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Tragicomic posted:Would a nuclear exchange, purely between Pakistan and India, reduce human population enough to mitigate climate change? Not even close, and whatever cooling that would result from the upper atmospheric debris would have its own consequences: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2011/02/110223-nuclear-war-winter-global-warming-environment-science-climate-change/
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Mar 1, 2019 03:52
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I don't know anything about politics on the subcontinent but I really hope I don't have to see 500 million+ people perish over some stupid nationalist bullshit posturing in my lifetime.
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Mar 1, 2019 04:28
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Crossposting from another forum:quote:
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Mar 1, 2019 04:38
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When will we learn of Modi's next move?
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Mar 1, 2019 22:02
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Not good https://twitter.com/AP/status/1101713237597409281
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Mar 2, 2019 06:36
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So what's the general conflict of this about? Why do Pakistan and India hate each other so much? Is it really just about Kashmir?
punk rebel ecks fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 06:50
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what's the general conflict of this about? Why do Pakistan and India hate each other so much? Is it really just about Kashmir? It's about Kashmir and religion. Islam vs. Hindu, which will be the dominant faith of the subcontinent.
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Mar 2, 2019 07:18
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https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/asia/india-pakistan-crisis.html That covers a lot of the history behind it.
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Mar 2, 2019 07:21
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Charlz Guybon posted:It's about Kashmir and religion. Islam vs. Hindu, which will be the dominant faith of the subcontinent. ehhhhhhhh, i'm not sure about that second sentence at all punk rebel ecks posted:So what's the general conflict of this about? Why do Pakistan and India hate each other so much? Is it really just about Kashmir? the roots are basically in the huge debacle that was partition, but yes, the lion's share of their historical problems is jockeying over kashmir; pakistan (somewhat credibly) argued back in the late 40s that all of kashmir should have gone to them because the partition was on sectarian lines and it was majority muslim. This didn't happen, to gloss over some hilariously clusterfucked history.
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Mar 2, 2019 07:32
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A more basic reason would be access to water via the Indus, which isn't especially great with climate change on course to only exacerbate the problem further.
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Mar 2, 2019 07:39
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Office Pig posted:A more basic reason would be access to water via the Indus, which isn't especially great with climate change on course to only exacerbate the problem further. Yeah, that's the most important resource in Kashmir - it's existentially crucial to Pakistan, but western India wouldn't exactly be delighted if they totally lost access to / control of / their proportion of the Indus water supply. the water treaty's actually been pretty well held to, but as you say, it's understandable for Pakistan to be terrified
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Mar 2, 2019 07:45
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Do both countries have legitimate reasons for their beef or is it like the Israel and Palestine conflict where  both sides have their points?
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Mar 2, 2019 07:55
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punk rebel ecks posted:So what's the general conflict of this about? Why do Pakistan and India hate each other so much? Is it really just about Kashmir? The short of it is that Gandhi did some things that led the British Empire to let India go. The Empire, knowing full well that the two nations would positively despise each other, divided it into two countries; Pakistan being very Muslim and India being very Hindu and Buddhist. There are ethnic divides as well but things were deliberately drawn in a way that would put the countries at each other's throats. This is the result. The other details are pointless; the part that matters is the Empire decided to be a bunch of dicks and create a deliberately unstable region.
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Mar 2, 2019 08:05
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The short of it is that Gandhi did some things that led the British Empire to let India go. The Empire, knowing full well that the two nations would positively despise each other, divided it into two countries; Pakistan being very Muslim and India being very Hindu and Buddhist. There are ethnic divides as well but things were deliberately drawn in a way that would put the countries at each other's throats.
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Mar 2, 2019 08:12
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ToxicSlurpee posted:The short of it is that Gandhi did some things that led the British Empire to let India go. The Empire, knowing full well that the two nations would positively despise each other, divided it into two countries; Pakistan being very Muslim and India being very Hindu and Buddhist. There are ethnic divides as well but things were deliberately drawn in a way that would put the countries at each other's throats. What that's not an accurate description at all. The British Empire didn't want to lose India at all, why would they deliberately destabilize it? The reality is that by the end British Raj had only a very tenuous grasp over the subcontinent, and events were increasingly being driven by the decision of Jinnah and Nehru. Partition was obviously a disaster but it definitely wasn't the intention of the departing British to make it so, they were mostly against partition in the first place.
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Mar 2, 2019 08:13
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punk rebel ecks posted:Do both countries have legitimate reasons for their beef or is it like the Israel and Palestine conflict where If you accept the arguably very stupid "let's partition the British Raj by religion, what could go wrong" proposition, Pakistan has the better original claim. The Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir (like a lot of dinkier princes) discerned that while his province was majority Muslim, the non-Muslims there of which he was one would be very angry if he decided to join Pakistan, so he made the clearly optimal decision for a minor power between two much larger states that were about to have other border and population disputes: he decided to remain independent. Everything immediately went completely to hell. Part of the Muslim population revolted, with quiet support from Pakistan. This didn't go over well, to put it mildly, with the state or with the Hindu population. Pakistan invades on the invitation of the Muslim insurgency / majority, India invades on the invitation of the Maharaja and Hindu minority, India winds up getting two thirds of the actual territory. Actual Kashmiri opinion on the subject is, uh, complicated, but there's probably a lot of support for independence/autonomy, and the Indian military have been kinda assholes over the last 30-40 years of on-and-off Kashmiri insurgency (supported by Pakistan, of course). it would admittedly be hilarious if we came full circle right back to an independent kashmir, after the entire mess started with that proposition blowing up in the maharaja's face Squalid posted:What that's not an accurate description at all. The British Empire didn't want to lose India at all, why would they deliberately destabilize it? The reality is that by the end British Raj had only a very tenuous grasp over the subcontinent, and events were increasingly being driven by the decision of Jinnah and Nehru. Partition was obviously a disaster but it definitely wasn't the intention of the departing British to make it so, they were mostly against partition in the first place. yeah, by the 40s the partition debacle was probably unavoidable Goatse James Bond fucked around with this message at 08:32 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 08:26
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You can't divide the two countries by religions because people don't live physically on two side of an invisible line. There was nothing the British could draw on the map that can satisfy both sides. Yes it was a Brit who draw the border line but a lot of this bad blood had to do with the subcontinent was not unified before the British except a brief time under Ashoka; there was no unified single language and culture to build a common foundation for a single nation state; subcontinent long lasting caste system has tendency to encourage two different religions because the oppressed lower castes has inventive to jump ship to a different religion that doesn't recognize caste in principle. So the Brit top priority was get the gently caress out of the British Raj asap and don't get blame. They couldn't prevent the split of the country by religions. I mean the Brits probably could have and should have cut out another country for the Sikhs but interestingly they didn't.
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Mar 2, 2019 11:09
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Perhaps the fact that the continent was horrifically under developed and exploited by the British and had been managed by playing one part of the population against the other had something to do with the explosion of violence. I mean seriously if you find yourself typing out an ethical defense of the British in India then maybe take a second to reflect on how you ended up where you are.
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Mar 2, 2019 16:42
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GreyjoyBastard posted:If you accept the arguably very stupid "let's partition the British Raj by religion, what could go wrong" proposition, Pakistan has the better original claim. It's worth noting that 'kinda assholes' translates to rape squads as a standard military tactic. The way the Indian government treats Kashmiri Muslims is loving horrific. Don't assume this makes Pakistan the clear-cut good guys, though - they're basicallly a criminal enterprise masquerading as a state these days, and are more interested in profiting from Kashmiri Muslims' despair and rage than relieving it. Also, they're quite happy to murder Kashmiri Hindus, who may have historically been a minority, and presently benefit from a deeply bigoted, repressive regime, but still lived there before this whole mess kicked off and have their own history of pogroms and expulsions at the hands of Muslims. Darth Walrus fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Mar 2, 2019 |
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Mar 2, 2019 16:51
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Helsing posted:Perhaps the fact that the continent was horrifically under developed and exploited by the British and had been managed by playing one part of the population against the other had something to do with the explosion of violence. Something to do with it, yes, but it's not as though history began when the British arrived.
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Mar 2, 2019 18:50
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just another posted:Something to do with it, yes, but it's not as though history began when the British arrived. If you watched a conversation between two people about the holocaust, and one person says "the Germans are responsible" and the second person says "[The Germans had] something to do with it, yes, but it's not as though the history of Poland began when Germany arrived" would you view that as a totally neutral and factual statement or would you quite reasonably conclude that this person is uncomfortable with candidly admitting the extent of Germany's crimes? I use the example of the holocaust because Godwin aside the record of British colonial rule in India is comparable to the imperial ambitions of the Third Reich in eastern Europe. In fact, in a very real sense, the colonial imperialism of the British (particularly in North America) was the direct and explicit inspiration for Hitler's project of colonizing eastern Europe. The difference moral between the British Empire and the Thousand Year Reich is mostly just a matter of the Germans having better logistics and technology. If the British East India company had access to poison gas and panzers you'd better believe they would have made good use of them. Maybe if the centuries long rule of Britain hadn't been directly predicated on taking one of the wealthiest industrial regions of the world (vastly more productive than England when the British arrived), stripping it for parts, immiserating its population, overseeing multiple genocidal famines that killed tends of millions and managing everything by constantly playing up local ethnic strife and acrimony, then the country wouldn't have immediately collapsed into a brutal civil war when the British left.
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Mar 2, 2019 19:30
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Helsing posted:Perhaps the fact that the continent was horrifically under developed and exploited by the British and had been managed by playing one part of the population against the other had something to do with the explosion of violence. If you are trying to use ethics as a lens through which to understand historical processes and events you are going to confuse yourself and wind up at nonsensical or irrelevant conclusions. Whether Lord Mountbatten or Nehru were ethical is so utterly irrelevant to why partition was a mess I'm straining to even understand what you're even going on about. Seriously loling at a modern day Gildas writing in his De Excidio Indis that the subcontinent fell into war and division because the British lost divine favour through the sin of hubris or whatever the gently caress
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Mar 2, 2019 19:32
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Squalid posted:If you are trying to use ethics as a lens through which to understand historical processes and events you are going to confuse yourself and wind up at nonsensical or irrelevant conclusions. Whether Lord Mountbatten or Nehru were ethical is so utterly irrelevant to why partition was a mess I'm straining to even understand what you're even going on about. He's saying, correctly, that a huge reason for partition was the british stoking sectarian infighting and resentment in India in the decades following the mutiny.
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Mar 2, 2019 19:40
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Squalid posted:If you are trying to use ethics as a lens through which to understand historical processes and events you are going to confuse yourself and wind up at nonsensical or irrelevant conclusions. Whether Lord Mountbatten or Nehru were ethical is so utterly irrelevant to why partition was a mess I'm straining to even understand what you're even going on about. Reread what you just quoted. The ethics are relevant because the fact that Britain was a genocidal white supremacist empire had a direct impact on how they governed. This isn't some pointless ethical aside, I'm directly speaking to the material system established by the British to maintain their power. The British ran the empire by literally destroying the previous economies and social structures of the places they conquered and then replacing them with a colonial administrative system that was predicated on dividing the population through ethnic and religious rivalries so that they'd be easier to manage. It was entirely predictable that such a system would produce horrific results when it eventually collapsed.
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Mar 2, 2019 19:41
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The empire rulers play different ethnic/sectarian groups against each other in order to stay on top and in control, Brits were not the only one doing it, both Stalin, French did it, but the Brits do it more skillfully. So all of them were fully responsible for the blood of their hands when they were rulers of the empires. But when they leave, their main goal is to stay in good grace with all former colony countries for maximum trade benefit. Nation State is actually a pretty recent concept came out of Westphalia Treaty. How do you choose to interpret the definition of border and citizen in dealing with the neighbors, a nation has certain degree of flexibility.
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Mar 2, 2019 20:25
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Helsing posted:Reread what you just quoted. The ethics are relevant because the fact that Britain was a genocidal white supremacist empire had a direct impact on how they governed. This isn't some pointless ethical aside, I'm directly speaking to the material system established by the British to maintain their power. Your ethics are hopelessly relativistic medieval mumbo jumbo and as long as you insist on inserting this kind of trite moralizing into a materialist history your conclusions are not even going to be wrong, they will simply be nonsense.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:02
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Helsing, as the mushroom clouds bloom over Karachi and Dehli: Wow, colonialism really was bad. Really makes you think
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Mar 2, 2019 21:29
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Squalid posted:Your ethics are hopelessly relativistic medieval mumbo jumbo and as long as you insist on inserting this kind of trite moralizing into a materialist history your conclusions are not even going to be wrong, they will simply be nonsense. I've made a very straight forward material claim about British rule directly creating the conditions that lead to mass violence following the Empire's sudden withdrawal. Once again it is contained within the very passage that you're quoting.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:32
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Squalid posted:Your ethics are hopelessly relativistic medieval mumbo jumbo and as long as you insist on inserting this kind of trite moralizing into a materialist history your conclusions are not even going to be wrong, they will simply be nonsense. The partition on India and Pakistan was done in living memory, and it was influenced by colonialism. That's undeniable, not medieval mumbo jumbo. We can argue all day to what degree it was influenced, and whether there were other factors exacerabted by colonialism, such as religion or poverty in the region. But colonialism absolutely played a role in it.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:40
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Squalid posted:What that's not an accurate description at all. The British Empire didn't want to lose India at all, why would they deliberately destabilize it? The reality is that by the end British Raj had only a very tenuous grasp over the subcontinent, and events were increasingly being driven by the decision of Jinnah and Nehru. Partition was obviously a disaster but it definitely wasn't the intention of the departing British to make it so, they were mostly against partition in the first place. They didn't want to lose India but realized it was ultimately inevitable. There was no way they were going to hold it. Gandhi pretty specifically warned about dividing it into two states the way it was done specifically because of what the result would be. He managed to keep the peace for a while as both sides adored him but it didn't take all that long for him to get assassinated and the whole thing to explode. Now you have two nuclear powers that positively loathe each other.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:42
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I think we can call this the South Asian Thread now. Any creditable news, culture, art, debate from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka is welcome here.
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Mar 2, 2019 21:50
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Assuming we could change the current border, what would it be instead?
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Mar 2, 2019 22:02
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Tab8715 posted:Assuming we could change the current border, what would it be instead? The ideal would be for one state without that border. It would likely have worked out best if it was just one country sorting out their differences democratically rather than with the hostility and dick waving we have now. Good luck convincing them to even not hate each other at this point. Granted that might have also led to a bloody civil war anyway so it might just be one of those impossible situations where you have two groups of people who will absolutely never get along.
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Mar 2, 2019 22:19
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Squalid posted:Helsing, as the mushroom clouds bloom over Karachi and Dehli: Wow, colonialism really was bad. You seem pretty angry about Helsing stating a straightforward fact of historical record. why do you have a problem with the Raj taking its responsibility for the violence and sectarianism leading up to partition and it's aftereffects that could lead to nuclear war.
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Mar 2, 2019 22:23
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Tab8715 posted:Assuming we could change the current border, what would it be instead? That's especially difficult because the ethnoreligious groupings match awkwardly with the vital natural resources. Like, even if you managed to create a perfect border between Muslim and Hindu areas, you'd run into the problem of one side cutting off the other's water or something
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Mar 2, 2019 22:24
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You can't realistically change the borderline anymore. The nation state borderline essentially stop being changed sometime after WW2. I would say it's around the time UN became influential and the members of the Security Council rushed to take side on both sides of every border dispute on earth. Think about how many border redraw in the last few decades. You had breakup of the Soviet, and the breakup of Yugoslavia. That was the rare occasion that both Gorbachev and the west could reach a consensus. The reunification of Germany, Bush 41 had to do all kind of heavy lifting to get the okay from France. Nowadays it's not going to happen again. The Kurds want their own country? Nop it's not happening. The Palestinian? It was approved but not actually happening. The two tiny states from Georgia? Nope nobody would recognize them no even China. Reunification of Korea? Fat chance China will okay it. This is a geopolitcal reality the India and the Pakistan need to look at.
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Mar 2, 2019 22:45
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mila kunis posted:You seem pretty angry about Helsing stating a straightforward fact of historical record. why do you have a problem with the Raj taking its responsibility for the violence and sectarianism leading up to partition and it's aftereffects that could lead to nuclear war. I haven't actually taken any position on the statements of historical record made by Helsing. I don't really know enough to even have an opinion about development and economics under the Raj. I'm annoyed at the way he has hopelessly confused some kind of morality with dialectical materialism and as a result produced a frankenstein Marxist theology which is of zero analytical or interpretive use to anyone. Most of all I'm probably just offended at what I felt was his implication that I had made an "ethical defense" of the British Empire. Ethics being essentially irrelevant to a materialist or empirical view of history they are something I make a point of avoiding. His bizarre grand standing regarding the trivial and uncontroversial point that colonialism is bad is also entirely uninteresting and does little to frame the current crisis at the border.
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Mar 2, 2019 23:30
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Helsing posted:If you watched a conversation between two people about the holocaust, and one person says "the Germans are responsible" and the second person says "[The Germans had] something to do with it, yes, but it's not as though the history of Poland began when Germany arrived" would you view that as a totally neutral and factual statement or would you quite reasonably conclude that this person is uncomfortable with candidly admitting the extent of Germany's crimes? I take your point, but if the conversation was about antisemitism and neofascism in contemporary Poland (in the same way this conversation is about current events and not the Raj), then you probably wouldn't quibble about putting the Holocaust into a wider historical context. I don't think there are any apologists in this thread.
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Mar 3, 2019 00:02
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Grouchio posted:I think we can call this the South Asian Thread now. Any creditable news, culture, art, debate from India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Nepal and Sri Lanka is welcome here. i wish to protest the erasure of the maldives Tab8715 posted:Assuming we could change the current border, what would it be instead? i mean, changing the border in any way is going to require India's assent, and they're really not interested in losing while i have sympathy for the apparently vaguely pro-independence Muslim population and, you know, the UN assessment that they should be allowed self-determination, I figure the best plausible outcome is some sort of increased-autonomy arrangement for Kashmir within India that cuts popular support for the various insurgent groups off at the knees even that is... unlikely
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Mar 3, 2019 00:20
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Colonialism was bad, that is a pretty much universally accepted fact. Apart from Japan and Korea every country outside of Europe suffered from invading European colonisers (and of course then Japan inflicted it upon Korea ultimately leading to that current situation). The whole world outside of Europe is still dealing with the repercussions of that period of history and Britain and other colonial powers deserve blame for that. However what I find objectionable in solely assigning blame to colonial powers for today's issues is the implicit removal of all agency from the previously subjugated nations. In the case of India and Pakistan it's insulting to say they are being puppet mastered by colonial Britain from 70+ years ago and are somehow too stupid to extricate themselves from that. The Indian subcontinent has a complicated history of invasion and conquest by different regions and powers. Being one unified country is not the standard status quo and that has not been caused by European colonialism.
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Mar 3, 2019 14:31
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