pg wrote on 02/16/20 at 18:25:32:Can you summarize the issues with Pakistand and India? I'm interested to hear what someone's perspective with first hand knowledge.
Best regards,
For nearly 60 yrs India and Pakisthan have fought over Kashmir (literally paradise on earth from the movies we have seen) Kashmir was a muslim majority state that wanted to stay autonomous but was supposed to go to plebiscite in 1989 if I recall. And Pakisthan's meddling in their autonomy from 1949 to 1989 meant Kashmir was going to likely go Indias way. Anyway Pak and India also fought over Bangladesh, parts of Gujarat etc. Some of these terrorist groups funded by Pakisthan's ISI were specifically built to fight India - Al Kanoon (The law) and Japat Al Nusra to name just 2 I remember. India's 9/11 was a Mumbai hotel shooting and subsequent hostage situation traced back to Pakisthan. Anyway Indians hate being called pakisthani. Indians outnumber pakisthani's by maybe 100 to 1 in the US, especially among citizens, and Indians are tired of Pakisthan getting preferred status for trade and what not because they were "helping" the fight in afghanisthan, except, they weren't, Pakisthan was hiding Bin Laden as well as shelter many other groups if not outright fund and arm them.
I may have some facts off here and there, Almost immediately upon the exit of the british in 1947 India and pakisthan went to war, India started losing territory etc etc. In 2019 Modi (India's Trump) essentially re occupied the disputed POK (Pakisthan occupied Kashmir) and Pakisthan essentially had to STFU, India is an economic powerhouse in that region, and Kashmiris were getting left behind, essentially now they are tired of living in paradise with nothing to do, no jobs, no food, nothing.
Similar to Boris Yeltzin's trip to a grocery store, google that - Sometime in the late 80's Boris Yeltzin on a trip to the US randomly decided to check out a grocery store, and walking through a supermarket somewhere in texas he said, if Russians see this store, communism is dead. The place was well stocked and people could easily buy what they need, stuff was good, fresh and affordable. Game set and match. Kashmir is now slowly awakening to the rest of India, it was deemed too dangerous to have people visit as tourists, and there was no industry for locals to make a living and no food really grew there cos its too mountainous.
Anyway, Some point in time it was bound to happen. There is a section of Kashmir now that is occupied by China, that's mostly where the muslim population of China (weegers I think they are called) lives. They likely would opt to break away from china and without autonomy be a viable option likely to join with India, however India has not opted to occupy that part of Kashmir. Other countries in that region Sikkim, Bhutan, Nepal, etc etc have all sort of opted to allow India control over various aspects of their national security because the other option is to go toward china, which they have not. Autonomy when you're 10,000 ft and up in the mountains have a miniscule size and are landlocked between 2 giants makes no sense. Nepal is the largest and China is meddling there attempting to strip mine the place because it is super rich in Lithium. Of late the influence of china has increased in that region mainly due to lithium.
Anyway Pakisthan vs India is also an age old rivalry in Cricket, in the 70's and 80's in our opinion they used to cheat both in umpiring and via ball tampering. But in the late 80's cricket went to Neutral umpires and cameras covering the entire field basically eliminated ball tampering to any real effect. Almost instantly Pakisthan turned mediocre even at home. India had world cup wins in 83 (England) and 85 (Australia) and finally didn't lose the series in 89-90 in pakisthan. Huge difference neutral umpiring made, though they were still tampering the ball, they knew where the blind spots were in cameras. New Zealand toured pakisthan in the 90-91 time frame, figured out where the blind spots were and also tampered the ball, prompting some analyst to comment "the game is fair now, both sides are cheating". New Zealand wasn't very good at tearing up the ball with bottle caps and so they lost then. LOL.
Anyway long running rivalry in hockey as well. I hate hockey so I wont go there. But They beat us in the 82 Asiad by bribing our goalie. Pakisthan also had a good hockey team though, and were world champions in squash (similar game to racketball) No idea about that sport, I didn't follow it. Badminton was my second favorite sport to play, no pakisthani or Indian got close to being a champion, china, indonesia, and Denmark and Netherlands etc dominated that game.
Politics, sport and religion. Holy trinity.
Cool.
Srinath.