That one guy obviously forgot to wax.

There will not be meaningful engagement between Delhi and Islamabad, unless Islamabad dismantles its terrorist and military infrastructure against India. India is also not going to make concessions on Kashmir, to satisfy unclear and short term American goals in Afghanistan. India has to deal with her neighborhood while the US engagement is subject to the whims and caprice of American policymakers and politics. The basis of the American approach to this matter is fundamentally unsound, where concessions are expected of countries in the neighborhood are expected simply because the US establishment woke up one day and realized that Afghanistan is the next big problem and something has to be done about it. The current crisis has been long in the making, with ample support, both diplomatic and logistical from the US, so there is a certain lack of credibility for the United States in the region.

"Terrorist" and "terrorism", along with "anti-Semite" are three
words that should be discarded if we're going to have any sort of
rational discourse of the problems facing this world.

Kashmir should have been given to Pakistan, but I agree Kris (or
is it Krishna -- do you work in a call center in Bangalore and
have to make up a Western name?) with a lot of what you have to
say.

India is a mess and will be until she gets her inherent classicism,
racism and religious prejudices out of the way. There's a poster
on here who actually thinks that this is India's century. Maybe, if
India is reincarnated as a true democracy and gets rid of all its
religious junk, but I would place bets on "No."

I was just reading the BJP (Hindu Nationalist) party manifesto: it
complains about British imperialism as well it should, but India
was cobbled together and then divided by the invaders and now
suddenly feels like it has a common culture from before the
colonialists came? Nah ah.

And no, I'm not a Muslim. I'm an Anglo-Indian (mixed race --
so if you're a Hindu nationalist then you automatically hate me
for being a mlechcch) former Catholic from Calcutta, or
whatever you're calling it now.

OK, I know I say I "hate" a lot of things, but when people change
the name of the city that you're born in for no real reason and
then you don't know how to spell it it's really annoying.

Arundhati Roy:

"When it comes to Kashmir the consensus in India is hard-core. It cuts across every
section of the establishment—including the media, the bureaucracy, the intelligentsia
and even Bollywood. There is no time here for me to tell the story of Kashmir, the story
of a tragedy that never seems to end. And yet to speak of India and not mention Kashmir
is unforgiveable, and, for me, impossible.

The struggle for freedom in Kashmir began in 1947, but the armed uprising began in 1989,
twenty years ago. The conflict has claimed about seventy thousand lives. Tens of
thousands have been tortured, several thousand have ‘disappeared’, women have been raped
and many thousands widowed. More than half a million Indian troops patrol the Kashmir
valley, making it the most militarized zone in the world. (The United States had about
one hundred and sixty-five thousand active-duty troops in Iraq at the height of its
occupation.) The Indian army now claims that it has, for the most part, crushed
militancy in Kashmir. Perhaps that’s true. But does military domination mean victory?
The trouble is that Kashmir sits on the fault lines of a region that is awash in weapons
and sliding into chaos. The Kashmiri freedom struggle is caught in the vortex of several
dangerous and conflicting ideologies—Indian Nationalism (corporate as well as ‘Hindu’,
shading into imperialism), Pakistani Nationalism (breaking down under the burden of its
own contradictions), US Imperialism (made impatient by a tanking economy), and a
resurgent medieval-Islamist Taliban (fast gaining legitimacy, despite its insane
brutality, because it is seen to be resisting a foreign occupation). Each of these
ideologies is capable of a ruthlessness that can range from genocide to nuclear war. Add
Chinese imperial ambitions, an aggressive, re-incarnated Russia, the huge reserves of
natural gas in the Caspian region and persistent whispers about natural gas, oil and
uranium reserves in Kashmir and Ladakh, and you have the recipe for a new Cold War
(which, like the last one, is cold for some and hot for others).

Kashmir is set to become the conduit through which the mayhem unfolding in Afghanistan
and Pakistan spills into India, where it will find purchase in the anger of the young
among India’s one hundred and fifty million Muslims who have been brutalized, humiliated
and marginalized. Notice has been given by the series of terrorist strikes that
culminated in the 13 Mumbai attacks of 2008.

India’s temporary, shotgun solutions to the unrest in Kashmir (pardon the pun) have
magnified the problem and driven it deep into a place where it is poisoning the
aquifers.

~

Perhaps the story of the Siachen Glacier, the highest battlefield in the world, is the
most appropriate metaphor for the insanity of our times. Thousands of Indian and
Pakistani soldiers have been deployed there, enduring chill winds and temperatures that
dip to minus 40 Celsius. Of the hundreds who have died there, many have died just from
the cold—from frostbite and sunburn. The glacier has become a garbage dump now, littered
with the detritus of war, thousands of empty artillery shells, empty fuel drums, ice-
axes, old boots, tents and every other kind of waste that thousands of warring human
beings generate. The garbage remains intact, perfectly preserved at those icy
temperatures, a pristine monument to human folly. While the Indian and Pakistani
governments spend billions of dollars on weapons and the logistics of high altitude
warfare, the battlefield has begun to melt. Right now, it has shrunk to about half its
size. The melting has less to do with the military standoff than with people far away,
on the other side of the world, living the good life. They’re good people who believe in
peace, free speech and human rights. They live in thriving democracies whose governments
sit on the UN Security Council and whose economies depend heavily on the export of war
and the sale of weapons to countries like India and Pakistan. (And Rwanda, Sudan,
Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Iraq, Afghanistan . . . it’s a long list.) The glacial
melt will cause severe floods in the subcontinent, and eventually severe drought that
will affect the lives of millions of people.25 That will give us even more reasons to
fight. We’ll need more weapons. Who knows, that sort of consumer confidence may be just
what the world needs to get over the current recession. Then everyone in the thriving
democracies will have an even better life—and the glaciers will melt even faster."

http://www.literaturfestival.com/upload//roy%20english%281%29.pdf

India and Pakistan could beat Israel at the start line in their race
to cause WW III.

I don't mean to be flippant for once. As I mentioned, I walked
away from anywhere between $600,000 to who knows, because
I thought my little script about the partition of India and
Pakistan, which I had modest hopes would become a small indie,
was suddenly going to become a big blockbuster, with Gwyneth
Paltrow of all people, to be approached to star as the Anglo-
Indian girl.

The other person who was wanted was Angelina Jolie, who does
actually look like an Anglo-Indian. This was back when she was
relatively unknown

So I walked, because that movie, with its graphic descriptions of
the violence surrounding Partition, would have killed people if
not triggered another war.

Wig worries about this being India's century. I would worry
more about a comet hitting her grandkids' shul.

Paul, I'll translate from Yiddish to Norwegian yet again: "Shul"
means "school" where you're indoctrinated into all things
"Yiddishkeit" which means "Jewishness."

Hollywood is the world's shul.

BTW and yet again completely randomly, an old friend of mine,
an Indian man *shudder* who I just saw at our reunion, lost out
on either the Commonwealth or the Booker prize to Arundathi
Roy. She was raised a Christian by the way.

This is the guy who actually got me set-up on the internet,
which the world still regrets.

"India and Pakistan could beat Israel at the start line in their race
to cause WW III."

I agree. And I would suggest that a dozen of regular commenters here educate
ourselves more on India/Pakistan and Kashmir, because the destructive potential may
be much bigger than in a scenario where Israel/USA attack Iran.

It`s amazing that such an important issue as this one only got three comments (two
by an Indian-American) before I pasted the Roy excerpt. The India/Pakistan issue
demands attention - and for once I agree with Questions: we should read up right
now!

BTW Outraged: no need to translate those yiddish words - Norwegian is kind of
yiddish as well, due to the common German influence: shul is "skole" in Norwegian,
and Schwartz is "svart" where I live.

I hope more people read the Arundathi Roy essay I linked to above and on the UN
report thread, because it`s brilliant, and put some of the discussions among us
commenters here in a wider perspective, and from a different angle.

Outraged American,

My name is as displayed, you are free to imagine
my antecedents as you please, however I would appreciate it if you kept your speculation on
this matter to yourself.

Kashmir is a nonstarter as an issue, and there is not much point going over this issue. As for Ms. Roy, I cannot take the views of anyone who consorts with and supports Maoists who terrorize parts of the Indian countryside seriously. There is also little danger of a war with Pakistan, unless Pakistan chooses to have one.

In any case the discussion here is about Afghanistan. Put bluntly, American policy in Afghanistan that predicates and requires Indian territorial or strategic concessions w.r.t Pakistan is bound to be a failure, as such concessions will not be acceptable to India.
The problem was, and remains Pakistan and its state sponsorship of terrorism and terrorist organizations including the Taliban. Not India, and not "Kashmir".

Namaste-ji Kris, or rather Hindu Nationalist: I won't speculate,
I'll just presume that you're a Brahman or a Parsi.

India needs a healthy dose of Maoism just about now and I'm no
fan of Commies, but India will never move forward unless she
rids herself of her institutionalized religious BS, and one thing
Communists know how to do is be Godless.

That's why I don't worry about it being "India's century" --
maybe the latter part. Nah. It will never happen,

"Terrorism" please define it and give examples of it on the part
of Pakistan. And the Mumbai hotel attacks don't count, unless
you can explain to me the uncanny involvement of Israel in
them.

Israel has never hesitated to kill a few dozen or thousand of her
own people when she needs propaganda points and has been
trying to destabilize Pakistan and get India on her side in the
fight against Radical Islamic Terrorism for ??? years.

The Pakistani government would have been fools to sponsor
"terrorism" directed at India and they're not. Deranged,
disorganized, lunatics, yes, but not fools. Not even the ISI.

Darker forces ares at work, one of whom could be you. I have
no idea how dark you are because I do not know your
antecedents, which is probably a good thing because they
probably fought mine at some point, but I'm actually quite light
skinned and look Swedish, which is why Norheim over here
hates me.

Thunyiba. (which means go take a bath in the nearest fjord,
Paul, cold water will help your problem -- JUST KIDDING PAUL,
you know I love you and would keep you warm this winter after
we off my husband the sardonic, Canadian, Jewish drunk)

namaste jeeee angry american or what
ever......considering the fact that you consider
India a mess and want India to have a dose of
communism ....well it will happen in your beautiful
dreams!!! are you nuts.... why on earth should
kashmir go to pak if it is legally Indian land.it
seems like there is more war on this page then there
is between countries.I appreciate the nukes of both
countries for they keep wars at bay.and as far as
jews are considered .. well , India IS MY COUNTRY
and ALL INDIANS ARE MY BROTHERS AND SISTERS.for you
it may be mess but for me you are even a bigger
mess.DARE you cast one more silly comment.