May 8, 2025 • 11 mins
Earlier this week, India fired missiles at Pakistan, reigniting a long-simmering conflict over a disputed region in the Himalayas. Pakistan said India’s strikes killed at least 31 people, mainly civilians, and that it’s considering it an “act of aggression”. Today, we’ll explain the history of Kashmir, the region at the centre of this conflict, and what has brought on the latest hostilities.
Hosts: Lucy Tassell and Zara Seidler
Producer: Orla Maher
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias.
Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
the Daily OS. It's Friday, the ninth of May.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Earlier this week, India fired missiles at Pakistan, reigniting a
long simmering conflict over a disputed region in the Himalayas.
Pakistan said India's strikes killed at least thirty one people,
mainly civilians, and that it's considering it an act of aggression.
Today we'll explain the history of Kashmir, the region at
the center of this conflict, and what has brought on
(00:43):
the latest hostilities.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Lucy, a lot of our audience have been dming us
and asking us to explain what is happening in Kashmir
as it pertains to India and to Pakistan. Now, this
is of those topics that is extremely complicated and has
a lot of history behind it. But I think a
good way to understand this is to first go through
(01:09):
the headlines that everyone will have been seeing this week,
and then to step back and understand the context. So
why don't we start with the most recent events first?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So the headlines our readers would have seen would have
started about two weeks ago. That's when Gunman opened fire
on tourists visiting Pahlgam, a town in the Himalayas, killing
at least twenty six people. Phalgam Is in Kashmir. That's
a region that borders India, Pakistan and China. Following a
UN decision in the late nineteen forties, India controls half
(01:43):
and Pakistan controls half, and Pahlgam is in the Indian half.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the killings a terrorist attack,
and India has accused Pakistan of supporting the militants behind it.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So there were militants who killed tourists in the Indian
part of Pahalgam in Kashmir, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And India has accused Pakistan of supporting these militants.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Pakistan has denied this, and Pakistan has also offered to
participate in a neutral international investigation the killings.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, But that was two weeks ago, and then this
week there's been more news.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yes, And in the interim in between two weeks ago
and this week, tensions between the two countries have fairly
significantly increased. India has ordered Pakistanis to leave the country,
Pakistan has canceled Indian nationals visas, and both countries have
withdrawn from bilateral treaties sworn between the two of them.
(02:48):
Then this week, tensions really explode when India fired missiles
at the Pakistani province of Punjab and at Pakistan's section
of Kashmir.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And at the time of recording, we understand that at
least thirty one people, mainly civilians, have been killed in
those missile attacks. Yes, in Pakistan, okay, And so that's
all on foot right now. Yes, but you referred there
to a un partition, to Kashmere, to a lot of
concepts that I think might be foreign to some of
(03:20):
our listeners. So can you give me a bit of
historical context about Kashmir and what we need to understand
about it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I can give you a lot of historical context because,
as I learned while researching this podcast, the only way
to explain this is to go back to the year
sixteen hundred. That's when Queen Elizabeth I of England created
the East India Company. This company controlled Britain's trade with
India for hundreds of years. It had troops, and it
(03:49):
fought wars with Indian rulers for land and access to
ports to ship all the goods that they were taking
from India. In the seventeen fifties, the company took control
of the entire subcontinental peninsula through wars and through deals.
When I say India from now until later on, I
(04:09):
mean the region that we would now consider India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Myanmar and Sri Lanka was also eventually colonized. The
East India Company's rule lasted for one hundred years, during
which time the company imposed impossibly high taxes, let millions
die in famines, and took basically every resource that they
(04:30):
could find for their own. Then, in the eighteen fifties,
Indian men in the East India Company's army turned on
their British leaders over a religious dispute, which led to
a major rebellion. Britain then intervened and crushed that rebellion,
and the British government took full control of the entire region.
(04:51):
Then Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. And this
was an era called the British Raj and it was
part of the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And so how long did the British Raj? How long
did that last?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
For it lasted until after World War II. It ended
in nineteen forty seven. Basically, over time, Indian people slowly
began to assert more control in the Raj. Following a
massacre of Indian people in a park by British soldiers
in nineteen nineteen, non violent protests spread around the country
(05:23):
led by Mahatma Gandhi and others. Following World War II,
the British government, Indian nationalists, primarily Hindu, and a Muslim
political group negotiated India's independence from Britain. The upshot of
these negotiations was that the region was split into Hindu
majority India and Muslim majority Pakistan, a process called partition.
(05:47):
Kashmir became a flashpoint of conflict between the new nations,
with both fighting for control over the region. The UN
then intervened and the area was split into Pakistani control
in the north and in control in the south Okay.
As we know though, that was not the end of
the conflict. More conflicts have followed, driven largely by religious
(06:09):
tensions by the Muslim majority in Pakistan the Hindu majority
in India. The two countries have gone to war in
nineteen sixty five, nineteen seventy one, and nineteen ninety nine
over the region, and then there's another conflict in nineteen
eighty four that's over a glacier in Kashmir. There was
a ceasefire in that conflict in two thousand and three,
(06:30):
but it's not really considered to be over. Tensions between
the two countries have remained extremely high, so much so
that actually during a recent international cricket competition called the
Champions Trophy, which was hosted by Pakistan, India refused to
play games in Pakistan, and so India played its games
against a bunch of different countries, including Pakistan in Dubai
(06:54):
and Pakistan also won't play in India even if they're
playing against India at these international level competitions. So that
kind of tells you where the tensions were at earlier
this year as we head possibly towards another war.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
We'll be back with the rest of today's podcast after
a quick message from our sponsor. Okay, so let me
just recap. So, Kashmir is partitioned, has been partitioned by
the UN into two parts, one part being controlled by India,
the other by Pakistan, and there have historically been tensions, conflicts,
(07:30):
and it is that region right now that is at
the center of renewed hostilities.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, because that's where the massacre of tourists by a
militia took place. And that's India has accused Pakistan of
backing this militia, which Pakistan has denied.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Okay, and so that incident took place two weeks ago,
and then this week we saw India fire missiles into Pakistan.
What's been the fallout since then?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So immediately after the missile firing, India's embassy in Washington,
DC released a statement defending its actions. It said it
launched the attack after Pakistan failed to quote take action
against the militants responsible for the earlier attack. Again they
are saying that Pakistan was involved. They maintained the missile
(08:18):
strikes were quote focused and precise and did not hit
any civilian, military, or economic targets. Al Jazeera and Reuter's
reported on Thursday that India had bombed multiple mosques. So
that's international reporting that hasn't been confirmed by either side.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And then what has Pakistan's response been.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, Pakistan said the initial round of strikes killed at
least thirty one people, primarily civilians. It also said it
had shot down a few Indian Air Force planes. In
a statement, Pakistani PM Shabbaz Sharif called the attacks cowardly
and said quote a resolute response is already underway, says
(09:00):
Pakistani attacks have killed at least fifteen civilians in the
part of Kashmir that it controls.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What of the international responses to what we're seeing unfold been?
What have we heard, for example from the UN? Say so?
Speaker 1 (09:14):
The UN Secretary General Antony Uguaterez urged both countries to
show restraint. He said, quote, the world cannot afford a
military confrontation between India and Pakistan. That global language saying
the world can't afford it is probably inspired by the
fact that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I was gonna ask, because so many of the dms
that we received asking us to explain this have asked,
are we on the cusp of another world war? And
is it because of the nuclear capability of both of
these countries that there is a suggestion that this could
escalate to that level?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That has certainly been mentioned in a lot of the
reporting that I've seen. But I will also say that
Russia has nuclear warheads and it has been at war
with you Ukraine for three years, and there's been zero
suggestion that they are going to deploy major nuclear warheads.
I mean, there's the concept of mutually assured destruction. Given
(10:10):
that India and Pakistan share a border, and given the
radius of a nuclear bomb, if one were to be dropped,
that would be catastrophic for the entire Asian continent, but
especially both India and Pakistan. So it seems unlikely, but
it could mean a why there's always the risk with
any regional conflict that it spills out into a broader war.
(10:33):
Going back to some of the global response, the European
Union's head of foreign policy said on Wednesday that the
organization is attempting to cool off tensions, and Nobel Peace
Prize winner Malala Yusufsai, who is Pakistani, has also called
for tensions to be de escalated and for both countries
to protect civilians. But it's kind of not clear that
(10:55):
that will actually happen. So Shabaz Sharif, as I mentioned before,
the Pakistani Prime Minister has been reported as saying India
will quote suffer the consequences of its strike, so we're
going to have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Lucy. Thank you for explaining that it is so complicated,
there's so much history, but it's such an important topic
to understand. So thank you for taking us through that.
Thank you for joining us for another week of the
Daily os. That was a big week of news and
we so appreciate all the support and love that you
have shown us this week. We'll be back later today
(11:28):
with some more headlines, but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bunjelung Kalkotin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present,
Already and this is the Daily This is the Dahlias.
Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
the Daily OS. It's Friday, the ninth of May.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Zara Seidler.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Earlier this week, India fired missiles at Pakistan, reigniting a
long simmering conflict over a disputed region in the Himalayas.
Pakistan said India's strikes killed at least thirty one people,
mainly civilians, and that it's considering it an act of aggression.
Today we'll explain the history of Kashmir, the region at
the center of this conflict, and what has brought on
(00:43):
the latest hostilities.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Lucy, a lot of our audience have been dming us
and asking us to explain what is happening in Kashmir
as it pertains to India and to Pakistan. Now, this
is of those topics that is extremely complicated and has
a lot of history behind it. But I think a
good way to understand this is to first go through
(01:09):
the headlines that everyone will have been seeing this week,
and then to step back and understand the context. So
why don't we start with the most recent events first?
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So the headlines our readers would have seen would have
started about two weeks ago. That's when Gunman opened fire
on tourists visiting Pahlgam, a town in the Himalayas, killing
at least twenty six people. Phalgam Is in Kashmir. That's
a region that borders India, Pakistan and China. Following a
UN decision in the late nineteen forties, India controls half
(01:43):
and Pakistan controls half, and Pahlgam is in the Indian half.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi called the killings a terrorist attack,
and India has accused Pakistan of supporting the militants behind it.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
So there were militants who killed tourists in the Indian
part of Pahalgam in Kashmir, yes, okay.
Speaker 1 (02:06):
And India has accused Pakistan of supporting these militants.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (02:10):
Pakistan has denied this, and Pakistan has also offered to
participate in a neutral international investigation the killings.
Speaker 2 (02:20):
Okay, But that was two weeks ago, and then this
week there's been more news.
Speaker 1 (02:25):
Yes, And in the interim in between two weeks ago
and this week, tensions between the two countries have fairly
significantly increased. India has ordered Pakistanis to leave the country,
Pakistan has canceled Indian nationals visas, and both countries have
withdrawn from bilateral treaties sworn between the two of them.
(02:48):
Then this week, tensions really explode when India fired missiles
at the Pakistani province of Punjab and at Pakistan's section
of Kashmir.
Speaker 2 (03:00):
And at the time of recording, we understand that at
least thirty one people, mainly civilians, have been killed in
those missile attacks. Yes, in Pakistan, okay, And so that's
all on foot right now. Yes, but you referred there
to a un partition, to Kashmere, to a lot of
concepts that I think might be foreign to some of
(03:20):
our listeners. So can you give me a bit of
historical context about Kashmir and what we need to understand
about it.
Speaker 1 (03:28):
I can give you a lot of historical context because,
as I learned while researching this podcast, the only way
to explain this is to go back to the year
sixteen hundred. That's when Queen Elizabeth I of England created
the East India Company. This company controlled Britain's trade with
India for hundreds of years. It had troops, and it
(03:49):
fought wars with Indian rulers for land and access to
ports to ship all the goods that they were taking
from India. In the seventeen fifties, the company took control
of the entire subcontinental peninsula through wars and through deals.
When I say India from now until later on, I
(04:09):
mean the region that we would now consider India, Pakistan, Bangladesh,
and Myanmar and Sri Lanka was also eventually colonized. The
East India Company's rule lasted for one hundred years, during
which time the company imposed impossibly high taxes, let millions
die in famines, and took basically every resource that they
(04:30):
could find for their own. Then, in the eighteen fifties,
Indian men in the East India Company's army turned on
their British leaders over a religious dispute, which led to
a major rebellion. Britain then intervened and crushed that rebellion,
and the British government took full control of the entire region.
(04:51):
Then Queen Victoria became the Empress of India. And this
was an era called the British Raj and it was
part of the British Empire.
Speaker 2 (04:59):
And so how long did the British Raj? How long
did that last?
Speaker 1 (05:02):
For it lasted until after World War II. It ended
in nineteen forty seven. Basically, over time, Indian people slowly
began to assert more control in the Raj. Following a
massacre of Indian people in a park by British soldiers
in nineteen nineteen, non violent protests spread around the country
(05:23):
led by Mahatma Gandhi and others. Following World War II,
the British government, Indian nationalists, primarily Hindu, and a Muslim
political group negotiated India's independence from Britain. The upshot of
these negotiations was that the region was split into Hindu
majority India and Muslim majority Pakistan, a process called partition.
(05:47):
Kashmir became a flashpoint of conflict between the new nations,
with both fighting for control over the region. The UN
then intervened and the area was split into Pakistani control
in the north and in control in the south Okay.
As we know though, that was not the end of
the conflict. More conflicts have followed, driven largely by religious
(06:09):
tensions by the Muslim majority in Pakistan the Hindu majority
in India. The two countries have gone to war in
nineteen sixty five, nineteen seventy one, and nineteen ninety nine
over the region, and then there's another conflict in nineteen
eighty four that's over a glacier in Kashmir. There was
a ceasefire in that conflict in two thousand and three,
(06:30):
but it's not really considered to be over. Tensions between
the two countries have remained extremely high, so much so
that actually during a recent international cricket competition called the
Champions Trophy, which was hosted by Pakistan, India refused to
play games in Pakistan, and so India played its games
against a bunch of different countries, including Pakistan in Dubai
(06:54):
and Pakistan also won't play in India even if they're
playing against India at these international level competitions. So that
kind of tells you where the tensions were at earlier
this year as we head possibly towards another war.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
We'll be back with the rest of today's podcast after
a quick message from our sponsor. Okay, so let me
just recap. So, Kashmir is partitioned, has been partitioned by
the UN into two parts, one part being controlled by India,
the other by Pakistan, and there have historically been tensions, conflicts,
(07:30):
and it is that region right now that is at
the center of renewed hostilities.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
Yes, because that's where the massacre of tourists by a
militia took place. And that's India has accused Pakistan of
backing this militia, which Pakistan has denied.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Okay, and so that incident took place two weeks ago,
and then this week we saw India fire missiles into Pakistan.
What's been the fallout since then?
Speaker 1 (07:58):
So immediately after the missile firing, India's embassy in Washington,
DC released a statement defending its actions. It said it
launched the attack after Pakistan failed to quote take action
against the militants responsible for the earlier attack. Again they
are saying that Pakistan was involved. They maintained the missile
(08:18):
strikes were quote focused and precise and did not hit
any civilian, military, or economic targets. Al Jazeera and Reuter's
reported on Thursday that India had bombed multiple mosques. So
that's international reporting that hasn't been confirmed by either side.
Speaker 2 (08:35):
And then what has Pakistan's response been.
Speaker 1 (08:38):
Yeah, Pakistan said the initial round of strikes killed at
least thirty one people, primarily civilians. It also said it
had shot down a few Indian Air Force planes. In
a statement, Pakistani PM Shabbaz Sharif called the attacks cowardly
and said quote a resolute response is already underway, says
(09:00):
Pakistani attacks have killed at least fifteen civilians in the
part of Kashmir that it controls.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
What of the international responses to what we're seeing unfold been?
What have we heard, for example from the UN? Say so?
Speaker 1 (09:14):
The UN Secretary General Antony Uguaterez urged both countries to
show restraint. He said, quote, the world cannot afford a
military confrontation between India and Pakistan. That global language saying
the world can't afford it is probably inspired by the
fact that both India and Pakistan have nuclear weapons.
Speaker 2 (09:35):
I was gonna ask, because so many of the dms
that we received asking us to explain this have asked,
are we on the cusp of another world war? And
is it because of the nuclear capability of both of
these countries that there is a suggestion that this could
escalate to that level?
Speaker 1 (09:50):
That has certainly been mentioned in a lot of the
reporting that I've seen. But I will also say that
Russia has nuclear warheads and it has been at war
with you Ukraine for three years, and there's been zero
suggestion that they are going to deploy major nuclear warheads.
I mean, there's the concept of mutually assured destruction. Given
(10:10):
that India and Pakistan share a border, and given the
radius of a nuclear bomb, if one were to be dropped,
that would be catastrophic for the entire Asian continent, but
especially both India and Pakistan. So it seems unlikely, but
it could mean a why there's always the risk with
any regional conflict that it spills out into a broader war.
(10:33):
Going back to some of the global response, the European
Union's head of foreign policy said on Wednesday that the
organization is attempting to cool off tensions, and Nobel Peace
Prize winner Malala Yusufsai, who is Pakistani, has also called
for tensions to be de escalated and for both countries
to protect civilians. But it's kind of not clear that
(10:55):
that will actually happen. So Shabaz Sharif, as I mentioned before,
the Pakistani Prime Minister has been reported as saying India
will quote suffer the consequences of its strike, so we're
going to have to wait and see.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
Lucy. Thank you for explaining that it is so complicated,
there's so much history, but it's such an important topic
to understand. So thank you for taking us through that.
Thank you for joining us for another week of the
Daily os. That was a big week of news and
we so appreciate all the support and love that you
have shown us this week. We'll be back later today
(11:28):
with some more headlines, but until then, have a great day.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
My name is Lily Madden and I'm a proud Arunda
Bunjelung Kalkotin woman from Gadigol Country. The Daily oz acknowledges
that this podcast is recorded on the lands of the
Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal and Torres
Strait Island and nations. We pay our respects to the
first peoples of these countries, both past and present,
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