An old non-starter is brought back into discourse
Rajinder Puri might even be right when he points out that the root cause of Partition was Britain’s geopolitical interests. But surely it is folly to think that undoing partition is in India’s.
Only after the real cause of Partition is recognized can steps be taken to undo the evil effects of history. If the governments of India and Pakistan sincerely seek normalization, they must first commit themselves to creating a South Asian Confederation for fruition within, say, five years. Once that commitment is public the enemies of Indo-Pakistan normalization would know what they are up against. Only then might both nations move forward, step by resolute step, to reach their goal. Enemies will always derail movement on an uncharted course. [Outlook]
The idea that any part of India has to be “jointly supervised” by Pakistan itself is repugnant. So what do you say to those who think that the all of India should enter into some form of political integration with Pakistan. Atal Bihari Vajpayee floated it when he was prime minister. And if Rajinder Puri’s analysis is correct, so is Dr Manmohan Singh. What do they smoke up there?
Nitin:
The argument over the merits of Partition is mostly academic. In fact, nobody in either India or Pakistan are calling for the return of unPartitioned India: first, they realize the impracticalities of it; and, second, the creation of Pakistan is a fait accompoli.
Whether Partition itself was good or bad is debatable. But to waste time on debating “Unpartitioning” is well, a waste of time. To echo your well put point, “What *do* they smoke up there”?
The fact that 60 years after it happened reversing partitioning is still being talked about is amazing. I always thought, despite the horrible murderous period, partitioning was one of the best things that happened to current India.
Paks main complain about India and its elite is that they haven’t accepted Pak as an independent country – hence the need for its self proclaimed strategic parity with us. Apparently the our dumb elite feed right into Pak’s paranoia and hurt Indian security with such lose talk. Advani seems to have moved on, but not others.
Chandra: the only acceptable way to reverse the Partition is us having to rescue this failing state in our own interests and make them a client. Even in that scenario we need to maintain our political distance. We need to insulate ourselves from the blowback of their inevitable disintegration.
kashmir can be jointly supervised with pakistan, as long as india gets to jointly control balochistan. i would any day trade balochistan for kashmir ;).
but im not in the indian govt, so that is not happening. balochistan is way more economically profitable than kashmir.
It’s incredible (and by that I mean, not remotely credible) that Rajinder Puri boils all of Partition down to Britain safeguarding its “geopolitical interests”, considering India’s thousand-year old Hindu-Muslim conflict. And interestingly, he never once mentions what exactly the English geopolitical interests were and how partition helped them achieve it.