On August 14 and 15, Pakistan and India will celebrate the anniversary of their Independence. Kashmir remains a contested region, but Delhi is increasingly looking to Beijing. Great strides have been made in recent decades, but Hindu ultra-nationalism is transforming the original idea of the Indian nation.
Milan () – On August 15, Delhi will celebrate the 75th anniversary of independence from British colonial rule, while Islamabad will do so a day earlier. Despite the planned celebrations, 1947, the year of partitionIt is still an unhealed wound.
In July of that year, English judge Cyril Radcliffe was tasked with dividing the British Raj in a matter of weeks: the border lines he drew created a predominantly Hindu India and a predominantly Muslim Pakistan. The partition put an end to the peaceful coexistence of the different communities of the Indian subcontinent, generating 15 million displaced people and around 2 million deaths – half of them Indians.
Some princely states like Kashmir were allowed to retain their autonomy but to this day, 75 years later, the issue is not fully resolved. The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ultra-nationalist Hindu party, wants to rename August 14 “Partition Horrors Remembrance Day”, to which the Pakistani foreign minister responded by asking the government Indian who avoids politicizing the acts related to the respective Independence festivities.
India has made tremendous progress in the last 75 years. The infant mortality rate has fallen: from 161.8 per 1,000 births in 1960, it fell to 27 in 2020. The human development index (which considers 1 as the highest value) has gone from 0.11 in 1950 to 0.65 in 2019. There have been advances in infrastructure, access to drinking water and Internet diffusion; in 2020, the GDP stood at 2,623,000 million dollars and this year India could emerge as one of the strongest economies in Asia.
However, India looks less and less like the secular and multicultural state that was born in 1947 with the ideas of religious tolerance of Mahatma Gandhi (assassinated by a Hindu fanatic the following year). Calls from the right are currently multiplying asking for the country to certify Hindu supremacy. The BJP, in addition to infrastructure, continues to build Hindu buildings and temples where Muslim mosques used to stand, and sectarian violence has been increasing year after year. Some data shows that between 2014 and 2020, 180 people died in sectarian clashes – and 62 in 2020 alone. a free country” until 2020, it became “partly free” in 2021. India seems to be plunged into a return to the past accompanied by a strong cultural flattening.
It should be noted, however, that Pakistan is not India’s main rival. The disputed region of Kashmir borders another nuclear power: China. Eager to boost the infrastructure projects of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, Beijing has decided to support Islamabad in the international arena as far as Kashmir is concerned.
Despite 17 rounds of diplomatic talks, the situation between India and China remains deadlocked. In mid-2020, the violence escalated with a clash in the Galwan Valley between Indian and Chinese soldiers. The tensions have been bringing India closer to the QUAD, the dialogue forum that includes the United States, Japan and Australia, all nations interested in countering the Chinese presence in the Indo-Pacific.
However, the members of the QUAD are democratic countries that, for example, take a dim view of India’s decision not to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine. On the other hand, India’s regional cooperation is necessary. In fact, at the last QUAD summit, in May this year, they joined various Indian concerns to the 2023 agenda – even those not directly related to the Chinese threat. This shows that, despite strong anti-democratic drifts, India is playing an increasingly central role in Asia.
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