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| Partition of Indian Sub-continent and Global Politics | | | Dr. Rajkumar Singh | 12/8/2020 11:10:55 PM |
| The partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947 into two sovereign, independent countries-India and Pakistan was preceded by dramatic change on world's power chess-board. It was an international landscape in which even the more experienced powers-Japan and the Western nations found it difficult to assess and to fit into existing patterns of policy. Though it was sure to say that for many of the combatants the destruction of World War I was as destructive as World War II, its memory did not prevent another world war. For most of the nations did conclude from the horrors of World War I that such an event must never be repeated. The disaster occurred despite the fact that the capable nations like Britain, France the USSR, and the United States were never to start the war, unfortunately other major nations sought direct territorial expansion, and conflicts over these desires finally led to war. The fateful outbreak of World War, like a tornado, had overturned empires, cast national idols from their pedestals, shattered age-old alignments, destroyed untold wealth of manpower and resources. Britain and France had been gravely weakened at home and had lost colonial domains overseas. Germany, Italy, and Japan, the defeated nations, had experienced grave psychological as well as economic disasters. The Arab lands were striving to complete the process of self-determination that had started with the breakup of the Ottoman Empire after World War I, but had been temporarily checked by British and French administration in the area under League of Nations mandates. In other words, everywhere one looked around the world, change seemed to be the only common denominator.
Global effects of World Wars
Unlike the situation after World War I, the only countries capable of creating another world war since 1945 have been the big victors, the United States, and the Soviet Union, each of which emerged comfortably dominant in its respective sphere. According to Waltz the United States and the Soviet Union as well, have more reason to be satisfied with the status quo than most earlier great powers had.' The United States alone was untouched by foreign invasion, enchanced its power, and had reluctantly but resolutely assumed responsibilities in world affairs it had hitherto sought to avoid. It blocked the USSR in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and both the USSR and China in East Asia through alliances with Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. In early years with a view to pursue its policy of containing communism, it placed higher priorities on West Asia, where a Soviet military threat to Iran and Turkey was perceived, and to Southeast Asia where the Chinese were suspected of long-term expansionist ambitions. At the other end was the Communist Russia, who, despite the losses it had suffered at the hands of Nazi Germany, had emerged as one of the two great powers to survive the holocaust. It contained the vision of changing the world in direction of a particular ideology. However, its tactics were inspired by the cautiously pragmatic Lenin, that stressed subversion, revolution, diplomatic and economic pressure, seduction, guerilla warfare, local uprising, and even civil war. Initially the USSR was a territorial power against the nuclear dominance of the United States.
Effects of global politics on South Asia
Along with India and Pakistan the region South Asia is comprised of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. The area deserves merit due to its geographical contiguity in belonging to a distinct sub-continent, ethnicity, historic-cultural affinity, and, most importantly, existence of a common level of interaction. In past these states were dominated by the British Raj in either way and provided another distinguishing element. In post-World War II phase and especially after the British withdrawal from the subcontinent in August 1947, major world powers began to take interest in region's affairs. Even the British stake in South Asia continued into the post-independence period and became an important component of its political considerations. In the changed world the regional interests became interconnected with global developments involving adjustments at inter-state level and interactions among the big powers, mainly Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union and China. Of the four, three powers, Britain, the Soviet Union and China were known to the region because they had traditional geo-strategic interests in the sub-continent. However, even in their's case, new shifts of emphasis were added in order to accommodate with regional conflicts on the one hand and the momentum arising from the emergence of a new state-system in South Asia on the other.
The global trends of politics accepted, in 1950s, the United States as the principal protector to western interests in South and South east Asia. It added a new dimension and the United States' interest came as a new factor altogether in the politics of this region. The after effects of the intrusion of big power politics in the area were two-fold ; first it developed into a competition among the major powers for support bases among the South Asian states; second, it developed into a competition among the South Asian states for big-power political, diplomatic and military support, intended to redress imbalances and inequalities, perceived to exist in their mutual interstate relations. But United States' interest in South Asia has always been a product of its global strategy. In the early fifties U. S. involvement in the region was dictated by a larger commitment to prevent communist expansion in Asia generally. Any shift in global strategy was reflected in U. S. policy changes in South Asia. Like the United States, the policy of Soviet Union in South Asia was also determined by the Soviets' own consideration of global strategic interests. Two issues, in particular, became relevant in this context : one, Pakistan's adherence to American military pacts ; the other, the Soviet rift with China.
American Policy and Indian Approach
The American policy of containment of communism in South Asia received its first jolt by the policy of non-alignment, pursued by various newly independent countries of Asia and Africa. Initially, for want of a better, popular name, it was called an "independent" policy or a policy aiming at freedom of action and judging every international question or problem on its own merit-with no advance ideological or military commitments. In nutshell, the policy was meant to keep away from bipolarity, the cold war, ideological crusades, the arms race, and military blocs which were the chief characteristics of international politics of the era following the Second World War. At independence India found itself in a world divided into two-opposing nuclear-armed blocs, each with an integrated politico-military structure. The Western democratic world was led by the United States and the Communist countries by the Soviet Union. India was assigned to make this difficult decision and Jawaharlal Nehru, in one of his historic announcement on 7 September 1946 said, "We propose, as far as possible, to keep away from the power politics of groups, aligned against one another, which have led in the past two World Wars and which may again lead to disasters on even vaster scale." In that stage the Soviet Union, despite being a nuclear-armed country, was essentially a territorial power and possessed no economic or military capability to influence the countries emerging from colonial rule. |
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