Overnight, India claims to have struck nine targets inside Pakistan, as a response to the terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, last month.
According to India, its aircraft and drones hit camps belonging to the terrorist groups Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba.Many times over the past 70 years, India and Pakistan have exchanged fire, taken casualties, lost aircraft and ships.
And yet those wars, those brief outbreaks of violence, never spiralled. Each one was, from a diplomatic point of view, a tragedy. Some were very big wars, totally forgotten in the West. But they always ended and life – for those who survived – continued.
The same may not be true inside Britain. Britain has big Indian and Pakistani diaspora populations. They’re watching the violence between their countries closely, as you would in their position.
India and Pakistan have clever generals, diplomats and politicians who will be able to call any conflict quits. On Britain’s streets, there are fewer restraints available. We had race riots involving Muslims and Hindus in Britain in recent years.
They’re always in the offing, always ready to break out.They did in summer 2022, when violence flared in Leicester between Britain’s south Asian Hindus and Muslims. It was sparked, at least in part, by a cricket match; but the spark could have been anything.
Footage of a scrap after the cricket travelled widely via WhatsApp and social media, and very soon rumours flew around the British Muslim world that people just like them were being hunted down and attacked by “Hindutva” Indian nationalists.
Hindus and Muslims in Leicester each took to the streets to show their face; some fighting broke out. After that, episodes of violence ebbed and flowed; many were beaten up and at least one person was stabbed. Eventually everything simmered back down again – but only after quite an investment in police presence and resources.
It will happen again.Britain signed a trade deal with India yesterday that is primarily designed not to buy Indian goods or to sell things to India but to solve India’s domestic labour problems. Too many young Indians graduate unable to find work. That is where Britain steps in. Already, Britain’s annual population of Indians increases by roughly 300,000 per year.
One expects that will go up even more now new Indian arrivals pay no national insurance for their first three years.A significant amount of Britain’s overstretched security apparatus is already dedicated to maintaining civic peace at any price between our innumerable diaspora populations.
Quite a lot of our diplomacy involves begging foreign countries to stop riling up their people living in Britain and telling them to take on long-standing sectarian enemies. It’s already an impossible job. After last night, it might prove a bridge too far.