Amid international media reports of a US-bound Marshall Islands-flagged oil tanker being seized by Iran with 24 Indian crew members onboard, there was a silver lining from Abuja. A Nigerian court freed 26 seafarers, including 16 Indians, who had been detained for more than eight months in the MT Heroic Idun case. The court verdict eventually came in favour of the crew which also included eight Sri Lankans, a Filipino and a Pole. The very large crude carrier (VLCC) Heroic Idun – owned by Idun Maritime Ltd, a subsidiary of Ray Car Carriers – was detained on disputed charges of ‘oil theft’ in Nigeria. The vessel’s owner, Ray Car Carriers, operator OSM Ship Management, Charterer BP, the Marshall Islands as the flag state, governments of India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines and Poland, as well as the various maritime-related organisations, were negotiating for an early settlement and release of the crew. For the full text Read

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The ghastly killings of Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor in Udaipur, and Umesh Kolhe in Amravati have sent shock waves across the country. Lal was hacked to death by Riyaz Attari and Ghouse Mohammad in the wake of his sharing a social media post in support of Nupur Sharma, the former BJP spokesperson who made disparaging comments on Prophet Muhammed. There was widespread condemnation of the gruesome murders, particularly from different sections of the Muslim community, including the All-India Muslim Personal Law Board.

Even as the heat and dust began to settle down – after the initial condemnation and comments on Sharma’s remarks from a number of countries in the Muslim world – the domestic scenario witnessed further mobilisation with sections of the Muslim community keeping it alive for political or social mileage. Lal’s murder was obviously a sequel to this mobilisation. Though there are reports of a ‘Pakistan connection’ to the killing, these things need extensive investigation.

Meanwhile, the Supreme Court of India accused Sharma of “igniting emotions across the country.” Apparently, the issue has the potential of vitiating the festering wounds. Whether Sharma apologises to the nation or not – in deference to the apex court’s oral remarks – the Muslim community also needs to rise to the occasion by turning down the heat and dust generated.

Anti-blasphemy waves across the world 

The killings have brought renewed focus on the place of blasphemy in Islam and in India as a whole. Allegations of blasphemy – with accompanying violence – are occasionally reported in many countries. Just three months back, a 21-year-old woman was beheaded in Pakistan by three women who accused her of blasphemy. There were several such instances in the past few years. Such incidents are often linked to laws and regulations in place, and how states impose such regulations.

Laws outlawing blasphemy were the norm in many countries for centuries, particularly where Semitic religions dominated. Blasphemy laws were in place in both Judaism and Christianity long before Islam emerged in the 7th century. In the modern era, blasphemy laws have gained a certain salience with ruling dispensations resorting to tactics that could sustain their regime interests and legitimacy.

The West Asia and North Africa region has the highest share of countries which have outlawed blasphemy. Many Sub-Saharan African countries have laws prohibiting blasphemy, proselytisation, or similar conduct, though the extent of their implementation is not frequently reported.

Many countries in the Asia-Pacific region also have anti-blasphemy laws, including India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Maldives, Singapore and Turkey. Similarly, a report by the US Congress says that some countries in Western Europe have blasphemy-related laws. Though such regulations are rarely implemented, there have been prosecutions, of late, in Austria, Finland, Germany, Greece, Switzerland, and Turkey. In countries such as Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan, there are laws banning proselytisation or insulting religion. There are only a few countries in Latin America and the Caribbean which have blasphemy laws. Canada has a blasphemy law, but it is not enforced.

In South Asia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan have blasphemy laws that are rigorously enforced. The Indian Penal Code (IPC) still has the provisions of the British Indian Penal Code that outlaws blasphemy, without using that specific word, of course. Sections 295, 295A, 296, 297 and 298 of the IPC provide for imprisonment ranging from one year to three years to deal with an insult to a religious group or communal tension and violence.

Over the years, there have been attacks and fatwas on writers and media personnel on charges of blasphemy. Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses sparked off a blasphemy heat wave which continued for several years. After the novel came out in 1989, Ayatollah Khomeini, the spiritual and political leader of Iran, issued a fatwa for the death penalty as well as a reward of several million dollars for the assassination of Rushdie.

The post Beyond the Udaipur Killing Lies the Spectre of Blasphemy. It’s Time to Banish the Ghost first appeared on KM Seethi.

Christian clergyman William Siraj and his fellow priests were targetted after Sunday services in a local church in Peshawar, the capital of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province which borders Afghanistan. While priest Nadeem Patrick was wounded, another priest escaped unhurt. According to Peshawar police, the priests were not facing any threats from any sources, yet they called it a ‘terrorist act.’ The city has already witnessed many incidents in the past few years, and the most dreadful was the bombing of the All Saints Church in 2013. The rising violence against the minorities in Pakistan has been further compounded by the resurgence of terrorist activities in the country in the wake of Taliban’s capture of power in Kabul in 2021.

Abbas Ahsan, Capital City Police Officer (CCPO) in Peshawar, said that they were “determined to protect minorities”, adding that a team consisting of officials from the Counter Terrorism Department (CTD) and Peshawar police has been set up to probe the case. Condemning the killing, Hina Jilani, Chairperson of the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, said the Commission would consider the attack “as a blatant assault not only on Pakistan’s Christian community but on all religious minorities whose right to life and security of person remains under constant threat.” She also demanded additional measures for the protection of minorities.

On Monday, Peshawar’s All Saints church witnessed a memorial service for Father Siraj, attended by more than 3,000 mourners. The service was held at the same church that was attacked by terrorists with bombs and gunfire in 2013 which caused the death of as many as 127 worshippers and hundreds being wounded. Terrorist attacks have intensified across Pakistan over years, but the turning point came after the Pakistani Taliban (Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan-TTP) ended a ceasefire with the government in Islamabad last year. The TTP has obviously become emboldened by the Taliban’s capture of power in Afghanistan in mid-August. The scenario has helped them to unleash fresh violence against the minorities in Pakistan.

According to various sources, there was a time when minorities constituted nearly 15 per cent of the population in the main cities. Now they make up less than 4 per cent. Christians today constitute a small minority among them, in this predominantly Sunni Muslim country. Data from Pakistan Bureau of Statistics report of the Sixth Population and Housing Census-2017 showed that Christians make up 1.27 per cent of Pakistan’s population of 207.68 million and the majority of them (1.88 %) live in Punjab. According to Catholic leaders, the data was erroneous and “the true figures were hidden.” Statistics, however, show that nearly half of them belong to the Church of Pakistan, a Protestant church. The remaining are mostly Catholic.

A BBC analysis says that the majority of Christians in Pakistan had their origin as low-caste Hindus during the colonial period. They were apparently descendants of those who were converted to Christianity to escape from caste oppression. Many found menial jobs in garrison towns and remained the poorest sections of the society. Several villages in Punjab have Christian inhabitants who work as labourers and farmhands, as BBC report says. However, there are also sections among the Christian community who remained educated and well off. Some found positions within the administrative system, army, business and law. A number of Christians also left Pakistan to settle abroad, in countries such as Australia and Canada, under pressures of persecution.

According to Minority Rights Group International (MRGI 2014: 6-7), though several prominent figures emerged from the Christian community and that they had “made significant contributions to social sector development in Pakistan,” as was “evident in the building of educational institutions, hospitals and health facilities throughout the country,” they were “rarely featured in the mainstream media or public.” Shaun Gregory says that the Christian community were facing more or less the same pressures and intimidations as all other religious minorities. He further noted: “the commonalities in these experiences flow from the interplay of political, legal, and social factors which create a context of threat, intimidation, powerlessness and violence for many religious minorities” (Gregory 2012: 197).

Mounting persecution and attacks

In several instances, charges of blasphemy have often led to court verdicts and violence against minorities, including Christians. For instance, in September 2020, a Lahore court granted death penalty to Asif Pervaiz, a Christian youth, after finding him guilty of sending ‘text messages’ containing ‘blasphemous content.’ Pervaiz was already in custody for nearly seven years, facing blasphemy charges. Earlier, there were many cases involving minorities, including Ahmadis, Shias and Christians, being accused of blasphemy. The Pakistani Christian woman Asia Bibi’s case is too well known.

In April 2018, there was a firing incident in Quetta in which four Christians were killed. In December 2017, in another attack on a church in Quetta, seven people were killed. In March 2016, in Lahore, a suicide attack targeting Christians celebrating Easter resulted in the death of 70 people and as many as 340 were wounded. Lahore witnessed another suicide bomb blast in March 2015 which killed 14 and injured more than 70 people. The number of people killed in the Peshawar church blast in 2013 went up from the initial causality of 80 to 127.

Even those who are at the helm of affairs are not spared. For instance, the Taliban gunmen shot dead Pakistan’s minorities minister, Shahbaz Bhatti, a champion of reform of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws in 2011. The only Christian in Pakistan’s cabinet, Bhatti was reported to have predicted his own death. In a farewell statement recorded four months ago, he had spoken of threats from the Taliban and al-Qaida.

Nearly 40 houses and a church were set on fire by an angry mob in Gojra town in Punjab in 2009. Eight people were burnt alive in this incident. In 2005, Faizabad saw mobs burning several churches and Christian schools and hundreds of people had to flee their homes. After 1990s, Pakistan witnessed several Christians being convicted under blasphemy regulations and, in many cases, such charges were fuelled by personal feuds or economic reasons.

Concerns of global agencies

The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom’s (USCIRF), in its Annual Report 2021 stated that the “issue of abduction, forced conversion to Islam, rape, and forced marriage remained an imminent threat for religious minority women and children, particularly from the Hindu and Christian faiths.” The Report further said that “Pakistani courts systematically failed to protect and provide justice to victims.” Referring to the blasphemy regulations, another USCIRF report found that “implementation of these blasphemy laws made Pakistan the world’s worst offender of blasphemy-related prosecutions and societal violence between 2014 and 2018.” The USCIRF Annual Report 2021 noted that “Sections 295 and 298 of Pakistan’s Penal Code criminalize acts and speech insulting religion or defiling the Qur’an, the Prophet Muhammad, places of worship, or religious symbols.” It said these “vague provisions are frequently abused to levy false accusations against Ahmadis, Shi’a Muslims, Hindus, Christians, Sikhs, and others who do not adhere to the majority Sunni interpretation of Islam.”

In fact, the structural characteristics of the Pakistani state make room for such abuse of laws and regulations, and the legacy of military rule only added fuel to fire. In fact, long years of military rule only emboldened the religious fanatics and fundamentalists. As Siegfried O. Wolf, Director of Research at South Asia Democratic Forum (SADF), observed, “religious minorities, including Christians, are facing severe discriminations in numerous Muslim-majority countries. Yet in no country are Christians so systematically–and institutionally–persecuted and victimised as in Pakistan.” The Research Report of SADF, State persecution of religious minorities in Pakistan: Christians in distress, underlines three major “patterns of state support to the persecution of Christians.” It says (a) “all types of governments, civilian and military, were involved in the persecution and discrimination of Christians; (b) “there is no difference among any of the major political parties regarding discrimination of Christians – all major political parties in Pakistan are engaged in this persecution”; (c) “the Pakistani state is failing to protect its minorities and their rights not because of a lack in capacity but because of a lack in political will.” Besides, it was argued that the withdrawal of the US/NATO combat troops from Afghanistan would “further deteriorate the security and living conditions of Christians in Pakistan.” In fact, this has apparently come true with increasing incidents of attacks on minorities.

Pervez Hoodbhoy in a Dawn article in 2019 wrote: “Pakistan’s minorities live under the boot of the majority and know they cannot speak the truth.” He posed a question, “How can we know which of Pakistan’s minorities — Ahmadi, Christian, Hazara, Hindu, Shia — has had the roughest deal? Hoodbhoy noted: “As structures of hate proliferate across the world, one desperately looks around for those who can intelligently use love and sympathy as tools to dismantle them.”

Travesty of Riyasat-i-Madina

Hardly two weeks before the killing of the Christian priest, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan was so eloquent about Riyasat-i-Madina, the ideal Islamic welfare state. Writing about it, Khan was reminding that Prophet Mohammed had “unified people of diverse ethnic and religious backgrounds into a single community. Besides Muslims, there were Christians, Jews, Sabeans and other groups who were all woven into a unitary communal whole under the state of Madina.”

Does this mean that Pakistan is on the right track and the spirit of the Prophet’s Riyasat-i-Madina is transforming Pakistan?

Pointing to the “cause and effect relationship between rule of law and socio-political harmony,” Khan said that “the most urgent of all challenges facing our country right now is the struggle to establish the rule of law.” He said that “over the last 75 years of Pakistan’s history, our country has suffered from elite capture, where powerful and crooked politicians, cartels and mafias have become accustomed to being above the law in order to protect their privileges gained through a corrupt system.” However, Imran Khan has conveniently skipped the role of religious elite, may be consciously, to legitimise his ‘Good Muslim’ rule.

When Prime Minister Khan launched a public version of the National Security Policy (NSP) document on 14 January, he sought to ensure that it should not be ‘conventional.’ So, he brought in all sorts of securities—most prominently ‘human security.’ While admitting that the “most acute form of efforts to undermine stability and national harmony of a society is terrorism,” the NSP also said that the “exploitation and manipulation of ethnic, religious, and sectarian lines through violent extremist ideologies cannot be allowed. Inculcating interfaith and intersectarian harmony and societal tolerance in all its forms will be prioritised.”

Admittedly, with NSP in place, two things apparently remain prominent—(i) “Pakistan pursues a policy of zero tolerance for any groups involved in terrorist activities on its soil.” (ii) “Action against those producing and disseminating hate speech and material will be swift and uncompromising.”

In less than two weeks after the launching of NSP, a priest has been brutally murdered, and the Prime Minister is yet to reach out to the beleaguered minority. Though the security forces have “widened their manhunt,” the “unidentified assailants” are still to be booked under the ‘zero tolerance’ policy.

Minority communities recall that Qaid-i-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah’s call for the protection of minorities in the new state has become ever more relevant today. In his famous 11 August 1947 Speech in the Constituent Assembly of Pakistan, Mohammed Ali Jinnah said:

We are starting in the days when there is no discrimination, no distinction between one community and another, no discrimination between one caste or creed and another. We are starting with this fundamental principle that we are all citizens and equal citizens of one State.

In another speech in Sind on 3 February 1948, Jinnah said:

I assure you that Pakistan means to stand by its oft-repeated promises of according equal treatment to all its nationals irrespective of their cast and creed. Pakistan, which symbolizes the aspirations of a nation that found itself in a minority in the Indian sub-continent, cannot be unmindful of the minorities within its own borders.

Having been victims of long years of persecution and killing, many minority communities feel that they “didn’t deserve this mistreatment” because of their contributions to the making of this country. But, as Hoodbhoy observed, “their appeals to the so-called “Quaid’s Pakistan” and his Aug 11, 1947, speech” were desperate attempts to sustain themselves in a beleaguered condition. He says: “…let us not blame these desperate people for clutching at straws; Pakistan’s minorities live under the boot of the majority and know they cannot speak the truth.”

Many would say that the test of a democracy is how the smallest minority of that country is protected. The ‘testing time’ for Pakistan is how its fledgling democracy can be protected under conditions of ‘deep state’ and its praetorian state apparatuses.

The post Killings, Suppression and the Blasphemy Ruse: Pakistan’s Minorities Are Beleaguered first appeared on KM Seethi.

PDF Version KM SEETHI-ER-Jan 2022- Michael Brecher India and International Relations

Walking down the corridors of the Indian Council of World Affairs (ICWA) library in the 1980s, one could barely escape meeting scholars with intellectual acumen moving around. As a novice in foreign affairs, I too had unintended encounters with many of them. The Sapru House (ICWA building) in New Delhi was already known as an international affairs public sphere, with ex-diplomats and foreign affairs scholars meeting frequently. It also had a cafeteria adjacent to its premises where scholars from the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA) also gathered for informal conversations and engagements. IDSA was housed in the Sapru House at that time. Earlier, the Indian School of International Studies (SIS) was also functioning there, until Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) was set up in the late 1960s. SIS was later merged with the JNU faculty.

In the evenings, the lawns of the majestic Sapru House would witness scholars coming for a small break after the day-long strenuous work in the library. One evening, Professor T.T. Poulose, who had served as Chairman of the Disarmament Division of JNU, approached me with his characteristic smile and asked, didn’t you get Brecher’s book? In fact, it was his second reminder—knowing my subject of doctoral thesis—to read Michael Brecher’s doctoral work, which had come as a book, The Struggle for Kashmir (1953). Though I was familiar with Brecher’s widely reviewed political biography of Jawaharlal Nehru (1959), I had kept his Kashmir volume pending for one or other reason. Professor Poulose said that it was here, in the Sapru House, that Michael Brecher worked on another volume on V. K. Krishna Menon, in the 1960s, based on his long interviews with Menon. I knew this volume was very important for several reasons, insofar as Menon was almost like a de facto foreign affairs minister, as Brecher said.

The Indian IR scholars of the 1950s and 1960s fondly remembered Brecher for his great works on Nehru, Krishna Menon, Kashmir, and Indian politics. But little did the Indian academia, since then, recognise him as a great scholar of IR with outstanding contributions to the International Crisis Behaviour (ICB) literature. In fact, much of Brecher’s academic world, since the 1970s, was devoted to exploring IR as a discipline with rich insights in empirical data, and he sustained this quest for fresh enquires within a liberal-pluralist IR for decades.

However, many would recall that Brecher had an important role in the founding of the Shastri Indo-Canadian Institute (SICI), way back in the 1960s. It was Brecher who mooted the idea of setting up such an institution to the visiting Indian Finance Minister T. T. Krishnamachari who responded to his proposal positively. What followed was an official joint statement in 1967 issued by Canada and India, which eventually resulted in the formation of SICI.

The demise of Professor Michael Brecher—on January 16, 2022—came at a time when the discipline of IR had just passed through its ‘uncelebrated’ centennial across world academia, particularly with the increasing limitations imposed by the pandemic over the last two years. Brecher was the R.B. Angus Professor at McGill University, and he had a long career as an active academic, which spanned over almost seven decades since the mid-fifties. A scholar of international repute, Brecher has been held in high esteem for his immense contributions to the vast corpus of knowledge in International Relations (IR)—from international crisis, war, and conflict to foreign policy and decision making.

Brecher’s Passage to India

It was Brecher’s doctoral research on the subject of the Kashmir conflict at Yale University that later prompted him to visit India. That was the beginning of his deeper interest in decision-making (DM) as an approach to the study of International Relations, especially with the publication of a major volume by Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck, and Burton Sapin on DM. The studies that proliferated since the 1950s branched out under different DM models and theories. Yet, one popular notion shared by all was ‘field research’—promoting IR scholars to engage with decision-makers/policymakers across the world in understanding the complex situations of conflict, war, and international crisis. This is still a challenging domain of IR studies where scholars rarely get source materials from the horse’s mouth. However, as a young scholar, Brecher was fortunate to have met many—from Lord Mountbatten, Clement Atlee, Jawaharlal Nehru, V.K. Krishna Menon, to Ben Gurion, and a lot of others.

As Brecher himself wrote, it was the Nuffield Foundation as well as the Canadian Social Science Research Council that facilitated his research by providing a travel fellowship to undertake visits to the UK and India in the mid-1950s. Brecher’s stay in India during 1955-56 (and subsequent visits) provided him with great opportunities to interact with several leaders, most prominently with Nehru and Menon. Brecher’s Nehru: A Political Biography (1959) was perhaps one of the earliest of several biographies which shed light on many facets of Jawaharlal Nehru’s personality. Having travelled with Nehru and spent long hours and days with him, Brecher had occasions to understand Nehru’s multifaceted personality. Brecher wrote that as prime minister, Nehru was “more the ‘giant among pygmies’ than ‘first among equals’” (Brecher 1959: 15).

The timing of Brecher’s visit was quite significant. The period witnessed several regional and international developments, which included Pakistan’s joining of Western sponsored military alliances, the Bandung Conference, visits of Chinese and Soviet leaders to India, the Suez crisis, the Hungarian uprising, the Soviet intervention, etc. Notwithstanding differences between India and Canada over a variety of issues during the cold war, Escott Reid, the Canadian High Commissioner to India (1952-57), was quite receptive to Nehru and, inevitably, the bilateral ties between the two countries assumed the character of “a special relationship” (Reid 1981: 24). Later, Reid in his memoirs said that his “views of what should be done to make the world safer and saner were much the same as Nehru’s” (Reid 1989). Brecher and Reid obviously played a significant role in changing Nehru’s perceptions of Canada under the cold war conditions. Yet, both were sceptical about Nehru’s cautious approach to international issues.

Writing on the Soviet intervention in 1956, Brecher noted that initially “the lack of direct knowledge and Soviet flattery inclined (Nehru) to disbelieve Western reports of Russian perfidy and ruthlessness. But as the evidence accumulated, he moved towards a mild censure of Soviet actions, reluctantly it appeared. His performance during this tragic affair disappointed many persons, both within India and abroad” (Ibid: 16). Nehru told Brecher that the Hungarian developments showed that communism, if “imposed on a country from outside, cannot last. I mean to say (a characteristic expression) if Communism goes against the basic national spirit, it will not be accepted. In those countries where it has allied itself with nationalism it is, of course, a powerful force. As in China, in Russia, too (Ibid: 23). Nehru further admitted that he could not see “the value of a military approach to these problems.” Nehru told Brecher: “This approach can no longer solve any problems. Besides, I do not see why some people in the West think the Russians are out to conquer other peoples. They are not interested in this. It is only when a neighbour is hostile that they try to weaken it. The Russian people want peace. So do the Americans. In fact, they are so similar, the Russians and the Americans. If only they could agree to end the Cold War” (Ibid).

Brecher wrote that “the effect of these crises on the Prime Minister was profound. His buoyant spirit and vivid enthusiasm have been less in evidence since 1956. They have largely given way to a more sober appreciation of the facts of Indian and international life. It is as if Nehru discovered India afresh, not in a romantic setting but in all its harsh realities. With this rediscovery there came deeper insight, a greater awareness of the intractable nature of certain problems” (Ibid:17).

Brecher also made comparisons between Nehru and other leaders. But some of them obviously would have come not from his direct interactions, but from other sources. For instance, Sardar Patel, who died in 1950, figured prominently in his comparison with Nehru. Brecher says: “Nehru is a man of great charm, generous to a fault, sensitive and aesthetically inclined, impulsive and emotional. Patel was generally dour and ruthless, unimaginative and practical, blunt in speech and action, cool and calculating. Nehru disliked political intrigue; he was a lonely and solitary leader, above group loyalties. Patel was a master of machine politics. Nehru was the voice of the Congress, Patel its organizer (and Gandhi its inspiration).” Elsewhere he says: “Nehru is a master of words and used this technique brilliantly to carry the message of independence and socialism to the far corners of the country. Patel had undisguised contempt for speech-making. He rarely toured the countryside. And except in his native Gujarat he never established a rapport with the masses, partly because of his disdain for the crowd.” He continues: “The only elements in the countryside who looked to the Sardar for leadership were the landlords and the orthodox Hindus. In the cities, too, they commanded the loyalty of different groups, Nehru the radicals and Patel the conservatives. Nehru appealed to the working class, the bulk of the Westernized intelligentsia, the young men and the minorities. Patel drew his support from the business community, orthodox Hindus, senior civil servants and most of the party functionaries. Nehru was (and still is) the outstanding idealist of the Congress and its leading exponent of socialism, a broad international outlook, a secular state and a modern approach. Patel was the realist par excellence, a staunch defender of capitalism, ‘national interests,’ Hindu primacy and traditionalism” (Ibid: 152-53).

Brecher had realistically assessed India’s foreign policy strategy of non-alignment and argued that the country’s “economic weakness and the basic goal of development provide powerful inducements to the policy of non-alignment. The doors must be kept open to all possible sources of aid, Western and Soviet, if the desired economic targets are to be achieved” (Ibid: 216). Brecher, who had already conducted extensive research on Kashmir, was pessimistic about the state of affairs in India-Pakistan relations. This holds true even after seven decades. According to him, “The price of discord has already been exorbitant. The constant threat of renewed war over Kashmir has resulted in a very high defence expenditure. This, in turn, has had grave economic repercussions, notably the slowing-down of much-needed development programmes in both countries. Tension has also reduced the flow of goods and services, for some time eliminating it almost completely. Propaganda war has been endemic, heightening the sense of insecurity among minorities, and stimulating a continuous migration.”

He says: “What makes the picture especially distressing is that no one seems capable of finding a way out of the impasse.” Brecher writes: “The wounds of Partition are still deep. The secession of Kashmir and its inclusion in Pakistan would, in the opinion of Nehru and others, lead to a strengthening of Hindu communal forces, increasing distrust of the Muslim minority, and a clamour for war with Pakistan. It is this which deters them from carrying out their pledge to hold a U.N.-supervised plebiscite though most Indians remain convinced of Pakistan’s aggression, of the U.N.’s dereliction of duty, and of their legal and moral claim to Kashmir (Ibid: 222).

After seventy or more years, Brecher’s observation remains true as it were: “The prospects for a friendly solution seem no brighter now than at any time in the past. It is pointless at this stage to apportion blame for the dispute. One thing is certain: the wrangling has accomplished nothing thus far; and in the absence of a bold new approach, the future of India and Pakistan will continue to be plagued by the impasse over Kashmir” (Ibid: 219).

In the Struggle for Kashmir, Brecher had already noted that “the failure to bring about a solution of the conflict was due partly to the inept handling by the UN; but he had also felt that the deeper causes of the conflict would make a solution possible only through an effort at direct political settlement between the contestants” (Brecher 1953). The UN also later concurred with this reading when its Representative, Frank P. Graham, submitted his final report to the world body.

Brecher was critical of Nehru in his handling of bureaucracy. He says that though “Nehru himself has frequently criticized the central bureaucracy as ‘an administrative jungle,’” “the blame for this state of affairs rests largely with him. The problem is not that Nehru does not discharge his responsibilities; he over-discharges them” (Ibid: 241-42). Brecher goes on to say: “The fact is that Nehru is an inept administrator. Decisions are concentrated in his hands to an incredible degree. He lacks both the talent and temperament to co-ordinate the work of the various ministries. Nor has he ever shown a capacity or inclination to delegate authority. The result has been the ‘administrative jungle’ which he bemoans” (Ibid).

Had this not paid a heavy price in 1962, when India had to fight a major war with China even as different sections of the government started blaming each other for the lack of coordination?

Doesn’t this appear relevant even after several decades when the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has “unchallenged power” and “over-discharging” functions?

Brecher’s India and World Politics: Krishna Menon’s View of the World (1968) remains one of the most comprehensive works on Krishna Menon. Jairam Ramesh, who wrote another comprehensive biography of Krishna Menon, says that Brecher “had produced an astonishing book which has not been rivalled since” (Ramesh 2019: 648). The major source for book was the record of an extended talk between Brecher and Krishna Menon from November 1964 to May 1965. These lively exchanges were tape-recorded and Menon edited the transcript in 1966. The subjects dealt with in the volume are wide-ranging, from non-alignment to China, Pakistan, UN, Bandung, Suez, Hungary etc. (Brecher 1968). Jairam Ramesh writes: “No student of world history of the 1950s can afford not to read Brecher’s book. There was one topic that Krishna Menon did not speak much about and that was Nehru” (Ramesh 2019: 649). Obviously, Menon knew that Brecher had already made much of Nehru in his biography.

Brecher and International Relations

Michael Brecher had a passion for studying foreign policies and international crises through a modified matrix of DM framework. He spent a lot of time with decision makers across world capitals to study in-depth the context and perceptions in the making of strategic decisions. Way back in 1963, Brecher had raised issues of ‘Levels of Analysis’ in IR studies in his World Politics article. He pointed out that IR “specialists have all but ignored the relevance of their discipline to Asia” and that the Asian studies “have not as yet, however, applied the insights of international relations to an area framework” (Brecher 1963). Many of his subsequent studies went in that direction. His works on Israel, the Korean War and China (1974), Political Leadership and Charisma: Nehru, Ben-Gurion, and Other 20th Century Political Leaders (2016), Crises in World Politics: Theory and Reality (1993), A Study of Crisis, with Jonathan Wilkenfeld (1997), International Political Earthquakes (2008), Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict: Past and Present (2017) are the best examples.

Crises in World Politics is a significant contribution to the understanding of international crises from different vantage points. He placed the notion of ‘crises’ within a broader setting and processes of factors that are involved in the initiation, escalation, termination, and consequences of international crises. His basic objective was “to create a theory of crisis and crisis behaviour.” Brecher was also trying to help augment policy-makers’ capabilities to manage decision-making under stress. Many scholars considered Brecher’s ICB project “the most ambitious attempt so far to integrate the multitude of approaches in all the subfields of crisis research” (Brecher 1993).

The volume Millennial Reflections on International Studies Brecher edited with Frank P. Harvey (2002) is undoubtedly a rich repertoire of IR studies with 45 renowned scholars having contributed to our understanding of the limits and possibilities of theory and practice in the discipline. The themes discussed are wide-ranging from realism, institutionalism, critical perspectives, feminist theory and gender studies to methodology (formal modelling, quantitative, and qualitative), foreign policy analysis, international security and peace studies, and international political economy. In this volume, Brecher and Harvey were deeply sceptical about the progress and knowledge accumulation in IR studies stating that the scholars seemed to have problem in “agreeing on what they have accomplished” so far. It is obviously for these reasons that many in the volume have put across a synthesis formula—variously referred to as a “paradigmatic synthesis” of IR studies.

Michael Brecher

Two years earlier, Brecher became President of International Studies Association (ISA), a prestigious global platform of IR Scholars. In his ISA Presidential Address in 1999, Brecher called for a pluralist-synthesis approach in the discipline of IR. The core of his address goes as follows:

The state of International Studies as the 20th century draws to a close is disconcerting. Among the shortcomings are intolerance of competing paradigms, models, methods, and findings; a closed-mind mentality; a tendency to research fashions; the increasingly-visible retreat from science in International Studies; and the low value placed by most scholars on cumulation of knowledge. Flawed dichotomies are pervasive: theory versus history as approaches to knowledge; deductive versus inductive paths to theory; a horizontal (breadth) versus vertical (in-depth) focus of inquiry, based upon aggregate data (quantitative) vs. case study (qualitative) methods of analysis, using large ‘N’ vs. small ‘N’ clusters of data; system vs. actor as the optimal level of analysis, and closely related, unitary vs. multiple competing actors; rational calculus vs. psychological constraints on choice, and the related divide over reality vs. image as the key to explaining state behaviour; and neo-realism vs. neo-institutionalism as the correct paradigm for the study of world politics.

On the eve of a new century, it seems to me important to reaffirm that pluralism is necessary for renewal in International Studies. It would clear the air among argumentative scholars and as such is a precondition to progress. We must recognize that no school has a monopoly of truth and that continuing fratricide among paradigms and methodologies poses a grave risk that the embryonic discipline will implode. However, pluralism alone is not sufficient to achieve our goal. The way forward also requires a sustained effort to move from the thesis/antithesis syndrome to synthesis in every facet of the field—approaches, theory, methods, and empirical findings. Attempts must be made to build upon separate islands of knowledge so as to achieve a theory of how international systems evolve and change, and how actors behave under conditions of stress and in the “normal” course of interstate relations; we have been locked into the false dichotomies discussed earlier for too long. Without the integration of knowledge, revised from time to time in the light of fresh theoretical insights, improved methods, and new evidence, International Studies is destined to remain a collection of bits and pieces of explanation of reality and behaviour (Brecher 1999).

Years later, Brecher’s work A Century of Crisis and Conflict in the International System (2018) again reflected many of his arguments that he had made in the 1999 ISA Presidential Address. Brecher reminded that “international stability is—or should be—a high value for all states and nations/peoples in an epoch characterized by weapons of mass destruction (WMDs), the persistence of anarchy despite the proliferation of international and transnational regimes, the increase of ethnic and civil wars, and the growing preoccupation with worldwide terrorism” (Brecher 2018). Justifying the ICB project, he said that its objective “has been to enrich and deepen our knowledge of international crisis and interstate conflict in the twentieth century and beyond.” Analysing the state of affairs in the discipline, he also noted that “prominent advocates of contending approaches in International Studies have not been immune to crass intellectual intolerance.”

Brecher says: “As someone who has learned from many of the pioneers and later ‘schools’ but is a prisoner or apostle of none, I present another answer to this elusive question. In particular, I will examine why this field of knowledge, using the terms, International Relations (IR), World Politics (WP), and International Studies (IS) interchangeably, has not yet crystallized into a mature social science discipline” (Ibid). Brecher wrote that many years ago he had set out the case for ‘many paths to knowledge’ and had “made a plea for pluralism in International Studies.” He further said that he was “a pluralist in the matter of research strategy: there are, it seems to me, many paths to knowledge; no single path has a monopoly of truth. In this I was influenced by my South Asia experience, especially the Hindu adage that no religion has a monopoly of the truth; all can claim to know only a part of the whole. Translating this to the enduring issue of the optimal path to knowledge, I became committed, very early, to pluralism in methodology” (Ibid).

Brecher put across “in-depth case studies of perceptions and decisions by a single state, using a micro-level model of crisis” that he had “designed to guide research on foreign policy crises for individual states and to facilitate rigorous comparative analysis of findings about state behaviour under varying stress.” He called this approach “structured empiricism” which promotes gathering and organizing “data on diverse cases around a set of common questions, permitting systematic comparison” (Ibid). However, Brecher knew that comparative case study alone “cannot uncover the full range of findings about any phenomenon in world politics.” For this, he suggested “a second path” which should promote “studies in breadth of aggregate data on crises over an extended block of time and space.” Here, he argued, the research programme should be shaped by ‘theory’ and ‘history,’ a synthesis of the two.

Brecher remained convinced that (i) despite the critique of Post-Modernism, Positivism is still a valid basis for creating and accumulating knowledge about state behaviour and international system change” (ii) “nation-states are no longer the virtually exclusive actors in the international system, the status they enjoyed during the three centuries of the Westphalia system” (iii) the end of the Cold War has not ushered in the ‘Nirvana’ of cooperation, as evident in the ubiquity of conflict, crisis, and war between and within states, though the domain of cooperation has dramatically expanded during the past 25 years” (iv) “violence played an important part in world politics in the 1990s and the early years of the new century, as in previous decades, centuries, and millennia, and is likely to continue to do so” (v) “nationalism has re-emerged as a primary force in world politics—in a new form, Ethnicity, which is manifested in the widespread demand for self-determination and secession” and (v) “Parsimony is undoubtedly a high scientific value, and, wherever possible, it should be sought, but it should not be forced on to the data.” Brecher said that the primary goal of all IR research is “not parsimony but accuracy in both the description and explanation of reality. The subject matter of crisis, conflict, and war, and, more generally, of world politics, is extraordinarily complex.” And Brecher “would rather forego parsimony than accuracy in the explanation of any complex issue in world politics” (Ibid).

T.V. Paul

Michael Brecher was always open and categorical in his position on scientific rationality in IR, which he appealed to scholars to incessantly explore in field studies. T.V. Paul, James McGill Professor of International Relations at McGill University—Brecher’s colleague and successor as President of ISA during 2016-17—said that his demise came after the death of another great scholar of South Asia, Professor Baldev Raj Nayar, in 2021. It was actually Brecher who brought Nayar to McGill. According to Paul, both Nayar and Brecher remained great role models for IR scholars, and they were so committed and meticulous in field research, always willing to take up challenges. As Paul remarked, Brecher’s ability to maintain the trust of leading political figures he met and interacted with was exceptional.

Admittedly, this is still a major challenge for IR scholars across the world—meeting the actual decision makers of foreign policy and bridging the gulf between the world of ‘facts’ and the ‘norms’ of international life. Michael Brecher, an accomplished scholar of great eminence, will remain as an inspiration to generations of scholars in both Political Science and International Relations.

References

Brecher, Michael (1953): The Struggle for Kashmir, London: Oxford University Press.

Brecher, M. (1959): Nehru: A Political Biography, London: Oxford University Press.

Brecher, M (1963): “International Relations and Asian Studies: The Subordinate State System of Southern Asia,” World Politics, Vol.15., No.2., January: 213-35.

Brecher, M. (1966): Succession in India: A Study in Decision-Making, London: Oxford University Press.

Brecher, M. (1968): India and World Politics: Krishna Menon’s View of the World, London: Oxford University Press.

Brecher, M. (1974): Israel, the Korean War and China, Jerusalem: Jerusalem Academic Press.

Brecher, M. (1993): Crises in World Politics: Theory and Reality, Oxford: Pergamon Press.

Brecher, M. (1997): A Study of Crisis, with Jonathan Wilkenfeld, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Brecher, M. (1999): “International Studies in the Twentieth Century and Beyond: Flawed Dichotomies, Synthesis, Cumulation: ISA Presidential Address,” International Studies Quarterly, Vol. 43, Issue 2., June: 213–264, https://doi.org/10.1111/0020-8833.00119

Brecher, M and Harvey F (eds) (2002) Millennial Reflections on International Studies, Ann Arbor: MI: University of Michigan Press.

Brecher, M. (2008): International Political Earthquakes, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

Brecher, M. (2016): Political Leadership and Charisma: Nehru, Ben-Gurion, and Other 20th Century Political Leaders, London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Brecher, M. (2017): Dynamics of the Arab-Israel Conflict: Past and Present, London: Palgrave-Macmillan.

Brecher, M. (2018): A Century of Crisis and Conflict in the International System: Theory and Evidence: Intellectual Odyssey III, Montreal, QC, Palgrave Macmillan

Ramesh, Jairam (2019): A Chequered Brilliance: The Many Lives of V.K. Krishna Menon, Gurgaon: Penguin.

Reid, Escott (1981): Envoy to Nehru, Toronto: Oxford University Press.

Reid, Escott (1989): Radical Mandarin: The Memoirs of Escott Reid, Toronto: Buffalo.

(The author wishes to thank Professor T.V. Paul at McGill University for his comments on Michael Brecher).

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