As India and Pakistan once again behave like kindergarteners refusing to talk to each other in the playground, the airwaves and op-ed columns on both sides of the border are abuzz with familiar points and counter-points. But, if you listen carefully, they all come back to the same question: is this continued confrontation, in some sense, inherent to the relationship that the two countries built up at the time of Partition?
The subject, irritatingly, never seems to get old. Nor, equally exasperatingly, does it get any newer. And, sadly, columns or TV discussions fail to contribute to any deeper understanding of the impasse. Fortunately, that's why we have books.
A particularly rich vein of Pakistan-related books has been unearthed in recent years. We had Ayesha Jalal's Struggle for Pakistan, in which she argued the case for the defence; and Hussain Haqqani's Magnificent Delusions, in which he argued the case for the prosecution. And more recently, we had Faisal Devji's brilliant Muslim Zion as well as Christophe Jaffrelot's Pakistan Paradox, a political scientist's take on the interest groups, classes, and castes that help shape the Pakistani state's choices. Prof Jaffrelot's 600 pages are perhaps the finest statement of the existing wisdom on the subject.
But into this almost-settled discussion have been dropped two other books, each of which disturbs the narrative somewhat: Nisid Hajari's Midnight Furies, which tells a somewhat different story of the lead-up to Partition, and argues for that story's contemporary relevance; and Venkat Dhulipala's Creating a New Medina, which makes substantive and provocative claims about the nature of pre-1947 Muslim support for Pakistan. (And, a little earlier, there is Philip Oldenburg's magnificent India, Pakistan and Democracy; and the second edition of Farzana Sheikh's Community and Consensus in Islam.)
Fascinatingly, any analysis of India-Pakistan relations is essentially dependent on your opinion of Pakistan's self-image. India, unsurprisingly given its relative size and dynamism, has a self-image on a totally different scale; thus we formulate our policy around either ignoring Pakistan while we rise, or isolating Pakistan while we rise, or placating Pakistan while we rise. Pakistan itself is no longer relevant to this country's self-conception; it is instead a nuisance to be either contained or fixed. We will happily watch Arnab Goswami attacking Pakistani generals on Times Now, but that's about it.
So: do these recent books explain why India looms large in the Pakistani conception of itself, without the reverse being true? Does the history of Partition, and the period shortly thereafter, tell us something about the two countries today?
Many Indians bristle at the latter suggestion. As Prof Jaffrelot's review of Prof Oldenburg's book in Foreign Affairs said, the differences between the two countries since 1977 are "less a difference of degree than a difference of nature". Nor are Pakistanis pleased: because, after all, anyone talking about differences that have crept in since Partition might use it to explain why Pakistan looks far more like a basket case than India - and from that to the dread statement "Partition was a mistake" can appear a short, logical jump.
Yes, Partition isn't everything. Nor is religion. Prof Oldenburg's book argued that pre-existing differences between Indian and Pakistani regions mattered, beyond religious differences. Places like the Northwest Frontier were less exposed to the Raj's institutions; feudal structures were stronger in Sindh than in many parts of India; and so on. Prof Jaffrelot focuses a lot on the tension between regions and the federation in Pakistan; if there is explanatory power in this tension, it comes in my opinion from the fact that Punjab sought and seeks to dominate Pakistan in a way no single region can do India. But a sceptical reading of these eight books cannot but leave you with the impression that, yes, there is something - in fact, there is a lot - to the argument that the nature of the Pakistan movement and the specifics of Partition do indeed cast long shadows.
Prof Jaffrelot gets to something deep when he argues in Pakistan Paradox that the elite-popular tension is central to Pakistan's history. To my mind, post-1947 Pakistan has replicated the essential cynicism of the Pakistan movement: in the latter, a relatively secularised elite used religion as a method to try and preserve its privileges. But they failed to understand the tiger they were riding, and were eventually mauled by it as much as anyone else; and their successors in the elite of independent Pakistan have repeated that mistake over and over again. This line of thinking in the literature owes much to Paul Brass' 1970s study of the Muslim elite of UP.
This is the argument that has been attacked, in many ways, recently, and from either end. For Nisid Hajari, the Congress was as cynical as the League - he deconstructs the Sikh role in Partition violence, and presents a terrifying rendition of Mohandas Gandhi's RSS-style mobilisation of Hindu outrage around the "ravishing" of Hindu women by Muslims in Noakhali. Nehru was "nearly" as responsible for Partition because he was "arrogant and dismissive" of Jinnah "and by implication his millions of Muslim followers". (I can't agree, though I urge you read it and make up your mind.) Meanwhile, Prof Dhulipala attempts to debunk the idea of Pakistan as an elite - or for that matter intangible - idea for Indian Muslims before 1947. Without prejudging our review of Creating a New Medina, I will say this argument too is excellently made, but is - for me - ultimately unpersuasive.
So the question of whether Pakistan is an "accident", and thus its anti-India orientation is a cynical nation-building ploy; or whether Pakistan was chosen as an anti-India by popular Muslim will, and confrontation is in its blood and bone; is far from irrelevant, even today. The plethora of books that address this, one way or another, underlines this truth. And, please, until you read enough of them, try not to express an opinion on the subject. It will just give the rest of us a headache.
mihir.sharma@bsmail.in
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
