This tag of “hyphenation” in global diplomacy is as old as the hills and doesn’t apply to India – Pakistan alone. It’s been turned into some scary foreign policy phobic doctrine by the mandarins of India’s MEA over several decades now since Bill Clinton as POTUS first tried to hyphenate all of South Asia as “Afghanistan-Pakistan-India” and pinned a United States Marshal or Sheriff’s star on the chest of a US State Department diplomat, Richard Holbrook, and tasked him with taking charge of the town here. India growled. And Holbrook best a hasty retreat from New Delhi.
Thirty years later , after many bloody wars, Afghanistan too finally managed to de-hyphenate itself from the Holbrook doctrine with Joe Biden beating a hasty, ignominious retreat in 2021 from Afghanistan.
Hypenation is an imperialistic trick always kept hidden up the sleeve of Western powers and is often used to keep the pot boiling in every hotspotand choke point across the world wherever their own strategic interests lie .
Hyphenation is a very useful tool to make Siamese Twins of two belligerent antagonists to tango while being joined at the hips in a slow dance of death. It’s a game. Very effective in setting one against the other in a slow-motion embrace of mutual destruction.
Look closely at the history of many of the world’s hotspots or perennial conflict-zones … and you’ll see hyphenation play a key role in everyone of them:
– Israel-Palestine
– China-Taiwan
– Ukraine-Russia
– South Korea- North Korea
– Sunni Arabia- Shia Iran
After May 2025 Pakistan-India clash in the aftermath of the heinous and tragic Pahalgam terror attack, for Indian foreign-policy the diplomatic choreography going forward has become much clearer now than it was ever before. And in PM Modi’s address to the nation a few days ago that clarity of direction and resolve was conveyed stridently and eloquently.
What came through loud and clear, to me at least, from the PM Modi stirring speech was this:
There’s now only way to survive hyphenation ….It’s called conjugation.
In biological science, Conjugation is the combination of two substances by which major horizontal gene transfer mechanism takes place through which DNA is transferred from a donor to a recipient bacterium by direct contact and by which process toxic compounds are eliminated from the body of the donee organism by the donor organism through conjugation”.
In India – Pakistan relations, going forward, Conjugation will mean DNA transfer of sorts: i.e. inevitably, on the one hand, the transfer of PoK to India; and on the other, the de-conjugating of Baluchistan from Pakistan.
Hyphenation out. Conjugation in …
Such conjugation will now have to be the the “new normal” in Indio-Pak relations that PM Modi spelt out in his speech. It is the only way to get rid of all traces of “hyphenation” and eliminate all traces of “toxic compounds” that India now knows are resident in that present host-organism, Pakistan’s body politic and its deep state.
Sudarshan Madabushi