War in Kashmir will explode onto Britain's streets
Thanks to decades of mass migration, spiralling tensions between India and Pakistan could lead to serious outbreaks of civil disorder on our streets.
While we may be thousands of miles away, the UK has a vested security interest in ensuring that the current face-off does not escalate into a full-blown conflict. Such is the reality of modern Britain.
The April 22 massacre, in which gunmen slaughtered at least 26 civilians in the forest-covered valley of Pahalgam, was the deadliest terror attack in Indian-controlled Kashmir since 2000.
Responsibility has reportedly been claimed by a rebel militant group called The Resistance Front, which is said to be an offshoot of Lashkar-e-Taiba, a jihadist organisation that desires full Pakistani control of Kashmir.
While Pakistan has denied any involvement in the attack, India has shut the main border crossing, expelled its military diplomats and suspended the landmark Indus Water Treaty (a water distribution agreement between the two countries arranged by The World Bank).
Pakistan has in turn threatened India with war.
This is bad news for Leicester, which experienced weeks of rioting between its Indian and Pakistani communities in 2022 over a cricket match between their respective home countries.
The city's already-shaky reputation as a positive example of multiculturalism was blown to smithereens as subcontinental-style communalism spilt onto the streets. Progressives were faced with an uncomfortable wake-up call when footage of Hindu and Muslim youth gangs brawling across the Belgrave suburb exploded onto social media.
Leicester was already home to large migrant-descended communities when it was hit by the 'Boriswave', the unprecedented cascade of migration that followed the former prime minister's changes to the visa system after Brexit.
For the year ending June 2023, total immigration to the UK was an astonishing 1.32 million.
1.1 million of these were from outside the EU, with 308,000 coming from either India or Pakistan. Nigeria, which has its fair share of problems with ethnic and religious conflict, was also a common country of origin for new arrivals.
The rise of ethnic and religious identity politics – accelerated by the post-Brexit immigration system – means that the King's peace is increasingly threatened by conflicts in far-off lands.This is exacerbated by the fact that the UK is a soft touch on Islamist extremism, even when compared to much of the Muslim world.
Britain also now increasingly has to contend with the threat of Hindu-nationalist ideology.
The last general election saw overt sectarian politics with The Muslim Vote (TMV) campaign, as well as the production of a 'Hindu Manifesto' that called for the proscription of those 'attacking the sovereignty and integrity of India'.
While we should be cautious over civil-war-is-coming alarmism, we must guard against diversity-is-our-strength complacency and not allow the normalisation of ethnic-religious tribalism in British life.
The Government must use all diplomatic channels at its disposal to ensure that growing India-Pakistan tensions over Kashmir do not spiral into an all-out war. Otherwise, it may well find itself having to respond to serious forms of communal disorder in its own cities and towns.
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