Dinesh Kamath's Editorial 'India-China-Pakistan cooperation necessary' that was published in Newsband

India-China-Pakistan cooperation necessary

India-China-Pakistan cooperation can transform the subcontinent. There should be mutually beneficial economic cooperation between Pakistan and India. This has become impossible because of “blind nationalism” in Pakistan and a visceral Indo-phobia, shared by many of their influentials. Many Pakistani politicians want nothing to be imported from India, the enemy nation. This kind of blind nationalism is by no means Pakistan’s monopoly. Those who watch Indian TV channels debating India-Pakistan relations routinely hear similar Pak-phobia. Despite being neighbours, India and Pakistan are among the least integrated nations in the world.

South Asia too has become the least integrated region in the world. The South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) is in a coma. The most populous region South Asia has the largest number of poor people in the world.

On the Indian side, it will be said that terror and trade cannot go together. The Narendra Modi government has raised the bar higher — terror and talks cannot go together. On the Pakistani side, resolution of the Kashmir issue has become a precondition for any substantial bilateral cooperation.

But is the status quo benefiting either country? The answer is obvious, except to those arrogant ultra-nationalists who think India now has a seat on the global high table and hence need not care for Pakistan, and to those narrow-minded Pakistani patriots who think they need not care for India since they now have two protectors — China and the Muslim Ummah.

China, of course, has become a new factor influencing India’s negative attitude towards Pakistan, both among policy-makers and the common people. War with Pakistan and China will make South Asia surely head towards a future of intensified hostilities and conflicts. Arms manufacturers and distant destabilisers will profit by this at the cost of common Indians and Pakistanis, who need employment, education, health care and food-and-environmental security. These needs can be met only through regional cooperation, not regional rivalry.

A three-way India-China-Pakistan cooperation is not only necessary but indeed possible. Modi’s advisers on the BRI argue that the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), a flagship project under the BRI, violates India’s sovereignty since it passes through Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK). The same advisers are persuading Modi to make India materialize the pipe dream of an alternative connectivity project by the “Quadrilateral” of the U.S., Japan, Australia and India.

To realise this vision of a resurgent South Asia, two obstacles will have to be removed - blind nationalism and the unfriendly designs of extra-regional powers. As Karl Marx would have said: peoples of South Asia and China, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains; you have a bright new future to win.