Lahore University of Management Sciences

POL 21X – Geopolitics of South Asia

Fall 2010

Instructor: Ambassador Azmat Hassan

Office: 236 Old HSS Wing review
Office hours: **** or by appointment
E-mail: azmat.hassan@lums.edu.pk

Course Description

South Asia is achieving increased global importance encapsulating as it does around 1.5 billion
people who represent one quarter of the world’s population. In India and Pakistan it contains two
nuclear armed powers who have had a history of contentious relations going back to 1947 when
both emerged as successor states to British ruled India. The course will focus on how the bloody
Partition of India has informed the uneasy and at times hostile relationship between India and
Pakistan. The course will examine critically the roles of Gandhi, Nehru and Jinnah in the
Independence Movement and what led to the parting of the ways between the Congress and the
Muslim League culminating in the emergence of Pakistan. The centrality of the Kashmir issue in
continuing to prevent normalization will be followed by the wars between India and Pakistan in
1947-49, 1965 and 1971 with the last named leading to the emergence of an independent
Bangladesh after a bloody civil war. The continuation of India-centric policies on the part of
Pakistan and Pakistan-centric policies on the part of
India will be examined. The increasingly visible role of civil society in ameliorating India-
Pakistan tensions will be discussed. Also the consequences of both countries going nuclear will
be dilated upon. Political developments in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal as well as prospects
for regional cooperation in South Asia embodied in the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) will form the last segment of the course. I will share my perspectives on
South Asia based on my service in the South Asia Division of Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry from
1972-1976 as well as my experiences as a career diplomat for Pakistan from 1966-1999.I will
encourage a seminar style format with active student participation in this Level Four course at
the end of which students will have achieved an enhanced perspective of a dynamic region beset
with a number of challenges but one whose future evolution is arousing significant interest
globally.

Grading:

2 Quizzes 10%
Attendance 10%
Class Participation 10%
Mid Term 30%
Final Exam 40%

Reading list will be provided at a later date.