Ideological roots of hostility between India & Pakistan
RECENTLY, I had the opportunity to listen to the views of the former President of Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJ&K), Sardar Masood Khan on Kashmir Dispute on a TV channel.
He rightly remarked that Kashmir Dispute was the key cause of hostility between India and Pakistan, having the potential to ignite a major armed conflict between the two nuclear powers.
I also read an article, some time back, on: “Hostilities between India and Pakistan Continue after 20 Years of Nuclearization” written by Salman Bashir, former Foreign Secretary of Pakistan and Ambassador to China and India.
Basing on his firsthand in-depth knowledge about the psyche and mindset of Indian policymakers, Mr Salman considers India’s hegemonic aspirations as the root cause of hostilities between India and Pakistan.
He writes: “At heart of the intensely adversarial relationship between the two protagonists is India’s refusal to allow Pakistan to co-exist as an “equal.
” To substantiate his conclusions, Mr Salman states, “Unless this changes, South Asia would remain relegated to periphery of Asia’s march to progress and prosperity.
The dream of durable peace would continue to elude peoples of Pakistan and India”.
While fully subscribing to the valued assessments of the two highly reputed and respected professional diplomats, who remained intensely involved in shaping Pakistan’s policies and response to ever-changing regional and global geo-political environments, I would like to add that there are few other irritants (that existed even before the Partition of India), because of which the two major countries of South Asia are unable to coexist peacefully.
Among others, ideological bias is one of the main causes of conflict between the two nations (Hindus and Muslims).
The animosity between Hindus and Muslims dates back to the conquest of India by Muslims.
Due to a large-scale conversion of Hindus and followers of other religions to Islam, Muslims of non-Indian origin were outnumbered by the local Muslims within a couple of centuries of the conquest of the Indian subcontinent by Muslims.
Despite the majority of the Indian Muslims being sons of the soil, their emotive affinities with the worldwide community of Islam, reinforced by linkages to wider networks of cultural and material exchanges with West and Central Asia, continued to be an important dimension in the Muslim sense of identity till the conquest of Central Asian Muslim States by the (erstwhile) Soviet Union.
In the aftermath of the 1857 rebellion, which the British colonialists blamed on Muslim antipathy to their rule, the British came to regard Muslims as a distinctive political community.
Religion became an important factor in defining majority and minority over all other signifiers of identity, transforming the role of religion in Indian politics.
Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, the leading Muslim social reformer of the late 19th century, who founded the Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College at Aligarh in 1875, sought to alter British perception of Muslim disloyalty.
He urged his co-religionists to focus on educational advancement and avoid joining the Indian National Congress.
The political thoughts of Sir Syed Ahmed Khan, a progressive and pragmatic scholar and social reformer, ultimately paved the way for the emergence of the “Two-Nation Theory”.
Prior to the colonial conquest of India, economic and social interconnections between the different regions of the subcontinent forged over the centuries had helped establish a loosely woven framework of interdependence.
However, a few important political developments during the 1st quarter of the 20th Century further widened the already existing misgivings between Hindus and Muslims.
These developments included the emergence of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh as the strongest representative of radical Hindu nationalism.
RSS aimed to organise Hindu community for its cultural and spiritual regeneration and make it a tool in getting the country free from foreign domination.
The rise of radical Hindu nationalism compelled the All India Muslim League (AIML), which was dominated by secular progressive Muslim leaders like Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who was known as the Ambassador of Hindu-Muslim Unity, to revisit its assessment about peaceful co-existence of Hindus and Muslims after the decolonization of India.
Due to the unrelenting attitude of the leaders of All India Congress, which claimed to be the representative of all religious and ethnic Indian communities, to address the genuine apprehensions of Muslims, AIML was finally constrained to subscribe to Sir Syed Ahmed Khan’s Two-Nation Theory.
A separate homeland was conceived to be the only viable solution to address political and economic issues of the majority of Indian Muslims after the departure of the British rulers.
Various explanations have been advanced for the creation of Pakistan. Official narratives in Pakistan attribute the formation of the country to the “two nations” theory.
The Nationalists in India hold the British culpable, noting that imperial policies of divide and rule worked to destroy the historic unity of the country.
I feel that the Muslim revivalist movements (that accounted for Indian Muslims’ lagging behind in the socio-economic and political fields) coupled with the rise of radical Hindu nationalism contributed most significantly to the creation of Pakistan.
The radical and fanatic elements present in both the communities have continued to fuel hatred among Muslims and Hindus even after the partition of India 75 years ago.
Though India boasts of being a secular state, where followers of different religions can peacefully co-exist, the on-ground reality is much different.
A research analysis of 118 countries ranked India as fourth worst in world for religious intolerance.
Coming to the other side of love-hate relations between Hindus and Muslims, many people have always maintained that misconception about the rationale behind the creation of Pakistan, more on part of Pakistanis than Indians, have been some of the major causes of misgivings among the peoples of two countries.
What to talk of friendly or good neighbourly, even normal relations could not develop between these countries since their independence more than seven decades ago, due to this misconception, which perhaps has played more significant role in producing enmity and qualms among their populace than any other single cause, including the Kashmir Dispute.
In case of Pakistan, this misunderstanding has also been the root cause of a number of other ills such as projecting Pakistan as a theocracy, rather than a moderate Muslim state.
Rise of puritanism, religious intolerance and sectarian violence are other direct outcomes of widely misunderstood rationale for the creation of Pakistan by none others, but Pakistani themselves and Indians to some extent.
—The writer is a freelance columnist, based in Islamabad.
