In April 1980, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi and Pakistani military dictator General Zia ul-Haq met for the first time in Salisbury (now Harare) in then Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Before the meeting, newspapers had published some uncharitable remarks by Zia about India. A contemporary account of the meeting by Inder Malhotra suggests a rather testy exchange: Indira Gandhi, however, was all smiles and courtesy when he arrived. “Madam, please do not believe everything that you read in the newspapers” was Zia’s opening gambit. “Of course not,” replied Mrs Gandhi. “After all, aren’t they calling you a democrat and me a dictator?”
In 1980, India had seen two quick democratic changes of government after having overcome an authoritarian spell, whereas Pakistan was under its third military dictator since independence. Having made very different choices at their birth, the two neighbours seemed placed firmly on two diametrically opposite trajectories: one of a secular, liberal, plural democracy, and the other of a religious, military dictatorship. Grounded in this widely accepted reality, Mrs Gandhi’s snub earned no retort from Gen Zia.
Soon after Partition, Pakistan’s rulers delineated a national ideology that stood on three pillars: Islam, hostility to India, and the Urdu language. Making being Pakistani synonymous with a good Muslim became a way to overcome diverse ethnic and linguistic identities. But Islam meant different things to different people, as Husain Haqqani wrote, and the State thus controlled the process of religious nationalism. For this, State control over education and media had to be complete. It empowered the conservative religious leaders, and created a nexus between the ‘custodians of Islam’ and the security establishment. Critics and opponents of the establishment and the government were now enemies of Islam.
An under-resourced State, driven by its insecurity of a larger neighbour and aspiring to be its equal, meant that the military needed a great power as its benefactor. Jinnah had told Life magazine, “America needs Pakistan more than Pakistan needs America…Pakistan is the pivot of the world, as we are placed… [on] the frontier on which the future position of the world revolves.”
By the time of the Salisbury meeting, Pakistan was deep down this path. Zia zealously undertook Islamisation of laws and society, which he claimed was what “99% of the people wanted”. School books were rewritten with an ideological agenda, and children taught, in KK Aziz’s words, “prescribed myths”. This meant that Zia’s ideological influence continued beyond his period in power. But it was increased Soviet involvement in Afghanistan that drew the US into the region, which Zia milked for military and economic aid by renting Pakistan’s strategic location. The US was unconcerned about the rise of violent Islamist fundamentalism as Zia’s Pakistan became a cornerstone of American geopolitical strategy to check, counter and defeat the Soviet Union.
Nearly four decades later, history is rhyming. US is again trying to counter fast-growing rival, China. And it is India, though not an US ally like Pakistan, that is the cornerstone of Washington’s Indo-Pacific strategy to check Beijing. Just like the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan, the Chinese ingress in Ladakh has pushed matters. If Pakistan then had close ties with Iran and North Korea which were not friendly with the US, India has a robust relationship with Russia today.
Many retired diplomats echo Jinnah when they assert that the US needs India more than India needs the US. As India is the pivot of this geopolitical contest, which many describe as the new Cold War, it ought to get even greater diplomatic and military support from the US. Unstated, but implicit in this argument, is India’s economic weakness to sustain a military capable of countering China on its own. Paradoxically, all this is meant to eventually fulfil India’s manifest destiny to be a great power.
If there are similarities in the geopolitics surrounding India, the domestic social and political changes since 2014 – heralding a ‘New India’ – provide an even scarier parallel. The Indian State is still constitutionally secular – though no one says it anymore – but the government routinely practices Hinduism as State religion. The judiciary allows a temple to be built at the site of a mosque demolished by a political mob, which is being constructed by the State. The religious ceremony marking the temple’s construction is led by the Prime Minister in full Hindu regalia, merging State and religion. He follows it up with Varanasi. An ethnically, linguistically and religiously diverse society is under the grip of a party that espouses the ‘Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan’ ideology.
It is no longer the trope of ‘cultural nationalism’. Being a Hindu is posited as being a real Indian, and religious minorities are reduced legally to a lesser position. Laws are being enacted which welcome only persecuted non-Muslims from other countries to India – only Afghan Hindus and Sikhs were flown in an aircraft from Kabul last month. The education system is being rewired, with books being rewritten with fabricated history, and invented mythology is peddled over science as part of the Hindutva ideological project. India’s weakly institutionalised democracy is witnessing a co-opting of institutions like the Parliament, judiciary, media, military and bureaucracy for this project.
Many had hoped after the Biden administration took charge in Washington that, unlike the Trump era, it will publicly force Delhi to change track. But in a replica of its policies during the Ayub, Zia, Yahya and Musharraf eras, the US has chosen to prioritise its geopolitical concerns and turned a blind eye towards India’s dark turn under Modi.
Amidst all this, it must be remembered that while Pakistan never elected its military dictators, Indians have popularly voted in this government twice. Mrs Gandhi’s retort to Zia would sound very different now.
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