Exorcising Curzon’s ghost | The Indian Express

Exorcising Curzon’s ghost | The Indian Express

Written by C. Raja Mohan |Updated: August 13, 2019 2:30:23 am

C. Raja Mohan is Director, Institute of South Asian Studies, National University of Singapore, and the consulting editor on foreign affairs for 'The Indian Express'. Before his association with The Indian Express began in 2004, Raja Mohan worked for The Hindu as its Washington correspondent and Strategic Affairs Editor. He was a distinguished fellow at the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.  In his academic avatar, Raja Mohan has been professor of South Asian Studies at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. As a think tanker, he worked at the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses and Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi. He is on the editorial board of various international affairs journals and is affiliated with the Institute of South Asian Studies, Singapore; the Lowy Institute, Sydney; and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC. He is the author, most recently, of Samudra Manthan: Sino-Indian Rivalry in the Indo-Pacific.

Exorcising Curzon’s ghost

By reorganising Kashmir’s political status, Modi government is addressing a colonial mess

India’s recent decision to revoke the special status of Kashmir is about the unfinished task of extending effective territorial sovereignty over lands it has claimed.

As India and Pakistan lurch towards a new phase in their extended conflict over Kashmir, it is easy to miss the larger context of the Subcontinent’s troubled frontiers. More than a century ago, Lord Curzon, spoke on the problem of constructing stable frontiers among the emerging European nations as well between their expanding empires in the Americas, Africa and Asia.