Commentary/Amberish K Diwanji

India-Pakistan war: The end of ideologies and the two-nation theory

The first two weeks of December 1996 will witness the silver jubilee of the Indian armed forces's finest hour: The comprehensive defeat of Pakistani armed forces and the dismemberment of that country. In fact, so thorough was the defeat that while the first 25 years of India's and Pakistan's independence would see the two countries fight three wars against each other, the next 25 would see no war. Pakistan would henceforth challenge India by arming separatist forces, backing them to the hilt, but never openly declaring war.

In politics, the war saw India traversing the path of realpolitik, and effectively ended the nation's non-aligned policy. The decade leading to the war would see strange bedfellows as a committed United States ally, Pakistan, would grow close to China, then perceived as being hostile to the US. And this, in turn, would force India to drop its commitment to non-alignment and depend on the Soviet Union.

The entire sequence began when the People's Republic of China attacked India in 1962. Forced to take help, India leant on the United States, then under John Kennedy, bringing India and the US closer to each other than it had ever been, or would ever be. The only good thing that came out of the drubbing that India got at the hands of the Chinese was the increase in defence budgets, an awareness of the country's strategic needs, and the strengthening of the armed forces. The defeat at the hands of the Chinese, along with their betrayal would forever rankle Indians, but it would help create one of the better armed forces in the world.

Then, in 1965, India repulsed a Pakistani attempt to break Kashmir from India. Faced with Pakistani infiltrators in the northern state, Lal Bahadur Shastri gave the order for an allout attack. The month-long war, which also saw the largest tank battle after World War II in the Khemkaran sector in Punjab, would end more or less in a draw. But for India, it was a gain.

First, it had forced Pakistan to give up its plan to forcibly dismember Kashmir from India. And the army gained immense confidence after its sorry debacle against the Chinese. China made noises during the war, and many feared a second front, but luckily for India, that never came.

Pakistan was part of the US-led Baghdad Pact, created to contain the Communists. But the dictum 'an enemy's enemy is my friend' held greater meaning for both China and Pakistan than ideological bonding, and the two countries forged a friendship that continues to this day. This kinship would come in handy less then five years later when the Soviet Union and China fell out, and the US began to woo the People's Republic.

Communist brotherhood came to nought in 1969 when China and the Soviet Union were engaged in a series of clashes along the Ussuri river. Henry Kissinger mentions in his book Diplomacy that the US made it clear to the Soviets that it would not brook a war against China, even though Sino-US relations were unfriendly. The US then recognised Taiwan as the official China, and the People's Republic was not even a member of the United Nations, thanks to the US veto. But the US, under president Richard Nixon, was fearful of the Soviet Union gobbling up China, changing forever the balance of power equation against the US.

And to alter the balance of power in the favour of the US, Nixon was not going to let a chance to ally with the world's most-populated nation, often acknowledged as the third superpower in the world, go to waste. Washington used Pakistan as its conduit to begin formal relations with Beijing. For Pakistan to see its two allies, previously opposed, close ranks must have been manna from heaven. For India, to watch US join the Sino-Pak alliance was nightmarish.

Very clearly, India's non-alignment had helped little. Realpolitik was the need of the day, and India was desperately in need of friends and allies. Another country in a similar boat was the Soviet Union. The Soviets were clearly worried as they now literally faced a two-front situation. Communist ideology had failed to contain the age-old disputes of nationalism. Isolated India and USSR would end up in each others's arms, notwithstanding the ideologies and different political structures of each.

If Communism failed to hold nations together, so did religion. After suffering from West Pakistan's neglect, East Pakistanis broke away, Bangladesh declared itself independent in March 1971, and set up a government in exile in Calcutta. Guerrilla warfare began on a large scale, and the Mukti Bahini -- the Bangladeshi rebels -- were assisted by Indian troops in training and logistics, and later in active support.

Clearly, India realised that it could not realistically take on both China and Pakistan. It needed an effective alliance to ensure that China would not interfere until the Indian military objective to dismember Pakistan was realised. There was no non-aligned country capable of giving that kind of help. The US was out, only the Soviet Union was available. Thus, New Delhi signed a treaty of peace and friendship with Moscow. For India, the purpose of the pact was clear: to prevent China from coming to the help of Pakistan when (there was no question of if) war broke out. After ensuring that India's northeastern flank was safe, the armed forces were now able to concentrate on Pakistan, both East and West.

The Indian armed forces proved their might by defeating the Pakistani forces in just 14 days. East Pakistan went on to become Bangladesh. China made noises, but did not act. The Soviet Union showed its usefulness by vetoing the move for an Indian pullout in the United Nations. Much has been made of the US Seventh Fleet moving up the Bay of Bengal, and the reason remains unanswered.

Few believe that the US really had any plans to help Pakistan in Bangladesh; it risked bringing in the Soviet Union. Perhaps this was also the main reason why China kept quiet: the Sino-US friendship was too new for the US to actually go to war for the sake of China, even against the Soviet Union. According to some reports, the US was not concerned with East Pakistan, they simply wanted to ensure that West Pakistan was not broken up by an India that had tasted the blood of success.

But India also paid a price. Non-alignment was de facto dead, and the Non-Aligned Movement would acquire a pro-Soviet tinge. India's relations with the US reached its nadir, improving only after 1973 when and trade ties were resumed. Indian foreign and strategic policies would always be based on acute realism, and idealism would be a dirty word.

In fact, India would from then on always be seen as part of the Soviet camp, thereby diminishing its credibility. Indian leadership of the Third World, and its talk of peace and disarmament would no longer carry the same clout as it did in the heydays of the 1950s.

For Indians, and the world, the 1960s would be the age of strategic alliance and realpolitik. In many ways, the 1960s were the years when Indian dreams came to an end, survival alone mattered, realism held the day. It would be the decade when ideological and religious monoliths were shattered, nationalism came to the fore. But the icing would be that for India, the creation of Bangladesh was to prove how hollow was the two-nation theory. Partition had been clearly proven wrong.

The war would not resolve the single most intransigent problem: Kashmir. Indians would often rue that the country missed a golden opportunity to ensure, once and for all, that Pakistan would never again question the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. But in doing so, they forget that wars do not answer such questions, just sweep them under the carpet. The fact that Pakistan cannot openly help Kashmir by declaring war (just like India did to help Bangladesh) is proof of the effectiveness of 1971.