Peace and Security Review, Vol.1 No. 2 - International Centre for ...

Badrul A. Khan South Asia and Regionalism 85
held policy of non-alignment and refusal to commit to a policy of engagement
with either of the super powers during the cold war has made it a passive
aspirant for that role, significantly impacting on the development of locally
based institutions. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation
(SAARC) for example had come into being without the initiative from India.
India’s reluctance to develop or effectively engage in regional organizations
partly came from the anti-Indian rhetoric, which most South Asian leaders
had been engaged in.
Hegemony involves prestige and status that a country must enjoy in
international political system in order to claim support of other states. Most
countries in South Asia seem to despise India for being a power, which they
think is divisive and whose commitment to South Asia’s regional concerns
are not spelled out properly. To a greater extent India has failed to insulate
from petty debates and bickering that characterizes its relationship with
neighbours. The impression that India eschews a regional commitment is also
enforced by a multiplicity of sub-continental concern left either unattended
or poorly negotiated by India. Tamil revolt in Sri Lanka affects India’s South;
inability to resolve the enclave issue with Bangladesh, tension with Nepal and
Bhutan and military clashes with tribal and indigenous people of Nagaland
and Mijoram have been protracted affairs, which though parochial and
idiosyncratic, have undermined India’s strategic purpose questioning its ability
to administer South Asia judiciously. When the exercise of responsibility
rather than domination or isolation or abandonment of secondary states is
what is commonly believed should be hegemonic role, India has remained
oblivious to it, even resisting changes that might have helped to resolve the
many difficult issues that past has left for South Asia to settle. This has
provided a leeway for other regional powers particularly China to cash in
and exert divisive influence over those countries, which are disappointed at
India’s attitude towards them.
Because of this, the underlying strategy of India’s foreign policy has
remained shy of undertaking regional initiatives. Issues related to region’s
economic and social growth have therefore received little attention compared
to the issues that are highly political. South Asia’s failure to appreciate the
potential of regional and bilateral trade in the promotion of economic growth
and regional peace has meant that no visible change in the thinking of
individual governments to create a collective self, which South Asia has
always felt short of during the past years, has enunciated. Contrarily, India’s
regional economic diplomacy has aimed to bypass SAARC rather than develop
it further as it now contemplates to go ahead with a divisive post-SAARC
arrangement “with a new regional economic grouping BIMST-FC that brings
Vol.1, No.2 2008 pp.77-93