Since April 22, 2025 and a deadly attack that has targeted tourists in Indian cashmere, tensions have been exacerbated between India and Pakistan. New Delhi imputes the responsibility of this attack-who left twenty-six dead and which has never been claimed-in Islamabad. Pakistan may deny any involvement, the embraces of the region seems inevitable.
For the two neighboring countries, this is not the first time that cashmere has crystallizes tensions. Himalayan region as much disputed as fragmented, the Kashmir conflict is one of the oldest unrexociated territorial disputes in the world. In total, the two countries compete on the question of this territory, with more or less intensity, for … near eight decades. And to understand the source of this conflict, you have to immerse yourself in the past, at the time of the dismantling of the British British Raj Empire (or Raj).
Unfinished partition
In 1947, the British, who had extended their influence to the borders of cashmere, left the Indian subcontinent. Two new states are then born: India, in the majority of Hindu, and Pakistan (Western and Eastern), designed as a refuge state for Muslims. If the distribution of territories was to be done according to the religious majority of the provinces, the cashmere poses a problem: it is mainly populated by Muslims, but led by a Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh.
Hari Singh then had three options in front of him: joining Pakistan, of which his people feel closer; join India, being Hindu itself; or bet on independence. The Hindu sovereign seems to bend a time for this last option, before an event – in this poorly thought out partition in 1947 – came to change the situation. Tribal fighters supported by Pakistan set off in the direction of cashmere, which they de facto consider as an integral part of their territory, because of its Muslim majority.
Hari Singh is afraid and then requests the military aid of India. A decision that marks a turning point: India agrees to intervene, provided that cashmere signs its official attachment to the Indian Republic. The contract is signed, which precipitates the First Indo-Pakistani war (1947-1949). The fighting ended in a ceasefire under the aegis of the UN and the establishment of a control line, which divides cashmere into two parts: Jammu-et-Cachemire under Indian administration in the south and east and cashmere Azad under Pakistani control in the west and north.
Strategic region
A region plagued by disorders, a wobbly and incomplete partition, a cease-fire that does not help anyone: what could still have complicated this poorly committed story? China’s claims, for example.
Third actor in the cashmere conflict, China was quick to interfere in this chaos by annexing, in the 1950s, the Aksai Chin region, a desert and almost uninhabited area of the Oriental cashmere. For what? Simply because she is vital for Beijing. It connects two particularly sensitive regions for the very young People’s Republic of China: Tibet, which it invaded in 1950, and East Turkestan, which has become Xinjiang (north-west of the country), whose hints of independence it struggles. In 1962, a war ended up bursting following this Sino-Indian border dispute.
If cashmere is as disputed by India, Pakistan and China, it is above all for its strategic interest. Far from being a simple mountainous territory, it notably houses a crucial reserve of water for the two countries of the Indian subcontinent. From its glaciers and rivers are born the main tributaries of the Indus, Vital River for Indian and Pakistani agriculture. If an agreement was concluded in 1960 to distribute the use of these waters and guarantee access to Pakistan, this resource remains a constant pressure lever from New Delhi – used today, following the attack on April 22.
Meeting point
At the crossroads of three countries, cashmere is as much a territorial and ideological battlefield. For Pakistan, a state founded on a religious basis and for whom this mainly Muslim region is naturally part of its territory, the cashmary cause makes it possible to federate its population, fragmented ethnically, around a common enemy. For India, which sees claims for cashmere as a threat to its national unity, these disorders are a means of galvanizing its electorate, through exacerbated nationalism.
China supports Pakistan, its strategic partner in the region, not without ulterior motives. The objective is to contain the rise of India, perceived as a direct regional threat. A hell of a mess.
Since this poorly adjusted partition of cashmere, waves of violence have succeeded. Without counting the three major conflicts-in 1947-1949, in 1965, then in 1999-, many clashes raised fears of a dangerous escalation between two powers with nuclear weapons.
In 2019 in particular, India led air strikes in Pakistan, after a suicide attack claimed by a group based on Pakistani territory, which has cost the lives to forty Indian soldiers. A few months later, New Delhi revoked article 370 of the Indian Constitution, thus eliminating the autonomy enjoyed by the State of Jammu-et-Cachemire since 1947 and saw the region. A turning point that has only favored tensions on this territory, until today.
