Geopolitics of the Indian subcontinent

A deeper analysis of the geopolitical situation of the Indian subcontinent is required; than is provided for by fiery speeches and public sentiment. To understand why this begets the notorious title of ‘the most diplomatically isolated neighbourhood’, one needs to have a holistic understanding of the economic, political and cultural aspects of the different countries of this subcontinent and how their individual pursuits leaves everybody worse off.

Going back 100 years to when lord Curzon was the viceroy of then British India, India was that its zenith of territorial expansion.That India included what today is India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Burma.

After partition, the subcontinent broke up and all the forementioned countries, with the exception of India became dysfunctional states overtime. The India of Curzon, which stretched from the Iranian plateau to the gulf of Thailand had shadow zones of influence and interest groups from Southeast Asia to the Iranian plateau and deep in Central Asia.
India lost a lot of this geopolitical weight at partition and developed as a very imperfect democracy while in Pakistan and Bangladesh, nothing seem to work. Neither military not democratic regimes were able to stabilize these countries.

Burma was the country which everyone was most optimistic about, at the end of the second World War. The country was rich with oil, natural gas and vast swaths of mineral resources. Burma however, turned into one of the world’s most neo-fascist military dictatorship because of its own ethnic problems, and the ability of the army to someone contain them to a certain extent.

Then there is Nepal, a Hindu monarchy for 200 years; it was decimated in a shakespearean tragedy, where the crown Prince killed the number of his family members before taking his own life. This leads to a devolution into instability, giving rise to communist elements in the country.
While thinking about Nepal, one must keep in mind that most of the Nepalese population lives not in the mountains, but along the border with India in the Terai plains. So India has to deal with a highly unstable Maoist influence Nepalese state, with an insecure and easily penetrable border.
Hence India lives in fear of mass number of refugees pouring into its already poor provinces of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar.

In Bangladesh, neither military nor civilian government have worked. Bangladeshi politics is almost comparable to that of Pakistan, being formally East Pakistan. There are an estimated 15 million Bangladeshi refugees in West Bengal.
It would seem to be in everyone’s interest for India to expand in a very soft power manner, simply by the dynamism of its democratic capitalism. India could strive to incorporate these countries; not in any political sense, but in a very soft economic sense.
But here, some cultural problems arise. R. Kaplan notes that when one goes to a place like Calcutta and asks the people about Bangladesh, which is about a two-hour drive away, they say ‘we don’t want an open society with these people, we don’t want Muslim fundamentalism coming in; erect a wall or something.’ This is particularly true of the younger generation of West Bengalis. The older generation has pre-partition memories of Calcutta and Dhaka being in the same realm, but the younger generation has no memory of this shared ancestry- which in turn impedes the integration of these two cultures which are essentially the same.

The concept of economic and social integration makes abstract sense to both side on paper, but the cultural isolation has made it much difficult for this to take place.The Bangladeshis hence lose out on transit fees and economic integration whereas India loses the ability to import cheap natural gas from and exert influence on Burma.
In Burma India is locked in a battle for influence with China. Because Burma has vast quantities of natural resources and is also a rearbase for around 15 ethnic insurgencies fighting inside the very underdeveloped northeast; India as a democracy cannot simply stand aside and let China essentially become the high protector of Burma, even though it has a very bad military regime. India has no option in a real politik terms, but to engage with the Burmese regime.

Coming to Pakistan, in a conventional sense relations between India and Pakistan a bit better now than they have been for a long time. The reasons for this are tri-fold. Firstly, troops had been moved to secure the border with Afghanistan, leaving the Indian border relatively sparsely guarded, secondly, the loss of political footing and diplomatic isolation that has taken place under the disastrous Imran Khan government and their crippling economic policy. So, India faces less of a threat in a conventional sense from Pakistan as compared to before but its faces a lot more of an unconventional thread.
There exists an organisation in Pakistan known as the ISI or inter-services intelligence which is comparable to the CIA , if the CIA had armed forces of its own. ISI is a state within a state, and is supporting terrorist insurgencies in Kashmir. Indian officials at the highest officers of the South block have compared ISI to Hezbollah in Lebanon.

Then we have Afghanistan, which does not have a border with India. But since the days of the Mughal dynasty, the Mughals governed from Delhi but controlled all of what is today Pakistan and two thirds of what is today Afghanistan. Afghanistan is very much a rear shadow zone of India. India is very much committed to the survival of the current Afghan government. It is absolutely critical for India for the Afghan regime to survive, in order to keep the Taliban in Afghanistan engaged and weak- which India sees as an extension of Pakistan’s influence. India sees a friendly Afghanistan as a strategic rear base to deal with its problems with Pakistan.

Lastly India has a very tense and careful balance relationship with China. On the one hand, border disputes have flared up in Dolkam and Pangong Tso. On the other hand, India and China do a tremendous amount of trade, nearing almost 150 billion dollars annually and projected to rise to 500 billion dollars within this decade. However India cannot ignore the fact that three of China’s biggest customers for Arms sales are Bangladesh, Burma and Pakistan- all India’s neighbours. And when combined with the fact that the Chinese are developing deep water ports in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Burma for use by the Chinese Navy, as well as high altitude airfields in Tibet, the Indian security establishment cannot help but feel threatened by these developments; given the expansionist nature of the Chinese state.

To conclude, we see India expanding in terms of its world image, we see the expansion and engagement of its armed forces and especially its Navy in the Indian Ocean, it is being seen increasingly an adversary to Chinese influence in the region and globally. But for all its glory, India can only be compared to Gulliver- a giant with little strings tying him down. It is India’s neighbours which are bedeviling India’s progress into a formidable power on the world stage. India can exert its global power through its military cultural and economic weight but it is its immediate neighbours which are keeping India from breaking out and realising it’s true potential and hurting the growth and integration of the subcontinent in the process.