| Well, India, of course, was made up of individual states under the British Raj. Kashmir had a majority Muslim population, but a Hindu ruler, who elected to stay with India. The other majority Muslim territories became Pakistan. Later, of course, Bangledesh seceded, since it was on the other side of the Himalayas, spoke a different language, and had its interests neglected by the western part of Pakistan. At independence, there was a mass migration, Hindus to India, Muslims to Pakistan, that killed at least a million people, some through intercommunal violence, some from the crush of people and hardship of the journey. All Hindus got out of Pakistan/Bangledesh, but about 12% of the population of India remained Muslim, mostly in the cities (Salmon Rushdie is from Bombay). There is lots of bad blood, but the biggest outstanding issue is Kashmir. Under the cirumstances of its creation, I think that a revision of territories, consequent upon an internationally supervised plebiescite, would work. India is much stronger than Pakistan, and has no comparable tension with Bangladesh, so my guess is that the security problem is not acute. The main thing is that they don't want to cede territory........ |
