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176 CHAPTER 2 Asia

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Imagine this: The year is 1921, and you’re a teenager in school in India. Your land has been under British rule for as long as anyone can

remember. You’re starting to hear about independence for India, though, and it sounds like an exciting idea. But what kind of independence? Self-rule within the British Empire? Or complete independence, like what the Americans got after 1776?

India is a vast country—Hindus and Muslims are only two of its mixture of religious and ethnic groups. Could one country possibly be big enough to include everybody? Won’t some groups get lost? Should certain groups be guaranteed a share of seats in Parliament? Maybe two or more smaller countries would make more sense. British India could draw the map so that each territory was pretty clearly Hindu or Muslim and everybody spoke the same language. What do you think is best, and why?

What approach should British India have taken to independence? Why?

• the precolonial history of the Mughals in the Indian subcontinent

• the encounter with Europe and the colonial period in the region

• the history of the struggle for independence in South Asia

• what caused the partition and war between India and Pakistan

• how Muslim-Hindu strife affects the politics and economics of South Asia

• which groups have struggled for control in Afghanistan and why

75162_C2L3_p176-199_AFJROTC_FINAL.indd 176 11/9/09 1:55 PM

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LESSON 3 ■ India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan 177

• Indian subcontinent• aristocrat• caste• British raj• interim• de facto• infrastructure• Taliban• madrassa

The Precolonial History of the Mughals in the Indian Subcontinent

You read briefl y in the Introduction about the Mughal Empire in the Indian subcontinent. Indian subcontinent is a term used to refer to India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and Sri Lanka. These countries spent many years under British rule, and so the term “British India” is used to refer to them during that time.


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People have lived in this part of the world—also called South Asia—for more than 4,000 years. Around 2500 BC people living in the Indus River valley built an urban culture based on farming and trade. After about a thousand years, this group declined. Then Aryan-speaking—early Indo-European—pastoral tribes moved in from the northwest. (Pastoral peoples are those who tend sheep and cattle.) They settled in the Ganges River valley and mixed with the people already there.

The Gupta Dynasty unifi ed northern India during the fourth and fi fth centuries. It was a golden age of Hindu culture. But then in the eighth century, Muslim traders began to arrive in Sindh, which is today part of Pakistan.

The Rule of Islamic Mughal Emperors in Northern India

Islam spread across the subcontinent during 700 years. In the tenth and eleventh centuries, Turks and Afghans invaded. They set up sultanates in Delhi, near India’s modern-day capital.

Then in the early sixteenth century, the Mughals, whose forebears included Mongols, Turks, Iranians, and Afghans, invaded India. Their dynasty lasted 200 years and eventually included much of South India under its rule or infl uence.

Zahir-ud-Din Babur was the fi rst Mughal emperor. He came to power when his well-disciplined force of 12,000 men defeated the 100,000 disorganized troops of Ibrahim Lodi, sultan of Delhi. Babur achieved other military gains as well but died before he could consolidate them.

His son Humayun succeeded him. As he came to power, he faced challenges to his rule in Delhi, notably from Afghan warlords. He fl ed to Persia and hid out there for almost 10 years. He fi nally returned to Delhi and took control in 1555. Just a year after this victory, however, he died. His empire passed to his 13-year-old son Jalal-ud-Din Akbar, who would rule for nearly half a century.

Akbar (1556–1605), a Notable Mughal Ruler

While Akbar was still a boy, the empire was in the hands of a regent named Bayram Khan, who pushed hard to expand the empire.

But when Akbar came of age, he began to break free from the court offi cials who had been running things. He quickly showed his own capacities for leadership and judgment. He seldom slept more than three hours a night, and he personally oversaw the administration of his policies.

He continued to expand his empire. He conquered and annexed lands until his territory stretched from Kabul in the northwest to Kashmir in the north to Bengal in the east, and the Narmada River in the south.

Akbar built a walled capital called Fatehpur Sikri (Fatehpur means Fortress of Victory) near Agra, starting in 1571. He kept moving his capital, however; whether for lack of water, or because he had to attend to the far reaches of his empire, is unknown.



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Historians consider Akbar a good manager. He kept track of a vast territory fi lled with many different ethnic groups. In 1580 he collected revenue records going back 10 years. He and his aides fi gured out how good each year’s harvest had been, and the related crop prices. He used this information to fi gure out how much tax the farmers could pay without hardship. He wanted to bring in as much tax revenue as possible, but he knew it wouldn’t be wise to demand more than farmers could comfortably pay. He relied on zamindars, or local revenue agents, to bring in money and deliver it to the treasury.

He also organized the warrior class, the mansabars, into an orderly system of ranks. Different ranks were associated with different numbers of troops, amounts of pay, and so on.

Akbar also possessed good people skills. He encouraged good relations with Hindus, who made up most of the population. He recruited Hindu chiefs for top posts in government. He encouraged intermarriage between the aristocrats—the nobles or “top class”—of the Mughals and Hindus. He practiced this policy personally, in fact. Maryam al-Zamani, the mother of his son and heir, Jahangir, was a Hindu Rajput—a member of the dominant military caste, or hereditary social class.

Even before Akbar, Muslim sultans in India offered their Hindu subjects some religious freedom. If they paid a special head tax for “peoples of the book,” on the basis of their own Scriptures, Hindus, like Christians and Jews, counted as more than “infi dels” and retained the right to practice their own religion.

But Akbar went beyond this. He personally celebrated Diwali, the Indian Festival of Lights, and even abolished the tax imposed on non-Muslims. In addition, he came up with his own religion, Din-i-Ilahi (Divine Faith), which incorporated the idea of acceptance of all religions.


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He also advanced women’s rights. He encouraged widows to remarry, discouraged child marriages, and banned sati, the traditional Hindu practice of suttee. This practice called for a widow to throw herself onto her husband’s funeral pyre to be cremated with him. Akbar also persuaded merchants to set up special market days for women only, so that they could get out and about occasionally. His reign ended with his death in 1605.

Efforts to Encourage Artistry

As the Mughals continued their rule, under Jahangir (1605–27) and later Shah Jahan (1628–1658), they provided political stability and good economic conditions. This gave the arts room to fl ower. Painting fl ourished. Writers and artists produced books. Architects designed and erected monumental buildings. Jahangir married a Persian princess whom he renamed Nur Jahan (Light of the World). She became the most powerful person at court, after the emperor himself. She attracted a number of notable Persians—artists, scholars, and military offi cers—to the imperial court.



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Even as far back as Akbar, the imperial courts supported the arts. Although experts believe Akbar couldn’t read, he commissioned a book called the Hamzanama, which the Smithsonian Institution calls “one of the most unusual and important manuscripts made during the Mughal dynasty (1526–1858). . . .” This book followed the adventures of the Prophet Muhammad’s uncle Hamza with text and colorful illustrations. Akbar’s successors also paid artists to create illustrated books.

In addition, the Mughal rulers backed painters, who came from around India and Iran. Like the manuscripts, the paintings came in bright colors. Subject matter ranged from plants and animals to court scenes and portraits. The arts came to an abrupt end under Shah Jahan’s son, Aurangzeb, who outlawed paintings and music.

The Taj Mahal

If there’s one Mughal Dynasty achievement you might have heard of before opening this book, it’s probably the Taj Mahal. This beautiful building is the crowning achievement of Mughal architecture. Shah Jahan ordered it built in Agra as a tomb for his beloved wife Mumtaz Mahal. The writer Rabindranath Tagore (1861–1941) called it “a tear on the face of eternity.”


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The tomb, higher than a modern 20-story building, was the work of 20,000 laborers. They spent 22 years completing it—longer than Shah Jahan and Mumtaz Mahal were married. Craftsmen came from as far away as Turkey to work on the edifi ce. The marble came from 300 miles away. To get material up to the level of the dome, the engineers built a two-mile ramp.

The white marble takes on different colors at different times of day. Early in the morning, it has a soft, dreamy look. It dazzles white at midday. By moonlight, the dome looks like a giant pearl. No wonder people around the world think of the Taj as the ultimate labor of love.

The Encounter With Europe and the Colonial Period in the Region

The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama opened a new chapter in India’s history in 1498. That’s when he arrived in Calicut, today known as Kozhikode, on India’s west coast. The Portuguese were after spices and Christian converts, and they were ready to challenge Arab supremacy in the Indian Ocean. Other Europeans came along soon after.

The Role of the East India Company as the First British Outpost in India in 1619

The British, the Dutch, and the French wanted to trade with India, too. So these countries set up trading companies. The fi rst of these was the British East India Company, set up in 1600 with a royal charter. It was a joint-stock company. People could buy shares of stock in it and became part-owners, as investors do today.

The Dutch founded their trading company in 1602. They had lots of money and government support, and they soon managed to shut the British out of the heart of the trade, the area that is today Indonesia. But both companies managed to set up “trading factories” (really warehouses) on the Indian coast. Indian rulers welcomed the newcomers. They saw an opportunity to give the Portuguese some competition and get better deals for themselves.

A key date was 1619. That’s when Jahangir, one of the Mughal emperors you just read about, granted the British permission to trade in his territories. Soon the British had several different hubs of trade in the important goods of the day: spices, cotton, sugar, raw silk, saltpeter (for explosives), calico, and indigo (a dye).

The Effect of British Rule on South Asian Economic and Political Systems

British agents in India learned the local customs and languages, including Persian, the Mughals’ offi cial language. Many of the agents lived like Indians and never returned to England. All this gave the British East India Company an edge over its European rivals.



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British trading privileges, meanwhile, kept expanding. By the early eighteenth century the Mughal emperor acknowledged that the East India Company helped keep the wheels of local commerce turning. The British trained Indians to serve as soldiers known as sepoys. With these troops protecting property, the British were able to treat parts of India as if they were in England. British law prevailed, and the British were able to offer jobs to foreigners and Indians alike.

The British had three main motives in India. They wanted to trade, to maintain their security, and to “uplift” the Indian people. They kept annexing more territory, in some cases by military conquest. This expansion continued into the middle of the nineteenth century.

British attitudes toward India changed over this period. At fi rst, they were great admirers of Indian culture. But eventually they became sharply critical. British intellectuals, including Christian missionaries, felt a need to “civilize” India with Western religion and technology. The missionaries made relatively few converts. The Indians didn’t feel they had any need of “civilizing.” But the missionaries had an unmistakable impact on the country by setting up schools, orphanages, hospitals, and clinics, as well as publishing organizations.

In 1813 the British Parliament passed the Charter Act, which introduced just and humane laws in India. It also banned a number of traditional practices, such as suttee. The expansion of British law in India had other effects as well. It provided professional opportunities for many talented Indians. Education improved, too. English fi nally replaced Persian as the language of instruction.

The 1850s saw the coming of three “engines of social improvement” to India: railroads, the telegraph, and the uniform postal service. Improved communications helped tie a vast country together. And the railroads moved goods much more easily and faster. But as a means of personal transportation, the railroads tended to divide people by class. The wealthy would travel in separate compartments from the masses.


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The Sepoy Rebellion On 10 May 1857 a group of mostly Muslim soldiers at a British Indian Army base called Meerut mutinied. They didn’t want to fi ght for the British anymore. They marched 50 miles to Delhi, the capital, to offer their services to the Mughal emperor. Soon much of north and central India was caught up in a yearlong insurrection. The Sepoy Rebellion released decades of Indian resentment at the British. The British won in the end, but not before each side had tasted both triumph and humiliation.

This civil war was a major turning point. In May 1858 the British exiled Bahadur Shah II to Burma. That was the end of the Mughal Empire. It was also the end of the East India Company. The British crown abolished it and began to rule India directly.

The History of the Struggle for Independence in South Asia

The Sepoy Rebellion seriously threatened the British raj—British rule in India. The confl ict goes by many different names, including the Great Mutiny and the Revolt of 1857. But many in South Asia call it India’s fi rst war of independence.



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Gandhi and Jinnah Lead India and Pakistan to Independence

The decades after the Sepoy Rebellion were a time of growing political awareness for Indians. They began to think of themselves as “a nation,” despite their differences in language, culture, and religion. They started expressing their political opinions. And many of them began to worry about their future. Every year, more and more Western-educated Indians prepared to enter the workforce. But they couldn’t be sure just what opportunities lay in store for them in British-controlled India.

And so in 1885 a group of 73 Indians met in Bombay (now Mumbai) to launch the Indian National Congress. Its members were mostly Western educated. They were lawyers, journalists, and teachers. The Congress began to meet annually. It passed resolutions on issues of the day, never anything too sensitive, and then forwarded them to the colonial government.

At the start, most members of the Congress were city-dwellers. But they claimed to represent “all India.” And by 1900, as more rural members joined the Congress, that claim became more valid. Congress’s weakness, though, was that it failed to attract Muslims. By this time, Muslims had come to see that they were underrepresented in government service and less educated than the Hindus. But they weren’t sure how best to advance their rights. Many felt they would be better off under British rule than in an independent country dominated by Hindus.

Gandhi was born in 1869 in Gujarat, a state on the western “arm” of today’s India. Schooled in England, he became a lawyer but not a successful one. In 1893 he traveled to South Africa to represent Indian laborers there. He had a year’s contract, but ended up staying for more than 20 years. He emerged as a powerful voice against racial discrimination in South Africa, which was at that time under white-minority rule. He returned to India in 1915, unknown but “fi red with a religious vision of a new India,” as the historian Judith M. Brown has written. His goal was swaraj, self-rule. And he would reach it through nonviolence.

Mohandas Gandhi


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India’s road to independence would eventually come to a fork. One branch would lead to a new India, and the other to a new state called Pakistan. Mohandas K. Gandhi would lead Hindus along the path to an independent country known as India. And Mohammad Ali Jinnah would be known as the “Father of Pakistan,” a Muslim-majority country carved out of British India.

In 1906 a group of anticolonial Muslims formed the All-India Muslim League. At fi rst, it had the same goal as the Congress: self-government for India within the British Empire. But the two organizations couldn’t agree on a formula to ensure Muslims’ religious, economic, and political rights.

The Role of the Indian National Congress in the Mass Movement Against British Colonial Rule

The Indian National Congress began as a debating society for the educated elite. But starting in 1920 Gandhi transformed it into a mass movement. He reorganized it and opened it to anyone who would pay a token membership fee.

The party used nonviolent resistance and noncooperation as ways to win independence. One of Gandhi’s targets was the salt tax. Under British law, salt was a British government monopoly. Everyone had to pay a tax on it. Anyone evading the tax, even if he made his own salt from seawater, was subject to prosecution. Salt is a basic commodity. But it’s especially important in a hot climate where people sweat heavily and need salt to maintain their health.

On 12 March 1930 Gandhi started with about 80 people on a 200-plus-mile march to the seacoast town of Dandi where he would lead his followers in making salt from seawater. Many thousands joined him along his journey; they reached Dandi in April.

Like Gandhi, Jinnah studied law in England. And like Gandhi, he was a member of the Congress—one of relatively few Muslims to join. In 1913 he joined the Muslim League as well. For a time he was a member of both organizations. He gained a reputation as an “ambassador of Hindu-Muslim unity.”

But Jinnah disagreed with Gandhi on many points. He didn’t think much of nonviolent resistance, for one thing. He believed constitutional change was needed instead.

In 1929 Jinnah drafted a statement of principles that he said would satisfy Muslims’ concerns about preserving their rights within a self-governing India. These became known as “the 14 Points of Mr. Jinnah.” The Congress and other parties rejected them, however. And after that, Hindu-Muslim political cooperation was rare. The people of India and Pakistan are still paying the price.

Mohammad Ali Jinnah



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In early May, police arrested Gandhi and thousands of other protesters around the country. But the pressure from Gandhi’s nonviolent movement began to affect the colonial government. In 1931 the British government released Gandhi from custody and allowed Indians to make their own salt.

What Caused the Partition and War Between India and Pakistan

Many Indians served with distinction in the British forces during World War II. But by the war’s end, Indians were united in the desire for independence. Britain, exhausted by war, was ready to let them go. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee’s government started to prepare in earnest for independence.

How Tensions Between Hindus and Muslims Led to Partition Into Two Separate States

The idea of a Muslim state in British India fi rst surfaced in the 1930s. On 23 March 1940 the Muslim League’s Jinnah endorsed the Lahore Resolution. It called for the creation of an independent state in areas where Muslims were a majority.

But the Congress Party and the Muslim League, the two parties who between them spoke for the vast majority of Indians, couldn’t come to terms. They disagreed about a Constitution and an interim—temporary—government. The Muslims didn’t want to be swallowed up in a majority Hindu state. And so in June 1947 the British Government said it would create two states—India and, in Muslim-majority areas, Pakistan.

How India Became a Dominion Within the British Commonwealth

On 14 August 1947 the Dominion of Pakistan won independence. Later it became the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. On 15 August 1947 India became a dominion within the British Commonwealth. Jawaharlal Nehru was India’s new prime minister. On 26 January 1950 India put into effect a new constitution that made the country a republic. But India has remained within the British Commonwealth, now known as the Commonwealth of Nations.

This partition of British India into India and Pakistan unleashed untold misery. Millions of Hindu and Muslim refugees fl ed from one new country to the other. Hundreds of thousands died. Both new states struggled to allocate assets, draw boundaries, and fi gure out how to share water. All this was on top of the many challenges of national integration that any new country faces.


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Confl ict in Jammu and Kashmir Then there was the question of Jammu and Kashmir, often called simply “Kashmir.” It was one of India’s 562 independent princely states. All of these independent states were under British control. But they weren’t organized like the other parts of India. As the British were leaving, they let these states choose whether to join India or Pakistan. A few went to Pakistan; most went to India. India annexed Hyderabad, the largest one, with 14 million people, and Junagadh, with half a million. These moves required “police actions” and promises of favors for the rulers. But those annexations went smoothly—Kashmir was another story.

The state was largely Muslim, but had a Hindu ruler—a maharajah. He was uncommitted. After Pakistani troops and armed tribesmen moved into his territory, he signed the Instrument of Accession to India on 27 October 1947. Pakistan challenged the agreement and war broke out.

This fi rst Indo-Pakistani war ended 1 January 1949 with a UN-imposed cease-fi re. The cease-fi re line refl ected the positions of troops on the ground. It has since become a de facto—accepted as fact even if not based on law—line of partition between the two parts of Kashmir. One is under Pakistani control and the other, under Indian control. The war cost 1,500 lives on both sides.

War broke out again between the two countries in 1965. Unhappy with the course of negotiations, Pakistan tried to grab control of Kashmir. But India held its ground. This second war lasted less than two months. But it was much deadlier. The two countries had more fi repower this time around, and the struggle cost more than 6,000 lives.

In 2002 tensions over Kashmir peaked again. By that time, both countries had acquired nuclear weapons. The Kashmir issue remains unresolved at this writing. Several Pakistani groups have committed acts of terrorism in attempts to force the issue and drive the Indians out.

India and Its Hindu Majority

Hindus make up more than 80 percent of India’s 1.14 billion people. Its Muslim population is only 12.4 percent. But in such a big country, that 12.4 percent is one of the largest Muslim populations in the world. Hindu-Muslim strife has been a recurring theme in Indian history. A Hindu radical murdered Gandhi in New Delhi less than a year after Indian independence. Hindus often criticized Gandhi for being too conciliatory to Muslims.

India’s fi rst prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, once said, “The danger to India, mark you, is not communism. It is Hindu right-wing communalism.” In other words, Nehru was warning his country against a protective, “my tribe fi rst” attitude.



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Recent years have seen a resurgence of Hindu terrorism against Muslims and also Christians, who make up about 2 percent of India’s population. In 2002 as many as 2,000 people died and another 150,000 were displaced from their homes during rioting in Gujarat that broke out between Hindus and Muslims after Muslims burned 58 Hindu pilgrims alive in a train in Godhra, India.

Pakistan and Its Muslim Majority

Pakistan’s Muslims are mostly Sunni, but its large Shia minority faces attacks, perhaps aided by national security forces. In February 2009, for instance, a suicide bomb attack on the funeral of a Shia leader killed 28 and triggered rioting.

Many observers believe Pakistan has been behind attacks on India and Hindus generally. The November 2008 attacks on Mumbai, India, for instance, which lasted two and a half days and left 163 dead, prompted the Indian foreign minister to describe Pakistan as “the epicenter of terror attacks against India.”

In addition, Pakistan fostered the development of the Afghan fundamentalist militia. It also in effect banned the Ahmadi sect in 1984. Its members consider themselves Muslims but Pakistani law does not, leading to serious acts of persecution.


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The Division of Pakistan

At independence, Pakistan was made up of two pieces of land—so-called West Pakistan and East Pakistan. Geographically, India stood between them. Almost from the start, Pakistan’s two “wings” had trouble getting along. After all, they were more than 1,000 miles apart. West Pakistan dominated the central government. True, the two parts of the country were both largely Muslim. But they spoke different languages and came from different ethnic groups, too.

A political party known as the Awami League formed to promote Bengali interests. (The Bengalis lived in East Pakistan.) In the 1970–71 national elections, the league won almost all the East Pakistani seats. This led to negotiations to redistribute power between the central government and the provinces. These talks soon broke down, however.

That led to civil disobedience in the East, and then a crackdown by the Pakistani Army. Many Bengali leaders fl ed to India. There they set up a provisional government while fi ghting continued. In November, India entered the war on the East Pakistani side. On 16 December 1971 Pakistani forces gave up. The independent state of Bangladesh—which means “Bengal country”—was born.

Democracy has run smoothly in neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh. Both countries have known military rule, political murder, and, more recently, Islamist extremism.

How Muslim-Hindu Strife Affects the Politics and Economics of South Asia

The long-standing hostility between Muslims and Hindus in South Asia moved Britain to split India into two states once they granted the people their independence.

That said, the lines that a British civil servant named Sir Cyril Radcliffe drew on the map of India—during his one visit to the country—only made things worse. These borders have led to three wars so far. And Kashmir remains one of the fl ash points where a nuclear war could start.

The Impact of Cultural Identities on South Asian Economics

As a social hierarchy that limits people’s economic potential, there is nothing else on earth quite like India’s caste system. People’s caste status, which they are born into, affects their economic status. Many castes are associated with occupations, from the high-ranking Brahmans to the mid-ranking farmers and skilled tradespeople down to the low-ranking “untouchables.” This last group does the jobs that put them in touch with death and decay, so to speak. They clean latrines because India largely lacks modern sanitation. They are also leatherworkers, butchers, and even launderers. High-caste people, unsurprisingly, tend to be well off. Lower-caste people tend to live in poverty and at a social disadvantage.



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Efforts to help the lower castes, especially the “untouchables,” go back to Gandhi’s day. He called them “Harijan,” children of light. Today they are known as dalits (dah-LEETS). Much remains to be done to bring them up the economic ladder. But, as a US government report puts it, “a quiet social transformation in this area” has begun.

The Impact of Caste and Religion on South Asian Politics

Hindu-Muslim tensions worsened during the 1990s. This likely had less to do with ancient hatreds and religious beliefs than with economic upheaval. As more people left the farm for work in the cities, they found themselves competing for jobs and places to live. Even high-caste Hindus often had to do work they considered beneath them. Hindu anger and frustration often turned against successful Muslim merchants. It also turned against those returning from well-paying jobs in the oil-rich Persian Gulf states. These workers tended to be Muslim. All these developments led some Hindus, especially those of the higher castes, to join militant or even terrorist groups.


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Politicians have helped increase Hindu-Muslim tensions as well. Some observers point to Shah Bano’s case in 1985. She was a 73-year-old Muslim who sought alimony after her husband divorced her according to Muslim law after 43 years of marriage. India is a secular state. But Shah Bano’s case brought the question of the state and religion to the top of the political agenda. When the Supreme Court awarded her alimony, many Muslims were outraged. Sharia, Islamic law, does not allow for alimony in case of divorce, they insisted. They felt the court’s ruling disrespected Islam.

At this point, Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi apparently felt he was in danger of losing support from a key voting bloc. So he pushed through legislation that moved Muslim divorce cases from India’s civil law to the jurisdiction of Islamic sharia courts. This, in turn, enraged many Hindus, many of whom submit to orders from civil court judges to pay alimony to wives they divorce.

Political and Economic Growth in India and Pakistan Since Independence

IndiaIn India, Congress, the organization that won independence from Britain, continues to rule today. A secular, left-of-center party, Congress at this writing leads a coalition in the Lok Sabha, the lower house of Parliament. Its support declined for several years, during which other parties sometimes formed the government. But it bounced back in the 2004 elections after reaching out to many poor, rural, and Muslim voters.

India’s economy, the world’s 12th largest as of the end of 2007, has a gross domestic product of more than $1 trillion. Its annual growth, while not as strong as China’s, has still been more than 9 percent in recent years. Hundreds of millions of Indians live on $2 per day or less. But the country also has a growing middle class. It’s expected to number 500 million by 2025.

The downside is that India has been slow to move to free-market reforms. In other words, government imposed many regulations on business. That has changed in recent years. But experts see India still held back by lack of good infrastructure—roads, rail lines, power lines, communications cables, and water and sewer lines. Other problems include bureaucracy, corruption, and too-rigid controls on foreign investment. Outside experts see Indian labor regulations as infl exible, too. India also has high fi scal defi cits. In other words, its government spends more than it collects in taxes.



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Pakistan Pakistan has spent much of its history under military rule. Most of the exceptions have been periods dominated by the Bhutto family. Zulfi kar Ali Bhutto served as prime minister during the 1970s but was eventually hanged on charges of conspiracy to murder. His daughter Benazir Bhutto was prime minister at different times during the 1980s and 1990s. She was assassinated in 2007 shortly after her return from a period of exile. Her political opponent Muhammad Nawaz Sharif has also been prime minister. He was in offi ce in 1999 when General Pervez Musharraf took over in a bloodless coup.

After the 9/11 terror attacks, Musharraf allied Pakistan with the United States in its global war on terror. Pakistan’s location, next to Afghanistan, which had harbored al-Qaeda, has made Pakistan a frontline state in the fi ght against terrorism. Musharraf has since been replaced as president of Pakistan by Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto’s widower.

Pakistan’s economic story is more troubled than India’s. Its population and economy are both about one-seventh that of its larger neighbor. Its exports are largely agricultural products and textiles. International sanctions slapped on Pakistan after its fi rst nuclear test in 1998 limited economic growth. In more recent years, though, cooperation with the United States has won it international aid.

A large section of Pakistan along the border with Afghanistan makes up the “Federally Administered Tribal Areas.” The Pakistani government exercises control over these economically undeveloped areas in name only. Their residents are the same Pashtun tribesmen who live on the other side of the border in Afghanistan. From this region, where some believe al-Qaeda’s Osama bin Laden is hiding, emanates much of the terrorism that bedevils both nations.

Pakistan is a good example of how political instability interferes with economic development—which then fosters more political instability.

Which Groups Have Struggled for Control in Afghanistan and Why

Afghanistan is a good place to remember why people say “geography is destiny.” A look at the map will give you some clues about why Afghanistan has been hard to control. It is mountainous and landlocked, with few roads even today.

Afghanistan isn’t just a political nowheresville, though. True, much of its terrain is of the type best traveled on horseback. And yet Afghanistan is on the historic trade and invasion routes from Central Asia into South and Southwest Asia. It’s been an important piece of real estate for a long time.


194 CHAPTER 2 Asia

Afghanistan as a Crossroads Over the Centuries

Afghanistan has been known as the crossroads of Central Asia. It was under Persian rule when Alexander the Great arrived in 328 BC to set up a Hellenistic (Greek) state. Scythians, White Huns, and Turks invaded over the next few centuries. In the seventh century, the Arabs arrived and brought Islam. More invaders and conquerors came and went, including Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, forebear of the Mughals.

But the founder of today’s Afghanistan was Ahmad Shah Durrani. A tribal council elected him king in 1747. He managed to weld a group of disparate provinces and fi efdoms into one country.



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During the nineteenth century, as the British were expanding their empire in the Indian subcontinent, they worried about czarist Russian advances in Central Asia and Persia. You might say the two empires “met in the middle,” and that middle was Afghanistan.

The British fought two wars there. In the fi rst Anglo-Afghan war, in 1839, they lost an army. After the second, Amir Abdur Rahman came to the Afghan throne. He reigned from 1880 to 1901, and during that time, the British and the Russians managed to agree on the boundaries of modern Afghanistan. The British didn’t exactly control Afghanistan at this point, but they controlled Kabul’s foreign affairs. That is, they did until 1919 when they signed this authority away in the Treaty of Rawalpindi.

During much of the twentieth century, Afghanistan was a constitutional monarchy. It became less isolated. Its rulers experimented with social reforms such as education for women. (This didn’t sit well with tribal leaders.) And while the king was focused on other things, extreme political parties developed. One was a Communist Party allied with the Soviet Union.

In 1973 Sardar Mohammad Daoud, the king’s cousin and prime minister, staged a coup. He set himself up as president and prime minister of a reformist republic. That didn’t go well, and in April 1978 the Communists staged a bloody coup. Opposition to their brutal rule emerged almost at once. The Communists’ Marxist “reforms” ran counter to Afghan traditions.

More coups and rebellions followed, and then on Christmas Eve 1979, Soviet aircraft started delivering troops to Kabul to “support” the regime of Afghan leader Babrak Karmal. Despite their 120,000 troops, however, the Soviets couldn’t control much of the country beyond Kabul. Afghan freedom fi ghters (mujahideen) kept the Soviets confi ned largely to the capital. The resistance grew, in part with covert fi nancial support from the United States.

It was a long, hard slog for the Russians, and they never succeeded in winning over the Afghan people. Moreover, the occupation was souring Soviet relations in much of the West as well as the Islamic world.

IRAN

PAKISTAN

AFGHANISTAN

INDIA

NEPAL

CHINA

KAZAKHSTAN

TURKMENISTAN

UZBEKISTAN

Delhi

TAJIKISTAN

KYRGYZSTAN

Ahmad Shah Durrani’s Empire 1772

Caspian Sea


196 CHAPTER 2 Asia

The Russians fi nally signed an accord in Geneva that committed them to leave Afghanistan in 1989. But signifi cantly, the mujahideen were not party to the deal. This meant that the civil war going on in Afghanistan would not end just because the Soviets were pulling out. This imperfect solution to one problem in Afghanistan sowed the seeds of another.

Afghanistan’s Ethnic Groups

The same factors that have made Afghanistan hard to govern also make it a hard place to take a census. Pashtuns are the largest ethnic group there. They make up 38 percent to 44 percent of the population. The estimate for Tajiks, the second-largest group, is 25 percent. Next come Hazaras, about 10 percent, and Uzbeks, 6 percent to 8 percent. A number of other small groups make up the rest of the population.

Dari (Afghan Farsi, or Persian) and Pashto are the offi cial languages. A third of Afghans speak Dari as a fi rst language, and it’s a common language for most of the country. Pashto is spoken in the east and south. People in the north speak Tajik and Turkic languages. More than 70 smaller groups have their own languages as well.

Afghanistan is an Islamic country—80 percent of Afghans are Sunni, and the rest, primarily the Hazara, are mostly Shia.



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Culture and Politics Until the Taliban Era

Experts describe Afghanistan’s culture as an ethnic mosaic. But it’s a mosaic in which the tiles tend to overlap with one another. There isn’t a homogeneous national culture. Most of Afghanistan’s ethnic groups have come from someplace else—the legacy of centuries of invasion. And few of its groups are racially homogeneous. The overlapping between groups has only increased as roads have improved (somewhat) and people have had more opportunity for schooling.

Ethnic differences have played a role in Afghan politics, which have traditionally favored the Pashtuns. But interethnic tensions tend to be based on some particular issue. If there’s a grievance, there’s a reason for it, in other words. Afghans tend not to distrust members of another group just because they’re “different,” for instance.

Afghan ethnicities became more apparent during the Soviet-Afghan war. The appeal of the mujahideen related to Afghan traditions of religion, family, tribe, and ethnic group. It was a stark contrast with the culture of the atheist-Communist Soviet invaders, who seemed so foreign.

Perhaps the most important legacy of the many invasions was Islam. The Arabs brought it to Afghanistan as part of their seventh-century sweep across Africa and Asia. During the decade of Soviet domination, Islam became important not just as a religion but as a form of cultural expression. It was a way for Afghans to push back against the Soviets.

The Taliban Era

The withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan in 1989 left a vacuum. The Taliban arose to fi ll it. The Taliban are an Islamic fundamentalist militia that governed Afghanistan for several years. The name comes from talib, an Arabic word meaning “student.” Many of them had studied in madrassas—religious schools—in Pakistan. They captured Kandahar from a local warlord in 1994. Two years later they had control of Kabul, the capital. By the end of 1998 they occupied about 90 percent of the country.

The Taliban introduced an extremely strict version of Islam. It was based on the tribal code of their rural Pashtun stomping ground. The Taliban violated the human rights of women and girls. They also committed atrocities against minority groups, such as the Hazaras. And from the mid-1990s they sheltered 9/11 mastermind Osama bin Laden and provided al-Qaeda a base of operations for terrorism. Bin Laden, as you read in Chapter 1, Lesson 4, was a Saudi national who fought the Soviets as part of the Afghan resistance. In exchange for being left alone, he gave the Taliban fi nancial and political support.


198 CHAPTER 2 Asia

During this time, al-Qaeda is believed to have bombed two US embassies in Africa in 1998 and the USS Cole in 2000. And on 11 September 2001 it launched the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Afterward, the United States demanded the Taliban hand over Bin Laden. But they refused—repeatedly. And so on 7 October 2001 US forces and their Afghan allies began a military campaign against the Taliban. The Taliban fell apart quickly. Kabul was in US hands by 13 November.

But the Taliban did not go away. The new Afghan government under President Hamid Karzai has struggled in its efforts to control the country, end corruption, and develop the economy. The Taliban have made a comeback—not surprisingly, in ethnically Pashtun areas. The resulting low-level confl ict continues to challenge the United States and its NATO allies in their support of the government in Kabul.



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Lesson 3 Review Using complete sentences, answer the following questions on a sheet of paper.

1. Who were the forebears of the Mughals?

2. What is the Taj Mahal and why is it important?

3. What was the British East India Company?

4. What was the Sepoy Rebellion?

5. Who was Mohandas K. Gandhi?

6. Who was Mohammad Ali Jinnah?

7. What was the partition of British India?

8. What is the signifi cance of Kashmir?

9. Who are India’s “untouchables”? What is a better name for them today?

10. Identify the Bhutto family.

11. Which European power left Afghanistan in defeat in 1839? In 1989?

12. Who are the Taliban and why did the United States attack them?

Applying Your Learning 13. Identify something in what you have read about Afghanistan that you think

might apply to what’s happening there now. Why do you think it’s relevant?


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