military events and the principal players, but also trade and cultural links. It covers the involvement of major powers of the globeâthe United States, the Soviet Union, and the Peopleâs Republic of Chinaâin shaping the relations between these South Asian neighbors, which together form one-fifth of humanity.
In the introduction I explain that the sixty-five-year-old Kashmir dispute has its roots in the tensions between Hindus and Muslims datingback eight centuries. The subjugation of the Indian subcontinent by Britain after 1807 gave rise to Indian nationalism within a century. The aim of the anti-imperialist movement that rose sharply after World War I was open to two different interpretations. One was to end Britainâs imperial rule and transform enslaved India into a sovereign state. The other was to end the subjugations that the majority Hindusâthree-quarters of the populationâhad borne since 1192; they were now ready to administer a free India on the basis of one person, one vote. The two interpretations overlapped because the foremost anti-imperialist party, the Indian National Congress, was overwhelmingly Hindu.
In 1915 the return home of Mohandas K. Gandhi, a Gujarati Indian lawyer, from South Africa sowed a seed in national politics that would grow into a tree covering much political space. His rivalry with another Gujarati-speaking lawyer, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, would come to dominate subcontinental politics for three decades. This is the gist of Chapter 1.
A deeply religious man, Gandhi made an alliance with the Muslim leaders of the Khilafat movement, which was committed to the continuation of the caliphate based in Istanbul that had come under threat after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Allied Powers in 1918. The Khilafat leaders backed the noncooperation campaign Gandhi launched in 1920. Its sudden suspension by Gandhi disappointed and bewildered them. The Hindu-Muslim unity forged to oppose the British Raj proved transitory. During the rest of the decade, Gandhi took up the causes of exploited peasants and workers; he garnered much publicity by launching such nonviolent campaigns as making salt from seawater without official permission. In the face of Gandhiâs spiraling fame, Jinnah moved his legal practice to London. This analytical narrative forms Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 covers the return of Jinnah from London to take up the leadership of the Muslim League and his articulation of the Two-Nation Theory. Though the League performed poorly in the 1937 elections, the policies of the Congress ministries, composed almost wholly of Hindus, gave a preview of the insensitivity of Congress officials toward the beliefs and mores of Muslims. The non-League Muslim leaders closed ranks with the League. In the 1945â1946 elections, the League won 73 percent of Muslim ballots, a giant leap from the previous 5 percent.
Britainâs decision to quit India after World War II intensified the rivalry between the Congress and the League: the former wished to inherit a united India from the British, and the latter resolved to establish a homeland for Muslims by partitioning the subcontinent. Communaltensions turned into violence. The chronology of this period constitutes Chapter 4.
Chapter 5 narrates the communal frenzy that gripped Punjab at the time of the birth of independent India and Pakistan in August 1947 and soon after. As a breakaway political entity, Pakistan faced many hurdles to get established.
Although the communal bloodbath that marked the birth of independent India and Pakistan on August 14â15, 1947, subsided after a few months, the dispute over Kashmir that broke out soon after has continued to vitiate relations between the neighbors. Indeed, their subsequent chronology has been peppered with so many challenges, crises, proxy wars, ongoing attempts to covertly exploit ethnic and other fault lines in their respective societies, hot wars, and threats of nuclear
In the introduction I explain that the sixty-five-year-old Kashmir dispute has its roots in the tensions between Hindus and Muslims datingback eight centuries. The subjugation of the Indian subcontinent by Britain after 1807 gave rise to Indian nationalism within a century. The aim of the anti-imperialist movement that rose sharply after World War I was open to two different interpretations. One was to end Britainâs imperial rule and transform enslaved India into a sovereign state. The other was to end the subjugations that the majority Hindusâthree-quarters of the populationâhad borne since 1192; they were now ready to administer a free India on the basis of one person, one vote. The two interpretations overlapped because the foremost anti-imperialist party, the Indian National Congress, was overwhelmingly Hindu.
In 1915 the return home of Mohandas K. Gandhi, a Gujarati Indian lawyer, from South Africa sowed a seed in national politics that would grow into a tree covering much political space. His rivalry with another Gujarati-speaking lawyer, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, would come to dominate subcontinental politics for three decades. This is the gist of Chapter 1.
A deeply religious man, Gandhi made an alliance with the Muslim leaders of the Khilafat movement, which was committed to the continuation of the caliphate based in Istanbul that had come under threat after the defeat of the Ottoman Empire by the Allied Powers in 1918. The Khilafat leaders backed the noncooperation campaign Gandhi launched in 1920. Its sudden suspension by Gandhi disappointed and bewildered them. The Hindu-Muslim unity forged to oppose the British Raj proved transitory. During the rest of the decade, Gandhi took up the causes of exploited peasants and workers; he garnered much publicity by launching such nonviolent campaigns as making salt from seawater without official permission. In the face of Gandhiâs spiraling fame, Jinnah moved his legal practice to London. This analytical narrative forms Chapter 2.
Chapter 3 covers the return of Jinnah from London to take up the leadership of the Muslim League and his articulation of the Two-Nation Theory. Though the League performed poorly in the 1937 elections, the policies of the Congress ministries, composed almost wholly of Hindus, gave a preview of the insensitivity of Congress officials toward the beliefs and mores of Muslims. The non-League Muslim leaders closed ranks with the League. In the 1945â1946 elections, the League won 73 percent of Muslim ballots, a giant leap from the previous 5 percent.
Britainâs decision to quit India after World War II intensified the rivalry between the Congress and the League: the former wished to inherit a united India from the British, and the latter resolved to establish a homeland for Muslims by partitioning the subcontinent. Communaltensions turned into violence. The chronology of this period constitutes Chapter 4.
Chapter 5 narrates the communal frenzy that gripped Punjab at the time of the birth of independent India and Pakistan in August 1947 and soon after. As a breakaway political entity, Pakistan faced many hurdles to get established.
Although the communal bloodbath that marked the birth of independent India and Pakistan on August 14â15, 1947, subsided after a few months, the dispute over Kashmir that broke out soon after has continued to vitiate relations between the neighbors. Indeed, their subsequent chronology has been peppered with so many challenges, crises, proxy wars, ongoing attempts to covertly exploit ethnic and other fault lines in their respective societies, hot wars, and threats of nuclear
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