As this turbulent century is approaching its end, the year 2000is increasingly assuming a talismatie significance. People all over the world seem to be yearning for a better world, but hardly anybody. Knows how this rose garden is going to appear at the turn of the century. Lest this heightened expectation tums out to be a broken dream, optimism should be channelized for building a better future. [Tis imperative that instead of living in the shadows of the past, we take positive and imaginative steps into the future with courage, faith and hope.
While the world community and the United Nations are preoccupied with the crisis in the Balkans, the human rights landscape in South Asia is becoming gloomier than ever before. South Asia happens to be the second most populous region in the world after China. Its people have experienced a series of blood baths — the partition of the Subcontinent in 1947the two Kashmir Wars in 194748 and 1965, India China War in 1962, the Bangladesh war in 1971, and the recurrent massacres in Kashmir, Punjab (Khalistan), Nagaland, Assam, and Sri Lanka, to mention a few.
In 1971, the crisis could have been resolved peacefully by granting the Bengalis of East Pakistan a genuine regional autonomy. Unfortunately, it ended in colossal human massacre. It culminated in India’s military intervention, dismemberment of Pakistan, and the birth of a bleeding new nation of Bangladesh. The human and economic cost of this tragedy was Staggering for Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh.
In this context, the bloody conflict in the Balkans provides the worst case history. The leadership of the Supra Serbian Empire (popularly known as Yugoslavia) missed a chance to transform this empire into a commonwealth of free nations. They did not seem to learn any lesson from the leadership of the defunct Soviet Empire. It is a compliment to statesmen like Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin (despite their mutual hostility) that they did not use the gun power to stop the transformation from the imperial political culture to a new environment of cooperation and sharing, They had the power to unleash a holocaust, but they did not use It.
As it were, the civility and political sophistication demonstrated by the Czechs and the Slovaks also provide some hope that a peaceful transformation is in the realm of possibility. Back in the 1960’s Malaysia and Singapore had shown a similar political maturity when they parted company without a shooting war. If two ethno cultural communities cannot live together, instead of bleeding each other to death, they can try to live as neighbors. IL involves the transformation of a political culture of dominance to a political arrangement of sharing and cooperation. By transforming the hegemonic state structure, the prima facie conflict between the principle of self-determination and the notion of territorial integrity can be resolved. Political entities can enjoy independence at the vertical level and maintain and develop horizontal cooperation for regional economic development with open frontiers and free trade.
In South Asia, Punjab and Kashmir were integral parts of the Sikh Commonwealth, which was annexed by the British in 1849. The Kashmiri Muslims. (About 6.5 million, constituting roughly 76% of the population of Indian occupied Kashmir), and Punjabi Sikhs (about 18 million or approximately 72% of the population of Punjab) have been struggling for a genuine autonomy since the 1950’s. In Punjab, a peaceful civil disobedience movement was subjected to India’s brute force, which in tum generated counter violence — making innocent people the victims of this vicious cycle of crossfire. Instead of learning any lessons from the Bangladesh War, India has relied on barbarian state terrorism to deal with essentially ethno cultural and political problems. Now India’s ruling regime blames the so called “external forces” for its own blunders. It has also been spending millions of dollars on a worldwide media blitz, of misinformation and distortion to hide the massacres in Punjab, Kashmir, Nagaland, and Assam, and to malign the Sikh, the Muslim, and the Christian minorities. Consequently, relatively manageable problems have been transformed into full scale insurgencies, involving unnecessary loss of human life and the depletion of scarce economic resources in the region, No wonder, Kashmir and Punjab, (Khalistan) are now being referred to as India’s Baltic States, seeking independence from India’s oppressive rule.
The way out of this tragic situation lies in the transformation of, the existing imperial system, inherited from the British, into a South Asian Commonwealth of free nations — with closer economic and cultural ties, somewhat like the European Community, The Supra Hindu nation has the power, but it needs the courage to understand that the days of the empires belong to the past. Therefore, it is imperative to live with the smaller nations, like the Punjabi Sikhs, Kashmin Muslims, and Naga Christians, as peaceful neighbors, instead of lording over them.
The South Asian Commonwealth will improve human’s rights environment in the region. It would save India and Pakistan significant resources presently consumed. By the gigantic military establishments, nuclear arsenals, and killing machines — which could not save either the Supra Russian Empire or the Empire. These resources can be utilized for meeting the basic needs of the people and for improving the quality of life for all. For too long poor people in South Asia have been fed on false promises.
In this new political and ethno cultural landscape the sanctity of human life (the right to life being the basic human right) would take precedence over the sanctity of existing, and somewhat arbitrary, boundaries; and the politics of compassion would put a human face on the polities of cynicism. This regional commonwealth of free nations would share power with the national and global authorizes and be accountable to them. None of the political entities would have the monopoly. Of power {o control human destiny, as the existing Supra Hindu state has today. To be ‘sure, this kind of idealism is easier said than done, but pessimism provides no hops for the future, one can get some inspiration (rom George Bernard Shaw’s words: “People see things and say why, but dream things that never were, and say why not?” The author, Dr.Gurcharan Singh is Professor of International Relations and Director of International Studies Department at Marymount Manhattan College, New York.
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Article extracted from this publication >> August 13, 1993
