Talks between India and Pakistan are periodically resumed and abandoned, with both sides fixated in their positions and little hope for reconciliation. Rather than throw one´s hands up in despair, it is educative to look into the underpinnings of the Indo-Pakistani conflict and the deeper causes for the locked positions. And indeed, a closer look reveals that this ceaseless South Asian conflict is an outgrowth of inter-communal contradictions of northern India in general and Punjab in particular. It serves to be reminded that an average South Indian, Pathan, Baluch or Sindhi is, at the most, apathetic towards seemingly never-ending Indo-Pak conflict.
North Indians and Pak-Punjabis constitute the majority of the population in both countries and, directly or indirectly, they are the ones who set the foreign policy parameters on each side. To stay in power, the leaders coming from the other ´nationalities´ within India and Pakistan, if they make it to the top slot, have to play the game. As a matter of fact, the leaders coming from minority nationalities, such as in the case of Benazir Bhutto, have to go an extra mile to prove their loyalty to the majority group.
Historically, a long-standing contradiction had existed between Punjab (mostly in Pakistan now) and Hind (northern India): Punjabi literature is replete with references to this fact. In a way, the Indo-Pak conflict is a continuation of this historical trend. However, the matter was further complicated, after 1930s, when both Muslim and Hindu Punjabis started following the leadership of the Uttar Pradesh elite. While Muslim Punjabis – quite underdeveloped then – went along with the Muslim League (led by the UP elite), the Hindus started identifying themselves with the sensitivities of the Hindi belt (and its language). The Sikhs, the third largest group, were put into an odd situation of choosing between the lesser of the two evils (as they perceived).
Ironically, Punjabi Muslims, the main Pakistani protagonists in the Indo-Pak conflict today, were only marginally involved in the creation of Pakistan. The seeds of anti-India ideology were sown by the elite that migrated from UP and the non-Muslim Punjabi migrant to North India exacerbated the centuries-old contradiction between these two regions by becoming the basin of anti-Pakistan sentiments in various ways. The causes of inter-communal conflict among Punjabis, however, had its roots in the socio-economic make-up of pre-Partition Punjab. And it was these socio-economic conditions of Muslim Punjabis, before and after Partition, that played a pivotal role in determining the overall Pakistani attitude towards India.