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P. R. Kumaraswamy, Md. M. Quamar, India’s Saudi Policy,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0794-2_5
CHAPTER 5Pakistan Factor
For long, Pakistan has occupied a pivotal place in shaping India’s foreign
policy and they were partly shaped by it. India’s self-perception of inclu-
sive nationalism was accompanied by Pakistan’s Islam-centric overtures to
the Middle East. These led to Pakistan looming large in India’s view of the
outside powers and their interests, involvements and interactions with
them. In some ways, it was a continuation of the nationalist struggle; after
1947 the pre-partition political rivalry between the Congress Party and
Muslim League was prominently played out in the Arab-Islamic Middle
East where both countries sought to use their respective national creden-
tials, namely, inclusive nationalism by India and Islamic identity by
Pakistan, in furtherance of their national interests. This competition got a
boost over the Kashmir issue that both were staking claims and seeking the
support of the Islamic countries of the Middle East.
More than seven decades after the departure of the British from the
subcontinent, the Kashmir dispute has no sign of a resolution and the
diplomatic maneuvers of both the countries in the Middle East persist. At
the same time, concerning the Middle East in general and Saudi Arabia,
in particular, one could mark three distinct phases of the Indo-Pakistan
relations. The first phase corresponded with the partition of the subconti-
nent and continued until the Arab-Israeli War of June 1967 during which
India was relatively better off than Pakistan as the latter’s efforts for a