India and Pakistan: Dangerous Politics of National Identity by Stanley Kober

India and Pakistan
and the Dangerous Politics of National Identity

By Stanley Kober, Cato Institute (Oct. 15, 2001)

"Having undertaken a war against bin Laden and his organization in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the United States must also deal with the political unrest that affects the entire region stretching from the Middle East to South Asia, unrest which is also rooted in issues of national formation and identity."

At the dawn of the twentieth century, there was a general belief that humanity had left major war behind. War, it was argued, did not make sense in an increasingly integrating world. "The division of labor intensified by facility of communication" made conquest unprofitable and superfluous, Norman Angell argued in his famous book, The Great Illusion.1 Indeed, by interfering with the flow of international commerce and finance, even the winner in war would lose economically. According to Walter Bagehot, the renowned editor of The Economist (London), the modern world had moved from the "fighting age" to the "age of discussion."2

Yet the twentieth century was the bloodiest in history because the nature of war had changed. It was no longer about conquest for profit or plunder. Instead, it was about things less tangible and more emotional. "War is not impossible, and no responsible Pacifist ever said it was; it is not the likelihood of war which is the illusion, but its benefits," Angell pointed out, commenting on the wars that had broken out in the Balkans in 1912. "War is only inevitable in the sense that other forms of error and passion-religious persecution for instance-are inevitable."3

Angell believed that the growth of commerce would eliminate even these wars, and he held out the hope that Western Europe would serve as a model. "The great service of a complex social and industrial organization," he wrote, is that "it teaches us, as only some such simple and mechanical means can teach, the lesson of human fellowship. It is by such means as this that Western Europe has in some measure, within its respective political frontiers learned that lesson.... that wealth is made by work, not robbery."4

A year after these words were published, Western Europe was consumed by the greatest war it had ever seen. The civilizing impulse of trade was overwhelmed by other, more elemental motivations, above all the need to belong, to be part of a greater community. That need was exemplified by Sigmund Freud, who exclaimed when the war began: "All my libido is given to Austro-Hungary."5 Freud's enthusiastic embrace of war-or more precisely, his desire to identify with his nation at a time of great moment-is an illustration of the fundamental irrationality of modern conflict, and of the attraction of that irrationality even to someone who professionally treated the irrational.

Angell was correct about one thing: war for plunder has diminished, in large part because the major powers now recognize its futility. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor might have been inspired, in part, by a desire to consolidate its Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, but that economic rationale for international conflict is now almost extinct. As Angell predicted, the great powers now recognize they can trade for what they need, and consequently their effort to acquire foreign goods is directed toward improving their own competitiveness, rather than on conquest. That is one reason Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was so unexpected: it had been a long time since the world had seen a case of war as bank robbery.

Modern war is overwhelmingly concerned with issues of identity. The American Declaration of Independence, for example, begins with a stirring call for the establishment of a separate American identity, "when, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume, among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them." Even so, an American identity did not emerge firmly until the victory of the Union in a terrible civil war.

The wars of our own day are simply continuations of these wars of national formation, which historically have been tied up with religious identification. In Europe, the bloody Thirty Years' War led to the Peace of Westphalia (1648), which is commonly regarded as the foundation of the modern international order. Even today, European states retain their religious identities, and the extent to which religious minorities must conform to those identities is a matter of debate. "Our Christian culture, marked by Christianity, ancient philosophy, humanism, Roman law and the Enlightenment, must be accepted," Germany's Christian Democratic Party asserted earlier this year in a policy paper. "That does not mean abandonment of particular religious and cultural practices, but acceptance of our values and organization for living together."6

These words reflect a concern that Germany's identity could be altered if its Turkish minority, which is overwhelmingly Moslem, is granted easier access to citizenship. Osama bin Laden takes this position to its extreme, asserting that infidels must be expelled from Moslem lands because like can live only with like. His willingness to kill innocents to achieve this objective is reminiscent of the Holocaust, which was justified as an effort to achieve a pure volkstaat, or nation-state. His war against the United States is a challenge not only to American power, but also to the American rejection of the idea that like must live with like.

Having undertaken a war against bin Laden and his organization in response to the terrorist attacks of September 11, the United States must also deal with the political unrest that affects the entire region stretching from the Middle East to South Asia, unrest which is also rooted in issues of national formation and identity. President George W. Bush has expressed the desire of the United States to see the establishment of a Palestinian state, effectively recognizing that a new nation (Palestinians) has arisen that must see some acceptance of its political aspirations if peace is to be achieved in the region and if Israel is to live in security. In addition, the Bush administration is now engaged in an effort to knit together an Afghan identity from the ethnic groups inhabiting that troubled land.

Perhaps the most intractable and dangerous problem of all, however, is the tension between India and Pakistan, focused on the disputed territory of Kashmir. Predominantly Moslem in population, it was absorbed by India in the chaos that accompanied the partition of the subcontinent. Pakistanis have never reconciled themselves to this outcome, and the dispute has already led to war between the two countries. Following the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, attention of the mujahedin shifted to Kashmir. The increase in violence intensified and almost led to outright war again in 1999. The tension dissipated only when then-Pakistani President Nawaz Sharif reached an agreement with President Bill Clinton, in which he agreed to recall the guerrillas fighting India in return for greater American involvement in resolving the Kashmir dispute.

The current conflict has brought the Kashmir issue again to the fore, and Secretary of State Colin Powell's visit to India and Pakistan is a testament to its seriousness. India feels strongly that it has been a victim of terrorism, just like the United States. Following an especially deadly bombing in Srinagar on October 1, Indian Prime Minister Vajpayee told the U.S. government his country's patience was running out.7 At the same time, however, some Indian commentaries are welcoming an American intermediary role, something New Delhi traditionally has rejected.8

Powell's task will not be easy. First of all, he must keep both Pakistan and India from coming to blows: war between these two countries would in any case be dangerous given their nuclear capabilities, but at this time it would be catastrophic to the effort against bin Laden's organization. Indeed, as Powell left on his trip, al-Qaeda announced it is adding Kashmir to its list of grievances, claiming that the U.S. is aiding Hindus at the expense of the Moslems.9 And it is not only Kashmir that poses a threat of violence. Hindu fundamentalists have threatened to build a temple at Ayodhya, where the destruction of a mosque in 1993 led to widespread Hindu-Moslem violence in India. If they go ahead, there will undoubtedly be a Moslem reaction, which could provide bin Laden with another opportunity and force a Pakistani response.

But even if the immediate disputes are successfully handled, the root problems will remain, since they reflect the issues of national identity of which Kashmir is a symbol. "For centuries, people of the subcontinent have identified their 'nationality' with their religious community," observes Mustafa Malik of the Strategy Group. "Alternately, people in some regions of the subcontinent identify their nationality with their ethnicity." He concludes, perhaps grimly, that "neither India nor Pakistan has yet been a nation as a student of nationalism would understand it."10 Already Pakistan has broken in two, with the separation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh. Ultimately, peace in the subcontinent depends on the ability of these countries to create identities that look inward rather than outward, so that they do not continually define themselves in opposition to, let alone in conflict with, their neighbors.

In this regard, the conflict in which we are now engaged has remarkable similarities to the situation that existed 100 years ago. Back then, it was also believed that deterrence would prevent war, but deterrence failed. American policy has been based on deterrence, but as Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld recently observed, "the deterrence that worked in the Cold War didn't work."11

That is because the Cold War lacked the emotional content of conflicts of identity: the leaders held different values, but they were rational, and they were afraid of war. That rationality may prove to be the exception, rather than the rule, however. Our war against terrorism has been likened to the Cold War, but we should be aware of this fundamental difference, which signifies a major change in our concept of war.

---

1 Norman Angell, The Great Illusion, 4th ed., rev. and enl. (NY: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1913), p. 53.

2 Quoted in Asa Briggs, A Social History of England (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1994), p. 273.

3 Angell, p. 389.

4 Ibid. p. 402.

5 Quoted in Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, ed. and abr. by Lionel Trilling and Steven Marcus (NY: Basic Books, 1961), p. 356.

6 Quoted in Roger Cohen, "How Open to Immigrants Should Germany Be? An Uneasy Country's Debate Deepens," New York Times, May 13, 2001.

7 See "Text of Vajpayee's letter to Bush," Times of India, October 2, 2001.

8 See, for example, Chinmaya R. Gharekhan, "Colin Powell's Visit," The Hindu, October 10, 2001,
internet at http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/2001/10/10/stories/05102523.htm.

9 Chidanand Rajghatta, "Al-Qaeda puts Kashmir in the Agenda," Times of India, October 15, 2001.

10 Mustafa Malik, "Ethnicity and Islamic Modernization," in Paul Peachey et al., eds., Abrahamic Faiths,
Ethnicity, and Ethnic Conflicts (Washington: Council for Research in Values and Philosophy, 1997), pp. 60-61.

11 Quoted in Dana Milbank, "U.S. Pressed on Nuclear Response," Washington Post, October 5, 2001.

Return to top of page