Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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johnkarls
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Joined: Fri Jun 29, 2007 8:43 pm

Suggested Answers to the Second Short Quiz

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Question 1

How did Kashmir, which is Muslim, come to be ruled by India in the split-off of all the other majority-Muslim areas of India into newly-created Pakistan when Britain gave India independence in 1947?

Answer 1

A century earlier in 1846, Rajah Gulab Singh (a Hindu) purchased the Kashmir Valley from the East India Company for 75 million Rupees.

When Britain granted India independence on 8/15/1947, the Maharajah of each state was encouraged/expected to choose between Pakistan and India based on the wishes of his people.

However, the Maharajah of Kashmir (Hari Singh, a Hindu and a great-grandson of Rajah Gulab Singh) chose India despite Kashmir’s overwhelmingly Muslim population.

Although India initially agreed to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir, India quickly reneged and treated the matter ever since as closed despite 3 wars and despite both sides “nuking up” in 1998.

Question 2

Why has Pakistan fought India 3 times already over Kashmir and why have both Pakistan and India “nuked up” relatively recently over Kashmir, when virtually no shots were fired when East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan in 1971 to become Bangladesh?

Answer 2

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The “short answer” reading between the lines???

Approximately 1,000 miles of separation between West Pakistan to the west of India and East Pakistan to the east of India.

In other words, virtually no cultural affinity between the Punjabis and Pashtuns of West Pakistan and the Bengalis of East Pakistan -- which caused the Punjabis and Pashtuns to treat the Bengalis as their own colony and the Bengalis to believe they had merely exchanged one colonial master for another.

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The “longer answer”???

Population background =

After 42 years since the break-up of Pakistan, it is shocking to read our author’s describing Pakistan repeatedly as the world’s most populous Muslim country when we are so used to thinking of Indonesia (current population 251 million) as being the most populous Muslim country and ranking 4th-largest among all of the world’s countries right behind China, India and the U.S.

Today, the population of Pakistan (formerly West Pakistan) is 193 million (ranking 6th in the world) and Bangladesh (formerly East Pakistan) is 164 million (ranking 8th). Incidentally, India also has approximately 164 million Muslims per http://www.cia.gov, implying that India as a secular state has treated 164 million Muslims well enough that they have not emigrated.

(NB: In contrast to these high Muslim populations in South Asia, the 22 nations of the Arab League have a combined population of only 338 million which is less than the current population of Old Pakistan, East and West. Which reinforces our frequent observation that agrarian societies achieve high population densities and desert cultures, the opposite.)

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Back to the “longer answer”!!!

From Independence from Britain in 1947 until 1958, Pakistan was ruled by the West Pakistan Establishment -- which was increasingly the military and which quickly deposed any East Pakistani elected Prime Minister (East Pakistan’s population was larger than West Pakistan from 1947 until secession in 1971).

From 1958 until 1971, Pakistan was ruled by a military dictatorship (in other words, still the West Pakistan Establishment).

In 1970, the first elections permitted by the military dictatorship were won by the Awami League of East Pakistan (167 seats in the National Assembly, or 53% of the total), giving East Pakistan’s Awami League the constitutional right to form the government.

The Awami League demanded that either the election be honored or East Pakistan be permitted to secede.

The military refused to recognize the election and, instead of permitting secession, launched Operation Searchlight on 3/25/1971 to crush the Bengali independence movement militarily.

Taking a page from their old British colonial masters who ruled a vast empire with a relatively miniscule navy and army by ruthlessly concentrating firepower on any colony that stepped out of line (which meant that such occurrences were extremely rare), West Pakistan engaged in systematic genocide and other atrocities resulting in untold casualties, 10 million refugees and 30 million displaced persons (virtually all of the refugees were Hindus who fled to India and the majority of DP's were Hindus who melted into the countryside).

However, the repression produced an increasingly-strong guerilla movement.

Increasingly frustrated by Indian logistical support for the Bengali guerilla movement, the Pakistani Air Force launched a pre-emptive strike on Indian Air Force bases on 12/3/1971.

Within a week, the Indian Air Force achieved mastery of the skies over both West and East Pakistan and within 13 days of the pre-emptive strike, three Indian Army Corps (with Bengali guerillas fighting along side) forced the surrender of all 93,000 West Pakistan military personnel in East Pakistan -- the largest surrender since World War II.

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Apology

Yours truly did not mean any disrespect with the phrase in Q-2 that “virtually no shots were fired when East Pakistan seceded from West Pakistan in 1971 to become Bangladesh.”

The adjective “virtually” was meant solely to contrast with 3 full-scale wars between Pakistan and India followed by both countries “nuking up” and to evoke the memory of how France was forced to surrender to the Nazis after only 6 weeks (5/10/1940 - 6/22/1940) following “virtually no shots” in contrast with World War I trench warfare.

It is a credit to the Bengalis that they persevered as an increasingly-potent guerilla movement for 8 months until they were rescued by India. No wonder we associate the term Bengal Tiger with the Bengalis of Bangladesh!!!

Question 3

According to http://www.cia.gov, “Kashmir remains the site of the world’s largest and most militarized territorial dispute” -- What is the ratio of Indian troops to Kashmiris? What is the population of Kashmir and how many Kashmiris are refugees including IDP’s (Internally-Displaced Persons in U.N. parlance)?

Answer 3

There is approximately one Indian soldier for every 10 Kashmiris in the Kashmir Valley.

The total population of Indian Kashmir is only 9 million (India’s population is 1,220.8 million and Pakistan’s is 193.2 million).

According to http://www.cia.gov, Pakistan has approximately 250 thousand refugees from Indian Kashmir.

Question 4

Is Yours Truly correct in the “think piece” attached to Answer-23 of the First Short Quiz that “even though Prof. Haqqani is probably right that we shouldn’t think of Pakistan as an “ally” (which may be merely a nomenclature problem), we should continue to try to engage Pakistan vis-à-vis anti-terrorism and anti-nuclear-proliferation with, to put it crassly, bribes (aka “foreign aid”) comprising conventional weapons.”

Answer 4

What do you think??? Let’s discuss at our 1/8/2014 meeting!!!

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