This review appeared in Indian Express on August 20, 2011
Border Forces
Routledge
Pages: 245
80 pounds
After more than a quarter-century of cross-border terrorism, most Indians do see Pakistan as a hostile and recalcitrant neighbour. But very few of them, even at the top layers of the national security establishment, know why. Profound ignorance of Pakistan and its narrative of grievances against India adds to the unending Indian perplexity at the actions of the state across the Radcliffe Line.
Things could only get worse. After the generation of Indians that grew up in the pre-Partition years, there will be less of an instinctive sense of Pakistan. Since the mid-1960s, the contact with Pakistan’s society has rapidly diminished, leaving the new generation of Indians with little understanding of the dynamic across the border. As in India, so in Pakistan, there is little scholarly research on the international relations of either the self or the other. As a result, the two countries, which treat each other as the principal security threat, have little knowledge of what animates the other on the world arena.
Into this void steps Aparna Pande, with arguably the best guide to understanding Pakistan’s view of India and the world. The US-based Pande’s work is very different from the rash of new books that have been published recently on Pakistan.
Most of those are from western journalists and think tankers who are part of the current Af-Pak policy industry that has thrived since 9/11 and the US military intervention in Afghanistan at the end of 2001. Pande’s book is likely to stay longer on the shelves because it is a valuable source of reference on the origins and evolution of Pakistan’s foreign policy.
The book is simple in its conception and quite successful in its execution. It seeks to explain the paradox of Pakistan’s foreign policy — an unshakable obsession with India and an unending and largely unsuccessful quest to break free from it. To unravel this paradox, Pande starts at the very beginning: the anxieties of the Muslim elite in undivided India. By returning to the origins of Partition and the political contestation between the Congress and the Muslim League on how to organise the subcontinent once the British leaves, Pande reveals the deepest foundations of Pakistan’s anxieties about India.
Having sought Partition on the basis of the two-nation theory, the elite of Pakistan had no option but to construct an identity that differentiated it from India. At the same time, Pakistan’s leadership never stopped feeling insecure about the existential challenges that India seemed to pose.
If the question of “parity” with the “Hindu” Congress was so central to the politics of the Muslim League in the early decades of the last century, “strategic parity” with India has become an obsessive pursuit for Pakistan after Partition. This unrealistic policy has had profound consequences for Pakistan’s engagement with the world.
After she deals with Pakistan’s identity politics and security concerns in the first two foundational chapters, Pande turns to the four critical elements of its international relations. These are Pakistan’s search for “strategic depth” in Afghanistan, construction of an alliance with the United States, development of an all-weather partnership with China, and the attempt to relocate itself in the Middle East and lead the Islamic world.
In separate chapters, Pande meticulously traces how the fears of India dominated the making of Pakistan’s foreign policy towards Afghanistan, the United States, China and the Middle East.
At the end, Pande examines the prospects for a pragmatic Pakistani engagement with India. Pointing to the many positive signals on India from President Asif Ali Zardari as well the main opposition leader Nawaz Sharif in recent years, Pande hopes that Pakistan will construct “an alternative vision of self” that does not deny Pakistan’s historic and civilisational links with India and South Asia.
Whether we agree with Pande or not, her presentation of Pakistan’s own narrative is of great value for the Indian political class and the strategic community in developing a more successful strategy towards our very special neighbour to the west.
If this volume is a must-read for all Indians interested in Pakistan, its price is rather prohibitive. A low-priced paperback edition should make it more widely accessible to a large and interested audience in India.