Review – India’s Near East

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India’s Near East: A New History
By Avinash Paliwal
Hurst, 2024

The sudden fall of Sheikh Hasina’s government in Bangladesh on August 5 evoked mixed feelings of surprise, anger and concern in India. However, what is missing from the discourse is a sense of assessment of India’s territorial policy, especially its troubled eastern flank. This is where Avinash Paliwal’s latest book, India’s Near Eastit fills the gap by examining the boundaries of India’s near-east policy in terms of protecting its territorial integrity, the protection of Hindu minorities and the management of ethnic conflicts in its region which are very similar issues that concern Indian intellectuals and the post establishment. -Hassina’s time. Thus, this book gives the reader a glimpse of the trials and tribulations of India in its near east during the seventies in a descriptive rather than descriptive way.

The book is divided into three parts and ten chapters, each covering a particular approach of India to its east, that is, unity, security, and communication, in chronological order. The unity section covers the period 1947-1970 and describes how India coped with the effects of partition and the outbreak of ethnic violence in its near east. The security section focuses on the period 1971-1990. It includes Bangladesh’s independence war, the assassination of leaders such as Sheikh Mujib and Jia Ur Rahman, and India’s support for pro-democracy elements within Myanmar. The final part, that is, communication, covers the period 1990-2024 and explains how India adjusted its near-east policy to adjust to the new realities of economic liberalization and the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The book’s greatest strength lies in its ability to support the author’s central argument that India’s diplomacy in its near-eastern region vis-a-vis East Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Myanmar is intricately linked to its regional project in the northeast as a country. a common string that includes the complete text. Thus, the reader can decipher contemporary events such as India’s ambiguity in engaging in a post-2021 military campaign or Delhi’s visit to Bangladesh over the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Act. The book’s historical analytical framework enables readers to uncover pressing issues such as Myanmar’s discrimination against Rohingya Muslims or India’s continued reliance on repressive measures such as the AFSPA (Armed Forces Special Power Act) in the northeast.

Through the careful use of archived sources and interviews with the main characters, the author is able to reveal interesting events such as the communication between India’s Intelligence Bureau (IB) and Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) in containing communism in Burma or India’s willingness to intervene militarily. in Bangladesh in 2009 to save the life of Sheikh Hassina following the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) mutiny in 2009. The author also demolishes many popular ideas through his research, such as Nehru’s indifference to the issues of separation. After Nei Win came to power in Burma, India accepted the overthrow of Ne Win against U Nu and the migration of many Burmese people to India to secure Burmese cooperation in the ongoing operations against Naga militants. He also identified many research gaps, such as India’s inappropriate response to the 1954 elections in East Pakistan. This election in Pakistan took place after the Bengali language agitation by the United Front. The electoral victory of the United Front was seen as a positive development by Nehru who believed that a non-Punjabi-dominated Pakistan could lead to a resolution of the outstanding conflict between India and Pakistan. Thus, the author is able to establish a hitherto unexplored connection between India’s intervention in 1971 and its perception of Pakistan’s ruling elites along ethnic lines in the 1950s, a critical aspect that requires further investigation.

The book also addresses India’s much-talked about “two and a half front” security dilemma, the solution of which has become a key driver of India’s near-east policy. India’s relations with Pakistan and China are “strained” following India’s revocation of Article 370 and the Galwan standoff with China in 2020, which dominated India’s security crisis, and the author’s attempt to make this history is important a lot.

Yet despite the above-mentioned features, the book’s relevance lies in its ability to shed light on the enigma of India’s neighbours. India’s inability to take a coherent and progressive stand in the eyes of its eastern neighbors is a historical fact. It provides an informative guide for all South Asian scholars on New Delhi’s dilemma in dealing with its younger counterparts. India’s vacillation between realism and freedom in dealing with South Asian states stems from its insecurity about its territory and the role of foreign powers such as China and the United States.

However, the contemporary relevance of the literature has also revealed its weaknesses as the author, in their attempt to use an “external” lens, ignores the role of the public policies of its neighbors, especially Pakistan, in shaping India’s response. Communism or ethnic nationalism in South Asia has a history and is self-reinforcing through a vicious cycle; therefore an analysis of the response of an unbalanced power like India would be incomplete without adequate consideration of the role of the colonial power and its neighbours. And, in the last part of the book, for example, while describing India’s communication pushing closer to itself and the east, the author adopted a very one-way approach to fix the dynamic things of the region and ignored the sea change in the balance of power of the world after the post-Cold War period.

India’s near east is a largely neglected region in Indian studies as our policy makers and academics have traditionally focused on the West in their perspective because of the size and importance of Pakistan in our imagination. This poverty of scholarship is the main reason why popular discourse in India fails to appreciate the behavior of its eastern neighbor, such as the toppling of Mujib Ur Rahman’s statue by protesting students after the events of August 5. of India is his greatest contribution to scholarship on South Asia in general and the Indian Near East in particular.