India’s position towards the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation has always been ambiguous. India is not interested in swimming with the small fish in a small pond. It sees itself as a big league player. There are two reasons why. First, it does not want the others in the neighbourhood to gang up against it.

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Second, it does not want Pakistan to become the dominant player in the region to India’s disadvantage. The two assumptions are not without a grain of truth. What is wrong with the Indian position is that it is rooted in a negative perception. The professed rhetoric is positive, that India wants a prosperous and democratic neighbourhood, and that South Asia constitutes about one-fifth of the world population and there has be to stability in the region.

Even if this rhetoric were to be made the basis of India’s foreign policy base for the region, it is not going to be helpful. Pakistan will always play the spoiler for India.

The better way for India would be to keep out of SAARC, and let the small countries in the region — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Pakistan, Maldives and Sri Lanka — forge a political and economic bonding among themselves. The irony is that India is the glue that holds SAARC together. Pakistan is not interested in Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and Maldives. Its interest in Afghanistan is justifiable but its attitude is foolish — the desire to be a dominant player. Pakistan also does not have the vision and diplomatic skills to play the leadership role for the smaller countries in the region. Most of Pakistan’s time and much of its energy is spent in shadowing India and tripping it.

It has done it once again with SAARC by bringing in China as one of observers. The main reason was to counter India’s overwhelming presence in the region. It is a perception shared in varying degrees by Bangladesh, Nepal and Sri Lanka as well.

These three countries, however, retain a sense of pragmatism in their relations with India. They are not obsessed with the need to corner India at all times and in all places. Pakistan wants the same degree of recognition that India gets. 

That is why when India seeks a permanent seat at the United National Security Council, Pakistan wants the same. When India gets the civil nuclear deal with the United States, Pakistan says, ‘I want it too.’ The one thing that Pakistan cannot do is to prevent the rest of the world from recognising that India is an emerging market with a greater role for it in the world’s economic affairs.

The US and the European Union feel the need to engage with India and so does the Association of South East Asian Nations because all of them are looking at the huge domestic Indian market. Whatever the rates of poverty in India, the country’s consumers are growing by the day. Pakistan does not have the advantage of India’s size.

Pakistan’s India-envy is consuming it because it has failed to become a player in its own right in the world’s affairs. It is not recognised as a leading country in the so-called Muslim world.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto made a desperate attempt in bringing together the Organisation of Islamic Countries in the 1970s and to Pakistan its leader. Both Pakistan and OIC remain insignificant on the world stage.

Pakistan could have become an important player had it nursed its potential — economic and human — in an imaginative way. Instead, it was content to remain a belligerent military power and wanted to use that as its calling card. It had limited success during the Cold War because of the silly American notions of fighting an ideological war against communism across the world. It has again assumed a certain strategic significance in the fight against Islamic terrorism, which has only a Pakistan, and no global, dimension, to it. Pakistan will be pushed to the back rows once the myth of the threat of Islamic terrorism dissolves.

India cannot allow itself to be tied down by its concern of security in the region by reaching out to a Pakistan that seeks nothing more than an upper hand over India. India wooing Pakistan will not stabilise SAARC. India will have to turn its back on SAARC so that others in the region will be forced to deal with Pakistan without blaming India.

The only party that is keen about the rivalry with Pakistan is the Bharatiya Janata Party because it is as much obsessed with Pakistan as Pakistan is with India. The rest of India has the world as its stage. India will have to junk the Gujral doctrine of wanting to be fair and generous to the neighbours, and look to West Asia and to Southeast Asia, Africa, Latin America, the United States and Europe.