Let’s wish them well

I was speaking with some NRI friends who were chuckling away with glee at the discomfiture prevailing currently in Pakistan, discomfiture that doesn’t get addressed by Pervez Musharraf being allowed to contest presidential elections. One of my friends, of extremist persuasion, said that it would be a good thing if Pakistan breaks up — “serves them right” he said. While I concede to no one in terms of patriotic zeal when it comes to India, I suggest that such thinking is dangerous, stupid and not at all in our self-interest.

For many years now, I have been quite grateful to the British for having imposed partition on us. Nostalgia-prone northern Indians who are given to the habit of loving maudlin Urdoo ghazals take delight in dreaming of the day when “we will all love each other, undo the dismembering that was done by the perfidious British and become one country again”. Their frequent phrases are “we are one people after all”; “borders imposed by colonial lawyers should be undone” and so on. Such sentiments get loudest around every August fifteenth when political correctness and sentimentalism become the motivators for numerous columns on this shop-worn subject. Being from the deep south, I am quite ignorant of parental memories of the Mall Road or Model Town in Lahore and am left cold and unmoved by these sentiments for reunion. Incidentally, there are practically no Pakistanis who I have met who have the remotest desire to unite with us however warm, hospitable or affectionate they might be.

My support for partition and for the continuance of a strong Pakistan stems from what I would call a practical sense of realpolitik. Pakistan is the buffer state that India needs to protect us from the hot-spots of Afghanistan and Persia (aka Iran). Less than three hundred years ago, we were invaded by Persians (led by Nadir Shah) and Afghans (led by Ahmed Shah Abdali). Both of these were in the nature of predatory raids. They did not result in conquests. But they did succeed in finishing off the glorious Moghul Empire and in causing considerable human and economic damage. It has been noted that a substantial portion of Afghan GDP derived from raids on India! Now as then, raids, unrest and related tensions are real dangers to us.

But let us breathe a sigh of relief. If today a Nadir Shah or an Abdali were to try...

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Let’s wish them well

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