Of course it would be wrong to cite these examples as a reason to place the entire onus for any subcontinental dysfunctionalities on India alone. Large parts of South Asia have made great progress — economically, socially and politically — over the last few decades. Yet, there are a number of challenges that continue to beset the region and that hold back the true potential of our countries, individually as well as collectively. These include terrorism and extremism, and the use of these as instruments of state policy; and the daily terror of hunger, unemployment, illiteracy, disease and the effects of climate change. And less obvious but equally potent, restrictions on regional trade and transit that belong to an older, more mercantilist century. That many Indian states, in India’s federal polity, have serious issues with their neighbours (concerns in Bengal and Bihar about movement of goods and people from Bangladesh and Nepal, for instance, or the treatment of Tamils in Sri Lanka, and at one time Pakistani support for separatist Khalistani militancy in Punjab) injects domestic political compulsions into New Delhi’s thinking, particularly in an era of coalition governance, where the views of political allies must be imperatively taken into account. A political tendency in some of the neighbouring countries to adopt ‘blame India’ as a default internal political strategy has in turn bedevilled perceptions. These are among the factors that drag the people of the subcontinent back from the path of sustained peace, development and prosperity.
As I have already argued, the principal thrust of India’s foreign policy ought to be to promote the country’s domestic transformation, development and growth. The neighbourhood remains vital in this regard. Whereas more distant areas of the globe — the investment-generating countries of the Americas and Europe, and the energy-supplying countries in the Gulf, Africa and Central Asia — offer obvious opportunities for India, problems in the immediate neighbourhood generate both threats and opportunities — and the threats risk undermining India’s efforts fundamentally. Weak and failing states, as scholars have noted, are able to subvert the larger ambitions of the more dominant countries neighbouring them. The Indian analyst Nitin Pai has gone so far as to argue that ‘India’s neighbours know that their own weakness is a source of implicit and explicit bargaining power’. Be that as it may, a rising India has an obvious interest in the success of its neighbours, since a stable neighbourhood contributes to an enabling environment for India’s own domestic objectives, while disturbances on India’s borders can act as a constraint on India’s continued rise.
India’s geopolitical strategists, both inside and outside government, have tended to see India’s interests globally (witness the attention paid to relations with the United States, or India’s role at the UN and the Non-Aligned Movement); in the neighbourhood, they have focused mainly on the threats to the nation’s rise from the Pakistani military and its terrorist proxies, and to a somewhat lesser degree from the emergence of China and its impact on India’s stature in the region. The result has been that the rest of the neighbourhood has sometimes been treated with neglect rather than close attention, and occasionally with a condescension that some have seen as arrogance. Whereas China is generally viewed as having managed its relationship with its neighbours well — though this image is fraying now with reports of Beijing’s increasing belligerence in the South China Sea — India is widely considered not to have done enough to transform its neighbourhood from a liability into an asset. Seventeen Indian states share land or maritime borders with foreign countries. The need to work for a peaceful periphery, devoid of the threat of extremism, is self-evident; less obvious but even more necessary is the need to embrace the neighbouring countries in a narrative of shared opportunity and mutually beneficial development.
This has worldwide implications for India. As the authors of a March 2012 report on India’s external relations, ‘Nonalignment 2.0’, point out: ‘India’s ability to command respect is considerably diminished by the resistance it meets in the region. South Asia also places fetters on India’s global ambitions. Our approaches to international law [and] international norms are overly inhibited by anxieties about the potential implications that our commitment to certain global norms may have for our options in the neighbourhood.’
For the Indian foreign policy maker, there is no getting away from the fundamental verities underpinning our relationships on the subcontinent. The question that all of us who belong to this ancient land need to ask ourselves is whether we desire peaceful coexistence and cooperation or are reconciled to being irretrievably mired in conflict and confrontation. A subcontinent at peace benefits all who live in it; one troubled by hostility, destructive rivalry, conflict and terror pulls us all down.
India must refuse to be dragged down by such forces. We need to look to the future, to an interrelated South Asian future where geography becomes an instrument of opportunity in our mutual growth story, where history binds rather than divides, where trade and cross-border links flourish and bring prosperity to all our peoples. Some will say these are merely dreams; yet there are few worthwhile achievements in the world that have not been preceded by ambitious aspirations. But dreams will only turn into reality if we take action to accomplish this brighter future together. Only work on the ground will help us overcome prejudiced mindsets, dogmatic doctrines and self-perpetuating myths. One thing is, however, clear. Our destinies are inextricably linked and we have to work together to lift our lives out of underdevelopment and conflict to peace and prosperity.
Our region has been blessed with an abundance of natural and human resources, a rich spiritual and civilizational heritage, a demography where youth is preponderant and a creative zeal manifest in all spheres of human endeavour. Our collective identity may be rooted in a turbulent history but the challenge is to translate the many factors that bind us into a self-sustaining, mutually beneficial and cooperative partnership that transcends the vicissitudes of the recent past. Indian officials like to argue that the people of South Asia have already made their choice and that the spirit — if not yet the reality — of an organization like SAARC embodies the aspirations of people from Herat to Yangon. It is imperative that all nations of SAARC work collectively to realize their vision. Yet, as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh noted at the April 2010 SAARC summit: ‘We have created institutions for regional cooperation but we have not yet empowered them adequately to enable them to be more proactive.’
The Government of India, from the prime minister down, has a strategic vision of a peaceful subcontinent. The Indian foreign policy establishment genuinely believes that the peace, prosperity and security of our neighbours is in our interest. Many efforts have been made by India in recent years to ensure a marked improvement in its relations with most of its immediate neighbours, particularly following (and building upon) the articulation of the ‘Gujral Doctrine’ in 1996, which declared the accelerated development of every country in the subcontinent to be a key goal for India. Unlike some, India has never believed in undermining or destabilizing other countries; we believe that each of us deserves an equal chance to attend to the needs of our people without being distracted by hostility from any of our neighbours. When I was briefly a minister in the Government of India, I proudly declared that ‘where we have disagreements, we will never abandon the path of dialogue and reconciliation. We are as resolute in our commitment to peace as we are firm in defending our country.’ These are sentiments anchored in a long tradition, one that official India still gladly stands by.