The Making of the India–Pakistan Dynamic: Nehru, Liaquat, and the No War Pact correspondence of 1950

Abstract

In January 1950, Jawaharlal Nehru wrote to Liaquat Ali Khan, seeking a joint declaration of a No War Pact by the governments of India and Pakistan. The two prime ministers undertook a lengthy correspondence on this subject, spanning a year that saw rising levels of resentment and hostility between the two countries. Yet, as the inter-dominion correspondence on the No War declaration during this period shows, neither government was actually predisposed to take a belligerent position and critically engaged with the possibility of signing a declaration that renounced the use of war. As I hope to show through my discussion of the 'No War Pact' correspondence, relations between India and Pakistan were not necessarily confined to hostile exchanges, and both governments also repeatedly engaged with each other to attempt to find spaces of agreement and compromise. Although much of the existing literature on India-Pakistan relations characterizes it as locked in acrimony and conflict, which arose from the bitterness of partition, a closer scrutiny reveals a more nuanced picture. Attempts at cooperation and dialogue between the two governments-and the rationale for undertaking them-complicate our understanding of a relationship apparently limited to instinctive antagonism, and help in creating a more rounded picture of the IndiaPakistan dynamic. *

South Asian Conflicts and Regional Security in the Context of Pakistan-India Relations: A Political Analysis

“…The nature of their relationship was characterised by tension and suspicion due to the ongoing Kashmir war and the unresolved issues surrounding the partition (Raghavan, 2016). Pakistan has had three significant conflicts, namely in 1948, 1965, and 1971(Ganguly, 1995.…”

India in The Pakistan Times, September 1950-February 1951

“…32 This, at a time, when the debate in Punjab's countryside was moving "from displacement to development", 33 and, the flow of minorities in Bengal was stemmed by the Nehru-Liaquat Delhi Pact of April 1950. 34 A new dynamic could be expected in India-Pakistan relations, while not diminishing the dispute on Kashmir (or, the Canal Water), 35 which remained sui generis and was thus reported/editorialized in the pages of The Pakistan Times, representing state policy and/or popular sentiment. [Cartoon: "KASHMIR: Function and…”