Last week, inspired by the work of KCL’s fantastic David Betz, I published a piece of speculative fiction, which explored the possibility that an India-Pakistan conflict could trigger civil conflict in Britain.
My fear was that such a conflict might come to pass in the next decade or so, triggered by competition over water. Unfortunately, it looks as though I may be proven right sooner than I had expected.
On 22nd April, a terrorist attack in Indian-administered Kashmir killed 26 people and injured a further 20; it is India’s deadliest terrorist attack since 2008. These brutal killings were carried out by Lashkar-e-Taliba, a Pakistan-based Islamist group, who primarily targeted Hindus.
This could have been just another sorry episode in the Indo-Pakistan dispute over Kashmir, which has marred relations between the two countries since independence in 1947. However, compelled by the strength of public sentiment, the Indian Government responded decisively. It blamed the Pakistani Government for facilitating the attack, expelling Pakistanis from India and cancelling the Indus Water Treaty, which has governed shared access to the Indus River and its tributaries since 1960.
For Pakistan, the suspension of the treaty is an existential threat. About 80 percent of the country’s freshwater supply comes from the Indus River system, supporting a similar proportion of the country’s irrigated land. It would not be too much of an exaggeration to say that, for Pakistan, access to the waters of the Indus River is the difference between stability and starvation. Senior Pakistani diplomats have previously suggested that Indian withdrawal from the treaty would constitute an act of war, fearing that India could restrict Pakistan’s access to the Indus by building dams and reservoirs.
And this is exactly where we find ourselves. India has withdrawn from the Indus Water Treaty. Neither side seems interested in de-escalation. On the evening of 24th April, Pakistani and Indian troops exchanged small arms fire across the border; at the time of writing, these clashes persist.
If the situation worsens, it will have huge domestic security implications for the United Kingdom
Could the situation worsen? Nobody can say for sure. Experts are divided on whether the two sides are interested in escalation; the risks associated with any real war between India and Pakistan are enormous, given that both sides possess the capability to launch nuclear strikes against the other. This is not the first Indo-Pak clash in recent decades, with border skirmishes breaking out in 2008, 2011, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2019, and 2020.
But if the situation worsens, it will have huge domestic security implications for the United Kingdom. Thanks to decades of mass migration, this conflict could spill over onto British streets. As of 2021, Britain is home to 1.9 million Indians and 1.7 million Pakistanis; that’s before the so-called “Boriswave”, which supercharged South Asian migration in the wake of Brexit. A large proportion of Britain’s South Asians are newly-arrived, with more than a million Indians receiving long-term visas between 2021 and 2024.
In decades past, migrants were largely separated from the homeland by distance and time. In the age of Whatsapp and cheap flights, these communities retain active ties to their home countries. In 2022, we saw a month of riots in Leicester, with Hindu and Muslim groups clashing in the wake of an India-Pakistan cricket match. Back then, tensions were heightened by the Modi Government’s decision to fully integrate Kashmir into India; if a full-scale conflict were to break out, it isn’t difficult to imagine that the two sides would come to blows again, in places like Leicester, London, and Birmingham.
This would make our domestic fracas over Gaza look like child’s play. Since October 7th 2023, we have witnessed weekly protests by pro-Palestine activists, the emergence of sectarian political candidates, and the routine intimidation of MPs. The implications of an India-Pakistan conflict would be far more severe; the UK-based diaspora from both countries is enormous, and Government prevarication would likely provoke a backlash from both sides.
I do not know how Keir Starmer would respond to a hot war in Kashmir. He has the unenviable task of defending Britain’s national interest, while also juggling a voter coalition which relies on support from both Indians and Pakistanis. Likewise, it isn’t clear how opposition parties will respond. If Labour alienates one community or the other, the opposition may seize the political opportunity that this presents.
But on the other hand, the vast majority of ordinary Britons will rightly wonder why so much political time is being spent on a conflict thousands of miles away. Didn’t we leave India in 1947? Why do so many people in Britain care so deeply about this war? Why did we import a sectarian conflict? Where, in all of the light and noise, does Britain’s national interest come into the equation?
Nobody knows whether war will come to South Asia this year — not even those involved in coordinating the response on either side of the Radcliffe Line. It may all fizzle out, remembered only as the latest spat in the decades-long dispute between the two countries.
But it might not. It might turn into a full-blown conflict, bringing India and Pakistan to war in a manner not seen since the late 1990s. If the situation does escalate, then Britain’s political class is woefully unprepared for the consequences that this country will suffer. For too long, we have sown the wind. We may be about to reap the whirlwind.
