With India having struck Pakistan in a determined way, China is likely to benefit from this offensive. This looks very strange, but in the fallout of the ISI offensive, this is likely to have an impact. Some staunch nationalists are arguing that one of the results of the Kashmir offensive will be that for the first time outsiders from the rest of India can be settled in the region so that the union territory can be converted into a Hindu-majority area. This will be a major shift in the status of the region, which is now the only Muslim-dominated area in the country. It is expected that Hindus and Sikhs from the other parts of the country will now freely settle in the region, thus integrating the region fully into India.
The change in status is seen by some in India, especially in the north, as a long-awaited correction. North India desired that the status of a Muslim-majority area be rescinded. It was not only Lt Colonel Saba Hussain who spoke on behalf of the army, but also the former Indian ambassador to France, Javed Ashraf, who addressed the issue eloquently on television—perhaps in support of India’s efforts.
Ashraf, whom I knew well, is also an alumnus of IIM Ahmedabad. He also served in the Prime Minister’s Office with Narendra Modi as his boss and spoke with authority about his viewpoint. One does not know whether India’s PM pushed him forth, but he spoke with clarity. Ashraf, who used to work with me, would say that he joined the government in deference to the wishes of his grandmother. She wanted him to be a government official like his grandfather and not sell saboon-tel, like they would in private jobs.
But let us return to the developments in Kashmir, which are not occurring in isolation—they carry broader geopolitical implications. The primary beneficiary in the whole process would be China – who will gain a free hand in Ladakh and nearby areas, which are in the gun range of China and through which the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor runs through. The CPEC runs through regions that give easy access to China to the ocean through Balochistan. Parts of China are very crucial to the country because the CPEC gives easy access to the sea for China. Additionally, certain regions of China are totally landlocked and located far away from water.
The CPEC is crucial because it provides China with access to the sea—an essential route for a country with large landlocked regions. China is expected to go to any length to safeguard this corridor, which opens up strategic opportunities across the region. A recent attack on a train passing through Balochistan was seen as an attempt to disrupt this passage, reportedly by European powers with long-standing strategic interests in the area dating back to the 1940s, when their British colonial predecessors had established a base there.
The base was set up to keep a watch on Russian establishments. But this was made public in the 1940s by Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose. He reportedly informed Mahatma Gandhi of these developments. This was the period when Stalin sought to test an atomic bomb, following the United States’ own detonation, and the region was identified as a potential site for the Soviet test. However, that did not come to pass—for reasons we may explore in a future article.
(Kingshuk Nag is a senior journalist who worked for TOI for 25 years in many cities including Delhi Mumbai Ahmedabad, Bangalore & Hyderabad. Known for his for fire brand journalism, he is also a biographer of Narendra Modi (The NaMo Story) and many others.)
