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COVER STORY: Conflict in Asia: India v Pakistan |
India and Pakistan:
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Section: The World, Page 28, TIME, Dec. 6, 1971 |
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Today, Not Tomorrow The solution, in the view of U.S. Senate Majority Leader Mike Mansfield, is to bring the U.N. into the picture. "This is the time, now, today, not tomorrow, for the Security Council to act," he said. But the fact is that, even though all the big powers are anxious to avert a conflict on the subcontinent, none are rushing to place the issue before the U.N. Security Council for fear that they might prove to be unable to agree. Lying in his hospital bed in New York City, U.N. Secretary-General U. Thant confided to one of his aides last week: "If I am suffering from a bleeding ulcer, it is at least in part due to frustrating efforts over the past eight months to do something about the terrible situation in East Pakistan." Even Pakistan's U.N. delegate, Aga Shahi, who was ready to bring the matter before Security Council early in the week, quickly changed his mind. Consultations with the Chinese delegation and soundings of Soviet intentions persuaded him that the two Communist powers might not agree on a cease-fire resolution. The Japanese, however, are working on a resolution that they will introduce if the fighting continues. The protagonists in this conflict are two extraordinarily strong-willed, even stubborn leaders. At 54, Yahya is a tough-talking professional soldier who rarely shows any inclination for compromise and exhibits his impatience at the drop of an epithet. "Stop reminding me every day," he once snarled at Pakistani journalists when they asked about his repeated promises of a return to democracy for his country. "The people did not bring me to power. I came myself." The stocky former army chief of staff, a Pathan who came to power in 1969 when widespread strikes and disorders forced President Ayub Khan to step down, showed his quick temper last week during an impromptu speech at a late night dinner in Islamabad. Lashing out at Indira Gandhi, he said at one point: "If that woman thinks she will cow me, I refuse to take it. If she wants a war, I will fight it." Child of the Nation The remark was not only ungallant, it was imprudent. For when it comes to tough-mindedness, Mrs Gandhi is at least a match for Yahya Khan. As the only daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, she was carefully groomed for leadership and grew up an adored and beloved "child of the nation." From her father she inherited a sense of grace under pressure, but where he was the idealist, she is much more the pragmatist. As one political commentator observed: "Her father was a dreamer who did not act decisively. The people loved Nehru, but they are impressed by Indira's ability to make decisions and make them firmly and fast. " In elections last March. Indians gave Indira, who like Yahya Khan is 54 years old, an overwhelming two-thirds majority in Parliament.Hostility to Hatred Rome and Carthage in ancient times, Israel and the Arab countries in today's world -- such are the parallels to the national enmity between India and Pakistan that come naturally to mind. Behind their hostility lies a legacy of Hindu-Moslem religious enemyity that is as old as Islam see Next: Hindu and Moslem: The Gospel of Hate. There are many who believe that if India had held out a little longer for independence from Britain without partition, it would have had its way and today there would be one country on the subcontinent, not two. But as Nehru confessed much later. "The truth is that we were tired men, and we were getting on in years too. We expected that partition was bound to come back to us. None of us guessed how much the killings and the crisis in Kashmir would embitter relations."But partition came, and what had been Hindu-Moslem hostility was soon converted into Indian-Pakistani hatred. The very next year, the two countries were at war with each other in the Vale of Kashmir. Even today, Kashmir lies a festering wound between India and Pakistan. Should all-out war come, there is no doubt that the conflict in East Pakistan would quickly be dwarfed by far bigger and bloodier battles in the west largely aimed at control of the fabled valley. The issue stems from Britain's failure to make provision for India's 600 princely states when self-determination elections were held on the subcontinent in 1947. As it happened, Kashmir was ruled by a Hindu Maharajah, but its population was predominantly Moslem. When Pakistan invaded in the autumn of 1948, the Maharajah promptly placed the province under Indian rule. Once again, in 1965, it became the battlefield for the rival powers. Though both Pakistan and India began as parliamentary democracies, they soon drifted along divergent political paths. Jawaharlal Nehru lived to guide India into a role of world's largest democracy (pop. 547 million), but Pakistan's founding leaders, Mohammed Ali Jinnah and Liaquat Ali Khan, died soon after independence and eventually the country fell under military control. Since the military was dominated by the Pathans, Punjabis and Baluchis of the West, it became established policy to short-change the poorer, more densely populated eastern wing, which before the refugee exodus began last March had a population of 78 million v. 58 million for the West.
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