They're Rioting in Kashmir

Ask an American about Kashmir and they'll usually assume you are talking about Cashmere wool sweaters. The wool for which now mainly comes from Cashmere goats raised in China and Mongolia. But the rioting reported in recent days in the news is in an area governed by India, more formally known as Jammu and Kashmir.

Most recently, the rioting was triggered by the famed threat to burn Korans by America's most famous (for now) religious bigot, the Reverend Terry Jones. That is an easy idea for Americans to dismiss: Islamic religious zealots misbehaving because they heard the words of hate directed to them by a Christian zealot.

I doubt the rioting in Kashmir has much to do with Reverend Jones. It has much more to do with the basic problems of Kashmir that have changed very little since the British Empire was forced out of the Indian subcontinent in 1947. While I believe that the U.S. should mind its own business, which has not been going well of late, Kashmir is a matter that should be better understood by every American citizen because it is part of a pattern of injustice that ties in with Palestine, Afghanistan, Somalia and overall Moslem perception that they are not being treated with respect.

The nation of India is a modern creation from a portion of the British occupation of the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan (later dividing into Pakistan proper and Bangladesh) was the other portion, and the two new states were designed to have separate religious identities: Pakistan Islamic, India Hindu. In addition to a few modern-minded people who do not subscribe to religious myths, each of the two nations not only had a number of minority religious groups (India is still 13.4% Moslem), but encompassed a patchwork of ethnic groups as well. In particular Pakistan included many in the Pashtun ethnic group, which is also the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan. There are even 11 million Pashtuns in India.

Relations between India and Pakistan got off to a bad start when ethnic (really religious) cleansing resulted in large scale atrocities as millions of Hindus moved from Pakistan to India and Moslems moved from India to Pakistan in 1947.

Kashmir occupies a special place in this mosaic. The British had not conquered India all at once. Along the way they made a variety of deals with the various local rulers. When they left the subcontinent [See also Partition of India] the recognized principalities that had never been fully incorporated into the British Empire were given the option of joining India, joining Pakistan, or becoming independent, but those that did not join India voluntarily or under pressure were later occupied and incorporated by military force. By Independence Day only Kashmir, Hyderabad, and Junagadh were still independent.

Contrast what happened in Junagadh with what happened in Kashmir. "Junagadh was a small seaport state on the coast of Kathiwar with a Hindu population and a Muslim nawab. The Nawab opted for Pakistan but after a few weeks Indian troops occupied the state and a plebiscite declared for Indian union. Pakistan took no action ..." [Percival Spear, A History of India, Vol. 2
page 241] Hyderabad also had a Muslim ruler over a Hindu majority population; India's tanks rolled in to take control in 1948. [Take note, Ghandi-freaks].

"There remained Kashmir which was in a class by itself. It was a fringe state, adjacent to both the new states, and could reasonably have joined either. It was also a mixed or conglomerate state, a state as it were by accident, formed through the chances of recent political history. It had a Hindu ruler; to the east it had a Hindu majority centre at Jammu, in the Vale of Kashmir itself the population was overwhelmingly Muslim ... The Hindu ruler played for time and still had not acceded to either side in October when a Pathan irregular force ... raced towards the capital Srinagar. In a panic the ruler acceded to India." And so a Moslem majority, Hindu ruled state was formed. "Pakistan called for a plebiscite to which initially Nehru agreed in principle. But he was never able to accept any proposals for carrying it out. A brief war flared up ... settled by a United Nations truce in 1948." [Spear p. 241-242]

Americans who often think its no big deal to be friends with people of many ethnic backgrounds, religions, and levels of wealth, have trouble comprehending that in other nations tribal, ethnic, religious and even caste identifications can remain very strong. They often overrule otherwise good people's ability to think fairly about human relations. But we do know that powerful people seldom want to give up power, and so governments almost never voluntarily cede territory no matter how right and just it is.

My hope would be that oppressed people in Kashmir can see that, in demanding their civil rights, they should uphold the civil rights of every person. Americans need some further work in that regard too. I am glad we stopped Terry Jones from burning the Koran. I believe that criticizing religions is part of our cherished freedom of the press and free speech. But if Mr. Jones is so sure Christianity is superior to Islam, he might try his luck and befriending Moslems and explaining what he sees as the difference. The real winner is the person exposed to two or more religions and modern rational thought who then makes a choice based on free will, not social coercion.

Pakistan and Israel

This essay is not about international relations between Pakistan and Israel, though that would also be an interesting topic. This essay looks at the remarkable similarity of the creation of modern Israel and Pakistan and relates that to the two nations' very similar internal and external problems.

Israel was founded in 1947 when the newly-formed United Nations voted to partition Palestine into two states, one Jewish and one Palestian. Prior to that Palestine had been a British colony, or mandate if you like a prettier term for brutal foreign occupations.

Pakistan was founded in 1947, a few months before the founding of Israel. It had been agreed to partition the Indian subcontinent into two nations, one Islamic and the other Hindu (though the leaders of both nations tended to secularism). Prior to that the Indian subcontinent had been a part of the British empire.

Isreal was largely the product of migration. The city of Jerusalem had a substantial number of Jewish residents under the Ottoman Empire. Beginning in the 1800's Jewish migration to Palestine grew, then it speeded up greatly in the 1930's, angering Arabs and resulting in the British imposing strict quotas on Jewish immigration in 1939. After that illegal immigration of Jews to Palestine greatly increased. The creation of the state of Isreal was accompanied by the explusion of many (but not all) non-Jews from the Israeli territory and the rapid increase of its Jewish population through immigration. The key point is that the state of Israel was explicitly created as a homeland for a particular religious sect (or spectrum of sects, since within Judeism there are many rival sects). However, many of the Jews who immigrated were in fact secular, rather than practicing religious Jews.

Pakistan was also created as a homeland for people of a particular religious denomination, Islam. There had been a vigorous debate in India for over a century about what India would look like once the British left. Prior to the invasion by Britain much of Indian had been ruled by Muslims who had invaded centuries earlier. However, most Muslims were actually poorer than most Hindus because they had been converts from the lower castes of Hindu society. In most areas of India, Muslims were a minority. Muslim political leaders knew they would never be the leaders of a united India; they simply would not have the votes, nor the economic leverage. So they angled for a two-state solution. The nefarious British could have left India a united state, and then left the Indians to sort things out themselves. With lines drawn there was massive communal violence, plus many Moslems on the Hindu side of the lines moved to Pakistan and vice-versa. The nation of India ended up with a substantial Moslem minority. Pakistan had a very small Hindu minority as well as other minorities, notably Christian and Sikh.

Israel's problems were apparent immediately, as the new state was a tiny Jewish island in a sea of Islam. Because it was an artificially created state and its creation involved land theft, murder, and the violent expulsion of non-Jews, its mere existence seemed like a crime to Arabs. Others may (and should) sympathise with the Jews who survived the Holocaust, but the Palestinians did not run the Holocaust. The U.N.'s creation of Israel amounted to punishing Arabs for the crimes of Europeans. The Nazis originated in Bavaria, Germany; expelling the Bavarians and making Bavaria a Jewish state might have struck people as a fairer response.

Pakistan was much larger both geographically and in population than Israel, but its leaders probably also felt surrounded by enemies. Their main concerns were the Indians and the Chinese (who within a couple of years would be Communists). Even Persia, now called Iran, had a history of rivalry. In addition significant tribal groups found themselves half in Pakistan and half in Afghanistan.

If Israel has the problem of Palestinian refugees and control of Palestinian majority areas (the West Bank and Gaza), Pakistan has the problem of Kashmir, a Moslem-majority area that had a Hindu monarch and was grabbed by India, then fought over several times.

Both nations have atomic bombs. Both are United States allies, but don't want to be U.S. puppets, and so have a difficult balancing act to maintain.

Both nations have bizarre combinations of modern science and technology combined with substantial minorities of fanatical religious conservatives.

If you want to see what can go wrong if you don't have the constitutional separation of church from state, you have only to look at Israel and Pakistan.