ACTIVITY 1 SPECIAL REPORT - THE INDIA-PAKISTAN CRISIS W&I pp 18 - 33
This month’s Special Report on Indian-Pakistani conflict is apt for two reasons: This year marks a half-century of conflict over Jammu and Kashmir, and today’s headlines underline the continuing strife on the Indian subcontinent. We will focus on two of the articles in this report.
1. Muslims have been in the news lately, sometimes depicted as radical terrorists, sometimes as peace lovers who abhor violence. After reading "Kashmir: The Fifty-Year Crisis," by John Tkacik, explain the role that religion has played in the long-running struggle over Jammu and Kashmir.
2. Before you can make sense of this article, you need to understand the geographical relationships of the region it encompasses. On a map of Asia, locate Kashmir and surrounding countries including India, Pakistan, Myanmar (previously known as Burma), and China. Also locate the Aksai Chin, Bangladesh, the Karakorum Mountains, and Xinjiang (Turkistan).
3. What were Lord Mountbatten’s qualifications for overseeing India’s transition to independence as "the last viceroy"?
4. In what way(s) does it appear that Sir Cyril Radcliffe was an unfortunate choice to partition India?
5. Tkacik refers to the December 1971 war that ended with the signing of the Simla Accord as the third Indo-Pakistani war. When did the previous two occur?
6. After reading Tkacik’s article about the Kashmir crisis, interpret his conclusion: "The root cause of Indo-Pakistani enmity, it seems, is not Kashmir. It is India and Pakistan."
7. In the sidebar, Tkacik uses religious affiliation as a way to describe the men involved. What does he mean when he says that soldiers "looked like Hindus, not Muslims"?
8. Does the sidebar offer any hope about the long-running conflict between Pakistan and India?
9.
How is Tkacik’s writing style in the sidebar different from the article it accompanies? What is the purpose of writing in a different style?
10. Now read quot;The Vital American Role in South Asia." Despite the title of Mahmood Butt’s essay, the relationship is symbiotic: the United States has a security interest in providing assistance to India and Pakistan. What are the four goals that he asserts will serve U.S. interests?
11. According to Butt, what event effectively sabotaged the Lahore Declaration?
12. What is his fear in the event that the United States does not offer sustained assistance to India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan?
