I read the piece by V.S. Dharma Kumar, entitled ‘Can India and Pakistan unite?’ (IE, August 17), and a response to it in the ‘Letters’ column (‘Third partition’, August 16). Every time the issue comes up, comparisons are made between India-Pakistan and East and West Germany, or North Vietnam and South Vietnam. We need to remember that countries like Germany or Vietnam had got divided by the forces of occupation. When the ‘occupation’ ceased, the division too ceased, since there had already existed the strong bond of language in these cases.

For a democratic merger of countries the necessary conditions are contiguity and a common language. Closer home, West Pakistan and East Pakistan were not sustainable precisely because they were neither contiguous nor had a common language. As for the European Union, please remember the countries of Europe have not merged. There has merely been a removal of trade barriers and a formation of a unified currency to benefit trade between them. Each country in Europe has its own language and government. Europe is not and cannot be a federal state, with one constitution and one flag.

Coming to the Indian subcontinent — or the region historically known as Bharat — it is largely made up of present-day India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. Bharat was really a continent, containing countries quite often at war with each other. Prior to 1857 these various entities were ruled by kings. After 1857, Bharat became a British colony. The officers of the British Empire, over a period of nine decades, bound the countries of ‘Bharat ‘ (British India) together through the use of the English language, the railways, the judiciary and, of course, the army.

... contd.