Topic > Case Study on India Pakistan Relations - 733

One was the trend started by Nehru. He focused on regionalism as the dominant theme. The second emerged during the Lal Bahadur Shastri years. This came in the aftermath of the 1962 war and the need to reset India's worldview keeping in mind its capabilities. Shastri would emphasize bilateralism as key to foreign policy, especially in relation to South Asian countries. East and West Pakistan and the Islamic worldview. The former placed Pakistan firmly within the regional state system of South Asia, while the latter brought it closer to the Islamic world of West Asia. Pakistan thus saw itself as a nation with two distinct identities and roles, that of a South Asian power and that of a West Asian Islamic power that would eventually emerge as a major country of the Organization of the Islamic Conference. One of the major security concerns that Pakistan has sought to address since its inception is that of fear of India. The problem of Pakistan's foreign and defense policy revolved around the central theme of Indian domination and the guarantees that needed to be established to counter it.