How Indian problems may impact Pakistan?

Having discussed in the article last week the impact on Pakistan of Afghanistan and China, I will move on to India, the country’s third neighbour which is now faced with its own problems. Some of these entered the commentary in the western press when the country celebrated its 75^th birthday, a day after Pakistan turned 75 on August 14. Before I discuss the Indian situation, it may be appropriate to discuss why Pakistan’s birthdate comes a day before that of India.

As the British were preparing to leave their Indian colony and return to London, Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy sent to India by the government in Britain, let it be known that he wished to remain as Governor General of both dominions — India and Pakistan. The day for the transfer had been set for August 15 for India with elaborate arrangements having been made to swear in the new government that was to be headed by Jawaharlal Nehru who along with Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, had led the fight for independence. While the latter had come to be called Mahatma Gandhi, he refused to accept any official position in the new government.

Jinnah did not approve the proposed arrangement and did not wish to share the Governor Generalship with Mountbatten. He wanted a clean break with India. When Mountbatten proposed postponing Pakistan’s independence by a few days, Jinnah suggested that he could be sworn in as Pakistan’s Governor General a day before — on August 14. It was with some reluctance that the Viceroy agreed to travel to Karachi a day before handing over power to the Indian successor. That is how Pakistan became India’s one day older twin-brother.

For almost sixty years — to be precise from August 15, 1947 to May 26, 2014 — India could be described as a strict parliamentary democracy. Laws under which the government worked were made by the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament. The Lok Sabha members were chosen in the elections that granted the vote to all citizens of the country above the age of 21 irrespective of their sex, caste and religion. Unlike the history of the extension of franchise in the United States, the other large democracy, women, or people belonging to lower economic status, did not have to struggle to gain the right to vote. They were given that from the first day that India became a constitutional republic.

In 2014, the Hindu Nationalist Bhartiya Janata Party, the BJP, won a majority of seats in the Lok Sabha. That meant that it did not have to bring in other parties into a coalition which had to be done by the Indian National Congress (INC) that had governed the country before 2014. The INC was an old organisation that had led the fight to again independence for the British colony in South Asia. The BJP was relatively new. It drew its roots from Rastriya Swayamsevak Sangh, the RSS, which was fashioned after Germany’s Nazi Party.

Like the Nazis, the RSS limited its membership to those who believed in its very restrictive ideology. Only Hindus, who strictly observed the fundamentals of the religion, could enter the party. Once in the party, they had to go through regular period of training in ideology and martial arts. Like a military organisation, the party had ranks; joining at the very bottom the party members could gradually advance to leadership positions. This is precisely what Narendra Modi. the current head of the BJP and twice elected to the country’s premiership, had done over the years. The recognised leaders of the Indian independence movement such as Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru were secular in their outlook and were honoured for six and a half decades as the true heroes of the independent India’s early history.

The large, growing and influential Indian diaspora in the United States has meant a fair amount of coverage was given to India when some development demanded the American-Indian interest. The observance of the 75^th birthday on August 15, 2022 was one such event that was covered in some detail. The American press reported extensively on the way several influential voices were reassessing the role played by Gandhi in expelling the British from his country and creating what is India today. For instance, Gerry Smith of The Washington Post in a long story titled: “As India marks its first 75 years, Gandhi is downplayed, even derided” reported how many in India were rewriting their past. He opened the story with a review of a documentary about the Indian independence movement. The movie “RRR” is a three-hour visual effects that was released in the spring of this year and instantly broke records at the box office. The film pays homage to the rising tide of Hinduism; in the movie’s climax Indian villagers arm themselves with guns, bows and arrows to fight the British who had ruled their country for centuries and overcome them. The film concludes with a lavish song and dance that eulogises a list of real-life revolutionaries from India history. “Absent from the names?” asks Smith. The answer: Mahatma Gandhi, the Indian pacifist who has been celebrated by many — including the Rev. Martin Luther Jr — as an inspiration and icon of nonviolent resistance. Continues Smith in his coverage: “As India celebrates 75 years of independence on Monday, the legacy of the ‘father of the nation’ who had advocated nonviolence and secularism is being debated as never before. Instead, Indians are embracing a pantheon of other 20^th century heroes, particularly leaders who favored armed struggle or overtly championed Hinduism is a reflection of the nation’s mood and its shifting politics.”

With radical Hinduism on the rise and the adoption of Hindutva as the governing philosophy for the country, India is not only abandoning its reputation as one of the few developing countries that had found a way of governance by following what Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson in their well-read book, Why Nations Fail, suggest for a governing system to succeed. According to them, for making a working nation it must adopt a system that is inclusive rather than exclusive. The constitution of India adopted in 1951 was written by a lawyer who belonged to the lower castes and incorporated provisions to improve the opportunities that were available to the lower-class people to move forward. Sunil Khilnani, a historian of Indian origin, wrote a book, The Idea of India, in which he suggested that the country had found a way of bringing into existence a governing system that would deal with extreme diversity. Just to give one example of diversity — there; there are 120 languages spoken in the country. However, what is most worrying about modern India is the way India under the Hindutva system is treating its minority. The Muslims are a minority but they still number 200 million people, close to the number in Pakistan.

Leading the charge on Gandhi and his role in the Indian history is Prime Minister Narendra Modi. To quote from Gerry Smith’s article: “Personifying the cultural shift is Narendra Modi, the popular prime minister who is portrayed by his allies as a living counterpoint to Gandhi and Nehru: tough on Islamic separatists, steeped in Hindu nationalism formidable on the world stage and — if his campaign speeches are to be taken literally — physically imposing, with a 56 inch chest.” Modi has come down hard on the Muslims; changing the status of the Muslim majority Kashmir to a “Union territory” directly controlled from New Delhi and passing a legislation to reduce Muslims to secondary status. A large restive Muslim population on Pakistan’s border spells trouble for Islamabad.

Published in The Express Tribune, August 22^nd, 2022.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.