Contributing host Doug Becker takes on one of the most volatile international rivalries in the world, the conflict in South Asia between Pakistan and India. No issue embodies this rivalry more clearly than the region of Jammu and Kashmir. Resolving this issue would ease tensions between these two nuclear powers. What’s driving the conflict in Kashmir? Would granting the region independence lead to peace? How much is this conflict driven by local actions in the region and how much is it fueled by policies in Islamabad and New Delhi? How can we resolve it? [ dur: 58mins. ]

For a transcript of this interview, please visit: TheBigQ.

* T.V. Paul is James McGill Professor of International Relations in the Department of Political Science at McGill University. He is the author of numerous publications including his latest books Restraining Great Powers: Soft Balancing from Empires to the Global Era and The China-India Rivalry in the Globalization Era.

* Mona Bhan is Ford Maxwell Chair of South Asian Studies in the Department of Anthropology at Syracuse University. She is the author of Counterinsurgency, Development, and the Politics of Identity: From Warfare to Welfare? and co-editor of Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, with scholars from the Critical Kashmir Studies collective.

Report from Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Right on Situation of Human Rights in Kashmir. Link.

Produced by the Scholars’ Circle team: Ankine Aghassian, Melissa Chiprin, Anaïs Amin, Tim Page, Mike Hurst and Sudd Dongre.