Asia: Not Enough of Nothing

For the past two years, two of the world’s poorest countries have spent about $25,000 a week in Geneva on lawyers and living costs to contest their rival claims to an obscure and worth less piece of land. Last week, after reviewing mountains of conflicting evidence, a U.N.-sanctioned tribunal of three justices (from Iran, Sweden and Yugoslavia) handed down a judgment that, in effect, gave 90% of nothing to India and the rest to Pakistan.

The disputed area is a 3,500-sq.-mi. stretch of the Rann of Kutch, a desolate stretch of salt flat and sand dunes that is located on the coast of the Arabian Sea between the two countries and inhabited chiefly by flamingos and wild asses. Pakistan and India fought a number of sharp engagements in the Rann in early 1965, but agreed to submit the conflict to binding international arbitration before a larger border war broke out a few months later over Kashmir. The tribunal turned down Pakistan’s bid for the area but, in a 2-to-l decision, confirmed its claim to two tiny areas that jut into Pakistan and a small northwest corner where Pakistani officials for years have administered justice to a few nomads. The judges gave the rest to India, on the basis of old British demarcations that placed the Rann* in the territory that became India after the 1947 partition.

Though it got only a small fraction of what it wanted, Pakistan accepted the ruling fairly graciously and promised to abide by it. The reception in India was testy. The Indian press complained about the “justice” of international courts, and the noisy opposition parties accused Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s Congress Party of sacrificing a bit of Bharat Mata—Mother India—to the hated Pakistanis. The opposition even introduced a no-confidence motion, which will probably come to a vote this week. Since Indira commands a comfortable majority in Parliament, she is unlikely to be beaten, but the nationalist Jana Sangh Party has already vowed to make the Rann a rallying cry in its growing campaign to win the masses away from the Congress Party. While most of India’s huge problems go begging, the country’s politicians retain an unfortunate, though perhaps understandable, passion for making an issue out of nothing.

*A Hindi word that derives from the Sanskrit irinam, meaning salty marsh.