New Republic

Twice during his sickly last months, when he knew the end was near, the late Prime Minister Nehru toyed with an ambitious idea for a comprehensive detente in South Asia, It was too ambitious for its time, but the East Bengal tragedy has given it new meaning and validity as a long-term alternative to the present prospect of multiplying Indo-Pakistan conflict.

The essence of the Nehru plan was his conviction that the Kashmir and East Pakistan problems are inseparable parts of the same larger problem. Both are historical accidents resulting from the hurried partition of 1947, he believed, and both symbolized in differing ways the artificiality of the Pakistani "Two Nation" concept with its emphasis on Hindu and Moslem religious identity as the sole basis for the political structuring of the subcontinent .

Nehru never publicly revealed his views on the future of East Pakistan, limiting his overt diplomatic initiatives to the search for a Kashmir peace as the first phase in what he hoped would become a broader process of accommodation. In off the record comments, however, he maintained during a memorable interview that a nonfederal relationship between India and Kashmir might help to promote a similar pattern between West and East Pakistan, setting the stage for gradual movement toward an overall confederation between India, Pakistan and their smaller neighbors .

In the published portions of my interview, appearing in The Washington Post on December 19, 1962, Nehru made a controversial reference to the goal of an Indo-Pakistan confederation that became a bogey in relations between the two countries for months to come. Britain and the U.S. were pressuring the Indian leader for a Kashmir settlement at the time, following the India-China border war in the Himalayas. Forced to explain his rejection of the Western demand, Nehru implied that the Kashmir issue could best be resolved within the larger framework of a confederation embracing not only India and Pakistan but an autonomous Kashmir as well.

"Confederation remains our ultimate goal," Nehru declared. "Look at Europe, at the Common Market. This is the urge everywhere. There are no two peoples anywhere nearer than those of India and Pakistan, though if we say it, they are alarmed and think we want to swallow them."

Pakistan promptly justified his prophecy by charging that his comments betrayed the futility of the Kashmir negotiations then about to begin under Western prodding. Nehru dropped his idea until early May, 1964, less than three weeks before his death, when he released Kashmiri leader Mohammed Abdullah after ten years in prison and encouraged the Sheikh to go on a peace mission to Pakistan.

Hitherto undisclosed details of the Rawalpindi talks between Sheikh Abdullah and Pakistan's former President, Ayub Khan, underline the intimate connection between the Kashmir and East Pakistan issues and make clear that the tensions between the two wings of Pakistan were already acute seven years ago. When Abdullah mentioned confederation, he recalled in a recent interview Ayub dismissed the proposal as "a trick to split Pakistan," since Nehru "knew very well" that even exploratory negotiations on the idea would fall the fires of Bengali separatism and lead to demands for separate coequal status with West Pakistan, India and Kashmir in any confederal setup. Nehru was playing with fire, the Pakistani leader warned, given India's own potential separatist threats in Tamilnadu, Kerala and West Bengal.

Looking back on Nehru's initiative in the light of the present situation, it should be stressed that even in his private comments, he did not necessarily envisage complete sovereignty for East Pakistan. He spoke of "more or less parallel processes" in India and Pakistan giving gradually increasing autonomy to both Indian and Pakistan-held portions of Kashmir as well as to East Bengal. The two Kashmirs and the two Bengals would begin to have trade and other interchange as part of a general relaxation in the atmosphere between the two countries. As mutual confidence grew, Nehru hoped for a drift toward overall confederation embracing not only India and Pakistan but smaller neighbors such as Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and possibly Ceylon. At this point, as Ayub feared, Nehru assumed that both Kashmir and East Pakistan would escalate their autonomy demands, "though not inevitably to the point of full sovereignty."

Nehru seemed confident that both Srinagar and Dacca would find "advantages in retaining links with a larger unit" so long as their internal autonomy was unfettered. He talked at length about the problem of reconciling local and national identities amid the complex social diversities of South Asia, "a patchwork, you know, ruling out oversimplified solutions that ignore the realities. The more we can have central directing instruments, the better for our development, but where the urge for autonomy is obsessive we must eventually accommodate it." In the Indo-Pakistan confederation of Nehru's conception, it might be necessary in special cases to have "interlocking confederations functioning within each country as well as between them. We must never be too rigid."

Nehru's willingness to see Kashmir autonomous or even independent under a confederation might seem puzzling in the light of past Indian intransigence in the dispute with Pakistan over the Himalayan state. Actually however, it was quite consistent with the basic rationale underlying the Indian stand. Just as Pakistan demands predominantly Moslem Kashmir as a vindication of the "Two Nation" theory, so Nehru and now Indira Gandhi have insisted that Kashmir should remain with India as a symbol of the Indian commitment to a secular state in which the Moslem minority coexists on equitable terms with the Hindu majority. An autonomous Kashmir in a setting of continuing hostility with Pakistan would only be asking for trouble, India reasons, inviting recurring Pakistani attempts to annex the state. By contrast, Nehru suggested, autonomy or even independence within the context of a confederation would lose its significance as a focal point for Indo-Pakistan conflict.

The confederation idea was predicated on the assumption that Pakistan would be compelled, in time, to reappraise the "Two Nation" theory, and it is a more valid idea today than ever before because the East Bengal carnage has clearly discredited the notion of an overriding Islamic unity cutting across regional and linguistic differences. The events of recent weeks have left West Pakistan saddled with an obsolete national ideology that will be increasingly difficult to sustain in the face of manifest realities. Whatever new raison d'ete is formulated for the existence of a separate Pakistan, it can no longer be credibly founded on the proposition that religion is the only meaningful dividing line in the subcontinent. The "Two Nation" theory was shattered beyond recognition on the night of March 25 when West Pakistani tanks rolled through East Pakistani barricades with their rockets blazing.

At the same time that Punjabi Moslems were gunning Bengali Moslems in East Pakistan, Prime Minister Gandhi won her landslide election victory in India, decisively defeating Hindu nationalist parties on a platform explicitly reaffirming her secular commitment. The 65 million Moslems in India solidly supported her and proved to be a critical factor in many marginal election constituencies. They have never been more secure or more politically powerful than they are today, though there is still a latent potential for communal strife if tension with Pakistan grows into war.

Once the monsoon sets in, it has often been said, West Pakistan will soon be driven to acknowledge that there is no longer a rational or viable basis for its continued rule in the eastern wing and will disengage to cut its losses. Yet the tragic reality of the present situation is that West Pakistan may well be able to postpone its agonizing reappraisal for months or even years despite mounting damage to East Pakistan, to India and to its own internal strength. Lacking a face-saving rationale for disengagement, the Yahya Khan regime is likely to hang on indefinitely hoping for a total collapse of Bengali will.

Even if this collapse never comes and resistance continues, the regime may well find Bengali collaborators capable of restoring minimal law and order behind a facade of phony autonomy. Another factor favoring West Pakistan in the short run is that Indian profiteers and smugglers are prepared to deal with both sides in the East Pakistan conflict. They are eminently ready to supply West Pakistani authorities with one hand, if the price is right, at the same time that they help Bengali independence elements with the other. The ability of West Pakistan to carry on its operations in the East would not be immediately affected even if all new Western aid commitments were to be suspended. Already programmed aid of nearly $200 million now in the pipeline will not be fully exhausted for months, and there is a continuing possibility of large-scale assistance to West Pakistan from China, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

Far from acknowledging that the "Two Nation" theory is dead. some West Pakistani leaders are seeking to rationalize the debacle in the East by contending that the Bengali Moslems are not really genuine Moslems at all as a result of their relatively recent conversion from Hinduism. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's Awami League derived much of its strength from the ten million Hindus in East Pakistan, the argument runs, and the lesson to be drawn from the recent unpleasantness there is simply that Hindus should be barred from further participation in the body politic or, still better driven out as refugees. This totally disregards the breadth of the Sheikh's overwhelming sweep of 163 out of 165 seats in the election last December and gives a ready handle to Hindu extremists in India, who maintain that Pakistan will inevitably be anti-Indian whether or not India decides to give military help to the Bengalis.

The vicious circle of distrust between India and Pakistan is steadily intensifying, and yet there are powerful countervailing reasons why it might eventually be possible to move in the direction suggested by Nehru. The most important of these is the increasing magnitude of the refugee influx from East Pakistan into India and the growing impact this is likely to have both in the subcontinent and the outside world. Many in India and Pakistan will no doubt become reconciled to the inevitability of a new war, but more might begin to search for another way as the staggering human and financial costs of the Bengali upheaval force a reassessment of basic attitudes. The Indian government has followed a policy of notable restraint toward East Pakistan which has kept the door open for such reassessment. Despite intensifying domestic pressures for intervention, Mrs. Gandhi, has shied away from recognition of an independent Bengali regime, skillfully playing for time in the hope of averting a major confrontation with Pakistan .

An important subsurface factor helping to restrain Indian recognition has been the fear that an independent East Bengal might stir separatist feelings in the Indian state of West Bengal, leading at the very least to strains on the shaky structure of law and order in densely packed Calcutta and conceivably to a revival of the abortive pan-Bengali nationalist movement of 1947. While West Pakistan has been in a defiant mood, so far, it is likely to be more conciliatory as time goes on and its problems multiply. Pressures boiling up in East Pakistan will continually frustrate the efforts of the West to reestablish a stable government within the present framework of a unitary state. Even their Bengali collaborators will be continually pressing for greater and greater autonomy, As the costs and complexities of its occupation grow, West Pakistan may gradually begin to take a more realistic view of the sort of loosely federated Pakistan proposed by Sheikh Mujibur.

The West Pakistanis' continuing delay in bringing the Sheikh to trial despite repeated threats to do so suggests that the possibility of negotiations with him at some later date has not yet been irrevocably foreclosed. While General Yahya Khan has branded the Sheikh a traitor, Yahya could step down in favor of a new junta leader who would be free to seek a negotiated settlement without serious loss of face. But no West Pakistan regime is likely to make a meaningful autonomy bargain with the Bengalis, in any case, unless this is accompanied by far-reaching changes in the overall pattern of Indo-Pakistan relations .

Before suggesting in specific terms how the Nehru approach might be applied to the East Pakistan crisis today, it is necessary to examine why West Pakistan blundered into its policy of naked military repression. What happened on March 25 was not the inexplicable behavior of madmen or sadists. It reflected the frankly- stated fear that a sovereign East Pakistan would inevitably link up with India to create a new balance of power in the subcontinent. The excesses committed by the Pakistani Army leaders are only partly to be explained in terms of their vindictive racial contempt for the Bengalis. Basically, their policy of repression demonstrated the deep sense of insecurity they felt when they belatedly realized the extent and strength of Bengali separatism.

Pakistan never fully recovered from the traumatic shock inflicted by the Indo-Pakistan war of September, 1965, After a decade of artificially inflated military expansion made possible by US aid grants, Pakistan had begun to think of itself as the equal of India, a country four times its size. Tashkent marked the start of a painful psychological deflation which had not yet run its course when the Awami League election sweep in East Pakistan last December brought the long-simmering Bengal crisis to a head. Having just come to terms with the fact that they presided over a country one fourth as big as India, West Pakistani leaders reacted in desperation to the prospect of a secession that might reduce them to the position of a Country one tenth as big. Their anxieties blinded them to the fact that Sheikh Mujibur was actually their best hope of forestalling secession with his plan for a loose confederation.

At bottom, as Ayub's attitude indicated, most West Pakistani leaders continue to believe that India will seek to undo Partition if the chance ever presents itself. Yet from the very start, the overwhelming majority of Indian leaders have been quite reconciled to the existence of a separate Pakistan. Nehru accepted partition unequivocally as a necessary and even desirable adjustment. He wanted the strongest possible central government in New Delhi, and he knew that Moslem majority states under militant Moslem League dominance would be politically indigestible in the new India Union. What he rejected was not the idea of a separate Pakistan but rather the "Two Nation" theory, committing the new state as it did to a built-in anti-Indian posture as the only political ethos holding the country together.

The basic precondition today for meaningful progress toward a rapprochement would be reconsideration, on Pakistan's part, of the concept that India is inherently an enemy by virtue of its Hindu majority. For such a complete reversal of present attitudes to come about, however, India would have to make a series of magnanimous gestures of reconciliation over the next several years designed to strengthen West Pakistani moderates. The initiative clearly falls to India not only because it is the larger and stronger of the two countries. Even more important, it has the more stable political structure at a time when Mrs. Gandhi has Just won a massive parliamentary majority and General Yahya Khan has Just led his country into a seemingly bottomless morass.

The most appropriate way for India to help set in motion a process of reappraisal in Pakistan would be to liberalize its policy in Kashmir, beginning with a revocation of the current ban on Sheikh Abdullah's entry into the state. This could be followed by a resumption of the dialogue with the Sheikh broken off at the time of Nehru's death and, at a later stage, by a renewed attempt to open up discussions with Pakistani leaders, either through a summit meeting, a new intermediary effort by the Sheikh or a Tashkent-type conference under the aegis of one or more of the major powers. Abdullah is still the unchallenged spokesman for the Kashmiris as he has been for the past two decades. Mrs. Gandhi indirectly acknowledged the threat he poses to the present pro-Indian regime in Srinagar when she barred him from the state during the recent elections. The pro- Pakistan fringe has given him minor competition in past years but is weaker than ever now in the wake of the East Pakistan butchery,

An Indian decision to engage in negotiations with Sheikh Abdullah would imply a new readiness to grant extensive autonomy to the Kashmiris, and this, in turn, would directly strengthen those in Pakistan who are beginning to rethink their relationship not only with East Pakistan but with India as well. In Pakistani eyes, Indian willingness to give autonomous status to a Moslem-majority area would be a powerful signal reaffirming that New Delhi is genuinely reconciled to the existence of a separate Pakistan. This would not be a betrayal of secular principles, because Abdullah and most other key Kashmiri leaders are not committed to the "Two Nation" theory. They are regional patriots committed to self-determination for a distinctive Himalayan area set off by geography and history from both India and Pakistan, an area that happens to have a Moslem majority but is also distinguished from the Moslems and Hindus of the plains by the spirit of independent identity common to mountain people the world over.

The psychological impact on Pakistan of an autonomy policy in Kashmir would be maximized if the state is given special status without alteration of its present ethnic and religious composition. This would place the Hindu minority in the Jammu portion of the state under the political domination of the Kashmir Valley Moslems without the offsetting strength of Hindu political elements in New Delhi as at present. It is precisely to obviate this possibility that some Indian leaders have long proposed the partition of Kashmir and the annexation of Jammu by the neighboring Punjab state. But even autonomy for the Vale alone, with Jammu detached, would still be a far-reaching step opening the way to rapprochement.

Given the obvious obstacles to direct talks between India and Pakistan in the forseeable future, the Sheikh might meet initially instead with leaders of Pakistan's "Azad" (Free) Kashmir with all eye to the phased introduction of trade and transit arrangements. Later, India could propose a mutual reduction of forces along the ceasefire line and at this stage direct contacts might follow naturally. New Delhi could make indirect efforts during this period, through diplomatic channels, to encourage acceptance of a confederated East Pakistan by offering some form of internationally-attested undertaking to respect the new arrangement. But the first experimental arena for accommodation would necessarily be in the two Kashmirs rather than the two Bengals.

It is somewhat misleading to bracket the Indian regime in Kashmir with West Pakistani rule over the Bengalis, if only because Indian military repression has never begun to approach the mindless brutality demonstrated in East Pakistan. In contrast to West Pakistan's unabashed economic exploitation of the Bengalis, India has used the velvet glove along with its iron fist, lavishing costly rice subsidies and development programs the Kashmiris to dull the edge of discontent. Nevertheless, while the two situations cannot be directly equated, they clearly invite comparison, and both symbolize in differing ways the basic psychological problems dividing India and Pakistan.

The influential Hindustan Times has editorially pointed to the Kashmir issue as the key to stimulating a process of rethinking in West Pakistan. Attacking Mrs. Gandhi recently for banning Sheikh Abdullah's entry into Kashmir, the newspaper declared that "if ever there was a need for a liberal policy in Kashmir it is now. If the events in Bengal have any lesson it is that repression does not pay and cannot win in the long run. The eruption in Bangla Desh will in time be seen to influence thinking in Kashmir and on Kashmir. Pakistan has sought to legitimize its claim to Kashmir by projecting it as the unfinished business of Partition. However, Partition has long passed into history and it is the concept of Pakistan and the kind of polity it professes on which there will be questioning."

Sheikh Abdullah made clear in a recent interview that he sees a direct connection between the Kashmir and East Pakistan problems and still believes in the possibility of an overall Indo-Pakistan understanding along the lines envisaged in his 1964 discussions with Nehru and Ayub. Significantly, he does not attempt to make a case for a sovereign East Pakistan, and his concept of what would constitute a tolerable measure of "maximum autonomy" offers new clues suggesting the possible outlines of a Kashmir compromise with New Delhi. India has been making "a hue and cry for the Bengalis," Abdullah observed bitterly, "but they apply a double standard when it comes to Kashmir. How can you control the minds of people anywhere with guns? This should be brought home to the people of India. What holds true for the people of East Pakistan holds equally true for Kashmir."

The Awami League leaders "were seeking virtual separation," he said, "and Yahya felt he was stopping the disintegration of Pakistan. Now, if he has learned any lesson, he will concede maximum autonomy to the eastern wing, and perhaps a way will be found for them to stay together for some time. If they allow the people of East Pakistan to be real masters in their own house it willnot be to their disadvantage to have some sort of link with the western wing. It would be helpful to them. But they must have maximum autonomy, subject to the overall solidarity of Pakistan."

Bengali autonomy would not extend to foreign trade as sought by the Awami League, Abdullah added pointedly, implying that Sheikh Mujibur had overplayed his hand after Yahya provoked him by postponing the Constitution- drafting session of the National Assembly without consulting the Bengali leader.

Like Nehru in 1964, Abdullah seems to be thinking in terms of coordinated autonomy moves in both Indian and Pakistani-held portions of Kashmir and views an agreement on Kashmir merely as the first step in a continuing cycle of accommodation. He contends that no Kashmir solution would have meaning "unless Pakistan is brought into it from the start." Even with "maximum autonomy" in its relations with India, he observes, the Kashmir Valley would still depend for its welfare on a relaxation of tensions along the cease-fire line and the reopening of the road from Srinagar to Rawalpindi, a traditional trade route closed for more than twenty years. Abdullah's formal public position on the nature of a Kashmir settlement is deliberately vague stressing only that an enduring solution must be acceptable to India, Pakistan and Kashmir alike. But the logic of private comments by the Sheikh today and by Nehru in his last years points to a form of mini-confederation between the two Kashmirs, operating at the same time that they each retain lines with New Delhi and Rawalpindi. In Nehru's case, this was clearly suggested in my 1962 interview, and the idea of tree interchange between two autonomous Kashmirs was explicitly viewed as the precursor of a larger confederal relationship between New Delhi and Rawalpindi in later years. In such a relationship, Nehru remarked, East Pakistan, too, should "logically! gain greater autonomy.

The possibility of full independence for East Pakistan as a coequal of India and West Pakistan in an overall confederal arrangement would be greatly enhanced if the smaller powers in the region were to be brought into the equation. Both Nehru and Abdullah saw Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan and possibly Ceylon as potential members of a South Asian confederation or of less ambitious arrangements patterned on the European Economic Community. This is a key point, since West Pakistan would naturally look to these countries as offsets to Indian power. Rawalpindi might even seek to include Afghanistan, not as wild an idea as it first sounds when one considers the already growing overland truck traffic through the Khyber Pass and the logic of extending this traffic across the Punjab plain to India.

"Looking ahead historically," Abdullah declared, "confederation is the long-run direction that the minds of the leaders should take. But we obviously cannot put the cart before the horse. The first necessity is for India to attempt to remove the deep suspicions in Pakistani minds. If both sides learn the lessons to be drawn from Bangla Desh it might be possible, in time, to make a new start toward stability in this region. Perhaps at some point friendly powers can assist in this process, slowly, steadily helping bring the parties around to this way of thinking.

Prime Minister Gandhi reacted sharply during an interview in New Delhi last month when I recalled her father's 1962 and 1964 proposals and asked about the possible value of a new start now on Kashmir and other Indo-Pakistan issues. "We have been suggesting new starts all along," she said, "but their whole attitude seems so far from ours and so hostile." She was coldly noncommittal as to whether she will extend the ban on Abdullah when it expires in early July. In her comments on East Bengal. however. she talked more expansively about the impact of the crisis on the subcontinent as a whole, expressing a fervent desire to keep it from becoming a source of conflict with Pakistan and implying a corresponding hope that the problem might yet be resolved through a negotiated settlement between Rawalpindi and the Awami League.

In assessing the role that India might play in untangling the present crisis, it is especially pertinent to note her comment that the demand for an independent East Pakistan "would not have arisen" if Sheikh Mujibur and Yahya had continued with their negotiations on a confederation. New Delhi has carefully avoided giving categorical recognition to the legitimacy of an independent Bengal and could advise the Bengali leaders with complete consistency to give up their goal of full sovereignty for the foreseeable future. Even after all that has happened, the last, best hope for a stable evolution of the subcontinent would appear to lie in a renewed attempt to negotiate some form of loose confederation agreement between East and West Pakistan as a means of inducing Rawalpindi to disengage. The terms for such a settlement would be demanding for both sides but not beyond the realm of possibility. The West would have to begin by releasing Sheikh Mujibur and dealing with him as the principal spokesman for the Bengalis. The majority of West Pakistani troops would eventually have to be removed as the unavoidable price for the excesses committed during the past two months. This was not something that Mujibur had demanded in his March negotiations with Yahya and would give the Sheikh a visible victory. But the Sheikh's Awami League might also have its own concessions to make in the form of scaled-down demands for independent trade and monetary policies.

The support or acquiescence of the United States and the Soviet Union would be an essential element in bringing about such an agreement. The US and its World Bank allies would have to make future aid to Pakistan conditional on movement in this direction, and Washington would have to abandon its long-standing objective of preserving a "balance" between India and Pakistan, urging Rawalpindi to accept its subordinate position gracefully in a new effort to forge a more secure and a more realistic relationship with India. This would require a much greater adjustment in current thinking for the US than for the Soviet Union, which has always emphasized India in its South Asia Policy and has even gone to the extent of questioning the wisdom of Partition.

Imperialist "divide and rule" tactics led to the division of the subcontinent, Nikita Khrushchev declared on a visit to Kashmir in 1955, "and we are absolutely convinced that when passions have calmed down and people realize the significance of such an artificial division of India, they will regret it."

The attitude of China is a major imponderable and could conceivably lead to the deliberate obstruction of a confederation effort In terms of their tangible interests in Pakistan, however, the Chinese would appear to gain little from such a course. Their major immediate objective in Pakistan appears to be air and overland access in West Pakistan to the Arabian Sea, utilizing their new road links from Tibet into Gilgit, and this is likely to be secure whatever happens in East Pakistan. Only direct Indian intervention in East Pakistan is likely to be regarded as a threat to their position. The initial Chinese commitment to West Pakistan has been carefully moderated in response to what the USSR and the US have done. In part, this may reflect concern for the Maoist image among Bengali Communists factions, but it may also suggest that Peking wants to allow for a possible moderate shift in its border dispute with India. New Delhi, for its part, hopes to reduce tensions with China in order to avoid excessive dependence on Moscow and Washington.

Important as it is, the role of the outside powers can only be a marginal one with a limited potential either for easing or prolonging the present crisis. The real issue is how India, Pakistan and the Bengali independence leaders assess their own interests. For the Bengalis, in particular, the very idea of a negotiated settlement might well prove to be totally indigestible after the brutalities of the past two months. The Awami League leaders understandably fear that even a nominal link with Rawalpindi would give a target to armed militants continuing to seek full independence and create a built-in challenge for a new East Pakistan. Yet the Bengali moderates have no real alternative but to make the best of a political settlement, if one is available on tolerable terms, since military liberation by New Delhi would leave a legacy of even greater instability, virtually ensuring Chinese support for the opposition guerrillas.

All accommodation between Dacca and Rawalpindi under present circumstances by its nature would be a contingent experiment placing the onus on Rawalpindi to demonstrate its bonafides. It would not necessarily signify abandonment of the independence goal but rather a recognition that its achievement is inseparably wrapped up with the larger fabric of relationships in the subcontinent. There is no escape from the bitter conclusion that enduring independence for the Bengalis will come, if it ever comes, only as part of a general relaxation of tensions between India and Pakistan and purposeful movement toward a confederated peace inspired by the Nehru vision.