Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
several Pakistani cities. In India the small, but influential Kashmiri Hindu
community was over-represented in the higher reaches of the Indian government,
not least in the presence of the Nehru family, a Kashmiri Pandit clan that had
migrated to Uttar Pradesh from the Valley.
Further, Kashmir acquired an unexpected military dimension. Not only has the
'line of control' (the former cease-fire line) become a strategic extension of the
international border to the south, China holds substantial territory (in Ladakh)
claimed by India. From 1984 onward advances in training and high altitude
warfare have turned the most inaccessible part of Kashmir—the Siachen Glacier
—into a battleground.
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The recent limited war in Kargil raised the stakes
considerably, as it was the first time that offensive airpower has been used
between Indian and Pakistani forces since 1971.
Kashmir was also tied to the Cold War. Washington and Moscow armed India
and Pakistan (often both at the same time), they supported one side or the other
in various international fora and the Soviets wielded the veto threat on behalf of
India in the UN Security Council. However, the superpowers reached an
understanding that they would not let the Kashmir conflict (or India-Pakistan
tensions) affect their core strategic relationship.
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Ironically, the process by
which the Cold War ended had an impact on Kashmir itself because the forces of
democracy and nationalism that destroyed the Soviet Union and freed Eastern
Europe were at work in Kashmir.
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Finally, Kashmir has been the scene of a of a national self-determination
movement among Kashmiri Muslims. Encouraged by neither India nor Pakistan,
this burst into view in late 1989 after a spell of particularly bad Indian
governance in the state. Angry and resentful at their treatment by New Delhi, and
not attracted to even a democratic Pakistan, younger Kashmiris looked to
Palestine, Afghanistan, Iran, the Middle East, and Eastern Europe for models,
and to émigrés in America, Britain, and Canada for support.
This emergence of a movement for self-rule by a younger generation of
Kashmiris was the result of decades of mismanagement, but more specifically
the manipulation of Kashmiri politics in the 1980s first by Indira Gandhi and
then by Rajiv Gandhi. It coincided with the slow and imperfect growth of
political mobilization of the valley Kashmiris.
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Kashmiris were mobilized too
late, too quickly and, imperfectly.
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'Kashmiriyat' (the refined amalgam of
Hindu-Muslim culture that characterizes the Valley and surrounding areas)
remains; it has been a rallying point for some separatists, but must now compete
with more virulent forms of militant Islamic doctrine, a form of Islam that had
been alien to the Kashmiri population before the 1980s.
Undoubtedly Pakistani support was provided—it was never hidden—and
Pakistanis speak proudly of their assistance to the Kashmiris and their right to
help the latter free themselves from an oppressive Indian state. However,
