Jaswant, Jinnah and the South Asian Monroe Doctrine
C. Raja Mohan
Sunday, Aug 16, 2009
Indian Express
http://www.indianexpress.com/
C. Raja Mohan is a Professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of South Asian Studies at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Bhartiya Janata Party leader Jaswant Singh's bold reinterpretation of Mohammed Ali Jinnah--his book on the founder of Pakistan is being launched on Monday--is bound to create controversy in both India and Pakistan.
On the face of it, it would seem futile to reapportion the political blame for the Great Partition of 1947. Yet, the renewed controversy over Jinnah could help us rethink the future of Indo-Pak relations.
No amount of blood-letting and political quibbling will alter our past. But we owe it to ourselves to overcome the many bitter consequences of the Partition. It is in this context that Jinnah's frequent invocation of the 'Monroe Doctrine' is of some interest.
The 'Monroe Doctrine', of course, is about the US foreign policy aspirations in the 19th century, when it sought to minimize the influence of European powers in the Western hemisphere. Jinnah visualized that after Partition, India and Pakistan could declare some kind of a Monroe Doctrine that would prevent the great powers from intervening in post-colonial Subcontinent.
In an interview to a European newspaper in early 1948, Jinnah discussed broadly his idea of how he wanted India and Pakistan to relate to each other and the world. "Our own paramount interests demand that the Dominion of Pakistan and the Dominion of India should co-ordinate for the purpose of playing their part in international affairs. It is of vital importance to Pakistan and India as independent sovereign states to collaborate in a friendly way to jointly defend their frontiers both on land and sea against any aggression. But this depends entirely on whether Pakistan and India can resolve their own differences," Jinnah said.
That India and Pakistan have not been able to resolve their differences or cooperate during the last six decades does not, in any way, detract from the essence of Jinnah's logic. If India and Pakistan reflect on their relationship with each other and the world purely in terms of power, they will confront two broad political conclusions.
One is that--hard as it may try--India can't shake off Pakistan. Put it another way, India will rise in the international system only if it takes Pakistan along with it. The other is that Islamabad can trip up Delhi at will but it can't force India to pay up what Pakistan considers are its dues from the Partition and then some.
Pakistan's determination to balance India with the help of other great powers turned Jinnah's logic of a South Asian Monroe Doctrine on its head. While Pakistan's foreign policy has certainly helped other powers, it has produced few enduring strategic gains for itself.
One does not have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that global weight of India and Pakistan would be a lot heavier if they stopped fighting with each other. If the two countries can embark on political cooperation, Delhi and Islamabad could easily become arbiters of the regional security order in the Indian Ocean and the Southern Asia.
It should not be impossible for Delhi and Islamabad to see that the absolute gains they could harvest from mutual cooperation are much larger than the compromises they need to make to resolve their differences. The reaction in India and Pakistan to Jaswant Singh's book on Jinnah might tell us whether the Sub-continent is ready to redo the Partition sums with a power calculus that is not cluttered with anger and tears.
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