America, Pakistan, and the India Factor

N. Mohanty

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9781349458868, 9781137323866
• eBook ISBN: 9781137323873
• Topic: Politique et relations internationales
• Subtopic: Relations internationales

This book is not just an update to studies of Middle Eastern policy and diplomacy, but an in-depth analysis that covers the United States' foreign and strategic policy from the days of President Roosevelt to President Obama and Pakistan's security and strategic planning since its inception to 2011, under the shadow of India and Afghanistan.

C H A P T E R 1

THE COLD WAR AND STRATEGIC PARTNERS: 1947–1971

The reason Pakistan refuses to close terrorists’ sanctuaries in its territory is so they can use them against India. Pakistan’s obsession with India began when the subcontinent got independence in 1947. The partition of the subcontinent into India and Pakistan came with an unprecedented brutal violence, deaths, and destruction after the All India Muslim League (AIML, founded in 1906) declared on the Direct Action Day (DAD) on August 16, 1946, to divide India or destroy India. Like America (United States), the Indian subcontinent was a British colony. The birth of Pakistan came at a time of Cold War rivalry, communist menace, and when the British wanted British India to join World War II. In 1930 the Indian National Congress (INC, founded in 1885) launched a noncooperation campaign to boycott all aspects of British rule in India, the AIML’s M. A. Jinnah found himself in total disagreement with this movement and resigned from the Congress, and in 1940, at an AIML’s session in Lahore, he demanded for the partition of India and the creation of a Muslim state of Pakistan. The AIML’s pro-British Jinnah wanted India to join the war and was opposing the Khilafat movement (1919–1924) to restore Ottoman caliph (abolished by Kamal Ataturk in Turkey in 1924), to support the British on both issues, while the INC’s nationalist and the socialist Jawaharlal Nehru and the peace activist Mahatma Gandhi were against the war and were favoring the Khilafat movement, for solidarity with Muslims. The British did not trust the INC and its anticolonial agendas and thought that the INC would be hostile to the British interest after the independence.

At the time of the birth of Pakistan, the world’s worst migration of people, who crossed borders in Punjab and Bengal, was more than ten million and genocide of communal massacre of almost one million in the subcontinent. The Freedom Movement gave rise to the insecurity of Muslim minorities within the movement who wanted a separate Muslim country. The movement for a separate Muslim country was headed by a secular Muslim, Quaid-e-Azam (great leader) M. A. Jinnah, who hardly practiced Islam. It was not an ideological revolution but a radicalism to establish a new land for Islamists that stoked and fomented communal hatred and bloodshed. The Hindus and Muslims who revolted together in 1857 against the British were killing each other in the 1940s. The most religious Muslim leaders and elected Muslim officials were against the creation of Pakistan, as there was no threat to Islam or Muslims. America supported the Freedom Movement and opposed the partition of India. The British continued their Great Game, and initially America did not side with them. After the partition, with Indian prime minister Nehru’s Non-Aligned Policy, America found a partner in Pakistan. Communists became a possible threat to the Western world. Eventually, America became the partisan of Pakistan and was concerned about containing Communism and Soviet expansion.

Later, after the attacks on America on September 11, 2001, America also committed itself to combating terrorism. America’s relations with Pakistan impact terrorism, nuclear security and proliferation, oil and energy transportation, and strategic calculus in Europe, Central Asia, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East. The relations have been volatile, never vibrant, restive, yet resilient, turbulent, and unreliable. The serious danger for Pakistan and for the world, however, comes from radical Islam, which is destabilizing the country and posing an existential threat to its survival. It is also viciously spreading to its neighbors and beyond, and the fear always exists that violent jihadists, holy warriors, will gain access to Pakistan’s nuclear weapons.

The British promised the independence of India by partitioning the country into a truncated India populated by a majority of Hindus, and Pakistan, populated by a Muslim majority. Unilaterally, the British committed Indian forces to join the Allied Army. India’s national parties had opposing reactions. The INC, headed by Gandhi, objected to the war, while the AIML, led by Jinnah, supported it. The British strategically wanted to create a state that would give them access to Afghanistan, Iran, China, and the part of the Indian Ocean that abutted the Gulf States. The Great Game restarted with the partition of India. American president Franklin Roosevelt was very much in favor of India’s freedom, and he mediated with the British administration, particularly Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who opposed it. Secular Great Britain played the Muslim card and divided India to deter the nationalists from aligning with the Freedom Movement. To avoid the collapse of the Empire, he indulged in the worst hypocrisy, conspiracy, poisoned the minds of the Muslim intellectuals, and yielded to the tyranny of the misguided minorities, forsaking the British values of democracy, pluralism, and secularism. Jinnah claimed that the Muslims of India, 20 percent of the population, were a different nation because they were Muslims. But the Muslims and Hindus of the subcontinent were of the same culture, history, and heritage, shared the same food habits, and could not be distinguished physically. Additionally, 90 percent of the subcontinent’s Muslims were converts.

In 1946 the population of India was 385 million with 255 million Hindus, 92 million Muslims, 6 million Sikhs, 6 million Christians, and 26 million Tribal.¹ The AIML wanted to be equal to the INC in every federal and state branch of India’s government or be given a separate country. By definition, a state is a self-governing political entity. The term state can be used interchangeably with country. A nation, however, is a tightly knit group of people who share a common culture. Nations are culturally homogeneous groups of people, larger than a single tribe or community, who share a common language, religion, and historical experience. When a nation of people has a state or country of their own, it is called a nation-state. Nations like France, Egypt, Germany, and Japan are excellent examples of nation-states. There are some states that have two nations, such as Canada and Belgium. Even with its multicultural society, the United States is also referred to as a nation-state because of the shared American “culture.” A nation-state is a nation that has the same borders as a state. However, there are nations without states, like the Kurds. Religion, a matter of private practice, does not make a nation. For example, 15 percent of France’s population is Muslims, but they are not called or defined as a separate nation. In ten years or more France’s Muslim population may exceed 20 percent. Can Muslims of France demand a separate state as Indian Muslims did in the 1940s?

The Pakistani anthropologist Salman Rashid writes,

Every single Muslim in the subcontinent believes s/he is of Arab descent. If not direct Arab descent, then the illustrious ancestor had come from either Iran or Bukhara. Interestingly, the ancestor is always a great general or a saint . . . Arab origin is the favorite fiction of all sub-continental Muslims . . . Most of us are the progeny of converts. In their need to escape the discrimination of the so-called higher castes, our ancestors converted to a religion that in theory claimed to profess human equality regardless of color or caste. I use the words “in theory” because even as the Arabs converted our ancestors to Islam, they discriminated against them for being “Hindis” as we learn this from Ibn Batuta’s own prejudices. And he is not alone. Consequently, even after conversion, my ancestors, poor agriculturists, were looked down upon by the Arabs and even those who had converted earlier the same way as they were by the Brahmans when they professed their Vedic belief.²

However, Muslims of the subcontinent preserved their heritage by marrying within their same caste, ethnicity, and community, just like Hindus. And recently, Pakistanis also identify with the Indus Valley civilization.

Jinnah’s demand for a separate state led to the Cabinet Mission prior to independence. The Freedom Movement was eclipsed by the cloud of communal disharmony and discord that resulted in bloody violence. Division on the basis of religion began. The aide to Lord Mountbatten, V. P. Menon writes,

When in 1942 HMG’s (His Majestic Government) offer was announced, the opinion was widely expressed that the British were bent upon the division of the country; that they wanted to create a Middle—Eastern sphere of influence and in pursuance of that policy, wished to bring about the creation of a separate Pakistan. This would [in] accord with their policy of protecting the Straits [of Hormuz] on the Persian Gulf and the Suez Canal from Russian influence and with their new but overwhelming interest in oil of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia.³

President Roosevelt, always differed with Britain’s Churchill on granting independence to India, had appointed Colonel Louis Johnson to report to him from Delhi on the British engagement with India. The ADC to Lord Mountbatten, Narendra Sarila writes, “On 21 February (Secretary of State for India Leopold) Amery wrote to viceroy on how to get around that ‘we are deliberately holding up all progress by giving a blackmailing veto to the minorities. Johnson reported that the ‘Muslim League [was being] used by Britain as a counterforce to [the] Congress’ and that ‘[Lord] Wavell hates and distrusts Nehru.’”⁴ Sarila continues: “Roosevelt’s interest in India was based on enlisting popular support there against the advancing Japanese, enduring India’s freedom and the subsequent building up, after the war, of post-colonial order in Asia.” In a correspondence with Churchill, Roosevelt noted, as describes Sarila, “The feeling almost universally held is that the deadlock has been caused by the unwillingness of the British Government to concede to the Indians the right of self-government, notwithstanding the willingness of the Indians to entrust technical, military and naval defence control to the competent British authorities.”

President Roosevelt categorically told Sir Ronald Campbell in August 1942 that the partition of India “sounded terrible” after America’s experience of the US Civil War. In April 1945 US secretary of state Edward Stettinius urged British foreign secretary Anthony Eden to grant India self-rule. With the success of the British Labor Party in the 1945 election, London dispatched in March 1946 a three-person Cabinet Mission headed by Sir Stafford Cripps, with a mission to grant independence, preserving the unity of India. The American mission in India was vehemently opposed to the division of India, and they met the AIML leaders Jinnah and veteran Liaquat Khan to work with the INC to form a federated India. American media reported that Jinnah, an intransigent politician, was senselessly blocking India’s road to independence. Both the INC and the AIML agreed with the finding of the Cabinet Mission. Unfortunately, India’s Nehru made a thoughtless, premature, impudent comment that India would alter the Cabinet Mission plan after independence, which indirectly helped Jinnah to withdraw support to the Cabinet Mission and demand the creation of Pakistan. Jinnah urged Indian Muslims to launch DAD, “Deliverance Day,” in August 1946.

The Cabinet Mission for the Partition of India was formed on February 19, 1946, with Lord Patrick-Lawrence (secretary of state for India), Sir Stafford Cripps, and Mr. A. V. Alexander. On March 13 Prime Minister Attlee declared, “It was for India to decide what form of Government should replace the existing regime, though he [Attlee] hoped that she would elect to remain within the British Commonwealth.”⁵ Attlee added:

We are mindful of the rights of minorities, and the minorities should be able to live free from fear. On the other hand, we cannot allow a minority to place their veto on the advance of the majority. Sir Stafford found it impossible to pin him (Jinnah, the leader of the minorities’ party, AIML) down to anything beyond vague phrases. The Muslim leader’s technique of getting the other man to make an offer so that he (Jinnah) could turn it down and ask for more was difficult to counter, except for ignoring it, and that was dangerous in the existing crisis . . . At the same time the Congress would never agree to the partition of India.⁶

The meeting at Shimla produced no agreements between the INC and the AIML. The INC was also opposed to parity between groups in the executive or legislature and held that it was not open to suggestions for the division of India. The three-tier structure was a recipe for a deadlock in the parliament because of the veto power of each party. The Cabinet Mission left India on June 29, 1946, after securing the following agreement on May 16, 1946, agreed to by both the INC and the AIML: if there is to be internal peace in India, it must be secured by measures that will assure Muslims control in all matters vital to their culture, religion, economic, and other interests. But it rejected the AIML’s demand for a Pakistan consisting of all six provinces, since substantial portions of those provinces contained non-Muslim minorities. The three-tier constitutional structure of the Cabinet Mission consisted of a top level that would be a Union of India embracing British India as well as the Indian States but dealing only with foreign affairs, defense, and communications, with equal numbers of majority and minority members for parity, even when the majority is four times the number of minority. The second one was comprised of “groups” to be formed by provinces to deal with certain common subjects. The third was to consist of provinces and states in which all residuary powers would be vested. At a press conference on July 10, 1946, Pundit Nehru said, “Moreover, the scope of the Center would have to include (as the corollary of foreign affairs, defense and communications) defense industries, foreign trade, currency and credit, adequate taxing power. The Mission’s proviso about power arrangements for minorities was a domestic Indian problem. We accept no outsider’s interference with it, certainly not the British Government’s.”⁷ Asked at the press conference whether he meant that the Cabinet Mission’s plan could be modified, Nehru replied that the Congress regarded itself as free to change or modify the plan in the Constitutional Assembly as it thought best. Nehru’s undiplomatic blunt remarks were not against decentralization but were against religious groupings as a dysfunctional construct. Concerning the central powers of the union executive, Nehru argued that it “would require ‘some over-all power’ to intervene in grave crisis breakdowns and that such central power ‘inevitably grows.’”

While INC leaders Gandhi and Nehru were reluctant to accept the mission’s mandate, Jinnah accepted it as the leader of the Muslim League.⁸ He declared, “We shall have India divided or we shall have India destroyed.” During the Muslim League Council meeting held on July 27–29, 1946, a resolution was passed declaring a DAD that was intended to unfold “direct action for the achievement of Pakistan.”

The British academic Yasmin Khan has shown similarities in the political rhetoric of Nehru and Jinnah:

Nehru gave one speech at Sukkurin Sind to a crowd estimated to be 50,000 strong in which he said that, in the free India everybody would be provided with sufficient food, education and all the facilities including a house to live and that Pakistan was a useless idea which meant slavery forever . . . Jinnah made a direct comparison between his leadership and Churchill’s, while Congressmen (INC) drew parallels between the Muslim League (AIML) and activities of the Nazis.⁹

India had been wrecked by the violence of partition, during which at least one million people were slaughtered, and on the DAD in August of 1946, India was further damaged by mass killings in Calcutta. Jinnah’s DAD was meant to show the Congress Party the futility of opposing the new nation. When asked about the implicit threat of violence behind the DAD, which left the streets running with blood, Jinnah said, “I am not prepared to discuss ethics.” Jinnah had arguably already won the fight for Pakistan in 1939 when Lord Linlithgow, the British viceroy, effectively recognized Jinnah’s Muslim League as the sole spokesman of all Muslims in British India in return for Jinnah’s support of India’s participation in World War II.

More than 5,000 people were slaughtered on the DAD, 15,000 were injured, and 100,000 were left without homes. This represented a direct failure of the state and federal British government to prevent the massacre that was planned by the AIML. It was a terrible defeat for Gandhi, one that smashed his lifelong dream of peace, unity, and nonviolence. The British Empire was the first to yield to terrorist violence and brutality before they left the Indian subcontinent. By their “divide and rule” policy, the British favored the Muslim martial races and exa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Introduction: The Volatile Strategic Partnership
• 1   The Cold War and Strategic Partners: 1947–1971
• 2   Eating Grass for Nuclear Bombs: 1971–1979
• 3   Strategic Assets and the Great Game: 1979–2001
• 4   The Jaws of Victory: 2001–2008
• 5   The Labyrinth: 2008–2012
• Epilogue
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index