序章: 南アジアにおける「国民国家」と国際関係

南アジアの国家と国際関係

抄録

South Asian politics can be analysed from three different angles: in terms of global politics, at the regional level and within the nation-states.
The end of the Cold War has not brought peace to the Indian sub-continent, but further complicated the conflict situation with the nuclear tests by India and Pakistan, the Kargil crisis and ever intensifying ethnic conflicts. A major difference between South Asia and other parts of the world that were affected by the Cold War rivalry is that in the sub-continent the conflict between India and Pakistan was an independent variable, and the Cold War a dependent one. The autonomy of the region still prevails in the post-Cold War period.
The regional politics is characterised by conflicts between India and Pakistan and between India and its smaller neighbours. Whereas Pakistan seeks parity with India, smaller states are forced to accept their subordinate position. India and Pakistan, which defined their nation-states as a secular state and a Muslim state respectively at the time of partition, are complimentary to each other in the sense that both can establish their national identities by denying the other. The Kashmir conflict is a symbol of such a struggle.
Recurring ethnic conflicts further threaten the integrity of the nationstates. The ethnic boundaries that do not coincide with the state borders enable neighbouring countries to intervene with ethnic conflicts for their own national security and interest. However, they are bound to face the repercussions to their own states.
The third dimension deals with problems of democracy. An institutional approach, i. e. the dichotomy between military regime and civilian democratic rule is misleading, as both regimes often belong to a gray zone. Although democracy seems the only viable discourse at the moment, democracy is sometimes dysfunctional for the development of the political system. Democracy itself can be a major cause for ethnic conflicts when political leaders resort to identity politics and populism.
One of the effective ways to overshadow the internal and external contradictions is to raise strong nationalism. Nationalism like ethnicity emerges when a group of people become conscious of differences between “us” and “them.” The “them” often becomes a common enemy of that group. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which was a strong protagonist of Hindutva or Hindu nationalism, switched the target of Indian nationalism from the Muslims within India to Pakistan in the mid-1990s in order to generate pan-India nationalism.
Under such conditions, the tension between India and Pakistan is likely to persist. The first step to solve the Indo-Pakistan conflict is that the two brother nations recognize each other as a foreign country. Only then will the two countries be able to normalize the relationship based on rational calculation. When they do, however, the state borders will be considerably lowered and the “nation-state” might loose its original meaning.