What factors explain Indian territorial restraint towards Pakistani occupied Kashmir despite military success against Pakistan?

Upvote:1

Two reasons:

  1. Most of the border between India and Pakistan in Kashmir is barren land made inhospitable during winter. India trumped Pakistan and occupied Siachen Glacier, which it continues to hold till date. Maintaining Siachen itself is a big expense for India. Maintaining the newly occupied territories is also going to be another drain. India needs to setup army posts, build roads etc. all of which are going to cost huge money and time, not to mention human casualities. India probably thinks it's not worth the effort to do all that just for a few hundred square kilometers of land.

  2. Pakistan would never be happy with it. Not that India cares, but it would be a great nationalistic setback for Pakistan which is just looking for some excuse to launch an attack against India (past lessons have taught it nothing). This would lead to unnecessary armed conflict between two nuclear powered nations, something which sane people in both countries have been trying to avoid for a long time.

Upvote:4

Based on news reporting on India/China of the last decades, India has taken great care in avoiding a conflict with China.

There have been many border conficts between them in the last decades on their present border.

Taking northern Kashmir would extend that common border.

With this in mind, togeather with the reasons given in the first answer, would be a valid reason for India to avoid making China nervous, which has happened when armies in confict (Korea, October 1950) nears her borders.

Any such action in this form could result in repercussions on India's North-Eastern border to China and that is something that India will most likly wish to avoid.

This is basicly a continuation of the Great Game with new actors.

Upvote:11

The question, whatever objections are made to its phrasing, boils down to: India won 3 wars easily and hasn't pushed its advantage to take over Pakistani Kashmir. Why?

This is highly speculative, but I wonder what India would gain from taking over Pakistani Kashmir. Policing Indian Kashmir has been a money drain, international embarrassment (India generally tries to look like a "good guy" in most other affairs) and a rather thankless task. The whole Kashmir mess regularly results in some attacks being launched by Kashmir-inspired terrorists (Mumbai) and news coverage of Indian police brutality.

No Indian politician can afford to give up Indian Kashmir or allow a referendum, in case they'd lose. Indian nationalist pride would never put up with it.

Doesn't necessarily mean they want to increase the problem even more by taking over an extra bit of, potentially even worse, mess to look after. The Indian military may very well benefit from the India-Pakistan rivalry as it gets them better toys like modern jets, tanks, even developing a nuclear capability. But Kashmir itself doesn't require any of these, it requires unglamorous spending on things like military police, informants, manning security checkpoints and training your troops not to kill civilians.

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