The Domestic Scenario of South Asian Regions

India as a core power of South Asia enunciates a strategic unity of the region and considers the security of the small regional actors as integral to its own security. It considers the latter to be the exclusive strategic backyard of India. On the other hand, the small states tend to perceive India as the main source of external threat to their security.  The diversity in governmental systems prevailing problems in South Asia. India and Sri Lanka have traditionally practised representative democracy. The Indian experience of democracy has had stern tests in recent years, since the emergency period of 1975-77; while Sri Lanka has had to compromise democratic norms more recently as a result of ethnic crisis. The two are even so considered relative success stories among Third World democracies. Pakistan and Bangladesh, particularly the latter, have in the beginning of the 1990s witnessed sweeping democratic transition in their domestic scenario. However, in a longer term perspective, both of these countries have always been swinging between military dominance in politics and democratic experimentation. Nepal’s transition to democracy is also perceived yet to be firmly rooted. Bhutan has been striving to retain the authority of monarchy as the dominant institution, while the Maldives has been practising one-party rule and in due sense variance in classes of people is manifested in values and principles pursued in governance and statecraft. The Indian political system is professedly a blend of democracy, socialism and secularism, though these lofty ideals have remained far from fully translated into reality. Most significant is the recent trend towards increased influence of Hindu fundamentalism in Indian politics. Bangladesh started off with more or less same principles as the fundamentals in statecraft, but it later changed course towards increasing influence of religion, an issue on which a national consensus has yet to emerge. Pakistan has Islam as the basis of its political system, while the Maldives is an Islamic society with relatively less influence of religion in politics. Nepal remains under Hindu influence whilst Bhutan and Sri Lanka are Buddhist societies.

The conflict as has been created strategically among the South Asian states is diverse too and as such the nature of the conflict between India and Sri Lankan is different from that of the conflict between India and Bangladesh, Pakistan or Nepal. Some conflicts are ethnic, others are religious, location or border related. For this reason India’s insistence on bilateralism gets priority, and India takes advantages of settlement of those conflicts as per its wishes. One important dimension of the conflict is that all are Indo-centric. Pakistan has accepted the superior military strength of India; it has shown no readiness to curtail its freedom of action as an independent state. Although Bangladesh has limited scope of independence, for Nepal and Bhutan it is more difficult to resist or say anything  at all about such regional security doctrine. For example, Sri Lanka failed to resist Indian hegemonic attitude when in 1977 the Jayewardene government opted for a free-market economy, making Sri Lanka increasingly receptive to western capital and technology. At that time the relationship with Pakistan improved dramatically. The Jayewardene government virtually tried to distance itself from India. India then took the opportunity of the Tamil separatist issue to put pressure on Sri Lanka. Apart from sheltering and arming the Tamil militants, the Indian ruling class blew out of proportion some of the features of Sri Lanka’s relationship with United States and Pakistan. India cannot apply this type of hegemonic attitude towards Pakistan

  There are differences in objectives in respect of SAARC among the South Asian countries. SAARC is indeed a facility and an opening for Nepal and Bhutan to maintain close relations with their South Asian neighbours. Above all, it has been perceived by the smaller members as a source of peace and stability in the region. For these small states these contacts and frequent interaction provide a means for generating mutual self-belief and understanding, which may help in the resolution of bilateral problems and in creating harmony. Such harmony could also, in due course, narrow down the prevailing strategic divergence among SAARC members. Unlike the other members, Pakistan has been cautious in expanding institutional and developmental aspects of SAARC. Its objective was to put a stop to India’s presence and influence at the same time to expand its interaction with all the other SAARC countries. Pakistani representatives have sought to use the SAARC forum for disseminating their specific policy proposals aimed at thwarting India.

For India, SAARC has been both a challenge as well as  an opportunity. The challenge has lain in the collective pressures of the neighbours, and the opportunity in the possibilities of making the neighbours look inward, into the region, for their developmental and security needs. India has pursued a two-pronged strategy to advance its regional objectives through SAARC. One has been to gradually push the expansion and deepening of the Integrated Programme of Action so as to cover  core economic areas like trade, industry and finance. The idea was to expand and consolidate infrastructure and social linkages at various levels among South Asian countries and to create a basis for interdependence. This in the long run could weaken the centrifugal tendencies of its neighbours and thus narrow down the divergence towards SAARC’s ties with other regional organizations.