The Baloch or Baluch are an Iranian ethnic group who live mainly in the Balochistan region, located at the southeasternmost edge of the Iranian plateau, encompassing the countries of Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan. There are also Baloch diaspora communities in neighbouring regions, including in India, Turkmenistan, and the Arabian Peninsula.
The Partition of India in 1947 was the change of political borders and the division of other assets that accompanied the dissolution of the British Raj in South Asia and the creation of two independent dominions: India and Pakistan. The Dominion of India is today the Republic of India, and the Dominion of Pakistan—which at the time comprised two regions lying on either side of India—is now the Islamic Republic of Pakistan and the People's Republic of Bangladesh. The partition was outlined in the Indian Independence Act 1947. The change of political borders notably included the division of two provinces of British India, Bengal and Punjab. The majority Muslim districts in these provinces were awarded to Pakistan and the majority non-Muslim to India. The other assets that were divided included the British Indian Army, the Royal Indian Navy, the Royal Indian Air Force, the Indian Civil Service, the railways, and the central treasury. Self-governing independent India and Pakistan legally came into existence at midnight on 14–15 August 1947.
Bahadur Shah I, also known as Muhammad Mu'azzam and Shah Alam I was the eighth Mughal Emperor who ruled from 1707 until his death in 1712. In his youth, he conspired to overthrow his father Aurangzeb, the sixth Mughal emperor, and ascend to the throne. He was governor of Akbarabad, Kabul and Lahore. Bahadur Shah was also Aurangzeb's third son.
The All-India Muslim League (AIML) was a political party established in Dhaka in 1906 when some well-known Muslim politicians met the Viceroy of British India, Lord Minto, with the goal of securing Muslim interests on the Indian subcontinent.
The Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 or the Second Kashmir War was a culmination of skirmishes that took place between April 1965 and September 1965 between Pakistan and India. The conflict began following Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, which was designed to infiltrate forces into Jammu and Kashmir to precipitate an insurgency against Indian rule, It became the immediate cause of the war. The seventeen-day war caused thousands of casualties on both sides and witnessed the largest engagement of armored vehicles and the largest tank battle since World War II. Hostilities between the two countries ended after a ceasefire was declared through UNSC Resolution 211 following a diplomatic intervention by the Soviet Union and the United States, and the subsequent issuance of the Tashkent Declaration. Much of the war was fought by the countries' land forces in Kashmir and along the border between India and Pakistan. This war saw the largest amassing of troops in Kashmir since the Partition of India in 1947, a number that was overshadowed only during the 2001–2002 military standoff between India and Pakistan. Most of the battles were fought by opposing infantry and armoured units, with substantial backing from air forces, and naval operations.
The Pakistan Movement was a political movement in the first half of the 20th century that aimed for the creation of Pakistan from the Muslim-majority areas of British India. It was connected to the perceived need for self-determination for Muslims under British rule at the time. Muhammad Ali Jinnah, a barrister and politician led this movement after the Lahore Resolution was passed by All-India Muslim League on 23 March 1940 and Ashraf Ali Thanwi as a religious scholar supported it. Thanwi's disciples Shabbir Ahmad Usmani and Zafar Ahmad Usmani were key players in religious support for the creation of Pakistan.
Major Jaswant Singh was an officer of the Indian Army and an Indian Cabinet Minister. He was one of the founding members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and was one of India's longest serving parliamentarians, having been a member of the Lok Sabha or the Rajya Sabha almost continuously between 1980 and 2014. He was NDA's Vice-presidential candidate in the 2012 Indian vice presidential election. Singh was the only leader from Rajasthan who had the distinction of becoming the Minister Of External Affairs, Finance and Defense.
Stephen Philip Cohen was an American political scientist and professor of security studies. He was a prominent expert on India, Pakistan and South Asian security, He was a senior fellow in foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution and an emeritus professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He authored, co-authored or edited at least 12 books, and named as one of America's 500 most influential people in foreign affairs, and was a fixture on radio and television talk shows.
Ziauddin Ahmad Suleri, best known as Z. A. Suleri, was a Pakistani political journalist, conservative writer, author, and Pakistan Movement activist. He is regarded as one of the pioneers of print journalism in Pakistan, and authored various history and political books on Pakistan as well as Islam in the South Asian subcontinent.
The 1970s operation in Balochistan was a five-year military conflict in Balochistan, the largest province of Pakistan, between the Pakistan Army and Baloch separatists and tribesmen that lasted from 1973 to 1978.
Nabi Bakhsh Khan Baloch was a research scholar and writer. He was termed as a 'moving library' on the province of Sindh, Pakistan.
Shah Ismail Dehlvi was an Indian Islamic scholar and Salafi-oriented Sufi reformer. He was an active member in the jihad proclaimed by Sayyid Ahmad of Raebareilly with the support of Pashtun tribes against the Sikh Empire, which ruled northwest India with their base in Punjab in the early half of the 19th century. He is considered as an important influence on the Ahl-i Hadith and Deobandi reform movements.
There are separatist movements in Pakistan which are based on ethnic and regional nationalism, including independence movements in Balawaristan, Sindh and Balochistan. The government of Pakistan has attempted to subdue these separatist movements.
Anti-Pakistan sentiment, also known as Pakistan-phobia, Pakophobia or Pakistanophobia, refers to hatred, fear, hostility or irrational fixation toward Pakistan, Pakistanis and Pakistani culture. The opposite is pro-Pakistan sentiment.
The princely states of Pakistan were princely states of the British Indian Empire which acceded to the new Dominion of Pakistan between 1947 and 1948, following the partition of British India and its independence.
Khan Mir Ahmad Yar Khan Ahmedzai (1902–1979), commonly referred to as "Yar Khan", was the last Khan of Kalat, a princely state within British India and the Dominion of Pakistan, serving from 10 September 1933 to 14 October 1955.
Opposition to the partition of India was widespread in British India in the 20th century and it continues to remain a talking point in South Asian politics. Those who opposed it often adhered to the doctrine of composite nationalism. The Hindu, Muslims, Christian, Anglo-Indian, Parsi and Sikh communities were largely opposed to the partition of India ..
The 2019 Pulwama attack occurred on 14 February 2019, when a convoy of vehicles carrying Indian security personnel on the Jammu–Srinagar National Highway was attacked by a vehicle-borne suicide bomber at Lethapora in the Pulwama district of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. The attack killed 40 Indian Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) personnel as well as the perpetrator—Adil Ahmad Dar—who was a local Kashmiri youth from the Pulwama district. The responsibility for the attack was claimed by the Pakistan-based Islamist terrorist group, Jaish-e-Mohammed. India blamed neighbouring Pakistan for the attack, while the latter condemned the attack and denied having any connections to it. The attack dealt a severe blow to India–Pakistan relations, consequently resulting in the 2019 India–Pakistan military standoff. Subsequently, Indian investigations identified 19 accused. By August 2021, the main accused along with six others had been killed, and seven had been arrested.
The Establishment in Pakistan refers to the deep state cooperative federation of the Pakistan Armed Forces, the Pakistani intelligence community and other pro-military government officials and civilians. Responsible for various military coups, the military-dominated Establishment has directly ruled Pakistan for nearly half of its existence since its creation in 1947, while frequently exerting covert dominance over the political leadership during the remainder. The Establishment in Pakistan includes the key decision-makers in the country's military and intelligence services, national security, as well as its foreign and domestic policies, including the state policies of aggressive Islamization during the military dictatorship of General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq.
Composite nationalism is a concept that argues that the Indian nation is made up of people of diverse cultures, castes, communities, and faiths. The idea teaches that "nationalism cannot be defined by religion in India." While Indian citizens maintain their distinctive religious traditions, they are members of one united Indian nation. This principle opposes attempts to make Hindu nationalism, or any other religious chauvinism, a supposed requisite of Indian patriotism or nationalism. Composite nationalism maintains that prior to the arrival of the British into the subcontinent, no enmity between people of different religious faiths existed; and as such these artificial divisions can be overcome by Indian society.
