Daily Times, Sunday, June 16, 2013 dailytimes.pk/default.asp?page=2013%5C06%5C16%5Cstory_16-6-2013_pg3_6 Book Review : A record of India-Pakistan interactions — By Dr Ishtiaq Ahmed Book Review: India-Pakistan Relations, 1947-2007: A Documentary Study Author: Avtar Singh Bhasin Publisher: New Delhi: Geetika Publishers; 2012 The publication of a massive 9062-page, 10-volume work, India-Pakistan Relations, 1947-2007: A Documentary Study by Avtar Singh Bhasin, who retired after a three-decade long career in the Indian External Ministry, is a work of outstanding merit produced with a passion and devotion that would elicit respect and admiration from anyone who has worked with the tiresome and frustrating task of sifting, selecting, categorisation and classification of documents. States enjoy almost a monopoly over the maintenance of the written record of events, past and present, and without such primary sources the study of politics and history is handicapped. The author has brought forward reports, including top secret intelligence ones, written by Indian high commissioners in Pakistan. The documentary study has been conducted in cooperation with the Public Diplomacy Division of the Indian External Ministry. When states begin to make public classified documents, it is indicative of growing confidence and transparency. The first five volumes focus on politics. It is not surprising that strained relations devolved between the two states from the bloody partition in 1947, and both sides began to play the blame game from the outset. Pakistan accused the Indian leadership of trying to harm Pakistan while the Indian leaders rejected vociferously such accusations and instead blamed their Pakistani counterparts of negative politics. The letters between Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan and Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru on this subject set the pattern and their successors continued to write in the same mould. In this regard, both sides point out the negative role of their national media for aggravating relations. However, since the leaders and civil servants on both sides had been part of the same colonial order, their personal contacts and friendships are also reflected in some communications. Therefore, occasionally we catch glimpses of friendly exchanges, even admission of mistakes and wrong moves on their part. There is hardly any political topic that I consider important in regard to India-Pakistan relations that the author has ignored. I found the complete verbatim transcript of the Simla conference and the conferences held in Rawalpindi and then in Delhi, before the Pakistani prisoners of war were released, in Volume III, invaluable (pages 1707-1852). The last volume on politics, Volume V, also contains a section on the no-war and joint defence pact offers made by both sides. However, when one did the other rejected it. According to Bhasin, the last one is a response of Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto dated August 9, 1996 in which she rejected the idea as long as the Kashmir conflict was not resolved. Volume VI includes sections on defence, the nuclear issue, Junagarh and Kashmir. Not surprisingly, both sides express concern about their counterpart’s arms buildup and pursuit of nuclear capability but are self-righteous about their own contradictory moves on the same issue. Junagarh and Kashmir are, undoubtedly, the most contentious issues, especially Kashmir. A mine of information based on official documents has been brought forth. That the two states assumed patently contradictory positions on the basic question of accession of those two princely states is all too obvious, notwithstanding vain justifications of their own stands. Volume VII includes sections on Kutch, canal/Indus waters and eastern rivers. It sheds much-needed light on issues that have compounded the strained relations between the two major states of South Asia. Considering that the Indus waters issue continues to be the source of tension and disagreement, the importance of this volume is considerable. Volume VIII includes sections on trade and commerce, India-East Pakistan border and India-West Pakistan border. The author has very wisely categorised these issues in one volume because they are organically connected. If and when trade and commerce pick up momentum, movement of goods would be essentially along the land route. Therefore, documents from 1947 onwards on border disputes and tensions are most useful to develop appropriate policy. Volume IX documents the two states’ concerns on minorities and evacuee property. My contention is that the partition of India created a minority problem that benefitted majoritarian nationalism in both states and there is enough evidence of it in the documents. This is especially true of the treatment of Hindus in Pakistan whose numbers have consistently been decreasing while those of Muslims in India increasing. Evacuee property litigation is still not over, most notably over the famous Jinnah House on Malabar Hill Road, Mumbai. So, once again a very useful collection of relevant documents is at hand. Volume X deals with financial issues, passports and visas and miscellaneous others. Miscellaneous includes an assortment of documents related to the other volumes but also to the two states’ interaction internationally with other states but on issues related to the India-Pakistan situation and, therefore, are most relevant and interesting. The 10 volumes that Bhasin presents contain enough material for several books and research projects. In the long introduction at the beginning the author presents an Indian perspective on India-Pakistan relations. He has tried to present Pakistani responses to communications between the governments on both sides, but this has not been done consistently. I talked to the author in Delhi and he said that he could not always find material. However, for the scholarly community it is important that we know what Pakistan had to say about the same issues and those it gave importance to. Both perspectives are important to form a fair and objective opinion about their relationship. One can only hope that someone from the Pakistani side would undertake a similar study of high standard so that comparable material is available to scholars. In its scope and depth the compilation of official documents by A S Bhasin is comparable to the classic 12-volume The Transfer of Power, published by the British government. It is a contribution of monumental significance indeed to understanding the India-Pakistan imbroglio. The reviewer is a PhD (Stockholm University); Professor Emeritus of Political Science, Stockholm University; and Honorary Senior Fellow, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore. Latest publications: Pakistan: The Garrison State, Origins, Evolution, Consequences (1947-2011), Karachi: Oxford Unversity Press, 2013; The Punjab Bloodied, Partitioned and Cleansed: Unravelling the 1947 Tragedy through Secret British Reports and First-Person Accounts (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 2012; New Delhi: Rupa Books, 2011). He can be reached at billumian@gmail
Posted on: Sat, 15 Jun 2013 21:40:43 +0000
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