India's Ad Hoc Arsenal - Publications - SIPRI

12 INDIA'S AD HOC ARSENAL111. Statehood and insecurityThe creation of Pakistan affected India in a more profound way than is irnrnediatelyevident from a historical account of the First Round. The partition of theIndian sub-continent created two nation states whose very existence created foreach a national security problem. The war of 1947 merely confirmed what wasalready suspected in New Delhi and Islamabad, namely that there would benear permanent hostility between the two states into the foreseeable future andprobably beyond.For India, partition had both direct and indirect effects upon national perceptionsof security and created a very particular security dilernma.9 The circumstancesof independence and the very creation of Pakistan, in the prevailingatmosphere of suspicion, left a deep sense of insecurity and raised pertinentquestions of territorial integrity, national security and sovereignty. First andforemost, it was the prelude to the dispute over Kashmir, which would alwaysbe a difficult circle for India to square following the UN resolution. The acceptanceof de facto borders, effectively ceding at least Azad Kashmir to Pakistan,would amount to a considerable loss of regional prestige for India, internationalopinion notwithstanding. In addition, to lose all of Kashmir would constitute aloss of security. Given the prevailing regional security equation, it would add tothe size and potential resources of Pakistan and alleviate in part Pakistan's primarystrategic weakness-a conspicuous lack of defence in depth. Above all, itwould cut off India's important supply route to Ladakh, which is fundamentalfor defence against China.Henceforth the security configuration in the sub-continent was conditionedby the existence of two nation states whose creation and existence stemmedfrom religious antipathy, by the 'two nations' theory which held that Hindusand Muslims could only CO-exist in separate nation states, and by profoundmutual mistrust bordering on hatred. Partition was neither a complete nor acompulsory process. A large number of Muslims remained in India~currentlysome 80 million-and Indian leaders have habitually assumed that the primaryallegiance of the Muslim minority was towards Pakistan. They thus constitutedan internal threat and a potential fifth column. This idea has become lodged inthe public imagination. Indian voters are quick to use Muslims as a scapegoatfor many of the country's internal, domestic problems, as is in part reflected inthe rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a radical Hindu party, the growthof strident anti-Muslim sentiments and anti-Pakistani rhetoric in the speeches ofIndian politicians.The Indian elites may have harboured a cultural sense of insecurity followinga long history of invasion from the north-west. Prior to the arrival of theBritish, Indian culture had evolved a unique system for assimilating successful'invasions', but the period under British rule and subsequent independence hadA particular security dilemma but not unique-thereand the Arab-Israeli dispute.is a striking resemblance here to the Middle East