*****
Around 40 to 50 million years ago, the floating area of the Earth's crust now known as the Indian plate (later stuck with the Australian plate to become the "Indo-Australian" plate) bumped into the floating area of the Earth's crust now known as the Eurasian plate. This collision - which is still going - led to a number of things, geologically speaking:
- the disappearance of 2,500 of the Indian plate;
- the elevation of the Tibetan plateau;
- the creation of a region which "supplies fresh water for more than one-fifth of the world population, and accounts for a quarter of the global sedimentary budget. Topographically, the belt has many superlatives: the highest rate of uplift (nearly 10 mm/year at Nanga Parbat), the highest relief (8848 m at Mt. Everest Chomolangma), among the highest erosion rates at 2–12 mm/yr, the source of some of the greatest rivers and the highest concentration of glaciers outside of the polar regions" - and a region of continuing major tectonic activity (i.e., earthquakes, and associated problems such as landslides and floods); and
- amongst other features, the development of a monsoon and the formation of the Indus River (map here), from which India gained its name, an area made fertile by the events that created this region.
Eroding mountains and water: as with the Nile, which carries the rich silt of East Africa down to lower levels and contributed to the Ancient Egyptian civilisation, the Indus valley was an area of opportunity, and that led to people, and a succession of empires competing for the rich resources of this region, with the British (see here, here, here, and here) and Russians (stopped, ultimately, on the northwestern border of Afghanistan) being the most recent before World War (part) Two.
The British had the appalling but sadly effective practice of using the old, Ancient Greek/Roman tactic of divide and rule (sometimes preceded by "divide and conquer"): notoriously, one of the bases for division used was religion. Now, as befits a region of such fertility, South Asia has a rich history of religion - including seeing the origin of several major religions and religious practices (see here, here, here, and here). For more on this mix, see here and here (the map is particularly useful), for instance. The British practice soon became problematic for them - as well as everyone else living under it. The ultimate expression of that manufactured level of religious hate was the tragic partition of India - opposed by Gandhi, which displaced 10 to 12 million and killed up to two million people, and was compounded by being done in a hurry.
One of the problem areas was the "princely state of Jammu and Kashmir", created from an area the British had taken from the Sikh Empire in 1846. That area saw massacres of Muslims which led Gandhi to comment:
"The Hindus and Sikhs of Jammu and those who had gone there from outside killed Muslims. The Maharaja of Kashmir is responsible for what is happening there…A large number of Muslims have been killed there and Muslim women have been dishonoured."Hindus and Sikhs were also massacred, with the death toll later being estimated at 70-100,000 Muslims and 20,000 Hindus and Sikhs. The violence, which included an attempted invasion supported by Pakistan, led to the region's leader, a monarchical (i.e., not elected - effectively largely appointed by the British) ruler, deciding to become part of India, which then led to the first (of four to date) India-Pakistan wars.
The war ended at a "Line of Control", with India keeping around half to two thirds of the disputed region, and Pakistan one third.
There was no vote or even consultation with the people of the region, and it is unlikely any attempt to do so could have been successful at the time (and a later floating of a possible plebiscite was sunk). A Wikipedia article includes the following:
"According to the Encyclopædia Britannica, "Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab (in Pakistan) could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, although basically Muslim in character, was thinly populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, situated in the Valley of Kashmir and estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, lay in Indian-administered territory, with its former outlets via the Jhelum valley route blocked." "I can't comment on that, but it does seem to me that this region is where a sectarianism that was, if not totally manufactured seriously magnified for purely political reasons (convenience and continuation of imperial rulership), has been concentrated into its most lethal expression. This region, one of outstanding beauty and a fertility that has been appreciated for tens of millennia, has been reduced for the last seven decades to a state of self-perpetuating conflict.
The fertility of this region has seen:
- in Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, a GDP of US$17 billion in 2018 - around 0.5% of India's total GDP (the region's HDI is 0.684, compared with India's 0.640 overall);
- on the Pakistani side of the border, the GDP of ~US$3 billion is ~1% of Pakistan's ~US$274 billion GDP (Pakistan's HDI is 0.562; I don't know what the HDI is in the region, but, whatever it was, it was devastated by by the 2005 earthquake).
And that's apart from the problem of "blood has been shed for that/this land" - the human desire to see past losses either rendered meaningful in some way, or acknowledged in a way that descendants and survivors consider "proper".
There are no easy or obvious solutions here - and India's decision to change the status of Kashmir (which has economic benefits for India) has certainly been inflammatory as far as Pakistan is concerned.
I have tried to think of other times and places of similar division, and the Troubles in northern Ireland and the UK is probably the closest I can get to. There, it was the work originated by Betty Williams and Mairead Maguire (unacknowledged on Wikipedia) that ultimately led to a peace process and a peace agreement (now potentially at risk because of Brexit). The viciousness and hate there also seemed intractable (and that history went back over centuries, longer than we're considering in Kashmir), but a solution was found by the people of the region - beginning with women.
That also brings to mind the ultimately successful "Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo" in Argentina, another movement that took decades to gain its aims.
There are women (and men) organising as peace activists in Kashmir: are we seeing the start of a solution?
If we are, we need to also see both sides acting to temper, not inflame sentiments. Pakistan showed the way earlier this year: it's now India's turn - over to you, Prime Minister Modi. Don't led this devolve to the brink again - you have your political support, you have time and opportunity to show leadership for the region. Please do.
