So deeply ingrained is the hostility with minimal prospects of sanity prevailing at least in the near future. And being a smaller economy, the burden on it is relatively far greater. To counter the threat from India, Pakistan perforce has to maintain a large military and allocate sufficient resources to it. Hardly a day passes when there is no adverse news of the other in Indian and Pakistani newspapers. Since 1947, in addition to several border skirmishes, India and Pakistan have fought three major wars and share a critical relationship. With the Taliban government in power, it will not be able to use Afghanistan for pursuing hostile activities. Until recently when Ashraf Ghani’s government was in power, India had been using Afghanistan as a base for launching anti-Pakistan activities in response to its support of the Kashmiri struggle. India’s endemic hostility toward Pakistan beefed up by the Modi government’s powerful type of Hindutva politics and the situation in Kashmir are closely interlinked. This is in gross violation of UN Security Council resolutions and a deliberate crime against the people of the state. The Indian government, meanwhile, is taking measures to change the demography of Kashmir so that it ceases to be a Muslim majority state. Strategic, political and economic interests far outweigh religious affinities.ĭespite India’s brutal suppression of Kashmiri people and international indifference, the Indian military might have not been able to suppress the unwavering spirit and struggle of the Kashmiri people. Their reaction was very similar to how the Middle Eastern rulers have been responding to Israel’s annexation of Palestine, confirming the hard reality that in the modern-day world, there is no convergence of interest merely based on religious commonality. Even Muslim countries - apart from Turkey, Malaysia and Iran - deliberately avoided commenting on India’s annexation. Regrettably, the US and other major powers, apart from making routine statements, failed to condemn the unilateral move. Prime Minister Modi knew that India’s clout and relative importance with major powers are such that the international community will not react adversely to this move.
There was hardly any serious reaction from the international community to this brazen defiance and trampling of human rights. The merger of Kashmir in the Indian Union was a well-thought-out and calculated move by Modi. India cannot ignore the reality that it has forcibly occupied Kashmir, defied UN resolutions, and faced serious opposition from the people of Kashmir but the balance of power and global politics favour it. The two positions are diametrically opposite. For Pakistan, the future status of Kashmir must be decided according to the wishes of the people of the state whereas for India it is a settled issue and an integral part of it.
Last year, while the tension between the two countries continued to escalate, the Modi government blatantly revoked the special status, or the autonomy granted under Article 370 of the Indian Constitution to Jammu and Kashmir - a region administered by India as a state. The endless tirade directed from India and Pakistan reacting to it broadly represents the present trajectory of the relationship further vitiating the environment. O ne of the most complex and tragic relationships exists between India and Pakistan that has adversely affected the lives of billions of people in South Asia for the last seventy-five years. He has also served as chairman of the Pakistan Ordnance Factories Board The writer is a retired lieutenant general of the Pakistan Army and a former federal secretary.