Kashmir: socialism or barbarism? (1990)

From the June 1990 issue of the Socialist Standard

By the end of April this year the Indian army had redeployed 70-90,000 troops, including between 300 and 500 tanks, to just 30 miles from Pakistan's Sind and Punjab provinces. These "exercises'’ were officially due to have ended in February. It was along this stretch of border, Pakistan's "weak under-belly", that Indian tanks crashed through in 1965, and today war between the two states again seems a real possibility.

Pakistan and India have fought each other three times since British forces pulled out of the Indian sub-continent in 1947. In that year Imperial India was partitioned into two bitterly opposed states. Moslem Pakistan and mainly-Hindu India. But the cause of the successive Indo-Pakistan conflicts was never religion as such. Religion rather became the cloak behind which the Indian and Pakistani states mobilised their peoples to fight for regional strategic dominance. And the key to this dominance lay in Kashmir.

Strategic importance

Kashmir is a poor, mountainous, scenically beautiful region of 85,000 square miles—larger than England—lying between India and Pakistan. Traditionally it has been the resting place for caravans moving from India to the Highlands of Central Asia, and it remains today the strategic pivot of the sub-continent. The state which dominates Kashmir dominates the area, and this has been clearly recognised by the leaders on both sides.

In an Indian government publication entitled Independence and After written in 1949 the then Prime Minister Nehru asserted that:

  India without Kashmir would cease to occupy a pivotal position on the political map of Central Asia. Strategically Kashmir is vital to the security of India: it has been so since the dawn of history.

And. almost twenty years later, the then Prime Minister of Pakistan. Liaquat Ali Khan, justified his state's claim in exactly the same terms:

  Kashmir is vital to Pakistan. Kashmir, as you will see from the map, is like a cap on the head of Pakistan. If I allow India to have this cap on our head, then I am always at the mercy of India. (In M. Gopal, Considerations of Defence, Caravan, 1967).

After “independence" Kashmir was left hanging between its hostile neighbours. Although some four-fifths of its population were Moslems, the ruling elite was Hindu. In 1947 Moslem tribesmen from the North West, enraged at reports of massacres of Moslems elsewhere, invaded Kashmir. The wave of mass killing and arson which followed threatened the rule of the Hindu Maharajah, who turned in desperation to India for support. Seizing its opportunity, the Indian government extracted a promise that Kashmir would be signed over after the army had intervened—a condition the Maharajah had little choice but to accept. But as soon as the instrument of accession had been signed Pakistan sent troops into Kashmir, ostensibly to "save the uprising" of fellow Moslems, but in reality to secure the Pakistani state's strategic position.

The bloody clashes which followed were brought to an end by a ceasefire which left India in de facto control of the most prosperous part of the province. Although Indian politicians had promised free elections for Kashmir, this was soon forgotten The result could only have been independence or union with Pakistan.

Despite a disastrous attempt by the Pakistani army to seize Kashmir in 1965 after infiltrating guerilla forces over the ceasefire line, Southern Kashmir has remained in Indian hands ever since.

Cynical misrule

The present crisis erupted in Kashmir after years of cynical mismanagement by the Indian state, including rigged elections, endemic corruption and now naked repression. Foreign correspondents, now banned from the province, have continued to receive reports of beatings, rapes, torture and even executions.

In response. Kashmiri secessionist groups have stepped up their campaign of violence, engaging Indian troops in savage street to street battles, assassinating politicians and senior police officers and waging a relentless bombing campaign whose recent targets included a private bus and a Bombay commuter train. Indian army curfews were met with mass demonstrations and over 350 people have died in the uprising this year.

Over 8000 refugees and at least 3000 volunteers seeking military training have already streamed over the ceasefire line, and with the end of the avalanche season in June as many as 100,000 more are expected to attempt the crossing. India has responded by banning any movement out of the province and constructing a 12-ft high electrified fence along the perimeter. Pakistani troops are reported to have provided covering fire for refugees making the break for the border and ugly clashes with Indian border patrols are said to have led to a number of deaths.

The Indian government has blamed Pakistan for fomenting the unrest and threatened armed retribution. In the middle of April the Indian Prime Minister VP Singh said the country should be "psychologically prepared" for war against Pakistan, and after attacking Pakistan's “evil designs" in Kashmir warned that the Pakistani army would "not last 1000 hours" in a war. “We will teach them a lesson unless they stop aiding terrorists", he concluded darkly, refusing to rule out the possibility of hot pursuit raids against the alleged rebel training camps on the Pakistani side of the ceasefire line.

Meanwhile correspondents in Pakistani Kashmir report that the rebels are setting up power centres and arming themselves with weapons bought from arms dealers in the country's tribal belt. A jihaad. or holy war, has been proclaimed by Moslems there with the support of a hard core of 1000-2000 Kashmiris already battle-hardened in that other jihaad just across the border in Afghanistan

Fingers on nuclear triggers

What lessons can be drawn from this dismal situation? First, that where there are states competing for strategic advantage—which they are compelled to do for reasons of survival in a competitive world—there will always be conflict, or the threat of conflict.

It also reveals the futility of nationalism. Who would Kashmir "belong to" if it was “liberated" from the grip of the Indian ruling class? Certainly not those who are pouring across the ceasefire line to learn to fight and kill their fellow workers. They would find that their sacrifices would bring just the same poverty and oppression when they are exploited by a bunch of Kashmiri or Pakistani bosses rather than the Indian variety. And of course the multinationals would continue to inflict their Bophals and extract their profits no matter which gang was in power.

The only solution to the Kashmiri crisis is world socialism, in which there will be no more states struggling to divide the world's markets between them and using the cloak of religion to muster support for their murderous banners; when there will be a free and cooperative sharing of the world's resources and living space on the basis of need, and not on the ability to conquer or exploit.

One closing thought for those who think that a socialist world would be all very nice but is not an urgent necessity. India has successfully exploded a nuclear capability Both have large air forces capable of delivering nuclear bombs. If a crisis does erupt when refugees from Kashmir start pouring across the border after the avalanche season, and the Indian state carries out its threat to launch cross-border raids, fingers will be on those nuclear triggers.

Because, unlike the superpowers, who can guarantee to retaliate after receiving a first nuclear strike. India and Pakistan have so few nuclear devices the side which strikes first could expect to "win" an exchange (whatever that might mean). This is clearly a recipe for massive instability, and perhaps disastrous miscalculation. Socialism or barbarism is still the only real choice which confronts us.

Andrew Thomas