The Kashmir Question

India, which had been created as a civic polity, initially sought to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to demonstrate its secular credentials. Pakistan, in turn, had laid claim to Kashmir because it had been created as the homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. After the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 the Pakistani irredentist claim to Kashmir lost substantial ground. If Pakistan could not cohere on the basis of religion alone it had few moral claims on its co-religionists in Kashmir. Similar