Attempts at resolution and legitimization

Although there was a clear Muslim majority in Kashmir before the 1947 partition, and its economic, cultural, and geographic contiguity with the Muslim-majority area of the Punjab could be convincingly demonstrated, the political developments during and after the partition resulted in a division of the region. Pakistan was left with territory that, although basically Muslim in character, was thinly populated, relatively inaccessible, and economically underdeveloped. The largest Muslim group, situated in the Vale of Kashmir and estimated to number more than half the population of the entire region, lay in Indian-administered territory, with its former outlets via the Jhelum valley route blocked.

Many proposals were subsequently made to end the dispute over Kashmir, but tensions mounted between the two countries following the Chinese incursion into Ladakh in 1962, and warfare broke out between India and Pakistan in 1965. A cease-fire was established in September, followed by an agreement signed by the two sides at Tashkent (Uzbekistan) in early January 1966, in which they resolved to try to end the dispute by peaceful means. Fighting again flared up between the two in 1971 as part of the India-Pakistan war that resulted in the creation of Bangladesh. An accord signed in the Indian city of Shimla in 1972 expressed the hope that henceforth the countries in the region would be able to live in peace with each other. It was widely believed that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, then prime minister of Pakistan, might have tacitly accepted the line of control as the de facto border, although he later denied this. After Bhutto was arrested in 1977 and executed in 1979, the Kashmir issue once again became the leading cause of conflict between India and Pakistan.

A number of movements have variously sought a merger of Kashmir with Pakistan or independence for the region from both India and Pakistan. To contend with these movements and confront Pakistani forces along the cease-fire line, the Indian union government has maintained a strong military presence there, especially since the end of the 1980s. Until 2019 the military presence was also intended to support the administrative integrity of Jammu and Kashmir state from movements seeking Indian union territory status for Buddhist Ladakh.

Insurgency and counterinsurgency

Disillusioned with lack of progress through the democratic process, militant organizations began to pop up in the region in the late 1980s. Their purpose was to resist control from the Indian union government. By the early 1990s the militancy had evolved into an insurgency, and India engaged in a crackdown campaign. The rigour of the fighting died down in the mid-1990s, though occasional violence continued to take place.

The Kargil area of western Ladakh has often been the site of border conflicts, including a serious incident in 1999. In May of that year Pakistan intensified artillery shelling of the Kargil sector. Meanwhile, the Indian army discovered that militants had infiltrated the Indian zone from the Pakistan side and had established positions within and west of the Kargil area. Intense fighting ensued, resulting in the Kargil War (May–July 1999) that left several hundred combatants dead from each country. The Indian army managed to reclaim most of the area on the India side of the line of control that had been occupied by the infiltrators. Hostilities finally ended when Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan gave his assurance that the infiltrators would retreat.

However, shelling across the line of control continued intermittently into the early 21st century, until a cease-fire agreement was reached in 2004. Tensions in the region subsequently diminished, and India and Pakistan sought more cordial relations in general and greater regional cooperation. Limited passenger bus service began in 2005 between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad on either side of the frontier, and, after the devastating earthquake in the region later that year, India and Pakistan allowed survivors and trucks carrying relief supplies to cross at several points along the line of control. In addition, in 2008 both countries opened cross-border trade links through the Kashmir region for the first time since the 1947 partition; trucks carrying locally produced goods and manufactures began operating between Srinagar and Muzaffarabad and between Rawalkot, Pakistan, and Punch, India.

Despite these advances, tensions have continued to erupt periodically in the region. Prolonged violent protests flared up over control of a piece of land used by Hindu pilgrims visiting the Amarnath cave shrine east of Srinagar in 2008 and again in 2010 after Indian soldiers killed three Pakistani villagers who they claimed were militants trying to infiltrate across the line of control. A subsequent investigation revealed that the soldiers had in fact lured the men to the area and murdered them in cold blood.

Another cycle of unrest began after the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) swept elections across India in 2014. The party had won an outright majority in the national legislature and began pushing policies nationwide to promote Hindutva (“Hindu-ness”). The BJP, which strongly favored the union of Kashmir with India, had become the second largest party in the Jammu and Kashmir Legislative Assembly and formed a unity government with the slightly larger People’s Democratic Party (PDP), whose platform centered on the implementation of self-rule in Kashmir. As the Hindutva and pro-India policies of the BJP stoked the anxieties of the region’s predominantly Muslim population, Kashmir saw an uptick in unrest. The growing tensions erupted into rioting in July 2016 after the commander of an Islamic militant group was killed in an operation by Indian security forces. India’s union government, dominated by the BJP, began asserting increased control over the state as a matter of national security and launched a crackdown on militants. In late 2018 the union government dissolved the government of Jammu and Kashmir and began direct rule of the state after the BJP left the state’s unity coalition and caused its collapse.

Kashmir experienced its greatest friction in decades in February 2019. On February 14 a suicide bomber associated with a militant separatist group killed 40 members of India’s Central Reserve Police Force, the deadliest attack on Indian security forces in three decades. With a tough election cycle approaching, India’s BJP-led government faced pressure from its supporters to take forceful action. Days later India sent fighter jets across Kashmir’s line of control for the first time in five decades and later claimed to have conducted air strikes against the militant group’s largest training camp. Pakistan denied the claim, saying that the jets had struck an empty field. The next day, Pakistan shot down two Indian jets in its airspace and captured a pilot. Yet, despite the aggravation, many analysts believed that both India and Pakistan intended to avoid escalation. In the aftermath, Pakistan implemented a crackdown on militants in its country, issuing arrests, closing a large number of religious schools, and promising to update its existing laws. A few months later the BJP won a landslide victory in India’s elections, expanding its representation in the parliament’s lower chamber.

As the BJP continued along its forceful push in Jammu and Kashmir, the union government in August built up its military presence in the state and within days undertook action to formalize its direct control there. Exploiting a constitutional provision that allowed the union government to integrate Jammu and Kashmir upon the approval of a no-longer-extant elected body, it suspended Jammu and Kashmir’s autonomy and applied India’s constitution fully to the territory. It also passed legislation to downgrade the state in October to a union territory—thereby allowing the union government full control over its governance—and to split off the Ladakh region into a separate union territory of its own.

Chinese interests

China had never accepted the British-negotiated boundary agreements in northeastern Kashmir. This remained the case following the communist takeover in China in 1949, although the new government did ask India—without success—to open negotiations regarding the border. After Chinese authority was established in Tibet and reasserted in Xinjiang, Chinese forces penetrated into the northeastern parts of Ladakh. This was done mainly because it allowed them to build a military road through the Aksai Chin plateau area (completed in 1956–57) to provide better communication between Xinjiang and western Tibet; it also gave the Chinese control of passes in the region between India and Tibet. India’s belated discovery of this road led to border clashes between the two countries that culminated in the Sino-Indian war of October 1962. China has occupied the northeastern part of Ladakh since the conflict. India refused to negotiate with China on the alignment of the Ladakhi boundary in this area, and the incident contributed significantly to a diplomatic rift between the two countries that began to heal only in the late 1980s. In the following decades, China worked to improve its relations with India, but there has been no resolution to the disputed Ladakh frontier.