The world thinks of India as old, exotic and mysterious. It is impressed with its vibrant democracy, its centuries old culture and history, its present day growth rate of about 8-9 percent, its prowess in modern IT industry and so on so forth. The West seems particularly certain that India will become a prosperous world power in forcible future.
However, personally I cannot help being skeptical about Indias bright future because I see a serious lack of timing, priorities, judgment and ability to avoid similar mistakes. Take the example of Indias policy of increasing its military might. Media reports revealed that recently it tested a short range ballistic missile, increased its defense expenditure by 30 percent and become worlds single largest customer of weapons in the last decade.
The question is why? What benefit will these bring to it? Will they not create anxiety among its neighbors and push them to take countervailing measures? Is such a policy not detrimental to the economic progress and well being of the whole region including India? Will it not hamper its efforts to alleviate poverty? How will it help reduce the misery of 700 million Indians who are living in abject poverty?
After all what are these missiles, nuclear bombs and conventional weapons meant to achieve? Win India a permanent seat in the Security Council, help it wrest NEFAs control from China, defeat and destroy Pakistani Armed Forces and deter it from creating trouble in IHK, or are they meant to make it a regional superpower?
If these are not its aims, which only a Modi or Bal Thakray can have, then why is India building its military power rather than its economic might in such a fashion? These are the unanswerable questions which make me pessimistic about Indias future and make me turn to its history. Time and space do not allow me to go in details so I will confine myself to a few examples from its recent history.
1. Until 1920, Mr. Jinnah was an Ambassador of Hindu Muslim unity and a nationalist, but by 1929 Motilal Nehru and others had made him an implacable advocate of partition and Pakistan.
2. All know that the Congress leaders wanted to stop the birth of Pakistan, but in the end played a crucial role in its creation. (India wins Freedom by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad and Jinnah, independence and partition by Jaswant Singh).
3. India took the issue of Kashmir to the UNSC, but refused to implement its resolution. Had it done so, while Sheikh Abdullah was still alive, it would have most probably won the referendum. Today J&K has become an albatross around Indias neck.
4. Until 1957 its relations with China were so good that both were singing Hindi Cheeni Bhai Bhai. But by 1959, they had begun to deteriorate so rapidly that by 1962 India was fighting a deadly war with China. It took India 40 years to end the hostility, while provided an opportunity to Pakistan to befriend a country which is today on the verge of becoming the next superpower. Had India not provoked China (Indias China war, Neville Chamberlain), the history of the world might have been different.
Exploding a nuclear device in 1974 made no sense as it could neither help it fight another war with China nor compel it to cede NEFA to it. However, it gave impetus and legitimacy to Pakistan to pursue its own nuclear program, while it undermined Indias moral authority and its position as a credible champion of nonviolence and non-proliferation. Most of all it neutralized Indias supremacy over Pakistan as a conventional weapon state while raised Pakistans stature as the only Muslim state to have become a nuclear power. If India had not exploded the nuclear device at the wrong time and not tested them at the wrong time, Pakistan too would not have followed suit nor done Kargil and exposed Indias military limitations.
Today most people are impressed by Indias economic progress, but fail to see the abject poverty of hundreds of millions of Indians, the slum dogs as the movie called them. Being the biggest country of South Asia in every respect, it should have felt confident that no matter how many planes, guns and ships Pakistan could accumulate, it could never defeat it or occupy it any more than Napoleon or Hitler could keep Russia under indefinite occupation or defeat it militarily.
Therefore, I hope that even now India would give up the military rout to greatness and opt for the economic rout to it. That it will behave like a big country that it is rather than live in the fear of being re-colonised or in Chanakiyas theories of colonising others. The world has changed my friends.
Conventional wisdom teaches us that there is a right time for everything. The right time now is for peace, progress and prosperity within and in the neighborhood.
The writer is a former Ambassador of Pakistan.