to be secure, while ensuring that the residue
gets formed, not into a single state but into several entities such as
a city-state of Gaza, on the Singapore model. Some of the territory abandoned
by Israel could get absorbed into Jordan, where One Person, One Vote would
then become the norm, as it is in India or Israel.
India and its people are still suffering
from the "unwisdom" of its leaders in permitting the creation of a country
that has become an ulcer on its flank. Will Israel's leaders learn from
this example, or will they too condemn their people to the kind of hell
Pakistan has created for its neighbor?
They must not allow Israel's borders
to be militarily indefensible nor welcome the creation of a state whose
people find their identity solely in the quest for Israel's destruction.
(The writer is director of the School
of Geopolitics, the Manipal Academy of Higher Education, India.)
