The re-hyphenation of India and Pakistan?
An interesting development from the recent small hot war between India and Pakistan: the re-hyphenation of the nuclear-armed neighbours?
For 11 years, India has assiduously worked to de-link itself from Pakistan and the BJP government’s strategy became crystal clear during a press conference in Washington DC in 2019. India had just revoked the constitutional special semi-autonomous status of the Indian part of Kashmir and India’s foreign minister S Jaishankar was at a press conference. Asked by journalists about the impact on Pakistan of the abrogation of Jammu and Kashmir’s special status, he said: “How do you hyphenate a country, which is one-eighth of your economic size…which is reputationally your exact opposite?”
It is true that India and Pakistan are not comparable in terms of economy, education, healthcare and their judicial and political systems.
India’s GDP is 11 times bigger, its land area is four times larger, its population five times greater. It is the world’s largest democracy. Pakistan’s system is such that it’s sometimes said that while most states have an army, the Pakistani army has a state!
It’s true that India and Pakistan are very different and technically, they should not really be spoken of in the same breath. Even so, their shared history, culture, customs, food and language makes for a natural sense that it’s right to link them and compare. And then there is the Kashmir dispute, which yokes the two countries together, at least in the global mind.
The recent conflict, however, had a particularly unfortunate effect on international perceptions of India and Pakistan. This was particularly so when Donald Trump announced on Truth Social that India and Pakistan had agreed to a “FULL AND IMMEDIATE CEASEFIRE”.
Indian officials immediately felt diminished because it appeared to put both countries on an equal footing.
Originally published at https://www.rashmee.com
