India's Pakistan Conundrum

Managing a Complex Relationship

Sharat Sabharwal

• Publisher: Routledge India
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000545166
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Diplomacy & Treaties
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Historically, the relationship between India and Pakistan has been mired in conflicts, war, and lack of trust. Pakistan has continued to loom large on India's horizon despite the growing gap between the two countries. This book examines the nature of the Pakistani state, its internal dynamics, and its impact on India.

The text looks at key issues of the India-Pakistan relationship, appraises a range of India's policy options to address the Pakistan conundrum, and proposes a way forward for India's Pakistan policy. Drawing on the author's experience of two diplomatic stints in Pakistan, including as the High Commissioner of India, the book offers a unique insider's perspective on this critical relationship.

A crucial intervention in diplomatic history and the analysis of India's Pakistan policy, the book will be of as much interest to the general reader as to scholars and researchers of foreign policy, strategic studies, international relations, South Asia studies, diplomacy, and political science.

Part I The Pakistani state

1 Pakistan – troubled and troublesome Religious extremism

DOI: 10.4324/9781003148081-3

Having a neighbour such as Pakistan that all through its existence of nearly 75 years has remained an implacable foe presents India with a unique challenge to which there are no straightforward answers. All the policy options deployed by India over the years – peace overtures, reaching out to the Pakistani people, deterrence, coercion, use of military force, incentives by way of lucrative trade and economic linkages and attempts to isolate Pakistan internationally – have failed to convince or compel Pakistan to alter its course and build a normal relationship with India. Pakistan has single-mindedly persisted with its revanchist agenda by questioning the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India and using terror as an instrument of state policy to cause instability in Jammu and Kashmir and elsewhere in India.

Pakistan’s hostile posture towards India and unwise policies have unleashed forces that pose a threat not only to India, but to the security and stability of the entire region, have caused chaos and instability within Pakistan and contributed in no small measure to international terrorism. Pakistan has thus become a troubled and troublesome state. Former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, summed up the nature of the Pakistani state pithily in December 2008, soon after the Mumbai terror attack, in describing it as a country that had everything to cause an “international migraine”. She added, “It has nuclear weapons, it has terrorism, extremists, corruption, very poor and it’s in a location that’s really, really important to us”.¹ The above is a telling commentary on Pakistan’s international standing. Pakistan’s civil and military leaders have used the only positive in Madeleine Albright’s comment – Pakistan’s key geographic location – to strike Faustian bargains with other powers from time to time that did not serve the long-term interests of the Pakistani people.

This part of the book surveys the factors and policies that have brought Pakistan to its current state of affairs. Such analysis is necessary not only to understand the nature of the Pakistani state and where it is headed but also to make coherent and effective policy choices to deal with it. We begin with religious extremism.

Religious extremism

On my way to Islamabad for the first time in July 1995 to take over as Deputy High Commissioner, I enquired from the passenger seated next to me in the Lahore-Islamabad PIA flight about its duration. The query was meant essentially to strike a conversation. He replied that it would take about half an hour to reach Islamabad and remarked, “You do not seem to be from here”. On being told that I was from India, he enquired “Are you a Kashmiri?” “No,” I replied. “Are you a Muslim?” “No”. “Aap kis maqsad se Pakistan aaye hain?” (“What brings you to Pakistan?”) was his next query. I said that I was on my way to work in the Indian High Commission. At this, the co-passenger clamped up. The bilateral relationship was going through a tense phase. Therefore, he either did not wish to converse with an Indian diplomat or was apprehensive about someone reporting him to the Pakistani agencies for doing so. This was my first exposure to pre-eminence of the religious identity in Pakistan, but not surprising in a country created in the name of religion.

Muslim divide in the Muslim homeland

Speaking to the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan on August 11, 1947, Muhammad Ali Jinnah said,

You are free; you are free to go to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or any other place of worship in this State of Pakistan. You may belong to any religion, caste or creed – that has nothing to do with the business of the State.

Pakistani liberals often cite this quote to say that Jinnah wanted the new state to give equal treatment to its citizens regardless of their religion. However, having created Pakistan on the basis of religion, he should have known better. He did not live long enough to steer its course, but even if he had, Pakistan would not have escaped the religious and sectarian divide and the resulting violence and chaos.

Within six months of Jinnah’s death, the Pakistan Constituent Assembly adopted the Objectives Resolution (it has remained part of Pakistan’s Constitutions enacted in 1956, 1962 and 1973) in March 1949, which provides, inter alia, that sovereignty over the entire universe belongs to “Allah Almighty alone” and the authority that He has delegated to the State of Pakistan, through its people, for being exercised within the limits prescribed by Him is a sacred trust. It also provides that Muslims shall be enabled to order their lives in accordance with the teachings and requirements of Islam “as set out in the Holy Quran and Sunnah”. While it states that adequate provision shall be made for the minorities to freely profess and practice their religions and develop their cultures, this provision has been observed more in the breach and the sorry plight of Pakistan’s religious minorities from its inception is a matter of public record. They have lived all along as second-class citizens.

The above provisions failed to build a lasting consensus. As the country moved forward, doctrinal differences over the branch or school of Islam that would govern it caused serious fissures in the Muslim majority. A Court of Inquiry headed by Justice Muhammad Munir, which enquired into the disturbances in the Pakistani Punjab caused by the agitation against Ahmadis in 1953, foresaw this problem and stated:

Keeping in view the several definitions (of Islam) given by the ulama, need we make any comment except that no two learned divines are agreed on this fundamental. If we attempt our own definition as each learned divine has done and that definition differs from that given by all others, we unanimously go out of the fold of Islam. And if we adopt the definition given by any one of the ulama, we remain Muslims according to the view of that alim but kafirs according to the definition of everyone else.²

Zulfikar Ali Bhutto succumbed to religious extremists in getting a constitutional amendment passed by the Parliament in 1974 to declare Ahmadis non-Muslims. They have remained at the receiving end of violence perpetrated by Islamic zealots, their places of worship are not called mosques, the signboards on their shops and their gravestones, bearing verses of the Quran, are defaced. Pakistan’s terror outfit Jamaat-ud-Dawa has remained at the forefront in targeting Ahmadis in Punjab.

Another fault line that fuelled extremism and violence in Pakistan was the traditional Shia-Sunni divide, which got accentuated after the Iranian revolution and the tussle between Iran and Saudi Arabia for the loyalty of Muslims in various countries. The fact that landlords in southern Punjab were Shias and their landless tenants mainly Sunni migrants from India too added to the divide. The State under General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq turning increasingly to Deobandi/Wahabi Islam placed Shias at a disadvantage. Free availability of arms and ammunition as a result of the “Afghan Jihad” and the consequent turmoil in Afghanistan and Pakistan’s tribal areas increased the lethality of the strife between Shias and Sunnis and other warring groups. During my stint as Deputy High Commissioner, clashes between the Sunni extremist organisation Sipah-e-Sahaba, its militant offshoot Lashkar-e-Jhangvi and the Shia militant outfit Sipah-e-Muhammad were quite common, with each round resulting in a large number of killings on both sides, including innocent devotees at their mosques. There were targeted killings of prominent Shia professionals. Even Iranian personnel in Pakistan were not spared. In 1990, the Consul General of Iran in Lahore was killed by Sunni terrorists. An Iranian diplomat was killed in Multan in 1997. The same year, some Iranian air force officers undergoing training with the Pakistan Air Force were killed in a sectarian attack. The above three outfits were banned post 9/11, but Sipah-e-Sahaba metamorphosed into Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi continued to operate and has such exploits as the attack against the Sri Lankan cricket team in 2009 and killing of a large number of Hazara Shias in Quetta in 2013 to its credit. Pakistan’s mainstream political parties have been hobnobbing with these groups to garner the votes of their adherents. By the time I went back to Pakistan as High Commissioner in 2009, the balance had tilted heavily against Shias because of the widespread terror perpetrated by the Sunni-Deobandi outfits. On account of growing incidents of terror, the Pakistani authorities decided at the end of 2010 to give me a vehicle borne armed contingent of four security personnel to accompany me during my road journeys. Coincidentally, the guard was deployed in early 2011, not too long after assassination of the Punjab Governor, Salman Taseer, by one of his armed guards. When I met a very senior Interior Ministry functionary a few days later, he made it a point to tell me that all the guards deployed with me were Shias. I did not bother to verify their sect, but they proved to be true to their duty.

The process of division eventually engulfed Sunnis by aggravating the fault line between Deobandis and Barelvis. Barelvis, constituting a large majority among the Sunnis in Pakistan, believe in a wider cultural interpretation of Islam, follow mystical Islamic practices and frequent Sufi shrines. The Deobandis on the other hand are adherents of a more orthodox version of Islam. In spite of their smaller number among Sunnis, Deobandis had come to acquire an upper hand because of their leading role in the Afghan Jihad, which made them the recipient of large-scale funds, not only from the western countries supporting the war against the Soviet Union but also from Saudi Arabia and other countries in West Asia. They were patronised by Zia-ul-Haq. The flow of funds from Saudi Arabia and other West Asian countries continued even after the Soviet forces withdrew from Afghanistan. A large number of participants in the Afghan Jihad, including the leading lights of the Taliban, were trained at Darul Uloom Haqqania, a Deobandi seminary located at Akora Khattak in the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa province of Pakistan. The war gave them access to lethal arms and ammunition as also a valuable connection to the Pakistan army and made them more prone to pick up the gun. Flush with funds, they took control of a large number of Sunni seminaries, thereby increasing their following and came to wield influence disproportionate to their numbers. For a long time, Barelvis were at the receiving end of violence perpetrated by Deobandis against them and their shrines.

Barelvis themselves have not been immune to extremism and have been among the strongest supporters of the blasphemy laws (the relevant provisions were introduced during the period 1980–86 under Zia-ul-Haq) that have been used to target minorities and even Muslims, often to settle personal score and have become a draconian instrument in the hands of influential sections of Muslims to carry forward their exclusionary practices in Pakistan. Once a person is accused of blasphemy, it becomes extremely difficult, if not impossible, to dispense justice to him or her (as was evident for a long time in the case of Asia Bibi, a Christian lady accused of blasphemy) because judges are scared to act in an impartial manner. The accused have often been murdered even before their trial was concluded. Moves to amend blasphemy provisions to make them more reasonable have met with stiff opposition from religious extremists.

In 1990, Pakistan Sunni Tehreek was founded by Muhammad Saleem Qadri, a Barelvi cleric, to counter the influence of Deobandis. It perpetrated acts of violence against its opponents and has been an ardent supporter of blasphemy laws. Muhammad Saleem Qadri was killed by Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan in 2001.

In more recent years, Barelvi extremism came to the fore following assassination of the then Punjab Governor Salman Taseer by his Barelvi bodyguard, Mumtaz Qadri, in January 2011, because he had spoken in favour of Asia Bibi. Mumtaz Qadri received widespread support among Barelvis, including from the Sunni Tehreek. The chief cleric of the historic Badshahi Mosque in Lahore refused to offer funeral prayers for Taseer. Many religious leaders gave a call not to attend the funeral. The prayers were eventually offered by a member of the Ulema wing of the then ruling party, PPP. Qadri was lionised by religious groups and garlanded by lawyers during his court appearances. He was sentenced to death by an anti-terror court towards the end of 2011 and hanged in 2016. But even in his death, he demonstrated the large following that he enjoyed in Pakistan. His funeral prayers saw the largest spontaneous gathering at the Liaqat Bagh in Rawalpindi, the venue of Benazir Bhutto’s assassination in December 2007.

Tehreek-e-Labbaik Ya Rasool Allah, a Barelvi organisation formed in 2015, which opposes any changes to the blasphemy provisions and calls for application of the Sharia law, shot into prominence towards the end of 2017, when it mounted a three-week siege of Islamabad, demanding resignation of the Law Minister in the then PML(N) government because in a change to the election law, the words to affirm a candidate’s belief in the finality of Prophet Muhammad were amended from “I solemnly swear” to “I believe”. The siege ended after intervention by the army and resignation of the law minister. The government also agreed to retain the original formulation of the candidates’ declaration.

While creating Pakistan in the name of religion, its founders forgot that intolerance and hatred, once let loose in the name of “us” vs. “them”, knows no bounds and invariably rips apart the most cohesive-looking “us” groups, leaving violence and misery in its trail for one and all.

State patronage

Religious parties and groups have prospered in Pakistan because they have been patronised and used from time to time both by military dictators and civilian leaders for their selfish ends. The religious sentiment has often been pandered to in order to make up for the shortfall in governance. In Pakistan’s initial years, its leaders found it expedient to use religion to paper over the ethnic and cultural differences of its provinces and forge unity in the country. The first constitution of Pakistan, adopted in February 1956 and scrapped following imposition of martial law in October 1958, besides incorporating the aforementioned Objectives Resolution, declared Pakistan an Islamic Republic, required the President to be a Muslim and provided that no law would be adopted against the teachings of the Quran and Sunnah. Even Ayub Khan, who “saw Islam as a nation-building tool, controlled by an enlightened military leader rather than by clerics”,³ could not resist the pressure of religious groups. He removed the adjective “Islamic” from the official name of the country in his constitution of 1962 but was obliged to restore it through an amendment in 1963.⁴ He also provided for an Advisory Council of Islamic Ideology to make recommendations to the government “as to means of enabling and encouraging the Muslims of Pakistan to order their lives in all respects in accordance with the principles and conc...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsement Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I The Pakistani state
• Part II India-Pakistan relations and India’s policy options
• Index