BRITAIN'S MISSION IN INDIA
'We are not a superpower, but we can act as a pivotal partner, acting with others to make sense of this global interdependence and make it a force for good, for our own nation and the wider world. In so doing, I believe we have found a modern foreign policy role for Britain.'
Tony Blair chose to codify his humanitarian foreign policy, not in Britain, but before an audience of Indian industrialists - and in the middle of a regional conflict that owes its origins and causes to British meddling. The speech was notable for its insistence that there would be no 'retreating into nostalgia' and that 'the days of Empire are long gone'.
Such a promise ought to be a relief to Indians, who have good cause to view the days of Britain's subjugation of India, not with nostalgia, but horror. But Blair protests too much: like the Imperialists of old, he pretends that Britain's interference in the Indian sub-continent is for everybody's benefit, as a 'force for good'. In fact, Blair is using the troubled region as a stage for his own self-aggrandisement, and for the reinvention of Britain's post-imperial role.
The conflict between Pakistan and India, though, is not the product of a peculiar visitation of fanaticism, as is argued, but of the retreating British Raj's sabotage of Indian national independence. Taking advantage of the Indian National Congress's gradualism, Britain promoted religious hostility between the sizeable Muslim minority and the Hindu majority - a policy that resulted in mass slaughter and the separation of the Muslim north (then East and West Pakistan) on independence. It was a policy that frustrated the creation of a secular Indian state, and created an unstable and reactionary Pakistan that owed its survival to the sponsorship of Britain, and later the US.
In the 1980s Pakistan was an important regional proxy for the West, as a base for countering Soviet influence. A failure to stabilise a coherent nation out of Britain's sectarian project left Pakistan prone to fragmentation, leading to the loss of East Pakistan, and separatist movements throughout the remaining rump state. Only her role as loyal Western ally allowed Pakistan to maintain a forward momentum, along with the country's rivalry with India, centring on contested, and largely Muslim but Indian-ruled Kashmir.
The current crisis was sparked by the recalibration of Western policy in the region following the end of the Cold War. In the past the West feared that India's 'non-alignment' favoured Moscow, and kept her at arm's length, while massively subsidising the Pakistan military. But since the soviets were put out of the picture the way was opened up for Indian-US relations to thaw, as they did during President Clinton's visit to India in March 2000. Since then September 11 and the Afghan war have underscored the dangerous consequences for the West in sponsoring Islamic fundamentalism in Pakistan.
Realising his advantage, Indian premier Atal Behari Vajpayee has used the framework of the War Against Terror to pile the pressure on Pakistan's General Musharraf - as well as passing some repressive police legislation at home. A militant Islamic attack on the Indian parliament allowed Vaypayee to demand Musharraf take action against fundamentalists operating from Pakistan. The West has little option but to lean on Pakistan further, having already forced Musharraf to back the attacks on Afghanistan. For Vajpayee, the heightened conflict with Pakistan has the fortunate consequence of redirecting hostility to the central state to an external enemy.
For the US, flushed with success, there are few costs involved in dumping Pakistan. A growing number of Indian immigrants in America make an opening to India attractive for domestic reasons too. Britain, by contrast, has stronger links with Pakistan, and British Labour MPs, particularly those in Birmingham, like Roger Godsiff and Overseas Development Minister Clare Short (in an attempt to forestall Muslim demands for political representation) have supported Kashmiri separatist demands. Consequently, Blair has been careful to suggest that Pakistan has a case in Kashmir, while unable to resist the Indian presentation of the over-riding need to 'combat terrorism'.
Blair's mission is largely indifferent to the sub-continent's real needs. Instead the conflict is just one more opportunity to leverage British diplomatic and military 'expertise' into another attractive trouble spot. Blair is oblivious or indifferent to the role that Britain played in stirring the conflict, by first creating and then dumping its Pakistani ally. Far from pouring oil on troubled waters, Blair's grandstanding will tend to aggravate the conflict further. -- James Heartfield Sustaining Architecture in the Anti-Machine Age is available at GBP19.99, plus GBP3.26 p&p from Publications, audacity.org, 8 College Close, Hackney, London, E9 6ER. Make cheques payable to 'Audacity Ltd'. www.audacity.org