General Topic: India, Pakistan, and the Dispute Over Kashmir
Specific Topic:
Introduction
Kashmir is situated in a vital geo-strategic area of Asia and has been a source of rivalry and conflict between India and Pakistan since 1947. Professor Sadia Fayaz (66) has pointed out that after 1947 when Great Britain formally ceded control of what had been the Indian Raj, both India and Pakistan advanced the case for their territorial control over the Kashmir Valley and the surrounding area. The importance of Kashmir is augmented by the fact that it is “the important region where Pakistan, India, China, and the former Soviet Union (Central Asia) converge. Kashmir is a strategic crossroad in the very center of Asia” (Fayaz 66).
One analyst described the region as follows:
“Kashmir, officially referred to as Jammu and Kashmir, is an 86,000-square-mile region (about the size of Idaho) in northwest India and northeast Pakistan so breathtaking in physical beauty that Mugal or Moghul emperors in the 16th and 17th century considered it an earthly paradise. The region has been violently disputed by India and Pakistan since their 1947 partition, which created Pakistan as the Muslim counterpart to Hindu-majority India” (Bangash 1).
The location of Kashmir is at the core of the conflict over its control.
The dispute between Muslim Pakistan and primarily Hindu India over Kashmir has been a flashpoint for some 60 years. In 1947 and 1948, India and Pakistan fought the first war over Jammu and Kashmir. Under supervision from the United States, the two rivals entered into a ceasefire along a line which left a substantial portion of the state divided among the two countries with Pakistan controlling the region they call Azad Jammu and Kashmir and India administering the Kashmir Valley and other areas (BBC News 1).
Today, Kashmir is a disputed territory and is recognized as such by the United Nations. Historically, the state of Jammu and Kashmir remained independent except in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The 1947-1948 war brought the religious conflict between Muslims and Hindus and the territorial conflict between the new states of India and Pakistan into sharp relief (Kashmir-Pakistan Mission to the UN 3).
The research question posed herein is stated as follows: Would independence for an autonomous state of Jammu-Kashmir be a viable solution to the ongoing conflict between India and Pakistan over control of the region? Drawing upon historical and contemporary commentary, the argument will be advanced that while an autonomous or independent state would be a potentially viable solution, it seems highly unlikely that either India or Pakistan will be willing to give up their competing claims to this region regardless of how the state itself is constructed.
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