At the Great Decisions meeting of March 28, the subject was India.  A native of India, now living in the U.S., sat in and contributed valuable information.
 In many ways, the story of India is a happy one.  It is the world’s largest democracy.  It is growing economically, especially in information technology.  On the other hand, overpopulation is a great problem, making for large crowds of people in the cities who have spilled over from the countryside.  In addition, Hindu nationalism is entrenched and is growing stronger.
 Hindu nationalism is pitted against Muslim fundamentalism in Pakistan, India’s next-door neighbor and chief rival.  The conflict between the two is frightening for the whole world, since both nations have nuclear weapons.  In addition, the U.S. needs help from Pakistan (and to a degree, from India) in fighting terrorism.
 The chief cause of antagonism between India and Pakistan is Kashmir, a beautiful, mostly-mountainous province that lies between the two nations.  When India achieved independence in the 1940s, Kashmir was a “princely state,” and the prince wanted to be independent of both countries.  He had to choose one country or the other, however, and he chose to be united with India.  So India occupied the province.  In much of Kashmir, however, the majority are Muslims, and Pakistan, a Muslim country, invaded the province.  At the end of the war, Pakistan occupied part of  Kashmir, and that’s where the matter now stands, except that there have been several India-Pakistan wars and continued informal violence with Pakistan supporting guerrillas armies fighting the Indian army.
 According to our Indian guest, most of the Muslins in Kashmir were originally content to live under Indian rule, though the Hindu-Muslim conflict and the behavior of the Indian army have turned them against India.  In any case, the conflict has been escalating, and mutual hatred has become more and more inflamed over the decades.   The great danger, of course, is that the conflict between India and Pakistan will result in nuclear war.
 We saw no way out of this dangerous situation.   During the Cold War, we remembered, the U.S. and the Soviet Union refrained from using nuclear weapons because each know that it would be destroyed by the weapons of the other side.  Likewise, an India-Pakistan nuclear exchange would be suicidal.  However, that might not make any difference to the religious fanatics who would be firing the weapons.
 It was pointed out that neither India nor Pakistan would ever destroy its nuclear weapons, and if the U.S. tried to intervene, that would seem to the combatants that we were merely throwing our weight around.
 In the absence of any solution; all we can do is hope.

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