November 15, 2001

10:31 AM

India, Pakistan and the Bomb. Scientific American says "The Indian subcontinent is the most likely place in the world for a nuclear war." How soon?
posted by jfuller (12 comments total)

Stephen Jay Gould says "time converts the improbable into the inevitable." Murphy says "anything that can go wrong will go wrong...
posted by jfuller at 10:33 AM on November 15, 2001

That area has been thought to be the most vulnerable to that kind of thing for a long time. Even before either nation admitted they had nuclear weapons it was something of an open secret.

But the testing of nuclear weapons by India (in hopes of intimidating Pakistan) followed by tests by Pakistan in turn, lead both nation's leaders to realize that their age-old antagonism couldn't go on, and ironically lead to a new peace initiative.

How soon? Quite possibly never, strangely enough.
posted by Steven Den Beste at 10:39 AM on November 15, 2001

I've never really understood why Pakistan & India hate each other so much. I mean, OK, I can see being somewhat irked by the whole Partition thing -- but why does anybody care about Kashmir? What's the strategic significance, and why won't anybody obey the Line of Control?

Is it strictly a matter of both sides using the conflict for internal political purposes, or is there actually something useful to fight over?
posted by aramaic at 12:32 PM on November 15, 2001

Perhaps this article Indictments From India may shed some light on aramaic's confusion.

This is a response to the Indian rhetoric on the topic of Kashmir.

(via The News)
posted by adnanbwp at 12:59 PM on November 15, 2001

I think that the chances of an incident of nuclear aggression occurring within the next calendar year are very high right now.
posted by yesster at 1:26 PM on November 15, 2001

Nuclear aggression in Pakistan/India is very unlikely. The 2 nations have a nuclear parity similar to the US/USSR. Nuclear parity is a *very* strong argument against two countries would otherwise go to war. I would argue that , if both countries didn't have nukes, they would have been at war already.
posted by Kevs at 5:52 PM on November 15, 2001

But the testing of nuclear weapons by India (in hopes of intimidating Pakistan)

India's primary objective for obtaining WMD is not to intimidate Pakistan, but to keep China on their toes. India has fought three wars with Pakistan, and beaten them in all of them (and liberated Bangladesh in one of them.) OTOH, India has fought two wars with China, one which it lost, and another which was a draw, but India lost some land. China -- which has lots of WMD -- is India's main concern, though Pakistan comes in a close second.

I've never really understood why Pakistan & India hate each other so much.

It's a combination of religious, historical, geographical, and nationalistic reasons. Think of Pakistan as the bastard child born out of Britain's rape of India. Before Churchill left India, he made sure to partition it under the guise of "protecting" the Muslim minority -- who, for the most part had lived in relative security with the Hindus for hundred of years. But the British powers, with the help of Jinnah-- Pakistan's founding father -- along with other Hindu nationals, I'm sure, stoked religious and ethnic hatred between the Hindus and the Muslims. It was Cain vs. Abel.

I mean, OK, I can see being somewhat irked by the whole Partition thing -- but why does anybody care about Kashmir? What's the strategic significance, and why won't anybody obey the Line of Control? Is it strictly a matter of both sides using the conflict for internal political purposes, or is there actually something useful to fight over?

The short answer: It's a matter of pride for both nations. The long answer: Kashmir is actually Jammu and Kashmir, two-states-in-one, and share the same capitol: Srinagar. Kashmir has a Muslim majority, and Jammu is dominated by Hindus. Because of this, many Pakistanis believe that Kashmir should be part of Pakistan (they say Kashmiries should be allowed to decide whether they want to become and independent nation or become part of Pakistan, but in reality, they want Kashmir to become part of Pakistan --at any cost).

Because Kashmir is part of democratic India, it is allowed -- within the bounds of the Indian Constitution -- to pass laws that represents the will of majority of Kashmiries. This flies in the face of Pakistan's argument that Kashmiries are oppressed under India's Hindu's majority rule. Next to Indonesia and Pakistan, India has the highest Muslim population in the world. The question is: If things are so bad in India for the Muslims, why don't they leave and emigrate to Pakistan or any other Muslim countries? The answer, IMHO, is probably that in India, they get to practice their religion and live under a democracy -- something they would not get to do in most Islamic nations.

As far as the posts's main point, my question is: Why shouldn't India have WMD? Who decides which country should or should not have WMD? India is a vibrant and healthy democracy, and the government is representative of the Indian people. India, like Israel, sits between enemies, nations who want to harm India and it's citizens. Therefore, it has a right to protect itself by any means necessary.
posted by Rastafari at 10:39 PM on November 15, 2001

Rastafari, Churchill was out of office in '45. India gained independence in '47. He 'left' India to become a war correspondent in South Africa during the Boer War. He was a colonialist tosspot and whilst I have some respect for some of the things he did he does seem to have been involved in most of the shadier things Britain did in the first half of the twentieth century. I'm not defending him - all I know about Indian independence I learnt from watching Ghandi about ten years ago - I just don't see where he and the partition of India come together or what role he could have played.
posted by vbfg at 6:10 AM on November 16, 2001

Rastafari: My understanding of the history of India, Partition, and the current state of Kashmir differs somewhat from yours. You've got some interesting comments there amongst some statements that are not quite true and rather provocative.

1) The Muslims had lived in security with the Hindus for hundreds of years partly because they ran the place, or as much of it as they could reach. The Moghul emperor was still the nominal ruler of northern India when the British East India Company started fighting for trading concessions. When the British began preparing to pull out, many Hindus feared a return to Muslim domination.

2) Jinnah would never have had the success he did with his Pakistan proposal had the Congress Party not alienated Muslims to begin with. British officials hardly wanted to inflame hatreds between the populations; they had enough trouble running the place as it was. The Hindus suspected them (rightly) of preferring Muslims, and the Muslims feared that the British would simply pull out and drop the government in the lap of the Hindu-dominated Congress Party, thus cutting them out of the political process. When riots developed out of protests, it was much easier for the Hindus to take out their anger on their non-participating Muslim neighbors, and vice versa, than to attack the (remarkably scarce) British. Add this to sporadic bouts of violent police actions by the British (e.g. Amritsar) and the hatred arose on its own.

3) The disposition of Kashmir: One of the many "princely states" within India at the time of independence, Kashmir's ruler was Hindu while his population was Muslim. As a nominally independent ruler, the prince was given the option to join either Pakistan or India. He waited until the last moment, hoping to remain independent. Pakistani soldiers & police moved in to annex the place based on its predominantly Muslim population, and the ruler hurriedly chose India. So: now it's a mess. India says, by the agreement at the time, it should be part of India. But it is clearly a Muslim-dominated area, and if the people had their say it would have definitely gone to Pakistan. If you held a free vote today it would probably still go to Pakistan.

4) Churchill had nothing to do with Partition. Clement Attlee was Prime Minister at the time. Mountbatten was Viceroy at independence and stayed on as Governor-General. If anyone is to blame, it is probably the Congress Party, who insisted that they alone represented all India and were remarkably cantankerous about sharing power with other organisations (such as the Muslim League). They essentially wanted the British to hand them the colonial government and then leave. This did not sit well with those who did not feel that the Congress party represented their interests.

5) If Kashmiris are not oppressed under India's rule, why is India using such heavy-handed security measures there?

aramaic: Why is Kashmir so important? I've never been there but I hear it described as playing a similar cultural role as Hawaii does to the United States. I think there are also cultural/religious overtones - one of the dominant Hindu castes came from there, or something like that.

Rastafari: I agree with your last paragraph. As long as any country "defends" itself with nuclear weapons, India might as well be one of them.

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 8:51 AM on November 16, 2001

Mars, you seem to have a very biased version of Indian history. I'll try to address most of your points:

If Kashmiris are not oppressed under India's rule, why is India using such heavy-handed security measures there?

The same reason the US is now bombing Afghanistan and trying to eliminate al-Queda and the Taliban: because they sponsor terrorism. Of course, there are many Kashmiries who support the terrorists and aid and abet them, and they are hard to distinguish from regular Kashmiris (at least for the Indian army) and so when the Indian army tries to clamp down on it, it appears they are using heavy handed tactics.

You are right about Churchill not being PM at the time of partition, but the fact is that he hated Indians, and was pissed off -- while he was in power -- that Indians wanted independence from Britian. He thought Indians were inferior to Westerners, and thought the best way to hurt India would be to partition it. I still think the partition was a guise to protect Muslim minority. Besides, you haven't addressed my point about India having the third largest Muslim population in the world, and if the Muslims really wanted, they could very easily emigrate to Pakistan, or any other Islamic country in the world? Why don't they?

I think your take on Congress party sharing power with Muslim League is a bit oversimplified, if not wrong altogether. Did you know there there were many Muslims in the Congress party? That the original plan was to have Jinnah as the first PM of India? That the main goal of the Muslim League was to have two sets of law in independent India -- one especially for Muslims and one for everyone else? In other words, they wanted to be treated differently, for whatever reason. So yes, there was opposition to the Muslims being given special treatment in independent India: most Congress party members wanted all Indian to be treated equally.

I think your take on Kashmir is wrong. If given a vote, most may choose to be independent, and not be with Pakistan. Sure, there are many Pakistani sympathizers in Kashmir, but majority of the Muslim Kashmiris are not stupid: They see the condition in a politically and economically unstable Pakistan and those of India, and knowing what they know, why would they choose to be with Pakistan? Remember, if they want to, they are free to emigrate there.
posted by Rastafari at 9:59 AM on November 16, 2001

Mars, you seem to have a very biased version of Indian history.

Perhaps that's because all you know of my version of Indian history is what I presented as counterpoint to your account of the history of Kashmir. You describe India's role in a way that sounds honourable, but nobody involved has clean hands in this affair.

Of course, there are many Kashmiries who support the terrorists and aid and abet them, and they are hard to distinguish from regular Kashmiris (at least for the Indian army) and so when the Indian army tries to clamp down on it, it appears they are using heavy handed tactics.

Whether such tactics are justified is an interesting question, but the fact remains that India uses a heavy military and paramilitary presence to suppress pro-Pakistan or pro-independence demonstrations and organisations in Kashmir. It's not hard to see how Muslims in Kashmir might see India as something less than a benevolent democracy.

I still think the partition was a guise to protect Muslim minority.

Well, yes, that's exactly what it was. The Muslims who supported the Muslim League believed they would not be secure in a Hindu-dominated India and wanted assurance that their autonomy would be protected. When satisfactory assurances were not forthcoming they demanded and eventually obtained the formation of a separate nation.

Did you know there there were many Muslims in the Congress party? That the original plan was to have Jinnah as the first PM of India?

That was one of the plans, yes, and of course there were plenty of Muslims in the Congress Party as it was originally *the* organisation for independence. But obviously something went wrong, or Muslims would never have felt the need to split off into their own party!

So yes, there was opposition to the Muslims being given special treatment in independent India: most Congress party members wanted all Indian to be treated equally.

Well, yes; it's a classic situation. The majority group just wants everyone to be treated equally, and sees any request for different treatment by the minority group as a grasping for special privilege; the minority group sees "equal" as a synonym for "dominated by the majority", and asks for measures protecting their individuality as a matter of self-preservation. So of course the Congress Party saw it as outrageous requests for special treatment, and the Muslims involved saw it as necessary for the survival of their culture.

I think your take on Kashmir is wrong. If given a vote, most may choose to be independent, and not be with Pakistan.

Wouldn't it be nice if India would let Kashmir take a vote on the subject so that we could all find out and settle the question for once and all, instead of making guesses and arguing about opinions?

-Mars
posted by Mars Saxman at 11:11 AM on November 16, 2001

Wouldn't it be nice if India would let Kashmir take a vote on the subject so that we could all find out and settle the question for once and all, instead of making guesses and arguing about opinions?

Gee, wouldn't it have been nice if the people of Hawaii would have been given the option to join the US or be an independent nation. How do you think they would have decided?
posted by Rastafari at 10:06 PM on November 16, 2001