Kashmir has become India's "nightmare".
Kashmir, which hangs over the heads of India and Pakistan, is a veritable "powder keg", and as long as India and Pakistan are the slightest bit unhappy, Kashmir will "blow up", and at least in the past 77 years, there have been three real wars here.
It is said that if India wants to use Kashmir to become the "hegemon of Asia", it will have to see whether it can achieve it, and the current Kashmir is like a hot potato, and even if India catches it, it will be in a dilemma and cannot afford to defend it at all.
Why is Kashmir India's "nightmare"?
Can India really pull out the nail of Kashmir?
[The mess left by the UK]
In the mid-18th century, Kashmir was not de facto part of India, or rather a nominal dependency of India, and it was directly subordinate to the British.
Most of present-day India, Pakistan, Kashmir, and Bangladesh had a unified name at the time, the Indian subcontinent, and were all British colonies in Asia.
At that time, Britain, the world hegemon, relied on the Asian colonies, pointed its sword at the Tsarist Russian Empire, and entered North America and Africa without any scruples. Because of its important strategic location, the Indian colony was praised by the British as "the jewel in the crown of the empire on which the sun never sets".
And Kashmir, which looks inconspicuous, is the connecting point between the pearl and the crown.
At that time, the British listed Kashmir in a "special strategic position" against the background of the entire Indian subcontinent.
Britain believes that Kashmir is a special location and a barrier to other enemy countries, and it should directly control it as a "lookout post" to monitor the movements of Asia, Tsarist Russia, and North America.
The British also set aside the actual jurisdiction of the Tu Wang of Kashmir, which later became "Little Kashmir", which was also the real Kashmir at that time. The cunning British also drew a large circle on the map in order to make it easier to find an excuse for further aggression in the future.
However, the British Empire has always wanted to save face, and in order to find a "fig leaf" to cover its true intentions, it specifically explained to the outside world: "This is to add two more lines of defense outside the actual administrative region", and the additional lines are said to be defensive lines and strategic lines.
In this way, "Greater Kashmir" appeared.
However, the redundant states in the defensive and strategic lines were actually independent and did not fall under the jurisdiction of the Kashmiri king.
Britain also gave itself a very scientific name for this "three-bar" behavior, called "scientific frontier". Under power, the British Empire had business as long as it fired a cannon, and no one dared to refute it at that time,
And the regional division of Kashmir has left a confused account.
After World War II, with the rise of the United States and the Soviet Union, Britain slipped from its position as world hegemon and soon lost the "jewel in the crown" of the Indian subcontinent. The Indian subcontinent has also undergone a series of structural changes and has been divided into two large parts.
First Pakistan became independent from the subcontinent and then from what is now India.
In 1947, Mountbatten, the British Governor-General in India, issued a "separation agreement", known as the "Mountbatten Plan", which stipulated the ownership rights of India and Pakistan and their respective autonomy plans, which was equivalent to the formal separation of India and Pakistan.
Since then, Britain has withdrawn from the Indian subcontinent and ceased to be the suzerain.
But Britain is very lacking in virtue, and it forgets to say whose Kashmir belongs to.
【Kashmir Controversy】
Kashmir originally wanted to become independent, but shortly after Britain withdrew, chaos began to arise within Kashmir.
The princely states of Kashmir were Hindu and interested in joining India, but the two factions soon collapsed when the 77 percent of the people were Muslims and they preferred to join Pakistan, which is a haven for Muslims.
In September 1947, Muslims in Kashmir rebelled and clashed with the Maharaja's own soldiers. The Maharaja of Kashmir panicked, and he told the Indian government: "Kashmir wants to join India, please send troops to help." ”
On the other hand, Pakistan is not happy, they believe that the majority of the people of Kashmir are attached to Pakistan, the Maharaja's move is "obstinate and contrary to the will of the people", and India is a conspiracy to seize it.
On October 27, a large-scale conflict broke out between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region.
At this time, the governor of Mountbatten saw that his buttocks had not been wiped clean, and a new problem arose, and he added fuel to the fire and said,
"According to the Accession Agreement that I left behind, whoever Kashmir joins is to help its internal stability, once it is stable, Kashmir has the right to self-government, and the Accession Agreement is not permanent, as long as it can be self-governing, Kashmir can withdraw. ”
Translated here, the British means:
Kashmir will not be able to become independent, but whoever can give it better security will join it. But no one should stretch their hands too long, Kashmir is a "special existence", it still needs to be autonomous.
In this way, can it not be more chaotic?
From ancient times to the present, autonomous and non-independent regions can only belong to one country, but if there are two countries to choose, it is bound to be "two tigers contending, and one must be injured". So India and Pakistan fought like this until the end of 1948.
India was furious and took the complaint to the United Nations.
In the end, the United Nations intervened to demarcate the Line of Actual Control (LAC) for India and Pakistan, with the Punjab area of Kashmir under Pakistan and the remaining three-fifths under Indian jurisdiction.
There should be no problem this time, but the two countries stopped fighting for more than ten years, and in 1965, they fought again. There is only one reason, India is not convinced, and wants to completely eat Kashmir's thief's heart without dying, and Pakistan will naturally not give up.
And Kashmir, which is sandwiched in the middle, let alone independence, is enough to deal with the war between the two countries.
[India's "Nightmare"]
The war between India and Pakistan in 1965 ended in a crushing defeat for India.
But with India's consistent urine nature, it is naturally impossible to accept defeat easily.
Sure enough, in 1971, India immediately launched an invasion because of the civil strife in Pakistan, and this battle changed the landscape of South Asia, when India agitated for East Pakistan to become independent from Pakistan.
Since then, East Pakistan has ceased to exist and has become Bangladesh, which has greatly damaged Pakistan's vitality. However, Pakistan held on to parts of Kashmir and did not allow India to succeed.
In the 21st century, India is even more ambitious, aspiring to become a great power in Asia, preferably ahead of China, and lead the situation in Asia. This can be clearly seen from the various operations of Modi's old fairy in recent years to "bear Trump and come out of Israel".
Geographically speaking, if India wants to "take a step forward", the best strategic target is Kashmir.
First, Kashmir is a transportation gateway to Central Asia, East Asia and South Asia, providing countries with a trade gateway between Asian countries.
The second is Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, which is 700 kilometers away from New Delhi, the capital of India, and just over 200 kilometers away from Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. In the event of war, India will be the "Son of Heaven guarding the country".
And if you want to hold India, Indian-administered Kashmir is the first pass, and the capital New Delhi is the second pass. As soon as New Delhi fell, with the strategic topography of the Indian plains, the entry of a large army was simply equivalent to a flat river. If Kashmir is completely captured, it can further threaten Pakistan and even Afghanistan and other regions, while if Kashmir is lost, it is "retreating from the country" and there is no danger to defend.
Another very important reason is that once India takes Kashmir, it will actually choke Pakistan's neck.
Because the three major rivers in Pakistan happen to be in Kashmir, if the rivers are intercepted or diverted by India, it is equivalent to cutting off Pakistan's agricultural irrigation, harvest, and most of the country's hydropower generation, and Pakistan's people's livelihood is in danger. So you can imagine how much India would laugh if Kashmir were to be captured.
However, imagination can only be imagination.
Pakistan's stubborn defense again and again, coupled with the long-term war in Kashmir, the people's rebellion has become more and more serious, and India has gradually realized that the dispute over Kashmir has become its own lingering "nightmare".
In the midst of years of war attrition and opposition, Kashmir has developed to today, so that India can neither afford nor let go.
Kashmir, the domain of "paradise".
Kashmir, known as "paradise", is supposed to be the most unique tourist destination in the war, with the world's second highest peak, Chogori, and Ladakh, known as "Little Tibet".
But it has been forced to embrace suffering.
After the Third Indo-Pakistani War, from the 80s of the last century to the present, there have been countless frictions and disputes between India and Pakistan.
After Modi came to power, the United States intended to intervene as a "mediator", although the Modi government did not immediately refuse, but later said that the Kashmir matter can only be resolved through negotiation between India and Pakistan themselves.
In today's Indian-administered Kashmir, there are at least 500,000 Indian soldiers stationed there, and these people eat Kashmir's war preparations, which is very expensive. This has made it difficult for Kashmir to develop its basic economy, and it has also caused a large number of local young people to rise up.
For this reason, Indian soldiers have always imposed martial law in the local area from time to time, strictly investigated rally, and shot and killed "members of opposition groups."
Pakistanis have recorded these scenes of fighting and hyped them up in the "Free Kashmir" region, which has exacerbated the current national division between India and Pakistan.
On the Line of Actual Control (ACT) between India and Pakistan against Kashmir, no less than 250,000 Indian soldiers and no less than 100,000 Pakistani soldiers are stationed on both sides of the 1,000-kilometer defensive line. Among them, on the defense line of the Siachen Glacier, the highest altitude, no less than thousands of soldiers on both sides froze to death.
In 2014, Modi visited this terrain, known as the "world's highest altitude defense line", and intriguingly said: It is in this place that we in India have been attacked by 'terrorists' and killed soldiers, more than the casualties of the wars in these years.
And a large part of the "terrorists" he refers to are civilians in Kashmir who originally only wanted to live and work in peace.
Defending difficulties, war difficulties, Kashmir, like a piece of heart disease that India can no longer cure.
Where will Kashmir go in the future? Perhaps, the best outcome for Kashmir is to remain independent.
At the very least, India should reinstate its ambitions, sit down with Pakistan, and negotiate in good faith the best gains outside of war, because Kashmir's interests are no longer India's exclusive and sustainable interests.
Resources:
[Kashmir dispute]
[The conflict between India and Pakistan has broken out again, and it is necessary to sort out the ins and outs of the Kashmir issue] Defense Times TV
[What is the way out of the Kashmir issue] Guangming Daily
[The conflict in Kashmir continues to escalate, witnessing 72 years of India-Pakistan fighting] Global Network
[Oriental Think Tank: Why is the conflict between India and Pakistan difficult to quell?] Longitudinal news
[South Asia Watch|Three Important Historical Facts about Kashmir's Special Status] The Paper