Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
3
India, Pakistan and Kashmir
STEPHEN PHILIP COHEN
India has for several years been regarded as an emerging or rising state.
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After
decades of unfulfilled promise, it now seems to be inching ahead, with more
rapid economic growth, new attention from the major powers, and the
development of a modest nuclear arsenal. Adding these developments to India's
traditional strengths—a unique and persistent democracy and an influential
culture—it is no wonder that many have predicted the emergence of India as a
major Asian power, or even a world-class state. However, this remains a
problematic development as long as India's comprehensive and debilitating
rivalry with Pakistan continues, including that dimension of the rivalry that
encompasses the 50-year-old Kashmir dispute.
Further, the India-Pakistan conflict is now especially alarming because it has
implications for the international system itself. The region is the site and the
source of some of the world's major terrorist groups. Aside from Al-Qaeda, these
include a number of groups based in or tolerated by Pakistan, and India itself has
tolerated or encouraged various terrorist groups operating in nearby states, and
has its own internal terrorist problem quite apart from Kashmir. India and
Pakistan have fought three wars in Kashmir and their conflict now contains the
seeds of a nuclear holocaust. This essay attempts a deeper probe of the India-
Pakistan relationship, including the difficulties that India faces in managing, let
alone resolving, the Kashmir dispute.
A PAIRED-MINORITY CONFLICT
The origins of the India-Pakistan conflict have been traced to many sources: the
failure of the British to manage a peaceful and politically acceptable Partition;
the deeply rooted political rivalries between the subcontinent's major religious
communities—Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims; the struggle for control over
Kashmir; Kashmir's importance to the national identities of both states, and the
greed or personal shortsightedness of leaders on both sides of the border, in
particular, Nehru's romance with Kashmir and his Brahminical arrogance (the
Pakistani interpretation), or Mohammed Ali Jinnah's vanity, shortsightedness,
