A boy hailing from Kandiaro fell in love with a girl belonging to Kashmir while they were studying together in an academy. During this time, their love grew deeper than oceans, sweeter than honey, and higher than the Himalayas. However, it met a sad end. The girl departed from his life, telling him that it was never possible for the two to unite, for in Kashmir, they had an inviolable custom of getting married within the family or at most to someone native to Kashmir only. Seeing their union as a mirage in the face of compulsions of custom and wraths of geography, both parted ways in sheer devastation to their hearts.
Geography has played a great role in the lives of individuals and countries, sometimes blessing them with dividends beyond measure and, at other times, being sinisterly accursed to them. It is a well-established fact that among a slew of reasons for the disintegration of East Bengal in 1971, it was also geography that proved to be a decisive factor. Both wings of the country were separated by not some mere distance but the mammoth distance of 1000 km. Sandwiched between them was their hostile neighbour India, who spared no opportunity to pit the two against each other until they divided.
The subcontinent remained on the radar of invaders and plunderers all throughout its rich history, again owing to its unique geography.
The results of the Cold War, which ended in 1991 with the dissolution of the USSR into 15 sovereign states, could have been an altogether different story had the country not sold its territory called Alaska to the USA. Sitting at the borderline with the USA, it could have easily manoeuvred its efforts to turn the outcomes of the war in its favour, but the folly it inadvertently made in the 19th century resulted in an inevitable, unimaginable catastrophe later. Today, this very territory is the largest state in America; along with that, it is also contributing massively to the country’s economy with its enormous mineral resources, both latent and discovered.
Similarly, the subcontinent remained on the radar of invaders and plunderers all throughout its rich history, again owing to its unique geography. Basically, it was a peninsula as it was covered by water on all sides barring the north, which was also covered but by high mountains, making people’s passage and access to the outer world difficult. This is the reason why caste became the sole identity of people, and whoever would dare go out of the country would lose his caste, thereby losing his identity. This closed geography made people inward-looking, solely relying on the resources the land was endowed with, and there is no shred of doubt about its abundance of resources, including fertile land that formed the country a strong agrarian economy. At the time of the annexation of Baluchistan, Darius was taken aback by the rich lands surrounding the Indus River, prompting him to levy tribute on the peasants. Similarly, almost all the invaders – from Ghazni, Ghori, and Mongols to all the way down to Mughals and Britishers – came to the subcontinent, lured by the enormous wealth that people amassed from the lucrative agriculture system of the country.
Pakistan has also suffered haunting misery due to its geography. It was its appealing geographic location that dragged it into the turbulent Cold War. The country was taken into camp by America against the USSR’s forces in Afghanistan. In return, Pakistan indeed extracted colossal amounts of money from the USA, but it paid heavily for this decision. Who can forget the reaction of Ziaul Haq to the petty aid of the USA, which he described as ‘Peanuts’? Being caught in an asking situation, then-President Jimmy Carter took no time to raise the amount in order to win the much-needed support of Pakistan. Unfortunately, it was this folly committed by Pakistan for which the country is still paying in the form of unceasing terrorism, even after more than 40 years.
A lot of people have the opinion that it was the U2 incident that led to fertile ground between the USSR and India to stitch a strong friendship with each other, which has endured to this day and continues on. Their alliance is a different story, but how Pakistan was made to pay for this episode is unforgettable. At the time of the capture of the American pilot doing surveillance, Nikita Khrushchev, the former president of the USSR, openly threatened Pakistan, saying that Pakistan would pay for this. In the war of 1971, it was obviously seen how the USSR went to every length to disintegrate Pakistan. It was the suitability of Pakistan’s geography to the USA that it set up an airbase in Badaber, Peshawar, to keep a watch on the USSR. In return for this, Pakistan earned a friend who has wreaked more miseries than favours on it and who has remained more hostile than cordial.
Why did Kashmir turn out to be a hotspot of Pakistan and India’s flashpoint despite the fact that the latter arbitrarily annexed Junagadh and Hyderabad while the state of Kalat went into Pakistan’s possession? The palpable answer to this is that Kashmir has possibly a lot more significant geographic placement than any other state in both countries; it borders China, Tibet, Afghanistan, India, and Pakistan, besides its enormous resourcefulness. Given this, neither of the countries was willing to wash its hands off such a golden bird. Moreover, Pakistan had an added apprehension that if India seized the territory, it would have direct access to Afghanistan, which would have given Pakistan a fate no different from that of Nagorno-Karabakh, an enclave in Azerbaijan claimed by Armenia.
These events are merely the tip of the iceberg. History is swamped with a myriad of stories wherein nations immensely suffered from the savagery of their geography.
The writer is a freelance columnist.