Birth Of India & Pakistan

[MUKHTIAR ALI]

Special Feature:
The Birth of India and Pakistan

Joe Gustaitis

On August 15, 1947 - 60 years ago - a new country was born: the nation of India . This was just one day after another new nation, Pakistan , had gained independence. Both countries came into existence after a long struggle against nearly 200 years of British colonial rule.

An Ancient Civilization

The civilizations of South Asia, of course, are among the oldest in the world. The first cities in the area emerged in the Indus River Valley in what is now Pakistan around 2500 B.C., the two largest settlements being Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa, which archaeologists consider two of the earliest examples of city planning. Around 1700 B.C., Indo-Aryan peoples arrived from the northwest. Over the next 2000 years, they created what is known as the Brahmanic civilization, during which Hinduism developed.

In the 4th and 5th centuries A.D., the Gupta dynasty brought Indian culture to heights of splendor, and the arts and literature flourished. Arab traders introduced Islam to India in the 8th century and by 1000 A.D., Islamic armies were launching forays into South Asia. The first Muslim kingdom in India, the Delhi Sultanate, was established in 1192. Under the rule of the Emperor Aurangzeb, the forces of Islam gained control of nearly all of India, although the vast majority of the population clung to their Hindu faith. Thus were planted the seeds of the Hindu-Muslim divide that remains an abiding issue in the region today.

Europeans began exploring the Indian subcontinent at the end of the 15th century. In 1498, Vasco da Gama of Portugal reached Calicut, now known as Kozhikode, establishing a Portuguese monopoly on trade until they were elbowed out by the Dutch, who founded the Dutch East India Company. Great Britain, France, and Denmark also set up East India companies, and eventually it came down to a struggle between France and Great Britain. The beginning of British colonial rule is usually considered to be 1757, when forces under Robert Clive defeated the Nawab of Bengal at the Battle of Plassey. England's victory over France in the Seven Years' War (1756-1763) enabled the British to take control of the area, and in 1773, Warren Hastings became the first British governor-general of India. In 1877, amid great pomp and ritual, Queen Victoria was crowned empress of India.

Quest for Independence

One of the first serious upheavals aimed at attaining Indian independence had come in 1857-1859, when bands of Indian soldiers, known as sepoys, staged what it known as the Sepoy Mutiny.What began as a single incident of defiance spread until it engulfed much of north and central India. British firepower and military strength, which had all along been the keys to control of the subcontinent, ultimately suppressed the rebellion, although the British government was alarmed enough to transfer the administration of India from East India Company to the crown in 1877.




The British established universities in India, such as Elphinstone College, which dates back to 1824, Wilson College (1832), and Sydenham College (1913). Ironically, one of the results of this university system was the development and education of an Indian middle class, one that soon grew avid for independence. The founding of the political party known as the Indian National Congress in 1885 marked a milestone on the road to self-rule. The conflicting factions that plagued the Indian National Congress in the early 20th century were unified under the leadership of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi in the 1920s.

Gandhi's vision and prestige brought him to the forefront as the leading advocate of self-rule in India. Drawing inspiration especially from the writings of the Russian Leo Tolstoy and from Henry David Thoreau's celebrated essay "Civil Disobedience," Gandhi fashioned a campaign of passive resistance and civil disobedience that he called satyagraha, from the Sanskrit for "truth and firmness." But Gandhi was more than a theorist; he was also a strategist with a gift for the grand gesture. Probably the most celebrated of his several satyagraha campaigns was the Great Salt March of 1930, in which he walked with a group of followers 240 miles from his home in Ahmedabad to the town of Dandi on the Arabian Sea to protest the British tax on salt. Once they arrived at the coast, he picked up a handful of salty mud and proclaimed "With this I am shaking the foundations of the British empire." The mud was then boiled to produce salt, an act which earned Gandhi a stint in prison. But his principles of nonviolent protest and civil disobedience could not be stopped. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru, president of the Indian National Congress, were both sent to prison several times.

Britain's Parliament in 1935 approved the Government of India Act, which called for the formation of autonomous legislative bodies in India's provinces and for the protection of Muslims. However, Muslim League leader Muhammad Ali Jinnah instead called for the formation of a separate Muslim state.

Additional friction between the British and Indian nationalists emerged with the onset of World War II. The Indian National Congress wanted Britain to grant India independence in return for its backing in the war. Indian nationalists in 1940 launched another round of civil disobedience.

In 1944, Gandhi expressed openness to the possible split of India into Muslim and Hindu states. However, efforts to negotiate with Muslim leader Jinnah failed. Additional attempts to reach an independence agreement supported by both Hindus and Muslims failed in 1945 and 1946.

By 1946 the British Labour government of Prime Minister Clement Attlee offered independence to India, but only if the two nationalist groups, the Muslim League and the Congress party, would reconcile their differences. Otherwise, he warned, the British would work out a form of separation. In early 1947, with no agreement at hand, Attlee said the British would pull out of India by June 1948.

Although Muslim-Hindu unity was one of the foundation stones of Gandhi's philosophy, the Indian National Congress in June 1947 unenthusiastically agreed to a plan outlining the establishment of not one, but two, new nations - India, which would be predominantly Hindu, and Pakistan, a majority Muslim state. The new nations came into existence in August 1947. When Hindu-Muslim riots erupted after the partition of India, Gandhi fasted until the conflict ended. Nevertheless, he was assassinated on January 13, 1948, by a Hindu fanatic and the hostilities grew more critical than ever. Adding to the tension, in the months after partition millions of people moved between the two nations, with Hindus and Sikhs leaving Pakistan for India, and Muslims moving to Pakistan.

Kashmir and Other Conflicts

The gravest situation emerged in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in the north, which was ruled by Hindus but which had a majority Muslim population. It soon turned into a shooting war between the two infant nations, leading to the involvement of the United Nations, which arranged a ceasefire on January 1, 1949 that left about one third of the area under Pakistani control and the rest under Indian control. But the issue of Kashmir was by no means settled and remains a source of friction between Pakistan and India to this day.

India and Pakistan went to war twice more after 1949. In 1965 fighting broke out in the border region known as the Rann of Kachchh. The conflict spread to Kashmir and to the Punjab, and before Pakistan and India agreed to a U.N.-sponsored ceasefire, the two countries were bombing each other. In 1971, civil war broke out in Pakistan when East Pakistanis (the country was divided into two noncontiguous parts) sought greater autonomy. Millions of East Pakistanis, mostly Hindu, fled to India, Pakistani planes attacked Indian airfields in Kashmir, and India assaulted both East and West Pakistan. After India occupied East Pakistan, that region became the independent nation of Bangladesh and again a U.N. ceasefire was arranged.

In May 1974, India set off its first nuclear device . Although the government said it had "no intention of producing nuclear weapons," the prime minister of Pakistan charged India with "brandishing the sword of nuclear blackmail." Pakistan had been conducting nuclear research since 1965, and by 1987, Pakistan's president, Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, said in a magazine interview, "Pakistan has the capability of building the bomb. You can write today that Pakistan can build a bomb whenever it wishes." India conducted its first underground nuclear tests in May 1998, and Pakistan quickly matched its rival by conducting its own underground tests, as the country's prime minister proudly said that Pakistan had "evened the score with India." The scenario of feuding South Asian nuclear powers became even more frightening when it recently became known that Abdul Qadeer Khan, the so-called father of Pakistan's nuclear bomb, had improperly shared nuclear weapons technology with companies or individuals in at least seven other countries.

The India-Pakistan arms race reached a higher level on April 11, 1999, when India conducted a test launch of an intermediate-range ballistic missile that was capable of carrying a nuclear warhead. Pakistan promptly responded by test-firing two missiles that also were able to carry nuclear warheads. At the end of the following month, India launched air strikes against Islamic militants' encamped in an Indian-controlled area of the disputed Kashmir region. Although Pakistan denied it, it was India's contention that Pakistan was giving Kashmiri militants military and financial help. This time, however, full-scale war did not break out. The leaders of the two countries agreed to discuss and defuse the situation, and so far the two nations have maintained an edgy peace. In 2005, India and Pakistan agreed on measures to create a "soft border" in Kashmir open to trade and transport and promised to work on plans for a joint natural gas pipeline.

Relations with the U.S.

The tensions between India and Pakistan confronted the U.S. with a delicate situation, as it often seem to be forced into making a painful choice between the two sides. During the Cold War, India refused to take sides, which displeased the U.S. The Soviet Union, however, established friendly relations with India, leading to an alliance. Pakistan consequently drew closer to the U.S. This situation lasted for decades, although the U.S. censured both nations for failing to ratify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, which was intended to block the proliferation of nuclear weapons and eventually attain global nuclear disarmament. In 2000, U.S. President Bill Clinton traveled to India, a visit that did a great deal to better relations between the two nations. The administration of President George W. Bush followed up on that breakthrough, so that today relations between the U.S. and India are as cordial as they have ever been. Indeed, on July 27, 2007, the U.S. and India announced that they had reached agreement on nuclear cooperation. Under the deal, which requires congressional approval to go forward, India would be able to access U.S. nuclear technology and fuel.

The close ties between the U.S. and Pakistan can be said to have begun at least as early as the meeting in 1950 of U.S. President Harry Truman and Pakistani Prime Minister Liaquat Ali. In the 1980s the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan sought Pakistan's help in driving the Soviet military out of Afghanistan, where the Soviets were backing a Communist government. The ties between the U.S. and Pakistan became much more central to U.S. foreign policy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 and the ensuing war in Afghanistan. Pakistan now became a crucial ally in the war on terror, and the U.S. welcomed the actions of its president, General Pervez Musharraf, who cooperated with the U.S. military and permitted Pakistan to serve as a military base for U.S. forces during the invasion of Afghanistan. The Bush administration continues to support Musharraf, although critics charge that the terrorist group Al Qaeda, which was responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks, has reconstituted itself in the wild tribal regions of western Pakistan and that the Pakistani leader is doing little to uproot it.

Economic Progress

During the first decades of its independence, India's government followed a centralized planning economic model that its chief architect, Nehru, who was prime minister from 1947 to 1964, envisioned as a third way that drew on the best aspects of the capitalist and Communist systems. Although this model initially kept the economy relatively stable, it eventually led to stagnation, inflation, a deterioration in the country's balance of payments, and deficit financing. However, P.V. Narasimha Rao, who was prime minister from 1991 to 1996, instituted a series of free-market reforms that reduced the government's role in the economy and welcomed foreign investment. When Rao entered office, India had a gross national product of only about $300 per capita, but from the mid-1990s through the early 2000s, annual economic growth averaged more than 7%, and by 2005 the gross national product was an estimated $3.6 trillion, which amounted to about $3,300 per capita, while poverty decreased 10%. In 2006, India achieved an impressive growth rate of 8.5%. One of the legacies of Great Britain that most Indians agree was a benefit was the English language. A large workforce comfortable with speaking English has fostered the development of computer software services, which have became increasingly important to the Indian economy. The city of Bangalore Bangalore, or Bengaluru, has become known as the Silicon Valley of India.

Pakistan has not, perhaps, achieved the status of India as an international economic wonder, but the last five years have seen substantial economic progress. Like India's, Pakistan's economic policy has recently focused on free-market liberalization and attracting foreign direct investment. The banking sector has been privatized, poverty levels have dropped by 10% since 2001, development spending has increased, and growth has been in the range of from 6% to 8%, while per capita income has reached approximately $2,700. The lessening of tensions with India has also improved the economic outlook by reducing security issues and by improving prospects of increased trade in South Asia.

Both nations still face serious challenges, among them growing populations, sectarian strife, widening trade deficits, and worries about inflation, which is a habitual accompaniment to rapid economic growth. But as they reach the age of 60 (which is young for a country), India and Pakistan can feel proud of how far they have come and be cautiously optimistic about the decades ahead.

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