The recent highly provocative and irresponsible statement by Indian Army Chief General Upendra Dwivedi regarding Pakistan is emblematic of immaturity and headstrongness, suggesting that Indian leadership still struggles with the existence of Pakistan. The Indian army chief was quoted by the media as saying on May 16, “if you have heard me earlier, what I have said… that Pakistan, if it continues to harbor terrorists and operate against India, then they have to decide whether they want to be part of geography and history.”
In a very strong rejoinder, Pakistan’s military public relations wing, the ISPR, issued a statement highlighting, “Contrary to the delusional and hallucinational belief system and despite the omnipresent ill wishes that prevail in Hindutva-led India, Pakistan is already a country of consequence at the global level, a declared nuclear power and an indelible part of South Asia’s geography and history.”
The statement of Gen. Dwivedi is immature because obliterating another country, and that too of a huge size and population, is nearly impossible. Moreover, the Indian leadership’s unending drama of blaming Pakistan for harboring terrorists against India is no longer believable to international institutions and the comity of nations. On the other hand, India’s involvement in harboring terrorists in Pakistan, particularly Balochistan, has been more than obvious. The case of the arrest of in-service Indian naval commander Kulbhushan Jadhav in Balochistan in 2016, who remains in Pakistan’s captivity, is enough to prove India’s involvement in terrorism on Pakistani soil. Jadhav was handed capital punishment by a Pakistani military court, but the sentence has so far not been implemented due to the involvement of the International Court of Justice, which rejected India’s plea for his immediate release. He was found involved in espionage and harboring terrorism in Balochistan. The large-scale insecurity and terrorist attacks in Balochistan would not be possible without foreign support, and this external backing has been actively coming from India.
The Pakistan military’s rejoinder to the Indian army chief’s provocative statement, alluding to the shallow ideology of Hindutva as the basis of such assertions, is quite logical. Had a worthless and senseless ideology not been present behind such statements, they would not have been made at all. Pakistan, its people, and above all, its predominant Muslim majority constitute a living reality; destroying it by a country like India, which faces so many internal problems, is unthinkable. Having said this, it must be admitted that Pakistan is not a dreamland and faces many issues, mostly of its own making. India has been exploiting these vulnerabilities in Pakistan, whether ethnic divisions or a lack of democracy, to destabilize the state.
Here, the Indian leadership must realize that destabilizing Pakistan is not at all in India’s interest either. There appears to be a strong realization regarding this within Indian civil society and true intellectual circles. For instance, New Delhi must realize that threatening Pakistan with geographic obliteration would not be without consequences of a similar degree for India, as Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country possessing a massive military and, above all, a nation that may seem divided but remains unified regarding national survival and defence.
Apart from the military and strategic consequences of instigating instability and crisis in Pakistan, the political repercussions of such Delhi-fomented turmoil would be insurmountable for India. Pakistan was demanded and established as a unified homeland for the majority of Muslims in British India. Since it was clear during the 1947 partition of United India into two states that all Muslims could not move to Pakistan, a massive Muslim population remained in India. These Muslims, though citizens by constitutional right, share civilizational bonds with Pakistan. In the impossible scenario, India could not remain geographically intact. More importantly, India lacks the resources and its leadership the capacity to unite entire South Asia.
The Hindutva-influenced Indian leadership seems to be living in a make-believe, fallacious past rooted in religious mythologies. For a thousand years, Muslim rulers kept India united through great sacrifice, accommodation, and resource generation. The British colonial rulers subsequently maintained this unity through extensive wars, massive expenditures, and developing rail, road, and canal infrastructure alongside a cohesive judicial and administrative system. Hindu rulers of contemporary India—as no Muslim has ever been prime minister since 1947—have never historically ruled such a massive country. They currently struggle to run India as a normal state. Therefore, thinking of undoing Pakistan and incorporating it into India is a vitriolic fantasy that unnecessarily manufactures enmity between two peoples.
At a time when chauvinistic Hindu leaders, who are the ideological godfathers of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, are calling for communication lines with Pakistan to open, such a nasty statement by a professional soldier heading India’s army reveals that ideological supremacism has crept deep into India’s state structure. This shift has occurred because under PM Modi’s third term, the institutional and wider societal culture of India has changed, making extremism very obvious. Recently, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) General Secretary Dattatreya Hosabale logically argued that doors of dialogue with Pakistan should not be permanently shut. Regardless of whether India engages, stability in Pakistan remains in India’s national interest.
Therefore, instead of harping on old tunes of terrorism, Indian leadership must realize that normal relations with Pakistan is the only way forward for South Asian development.