The EconomistJuly 22nd 2017 52
1tory, sees itself as better able to absorb a nuclear strike.
Alarmistswill probably be proved wrong. Both countries
are prone to sabre-rattling theatrics, but they are well aware that
the price of full-blown war would be appalling. And despite the
uncertainties generated by the rise of China, the continuing trou-
bles in Afghanistan and the incalculability of Donald Trump’s
America, the international community still seems likely to be
able to pull Pakistan and India apart if need be.
As this special report will argue, though, both Pakistan and
India should more openly acknowledge the costs, to themselves
and to the wider region, of their seven decades of bitter separa-
tion. These include not only what they have had to spend, in
lives and treasure, on waging war and maintaining military
readiness over generations, but the immense opportunity cost of
forgoing fruitful exchanges between parts of the same subconti-
nental space that in the past have always been open to each oth-
er. Trade between the two rivalsadds up to barely$2.5bn a year.
Perpetual enmity has also distorted internal politics, espe-
cially in Pakistan, where overweening generals have repeatedly
sabotaged democracy in the name of national security. Pakistan
has suffered culturally, too; barred from its natural subcontinen-
tal hinterland, it has opened instead to the Arab world, and to the
influence of less syncretic and tolerant forms of Islam. For India,
enmity with Pakistan hasfostered a tilt away from secular values
towards a more strident identity politics.
Reflexive fear of India prompts Pakistan’s generals to med-
dle in Afghanistan, which they see as a strategic backyard where
no foreign power can be allowed to linger. In turn, India, because
of the constant aggravation from Pakistan, has become bad-tem-
pered with its smaller neighbours. Small wonder that intra-re-
gional trade makes up barely 5% of the subcontinent’s overall
trade, compared with more than a quarter in South-East Asia.
And it is no surprise that Pakistan has opened its arms to China,
which is offering finance, trade and superpower patronage.
This special report will seek to unravel the causes of this ir-
rational enmity, and to explore the contrasting internal dynam-
ics in both countriesthat sustain it. It will examine new factors in
this complex geopolitical board game, such as the rise of China.
And it will consider what might be done to nudge the two rivals
away from the vicious circle that binds them. 7YOUNGERINDIANS AND Pakistanis tend to assume their
countries were born enemies. Only the old recall that until
their teenage years they were quite friendly. Ties of kinship were
strong. India and Pakistan had inherited the same laws and insti-
tutions, and both were poor, multilingual and multi-ethnic.
Their elites shared similaraspirations and spoke the same lan-
guage, English, in addition to others that spanned the border,
such as Urdu and Punjabi.
Pakistan’s gaunt, chain-smoking founding father, Muham-
mad Ali Jinnah, insisted that Muslims constitute a separate na-
tion, but envisioned a secular state. He was no Sunni majoritar-
ian. The Jinnah family were Ismailis, a subsect ofIslam’s smaller
Shia branch. His foreign minister was an Ahmadi, another smallsect that some Muslims regard asheretical. His law minister was
a Hindu, and both his second wife and his personal doctor were
Zoroastrians. Jinnah owned a luxurious mansion in Bombay,
where he spent most of his youth and career.
In the 1950s India and Pakistan amicably settled the tricky
problem of properties abandoned by millions of refugees. In
1960 they signed a complex deal to share the waters ofthe Indus
river, Pakistan’s lifeline; it has stuck ever since. Pakistan’s nation-
al cricket team toured India in 1952 and 1960-61; the Indian one
went to Pakistan in 1954-55. Until 1965 citizens of either country
who wanted to visitthe other could get visas on arrival.
There are many reasons why the ungainly twins drifted
apart. In the initial division of spoils, India got more of the mon-
ey. It also got land that Pakistan laid claim to. The big, rich prince-
ly state of Hyderabad and the tiny one of Junagadh had Muslim
rulers but mostly Hindu subjects, and they were a long way from
the rest of Pakistan, so India annexed them. Jammu and Kashmir
presented the opposite problem: a Hindu rulerwith mostly Mus-
lim subjects. In late 1947 Pakistan sentguerrilla fighters to stir a
Muslim uprising. The Maharaja invited Indian troops who eject-
ed the intruders. The territory has been a bone of contention
ever since (see box, nextpage).
As the two countries matured, their political systems di-
verged. “They got the generals, we got the bureaucrats,” is how
Indian wits put it. With a single brief interruption, India has sus-
tained a noisy, wobbly and messy democracy. Itselected leaders,
backed up by a powerful civil service and buffered by the sheer
size and diversity of the country, have kept the army in check.
Not so Pakistan.
The British Raj recruited hardest among the supposedly
“martial races” of northern India, and deployed soldiers most
heavily on the troubled Afghan frontier. So Pakistan, with a fifth
of India’s population at partition, inherited 30% of the Indian
army, 40% of the navy and 20% of the air force. Military spending
ate up three-quarters of Pakistan’s first budget in 1948, notes Hu-
sain Haqqani, a Pakistani diplomat and author. The share has
dropped, but Pakistan still has an oversized, pampered army.
Split in two, with the bulk of India in the middle, in the
1950s the country felt vulnerable. It was not surprising that Paki-History of the conflictPost-partum
depression
Unhappy together, unhappy apartUnquiet Jammu