'In Our Vital Interest'

On June 9, 2009 Prime Minister Manmohan Singh stated in the LokSabha, "I sincerely believe it is in our vital interest therefore to try again to make peace with Pakistan … If the leaders of Pakistan have the courage, the determination and the statesmanship to take this road to peace, I wish to assure them that we will meet them more than half way." 

The Prime Minister’s statement is in consonance with foreign minister S.M.Krishna’s words during his first press conference in early June 2009: "India would like to live at peace with Pakistan and we are ready to extend our hand of friendship and partnership with Pakistan."

This is not the first time that Indian leaders have stated that peace with Pakistan is in India’s vital interest. 

In a speech in October 1948 Prime Minister Nehru (who was also Foreign Minister) stated: "I can assure the people of Pakistan that India has no aggressive designs against any country, least of all against Pakistan. We want Pakistan to live in peace and to progress and to have the closest ties with us. There never will be aggression from our side." 

In 1999 then Prime Minister Vajpayee wrote the following words in the guest book of Minar-e-Pakistan at Lahore: "A stable, secure and prosperous Pakistan is in India’s interest. Let no one in Pakistan be in doubt. India sincerely wishes Pakistan well." 

Separated by decades, these statements are a true indicator of India’s policy towards itsneighbour Pakistan. 

Successive Indian governments have always tried to build better relations with Pakistan. However, one of the key problems has been the lack of trust amongst large sections of Pakistani population, policy makers and others, and the belief that the sole aim of India’s foreign policy is to ‘Undo Partition and Pakistan.’

It is true that at Partition there were Indian leaders who did not accept the idea of Partition or the creation of Pakistan. 

The wording of the resolution passed by the All India Congress committee on the eve of Partition stated: "The picture of India we have learnt to cherish will remain in our minds and hearts. The All India Congress Committee earnestly trusts that when present passions have subsided, India’s problems will be viewed in their proper perspective and the false doctrine of two nations will be discredited and discarded by all." This statement along with others in a bitter environment of large-scale riots, large scale migration, struggle for a fair share of the assets of undivided India and the war of 1947-48 over Kashmir marked a bloody start to the relationship between the previously conjoined siblings, now separated. 

There are many principles which underlie any nation’s foreign policy and the same is true of Pakistan. However, the one key underlying factor is its sense of existential threat from a largerneighbour India. Its security, defence and foreign policies have been framed to a large extent by this fear. As a Pakistani journalist stated in the 1960s: 

"Let us clearly understand that the Indian threat will never be averted. It is not Kashmir alone; Kashmir merely symbolizes the Indian mind. The danger is more basic. It arises from the physical situation of the two countries….So long as Pakistan stays within thesubcontinental gravitation, its position will be precarious. No settlement can overcome this geopolitical hazard." 

This has been the dominant view among most Pakistani policy makers and strategists and has led to the unwillingness on the part of Pakistani leaders to seek cordiality with India.

Fear of India and Indian intentions is widespread in both the civilian and military wings of the Pakistani government. Pakistan’s first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan during his first trip to the United States in 1950 stated that India had not accepted Pakistan and there were ‘elements’ in India who were trying to undo Partition.General Ayub believed India had hegemonic and imperial designs against Pakistan. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto believed that India had ‘hostile intentions’ and could not be trusted to abide by any treaties or negotiations. General Zia was convinced that India connived with the Soviet Union to break up Pakistan in 1971. General Musharraf believed India had nefarious designs apropos Pakistan. In the present civilian government too there are very few takers for President Zardari’s statement that India ‘is not a threat’ to Pakistan. 

However, I believe that the best explanation of India’s policy towards Pakistan lies in a speech given by Prime Minister Nehru in January 1948 at the Aligarh Muslim University. Nehru deliberately chose the settings of Aligarh to give his speech on India-Pakistan relations. The university at Aligarh was founded by a leading Muslim Sir Sayyid Ahmed Khan in the late 19th century and Aligarh’s students and alumni were leading members of the Muslim League. 

Nehru’s speech talks in detail about India’s view of Pakistan. Acknowledging that though many Congress leaders, including Nehru, initially thought of Pakistan’s creation as "unnatural" yet because it represented the "urges of a large number of persons" the Congress leadership "accepted it in good faith."

Nehru pointed out that India has "been charged with desiring to strangle and crush Pakistan and to force it into a reunion with India. That charge, as many others, is based on fear and a complete misunderstanding of our attitude." According to Nehru if the Congress had really wanted to break up Pakistan they would not have agreed to Partition. "It was easier to prevent it then than to try to do so now after all that has happened." Nehru also stated emphatically that "There is no going back in history."

Referring to India-Pakistan relations, Nehru said: "It is to India's advantage that Pakistan should be a secure and prosperousstate with which we can develop close and friendly relations." Nehru believed that in the future India and Pakistan would draw close because "we have known each other too long to be indifferentneighbours." However, any relationship with Pakistan, or any other of India’sneighbours, would be one that is mutually acceptable. "This does not mean any desire to strangle or compel Pakistan. Compulsion there can never be, and an attempt to disrupt Pakistan would recoil to India's disadvantage." 

Referring to the belief by many Pakistanis that India wanted the ‘reunion’ of India and Pakistan, as early as 1948 Nehru stated: "If today by any chance I were offered the reunion of India and Pakistan, I would decline it for obvious reasons. I do not want to carry the burden of Pakistan's great problems. I have enough of my own. Any closer association must come out of a normal process and in a friendly way which does not end Pakistan as a state but which makes it an equal part of a larger union in which several countries might be associated."While leaving Delhi for Karachi on August 7, 1947, Pakistan’s founder Muhammad Ali Jinnah (the "Quaid-e-Azam or Great leader) wished India prosperity and peace and appealed, "Let us start afresh as two independent sovereign states of India and Pakistan."

There may have been only a few issues of tension between India and Pakistan in 1947,but there are a very large number of them 62 years later. The Kashmir conflict dominates them though the real issue is a question of trust. Over the years, incidentshave taken place that led each country – especially the two governments – to mistrustthe other’s intentions and actions. 

In 2004 the governments of India and Pakistan started the Composite Peace dialogue to tackle some of the key issues troubling the two nations. The November 2008 attacks in Mumbai by the Pakistan-based Kashmiri jihadi group, Lashkar-e-Taiba, however, led India to put a hold on these talks. 

With the re-election of the Congress-led government to power in June 2009 there was hope that the peace process would resume. Foreignminister S.M. Krishna’s first press conference reflected these sentiments when he stated that "nations cannot choose theirneighbours, they have to live with them." The release from house arrest of Hafiz Saeed, the head of the Lashkar-e-Taiba’s parent organization, however, has led many in the Indian establishment to doubt the sincerity of Pakistan’s intentions. 

For India, a democratic, economically and politically stable Pakistan which is secure in its own identity and confident about its security is in its own interest. The civilian government in Pakistan is still weak and may often take ‘two steps backward’ before it takes ‘one step forward.’ But, in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s ownwords in the Lok Sabha, "What is at stake is the future of one-and-a-half billion people living in South Asia." Clearly, both the governments need to do whatever it takes to bring the dialogue process back on track.

Aparna Pande is a doctoral candidate and lecturer in political science at Boston University.