The Indian dichotomy
In 1947 two nations secured independence within a day of each other and started treading on a path of their own. Both had to take some important decisions.
Consider the dichotomy. Pakistan stuck in a rut while India is writing a success story of its own. Why is Pakistan in such a mess while India has been registering a growth rate of ten percent?
The choices both these countries made in the decades following independence help in simplifying our analysis.
Pakistan’s rulers recognized that there was much to be gained from linking up with Washington and enjoying their patronage. A steady stream of American aid dollars flowed into Pakistan. The armed forces had access to latest technology and weaponry.
During the Zia-Ul-Haq era, when pakistan’s economy seemed robust and billions of dollars were pumped into the state treasury, while we struggled to make ends meet, many educated Indians pondered whether we were paying the price for Pandit Nehru’s
mistaken choices. Hadn’t Mohhamad Ali Jinaah’s heirs got it right while we floundered? Wouldn’t India have been better off on America’s side?
With the benefit of hindsight, we can today safely say that our leaders made the right choice by rejecting the US’ prescription for the development and foreign policy. The other country that rejected this prescription was China. A look at both these country’s story and a look at America’s client states and we arrive at the answer we required.
Because Pakistan believed all the American dogma about free trade, it never built for itself the kind of industrial base that India constructed at such a huge sacrifice in the name of self reliance. Because it tied itself so closely to US foreign policy, its diplomats did whatever America wanted, even helping pimp the first assignation between Kissinger and the Chinese in 1971.
There is no denying that Pakistan got many jets and Patton tanks along with other benefits. Treat those benefits as rent paid by US. Because Washington turned Pakistan into its largest military base, an entire country at the service of Uncle Sam. In the 1960s, it was used to keep a watch on Russia (the U2 spy planes took off from there); in the 1970s, it served as a back channel for China-US diplomacy; in the 1980s, it was used for the Afghan ‘jehad’; and now, it is a launch pad for a crucial part of the ‘War on Terror’. The Americans had no interest in developing Pakistan’s economy or in promoting the institutions of democracy. They preferred to deal with a succession of military dictators (Ayub Khan, Yahya, Zia and now Musharraf) because it was both easier and quicker.
And they actively exploited Pakistan’s lack of secularism — its very raison d’être was its status as an Islamic nation — to launch the world’s first high-tech jehad, thereby unleashing the fundamentalist and terrorist forces that are tearing Pakistan apart today.
Looking back, it is hard to see how any country could have got it more wrong than Pakistan did. Every single choice it made — foreign policy, economic, religious, political etc — seems, in retrospect, to have been a disastrous mistake.
In contrast, Nehru created the modern Indian republic, one of 21st century’s potential superpowers. The same Americans who once dismissed India as a Russian lackey now throng our airports looking for investment opportunities. When their President comes to India, he talks to our Prime Minister on equal terms and discusses foreign policy. When he goes to Pakistan on the other hand, he merely instructs their President on which terrorists to hand over to US authorities.
Of course, Nehru made mistakes. But can anybody really deny that the principal reason why India and Pakistan, once part of the same country, have followed such divergent paths is because of the choices both countries made in the years following independence?
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