India-Pakistan in War and Peace
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INDIA-PAKISTAN IN WAR & PEACE Other Books by the Author Self in Autumn Anatomy of Flawed Inheritance My South Block Years: A Memoir Assignment Colombo Indo-Sri Lanka Relations from 1985–1989 Across Borders 50 Years of India’s Foreign Policy Liberation and Beyond Indo-Bangladesh Relations 1971–99 An Afghan Diary Zahir Shah and Beyond Indian Foreign Policy and its Neighbours INDIA-PAKISTAN IN WAR & PEACE J.N.Dixit LONDON AND NEW YORK First published 2002 in India by Books Today, an imprint of The India Today Group This edition published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2002, J.N.Dixit who asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-203-30110-2 Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0-203-34252-6 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0-415-30472-5 (Print Edition) Contents Introduction 1 1 IC-814 to Kandahar 10 2 Implications of the Kargil War 25 3 Tunnel Visionaries 72 4 Wellsprings of Antagonism 91 5 From Democracy to Dictatorship and War 122 6 The Break-up of Pakistan: Mujibnagar to Simla—The 161 Advent of Zia-ul-Haq 7 Coup to Coup: Pakistan, 1972–1999 232 8 Kashmir: The Intractable Bone of Contention 302 9 India and Pakistan—Nuclear Weapons States 322 10 Retrospect and Prospects 346 11 The Agra Summit and After 396 12 Uncertainties or Opportunities 411 Annexures 434 1 Pakistan-Birth and Objectives 435 2 Chronology of Significant Bilateral Meetings Between 453 1994–2000 3 Joint Statement 458 4 Memorandum of Understanding 460 5 Lahore Declaration 462 vi 6 Simla Agreement 1972 Agreement on Bilateral Relations 464 between the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan 7 Tashkent Declaration, 10 January 1966 467 8 India and Pakistan: Military Balance (Year 2000/2001) 470 Index 482 Introduction I originally wrote the introduction to this book as the Atal Behari Vajpayee-Pervez Musharraf summit concluded in Agra in July 2001. I thought my work was done, my assessment of a half-century and more of Indo-Pakistani relations complete. Three dates were to prove me wrong—11th of September, 13th of December and 12th of January. The attack on the World Trade Center in New York, the terrorist assault on the Parliament in New Delhi and Musharraf s “historic” speech to his people were only three signposts on the Indian subcontinent’s roller- coaster journey in this period. The war in Afghanistan and the destruction of the Taliban regime changed many of the verities on which this book was based. Yet, my purpose here is not to assess the consequences of the latest events, much less get carried away by them. There has to be a difference between quick journalism and reasoned analysis. It is appropriate to view even recent happenings through the prism of history. Such a larger view may indicate not a break from the past but perhaps continuity. I was pondering the rationale for this book when the Musharraf- Vajpayee summit commenced in Delhi on the 14th of July. At a lunch hosted by the Indian prime minister, a brief conversation with a well- known Pakistani provided me with the initial arguments to articulate the relevance of this book. I came to know Cowasji Jehangir, an eminent Parsi citizen of Pakistan, during my tenure as India’s high commissioner to his country between 1989 and 1991. I met him after a gap of ten years at Prime Minister Vajpayee’s lunch. Jehangir belongs to a distinguished family of shipping magnates of Karachi. He has been fearless, highly intellectual and articulate in advocating human rights, civil liberties and liberal political values through the travails of Pakistani politics stretching over the past three or four decades. He did not spend too much time on initial courtesies. “This summit,” he said, “is a good thing but its relevance still lies in what the two heads of governments 2 INDIA-PAKISTAN IN WAR & PEACE achieve.” He was not terribly optimistic. He wondered why the establishment in either country didn’t recognise the fact that: “Nal main pani tak nahi hai our atom bomb bana liya hai. Kya Pakistani aur Hindustani bomb khayenge?” He added: “Popular nara hai Roti, Kapda aur Makan. In teenon cheezon kay liye pehle pani hona chahiyey, peace hona chahiyey. Aur dono taraf sey log bekar ki batain kartai hain, Kashmir, Line of Control.” (There is no water in the taps, water is drying up, and we have gone ahead to make a bomb. The populist aspiration trumpeted by politicians is food, clothing and shelter. But they forget for all these three things there must first be water as an elemental factor. This they do not realise. They waste their time talking of irrelevant issues, Kashmir, Line of Control. How foolish can we get.) What he said provided a post facto rationale for this book, which I had started early in 2000. It is 55 years since the Partition of India. The objective for which Partition was brought about has not been met. The objective was that once those Muslims who wanted a separate homeland got their homeland, the antagonism, apprehension and suspicion that underpinned the demand for Pakistan would disappear. The two countries would live in harmony and peace. This was the aspiration of both Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru, first heads of government in the two countries. Exactly the reverse has happened. So I felt that perhaps a panoramic survey of Indo-Pakistani relations covering the entire period since the inception of the idea of Pakistan might serve a purpose. Locked in adversity, burdened by inadequacies in terms of territorial and political identities, devilled by misunderstanding, suspicion and animosity—Indians and Pakistanis have much to think about. In a telling phrase, as Jehangir asked me at the prime minister’s lunch, “Why are we in the subcontinent collectively so foolish?” The idea of Pakistan predates Partition by 30 years. Chaudhary Rehmat Ali, a young student at Cambridge University wrote a monograph in January 1933 titled “Now or Never”. In it he advocated a homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. He argued the future well-being of the Muslims in the region could not be ensured if they remained fragmented in different countries and particularly so in British India where the Hindus were in a majority. He talked of a Muslim homeland called “Pakistan” which would comprise Afghania (the North West Frontier Province), Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Sindh and Baluchistan. Significantly he did not talk of Muslim majority areas of Bengal and Assam as part of this “land of the pure and the faithful”, though he INTRODUCTION 3 hinted that other Muslim majority areas in the subcontinent could also unite as Muslim homelands and assume separate political identities. The pre-Partition Muslim League of India rejected Ali’s idea, describing it as chimerical and unpracticable. It was only towards the end of the decade of the 1930s, that the great Muslim philosopher and poet Alamma Iqbal recalled Ali’s idea and speculated on his suggestion being a possible solution to the concerns and aspirations of Muslims in the British Indian Empire. It was only in 1940 at the Lahore session of the Muslim League, Jinnah formally proposed the idea and the “Pakistan Resolution” was passed. The territorial concept of Pakistan was expanded to Assam and Bengal. The rest is history. Three specific events impelled me to undertake this longish analysis of how India and Pakistan have interacted in peace and war, influenced continuously by adversarial attitudes. The first was the Kargil war of summer 1999, waged by Pakistan within three months of Prime Minister Vajpayee’s visit to Lahore, which on its part was a serious attempt by India to normalise relations. The Kargil experience was instructive as far as many people of India were concerned. The second event was the hijacking of the Indian aircraft from Kathmandu in December 1999 and the manner in which Pakistan reacted to the hijacking and then treated the hijackers and the criminals whose release they managed to achieve. The third event was General Pervez Musharraf ousting Nawaz Sharif, the elected prime minister of Pakistan, in a military coup (mercifully bloodless) and Musharraf’s subsequent rejection of the Lahore process in November 1999. One discerned that differences between India and Pakistan went beyond territorial disputes, political issues and attitudes of the establishments of the two countries to similar situations. I felt, therefore, that an attempt to take the journey backwards from the events of 1999 to 2000, to the beginnings of Partition and beyond might perhaps provide insights to the gridlock of Indo-Pakistani relations. So the first two chapters deal with the hijacking of the Indian plane from Kathmandu to Kandahar via Dubai.