Nuclear Crisis Stability in South Asia

Abstract

Relations between India and Pakistan have been fraught with conflict since their emergence from the detritus of the British Indian Empire in 1947. In the British Indian Empire, there were two classes of states. One set of states, those of British India, was directly under the tutelage of the British Crown. The others, the so-called princely states, were nominally independent as long as they accepted the British as the paramount power in the subcontinent. Since their independence from England, India and Pakistan have had markedly divergent concepts of nation building and quickly became embroiled over a territorial dispute involving the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir.