Miles to go for Pakistan

It is useful to look upon the Indo-Pak Summit against the wider background of social and political awakening in Asia. What do the two states stand for? What has been their respective record in the last twentyfive years since they attained independence? To a large measure, the answers to these questions provide the clue to the ultimate outcome of the Simla Summit which is yet to be known as these lines are being written.

By the yardstick of accepted ideological categories, India and Pakistan belong to the same type of social system, namely, they are what is called in the language of the Marxist, bourgeois states. And yet between the two, there is a world of difference and it is this difference that accounts for the divergence in the course of developments that the two countries have traversed in the last two decades-and-a-half.

From the outset, Pakistan started as a political set-up more inclined to depend on Western imperialist support, at that time, mainly the British. The very origin of Pakistan was, to a large measure, facilitated by the British strategy of dividing the powerful national upsurge for freedom in India, and the founding fathers of Pakistan, even the best of them, did not object to it, because of their misgivings-turned-into-obsession about the danger of domina-tion by the majority community in an independent India. This obsession was exploited to the hilt by those in the leadership of the Pakistan movement, who really acted as the camp followers of the British.
It may sound irrelevant to recapitulate this history, but if one goes deeper, one finds its importance for the contemporary developments. The very first months after independence saw the outbreak of a conflict between the two new-born states which has continued like a festering sore even today, and provides the biggest hurdle to cross at Simla.

This is the problem of Kashmir. And subsequent disclosures have made it clear how the British engineered to make it an issue of bitter acrimony between the two states. On the side of Pakistan, the British hand in inciting the armed attack on Kashmir is now undeniable, for, even British officers were found to have masterminded the offensive. On the Indian side, Mountbatten tried his best to delay the defence of Srinagar and when, overrulling his objections, the newly-formed Government in New Delhi rushed reinforcements and the Indian troops were about to clear the entire Valley of the invaders, Mountbatten persuaded it to agree to a ceasefire, thereby letting Pakistani forces have a foothold on a portion of the Valley. Again, it was Mountbatten who initiated the idea of taking the case to the UN and almost on his own, put forward the proposal for a plebiscite despite the fact that the State’s ruler had already signed the Insrument of Accession to India, and the accredited leadership of Kashmir’s national movement, with Sheikh Abdullah at its head, had taken the lead in Kashmir remaining a part of India.

After the British came the Americans. It is no secret that the US strategists could succeed in enmeshing Pakistan into its military alliances because the democratic resistance to it was weak inside Pakistan. In the power set-up in the newly-carved state, it was the western wing which dominated, and in the western wing, it was the military-feudal complex that held sway, and it is this clique which was strengthened by Western support to suppress democracy at home and make Pakistan a client state of the US in the international sphere.

The culmination of this politics came in the mid-fifties when Pakistan’s military alliances with the USA were not only formalised but the hand of the CIA and the Pentagon could be discerned in the political convulsions that rocked the state, leading it through a succession of unstable regimes until by the end of the decade, a miliary dictorship was put on the saddle at the behest of Washington. The entire economy of the state became dependent on dollar aid, while its defence, foreign policy and foreign trade were mortagaged to the USA. Neo-colonialism ceased to be a mere Left jargon in Pakistan; it became the stark reality.

The vassal state became almost a plaything of the global politics of the USA. The setting up of the U-2 spy flight base near Peshwar was only one example—though the most dramatic—of this great conspiracy. Constantly, the hate-campaign against India was worked up and the constant infiltration and almost non-stop efforts at subversion inside Kashmir culminated in the war of 1965. As part of the same strategy of consolidating a millitary junta to act as the watcdog of US imperialism, the politically awakened eastern wing of Pakistan was sought to be stifled.

This grand strategy met its first rebuff in 1965 when with all the myth of Pakistan’s first-class war machine—in contrast to the then discredited Indian military standing after the 1962 debacle of the Chinese attack—was broken, since Kashmir could not be captured, and for the time being, Washington lost face so badly that it could not even take the initiative for a truce, as it could in the first round of clashes over Kashmir in 1947-48. Hence came the Soviet initiative for peace at Tashkent—the first time, Pakistan had to move out of the US orbit in international diplomacy.

Then came the new stage in US diplomacy. The Sino-Soviet rift provided it with a god-send and so the first overtures were made to Peking, and Pakistan, as the client state, was used for the job. President Ayub himself claimed to be acting as the broker between Washington and Peking, a role which was confirmed when Dr Kissinger chose Islamabad as the safest point of departure for his secret flight to Peking last year. This new role of Pakistan as an ally of Peking helped to mislead a large section of the world into the false hope that Islamabad’s ties with Washington were being weakened. And Ayub played this false role with consummate skill, and even undertook the mission to Moscow.

However, the basic loyalty of Pakistan’s military junta to the USA remained steadfast. This could be seen not only in the rapid replenishment of arms by the USA and its allies and stooges, but by the blatant stand that the USA took during last year’s struggle for the liberation of Bangladesh. With all the publicity in the world press about Pak military genocide in Bangladesh, Washington remained unmoved and determined in its support for Yahya Khan’s regime, to the point of even despatching its formidable Seventh Fleet to the Bay of Bengal. Washington’s bitterness against New Delhi was heightened with the Indo-Soviet Treaty and the subsequent intervention by India on the side of the freedom-fighters in Bangladesh.

But the Bourbons do not die easily. And even today, the Generals though humbled are not totally dislodged in Pakistan’s politics. Today Pakistan finds herself in a strange twilight—the glittering days of the military regime, giving a false sense of security to the country, are over, and yet the democratic forces, long suppressed, are not still in a state of health that can enable them to take over power. Hence, a quick-change artiste of the type of Mr Bhutto can dominate the stage. His contradictory statements, hysterical postures and unbalanced political moves reflect the state of instability in which Pakistan finds itself today.

Which way shoud she go? The path followed during the last twentyfive years has led her to humiliation, disaster and disintegration of the state-structure itself. If this path is pursued further, then Pakistan’s viability as a state is in danger. The different nationalities inside can no longer be suppressed by the jackboot of the military junta. And even as a military power, she has lost face both with India and Bangladesh.

The alternative path not only ensures her much-needed peace but guarnatees her security in a system of neighbourly amity and mutual pledge of non-aggression. The economy can be reorganised on the principle of self-reliance, without the cramping crutches of the dollar. But to take this line, it has to delink itself from Washington’s military bloc Politics. Mr Bhutto’s recent move to activise pakistan’s membership of the CENTO is a step in the wrong direction.

It is only out of the suffocating grip of the military alliances that Pakistan can breathe the air of freedom. Non-alignment has given strength of India both politically and militarily for she did not have to move by the puppet-strings from Washington.

Hence, the two key points in India’s stand at Simla are, firstly, that all disputes between the two neighbours have to be settled through peaceful means and not through resort to arms. This will on the one hand dispel all fears generated by interested propaganda that India’s superior might pose a threat for Pakistan, and on the other hand neutralise the grip of the military clique which will be bereft of the bogey of India.

Secondly, India’s insistence against third-party intervention will not only help to strengthen the natural relations between two neighbouring states, organically bound together, but will undermine the grip of Western imperialism over Pakistan.

The road ahead from Simla offers for Pakistan a new vista, not only of peace with honour but of reassertion of real independence both political and economic. It is for the people of Pakistan to decide how they should mandate their leadership to make the right choice.

(Mainstream, July 1, 1972)