Tariq Ali on India and Pakistan veering dangerously towards all-out war

India and Pakistan are preparing for war. The casus belli is, once again, occupied Kashmir. Control over this disputed region has since 1947 been the main obstacle to normalising relations between the two states. On 22 April, a group of Kashmiri militants targeted and killed 26 tourists enjoying the beauty of Pahalgam’s flower-filled meadows, crystal streams and snow-capped mountains; responsibility for the attack was claimed and then quickly disavowed by a little-known organization called the ‘Resistance Front’. This was a particular affront to Narendra Modi (whose record includes presiding, as Chief Minister, over the slaughter of an estimated 2,000 civilians in the 2002 Gujarat massacre, and long a defender of anti-Muslim pogroms). A far-right Hindu nationalist now in his third term as India’s Prime Minister, Modi had previously declared that there was no longer any serious Kashmir problem. His final solution – revoking Kashmir’s autonomous status in 2019 – had succeeded.

Nothing justifies the slaughter of the Pahalgam holidaymakers, and vanishingly few Kashmiri or Indian Muslims would support actions of this sort. But historical context is necessary to understand the overall situation in the province. Even Israel has a Ha’aretz. Not India. Kashmir remains an untouchable subject. This Muslim-majority province has never been allowed to determine its own fate, as promised by Congress leaders at the time of Independence. Instead, it was partitioned between the new republics of India and Pakistan after a short war in which the British commander of the Pakistan Army refused to agree to its use, leaving a ragtag force to face off against India’s regular troops. That well-known pacifist, Mahatma Gandhi, blessed the Indian invasion. Articles 370 and 35A of the Indian Constitution were supposed to guarantee Kashmir’s special status, not least by forbidding non-Kashmiris the right to buy property and settle there. This was combined with brutal repression of any stirrings of discontent, turning Kashmir into a police state with military units never too far away. Killings and rapes were common. Mass graves had been discovered.

Courageous Indian citizens (Arundhati Roy, Pankaj Mishra and others) relentlessly exposed these crimes. Angana Chatterji cited numerous examples uncovered in the course of her 2006-11 fieldwork:

Many have been forced to witness the rape of women and girl family members. A mother who was reportedly commanded to watch her daughter’s rape by army personnel pleaded for her child’s release. They refused. She then pleaded that she could not watch and asked to be sent out of the room or else killed. The soldier put a gun to her forehead, stating that he would grant her wish, and shot her dead before they proceeded to rape her daughter.

This would not have been illegal. The 1958 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act grants impunity for uniformed defenders of the Central State in ‘disturbed areas’, upheld by the Indian Supreme Court.

Modi’s strategy in 2019 was to flood Kashmir with Indian troops, imposing lockdowns, arresting local leaders and journalists and instilling enough terror in the population to ensure that there would be no protests such as might prompt objections from the Western powers. The goal was turning the Valley into the dairy centre for the whole country. Repression seemed to have worked – until now.

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The Indian Government is convinced that the killings were orchestrated by the Pakistan Army. No proof has so far been provided, but the charge is more plausible than the Pakistani response that this was a false-flag operation. To add to the confusion, on 24 April Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khwaja Asif confirmed on UK television that Pakistan had a long history of training and funding such terrorist organizations, saying ‘We have been doing this dirty work for the United States for about three decades’. A few days later Asif also forecast an Indian ‘excursion’ into Pakistan, only to later retract the remark.

Indian politicians of most stripes are calling for war. Shashi Tharoor, a Congresswallah and a former senior UN official has stated: ‘Yes, blood will be spilled but more of theirs than ours.’ The popular mood is for a short, sharp war of revenge. Israel’s genocide in Gaza has been approvingly referenced, but another model is more likely. After Israel bombed the Iranian Embassy in Damascus in April 2024, the CIA rushed to organise a carefully controlled response by Iran, with US, French, British and Jordanian air defences in the region primed to shoot down the incoming Iranian drones and missiles.   

The Indian Army and Air Force are currently engaged in planning an assault, but it may be of the Iranian variety. Retired generals are boasting of India’s drone reserves. The most extreme measure being discussed is to occupy Pakistani-controlled Kashmir and unite it with its Indian-occupied sibling. Threats to cut off the water supply to Pakistan are pure bluster and Bilawal Bhutto’s riposte – ‘If the water does not flow your blood will’ – was immature and stupid, even for a former Pakistani Foreign Minister.

The Indian press has alleged that an inflammatory public address to representatives of the Pakistani diaspora on 17 April by the country’s Army Chief, General Asim Munir, was the signal for Pahalgam. Others, including a former Pakistani army major, Adil Raja, are claiming that the attack was a personal initiative by Munir to boost his own standing and pave the way for a new military dictatorship. This was putatively opposed by the ISI. Damage control or truth? Difficult to say, though Munir’s appalling speech offers some clues.

The address was clearly designed to make clear to wealthy overseas Pakistanis that the Army runs the country. Some in the audience must have been hired to give standing ovations to the Army Chief’s unprecedentedly crude, uncouth and ignorant remarks. I cannot recall a single military dictator of the country ever speaking in such a fashion. Sandhurst-trained General Ayub Khan was bland and secular. General Yahya Khan was highly entertaining when drunk and avoided public appearances. General Zia-ul-Haq was a religious sadist, but desperate for a deal with India; denouncing Hindus was not his style. General Musharraf was essentially secular, relatively cultured and very keen on a rapprochement with India.

General Munir’s attempt to pose as a uniformed Pakistani version of Modi was a dismal failure. He made three assertions, all of them disgusting nationalist lies. First, that Hindus were and always had been the enemy, and that Muslims could never live with them. This is the inversion of Modi’s claim that all Indian Muslims are converts from Hinduism and ought to return to the old faith. Someone should have educated the General: Muslims co-existed with Hindus and later Sikhs for nearly twelve centuries prior to 1947. The Mughal period (hated by Modi and Islamic fundamentalists alike) led to integrated armies with Hindu and Muslim generals and soldiers defending the Muslim-created Empire.

Islam travelled so rapidly that many pre-Islamic traditions and rituals in West Africa, Europe, India, China and South-East Asia were incorporated into the new religion. The exclusively Wahhabi version of history taught today in Pakistan is narrow and false. There were many instances of Hindu-Muslim joint worship of saints in parts of pre-British India and even later.  This imbecilic version of Islamic history does a huge disservice to Pakistanis at home and abroad. It’s one reason for the inability of so many young Muslims to combat Islamophobia.

Munir referred to Kashmir thus: ‘It will be our jugular vein, we will not forget it, we will not leave our Kashmiri brothers in their historical struggle’. In reality, the bulk of Kashmiris have lived under Indian rule since August 1947. Pakistani-controlled Kashmir does not fit the General’s anatomical metaphor. It might more aptly be likened to a redundant duct of General Yahya’s liver.

The third, ultra-emotional reference concerned the inviolability of the ‘two-nation theory’ that was the basis of Pakistan’s ideological charter. But this was violated by the Pakistan Army in 1970, when it refused to recognize the fact that the Bengalis of East Pakistan had won an overall majority in elections that year. It was the refusal of General Yahya to accept the result that led to huge massacres of Bengali Muslims by their so-called brothers from West Pakistan, followed by civil war and Indian intervention. That was the end of the two-nation theory. Contrary to what the General told his audience, far from saving Pakistan, the Army High Command has brought it close to political and economic ruin. A list of Army Chiefs who retired as billionaires should have been made available to the assembled expatriates.

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Let us accept, for the sake of argument, that Pahalgam was a Pakistani operation. Why now? Pakistani officials argue that India is behind the Baluchistan Liberation Army (BLA), a nationalist guerrilla organization that wants the southwestern province to break from Pakistan. The BLA’s boldest recent action was on 13 March, when they derailed a train in the wilderness of the Bolan Pass and took the civilian passengers hostage. BLA units have attacked military encampments and railway stations fairly regularly. This particular atrocity was very well-prepared. Pakistan is sure – and many observers agree – that India is arming and funding the BLA. Speculation about Chinese naval activity at the port of Gwadar suggests to many that the US could be added to the list of BLA funders. Dozens of Chinese workers have been killed by Baluch nationalists.

It’s a complex picture and Pakistan is far from blameless in creating this lethal mix, but as Kurdish nationalists discovered there is no real independence in today’s world; the Kurds have allied themselves to Israel and the US in Iraq and Syria. The BLA face similar choices; expelling China from Gwadar can’t be the sole aim. The old progressive de-colonising nationalisms are long dead and gone. The choice for the Baluch is Pakistan or India, plus their respective allies. As in Kurdish areas, the appointed leaders will get rich while ordinary people suffer. Baluchistan is unlikely to be any different, and its minerals and other underground resources will be exploited by multinational giants. Look at Iraq.

Was Pahalgam a retaliation for the Bolan Pass attack a month before? It’s possible. Will war solve anything, even if India succeeds in adding a tiny sliver to the Kashmir it occupies? I doubt it. Behind the scenes India has offered Pakistan a deal along the following lines: ‘Let’s agree to the status quo and accept the Line of Control (border) as permanent. Then a peace treaty, open trade, lifting of all restrictions on Pakistani cricket and visa-free travel.’ I’m told that the Pakistan Army was tempted but divided. The ‘Kashmir is our jugular vein’ faction won.

As far as most Kashmiris are concerned, the best solution would be a unified autonomous state with its security needs guaranteed by Pakistan and India and the re-insertion of Articles 370 and 35A in India’s Constitution. Too good to come true? Perhaps. But the alternatives are unattainable or worse.

During the last round of protests against Modi’s authoritarian rule in India – as after the fall of Zia’s military dictatorship in 1988 – students and others, Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh, gathered on both sides of the border to recite a poem by Faiz Ahmad Faiz, denounced by the Modi folk as ‘anti-Hindu’:

We will see
We will surely see
The day that has been promised
carved in stone at the beginning of time
we will witness the day
when the mighty mountain of oppression and cruelty
will be blown away like cotton wool
when beneath the feet of us, the oppressed
The earth will move, will throb and shake
When over the heads of those that rule
Thunder and lightning will flash and roar
And only the name of God will remain
who is all around us and hidden from us
Who is both the spectacle and the audience
And the slogan will rise, ‘I am the truth’  
And that means me, and that means you
And God’s own people will rule at last
And that means me, and that means you
We will surely see that day

Read on: Tariq Ali, ‘Conquered Lands’, NLR 151.

Reposted from Sidecar