Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
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Amen. We've done it again. We planned to record an episode on Kashmir, on Pakistan and India, and bang, right on cue, the Pakistani capital of Islamabad erupts into violent protest. Amen. What's going on?
What is going on is, you know, our dear friend, and I'm being sarcastic here, Imran Khan, the former, now the former prime minister of Pakistan, is not exactly happy about being out of power. Ah, so you've gone straight for the jugular right away. You've alienated half of our Pakistani listeners.
Look, for me, I can say that just like the Palestine-Israel episode, we're going to ruffle some feathers here. But you know what? We are here at Conflicted. We deal with facts and facts alone. Well, we try to deal with facts. Sometimes some Amon Dean opinion slips in there. Anyway, Amon, I got to admit right up front, I'm no expert on Kashmir. I mean, I'm hardly an expert on anything, but certainly not Kashmir. So I'm relying on you today. Let's get into it.
Right, Eamon, listeners have been requesting we do an episode on Kashmir, and here it is. Our first episode on that crisis, perhaps our first of many. Who knows? It's been a long-festering crisis. It has erupted several times into war, involving several major players, India and Pakistan, of course, but also China, Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and, of course, the U.S. and Britain as well.
Kashmir is a classic case study in the amorphous thing we've been calling the clash of civilizations, and not in the way that you perhaps think.
People think the problem there boils down to Islam versus Hinduism. Well, think again, I say. It's another example of Western modernity throwing a hand grenade into a pre-modern traditional world with the usual conflictual results. Or so I'll argue, at least. What's the situation there at the moment, Eamon? From what I understand...
The India-controlled part of the region is heavily militarized and the people there are increasingly discontent with the Indian government's heavy-handed policies.
Is that how you see it? Oh, yes. There is no question. Heavy militarization of any zone will result in discontented civilians. No question about it. I mean, and Kashmir in particular is the most heavily militarized zone in the world right now. The most heavily militarized zone in the world? Yes. I did not know that. So we're talking more than, you know, Palestine, for example? Oh, yeah. Because you have 600,000 Indian troops
in the Indian-administered Kashmiri zone. And then you have, on the other side, on the Pakistani side, you have between 250,000 to 300,000 troops in the Pakistani-administered Kashmir. So you end up almost with 300,000 on the Pakistani side, 600,000 on the Indian side. Almost a million troops are facing each other there in Kashmir. Oh my God. And of course, you know, both sides...
also nuclear powers. It's, you know, it's a recipe for a major disaster. Yeah, this is, you know, what worries me is that if you look at the size of Kashmir on either side, I mean, and put them all together and don't forget, by the way, Kashmir is not only claimed by India and Pakistan, China also claims
you know, taking a chunk of Kashmir in 1962 war between India and China. So you will end up with a situation where there are three major powers, all of them are nuclear, you know, fighting over Kashmir.
And it is most important to understand here that this conflict is one of the most unnecessary conflicts you could ever come across in this series. We'll get there, Ayman. We'll get there. You've got a lot to say about your views on the Kashmiri crisis and, in fact, its solution.
But before you go there, I want to talk more about the nuclear element. You briefly referred to Pakistan's nuclear program in the last episode, the one on Libya, because it was a Pakistani nuclear scientist who helped Gaddafi or was helping Gaddafi acquire a bomb for Libya before Gaddafi agreed to shut down his program of weapons of mass destruction.
Now, India obviously acquired its bomb before Pakistan in 1974. It carried out an operation. I think it has an almost hilariously inappropriate name, given what it was for. Do you know the name? Operation Smiling Buddha. Oh, yeah. I mean, for God's sake. I mean, Buddha was...
A pacifist. Exactly. So Operation Smiling Buddha in 1974 was India's first ever test of a nuclear weapon. And so India's neighbor, Pakistan, did not take this successful demonstration of nuclear capability lying down. And its own nuclear program, which had been launched two years earlier, was then kicked into high gear.
In the 90s, this came to a head when both powers became proper nuclear powers. And since then, well, Amen, you know, India, Pakistan, cultural cousins caught in a cold war all their own since 1947, since the partition of the Raj. When India tested that bomb in 74, was it a watershed moment in South Asian history? You know, Thomas, there is a joke in both India and Pakistan about what keep
both countries together, you know, because if you look at India, it's just a patchwork of many states with so many different languages, so many different cultures, so many different ethnicities. India is so fragmented, you know, culturally and geographically and politically and everything. So what keeps it together? So they say what keeps India together is English and cricket. English and cricket. However, what is keeping Pakistan together? Uh,
Tell me. Cricket and India. Yes. I see. So Pakistan is held together by a shared hatred of India and cricket. Indeed. And this demonstrates the fact that the entire British Raj, actually, even at the height of its power and the height of its hegemony, it was really still a patchwork between
of many decentralized provinces with princely states here and with many enclaves and exclaves. And it was really a jumble of so many things put together. Tell me about it, Eamon. I mean, I have been staring at maps of the Raj for the last two weeks in preparation for this episode, trying to wrap my head around some way of simplifying that polity. It's insane. If you look at a map
of all the different zones of British control, semi-British control, independent Maharajas, weird things called presidencies, weird things called agencies, not to mention, you know, like little outposts still of Portuguese and French control. It is insane. Don't forget, it's called the Indian subcontinent. It's massive. It's huge. It's massive. And hugely populated also. It's huge.
The conflict between India and Pakistan goes very, very deep. But on paper, at least, it's over an extremely mountainous piece of land in the far north of the Indian subcontinent where the Himalayas meet the Hindu Kush, Kashmir. And I say piece of land, but, you know, it's roughly the size of Great Britain. So Kashmir is not small at all. Yeah, it might be the size of Great Britain, but...
The reality here is that it is absolutely essential. It is geographically gifted with high mountains, and these high mountains are the source of many rivers in the Indian subcontinent. Especially the Indus River that flows down through the middle of Pakistan.
If you look at Tibet and China, it is the birthplace of the Yellow River, the Yangtze and the Mekong. So there are so many rivers that are essential for hundreds of millions of people coming out of that plateau. The same thing with Kashmir. Kashmir, actually, there are quite few rivers coming out of
It is the source of water for Pakistan, the Indus River system. And the Indus River system is what's run through Pakistan, especially through the Punjab and then later the Sindh, which is the lifeline for the fertile parts of Pakistan.
It's the breadbasket of Pakistan there. So for India, having some control over Kashmir actually will have a strategic edge, massive strategic edge against Pakistan. Pakistan understand this and they want to be free of India's strategic grip on its water sources.
I mean, Ayman, you've actually been to Kashmir, haven't you? I think you went... Did you go as a fully-fledged jihadist, or were you already a double agent working for MI6 inside al-Qaeda? At the time, I was a fully-fledged spy inside al-Qaeda for MI6. I mean, the reason for that is because
At the time, I used to have a cover story, you know, working as a merchant within Al-Qaeda, on behalf of Al-Qaeda, acquiring certain commodities from Kashmir in order to export, including the pink Himalayan salt, you know, and as well as the famous Kashmiri mountain honey. So, I mean, that was...
It was a wild adventure. So you were going into Kashmir regularly to pick up these goods that you then sold on to make money for al-Qaeda, all the while working for MI6. But what was the, let's say, what was the intelligence-gathering aspect of your visits to Kashmir? So my visits to places like Muzaffarabad and then from there into the Neelam Valley and the Kargil Hills and all of these places that you hear about in the news all the time,
First of all, the first impression you get there is what a beautiful place. I've seen photos and it's breathtaking. It's like beyond anything I've ever seen, really. It is Switzerland, but on steroids in terms of natural beauty. Yeah.
I mean. Isn't Switzerland on steroids Arnold Schwarzenegger? No, he's Austrian. No, he's Austrian. I mean, I know. He's Austrian. Okay, so. So you're saying Kashmir is the Schwarzenegger of the subcontinent. Indeed. You know, you look at, you go there and you find such amazing,
natural beauty littered with, you know, training camps and military outposts and you think, oh my God, what a, you know, what a pity. But you meet Kashmiris and you immediately, you know, notice the warmth, you know, the loveliness of the people and, you know, you listen to their grievances and
And I was surprised, actually, by the fact that they have very, very angry grievances against the Indians, but also at the same time, they have equally angry grievances against the Pakistani military. Sure. So back to your trips there, what sort of intelligence were you gathering? At the time, I was looking into groups like Lashkar-e-Tayyiba, Jaysh-e-Mohammad,
I was looking into their relationship with Al-Qaeda, the training camps of Al-Qaeda set up for them there in conjunction with the Pakistani military, the Pakistani ISI, and also at the same time understanding their financial and cultural and ideological relationship with Al-Qaeda and the Taliban and the relationship between all of these groups. That's absolutely fascinating. I mean, your knowledge of Kashmir is indeed remarkable.
very intimate, I mean, I hope I'm not talking out of turn here, but your wife is actually Kashmiri. - Indeed. - So you are the man to turn to about Kashmir. - But I can tell you that in order to understand Kashmir,
and the Kashmiri conflict right now. We have to really go back in history, not too far, but just at least like in the first half of the 20th century. - Well, you're right. I'm afraid we're going back further than that as we always do. I love a bit of Bronze Age, I love a bit of Iron Age. So let's have our typical excursus on ancient India in this case. However, first, geography. It's called the Indian subcontinent. It is huge.
It is heavily populated. It currently has the Indian subcontinent as a whole. So we're talking, you know, we're talking Pakistan, India and Bangladesh and Bhutan and Nepal, in fact.
1.7 billion people, basically. More than China. 22% of the world's population. And yes, more than China. Very important. And it's a single cultural geographical zone, even though it's split into different nation states at the moment. Geographically, the Indian subcontinent is basically a huge island.
that smashed into Southern Asia gazillions of years ago. And the force of the impact created the Himalayas. So this is why India from space looks a little bit like, well, I like to think of it, it's like the aftermath of a car crash, like a fender bender. The Himalayas are the crumpled hood.
A steep wall of mountains rising above the rest of the country below. You have dark imagination, I must say. You have dark imagination. I tell you why. Because when I see India, I see a slice of pizza, you know, basically. And basically the Himalayas is the crust. Okay. That's a much, much more pacifistic or much, much sweeter...
Sweeter or more savory, I should say, a more savory metaphor. So yes, like the crust of a slice of pizza, the Himalayas rise above the rest of India. And just below the Himalayas is a huge arc of extremely fertile land called the Indo-Gangetic Basin.
This is where the Indus and Ganges rivers fertilize an immense amount of arable land that has been for many millennia the source really of Indian civilization, literally, cities, empires, etc. And then beyond India,
The Indo-Gangetic Plain is the peninsular plateau all the way down to the south, and the plateau is ringed all around by coastal plains, a thin strip of green running around the edge of the country. And it's just enormous, the whole place, it's enormous.
Now, as I said, the Indo-Gangetic Plain is where the action has been for most of history. And of course, I'm not an expert at all. The history of the region and its religions is hotly contested, not only by scholars, but especially by Indians and Pakistanis themselves of every stripe, because religion has become so mixed up with national identity in South Asia. That's part of the story we're telling.
But historically, right? Stay with me here, Eamon. Basically, you have a people, they're called the Dravidians, right? They probably predate the other inhabitants of the subcontinent. They are now located mainly in its southern half and in Sri Lanka.
They speak their own languages, the Dravidian languages, the major one of which is Tamil. They were probably the people who founded the Indus River civilization, one of the early cradles of civilization, this one along the Indus River Valley in what is now Pakistan.
The Dravidian peoples have their own ancient religious practices. They are themselves very diverse, and to some extent they have been influenced by the religion of their conquerors, the Indo-Aryans. So the Indo-Aryans...
cousins of the ancient Iranians about whom we spoke, you know, I don't know, eons ago when we were talking about Iran. They were speakers of an Indo-European language which split into the many Indo-European languages and dialects of India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, Hindi, Punjabi, Kashmiri, Gujarati, Bengali, many, many, many more. When they arrived as invaders from the north during the Bronze Age, they came with a religion that was significantly different from that of the indigenous inhabitants.
A religion which was codified a bit later into texts known as the Vedas. And this religion is actually not so dissimilar from Zoroastrianism because they have similar roots in the Indo-Iranian areas of Central Asia.
This Vedic religion in turn developed into a highly ritualized priestly tradition which scholars call Brahmanism. And it was against this, against Brahmanism and its priestly stratification that Buddhism arose as a kind of reaction.
sometime around the turn of the 5th century BC. So that sort of lays a bit of the groundwork for what happened next. And the subcontinent is too ancient and too huge and too diverse to do justice to it. But politically speaking, over the centuries, various empires would wax and wane centered somewhere along the Indo-Gangetic plain, usually in its eastern half,
and penetrating southward, sometimes a long way, sometimes less, but most of the time the whole subcontinent was fragmented into warring principalities, if you can even call them that. And this is basically the case all the way until the 19th century when the whole of the subcontinent and even further into Burma or Myanmar was politically unified under the British.
However, I'm going to hand this over to you now, Eamon. Before we get to the British, tell us about Muslims and the subcontinent.
So when and how did Islam arrive there? It wasn't straightforward. It came in incremental waves. So the arrival of Islam, you know, to the Indian subcontinent started roughly about 90 years after the death of the Prophet Muhammad. You know, so in the 690s, you know, 700s, early 700s. Culminating, I think, in 711, if I'm not mistaken. 711, yeah. When, you know, there were the, you know, the campaigns of Muhammad ibn al-Qasim al-Thaqafi
going all the way to what today is modern-day Karachi and the surrounding areas. It was going towards the Sindh and, to some extent, into the Punjab. So, you know, these early incursions, you know, incorporated some of these provinces, especially Balochistan, you know, and the parts of the Sindh into the Umayyad region.
empire, it remained so. Then after the Abbasids came, they consolidated their control over these parts, especially around the Indus River. But that said, the Indus River formed a borderline between the Muslim conquest and the heartland of the Gangetic plain. That's right.
At that point, if I'm not mistaken, so the Muslims became well established in what is now that part of Pakistan. It remained inside the caliphate forever. Networks of ports from Arabia via Sindh grew up.
and grew up and dotted all around the subcontinent as trade, the Arabs performed trade activities around India. It's not easy to know exactly how influential this trading activity was in terms of spreading Islam, but it must have played some role. - So the network of ports that the Muslim traders and merchants established, it was actually extensive. It ran all the way from modern day Karachi, if we can call it, all the way through Goa,
West of India, going all the way to Tamil Nadu, and then also to Ceylon, which is known today as Sri Lanka, although the Arabs had a different name for Sri Lanka at that time. They used to call it Sarandeep. Ah, Sarandeep. That's a beautiful name.
And from there they expanded into the Maldives, they expanded their trade missions into Jakarta, Java, Sumatra, and all the way to Thailand. So the trade network was extensive. And through the trade network, Islam slowly and gradually was being introduced, at least being familiarized by the Hindu princes. And in fact, an entire Hindu kingdom
separate from India, though, converted to Islam in later years because of the merchant activities. That was, of course, Jakarta, the principality of Jakarta. Now, going back, this was the first wave, but militarily, there was no further expansion after the Abbasid dynasty was established. They focused more on Central Asia.
Yes. I mean, in fact, from Central Asia, well, from Greater Persia, let's call it, especially Afghanistan, Islamic rule politically began slowly, slowly to spread, you know, as Hindu kingdoms in the Punjab, in sort of north, northern Pakistan, north, you know, western India, the Punjab and Kashmir fell to Islamic conquerors.
But then eventually the whole Ganges Valley, all the way to Bengal. So basically, you know, the entire Indo-Gangetic plain crystallized under Islamic rule in the 13th century during the rise of what's called the Delhi Sultanate.
But indeed, it wasn't the Arabs really who subjugated India. It was actually the Mongols, known as the Mughals. They are the ones who, when they converted to Islam, made this detour through Afghanistan into the plains of India, and they conquered India this way.
That's right. So first you have the Delhi Sultanate, which conquered about 70% of the subcontinent. And then in 1526, as you say, the great conqueror Babur and his Persianate Turko-Mongol warriors from Kabul conquered about 95% of the whole subcontinent.
which was then incorporated into the Mughal Empire. And I think Mughal India is really the India of the average person's imagination. I mean, like the Taj Mahal, the Red Ford, and all those sorts of oriental dreams of what India is.
Indeed. And just to let you know that, you know, in many ways, while the Abbasids stopped, you know, the conquest of India at, you know, the Indus River, and that's it, they formed that political border with the rest of India. Just like Alexander the Great before them, actually. That's interesting. Alexander himself stopped at the Indus. Exactly. I think it's just because by then, you know, the Arabs had enough of elephants. I mean, basically, they fought the Persian elephants, you know, they fought the, you know,
Asian elephants. I didn't want to fight any Indian elephants anymore. That's it. We had enough of elephants. But, you know, the cultural exchange that happened during the Abbasid era between India and the Arab world was phenomenal. Yeah, immense.
Immense. I mean, first of all, mathematics and geometry and architecture and medicine. I mean, just the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, the greatest library the world has ever seen by then, was receiving so many delegations from India, bringing with them knowledge, bringing with them mathematics. It was amazing. Yeah, the House of Wisdom is most famous in the West for being the place where Greek
science and Greek literature was translated and housed. But even more so, I would say, works of Persian and especially Indian genius populated the House of Wisdom. And as you say, lots, and not just science, actually a lot of literature entered into Arabic and Persian via India at that time. Indeed, including numbers. I mean, funny enough,
The Arabs came with what we know now as the Arabic numerals, which is what we use today globally, including in the English language and many European languages. But
Now the Arabs, especially of the Gulf, they are using Indian numbers instead of the original Arabic numbers. So that in itself is incredible. So since we're talking about, we'll go on to talk about Hindu-Muslim relations in the subcontinent, we can briefly say that the Mughal conquests of India were somewhat checkered. There was a lot of destruction, as there often is during such conquests.
I think in phases at the beginning of the imperial expansion, the native polytheistic traditions considered to be idolatry by the Muslim conquerors were targeted somewhat in some places. But eventually, the Mughal Empire settled into a...
a pattern of fairly peaceful coexistence between a Muslim aristocracy ruling class, a Muslim, let's say, a growing Muslim merchant class, and a Hindu majority. There was basically peace between those communities. Is that fair to say, do you think? Yeah, because don't forget, many of the Mughal sultans then adopted what they call dini ilahi, which means the divine religion, which means
you know tried to incorporate some of the mysticism of You know Hindu religion into Islam and at the time even during that time there was you know the birth of the Sikh religion which was trying to incorporate aspects of Islam and Hinduism It was mostly peaceful coexistence, you know riots would happen between now and then because why it was
a peaceful coexistence imposed from the top down. - Well, we wanna move on 'cause we gotta get to the 20th century. So when we talk about the British, I'm gonna be brief. So basically, just in summary, the East India Company is founded in 1600. It sets up a number of trading forts around the coast of India, especially Calcutta in the east and Bombay in the west.
And over the next 250 years, the East India Company takes advantage really of the slowly crumbling Mughal Empire by conquering or annexing or otherwise incorporating, subjugating the whole subcontinent. So then in 1857…
There's a huge uprising called the Mutiny of disgruntled Indians, mainly Muslims, in fact, in the north. And this compelled the British government in London, which had largely allowed the East India Company to rule the place on its behalf. But after the mutiny, the British government in London took direct control of what then became known as London.
the Raj, British India, which was the unquestioned jewel in the British imperial crown. You know, remember, again, we're talking about modern Pakistan, India, and Bangladesh. Oh, and also Nepal and Bhutan and even Burma, you know, Myanmar for a large part of the history. So we're talking a huge, huge, huge region, heavily populated.
And during this whole period, first under the East India Company, and then during the 90 years of the Raj, modernity came to India. You mean bureaucracy? Well, no, bureaucracy. The Mughals had a very sophisticated bureaucracy, which they brought with them from the Persian tradition of bureaucracy. It's not bureaucracy, modern ideas. So I think what's most germane to the topic of the partition of India later and the Kashmir crisis is the modern idea of religion.
I mean, that might strike you as weird, but religion as a category is very modern and very Western. And it was the British who began to categorize Indians by religious affiliation, religious as the British themselves understood it. So the word Hindu, for example, was originally used to denote anyone who lived in Hind, in India.
which was defined as all the land east of the Indus River. But in the 17th and 18th centuries, its definition, the definition of Hindu shifted and began to denote the non-Muslim religious traditions of India, which were vast,
incredibly different, very diverse, often mutually contradictory, but the Europeans amalgamated this diversity conceptually into one thing, which they called Hinduism, which they labeled a religion and considered one of the great religions of the world.
But what is religion? Is there even such a thing? I mean, is religion, by which I mean something that can be bracketed off from the rest of the world, from the rest of the society, from politics, from social interaction, from trade, from criminal justice, something that can be bracketed off and seen apart from everything else?
Or is this thing, religion, really an inherently Western concept rooted in the particulars of European history? You know, in the wars of religion that followed the Protestant Reformation when Catholics and Protestants were fighting. And in order to create peace, they sort of said, look, religion is separate. It's private. Everyone can have their own religion or whatever, but it's a separate thing. I don't think that's the way that Muslims and who are now called Hindus traditionally understood it.
Yeah, and this is why, as I said, the Mughals adopted the new concept of Deen-e-Ilahi, the divine religion. Everyone can worship God the way they like, as long as they obey the Sultan. I think the arrival of the British...
and with their concept of religion as a category and an identity, may have contributed to the religious divide that will take place in later years in India.
I think it definitely did. Historically, the peoples of India had identified with more than just whatever spiritual tradition they followed. You know, linguistic, ethnic, regional, and dynastic markers. I mean, who your leader was. And the caste system also. Yes, those markers of identity were even stronger than religion. And yes, strongest of all, even among Indian Muslims to some extent, was class or caste. Yes.
Because that Brahmanic strand of Indian religion led to the creation of a very rigid caste system in India, which persists to this day. Even among Muslims, even among Pakistanis. I mean, still, if you ask someone, oh, where is your wife from? Oh, my wife is from the same caste as me. Caste?
You know, so, I mean, it was a foreign idea to me at the time. Like, I mean, what do you mean by caste? I mean, I thought caste, you know, just is something that is like, you know, the Hindus practice. They said, no, no, no. Even among Muslims in India and Pakistan, the caste system still exists. Well, we can't, you know, I want to talk about this more. I mean, I hope it's not going to bore you, dear listener. But, you know, Eamon, you say that the Mughals tried this thing called Deen-i-Lahi, the divine religion, as you translated it. But let's talk about that word Deen.
Dean, which is translated usually as religion into English, but I'm not sure that that's the right translation. I mean, I think etymologically, Dean is related to the word law.
or the word judgment, or the word, how do we talk? Din was a much more all-embracing concept than the way we think of as religion today. - Sometimes it could be a way of life. - A whole way of life, but also a way of governing society. It's inherent in the word.
The sultan's deen, the sultan's religion is also his way of governing society. It's very different from religion as we understand it now, a private affair based on conscience and metaphysical ideas that you give your intellectual assent to. It's more social. It's more political. Absolutely. There is no question. I mean, Islam's...
amalgamation of laws and rituals put together as well as transactions. So you have transactions, laws, and rituals. When you put them together,
and worship and spirituality, you put them together, that is actually what religion is. It's a way of life, a whole encompassing from the seat of power all the way to the private room where you pray. All of this is religion. - From the seat of power is the important thing. So basically the sultan could define for his realm what the din was. So the moguls defined it as including the din.
the practices that we call Hinduism. That's the thing. It wasn't seen as incompatible as we now have to understand it with Islam. The Sultan, a Muslim, he had a dean and that dean included his
his Hindu subjects. This transformation of the consciousness, let's say, of the inhabitants of the Indian subcontinent towards a more modern conception of religion to some extent came to a head beginning in 1871 when the Raj held its first of many censuses of all of the inhabitants of the Raj. It was the first of several and this helped to further ingrain religious identity among Indians.
And briefly, it would be interesting, I think, to discuss the impact this had on Bengal, because we think of the partition of India of 1947 as the big partition. But there was a sort of a preview of the major partition in 1905 when Bengal was partitioned between East and West.
between an eastern Muslim majority area and a western Hindu majority area. And this was the result of these censuses, which had revealed that there were more Muslims in Bengal than was thought. And the Raj, they said in order to administer Bengal better, although Bengalis themselves accused the Raj of adopting divide and conquer policies, partitioned Bengal, a huge area, into these two sides, which
which resulted in chaos. You see, the partition of the Bengal and the idea that separate elections will be held for each community was the brainchild of idiotic British civil servants. And because the idea is, oh yeah, divide and conquer, divide and rule, that's the best way to do it. But
In reality, the 1905 partition, and then after that, by 1911, there were these separate elections. All of this means that the British unwittingly planted the idea that, first,
Hindus and Muslims cannot get along together in a united India. And second, you know, that if they can get along, then in the future maybe, maybe, you know, each side can go separately. Yes, in 1911, the partition of Bengal was actually undone and Bengal was reunited because the British had seen the chaos that partition there had caused.
So ironically, from that point onwards, the British themselves never favored partition as a solution to internecine or whatever intercommunal political problems. We saw a few episodes ago that in the case of Palestine, for example, the British abstained
from the UN vote to create the partition there. They didn't believe that partition would work. They were proved right to some extent. And as we'll see, you know, in the run-up to the partition of India in 1947, the British also tried to avoid this. In the end, they couldn't, but they didn't want partition as policy, I think because they'd been burned by the partition of Bengal. - But you see, the problem here is that they might not have wanted partition,
But their entire set of policies they implemented in India and in the Raj led eventually to the partition because they were really favoring one party against another within the alliance that was trying to gain Indian independence.
And of course, we'll be talking about personalities soon, but we are talking here about Gandhi, Jinnah, Nehru, Sardar Patel and everyone. I mean, they were imprisoning one group while allowing the other to campaign and to have more political freedom. And by that, I mean Mohammed Jinnah.
Reporting live from under my blanket, I'm Susan Curtis with Duncan at Home. Breaking news, pumpkin spice iced and hot coffees are back. I'll pass it to Mr. Curtis with his blanket for the full story. That is so right, Susan. You know, it's never too early to get in a spicy mood. I'm talking cinnamony goodness that's so tasty, people don't want to leave their blankets either. Back to you. No, back to you. All you.
The home with Dunkin' Pumpkin Spice is where you want to be. So the idea that Muslims and Hindus in India would eventually need their own state, it began to rise in India in the late 19th century, early 20th century. But resistance to that idea also was on the rise. Its proponents
presented something called composite nationalism. For example, Gandhi, the most famous Indian freedom fighter, independence supporter, he said, "Hindus and Muslims were sons of the same soil in India."
They were brothers who therefore must strive to keep India free and united. So this idea that India was one, that Indians, regardless of their ethnicity, regardless of their religion, are one, is what informed the development of something called the Indian National Congress. I mean, a massive player, political player to this day in India. And I wish we could go into the
the whole story and the details because the story of India and its struggle to get independence and everything that followed is amazing, but it would take a gazillion hours to tell it properly. So the Indian National Congress was the most well-organized and most powerful proponent of independence from Britain, and for that very reason, it annoyed the British authorities. So yes, as you say,
Amen, eventually the Raj worked closer with a group that had arisen in opposition to the Indian National Congress, the All India Muslim League, which invariably brings us to a very big personality in this story, Muhammad Ali Jinnah.
If we talk about Muhammad Ali Jinnah, if you ask the Indians, how do they view him? They view him entirely negatively. If you ask the Pakistanis, how do they view him? They view him entirely positively. And if I ask myself, as someone who's an avid reader of history, how do I view him?
I really believe that his role was not entirely positive in the story of the Indian subcontinent. Well, let's tell the listener first, you know, who this guy is. I mean, he was born in 1876 near Karachi to a wealthy merchant family. And funnily enough, an Ismaili family.
That's quite interesting, isn't it? Indeed. I mean, this is one of the things I always find it puzzling. Whenever I talk to my friends from Pakistan, I ask the question, I ask, you know, what is Qa'a al-Dazm to you? Qa'a al-Dazm means the great leader. And that is the title they give to Muhammad al-Jannah. And they say, you know, he is the founding father of Pakistan. He is this, he is that. And most of the people I talk to are either, you know, Braille Vs, you know, Sunni Braille Vs or Sunni Diobandi from Pakistan. And I say, yeah, but you know, he was a smiley.
What? Yeah, he was a Smiley. I mean, the fact that he was a Smiley and as such considered heretic, you know, by all of these religious schools,
tells me a lot about the Pakistani education system, that they really gloss over his first highly aristocratic roots and the fact that he was a follower of the Aga Khan and he wasn't a smiley. Plus, I imagine they gloss over just how westernized he became.
He went to London to study law. During his studies there, he was inspired mainly by the great thinkers of England's liberal tradition, like John Stuart Mill and others. And, you know, he only wore suits from Savile Row. The language that he spoke most fluently was English. So he was very westernized before returning to India, where he set up practice as a lawyer. The reality is, Thomas, I don't believe...
I mean, Muhammad Jinnah was motivated by religion, to be honest, because for him, the majority of India's Muslims are Sunnis. And, you know, he is a smiley. He is like, I mean, completely separate from them in terms of religion. I mean, basically, like, you know, he's a fringe sect.
That's the first thing. The second thing is that he was mainly secular, liberal, and aristocratic, and really was in pursuit of material gain. And therefore, what was his motivation about really creating that separate identities for Muslims in the Indian subcontinent? In my honest opinion...
I would say he was really after one thing and one thing only. He was after power. He did not want to be
the second man in a united India, he wanted to be the first man in a smaller country for India's Muslims. Well, I think that one of the indications that it was political ambition that largely motivated him was the fact that in the teens, you know, in 1916, around that point, he was a member of the Indian National Congress while also being a member of the
the All India Muslim League, this other organization which opposed the political platform of the India Congress. So he was clearly trying to straddle both sides. In the end, he threw his weight entirely behind the Muslim League and he became its great leader in time. Now the Muslim League, quite straightforward, founded in 1906. It wanted a state for Muslims only and it worked assiduously towards that end.
We got to jump forward now to World War II. So by World War II, the Raj had introduced some democratic reforms. There had been elections and members of Indian political parties were participating in governing the country. The Indian National Congress was by far the biggest of these political parties, but other parties were there as well. Now in World War II, when the UK declared war on Germany, India's viceroy there followed suit. So India declared war on Germany.
The leaders of the Indian National Congress, like Gandhi, like Nehru, about whom we'll speak a little bit more down the line, they all resigned from the government. They opposed the Nazis, but they refused to join Britain's fight against the Nazis before being granted independence because independence from Britain was the Indian National Congress's primary aim.
Now, Jinnah and the Muslim League were delighted by this resignation. And during the war, as Congress leaders were held under arrest, Muslim League members drew closer to British authorities who were considered by the British. I mean, the British considered the Muslim League to be more loyal than the Indian National Congress.
So then when in 1940 in Lahore the Muslim League held a conference where they adopted a resolution calling for an independent Muslim state following independence,
The British found themselves in a tricky situation. They didn't want partition. They wanted an independent India to remain whole, remain one. But they had really got very close to the Muslim League and its leaders, especially Jinnah. Jinnah enthusiastically endorsed the idea of an independent Muslim state, Jinnah.
of course, which he hoped to lead. And because the Muslim League, unlike the Congress, was free to spread its message during the war, during the war, more and more Indian Muslims signed up to its ideology and began to desire an independent state. So it became clear that, you know, as World War II was coming to an end, that India was going to be partitioned, despite the best efforts by Gandhi and
despite the best efforts by Nero, it became clear that the distrust between the two communities has reached levels where it's no longer reconcilable. This was certainly clear following the provincial elections that were held in 1946. At the end of the war, provincial elections were held and it was understood that the outcome of those elections would help guide the policy of independence, whether to pursue partition or not.
90% of all non-Muslims in India voted for the Congress and 87% of the Muslims who voted
voted for the League. It seemed to be quite clear, though it's important to note of all Indian Muslims, only 16% were eligible to vote, most of them upper-class Muslims. So you get a sense then that wealthy, upper-class, elite Muslims felt that an independent state would serve their interests. It's not clear to me from the reading I've done that most Indian Muslims wanted a separate state.
Indeed, in fact, even Deoband, the school that was founded in order to preserve Muslim identity during the British Raj in 1866, was opposed to partition. After the election results came in,
And in general, there was an increase in inter-communal violence, there were various riots. The situation became very, very tense in India, desperate to leave, desperate to sort out a rapidly deteriorating situation. The Raj, its viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, announced that on the 15th of August, 1947,
India, as it was then known, would be independent and would be partitioned. And that partition was so messed up.
I mean, seriously, because why? They created this new entity called Pakistan, which was, you know, of course, what we know today as modern Pakistan around the Indus River. But what many listeners might not know is that there was another part of Pakistan to the completely other side of the country in the east, and that was called East Pakistan. That is what we know today as Bangladesh. Bangladesh was
from 1947 until 1971, called East Pakistan. And Pakistan today, as we know, it was known as West Pakistan because Muslims were the majority in two sides of the country. And as a result, the partition was just looked so convoluted. It not only looked convoluted, it resulted in just some phenomenally horrible events.
I mean, 14 million people were displaced as a result of partition as various groups decided that they had to or wanted to move to either state to be amongst their co-religionists. Well over a million people died in riots and sort of pogroms and ethnic cleansing. There was a lot of rape of women. It was really, really, really tragic. Absolutely.
In the middle of all this chaos, there was Kashmir. Kashmir at the time was a separate principality ruled by a Hindu prince called Hari Singh. And he ruled an entity that was two-thirds Muslim and one-third Hindu and Sikhs and Buddhists. He was the Maharaja of Kashmir. And Kashmir at the time was invited, just like other princely states, to either join Pakistan or India.
Yes, that was one of the arrangements that the Raj had said to those independent Maharajas. They said, look, you can choose to be a part of this new India. You can choose to be a part of new Pakistan as you like. You just have to sign a letter of accession, as it was called, and inform New Delhi which country you want to join. But Maharaja Hari Singh of the princely state of what was called Jammu and Kashmir at the time, which was a huge, you know, this is this big area in the north of India. He prevaricated. He didn't
know which way he wanted to go. Indeed, and
There was a problem. He faced a problem that he was the Maharaja, but most of the arms were with the Muslims because at the time, by the end of the World War II, most of the British Indian army conscripts were Muslims because of the Indian National Congress, who are mostly Hindus, boycotted the World War II, as you said. So he was in a pickle here. So what he did is that he confiscated arms from
the Muslim soldiers in Kashmir, gave them to Hindus and Sikhs. That created mistrust, that created communal violence. You know, 20,000 Muslims were massacred. They got angry. They massacred in return 20,000 Sikhs and Hindus. And the situation was chaotic. And so the Maharaja, what did he do? He just left to New Delhi. And instead of the promise to remain neutral,
And to leave it to a vote, he actually just went to Nehru and said, you know, I lost control of the situation. I need, you know, troops to come and restore peace in Jammu Kashmir. I want to stop you there, Ayman. We haven't told the listener, Ayman, who Jawaharlal Nehru is. So let's discuss this, man. I mean, an absolute...
Titan, an icon of modern India. The Secretary of State Dean Acheson, the American Secretary of State, said of him, Nehru was so important to India and India's survival so important to all of us that if he did not exist, as Voltaire said of God, he would have had to be invented. Nehru is a 20th century legend.
So who was he? Well, he was from Kashmir to begin with. How incredibly convenient for us. He was a Kashmiri.
Yeah, from the Pandit Kashmiris. You know, we're talking about the Hindu Kashmiris, they're called the Pandits. And so, you know, he came from the Pandit community of Kashmir and he was, you know, from a well-to-do family. He went, you know, to England to study law. You know, he and his father were some of the leaders of the National Indian Congress.
And in later years, he was extremely influenced by Gandhi and by Gandhi's appeal for India to find its soul and to return back to its traditions and to reject
aspects of British modernity in favor of the spiritualism that characterized India's Hindus in the past. Though Gandhi himself studied law in England. All of these guys studied law in England. And you could argue that though he portrayed himself, Gandhi that is, portrayed himself as a traditional Indian. In fact, there was something very, very modern about his movement towards independence, his democratic ideals, his nonviolence. All of this is quite
quite modern, though on the more radical left-wing kind of spiritual side of modernity. Absolutely. So Nehru is the product of being highly educated,
But at the same time, he adopted the down to earth attitude that Gandhi wanted to adopt. And, you know, and he became more or less, you know, the undisputed leader of the National Indian Congress. And then later, of course, became the first prime minister of India upon independence. But of course,
He and Gandhi were pretty much heartbroken over the partition. All of them opposed the partition. Yeah, so back to Kashmir. So Maharaja Hari Singh prevaricated about whether to join Pakistan or join India. I think, you know, you're a little bit nicer to old Hari Singh. I think what he really hoped was to retain his independence and hoped somehow for an independent Kashmir. So when we left Hari Singh, he'd gone to New Delhi.
Yeah, he went to Nehru straight away and he said, "I need Indian troops to come and restore peace." So, Nehru looking at him and said, "I'm not going to help you because you're not part of India yet. You know, how about you become part of India and I will send the troops to pacify the situation?"
And that is when, you know, Nehru accepted Kashmir's ascension into India and he sent in the troops. Jammu and Kashmir, you know, was the last Indian principality to decide whether to join Pakistan or India. But, you know, we have a situation here. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir
while Jammu and Kashmir was two-thirds Muslims. However, the Maharaja, Hari Singh, was in fact Hindu. And he was afraid that, of course, he wanted to retain his status, he wanted to retain his power and influence, but he knew that if he was to abide by the agreement that he pledged to Lord Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy in India, as well as to Nehru, that there will be a referendum, a plebiscite,
then, you know, it's going to be inevitable that the population of Kashmir will choose to join Pakistan.
So he started really clumsily, you know, putting together some measures which actually led to aggravating the situation. First, he started confiscating the arms of the British Indian Muslim soldiers in Kashmir, you know, the Kashmiri ones who joined the World War II and returned back. So they had their weapons confiscated. They were thinking,
"Oh, he is giving the weapons to the Hindus and to the Sikhs, so therefore we have to do something." So during this trouble and the communal riots, between 20,000 and 30,000 Muslims were massacred. The Muslims retaliated against the Hindus and the Sikhs in the province, and 20,000 Sikhs and Hindus were massacred.
And to make it even worse is that the new government in Pakistan thought that they have to preempt what they believe to be Harry Singh's intention not to honor the agreement and not to hold a referendum, so they invaded. And they used Pashtun tribal men to launch the invasion into Jammu and Kashmir.
which had really the opposite of the desired results. So they invaded. And that invasion actually led to the Pashtun tribes committing atrocities against Muslims in Jammu and Kashmir. Yeah, this is the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-1948, which remarkably mirrors in many respects
the war of Israeli independence one year later. I mean, especially in the sense that that war never ended. Neither war has really ever ended. And just as Israel is sort of still partitioned between the Palestinian territories and Israel proper, so is Kashmir still partitioned
along what was called the Line of Control, which the UN established to try to at least create an armistice between the two sides. Because after Pakistan invaded, India invaded and managed to fight back the Pakistani troops. But anyway, in the end, the UN got involved and put a stop to it
right there along the line of control. Indeed. And into this new story, like, you know, we see the fading of a character, which is Hari Singh, because Hari Singh ran straight away to New Delhi, you know, after the invasion of the Pashtun tribes from Pakistan and asked, you know, the prime minister of India at the time, Jawaharlal Nehru, for assistance.
Nehru said, I would love to assist you, but you know what? This is the letter of Jamo and Kashmir accession to India. Sign it. Because I can't send troops to restore order without Kashmir being part of India. So he signed it. And he signed Jamo and Kashmir into India. So Jawaharlal Nehru sent the troops to fight the tribal people and to send them away. But here is the issue. There is one character
that needs to be introduced into the story, which is essential, which is the character of Sheikh Abdullah. Sheikh Abdullah. Who is Sheikh Abdullah? Sheikh Abdullah is a Kashmiri leader, political leader, political activist, and someone who always wanted, you know, a Muslim power in Kashmir, that Kashmir should be an independent state generally, but nonetheless,
between him answering to Jannah or answering to Nehru, he found Nehru to be more amenable than Jannah. And this is the crucial moment, the crucial moment when there was a meeting between Sheikh Abdullah in 1948, between Sheikh Abdullah, Sardar Patel, the deputy prime minister, and Nehru, the prime minister.
Nehru looked at Sheikh Abdullah, who is now galvanizing a Kashmiri Muslim resistance against the Pakistani invasion. Because without the Muslims, at least some segment of the Muslims of Kashmir siding with India, India will have trouble pacifying Kashmir. So he told Sheikh Abdullah, he told him, if you want to go with Pakistan, now is your time.
So make up your mind. You want to go with Pakistan or stay with India? Sheikh Abdullah, who would later become the first governor or Muslim governor of Kashmir on behalf of Delhi, said, I want to stay with India. And that's what sealed Kashmir's fate.
Many people basically don't understand that Kashmir had a shot at being part of Pakistan because Nehru reluctantly asked him, he said, "Do you want to go with Pakistan or stay with us?" He said, "No, I'm going to stay with India."
And Sheikh Abdullah then went to the UN Security Council and condemned the Pakistani invasion. And he said that those Pashtuni tribes that invaded raped our girls, kidnapped our women, killed many of ours, and looted the country. And actually, we as Kashmiri Muslims, we were the victims equally, not only of Hindu nationalists, but also Pashtun tribes invading from Pakistan.
And I think this is where the reality is that the conflict was prolonged and prolonged because of what Sheikh Abdullah decided at the time. If he decided, that's okay. Join Pakistan, maybe this conflict would have been over, but no. The reality is that he decided to stick with India. Well, in the end, tragically, Kashmir was divided. I want to zoom out.
and incorporate the Cold War perspective on Kashmir because Kashmir and the conflict there played a role, an important role in the Cold War, a role that, as we will see in a second, ties in very neatly with all the other things we've been discussing in this season of Conflicted.
So, you know, as most people know, in the Cold War, India was neutral. As we saw with Nasser's neutrality, in general, the U.S. opposed neutrality in the Cold War. It had a you're either with us or against us mentality. But in the case of India, the U.S. was forced to adopt a more conciliatory approach. I mean, India was a huge democracy and America hoped that it would be a counterweight to rising communist China. Right.
For that reason, the U.S. did not want to get involved in the Kashmir conflict. President Eisenhower's position was that the dispute should be settled using peaceful means only, and after demilitarization of the region, a plebiscite of Kashmiri residents should take place to determine the fate of Kashmir.
Well, by this point, Nehru categorically rejected both. He wasn't interested in demilitarizing the region, and he certainly wasn't interested in a plebiscite, fearing that it would mean all of Kashmir was added to Pakistan. So Nehru rejected Eisenhower's solution.
Eisenhower was of course focused on the Soviet threat. He realized that India wanted Pakistan to be weak. It would rather have a weak Pakistan, too weak to press its claims in Kashmir, than a Pakistan strong enough to resist Soviet pressure.
So Eisenhower decided that America had no choice but to strengthen Pakistan. And so when he was putting the pieces together for that military alliance that would become the Baghdad Pact, he included Pakistan in it. The Baghdad Pact. You remember, dear listener, all about the Baghdad Pact, how Nasser was opposed to it and how it led to all manner of shenanigans in the Middle East. Well, Pakistan was in that pact, so it had ramifications for the subcontinent as well.
Obviously, the Prime Minister of India, Nehru, strongly objected to Pakistan being in the Baghdad Pact. He claimed that the U.S. was taking sides in the Kashmir dispute and used it to whip up a lot of resentment against America among Indians. You know, Nehru's position was clear. He said, quote, I do not like either communism or colonialism. Communism is only a threat. Colonialism is a fact.
Nehru's position here was precisely the same as Nasser's. Remember, Nasser also didn't like communism, but he felt that British colonialism was the real threat. And then he saw that America was just behaving like the British colonialists from before. Nehru felt the same. And so this is the final piece in the puzzle that we've been putting together on and off for most of this series. Pissed off at America for America's close military support for Pakistan.
Nehru reached out to other leaders equally unwilling to fall in line behind America's Cold War objectives, equally concerned at the way American policy so closely mirrored the policy of the British Empire before it. And of course, one of those leaders was Nasser.
Nehru formally inaugurated what was called the Non-Aligned Movement, i.e. powers that didn't want to be aligned with either the Soviet Union or the United States in the Cold War. Nehru inaugurated this movement by convening the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in April 1955. Nasser was there. He was the primary representative of the Arab countries there.
The US had intensely petitioned Nasser not to attend the conference, but Nehru's seduction was more powerful. Nasser was there as the primary representative of the Arab countries. And thus in solidarity with all these anti-American leaders, Nasser returned to Cairo and became
the man that we have seen him become. The man who nationalized the Suez Canal, the man who resisted the invasion during the Suez Crisis, the man who led the Arabs to, well, overwhelming defeat in 1967. So we can say, Ayman, if it weren't for the Kashmir Crisis and the formation of the non-aligned movement on the back of it, maybe modern Middle Eastern history would be completely different. - Maybe, but you know, what is ironic for me is that
Nehru, just like Nasser, went down the path of non-alignment, but that non-alignment meant weapons and military assistance from who? The Soviets. Exactly. So while Pakistani military was armed by the Americans, the Indian military actually was armed by who? By the Soviets.
So we've laid the foundations for an understanding of the Kashmir crisis, which goes on. I mean, and it really does go on. As you said, Eamon, it's the most heavily militarized place in the world. It erupted into war in 1962, again, with China, which took a chunk of
of Kashmir, war with Pakistan again in 1963, and on and on and on. I mean, in the 80s, this infamous jihadist group, Lakshara Taiba, was founded by the Pakistani military, I think. Yes, the Pakistani military and the ISI formed this group, Lakshara Taiba, and in 1986, I think, and it started, like, you know, from the mountains of Afghanistan as the jihadist
movement against the Soviet Union. And then after that, of course, the Pakistanis established even more groups such as Hezbollah Mujahideen and Jaysh-e-Mohammed. So all of these militant groups were founded by the ISI and by the Pakistani military to infiltrate into Kashmir and to create an insurgency inside Kashmir against the Indian military presence there. The reality is that
It's a tragedy. It is a tragedy because the entire Indian subcontinent is held hostage to this never-ending crisis and never-ending conflict. You mentioned to me, Ayman, your idea of the Palestinianization of Kashmir in the way that Kashmir is used by leaders in both Islamabad
and New Delhi to create national solidarity, to strengthen their own political positions. I mean, certainly, you know, India is by no means a good guy in this context. The Indian military has been very brutal in its part of Kashmir. And in recent decades, Indian politics have become more and more associated with Hindu nationalism. And the Kashmiri crisis is part of that. Whenever I talk to people, I just realize that
On both sides of the border, there are three major players on both sides of the borders who don't want a solution to Kashmir. On the Indian side, you have the Hindutva, you know, the Indian Hindu nationalists,
They don't want a solution to Kashmir because it is a cause that keeps giving them followers and money and influence because you whip up the national Hindu feelings with the crisis in Kashmir. Kashmir has become a national pride issue.
Then you have RAU, the Indian intelligence. They love the idea of the fact that there is an enemy to be engaged with, which is Pakistan and its ISI. So, you know, and this crisis keeps going on and on, and it gives importance and budget and extra influence for RAU. And then you have the Indian military, because if there is an enemy,
in Pakistan and its ally, China, then there is a greater importance to the Indian military, more budget, more recruit, more power, more influence. So these are the three major players on the Indian side of the border. On the Pakistani side of the border,
Even greater forces there don't want to have peace with India over Kashmir. First, you have the Pakistani military. As long as there is an enemy, the Pakistani military will be so powerful. In fact, the Pakistani military in Pakistan is far, far more powerful than the Indian military in India.
They control 40% of the economy and they control politics. They can depose any prime minister, elected prime minister at any time. Just look at what happened to Imran Khan now, before that Nawaz Sharif, and before that Bin Azir voted twice. And it's always like this. The Pakistani military decides who actually among the civilian government rule the country.
So why would they give up, give all this up, you know, for a sake of peace? Then you have the ISI, the Inter-Services Intelligence. So this agency, the ISI, the Pakistani intelligence, they get their budget and they get their influence and they get their power because of what's happening in Kashmir and across the border.
and the enmity with India, then you have the most important element here. The Islamist groups all across Pakistan, whether they are the Jama'at Islamiyya or whether they are Tariq-e-Labbaik-e-Muhammad or whether they are Lashkar-e-Tayyiba or Jaysh-e-Muhammad or Hezbollah Mujahideen, all of these people, they don't want peace with India because
You know, it is the Indian, or the enmity to India is what keeps all these groups together. They can raise funds, they can have recruits, they can radicalize the population. Why would they give all this up? So you end up in a situation where Kashmir, poor Kashmiris, I mean, they are really caught in the middle between all of these powerful forces.
Don't forget China. I mean, there's another big player in Kashmir. China is a close ally now of Pakistan. China has immense interests in Afghanistan and in the new economic corridor all the way down to the Arabian Sea through Pakistan. You know, China, I guess it also it's pretty happy with the status quo. It would like its rival India to be wrong footed in this way. Indeed.
I mean, I always discussed with my both Indian and Pakistani friends, and I'm married to a Pakistani, like, I mean, from Kashmir. So, you know, so we always have these discussions and debates and they are so animated and I love it. But I always say, yeah, look, listen to me. I know, like, you know what I'm going to say you won't like, but, you know, just take a seat back, you know, take a deep breath,
Relax a little bit, you know, free yourself from the shackles of, you know, emotional nationalism, and let's talk, you know, rationally here. First of all, before I say what my solution is, I have always stated that I'm very much opposed to what happened during the partition. The partition was a mistake. Historical, strategic, in every level, was a mistake. I would rather that India as a whole, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and India today, were a one united country.
because the idea that the Muslims feared oppression by the Hindus, well, if the Muslims remain, they will be at least between 35 to 40% of the population. They will be a very big minority that they can withstand anything that the Hindus can throw at them. And the Hindus will be slightly enough majority that they can have dignity and
They will not feel that they are overruled by a Muslim aristocratic class. So we come back to the fact that the partition was a mistake. But now we are living in the now. And so how do we solve the crisis in Kashmir?
I always said that there is only one power in the world that have both leverage over India and Pakistan, that they can bring the two parties together and pressure them into a solution. And that power is the GCC. The Gulf Cooperation Council, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, all of your friends over there on the Arabian Gulf. Indeed, because both India and Pakistan, they receive the majority of their energy from there.
And the majority of India's and Pakistan's labor workforce who send in billions upon billions of remittances every month come from the GCC. So the GCC is an important lifeline, economic lifeline to both India and Pakistan. If the six countries of the GCC were to come together and to say, well, you know what, it's time to resolve this issue. We don't want a nuclear war on our doorstep.
So, what we want to do is that for both sides of Kashmir, the one-third that Pakistan controls and the one-half that India controls, for these two Kashmirs, both of them become an autonomous region, and the Pakistani side will become an autonomous region of Pakistan, the Indian side will become the autonomous region of India, and both of them become totally demilitarized.
And the next phase after that will be massive investment in the tune of tens of billions of dollars by these countries into the tourism and food sector in Kashmir. I mean, tourism alone would get so much investment. As you say, Kashmir is beautiful. Kashmir is a heaven on earth. It is the, you know, let's put it this way, like the more attractive sister of Switzerland. Right.
And, you know, and this is why, you know, for the Arabs of the Gulf, you know, just if you offer them this all year round tourism, whether it is skiing holidays in the winter or, you know, beautiful summer weather, you know, chalets and, you know, villas. I mean, you're talking about tens of billions of dollars of investments that actually will create millions of jobs on both sides of the border. And you open the border.
Not only across the two parts of Kashmir, which is now demilitarized, you open the entire bloody border from Kashmir all the way to the Indian Ocean. You open the entire border between the two because if you unlock the trade, if you unlock the commercial cooperation between Pakistan and India, what that would do to the 1.6 billion people who live there in the sub-Indian continent, it will transform their lives.
It's a beautiful dream, Eamon, but as you said, there are too many powerful players with interests opposed to that dream. I don't see it happening anytime soon. As for me, unlike you, I don't really live in the now. And I come away from this exploration of Kashmir and the history of partition just wondering, why the hell did the modern Western-style nation-state have to develop there in the way it did? Why did we have to...
create national identities, homogenous national identities, increasingly based upon some fictional idea of religious partisanship? Why did we have to do that at all? India
India is so old. India had its own forms of governance, its own traditions, very hierarchical, absolutely. Not at all in the way that we understand governance in the West. But why did it have to happen? That's all I'm left with, a tragedy, yet another tragedy of the modern state causing problems. Yeah. But you know what? I'm still optimistic that
as Indians and Pakistanis become more entrepreneurial and more enterprising, that they will see that the Kashmir issue could be resolved
But it needs a powerful third party with leverage over both sides coming in and saying, you know what? Let's grow up. Let's have peace. Ameen. Ameen. Well, dear listener, that's Eamon and me on Kashmir. I'm sure we'll come back in another episode to talk more about Kashmir. There's so much that could be said. There are so many wars, so many terrorist groups.
So many shenanigans happening in that part of the world. But that's it for now. This episode, God knows, is long enough. From the Indian subcontinent, stick with us because in two weeks we will go to really the epicenter of all that we've been talking about in all of this series, though we haven't focused in on it. And by that I mean Turkey.
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Conflicted is a Message Heard production. This episode was produced and edited by Rowan Bishop. Sandra Ferrari is our executive producer. Production support and fact-checking by Molly Freeman. Our theme music is by Matt Huxley.