Obsessed with Pakistan

Let’s not allow debate about what it means to be Indian to be held hostage to jingoists and bigots

IN DELHI, THE attitude of politicians, policymakers, journalists and activists towards Pakistan has historically veered between extreme trust and extreme distrust. There are those who take candles to the Wagah border every August 14-15, insisting that we are one people with the same culture, separated by Partition and malign governments (both ours and theirs). There are others who see Pakistan (and Pakistanis) as implacable enemies, who divided the motherland in 1947 and now want to break up what remains of India into many parts. The first kind of Dilliwallah demands “uninterrupted and uninterruptible” dialogue with Pakistan, the second kind demands that we isolate Pakistan internationally, squeeze it economically, and, if required, attack it militarily.

Living outside Delhi, I find this obsession with Pakistan unhelpful to our short as well as long-term interests. For one thing, it makes us a mirror image of them. From Jinnah onwards, the Pakistani establishment has been consumed by hatred of India. Since the 1971 war and the loss of what was East Pakistan, the Pakistani army has been driven by the desire to get even with India. So have the religious clergy, the other dominant force in Pakistan today. The self-definition of the Pakistani elite is: We are not, and we are against, India.

That the Pakistani state is complicit in and promotes acts of terror aimed at India and Indians should no longer be in dispute. The boycott of the forthcoming SAARC conference is therefore a sensible move. Less sensible, perhaps, is talk of retributive attacks across the Line of Control; or of the unilateral modification of the Indus Water Treaty.

The Indian government needs to be hardheaded when dealing with its always unpredictable and occasionally malevolent neighbour. But realism must not be overtaken by hysteria. For, to see Indian nationalism as merely defined by antagonism to Pakistan is to deeply diminish it. And it is to divert attention from the other (and sometimes more serious) problems that confront us as a society and a nation.