The deep state’s snake pit
Srivastava shows how Pakistan’s military garrison, driven by an anti-India ideology, cultivates jihadist “snakes” that now bite their keeper.
Ambassador Dinkar Prakash Srivastava’s book offers a detailed analyis of the underlying factors that drive Pakistan’s actions, arguing that they are largely influenced by the religious ideology reinforced by the state. Srivastava traces the genesis of the “two-nation” theory to Sir Syed Ahmad Khan, an educationist and one of the founders of the All India Muslim League. He highlights Khan’s 1888 speech in Meerut as the first instance of Hindus and Muslims being cast as “two distinct nations” who could not cohabit as equals. Half a century later, in 1940, Muhammad Ali Jinnah endorsed this idea at the Lahore session of the Muslim League where he adopted a resolution for the creation of Pakistan, emphasising the irreconcilable communal divide.
The book suggests that this shift in communal politics sowed the seeds of discontent and went on to influence nationalist figures, such as the famous poet Muhammad Iqbal, known for his inspiring anthem “Saare jahan se achcha, hindustan hamara”, to support Partition. The voices that championed the cause of a united India—such as Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, Rafi Ahmed Kidwai, Maulana Mahmood Madani, Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, and his older brother, Khan Abdul Jabbar Khan—were lost in the din of communal politics.
Srivastava points out that the British saw an opportunity in the infighting between the Congress and the Muslim League to perpetuate their own rule in the subcontinent. He argues that the British’s “divide and rule” policy was a deceptive strategy that exacerbated religious differences and the imaginary fears of exclusion of Muslims. The book concludes that Partition was a British decision in which Jinnah played a perfect roulette; it was not an unintended consequence of negotiations as had been made out to be.
Beyond the familiar narrative of the frailty of the two-nation theory, the book goes on to explain how several ethnic groups in Pakistan, such as the Pashtuns, Shindis, Ahmadis, Baluchis, Muhajirs, Afghanis, and Bengalis (East Pakistan), suffered systematic discrimination under its monolithic ideology. This situation, Srivastava argues, was further aggravated under successive rulers with the introduction of blasphemy laws, Hudood ordinances, and the Shariat under General Zia-ul-Haq.
Pakistan
Ideologies, Strategies and Interests
Dinkar Prakash Srivastava
Bloomsbury India
Pages: 312
Price:Rs. 799
This stress on the organic link between the state and religion, the author observes, led to the Islamisation of Pakistan, which undermined the rights of minorities and suppressed the voices of rationalism, pluralism, secularism, and democracy. This constraining space, Srivastava reasons, led to the radicalisation of society and birthed extremist non-state actors such as the Taliban, the Jaish-e-Mohammed, and the Lashkar-e-Taiba, with debilitating consequences for the subcontinent.
The book concludes that Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is driven by a combination of interests, ideology, and strategy, with the core objective being anti-India. | Photo Credit: By special arrangement
Srivastava goes on to explain Pakistan’s military strategy of using Islamist groups to advance its interests in Jammu and Kashmir. He notes that the Pakistan Army has integrated “low intensity conflicts” into its defence doctrine as a euphemism for the campaign against terrorism. While Pakistan views the war on terror as a “lesser evil” than India, which it wants to bleed, the irony is that it has ended up bleeding as a victim of its own jihadist ideology and suffered immense collateral damage, with several terrorist strikes taking place within its own territory. The book cites former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who, during her visit to Pakistan in October 2011, aptly articulated the situation: “You can’t keep snakes in your backyard and expect them only to bite your neighbour.”
Srivastava unveils the cold calculation behind Jinnah’s description of Kashmir as “the jugular vein”. He suggests that the objective was to secure by force or deception the Indus waters that are a lifeline for much of Pakistan; this also explains the three wars against India in the past and the ongoing unease. Srivastava covers developments on the UN-mediated plebiscite on Kashmir in 1948 and attributes Pakistan’s reluctance to cooperate to its uncertainty of winning the vote even on its own side of Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). He explains that Pakistan took over administrative control of PoK and renamed it “Gilgit-Baltistan” in order to erase any trace of its historical links with Jammu and Kashmir and camouflage its steady integration with Pakistan. (For a detailed explanation of the plebiscite, see Srivastava’s book The Forgotten Kashmir.)
The book concludes that Pakistan’s Kashmir policy is driven by a combination of interests, ideology, and strategy, with the core objective being anti-India. Srivastava writes that the Pakistan Army controls the country like a garrison state involving high levels of defence expenditure at the cost of development needs. He observes that Pakistan’s trajectory followed Jinnah’s famous riposte on the people of Kashmir—“let the people go to hell”—and that the rise of a praetorian state will seldom allow its interests to dictate the need for political accommodation with India. Srivastava concludes that for now the ball is in Pakistan’s court.
The book will be a valuable read for all those wanting to understand the making of the deep state that Pakistan has become and the implications it holds for peace and stability in the subcontinent.
