by 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.