India’s neighbour from hell

It might serve India well to do a deep dive in studying all aspects of Pakistan.

The greatest intellectual and strategic failure of India is the absence of Shatrubodh (understanding of the enemy). This is not limited to only the society but also extends to sections of the Indian state and many of its functionaries, political, military and bureaucratic. The inability to clearly identify the enemy, much less its motivations and its mindset, means India has never prepared itself to vanquish, or even deter, the enemy.

Forget China or Bangladesh or the fifth column inside India, even an enemy like Pakistan that avows enmity and hatred for not just the idea of India but also of Hindus has not been studied and understood like it should have been. What is mind boggling is that even when Pakistanis openly proclaim they are an enemy of India and Hindus and want to balkanise India, there are people (including people who have served as advisors to Prime Ministers) who insist that “no, no, you are not an enemy but a brother and friend”. And then there are people who were responsible for securing India and fancy themselves as experts on Kashmir feel proud to call for “moving on and moving forward” with Pakistan.

While it is unfair to doubt anyone’s integrity without evidence, there is sufficient proof to question their intellect, intelligence and sheer obtuseness.

Indians have a shallow understanding of Pakistan

Indian understanding of Pakistan and Pakistanis has no rigour. It is mostly anecdotal, flaky, superficial and pedestrian. Personal experiences are often conflated with the political and imagination is allowed to run wild thinking if personal relations are cordial then it can be the same at the political level. Worse, anecdotal experiences are delusionally extrapolated to think everyone on the other side is the same and that peace and friendship with Pakistan is within grasp.

After all, we speak the same language (no we don’t), we share the same traditions and customs (no we don’t), we like the same music (no we don’t), we wear the same clothes and look the same (no we don’t), we have the same dreams and ambitions (most certainly we don’t – Indians dream of educating their kids and moving up in life, Pakistanis dream of how to make their kids a martyr in jihad against Kafirs;  Indians have ambitions of becoming the next Elon Musk or Mukesh Ambani, Pakistanis dream of becoming a Hafiz Saeed or if very ambitious then Khaled the conqueror).

"Two nations" carried to an extreme

What the Indians just haven’t got is that Pakistan is an Islamist ideological state in which hate and intolerance for the ‘other’ is framed in the so-called “Two Nation Theory” (2NT). This ideology of hate which gave birth to the country is the ruling paradigm. Interestingly, the 2NT operates at different levels: it created Pakistan because Hindus and Muslims were two nations that couldn’t live together – communal and religious 2NT; it created Bangladesh because Punjabis couldn’t live with the Bengalis – an ethnic, linguistic and racist 2NT; it is now reflected in the Pakistani Punjabi Muslim wanting to colonise and exploit the Baloch – a colonial 2NT; it is also reflected in Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) wanting to enforce its brand of Islam on the Punjabi dominated Pakistan – an Islamist 2NT; and it is manifest in Sunnis vs Shias and Deobandis vs Barelvi divides – the sectarian 2NT. What this means is that anyone who subscribes to the 2NT and believes in ‘ideology of Pakistan’ is incapable of living in peace with anyone else.

That is why wherever Pakistanis go they bring trouble – UK being a prime example, and many Arab states also running out of patience with Pakistani shenanigans. And yet, if any Indian thinks there can be peace with Pakistan, then they are living in an alternate reality.

Myth of the whisky drinking generals

Most Indians have manufactured their own myths and measures for judging the Pakistanis. Needless to say, these are utterly specious, even puerile. Sample this: such and such general drinks whisky so he must be a moderate; such and such politician wears three piece suits so he must be enlightened; such and such journalist tells us ‘pleasant lies’, appreciates India and Indians so he/she must be secular; such and such Pakistani has studied in a Western university so he must be progressive.

This kind of labelling and stereotyping is not just superficial, it makes for utterly wonky analysis. If only these Pakistanis were scratched to ferret out their true nature, the Indians would realise that there is little to choose between these characters and the more visible jihadist elements. In anything, with the latter you get what you see, which is hardly these case with these two-faced faux liberals, or Islamists with a secular façade.

Regardless of their accent or their act of being enlightened moderates, Pakistanis, especially Punjabi Muslims who suffer from a deep inferiority complex of the neo-convert trying to prove his faith but unable to shake off his caste identity – Jat, Gujjar, Arain, Rajput, Shaikh (baniya converts) etc. – have a visceral hatred for Hindus (also Sikhs and Christians) and by extension India. The Punjabi Muslim is the most vicious, venomous, visceral and even vacuous Pakistani. These are people who are the products of Pakistan’s enormously successful indoctrination program through which multiple generations have been brainwashed with lies, half-truths and bigotry to make them ‘good’ Muslims who not just hate the ‘other’ but are incapable of living in peace with anyone not like them.

This includes othering the Baloch or the Pashtun nationalists for example. Some decades ago, they hated the Bengalis but now that Bangladesh is becoming a mirror image of Islamist Pakistan, the Bengalis of Bangladesh are suddenly long-lost brothers of Punjabi Muslims.

Indians are easy patsies for Pakistanis who try to infiltrate by pretending to be democrats and anti-Pakistan Army. Almost all of these are traps laid out for gullible Indians who take them at face value and give access to them which otherwise would not be available.

A candid Afghan perspective

Unlike the Indians, the Afghans got a good measure of the Pakistanis, particularly the Punjabi Muslim. In what is probably the most accurate description of Pakistan, the former Taliban ambassador to Islamabad, Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef in his book “My Life With Taliban” described Pakistanis in the following words:

"Pakistan...is so famous for treachery that it is said they can get milk from a bull. They have two tongues in one mouth, and two faces on one head so they can speak everybody's language; they use everybody, deceive everybody. They decieve the Arabs under the guise of an Islamic nuclear power, saying that they are defending Islam and Islamic countries. They milk America and Europe in the alliance against terrorism, and they have been deceiving Pakistani and other Muslims around the world in the name of Kashmiri jihad. But behind the curtain they have been betraying everyone. Their Islam and their jihad were to destroy their neighbouring Islamic country together with infidels...”

Wake up, India

India and Indians need to wake up from their delusions about Pakistan and understand that the distinction that is often made between the Pakistani state and society is entirely and completely fallacious. There is no difference between the two. All you need is to scratch at the surface and the truth will out. This distinction is nothing more than a kind of virtue signaling by Indians who don’t want to accept the reality of Pakistan being an implacable, civilisational enemy of India. It is a country whose existence is based on anti-Indiaism and anti-Hinduism. To expect that such a people can be befriended is to live in cloud cuckoo land.

It is imperative that Indian policy makers also throw in the rubbish bin the proposition that if we talk to the Pakistan Army, we can settle matters and normalise affairs. The thing is that this too is a desultory path because what one general decides is often reneged by his successor – Ashfaq Kayani did 26/11 to undo Musharraf’s peace moves; Asim Munir has done Pahalgam to undo what his predecessor Qamar Bajwa was trying to do.

If India is serious about putting Pakistan in its place, the first thing it needs to do is get real about the country and people it is dealing with, their mindset and their maniacal motivations. Otherwise, India will continue to get surprised and shocked by Pakistani actions. It is indeed time to move on and move forward on Pakistan, not in the direction that a former spook would have us take but in the opposite direction. And while doing so, it might serve India well to do a deep dive in studying all aspects of Pakistan and become better informed about the enemy at the gates.