A moving poem by Allama Iqbal, one that India eventually chose to accord the status of a national song, presents a strange irony. In the 1930s Iqbal wrote: Saare jahaan se achha Hindustan hamara (Our Hindustan is better than any other nation in the world). Now, if you were to take the self-deluding poetic thought to heart, hitch it to a newfound nuclear prowess, and you happen to be surrounded by countries who fear your overbearing narcissism, you would spell trouble for both yourself and those you seek to befriend.

The tortuous journey of SAARC since its inception in 1985 has been overshadowed by an unwieldy baggage of history, as reflected in the potential for damage by an innocuous poem, as much as it is stymied by an unequal development of capitalism across the subcontinent under British rule.

‘To tell you frankly, we were all a little allergic to India, so we decided to engage it collectively,’ General Hossain Mohammed Ershad, who hosted the first summit in Dhaka, explained the reasons for setting up Saarc. The comment would seem improbable coming from a Bangladeshi leader. After all India’s army had helped liberate the country from a sectarian, Punjabi-dominated West Pakistan. And yet, Dhaka became suspicious of its former ‘benefactors’ in New Delhi. Was there something wrong with India’s body language towards Bangladesh following the brief honeymoon in 1971-72 that such tension should arise between them? It appears so, but the problem has never been publicly or truthfully discussed. Is Bangladesh an ungrateful neighbour? Perhaps both sides could do with a modest measure of self-criticism? Bangladeshi diplomats are urging India to appoint a special junior foreign minister to handle the frequently unstable but potentially high yield ties.

South Asia’s mistrust stems from deep recesses in history. In fact some would say that history is repeating itself here in different cloaks. It would seem preposterous for India’s foreign ministry, for example, to choose between two warring sides from ancient times, say, between Mughal invader Zahiruddin Babar and Delhi’s Pathan ruler Ibrahim Lodhi in the First Battle of Panipat that was fought in 1526. But that is more or less the brief the Indian government has pursued in contemporary Afghanistan, having changed alliances and perceptions of the battling sides several times over since 1947.

The choice between today’s Northern Alliance and the Pashtuns ranged viciously against each other presents an amazingly palpable replication of the ethnic battle lines that greeted Babar’s arrival in India as a fugitive from a turbulent Farghana valley, now in Uzbekistan. The Northern Alliance mostly swears by Babar’s legacy, the Pashtuns despise him. The objective of the war may have shifted and instead of vying for the throne of Delhi, the protagonists of Panipat are today locked in a fight for the capture of Kabul. Indeed, even the so-called global war on terror in more ways than a mere manner of speaking could be seen as one being fought between the dramatis personae that first featured on a battlefield near Delhi. It is ironical that India which once backed Pashtun nationalism in the garb of Abdul Ghaffar Khan has switched allegiance to its rivals, the Northern Alliance of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Hazaras and their powerful foreign mentors in the so-called global war on terrorism.

It is very nearly the same story intertwined with history vis-a-vis India’s other neighbours. Emperor Ashoka converted to Buddhism and sent emissaries to promote the new religion centuries ago. But he is often not too obliquely linked with today’s Sinhalese chauvinism in Sri Lanka that mocks ties with Delhi despite the helping hand it has often extended to Colombo. In the 1970s, Indira Gandhi had militarily rescued Sirimavo Bandaranaike’s Sinhalese-dominated government in the face of a nearly successful Marxist revolt. On the other hand, India also gave moral and political support – including alleged military training – to Sri Lanka’s Tamil minorities. And yet, Rajiv Gandhi was butted by a miffed Sinhalese soldier at an official guard of honour in Colombo, before being killed by a Sri Lankan Tamil woman near Chennai some years later. It was all extremely tragic, but how do we explain this bristling rage from the very people one had tried to help?

 

There have been frequent attempts to see the trouble in South Asia through the communal prism of 1947 – a notionally secular but predominantly Hindu nation flanked by two inimical Muslim states. According to this thesis, the Saudi style Islam encouraged in the Maldives and a tussle between diverse shades of Muslims from Afghanistan, a new entrant to Saarc, should make life that much more difficult for India. But the truth is that few countries have been as overtly expressive of their allergies with India as the landlocked former Hindu kingdom of Nepal. In fact, the one lasting memory among the people there – despite India being the artery, a veritable lifeline to Kathmandu – is the image of the crippling economic blockade that New Delhi imposed on its northern neighbour in 1989. Some Nepali analysts acknowledge the culpability of the once powerful royal palace in forcing India’s hand, but the lasting rancour in Kathmandu is palpably anti-Indian. Why? Was there introspection, much less any self-criticism, by either India or Nepal over this easily avoidable standoff?

 

A country such as Buddhist Bhutan, supposed to be closely linked with India’s political and diplomatic postures, finds itself occasionally strained by the bear hug. The tiny Maldives, whose government the Indian Navy saved from a certain coup in 1988, does not exactly seem to reciprocate the enthusiasm with which India seeks its welfare. In far flung islands of the Maldives, having exported Buddhism there centuries ago, only to lose it to the relatively new sea-faring religious proselytisers from Arabia, reveals a strange demise of durable cultural links that were snapped, on this occasion, by the peccadillos of a kinky ruler.

Legend has it that a particularly cruel Buddhist ruler of the archipelago exploited the superstitions of his subjects. He masqueraded as the ‘Sea Devil’ who could stave off storms if the people of the Maldives would offer a virgin to him at an assigned temple. An Arab traveller came by and managed to trap the king by masquerading as the virgin. The cornered king agreed to accept Islam, according to a legend shared by its inhabitants, if only the Arab would not reveal the dark secrets of the contrite king. Of course this is not the only reason why India’s loss in the Maldives became Saudi Arabia’s gain. The politics of Cold War and, with its end in 1991, the concomitant rush for free market economic policies continue to play a hand in the shaping of future South Asian linkages.

India’s smaller neighbours, once a key plank of American presence in the region, are uneasy that the new Indo-U.S. bonhomie might just overwhelm them. The deep distrust between New Delhi and Washington presented a welcome respite from India’s potential for intrusive approaches. The United States was perceived in most other capitals in the region as a useful counterweight to the perceived temptations in New Delhi to exercise hegemony over the region. Instead of ignoring these fears as irrational, the Indian security establishment may have to find ways to allay them.

 

India’s own strategy appears to be to simultaneously improve its relations with both Washington and Beijing. At the end of the Cold War, Delhi’s relations with the United States and China were hampered by fear of both but now the scope for improvement with both remains enormous. Even-handed diplomacy in the region could again reassure Pakistan and the smaller neighbours that India’s aim of its new ties with Washington is not to deepen its hegemony but to seek stability and prosperity and prosperity for all concerned.

And yet, it’s all easier said than done. The raging wars in the region, most notably on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border and between Sri Lankan troops and Tamil rebels, has had a debilitating effect on all concerned apart from sapping the energies of the sides involved. By comparison the more intractable looking dispute over Kashmir between two of South Asia’s biggest states, once a major stumbling block for peace in South Asia, now looks easier to deal with.

While on the subject, there were ecstatic headlines in Indian newspapers and doleful ones in Pakistan recently. Islamabad’s new power-broker, Asif Ali Zardari, they proclaimed, had agreed to put the Kashmir issue in the cold store to promote greater business relations with Delhi. The headlines were of course not new. They were similar to the ones generated by comments by Pakistan’s representative at the 14th Saarc summit in Delhi in April last year.

 

Leaning on his skills as a banker, former prime minister Shaukat Aziz had in fact stressed unequivocally that the quest for peace between India and Pakistan was ‘not a business transaction but a commitment between two sides that could lead to a long wait before bearing fruit.’ Aziz in fact likened the required patience to Ireland’s example where decades of relentless bloodshed had ended in a handshake between the two warring leaders in March last year.

‘You saw the picture of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams standing together last month. Who could have thought that this was ever going to be possible?’ he had said. Paisley and Adams, sitting side by side for their first news conference in Stormont, confirmed that their power sharing would begin soon as envisaged and so it did.

The Irish analogy by the former Pakistani prime minister could be significant for many reasons. But he appeared to be speaking more generally about the time it took the seemingly intractable Irish dispute to end in a peace accord. Aziz also said deregulation, privatization and liberalization of the economy were the main plank of his vision for a prosperous Pakistan. This vision is not about to be overturned by Zardari or anyone else.

But is this enough? By most yardsticks South Asia is one of the least integrated regions in the world. A legacy of unequal development of capitalism under colonial rule, the consequences are just as palpable today not only for Saarc states but also within India. For example, the riparian resources of some well-endowed Saarc members to generate surplus electricity for the region remain stifled by political mistrust. At the same time as Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said recently in reference to the water dispute between Karnataka and Tamil Nadu, there often are more intractable issues between Indian states than those that are required to be resolved with India’s neighbours.

A new emphasis on greater connectivity in terms of air, road and trade links that was stressed at last year’s Saarc summit in New Delhi remains vulnerable to nagging fears and inbuilt resistance. The problem is complex. At one level the alleged Bangladeshi influx, for example, is frowned upon in Delhi as an unwanted headache, at another level everyone else is mistrusted by a growing number of India’s own homegrown bhumiputras, the self-proclaimed sons of the soil. Saarc leaders in India’s neighbourhood would be smiling at the antics of the Thackeray clan in Mumbai.

 

Unequal growth has not merely led to regional disparities within India and in its neighbourhood, which results in the humiliation of Bangladeshi and Bihari migrants in Mumbai, it seems to have distorted the collective sense of priorities for the road ahead. The mismatch assumes the role of a political or even economic vaudeville at times. It was not out of character with South Asia’s growing penchant for a free market worldview, to take one example that its leaders, nudged by India no doubt, agreed at last year’s summit in Delhi to have a cross-country car rally in preference to a more environment-friendly symbol of convergence.

 

It was ironic that as the car rally was entering Pakistan through the Wagah border just days ahead of the summit, a hapless cyclist who had embarked on a journey of peace between India and Pakistan was denied a visa by Islamabad and could not cross over. Some time back, a group of peaceniks headed by well-known activist Sandeep Pandey, was similarly denied entry by Pakistan. This group was scheduled to walk to a Sufi shrine in Multan from a similar shrine in Delhi. A Pakistani theatre group led by Sheema Kirmani was humiliated before being deported from India simply because their play depicted images against the occupation of Iraq.

The priorities of South Asia, as the region evolves under India’s care, are thus getting clearer. Its symbol is going to be fuel-guzzling automobiles, a symbol which connects it directly to the energy wars underway in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a dusty village of Awadh in eastern India there is a terse saying for such a misconceived priority: Baap andhere main mar gai, bete ka naam powerhouse. It’s not a saying that can be easily translated but it does juxtapose India’s bustling new malls in the cities with growing incidence of starvation deaths and farmers’ suicides in the villages.

Can Saarc truly serve its stated goals by paving the way for an elitist car rally while turning a blind eye to a cyclist for peace who finds himself stranded at the border for want of a visa? The quest for motorcars and roads to ply them on is rooted in the region’s new economic burgeoning. The cyclist’s plight is rooted in historical mistrust.