Manish Tewari | India Must Keep Track of Pak’s Strategic Faultlines

The idea of Pakistan was conceptualised by a Muslim Gujur from the Gorsi clan named Rehmat Ali from Balachour that falls in my erstwhile Parliamentary Constituency of Sri Anandpur Sahib.

A “permanent student” at Cambridge University, he wrote a pamphlet at age 36 called “Now or never; are we to live or perish forever?” where he laid out the intellectual basis of a Muslim state to the northwest of India.

The name Pakistan comes from the first letters of Punjab, Afghania (NWFP), Kashmir, Sindh and the tan from the last letters of Baluchistan. An i was added later for ease of pronunciation. The name has nothing to do with the mythical gobbledygook that Pakistan means the land of the pure.

In the said leaflet, there was a sentence that must have caught the eye of some die-hard imperialist for it provided the strategic rationale for such an entity.

“This Muslim Federation of North-West India would provide the bulwark of a buffer state against invasion of India either of ideas or of arms from any quarter.”

Initially, there were no takers for this harebrained scheme but by 1940 one of its early supporters became the wartime Prime Minister of Great Britain, Sir Winston Churchill.

By October-November of 1940 just after the Battle of Britan ended, Churchill was seriously discussing this idea with his colleagues in the war cabinet for he utterly distrusted the Indian National Congress that had resigned from all the provincial ministries in October-November 1939 to protest the decision of the then Viceroy Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquees of Linlithgow, to declare war on behalf of India against Germany on September 3, 1939, without as much as consulting the Indian leadership. By then the Pakistan Resolution had already been passed on March 23, 1940.

Churchill feared a Soviet Invasion of India as till the July of 1941 or Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi fascists and Soviet Communists were fighting on the same side and the second iteration of the Great Game in Central Asia was predicted to commence sooner than later.

Seven years later what became Pakistan was broadly the construct laid out by Rehmat Ali and embraced by Churchill in the nascent years of the Second World War. It was Churchill in 1947 as leader of Opposition who prevailed upon Jinnah to accept what Jinnah derisively called a moth-eaten Pakistan.

West Pakistan was a strategic project of the victorious Anglo-American alliance as the Cold War had already begun in 1945. The future state of West Pakistan was supposed to be the buffer to stop the Soviet influence from expanding.

Hence West Pakistan was set up by the Allies to succeed. It, therefore, got the rich irrigated lands of West Punjab and the flourishing mercantile cities of Lahore and Karachi.

Conversely, East Pakistan, as it had no strategic value because the British had enough equities in Burma, was set up to fail and was, therefore, mostly pastoral in character.

However, in the past seven decades, while East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) has succeeded against all odds and West Pakistan (now Pakistan) has failed ever so spectacularly.

The myth of might: Pakistan is perhaps the only nation where the military has a country, not a country that has a military. It has nuclear weapons, a first strike doctrine, a client-patron relationship with China and was America’s frontline ally in the Afghan Jihad from 1980-89 and again in the War on Terror from 2001-2021.

However, all this bombast subterfuges a fractured and unstable internal structure. The Pakistani Army may command the state, but it does not command a unified nation. The country’s existence is propped up by military dominance, foreign assistance, and a manufactured sense of religious identity; all inherently brittle in the long run.

Its dependence on semi-state militant outfits, once an asset in proxy conflicts, is now a serious liability. Pakistan’s gamble on terrorism as a tool of statecraft has badly backfired. It has been weakening its civil institutions, eroding the credibility of its diplomatic narrative and drawn sustained global censure.

Cracks beneath the surface: Pakistan was born out of the two-nation theory based upon the erroneous belief that Hindus and Muslims can not not coexist.

Yet more than 70 years later Pakistan’s identity remains narrowly defined and deeply friable. A nation built solely on religious identity is inherently prone to internal fractures and existential insecurity.

Does even Islam unite Pakistan?

Even within its Islamic framework, Pakistan has failed to safeguard its own Muslim minorities. Shias, Ahmadis, Hazaras, Khojas and others face regular persecution, often branded as heretics. Sectarian violence is endemic, especially in Punjab and Balochistan where extremist groups like Sipah-e-Sahaba and Lashkar-e-Jhangvi flourish. The state’s inability or unwillingness to rein in such forces reveals a hollow ideological core and undermines its claim to defend Muslim causes, including its sanctimonious role in Kashmir.

Pakistan’s over-centralised, military-heavy governance has alienated various ethnic and regional groups. Balochistan remains embroiled in insurgency, marked by disappearances and military repression. In Sindh, particularly among the urban Mohajir community, resentment festers against the Punjabi-dominated establishment. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and the former Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA) continue to suffer from economic neglect and the fallout of Pakistan’s own militant policies. Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, despite their strategic importance, remain disenfranchised and underdeveloped. Pakistan claims to be a federation where federalism is absent. Power is concentrated in a unitary structure dominated by the military and bureaucracy where political parties only play a peripheral role.

The Durand Line, drawn by colonial powers, remains a flashpoint, unrecognised by any Afghan regime, including the Taliban. The Pashtun communities on both sides reject this artificial divide and Pakistan’s long-held ambition of controlling Kabul for ‘strategic depth’ has not only failed again but bombed.

The rise of the Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a civil rights platform challenging military excesses, reflects the growing unrest within. For India, tracking and amplifying such voices of internal resistance could become a potent tool in reshaping the strategic narrative.

India’s strategic leverage: Pakistan’s economy remains in chronic distress, propped up by IMF bailouts, Chinese loans, and remittances from the Gulf. In 2025 it is estimated to grow at a meagre 2.6 per cent. Its financial structure is dominated by military-run conglomerates such as the Fauji Foundation and the Army Welfare Trust, while its civilian leadership remains weak, divided, and beholden to the military establishment in Rawalpindi. Corruption is entrenched, tax compliance is abysmal, and the economic outlook is grim with surging inflation, a sinking rupee, and depleting foreign reserves. Even a robust black economy cannot mitigate this economic morass. Pakistan today resembles not a sovereign economy, but a financially dependent protectorate.

The Pakistan Question? The prospect of Pakistan’s disintegration is no longer confined to the realm of speculation. Its internal contradictions, ideological rigidity, ethnic unrest, economic fragility and political dysfunction have grown so deep that the collapse of the state, though not imminent, is no longer inconceivable and but a matter of time. This is the end game that India must focus upon by sharpening these contradictions. For as long as the Pakistani state exists in its current form its core behaviour will not change.