SSridhar wrote:A_Gupta & shiv, great discussion.
A_Gupta, thanks for bringing the civilizational aspect of the conflict back into focus. In our day-to-day tactical handling of Pakistan, we sometimes tend to forget the strategic larger issue which is certainly the 'civilizational enmity' of Pakistan with India which is the reason why it is called Pakistan's 'enduring hostility'.
This is a long post.
The gist of my argument is that as A-Gupta reiterated, there are two paradigms proffered by analysts, one 'security-seeking' and the other 'civilizational'. The former is the widely accepted Western construct and the latter, the long held Indian belief among many analysts (there are some exceptions which we shall see later). As far as Pakistan is concerned, the two constructs are not mutually exclusive as it uses them to target appropriate audiences to effectively further its singular obsessive agenda.
The 'security-seeking' model emanated from American analysts, bureaucrats and politicians who wanted to justify to India their military collaboration with the Pakistanis in terms that appear reasonable. The Americans, during the Cold War period were not willing to entirely let go of India and wanted to maintain a relationship with us, however tenuous and hostile it may be. This way, they justified their arms transfer by claiming that all they did was to supply just enough weapons for Pakistan to fend itself off a much larger adversary. This model continues and fine examples of proponents of this model in recent times were Obama, Armitage, Cheney et al.
To understand the 'civilizational' paradigm, we travel a century back to the beginning of the twentieth century. We need to understand the churn amongst the Muslim society in India. By the turn of the twentieth century, the Muslims were acutely aware of the fact that they had seen better days and their glory was on the wane irrecoverably. The previous two centuries had seen the European powers like Great Britain, Russia, and France vanquish Muslim rulers in India, Central Asia and parts of North Africa respectively. By early twentieth century, the Ottoman Empire was disintegrating. Muslims all over the world, and especially in India, were introspecting and came to the conclusion that their misfortune was because of moving away from Islam. In India, Emperor Akbar’s accommodation of Hindu philosophy had already raised the ire of the fundamentalists. The backlash came swiftly in the form of his successor Emperor Aurangazeb who implemented a strict form of Islam and treated the Hindus as dhimmi. Sheikh Ahmed Sirhindi, who was a religious teacher of Aurangazeb, ensured fundamentalist ideas were firmly entrenched in governance. This later led to the emergence of such hardcore fundamentalists as Sheikh Waliullah and Ahmed Berelvi who took his volunteers to Afghanistan border to fight the British and the Sikh kings, in an act reminiscent of Prophet Muhammad’s hijra from Makkah to Medinah. The Afghan borders have never been the same after this emigration by Ahmed Berelvi. While some Muslims raged at their impotence to fight the British, others plotted to regain power through an association with the British. The Indian muslims were thus divided into two groups. The Second War of Independence in 1857 by Indian soldiers (the First War of Independence was in July 1806 when sepoys mutineed in the Vellore Fort) under the flag of the Mughal ruler, Bahadur Shah Zafar and the ruthless manner it was put down and he was exiled to Burma where he died eventually and his young sons were brutally killed, created revulsion in the minds of Indian Muslims.
SSridhar saar,
I think we are missing a very important point. But, before I make that point, I want to ask a few questions to lead to that point.
a) About Security State:
Why would Pakistan need security? The assumption is that India will attack Pakistan, so Pakistan needs security. This assumption is not based on facts. Everyone with any knowledge on these issues, knows that all the Indo-Pak conflicts are started by Pak. Then, why would anyone want to assume that India will attack Pakistan? If India will not attack Pakistan, then why would Pakistan need a security?
b) About civilizational threat:
Here, you talked about the history of malsI in Bhaarath. What are the fears expressed by Sirhindi? There are two combined fears:
1) The large and martial Hindhu people who cannot be subjugated easily. It would be a costly and protracted campaign. And it would require a healthy dose of divide and rule. And still there are frequent rebellions and reconvertions.
2) The second fear is the real fear. These Hindhu people regardless of whether they are converted or not will digest new cults into Hindhuism. Sirhindi actually saw this fear manifest in his own lifetime when Akbar created Dheen-i-Ilahi. He was spooked. The real fear is that Hindhuism will simply digest them and not even burp. Thats why Sirhindi did not want mass convertions of Hindhus into malsI because he was convinced that such mass convertions would change the very character of malsI as he knew it. The whole idea being to insulate malsI from Indian culture(which is naturally seeped in Hindhuism). This attempt to insulate Indian culture from malsI continued with every conservative icon of malsI in India. This is true as late as Barelvi. We generally tend to think that by 1800, the Hindhus who converted to malsI would have been thoroughly alienated from Hindhu culture and Indian culture. This is not true. It seems that even as late as 1800, many people even in places like Khorasan(which were the first regions in India to be converted) continued with many Hindhu practices.
Barelvi was quite successful in setting up a network of centres in various cities of North India. He enlisted an impressive following, particularly among the upper class Muslims. He also collected a lot of money at the same time. He called upon Muslims to eliminate three kinds of excesses - firstly, those advocated by heterodox Sufis; secondly, those practised by the Shias; and thirdly, those �borrowed� from the Hindus. Prof. Aziz Ahmad writes: �This last category was by far the most important, and was most vigorously denounced by Sayyid Ahmad Barelvi. It had included pilgrimage to Hindu holy places, shouting Hindu religious slogans, and adorning the tombs with lingams (Hindu phallic symbol), worship of Hindu deities, borrowing from Hindu animism, consulting Brahmins for good or bad omens, and celebration of Hindu festivals. Next came external Hindu manners, such as eating on leaves or keeping pig-tails or piercing women�s ears and nose to wear jewellery or shaving one�s hair and eyebrows in imitation of yogis or even dressing like Hindus.�5
Barelvi forgot that a majority of Muslims in India were converts from the Hindu fold, and that Islam sat rather lightly on most of them. This is understandable. After all, Barelvi was an Islamic missionary and not a historian of Islam in India. What amazes one is that even Muslim scholars in modern times have managed to forget that the �impurities� or �excesses� of Islam in India were not injected into it by Hindus from the outside, but were brought along by Hindu converts who were driven or lured into the fold of Islam by force or fraud. Nor has any Muslim scholar noted that it is these �impurities� and �excesses� which have prevented the total brutalization of native Muslims such as had always been and is being advocated by their Ashrãf (foreign) mentors.
To resume the story, Barelvi�s confidence in a jihãd against the British collapsed when he surveyed the extent and the magnitude of British power in India. He did the next best under the circumstances, and declared a jihãd against the Sikh power in the Punjab, Kashmir and the North-West Frontier. The British on their part welcomed this change and permitted Barelvi to travel towards the border of Afghanistan at a leisurely pace, collecting money and manpower along the way. It was during this journey that Barelvi stayed with or met several Hindu princes, feigned that his fulminations against the Sikhs were a fake, and that he was going out of India in order to establish a base for fighting against the British. It is surmised that some Hindu princes took him at his word, and gave him financial help. To the Muslim princes, however, he told the truth, namely, that he was up against the Sikhs because they �do not allow the call to prayer from mosques and the killing of cows.�6
Barelvi set up his base in the North-West Frontier near Afghanistan. The active assistance he expected from the Afghan king did not materialise because that country was in a mess at that time. But the British connived at the constant flow not only of a sizable manpower but also of a lot of finance. Muslim magnates in India were helping him to the hilt. His basic strategy was to conquer Kashmir before launching his major offensive against the Punjab. But he met with very little success in that direction in spite of several attempts. Finally, he met his Waterloo in 1831 when the Sikhs under Kunwar Sher Singh stormed his citadel at Balakot.
Link
Most of the alienating cultural aspects were introduced as late as 1800s. Barelvi was still trying to undo Hindhu customs in Khorasan region as late as 1800. Urdu was propagated mostly in UP & Bihar in 1800s. The Urdu language itself is mostly Indian languages of UP & Bihar with some persian loan words written in foreign script. Earlier, Persian was spoken by the educated aristocracy. The commoners spoke native languages. So, there was not much difference between a commoners of different faiths in terms of culture. Thats why they write Urdu in a foreign script simply because if Urdu is written in a local script, it becomes indistinguishable from Hindhi. Just as Urdu is separated from Hindhi, similarly a common muslim is separated from a common Hindhu in small ways. If these small ways are removed, then the conservatives fear that they will be assimilated. So, the whole idea is to create an insulation so that they are unable to get assimilated. The insulation is generally middle-eastern culture. The middle-eastern loaned culture is used as an insulation. British idea of secularism(as practised from 1906) was to support the conservatives and protect the insulation to stop assimilation into Indian culture.
This leads back to the first set of questions:
Why would Pakistan need protection from India when India has never attacked Pakistan till today? What exactly is Pakistan afraid of? There are dual fears of Pakistan:
a) India will conquer them
b) India will assimilate them
Out of these two fears, the second fear is the bigger fear. A military defeat is not really that feared because they know that India will not resort to any mass murder. But, an assimilation seems to be really feared.
The mere existence of a Hindhu India is a threat because it threatens to assimilate Pakistan. All of the Pakistan's actions are understandable if we see that Pakistan is more afraid of being assimilated by India than being conquered by India. They have realized that its impossible to keep undoing the Indian culture. They have tried as much as they can. They have negated their race. They have changed their language, dress, customs, ...everything. Yet, somehow, they still can't get rid of the Hindhuism within. So, whats the solution from their angle? The only solution they can think of is to somehow conquer India and convert the whole India. If there is no Hindhu India, then there is no threat. Then, they can get into Iran model. Perhaps, Indian culture need not be shed once all of the Hindhus have been converted because then Indian culture won't be associated with Hindhuism. At worst, they hope for Mughal model of reigning over the Hindhus.
Now, why do Pakistanis keep insisting about Honor and Dignity vis-a-vis India? The idea is that if at any point Pakistan is seen as not having any parity with India, then they fear that this will lead to questions on Partition. And this will eventually lead to assimilation. Cultural assimilation and territorial assimilation. Thats why Pakistan doesn't want any two-way ties with India. Pakistan is more than willing to have one-way ties but it has steadfastly refused to reciprocate on any ties as it fears this will lead to assimilation. They are afraid that Pakistanis themselves may want assimilation with India if they see Hindhu India as disproportionately more powerful and wealthy. In short, if Hindhuism is seen as cool, then Pakistanis will also adopt it and soon get assimilated. We tend to look at Pakistan as a separate nation. Pakistan itself seems to be not very confident of being separate from India.
