Dispute in Kashmir

When British colonial forces withdrew from the Indian subcontinent in 1947, the territory was divided into two newly independent countries: Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. For the latter, two Muslim-majority provinces in India—Bengal and Punjab—were carved up to join Pakistan. However, the rulers of the subcontinent’s princely states—semiautonomous kingdoms governed indirectly by the British—were given the option to choose between the two countries. The decision was typically straightforward, falling along geographic lines. 

Kashmir—the largest princely state—presented a unique case. Its majority population was Muslim, but its ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, was Hindu. The Maharaja initially decided that Kashmir would remain independent. However, within months, Pashtun tribesmen from the northwest of Pakistan invaded Kashmir, allegedly with Pakistani support. To maintain control, the Maharaja exchanged independence for Indian military aid. Hari Singh signed a document known as the Instrument of Accession agreeing that Kashmir would join India but remain an autonomous region within the country.  

India accepted those terms and intervened in Kashmir, sparking a war with Pakistan. Following a year of fighting, the two countries agreed to a UN-brokered cease-fire. India was left in control of roughly two-thirds of Kashmir, and Pakistan controlled the rest. China claimed an eastern portion of the region in the 1950s. 

The original cease-fire called for a referendum in which Kashmiris could decide the region’s status. However, that referendum was never held, and the region’s division became permanent. Pakistan maintains that, in the absence of a referendum, India’s control in Kashmir is illegitimate. India holds that the maharaja legally signed the Instrument of Accession and that Kashmir’s regional government, and voters, have repeatedly affirmed the region’s status as a part of India. Therefore, India argues, no referendum is needed. 

In the decades following the initial determination of Kashmir’s status, the region remained a source of tension. India and Pakistan have fought two full-scale wars over the territory and participated in numerous smaller skirmishes. Each of those conflicts, however, has ended more or less back where it began. The original cease-fire line (now called the Line of Control or LOC) continues to divide the region between Indian- and Pakistani-administered Kashmir to this day. Kashmiris, meanwhile, have experienced internal unrest due to the dispute. Decades of separatist militant violence—some of which has been supported by Pakistan—and fierce Indian military responses have claimed tens of thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands more. 

Throughout that period, Kashmir largely maintained its autonomous status. In recent decades, however, the region’s autonomy has become a focal point for a rising wave of Hindu nationalism—a political ideology advocating for India’s politics and culture to be tied to its majority Hindu faith. A key demand of the movement has been integrating Kashmir into India by revoking its autonomous status. The movement accelerated in 2014 with the rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party. Modi initially introduced a series of laws marginalizing India’s non-Hindu population and enabling the government to quash dissent. Under those laws, and amid allegations of increasing Pakistan-sponsored militant activity, Kashmir saw a severe crackdown on civil liberties. Constant surveillance, curfews, and internet blackouts became the norm. Then, in 2019, Modi fulfilled a core Hindu nationalist goal by revoking Kashmir’s special autonomy. Following the decision, Indian authorities increasingly asserted control in Kashmir. Any opposition was met with public beatings, tear gas, and forced disappearances. Hindu Indians, moreover, were enabled to purchase land in Kashmir, which Kashmiris saw as an attempt to manipulate the region’s demographic makeup.  

In Kashmir, most remain opposed to India’s increased presence; one 2020 survey found that 91 percent of Kashmiri students wished for the complete withdrawal of Indian forces from the region, and a large majority also want a referendum to resolve Kashmir’s status. Human rights activists have labeled India’s activity as a form of occupation in the region. Pakistan, for its part, has condemned India’s decision and vowed to consider “all possible options” to oppose it. Meanwhile, as tensions rise, around 6.8 million people in Kashmir continue to grapple with political repression and sporadic militant violence. Since 2019, outbursts of violence have resulted in more than four hundred deaths in the region.