THE INDIAN CONSTITUENT ASSEMBLY AND THE MAKING OF HINDUS AND MUSLIMS IN JAMMU AND KASHMIR

Article 370 of the Indian constitution gives the northern province of Jammu and Kashmir special status within the union. Today that provision forms a nucleus of fierce political contention between secularists and religious nationalists in India, despite the manifest whittling down of the article's most significant aspects. This development is counterintuitive: the original intent of the article's introduction had no relation to questions of religion. This essay attempts to understand this unanticipated role, as a marker of the state's secularity or lack thereof, the article has come to play in Indian politics. It contends that the seeds were sown even at the time of shaping the Indian constitution of a perspective that viewed the people of Jammu and Kashmir according to their religious affiliations.     

THE FIRST WORLD WAR AND THE MIDDLE EAST

The First World War in the Middle East swept away five hundred years of Ottoman dominion. It ushered in new ideologies and radicalized old ones – from Arab nationalism and revolutionary socialism to impassioned forms of atavistic Islamism. It created heroic icons, like the enigmatic Lawrence or the modernizing Atatürk, and it completely re-drew the map of the region, forging a host of new nation states, For many, the self-serving intervention of these powers in the region between 1914 and 1919 is the major reason for the conflicts that have raged there on and off ever since. Yet many of the most common assertions about the First World War in the Middle East and its aftermath are devoid of context. This article argues that, far from being a mere sideshow to the war in Europe, the Middle Eastern conflict was in fact the centre of gravity in a war for imperial interests. Moreover, contrary to another persistent myth of the First World War in the Middle East, local leaders and their forces were not simply the puppets of the Great Powers. The way in which these local forces embraced, resisted, succumbed to, disrupted, or on occasion overturned the plans of the imperialist powers for their own interests in fact played an important role in shaping the immediate aftermath of the conflict – and in laying the foundations for the troubled Middle East.     

THE SINS OF THE GREAT-GRANDFATHER: THE ROWLATT ACT AND THE AMRITSAR MASSACRE

Justin Rowlatt, the BBC's South Asia Correspondent, writes a reflection on the 1919 Amritsar Massacre and the 1919 Rowlatt Act, which was a precursor to the Massacre. The author is the great-grandson of Sir Sidney Rowlatt, who was responsible for the 1919 legislation.     

ERIC NEWBY,THE HINDU KUSH AND THE GANGES

Hugh Carless was Oriental Secretary in the British Embassy in Kabul and then in the Embassy in Tehran in the 1950s. In 1956 he accompanied Eric Newby on their journey to the Hindu Kush. Later he was British Ambassador to Venezuela and a member of the Council of this Society.

This is the edited text of the lecture which he gave to the Society on 21 March 2007.