India’s relations with its neighbours has improved drastically over the last decade, but its volatile dealings with Pakistan still makes the South Asian region prone to instability
There is an interesting legend about the Gordian Knot. The kingdom of Phrygia was once without a head and the oracle of the temple of Zeus in the Phrygian capital decreed that the next one who wanders into the temple in an oxcart will be the next king. The chosen one was a peasant, Gordias, whose son Midas later tied the oxcart to a pole with an intricate knot, dedicating it to Zeus. It was prophesied that whoever untied the knot would be master of Asia. Legend has it that Alexander the Great, unable to untie the knot, sliced it with his sword and then went on to conquer Asia.
In 1954, when the then US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles signed a military pact with Pakistan, he was perhaps unaware how Gordian that knot would be for Asia. America and the Western world considered Pakistan as a bulwark against potential aggression by Communist Soviet Union. That not only changed India’s geopolitical positioning but also reordered the rest of Asia’s relationship with one another.Moreover, India’s neighbours have come to realise that coalition formation amongst them that seeks to exclude India has been neither particularly feasible nor successful. Thus, these efforts have also become increasingly less vigorous in recent years.
In his paper titled Making SAARC Work Rajiv Kumar also argues that non-economic gains from successful regional co-operation will be as important, if not larger, than economic gains.
(This story appears in the 27 August, 2010 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)