What comes to mind first when you think of the UK? Is it palatial Buckingham Palace? World-class institutions? A polite English gentleman? Or is it a literary achievement that is still celebrated today? But, in my opinion, these things are only the least worth mentioning in Britain.
Don't look at Britain, which is just an island country with a small land area, but his strength is not weak, otherwise it would not be known as the empire of the sun that never sets.
As the world's number one hegemon, Britain at its peak also made many contributions to the world, leading the First World Revolution and creating the world's free market economy.
However, the powerful Britain also brought great harm to the world, and after the industrial revolution was basically completed, Britain became the first country in the world to industrialize.
At that time, Britain, which took the lead in completing the industrial revolution, began to implement colonial rule around the world in order to continuously meet the needs of the industrial bourgeoisie, in order to seize a large number of raw material production areas and expand commodity markets.
As a result, Britain soon had a large colony, but this British approach brought many indelible injuries to the people of the colonies.
However, with the outbreak of two world wars, Britain consumed a lot of its own national strength in the process of long-term combat, so it fell from the altar and began to act as an offshore balancer and a-stirring stick in the world.
At the same time, because the world powers were all involved in the war during World War II, they had no time to take care of the colonies, so that the colonial people's sense of national independence awakened, and the big countries were unable to support their colonial rule in various places.
Coupled with the outbreak of the Cold War, the national independence movements of the colonies were supported by the United States and the Soviet Union, so in this situation, the world colonial system began to gradually disintegrate.
Although Britain has been trying its best to prevent this from happening, at this time, he is no longer the empire that never sets, so the helpless Britain had to make the decision to leave the subcontinent and hand over the Indian regime.
At this time, the British have been operating in the land of India for a hundred years, and the ambitions and contradictions of the indigenous people of this land are clear to the British, as early as the beginning, in order to eliminate future hidden dangers, Britain began to constantly provoke contradictions between the two sects within India to strengthen its colonial rule in this area.
Now Britain has to abandon this long-running colony because of the international situation, but considering that it will return later, Britain does not want India to become strong.
Therefore, before leaving, he adopted a "divide and rule" approach to India, dividing India into two, and at the same time deliberately shelving the issue of the ownership of Kashmir, completely blocking all paths for peaceful development between India and Pakistan.
So why is tiny Kashmir so important to India and Pakistan? What is the wisdom of the British approach?
Important value for Kashmir
Geographically, Kashmir, located in the north of the subcontinent, not only has a pitifully small land area, but also the local population is not as large as that of neighboring countries, and the terrain is basically dominated by plateau wasteland, and more importantly, the natural resources here do not account for much advantage.
Therefore, in terms of economic value alone, Kashmir really does not have the advantage of development, but because it is connected to China, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, and is also an important transportation hub connecting South Asia, East Asia, Central Asia and Europe, the strategic value of Kashmir is immediately apparent.
And what is even more special about Kashmir is that his position is the only passage into South Asia, so Kashmir has no accidents and has become the last barrier between India and Pakistan against each other's attacks, which has caused the main reason for the long-term dispute in Kashmir.
For India, taking Kashmir can better help them resist the "threat" from Pakistan and other countries and stop the expansion of illegal forces.
It should be known that in the process of confrontation between India and Pakistan, the existence of Kashmir has successfully avoided the risk of exposing the Indian plain and coastline to the enemy's strike range, so that India's national security has been greatly guaranteed.
Not only that, as long as India has Kashmir, it is equivalent to opening up trade routes between Central Asia and South Asia, which can greatly improve India's economy.
For Pakistan, taking the ownership of Kashmir is much more urgent than India, from the perspective of the military and economic strength of India and Pakistan, Pakistan is not India's opponent, if not for China's help, he was already destroyed by India in the second India-Pakistan war.
Therefore, in this case, Pakistan must take Kashmir, on the one hand, increase its territorial area, on the other hand, it can use this area as a buffer area, so as to prevent India from burning the war on Pakistani soil and causing serious losses.
In addition, large areas of Kashmir are plateau, so Pakistan can take advantage of this advantageous terrain to form a condescending posture against India.
In addition, Pakistan is a country with relatively poor resources, most of the water sources in its territory come from Kashmir, so Pakistan has spent a lot of money to build hydropower stations here to meet the huge demand of the Pakistani people for hydropower, so for Pakistan, the importance of Kashmir is self-evident.
Therefore, Pakistani officials have publicly stated that the existence of Kashmir greatly guarantees Pakistan's status in Central Asia.
All in all, the importance of Kashmir is very important for both India and Pakistan, and as long as they can hold the region, it means that they have successfully held their own borders and ensured that their destiny will not be affected by other countries.
When did the UK become interested in Kashmir?
When Britain became interested in Kashmir, one has to start with the history of wars in the region.
With the passage of history, what we call Kashmir today covers a large area, and it is no longer the original small canyon located in the western Himalayas.
In ancient times, Kashmir was a meeting place for religious ideas due to its unique geographical location, and it is for this reason that no matter which religion is ruled here, it is bound to aggravate the contradictions between religions, and under this fragile social structure, war has become the norm in the region.
The rapid expansion of Tsarist Russia from the end of the eighteenth century onwards and the Qing government's use of Mongolia, Tibet, and Xinjiang by force and their incorporation into Chinese territory caused great concern in Britain about the current situation.
Under these circumstances, the superior geographical location of Kashmir allowed Britain to find a way to curb the expansion of Tsarist Russia, and at the same time, it also provided great convenience for Britain to enter the mainland territory unscrupulously in the future.
In view of the importance of Kashmir, the British obtained jurisdiction over Kashmir by banditry, and then in order to further strengthen their rule over Kashmir, the British adopted a counterbalance method, allowing the Hindus to control the power of Kashmir and contain the local Islamists.
It has to be said that after this tumultuous operation by the British, it successfully provoked irreconcilable contradictions between various nationalities, tribes and religions on the Indian continent, cut off all cooperation paths between the other side, and made it very easy for Britain to achieve the goal of snipe mussels competing for profits.
However, what Britain did not expect was that a world war would exhaust all the national strength he had accumulated before, and at the same time increase the national independence mood of his colonies, so Britain could only follow the trend and withdraw from the colonies.
However, before Britain withdrew from India, one thing must be done, that is, to cut off all development paths in India, after all, no country knows better than him that once India is free from the constraints of other countries, after a certain period of free development, it will grow into a country that makes Britain fear.
Therefore, the cunning British began to privately set up various obstacles to India's independence, so that India's vision of unifying the whole country after independence was finally shattered.
Britain's Yang Scheme: The strategy of religious partition left India with a source of conflict
In fact, Britain did not have much to do in destroying the national unity of India, you must know that as early as after India became a British colony, Britain began to use the means of divide and rule, separate elections, intensified the contradictions between various sects in India, artificially separated the religions, and eventually split the Indian national movement.
Therefore, even if Britain does not participate in this matter, India will need to take many detours to achieve national unity.
But Britain was not satisfied with the current situation in India, so what he had to do now was to propose to the incompatible Congress Party and the Muslim League to divide India into two parts by way of religious division.
One part is Hindus in India and the other is Islamist in Pakistan, and then the British handed over power to both, although this plan was not initially approved by the conflicting parties.
However, the two sides could not come up with a better way at this time, and if this stalemate continued, India would certainly not be able to avoid the outbreak of civil war, so India accepted the British proposal and began to implement the partition of India and Pakistan.
With the smooth implementation of the partition of India and Pakistan, Britain also officially declared the end of its own colonial rule of India for nearly two hundred years.
Although Britain did leave India this time, what he did before leaving brought great suffering to the local people.
First of all, there is the large-scale bloody conflict caused by the immigration issue after the partition of India and Pakistan.
It must be known that the main reason for the implementation of the partition of India and Pakistan was to avoid the outbreak of civil war and cause casualties, but the large-scale migration of the population inevitably brought many sectarian vendettas, resulting in a high number of casualties caused by bloody conflicts.
Although the large-scale bloodshed stopped after the end of the migration, it once again deepened the hatred between the two peoples.
Secondly, there is the question of the ownership of Kashmir.
At that time, after proposing the partition of India and Pakistan, the British made it clear that in the process of implementing partition, the princely states of India could decide whether to join India or Pakistan according to their geographical location and the wishes of the people.
However, the issue of the ownership of Kashmir is differentiated, from the perspective of Kashmir's geographical location, religious beliefs, historical development, etc., this area should be joined by Pakistan, but the biggest problem is that the British policy of checks and balances made the prince of the area a Hindu, and the people were mostly Islamic.
Therefore, under such circumstances, the issue of the ownership of Kashmir is more difficult, and the British are very satisfied with this result, so Kashmir has been independent after the partition of India and Pakistan.
At this time, the prince of Junagd announced his accession to Pakistan in disregard of the will of the people and contrary to the principle of geographical proximity, in which case India sent troops to take over Junad, and the cause and effect of this matter made a bad example for later solving the problem of Kashmir's belonging.
Although Kashmir shares borders with India and Pakistan, neither strategically nor emotionally will easily cede this important area, but if anyone is most desperate to get ownership of Kashmir, it must not be Pakistan.
As we have seen above, the hearts of the local people in Kashmir are always towards Pakistan, and even if a Hindu prince intervenes, it is only a matter of time before Pakistan wants to take Kashmir.
Therefore, instead of putting too much pressure on Kashmir to fall into India's arms, it would be better to agree to their independence first, and then slowly find a way to get the other side to join him.
Pakistan's advantage in Kashmir is an intractable disadvantage for India, so India not only will not agree to Kashmir independence, but also tries to lobby the Hindu Maharaja Singh, unfortunately, although he also has the intention to let Kashmir into India's territory.
But he had to consider whether he could afford the wrath of the Kashmiri people once he did.
India's coercive behavior soon aroused strong dissatisfaction among the Kashmiri people, so an uprising broke out in the region to rebel against India, and the voice of Kashmir demanding to join Pakistan increased, and the peace and stability of the region were greatly challenged for a while.
Seeing that the situation was becoming more and more serious, Kashmir Maharaja Singh began to send military requests for military help to India, completely standing in the Indian camp, and then the Indian army entered Kashmir and began to launch a fierce attack on the local insurgent troops and ordinary people.
Due to the backward weapons and equipment in the hands of the rebels at that time, coupled with the lack of effective command, they began to retreat after suffering strong artillery fire, and Pakistan also sent troops to participate in this war.
In this way, the first Indo-Pakistani war officially began, and the war lasted for nearly two years, and finally it was only under the mediation of the United Nations Security Council that the red-eyed sides stopped firing.
Unfortunately, although this India-Pakistan war is not short, it has not solved the Kashmir issue, not only that, but also further intensified the contradictions between India and Pakistan, laying the foundation for the frequent outbreak of India-Pakistan wars in the future.
The Kashmir issue has completely blocked the path to the peaceful rise of India and Pakistan
After the end of the first Indo-Pakistani war, India occupied a large area of Kashmir with its strong military strength, although Pakistan occupied less area than India, but at least had the right to control parts of Kashmir.
However, at this time, with the intensification of the Cold War situation, the United States realized the importance of the South Asian region, in order to ensure the interests of the United States in the South Asian region and realize the Asian strategic plan it advocated, the United States began to intervene in the Kashmir issue, trying to get India and Pakistan to reach a reconciliation.
Due to the accession of the United States and the maintenance of Pakistan, the Soviet Union also began to participate and stand behind India, so that because of the addition of the two superpowers of the United States and the Soviet Union, the already complex situation in Kashmir began to become more confusing, and India and Pakistan began to fight endlessly.
With the passage of time, the allies behind India and Pakistan have changed, and the contest between the two sides in Kashmir has also moved from local to full-scale confrontation, and the military confrontation between the two sides is constantly escalating.
After all, the contradictions between India and Pakistan in Kashmir are no longer purely territorial issues, but also include religious contradictions that can never be reconciled between the two countries, so as to achieve national dignity.
Therefore, even if the two sides have long known that the Kashmir issue is a means used by Britain to disperse their peaceful development country, India and Pakistan can only bite the bullet and continue to confront.
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