The opening of the Kartarpur Corridor from Dera Baba Nanak Saheb in Punjab to Gurdwara Darbara Kartarpur Saheb inside Pakistan is being hailed with great hoopla, ecstasy and glee by many political leaders, mediapersons and others. The Kartarpur Corridor is being seen as the beginning of an era of good relations between India and Pakistan, and many more such 'faith corridors' to go to dargahs, temples, mosques and so forth are being discussed.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has said that the Kartarpur Corridor can act as a bridge between India and Pakistan, and will be “like bringing down the Berlin Wall”. Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan will lay the foundation stone of the Kartarpur Corridor on November 28, in a ceremony which will be attended by two Central government ministers and Punjab minister Navjot Singh Sidhu.
I am sorry to pour cold water on such fanfare, rejoicing and revelry, but must tell the truth—the opening of the Kartarpur Saheb Corridor will change nothing, and is only a gimmick.
Let me explain why. If there are good relations between India and Pakistan, the very raison d'être of Pakistan will come to an end. Pakistan was created by the British on the basis of the two nation theory that Hindus and Muslims are two separate nations. That, of course, was a hoax and the theory on the face of it was bogus.
If religion is the basis of a nation, no nation can survive. For instance, the UK has Protestants, Catholics, Jews, Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs and others. Also, there are many varieties of Protestants, e.g. Anglicans ( in England ) and Presbyterians ( in Scotland ). So, the UK will have to be partitioned into a dozen or more countries, and so should the US, France, Germany and other nations if we go by the theory that religion is the basis of a nation.
So, what was the real reason for partition and creating Pakistan?
There were two real reasons:
First, a united India would emerge as a powerful industrial giant, like the China of today, and the British wanted to prevent it at any cost. This needs to be further explained.
The cost of labour is a big chunk of the total cost of production, and so if cost of labour is less than the cost of production, and if cost of production is low, one can sell at a cheaper price and undersell his business rival. There is competition in the market, and one businessman eliminates his business rival not by guns or bombs but by underselling him.
China set up a massive industrial base after the Communist Revolution in 1949, and this massive industrial base coupled with the cheap labour available in China enables the Chinese to undersell the whole world in consumer goods. Thus, Western supermarkets are packed with Chinese goods, because Chinese products often sell at less than half the price at which the same product made by a Western manufacturer can sell (because Western labour is much costlier).
Now, Indian labour is even cheaper than Chinese labour. So, we can even undersell the Chinese. So foreign countries, including China, do not want India to emerge as an industrial giant, because, if that happens, who will buy their costlier goods?
But how to prevent India from emerging as an industrial giant? The best way is by making Indians (under which term I include Pakistanis) keep fighting each other on caste, religious, ethnic, lingual and regional basis. I suspect behind much of the religious, caste and ethnic strife in our subcontinent is the hand of foreigners (acting through their local agents).
Secondly, a massive armaments industry was created in most Western nations after the Second World War, and both India and Pakistan are big markets for these. India is the biggest purchaser of foreign arms in the world, and has spent billions of dollars buying foreign arms. So, hostility between India and Pakistan, if not actual warfare, is essential for Western arms manufacturers to keep selling arms and earning huge profits. It is another matter that thereby these poor countries waste their scant resources in buying arms, which otherwise would have gone for the welfare of the people.
This is the real reason that there can never be good relations between India and Pakistan. So people like those who are hailing the Kartarpur Corridor are living in a fools paradise, and the truth is that the Kartarpur Corridor is just a gimmick.
It is only when India and Pakistan (and Bangladesh) reunite under a secular govt with modern minded leaders that we can really start rapidly industrialising and advancing towards our goal of becoming a powerful industrial nation with our people enjoying a high standard of living. But that is a long way off.
Justice Markandey Katju retired from the Supreme Court in 2011
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author's and do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of THE WEEK
