Soften these borders

Whether we like it or not, the construction of modern India contributed to the creation of these problems and New Delhi must necessarily play an important part in finding solutions for them.

Many of these issues could be traced back to the unique system of a three-fold frontier built by British India. Imperial Calcutta drew what it called an “inner line” behind which it exercised full sovereignty. It also delineated an “outer line” and claimed it as its territorial boundary. In the space between the inner and outer lines, British India exercised only loose control and relied on a special set of arrangements with the tribal communities that populated these regions.

To stop other powers from interfering in British India, Calcutta worked out a series of treaty-based security arrangements with the neighbouring regions such as Afghanistan, Tibet, Nepal and Bhutan. The regimes there were offered protection in return for denying their space to other powers.

The partition of British India inevitably resulted in two different sets of conflicts. The successor states quarrelled with each other over the new boundaries within the Subcontinent. They also got embroiled in a series of conflicts on the outer frontiers of the Subcontinent. If the former has obsessed us for the last six decades, we are now being called upon to pay attention to the second category of conflicts. They can be understood in four different dimensions.

The first is the problem of extending full sovereignty over the spaces beyond the inner line. Pakistan, for example, claimed the Durand Line — negotiated between British India and Afghanistan — as its boundary. Yet, it failed over the last 60 years to establish its writ over the tribal regions east of the Durand Line. Having allowed extremist forces from around the world to use these territories as sanctuaries for running their many different wars, Pakistan today is in danger of losing what little control it has exercised over its tribal regions.

Second, the Subcontinent’s outer boundaries became a contested terrain. Afghanistan was not willing to accept the Durand Line as the border with Pakistan. Every government in Kabul since 1947 — including that of the Taliban — sees the Durand Line as an imposition by British India. Similarly, China, which became our neighbour, refused to accept the McMahon Line that the British drew between Tibet and India.

Third, neither New Delhi nor Islamabad had the strength to fully sustain the third frontier of British India. While New Delhi quickly reconciled itself to the rise of a powerful new state in China that gained control over Tibet, Pakistan’s foreign policy has tied itself into knots by pursuing the “strategic depth” strategy inside Afghanistan.

Fourth, there is the inability of the new states to offer an honourable integration to the people on their frontiers. The Baloch who enjoyed a relatively loose association with British India were not eager to disappear into a new Pakistan. The Pashtuns divided by the Durand Line remained anxious about their relative power position in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Tibetan quest for autonomy in China has refused to go away. In Myanmar, the ethnic minorities have rarely stopped their prolonged war against Yangon.

What can India do to promote solutions to the intractable problems on its borders? For one, it must stand firm in its principled opposition to the break-up of the existing states. It is the fear of disintegration that has driven the Chinese communists and Burmese generals to cracking down so hard ons the recent political protests.

Two, while ruling out the creation of new states, India must encourage its neighbours — Myanmar, China, Nepal and Pakistan — to move steadily towards granting genuine autonomy to ethnic minorities. India’s relative success in managing diversity and mitigating the many insurgencies it had to confront is rooted in its federalism. The Tibetan revolt has underlined the reality that no amount of economic growth can overcome the minorities’ quest for cultural autonomy and political dignity.

Three, India must also encourage its neighbours to think about softening the existing borders. The peoples of the Subcontinent’s frontier regions have suffered greatly from the rigid territorial conceptions of the nationalists. They badly need the freedom to interact with their ethnic and cultural kin across the national boundaries.

Together, these principles — legitimisation of existing borders, significant autonomy, soft borders and cross-border institutions — are at the core of India’s strategy to settle its own extended dispute with Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir.

The same principles should help guide our neighbours in addressing the political aspirations of the minorities in Myanmar, the Tibetans, the Uighurs of Xinjiang, the Pashtuns across the Durand Line, the Baloch, and the Madhesis in Nepal.

The writer is a professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, Singaporeiscrmohan@ntu.edu.sg