Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

What's happening in your world? Discuss it here.
Forum rules
Play nice. We will be watching

Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby Doodle Dee. Snickers » Thu Aug 15, 2019 4:40 pm

So I've been reading lately about India revoking Kashmir's autonomous status, and I don't much get it but for hearing that it might (is?) piss off Pakistan.

Here in the US, we don't talk about Pakistan-India relations much even though those tensions are maybe the biggest thermonuclear threat (along with the relative weakness of Pakistan's govt). Since a complex explanation is hard to come by, is anyone able to explain this Kashmir move and why it pisses off Pakistan?
  • 4

Doodle Dee. Snickers
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 2730
Joined: Mon May 06, 2013 8:15 pm
Show rep

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby Absentia » Thu Aug 15, 2019 5:52 pm

The short version is that Kashmir has been disputed territory for 70 years, and this is a disruption of the status quo. It would be a bit like South Korea claiming the DMZ, if the DMZ were a lot bigger and people actually lived there.

The long version:

Before the Partition of India, Kashmir was an independent state under the British Empire, majority-Muslim but relatively diverse and secularized. When the Partition happened, the secular government preferred to remain independent. This led to unrest in conservative Muslim communities that wanted to join Pakistan, and Pakistan's government supported their insurgency. In response, Kashmir's government decided to join with India for their protection against Pakistan. Pakistan argued that this decision was illegitimate, and war ensued.

After the cease-fire that ended the war, India controlled most of the state's populated areas, but Pakistan has never renounced its position that India does not have a legal claim there. They consider it intolerable for a non-Muslim government to rule over Kashmir's Muslim communities. The unofficial compromise has been to let Indian-controlled Kashmir continue to exist as a mostly autonomous state, instead of being ruled by the Hindu-dominated central government of India. Pakistan didn't like this status quo, but they didn't hate it enough to go to war over it.

So, obviously, for India to throw out the status quo and take more direct control of Kashmir is a huge provocation. There's the religious element of Hindus ruling over Muslims which Pakistan has stated that it will not tolerate, and also the political element of India consolidating its "conquered" territory that Pakistan never formally surrendered. India has essentially decided to just ignore Pakistan's position and dare them to do anything about it.
  • 8

User avatar
Absentia
TCS Moderator
TCS Moderator
 
Posts: 1786
Joined: Mon Feb 09, 2015 4:46 am
Location: Earth
Show rep

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby cmsellers » Thu Aug 15, 2019 6:55 pm

I'm going to try not to go too much into why there is even a separate Pakistani state, but I will note that "Pakistan" was both an acronym and a pun initially, and the "K" in Pakistan references "Kashmir." Kashmir was part of the original proposal, which is basically modern Pakistan, though at independence Pakistan also included East Bengal, now Bangladesh. When Britain decided to create Pakistan as a state encompassing all of India's Muslim-majority areas where were different rules for the areas Britain governed directly and the princely states.

Britain held referendums in all of the directly-governed Indian provinces, and if there was a large, geographically concentrated minority for the other choice, the province was partitioned, as happened in the Punjab, Bengal, and Assam, Britain divided the provinces. The Brits tried to follow religious lines, though in practice, Lord Mountbatten drew the borders unilaterally on a tight schedule, leading to some ... quirky decisions.

For the Princely States, the British had two rules: 1. you have to accede to India or Pakistan, pick one, and 2. you can only accede to a country you border. For the most part, rulers followed these rules, and also acceded to the country representing the majority of the subjects' faith. However in three cases, where there was a mismatch between the ruler's faith and the majority of his subjects', the ruler tried to break the rules laid out by Britain.

In one case, Junagadh and its vassal Manavadar (which didn't actually have the right to choose separately), both overwhelmingly Hindu territories ruled by Muslims, tried to accede to Pakistan, claiming they bordered Pakistan by sea. (They wouldn't have, but were accessible by sea.) The people rose up, India invaded and held a referendum which put an end to that nonsense. Two very large princely states tried to remain independent. One was Hyderabad, a majority-Hindu area ruled by a Muslim, and completely surrounded by India. India just straight-up invaded. The final case was Kashmir, a majority-Muslim area ruled by a Hindu.

Immediately on announcement of partition, a British Army officer stationed in Gilgit in Kashmir basically said "it's all Muslims up in here, this should go to Pakistan," ousted the Kashmiri governor, and gave the area to Pakistan. The surrounding vassals of Kashmir, all ruled by Muslims, went along with it. When the Maharaja Kashmir tried to remain independent, Pakistan then semi-openly invaded and overran Baltistan in Ladakh, plus portions of Jammu and Kashmir now administered by Pakistan as Azad Kashmir.

The Maharaja of Kashmir appealed to India for help, India said "not unless you accede to India," so the Maharaja acceded to India, but only granting India a handful of powers. The part of Kashmir in India is composed of three parts: the Valley of Kashmir, which is overwhelmingly Muslim, Jammu, which is mostly Hindu with a large Muslim minority, and Ladakh, which is sparsely inhabited and mixed Muslim-Buddhist. The Pakistani parts of Kashmir were all majority-Muslim at the time and are overwhelmingly Muslim today, though Hindus were ethnically cleansed from southern Azad Kashmir, as they were in almost all of Pakistan.

At the Indian constitutional convention, the Kashmiri delegation basically said "Kashmir cedes these powers to India and maybe some more but not unless we agree to at the Kashmiri constituent assembly (constitutional convention)." India added a "temporary" article to the Constitution affirming this. The Kashmiri constituent assembly dissolved without ceding any more powers, which makes the temporary article permanent according to Indian Supreme Court rulings.

As Pakistan sees it, India got all the Hindu-majority territories ruled by Muslims and part of a Muslim-majority territory ruled by a Hindu, and that's grossly unfair. The Pakistani parts of Kashmir remain officially not part of Pakistan's territory, because Pakistan's position is that Kashmir can't be integrated into Pakistan until a referendum is held in the whole territory. India's position is "Hyderabad and Junagadh broke the rules for accession, whereas Kashmir lawfully acceded to India, it's part of India, and you should give back the parts of it you occupy." They've fought a couple wars over the subject with nothing much changing, at least in Kashmir.

For most of independent India's history, there's been an insurgency by Muslims in Kashmir and Indian leaders basically recognized its special status. The insurgency was largely resolved by an agreement which officially guaranteed Kashmir significant autonomy under Article 370. This agreement was popular in Kashmir and extremely unpopular in the rest of India, where Indians basically said: "It's not fair, why does Kashmir get special status!? And also, this makes it look like we're agreeing with Pakistan that Kashmir isn't rightfully Indian."

The BJP made noises about repealing Article 370, the Supreme Court said "you can't do that," and the BJP said "Oh yeah? Just watch us." They declared that Article 370 doesn't apply anymore, Indian law applies in full to Kashmir, and oh, by the way, it's not a state anymore, it's now two Union Territories. One of these Union Territories (Jammu and Kashmir) has twelve million people, basically the same as the old state, and the other one (Ladakh) has three hundred thousand, closer to normal for Union territories (except Delhi and Chandigarh, which have sort of a DC-like status).

So basically, the Kashmiris are pissed off because the BJP broke the peace agreement under which they agreed to remain in India, demoted them from both their special status and even equal status, and violated the Constitution. Pakistan is pissed off because it changes the status quo over Kashmir and fully integrates the Indian part of Kashmir into India, when Pakistan believes that all of Kashmir (or at least the Muslim-majority parts) should be allowed to hold a referendum in which it joins Pakistan. And India has sent the army in to try to quash the inevitable unrest by force.
  • 6

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby tinyrick » Fri Aug 16, 2019 12:43 pm

Any conflict over Kashmir is going to go down like a hydrogen filled balloon made of a metal known for being very heavy. Like an Osmium Blimp, I suppose.
  • 2

YEEEEEEAAAHHHHH!!! Tiny Rick!
User avatar
tinyrick
TCS Regular
TCS Regular
 
Posts: 442
Joined: Mon Apr 10, 2017 7:37 am
Location: Underground Bunker, USA
Show rep

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby cmsellers » Mon Aug 19, 2019 3:27 pm

Some additional information which I hadn't realized at the time I wrote my long-ass post:

The agreement under which Kashmir remained in India prohibited Indians from outside of Kashmir from living in Kashmir. The Kashmiri insurgency chased almost all the Muslims of the Vale of Kashmir away, and though the Kashmiri separatist organizations invited them back after a peace agreement, the Hindus of the Vale are, understandably, loathe to trust the Kashmiris. In India, it looks like this situation is presented as "Hindus were chased out of Kashmir, and Kashmir's special laws say they can't move back." It looks like that could even be true for the children of such people, but it's not clear to me.

Meanwhile, both the Kashmiris and Pakistanis are terrified that the Indians are going to settle Hindus from the rest of India in Kashmir until it has a Hindu majority, a move which would not only make Muslims a minority in Kashmir, but make Kashmiris a minority in their own country. Witness what happened with Mainland China and Hong Kong, where first a lot off Mainlanders were moved in, then Mandarin was made official with Cantonese and English, and then Cantonese and English were marginalized as "a dialect" and "a foreign language." However there's no evidence I can see that the BJP has any plans to do this, aside from it sounding like something they would do.

It also looks like the Hindu minority in Kashmir is more favorable towards these changes than the Muslim minority, which makes sense, and the Hindus who were expelled from the Vale of Kashmir very strongly in favor of them, which also makes sense. The Ladakhis, Buddhist and Muslim alike, also seem very happy about being out from under the thumb of the much more populous Kashmiris, however the major parties in Kashmir had previously expressed their support for separate status for Ladakh; there was no need to destroy Kashmir's autonomy to achieve it.
  • 0

User avatar
cmsellers
Back-End Admin
Back-End Admin
 
Posts: 9316
Joined: Sun Apr 14, 2013 7:20 pm
Location: Not *that* Bay Area
Show rep
Title: Broken Record Player

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby Ladki96 » Tue Aug 20, 2019 3:39 pm

yeah BJP is a terrible party >_> I feel like it and RSS won't rest until the country's population is totally Hindu. Removing Article 370 was dumb but you could be called anti-national/unpatriotic if you said so, as I found out at work recently :P smh {{{Kashmiris}}}
  • 6

Image
User avatar
Ladki96
Time Waster
Time Waster
 
Posts: 1074
Joined: Sun Aug 23, 2015 7:32 pm
Location: India
Show rep
Title: =)

Re: Explain it to me: Kashmir Edition

Postby NathanLoiselle » Tue Aug 20, 2019 6:34 pm

It's a song. What else is there to know?
  • 2

User avatar
NathanLoiselle
TCS Junkie
TCS Junkie
 
Posts: 4484
Joined: Wed Jul 09, 2014 3:49 am
Location: You'll Never Know!
Show rep


Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users and 16 guests