Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
engaged. India is faced with a conundrum. Its great power status in the new century will
be enhanced by its very political and military competition with China, even as it remains
pinned down by frontiers with weak and semi-dysfunctional states inside the subcontinent.
We have discussed Afghanistan and Pakistan, but there are Nepal and Bangladesh, too, to
momentarily consider.
Following the dismantling of its monarchy and the coming to power of former Maoist
insurgents, the Nepalese government barely controls the countryside where 85 percent of
its people live. Never having been colonized, Nepal did not inherit a strong bureaucratic
tradition from the British. Despite the aura bequeathed by the Himalayas, the bulk of Ne-
pal's population live in the dank and humid lowlands along the barely policed border with
India. I have traveled through this region: it is in many ways indistinguishable from the
Gangetic plain. If the Nepalese government cannot increase state capacity, the state itself
could gradually dissolve. Bangladesh, even more so than Nepal, has no geographical de-
fense to marshal as a state: it is the same ruler-flat, aquatic landscape of paddy fields and
scrub on both sides of the border with India; the border posts, as I have discovered, are
run-down, disorganized, ramshackle affairs. This artificially shaped blotch of territory—in
succession Bengal, East Bengal, East Pakistan, and Bangladesh—could metamorphose yet
again amid the gale forces of regional politics, Muslim religious extremism, and climate
change. Like Pakistan, the history of Bangladesh is one of military and civilian regimes,
few of which have functioned well enough. Millions of Bangladeshi refugees have already
crossed the border into India as illegals. And yet the Bangladeshi government struggles on,
improving its performance as of this writing. It could yet succeed as a hub of overland trade
and pipeline routes connecting India, China, and a future free and democratic Burma.
The subcontinent from early antiquity was politically divided, and that is what ails it
still. Now let us look at the extreme north, where the Karakoram meet the Himalayas. Here
is the territory of Kashmir, crammed in between Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, and China.
The northern areas of the Karakoram Range, with the town of Gilgit, are held by Pakistan
and claimed by India, as is the slice of Azad (“Free”) Kashmir to the west. The Ladakh
Range in the heart of Kashmir, with the towns of Srinagar and Jammu, are administered
by India and claimed by Pakistan, as is the Siachen Glacier to the north. To the far north
and northeast lie the Shaksam valley and Aksai Chin, administered by China and claimed
by India. Furthermore, the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (the Ladakh Range) has a
Muslim majority of 75 percent, a fact that has helped fuel jihadist rebellions for years. The
late Osama bin Laden in his pronouncements railed against Hindu India's domination of
Kashmir. And yet much of Kashmir is high-altitude, uninhabitable badlands. But wars have
been fought on these territories and over them, and may be fought still. The Chinese fought
India in 1962 because they wanted to build a road from Xinjiang to Tibet through eastern
Kashmir. India fought China to obstruct the common border between China and Pakistan.
