Behind the division of the sub-continent lies a great debate, that of Jinnah vs Gandhi. Was it the true aspiration of the people to get divided geographically while getting independence from British rule? It seems the divide happened because of some ideology driven people (Iqbal) who convinced other leaders (Jinnah) to pursue it. Today, this is a raging battle in Pakistan, did Pakistan ever need to be an independent country, considering how peacefully muslims are living in India vs the ready-to-cut-throats Pakistanis?
It's a sad fact that the departure of the British Empire from various colonial possessions frequently resulted in a power vacuum followed by deep internal conflicts which remain problematic today - Ireland, Israel, and India being three obvious examples.
> It's a sad fact that the departure of the British Empire from various colonial possessions frequently resulted in a power vacuum followed by deep internal conflicts which remain problematic today - Ireland, Israel, and India being three obvious examples.
Let's not be overly generous.
I won't speak to Ireland or Israel, but in the case of India, the political strife was not a coincidence - it was the all-but-deliberate result of the British. They actively funded terrorist groups on conflicting sides with the express goal of dividing the region not just geographically (Partition), but ideologically and politically.
(This is, of course, not too different from the US funding terrorist groups when it is politically convenient to do so, and then invading foreign countries to overthrow the rulers brought to power by those same terrorist groups, when it becomes politically convenient to do that instead.)
> They actively funded terrorist groups on conflicting sides with the express goal of dividing the region not just geographically (Partition), but ideologically and politically.
Can you give me some specific examples of terrorist groups? From my readings, the British just successfully managed to divide the Hindu and Muslim populations using discriminating policies (like the pig / cow oil on guns in the 1800s), and let the divisions play out. They did support Gandhi and Jinnah, but I never came across them actively funding terrorist organizations.
>It's a sad fact that the departure of the British Empire from various colonial possessions frequently resulted in a power vacuum followed by deep internal conflicts which remain problematic today - Ireland, Israel, and India being three obvious examples.
Not a "sad fact". It's how the "british empire" planned it, melticulously and with great effort and cunning.
It's a result of their "divide and conquer" way of ruling, in their colonial era, and it's something they pursued afterwards in order to keep it's post colonial grip on those places. With lackeys, puppet governments et al.
Oh, and add Cyprus/Nothern Cyprus, Ethiopia/Eritrea etc to the mix.
You seem to think I'm saying it was unavoidable/inevitable, but I'm deliberately abstaining from commentary on the causes. Being Irish myself, I have my opinions about this but this doesn't seem like the place to air them.
Sounds like you were looking for a polemic and were disappointed to documentary work instead. Strangely enough I lerned a great deal about colonial misrule of India from reading the same book, but that doesn't make the viewpoints of the pro-empire participants less interesting.
Au contraire. It is not polemic to call a spade a spade. Nor it is documentary work to propagate a biased and watered down version. In fact, it is propaganda. If you have the appetite for colonial misrule these articles might help paint a backdrop:
Pakistan is a pretty screwed up country in a great many ways, and much of their problems are due to Islam having such a central role in the identify of the country. I think they have the capacity to get past their problems but they have as difficult a problem ahead of them as does Iraq, Syria, or Lebanon.
On a meta-level it's fascinating how the vast majority of countries in the world still tend to be mono-ethnic "nation states". Even in the most westernized parts of Europe there are overarching tendencies for nations to fly apart into their component sub-ethnicities rather than to stick together based on belief in common values. Look at Britain and the ongoing discontent of Wales and Scottland, let alone Northern Ireland. Or Belgium threatening to split into two countries. Or the Basques in Spain. Or the history of Czechoslovakia, the USSR, Yugoslavia, etc.
> and much of their problems are due Islam having such a central role in the identify of the country.
Not really. The East Pakistan/West Pakistan war (which resulted in an independant Bangladesh) was between Muslim groups with little religious difference, but huge language, class, and cultral bigotry, with the Urdu-speaking West Pakistani-dominated millitary having a significant role.
Islam was pretty irrelevant. And my impression is that much of the harshest religious conflict in India itself owes plenty to Hindu extremists.
(From my POV the biggest problem in Pakistan is that a minority of usually millitary-backed elites remain in power, no matter how corrupt or awful they are, because they attract US support so long as they pretended to battle Communism during the Cold War, and now radical Islam. But actual Pakistanis or real experts on Pakistani politics may wish to correct me.)
If I said that "much of the problems in the deep South in the United States are due to the prominence of Christianity in their culture" nobody would bat an eye, and nobody would read it as being anti-Christian.
Denying that there are very real problems within the Islamic world, some of which are core to the religion, is an example of naivete, ignorance, or propaganda.
> If I said that "much of the problems in the deep South in the United States are due to the prominence of Christianity in their culture" nobody would bat an eye
I would.
There's a complex two-way interplay between the particular forms of Christianity that are common in the deep South and the deep seated history of conflict, division, etc., in the region, but to portray the problems as the result of Christianity qua Christianity is, at best, simply useless.
