World Community Must Finish Pakistan, As Its Behaviour Cannot Be Changed
THE WORLD CANNOT CHANGE PAKISTAN, WORLD CAN ONLY FINISH IT
Pakistan was born out of an idea. This idea was that of a Muslim exclusiveness and a pan-world identity, which articulated itself as a claim of being not only a separate nation from the Hindus of India, but also being an equal nation (The 2-Nation Theory). The partition gave them a separate nation, but the equality bit was not addressed. That quest for equality continues till date.
The quest for separate and equal nation was a political goal of Jinnah and his support base of Muslim nawabs and landlords, who feared losing their power, influence, and property in an egalitarian India. The Congress governments formed after the 1936 elections gave enough evidence of the anti-feudal direction they intended to take once they had got independence. It was easy for Jinnah to drum up support from the Islamic theologians, as Islam is essentially a religion that combines religious and political power — as in a Caliphate.
The motivation for the Islamic clerics had always been a complete Islamic rule in India. Aurangzeb was its finest example, as was Tipu Sultan. These two were unabashed in imposing the Shari’a Law in India, but Shari’a as motivation was within every medieval Muslim ruler in India. The decline of the Mughals and rise of the Marathas disrupted this project. Marathas were the de facto ruler of Delhi and the largest part of Bharat for a good seventy years before the British finally got the better of them in 1818, and established themselves as the undisputed ruler of India. Even the 1857 revolt had different objectives for the Hindus and Muslims. While the Hindus saw it as the revival of Maratha Empire through the revolt, the Muslim clerics exhorted their followers in the name of return of the Mughal Empire. The courses were divergent, and a clash was inevitable after the revolt ended. The British sensed the divergence and played on it. Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Mohammad Iqbal carried this sentiment forward in no uncertain manner. The sentiment of Muslims belonging to a pan-world Ummah was further consolidated by the Khilafat movement, supported interestingly by Mahatma Gandhi. The partition could still have been averted if the Congress had been ready to fight a civil war on the question of territorial integrity of India, but that was unfortunately not the course it chose.
The Barelvi Muslim theologians conceived the Pakistan project as Prophet Mohammad’s flight from the Mecca of undivided India to the Medina of Pakistan, where they would gather strength and ultimately take over the Mecca of India much in the same manner as Mohammad won Mecca back. In between, there would be many wars (Ghazwas), some of which the Ghazis may lose but they would win all the important wars. They would keep making fool of India in the same manner as Mohammad did by signing the Treaty of Hudaybiyyah, and then conquering Mecca by breaking that Treaty. The Deobandis thought this to be impractical and opposed the partition on the ground that a large part of India would become impossible to convert if India were to be divided. However, ultimate subjugation of Bharat by Islam was the motivation of both leading Sunni sects. Shi’a elites had their own selfish motivation of keeping their privileges secure, as did the Ahmadiyas.
As Pakistan oscillated between these two self-images, it combined the quest of equality with the Medina-Mecca imagery. As luck would have it, Pakistan inherited 17% of India’s resources but 33% of its Army. The largest deployment of the British army used to be in the North-West Frontier, as also its maximum recruitment. This peculiar asymmetry also decided much of the history of Pakistan. The outsized Army competed for the resources of a new nation without an identity, and eventually took it over. The 2-nation theory was debunked and destroyed in 1971, but India walked straight into the trap of a Hudaybiyyah like Treaty in the form of Shimla agreement. India’s release of 93,000 POWs without any major concession from Pakistan would go down in the world history as an extraordinary piece of muddled strategic thinking.
The Pakistan Army, however, utilised the debacle of 1971 to become the defender of faith from being just the defender of the nation of Pakistan. It transmogrified itself into a Jihadi Army, and adopted a patently Islamic motto of ‘Taqvā, Imān, Jihad-fi-Sabilillah’, meaning ‘Trust, Faith in Islam, Jihad in the way of Allah’. The nuance behind Jihad-fi-Sabilillah must be clearly understood. While the plain term Jihad can sometimes be explained away as Jihad-e-Akbar (The bigger Jihad, or struggle against Self), and Jihad-e-Asghar (The lesser Jihad, or Jihad against others), Jihad-fi-Sabilillah means Jihad in the way of Allah, and means imposition of the way of Allah (or Islam) by violence and force. This being the official position of the Pakistan Army now, any reformation of its doctrine is virtually ruled out. It is now firmly established in Pakistan as the intellectual doctrine of ‘nazaria-e-Pakistan’.
The Pakistani dilemma has been nicely summed up by Ravichandran, a follower: ‘Pakistan is in denial of their identity. They look at themselves as Arabs of Al-Bakistan and not as converted Hindus of Bharat or a successor State of India. Repeated defeats by “Hindu” India has made them insecure and the fear of disintegration is always a the back of their mind. Along with disintegration, dilution of Islam and reversion to the Hindu/Buddhist way of life also preys on their mind. In the process they have landed from the frying pan into the Dragon’s fire. Even if India does not act now China will get in in incremental steps, take over the country and eliminate Islam. Uighurs of Xinjiang are just the beginning.’
Pakistan was created to save the privileges of the Muslim elites of North India, so there was no question of land reforms in the new nation, and a curated system of privileges was conveniently put into place by the Military elites, and erstwhile Nawabs and Landlords; who then collaborated with the clergy to get a religious justification for the privileges and entitlements these groups continue to enjoy till date.
India, on the other hand, forgot the raison d’etre of Pakistan within a few years of its formation, and made many strategic mistakes. Taking the Kashmir issue to United Nations when it was on the verge of decisively winning the war would certainly rank as its biggest strategic blunder, followed by incorporation of Art. 370 in the Indian Constitution. The only reason for such an extraordinary concession to Sheikh Abdullah in the face of total opposition from the members of the Constituent Assembly was that it was a Muslim majority State. This was a tribute to the infamous 2-Nation Theory, even though India and Congress had always opposed it ideologically. That there is a fundamental difference between the foundational principles of India and Pakistan was probably forgotten when Art. 370 was incorporated in the Constitution of India.
To further learn about the differences in the foundational principles of India and Pakistan, you may pause to watch these two videos, or save them for watching them later: (a) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dIPVdbWBQpg&t=1889s (b) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3beGhULPDeM&t=1s
The present situation of Pakistan has to be understood in the background of this psychoanalysis of the Pakistani nation.
Every time Pakistan proposes talks, it is only trying to gain a reprieve and some international legitimacy. On the other hand, its quest for equality impels it to wage a permanent asymmetric conflict against India in the hope that it would be able to first wrest Kashmir away in some moment of Indian weakness, and then launch its project of taking over of rest of India. The Ghazwa-e-Hind hades is taken very seriously in Pakistan, even though authentic Islamic scholars disregard its authenticity. According to this Hadis by Nasa’I, Muslims have to conquer India first before the final battle of Dabiq can take place. The day of Last Judgment, called Qayāmat (or Ākhirat), will happen only after the Muslim Army has defeated the Army led by Dajjāl and Christ and Mohammad come together in front of Allah. (Please read my short story ‘Judgment at Dabiq’: https://medium.com/@Sanjay_Dixit/judgment-at-dabiq-a3178f725b94). This theological narrative feeds into Pakistan’s unfulfilled quest of equality with India. With India galloping ahead economically and becoming the 3rd most powerful economy along with leaps in science and technology, Pakistan establishment becomes more and more frustrated. It, therefore, cannot let go of its asymmetrical warfare as it feels that this is the only way it can slow India down. It also draws inspiration from the conquest of Constantinople by the Turks, after a continuous war of attrition lasting 800 years.
Pakistan also has a peculiar strategic thinking of brandishing its nuclear weapons to the world and creating a narrative that should Pakistan fail, the nuclear weapons would fall in the hands of the terrorists. It uses its potential failure as a strategic tool against the whole world.
So what are the options before India? Let us have one thing absolutely clear. Even if India were to gift Kashmir to Pakistan, Pakistan is not going to stop. It will feel vindicated in its narrative of Ghazwa-e-Hind and aim at Jammu and Ladakh next. If you gift away Jammu and Ladakh, it will aim at Punjab next. Pakistan is an idea, and this idea is not confined to the geographic territory of Pakistan. The theology permeates significant sections of both Deobandi and Barelvi clerics in India. Add to this the Marxist and Western control of education in India, and its apologists dilute narratives of Pakistan in India. That is why there is little outrage on the Social Media celebrations after Pulwama attack, and a disproportionately high coverage to the reactions to those celebrations.
Thus the World Community has its task cut out. The only way to deal with Pakistan in the short term is to dismantle these Pakistan-sympathetic narratives in India and the rest of the world including the United States, and by hurting the interest of the Pakistan Military so badly that it abandons its pursuit of ‘death by thousand cuts’ policy.
In the long term, Pakistan itself must be dismantled, and divided into 4 or 5 countries. This will provide safety and strategic stability to the entire Central Asia, China’s western provinces, India, Afghanistan, Iran and even the USA and Europe.
To achieve the short-term objective, the following measures need to be taken:
1. Abolish Art. 370. This will take away the concession India made to 2-Nation Theory. Check my pieces on Kashmir:
https://swarajyamag.com/politics/the-facade-that-is-kashmiriyat
2. Protect the demography of Jammu and Ladakh. Islamist CMs of the Valley have deliberately tried to change demography of Jammu and Ladakh.
3. Dismantle Jammat-e-Islami Kashmir, and the newly minted Wahhabi mosques in the Valley.
4. Make Kashmir a Union Territory along with Ladakh. Make Jammu a full fledged State.
5. Occupy strategic enclaves in the Valley, including parts of Neelam Valley, and the Haji Pir. Remember, the UN Resolution #47 gives you the right to occupy the entire territory belonging to the erstwhile Jammu and Kashmir State
6. Completely stop appeasement of separatists.
7. Support insurgencies in other parts of Pakistan.
8. Rest of the world should stop all economic and military assistance to Pakistan
To achieve the long-term objective of dismemberment of Pakistan, the following measures need to be taken:
1. Engage Pakistan in arms race to make it bankrupt.
2. Continue pursuing its economic and diplomatic isolation.
3. Fund the Pashtun, Sind and Baloch insurgencies to keep Pakistan Army fully occupied.
4. Link up India with Iran and Afghanistan to keep half its Army occupied on the Western front.
5. USA backed economic sanctions.
6. Stop all arms exports. Let it be content with the second-rate China weaponry
If we pursue these measures resolutely and consistently, we will find the tactical moves paying off within a year. The strategic moves may take anything between 10 to 25 years.
I would welcome more suggestions, and would include good ideas in the list of measures.
