Kashmir Crisis

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Within its ongoing sixty year period, the Kashmir crisis has become one of the most potentially reactive situations the world has seen. Preceding the British decolonization of the greater Indian area into modern-day India and Pakistan in 1947, Kashmir was an independent region, ruled by a Hindu maharaja, though its people were, and continue to be, predominately Muslim. Maharaja Hari Singh, the royal ruler, was able to select whether to comply with either newly independent nation. Hesitant to join either, the Maharaja chose to wait until the British presence fully departed the region. The Kashmir sovereign desired to remain independent but eventually elected to accede to India. Being a Muslim majority State and adjoining to Pakistan, Kashmir was expected to accede to Pakistan; since the Hindu Ruler acceded instead to India, a quarrel arose in Kashmir. The population of the Indian-administered state of Kashmir is over sixty percent Muslim, making it the only state within India where Muslims are in the majority. In the spring of 1947, an internal revolution began in the Poonch region of Kashmir, opposing the newly imposed taxation laws. In response, the Maharaja’s forces fire upon demonstrations in favour of a Pakistani Kashmir, forcing the Poonch people to abandon their homeland and enter Pakistan as evacuees, and, in response, return to Kashmir with arms. Organized rebellion arises in August 1947, and Poonch rebels, along with Pathan Pakistani tribesmen, declare an independent government of “Azad” (Free) Kashmir on the 24th of October.
In a desperate attempt for order, the Maharaja signed over key powers to the Indian government in the Instrument of Accession on the 26th of October, 1947, in return for military aid and a promise...

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