Seventy-five years after independence, the subcontinent remains at odds with itself. Bemoaning this tragedy is no substitute for hard-headed analysis. There has been plenty of reflection on the state of the subcontinent in this issue of India’s World.
No analysis of the region can overlook the historical burden of the Partition that continues to weigh down on Bangladesh, India and Pakistan. So is the inevitable fragmentation of the broader subcontinent, whose heartland and periphery were held together by the paramountcy of the British Raj until 1947. Independent India could not have sustained that hegemony after Partition, thanks to relative economic decline, the rise of national identities, and the quest for autonomy on the periphery.
India’s inward orientation in the decades after independence helped turn the political division of the subcontinent into an economic one too. Delhi’s socialist planners had no value for trade and regional connectivity. The logic of globalisation at the turn of the 21st century has helped reverse this dynamic, but not in sufficient measure. Consider, for example, the significant progress in dispute resolution and economic integration over the last decade and a half between India and Bangladesh. Will these important gains survive the ouster of Prime Minister Shiekh Hasina in August 2024? Or could India-Bangla economic interdependence dampen the attempts of those in Dhaka seeking a political rupture with India? The jury is out.
