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South Asian Cooperation
and the Role of the Punjabs
We are told that there is an already existing continuum of the Punjabi psyche across the border. Even after the Partition people still adore their common saints, poets, kings, and philanthropists and the different organizations have taken initiatives to promote Punjabiat. If properly harnessed, this common cultural heritage can further lead to the formulation of economic strategies to access the global markets and to tackle the common problems. In fact, the author notes, some of the crucial domains are quite inseparable. For instance, take the matter of irrigation. Cyril Radcliff had himself recommended some joint control over the water-management as he had awarded canals to Pakistan and rivers feeding them to India. Realising great prospects of mutual benefits, many goodwill gestures (like Lahore-Amritsar bus-service) have been made on both the sides. There are bright possibilities to have symbiotic relationships in the fields of agricultural research, designing of canals, power, and industry. The need of the hour is to adopt and apply in a vigorous way the minimalist African models of regional-integration that move from the resolution of conflict to the building up of concrete cultural, economic, and political relationship. Once this West Punjab-East Punjab harmony is established, it would be much easier to introduce progressive innovations in the areas like those of finance, education, and hygiene in the South Asian countries. Here the writer wisely throws a word of caution that while participating in this crucial process, the Punjabis should not work in such a way as to make the non-Punjabis feel that the Punjab is hijacking the overall process of cooperation. Even if this advice of the author is picked up, for many Indians a statistical anomaly is likely to hang around—if the West Punjab constitutes 25 per cent of Pakistan’s territory with 56 per cent of its population and if the East Punjab constitutes just 1.6 percent of India’s territory with merely 2.3 percent of its population, how then would it be possible to take the relation between the West and the East Punjab as equivalent to that of Pakistan and India? The author has based much of his text on the personal interviews, questionnaires, papers, and news-items published during the last two years. While his main proposition is quite interesting, commonplace facts and ideas abound. It is difficult to find an in-depth analysis of the issues involved. The book, however, may serve to provide some introductory information to readers not native to India or to Punjab.
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IN order to make South
Asia a zone of power, says this book, India and Pakistan must have a
harmonious understanding and one of the easiest and most effective ways
to achieve this end is to establish a close relationship between the
West (Pakistan-side) and the East (Indian-side) Punjab.