Pakistan is an outcome of the project that was meant to balkanise India. It was never an outcome of the geographical or civilizational originality that defines the nationhood. Indian struggle for independence from the British colonisation led to the emergence of new permutations and combinations in the un-divided India. These equations were formulated with the blessings of the British who knew that their days are being numbered. There were many streaks in the Indian freedom movement that were either opportunist or unpredictable.
When the British were present in the Indian mainland there was a semblance of brotherhood in political affairs but the undercurrents in the socio-religious matrix were something else. The British were well aware of these fault lines and they had in fact worked overnight to engineer these during their rule in India. And over the years they had mastered the art of manipulating the conflicts.
It is a paradox that those against whom the masses had united became the patrons of balkanising forces. It is a well-known historical fact that the Indian National Congress was a British creation meant to take out the steam from the educated intelligentsia of India. The British education system may have created a class of educated people who by default got trained in the colonial system but it enabled them to internalise the art and nuances of the politics and administration by which the colonisers ruled and supressed India.
This class got fully well versed in the intricacies of the British Raj and the strategies of the Crown to hold India. It goes to the credit of this intelligentsia that hey utilised the British system in India and England to pursue the politics of Indian empowerment. But realising the impact that this class can have on the Indian political scene. They devised the Indian national Congress to take the steam out of their pursuits. It was the creation of A.O. Hume. It helped to develop petitioners who pleaded for the rights of the Indians that is what the colonisers wanted. But till the truth about the foundational intent was evident among the educated and the masses, it served as the platform that gave some semblance satisfaction to the freedom fighters in terms of the Indian pursuits.
But this experiment did not last long and the British could not constrain the aspirations of the freedom movement with this bureaucratic instrument. That appeared to speak for the Indian empowerment but was in reality a pressure cooker to consume the abilities of the educated class of the natives. This formulation attracted both Hindus and Muslims to its fold to pursue their community aspirations as well.
It may have appeared that the organisation has a national character but in reality the British were experimenting the search for the elements that can have larger utility to wreck the national movement for freedom from within. They did succeed indeed. They encouraged the factions and individuals to be apparent ambassadors of the national unity but helped them to nurture the seeds of balkanisation of India. It is with this intent that seeds of Pakistan started germinating that took first shape in the form of separate electorates.
It was a well calibrated move to give an impression of leaving India but wait till the critical mass is created for the swift take over. It was a ruse, the British were in reality nurturing a segment that can leave India balkanised on their exit. So that at least one entity gives them a foothold in one part of India even after their exit. So that they can continue to play the role in the Great Game that had already started unfolding in the Himalayas.
Mohammad Ali Jinnah may have been the part of the Congress that gave space to the educated class to sharpen their debating skills but at the same time it gave the British a catchment area to nurture a class that can be used as the centrifugal force to sow the seeds of dismemberment of India. Jinnah was not acting in isolation he was well aware of the thesis of the Mohammad Iqbal who had already given the treatise to formulate the Muslim India. Syed Ahmed Khan had already catalysed the social undercurrents that too converged in the same direction. It suited the British to wreck the march of Indian freedom with balkanisation.
It was not necessary that props were cultivated from the British set up but groupings from outside its ambit joined hands with these formulations that used the British creation to pursue the communal agenda to the agenda of the British project. This resulted in a case for the creation of Pakistan when the grouping of states failed and the cabinet Mission Plan was rejected. This engineered the Direct Action leading to genocidal attrition. It became a norm to pursue the politics of genocidal attrition for compelling the powers at the helm of affairs to agree to the demands even if these may be based on the marginalisation of the other communities.
It is not that this politics of genocidal blackmail was not decoded. It was indeed internalised but the people inflicted with the ostrich syndrome in the pleading Congress were in a denial mode. This denial mode later led to the development to genocide denial and entered into the national DNA displacing the people from their original homelands and rendering them refugees for generations that is going on till date. Thus Pakistan emerged on the basis of inflicting genocide on the others. This othering forms the basis of Pakistan.
What the Pakistan Army Chief General Asim Munir said recently in a conclave of the overseas Pakistanis is the continuity of Pakistan as a genocidal state. He was clear that Pakistan is what India is not. New generation must be sensitised and told about the otherness between the Hindus and Muslims.
Thus negating the inclusivity that shapes the Indianess. He was not saying anything new. He was upholding what the founding fathers of Pakistan meant-genocide of others being the foundation of Pakistan. The wholesale religious cleansing of the non-Muslims in 1947 from the places that now constitute Pakistan was a project of its genocidal foundation.
It did not stop here but it transgressed its own existing standards on genocide infliction. It extended the genocidal attrition to the princely states. It violated the Independence of India Act that gave the option of acceding to either India or Pakistan to the princely states. There was no option of independence. But being a genocidal state, Pakistan had mastered the art of genocide to hold the decisions hostage.
And that is what it did in Jammu and Kashmir when it organised an invasion of its army to annex Jammu and Kashmir using the un-uniformed military men on vacation and the tribal mercenaries as its army extension. The same way it uses the radical religious terrorists as the un-uniformed battalions of Pakistan Army to engineer the acts of genocidal attrition in Jammu and Kashmir today. The recent Pahalgam massacre is the continuity of Pakistan as a genocidal state.
The 1990 genocide of Kashmiri Pandits is again the extension of its genocidal basis. It has integrated genocide as a state existence strategy substantiated by the patronage of the un-uniformed terrorist mercenaries who act as the extension of its army establishment. It allows it to garner plausible deniability. But the recent acknowledgement by its Defence Minister after the punitive strikes by India in Pakistan Occupied Jammu and Kashmir(POJK) and Bahawalpur that madrasas are the second line of defence for Pakistan makes it amply clear that its uses seminaries as the tools for enabling genocide and inflicting genocide on the others who are anti-thesis to its agenda.
For that it identifies the support structures in the areas of operation where it intends to enable genocide of others. This veil of plausible deniability was ripped apart when the Pakistan’s Army Chief General Asim Munir and the Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharief attended the funeral of the terrorists who perished during the Indian precision attacks in POJK and Bahawalpur. This establishes beyond doubt that Pakistan pursues genocide of others as the state policy and what it has been doing in Jammu and Kashmir for more than 35 years is not terrorism but an absolute asymmetrical war. If this would have been internalised in 1989-1990 then the genocide and internal displacement of the Kashmiri Pandit community would have been averted.
Genocide has its own implications and it does not stop at only harming others but it leads to internal damage within the state that enables it. Pakistan is witnessing the same. The genocidal attrition of the Balochis in Balochistan vindicates this. A genocidal state ends eating up its own vitals as it develops an immune system that eats its own vitals.
Pakistan is an artificial state and it owes its existence to inventing the enemies. And for that it needs genocide as the state policy. The international community in general and India in particular needs to internalise that Pakistan is a genocidal state that thrives on genocide of others and genocide as a state policy. This realisation is a must to establish peace and stabilisation in South Asia. Humanity cannot be held hostage to a genocidal state.
( Author is a National Security Expert, Heritage Tourism Management Expert & an Exponent Kashmir Shaiva Trika Tantra Parampara. He writes on the issues concerning Jammu and Kashmir, Northern Frontier and Kashmir Shaiv Darshan. His two books titled “Jammu and Kashmir Breaking the Subversive Web and A Way Forward” Exploring Heritage Tourism in Jammu have been widely acclaimed)
