Conflict at 18,000–Feet in Kargil: Pakistan and India Eyeballing the Nuclear Precipice over Kashmir

Inter-ethnic relations, International Relations, Military history, National politics, Political geography, Regional History

The post-independence relationship of India and Pakistan has been characterised by ongoing tensions, mutual suspicions and a sequence of short wars involving the sovereign state successors to the British Raj𖤓. At the forefront of this regional disharmony has been Jammu and Kashmir (J & K), the greater part of the area controversially awarded to Hindu-dominated India in the 1947 Partition of the Subcontinent but populated by a Muslim majority.

Kargil: 8,780 ft above sea level

Advancing by stealth across the disputed boundary: The most recent of these short-lived, episodic wars occurred in 1999 in Kargil in the remote union territory of Ladakh. Faced with the frustration of India holding the dominant hand in the disputed Kashmir region and unwilling to consider any alterations the Line of Control (LoC)𖦹, Pakistan opted for a bold if brash strategy. “Infiltrators” from the Pakistan side, crossed the LoC and took hold of Indian positions in the inhospitable glaciated terrain of Kargil, initially undetected by the Indian command. Alerted to the incursion, the Indian military unleashed a counteroffensive and over two months of fighting drove the Pakistanis back onto their side. Islamabad first sought to explain the military incursion as the work solely of Mujahideen “freedom fighters”, but this deception was quickly exposed with Pakistan paramilitary involvement discovered to be central to the military operation.

Kargil and Kashmir (image: insightsonindia.com)

Islamabad’s motives for the act of aggression taken by what Indian media termed “rogue army” elements, seem to have been severalfold. The strategic plan was to cut India’s communication lines in Kashmir between Srinagar and Leh. Pakistan was probably also motivated by a desire to regain lost honour for earlier military reversals at India’s hands, especially the Indian army’s 1984 seizure of Siachen Glacier and the crushing defeat in the 1971 war (Liberation of East Pakistan). Islamabad hoped that the proactive move might also prove a fillip for the flagging Pakistani insurgency movement in Kashmir [RAGHAVAN, SRINATH. Review of Dissecting the Kargil Conflict, by Peter Lavoy. Economic and Political Weekly 45, no. 44/45 (2010): 29–31. http://www.jstor.org/stable/20787524]. Essentially, Pakistan’s intent was to create a crisis in Kashmir with the aim of forcing New Delhi to sit down to negotiations and finally settle the Kashmir imbroglio.

Pakistani soldiers in snow-capped Kargil (source: au.pinterest.com)

Strategic miscalculation: The upshot for Islamabad was pretty disastrous, the status quo remained in New Delhi’s favour, strategically Pakistan failed to hold its advance position into enemy territory and found itself diplomatically isolated by its action…most of the international powers, including its ally China, criticised Pakistan for what some observers saw as its “reckless”, “adventurist”, “risk–adverse” behaviour. [Tellis, Ashley J., et al. “THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE KARGIL CRISIS.” Limited Conflicts Under the Nuclear Umbrella: Indian and Pakistani Lessons from the Kargil Crisis, 1st ed., RAND Corporation, 2001, pp. 5–28. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7249/mr1450usca.8. Accessed 15 Nov. 2024]. This generally-held perception of Pakistan resorting to intemperate action allowed India to turn the information war in the Kargil conflict into a diplomatic victory for New Delhi.

Pakistan, First Islamic state to join the nuclear club (source: Topcity–1)

Spectre of the nuclear option: While the brief Kargil War was limited to a low intensity conflict, the potential was there for it to escalate into an expanded conventional war, and most alarmingly, into a nuclear confrontation. The possibility of this happening existed because a year prior to Kargil, in 1998, Pakistan joined India as the second South Asian state to attain nuclear weapon capacity. This became more acutely critical to the international community during the war when, in response to India’s massive build-up of military arms in Kargil-Dras sector, Pakistan foreign secretary Ahmed hinted that the country might resort to using nuclear weapons. Islamabad may have only produced the nuclear card as a deterrent to an Indian counter-thrust, nonetheless Pakistan Prime Minister Sharif was clearly engaging in nuclear brinkmanship – by moving nuclear warheads towards the border (for which he was roundly rebuked by US President Clinton) [‘India and Pakistan Fought in 1999. Why Didn’t It Go Nuclear?’, Sébastien Roblin, The National Interest, 14-June-2021, www.nationalinterest.org].

Indian soldiers celebrate victory in the Kargil War (photo: business–standard.com)

No let-up for the troubled Kashmiris: Although there hasn’t been any new wars in Jammu & Kashmir since 1999, tensions and conflicts have continued virtually unabated since then.  In 2019 there were troop clashes across the de facto border following Pakistani Islamist terrorist attacks. With Prime Minister Modi’s BJP Hindu nationalist regime committed to integrating J & K, an administrative rearrangement of the territory saw it lose its autonomy and be downgraded in status. Civil and political rights of the majority Muslim population have been eroded and Indian security forces are frequently accused of human rights violations. Separatist and jihadist militants continue to wage a protracted insurgency against the authorities [‘Indian Kashmir’, Freedom in the World 2024https://freedomhouse.org]. 

Heavy Indian army presence in Kashmir fuelling Pakistani resentment (photo: pakistanpolitico.com)

Postscript: Atlantique Incident After fighting in Kargil ceased in July 1999 there was no easing of Indo–Pakistani tensions. Just one month later the Indian airforce shot down a Pakistan navy plane in the Rann of Kutch (border land between Pakistan’s Sindh province and Western India’s Kutch district), accused of violating the former’s air space. The matter dragged out with both sides blaming each other and a failed international court appeal, leading to a further deterioration in the ruptured relationship.

Rann of Kutch, site of Atlantique Incident (Sir Creek) location of a second long-running Ind–Pak border dispute

 

𖤓 1947–48, 1965, 1971, 1999

𖦹 the temporary border separating the two countries in the Himalayas region

in so doing it breached the Simla Agreement (1972) between the two neighbours

Mr Moto Goes to the Movies

Cinema, Creative Writing, Inter-ethnic relations, Literary & Linguistics, Popular Culture

The popularity of Earl Derr Biggers’ Chinese detective creation Charlie Chan triggered a demand for this kind of Asian–American mystery crime fiction, paving the way for a spinoff into a profitable movie series. Biggers’ early death in 1933 after publishing just five Chan books left a void in fiction that other writers were not slow to try to fill. Encouraged by the editor of the Saturday Evening Post, which had serialised the Charlie Chan books, author John P Marquand created his notion of an Asian “detective” hero who triumphs in white society, Mr Moto. Mr Moto is Japanese, quiet, small and seemingly meek of nature, like Charlie Chan he roams the globe solving crimes and exposing murderers. Unlike Chan he uses ju-jitsu as well as brains to overcome and apprehend the bad guys.

Marquand eventually completed six novels centring around the Japanese secret agent/sleuth – Your Turn, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto, Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto is So Sorry, Last Laugh, Mr. Moto (all in the 1930s) and Right You Are, Mr. Moto (1957). 20th Century Fox bought the films rights (as they had with the Charlie Chan novels), and casting Hungarian-American actor Peter Lorre as the Japanese spy Moto🅐, rapidly made eight publicly well-received B-features in two years – Think Fast, Mr. Moto, Thank You, Mr. Moto, Mr. Motor’s Gamble, Mr. Moto Takes a Chance, Mysterious Mr. Moto, Mr. Moto’s Last Warning, Mr. Moto in Danger Island and Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (the series was variously set in Hawaii, Mongolia, Peking, Cambodia/Siam, Egypt, Devil’s Island, Puerto Rico, at sea, San Francisco and other locations in the US).

Your Turn, Mr. Moto: Book and movie The film is only loosely based on the original novel, retaining only some of the key characters like American Tom Nelson and Prince Tung, introduces new characters and makes the quest for the ancient Chinese scrolls a more central element than in the novel where it is subordinated to the question of Japo–Chinese relations🅑.

Apart from some overlap of titles there are big differences between the books and the movies. One of the most conspicuous is Mr Moto’s presence in the stories. In Marquand’s novels, the character of Mr Moto goes missing for large parts of the books (though he’s always actively working towards his objectives “off-stage”)…meanwhile attention switches to the male (American) protagonist who finds himself in trouble of some kind or other🅒. Moto returns to intervene at a crucial moment, the American is saved and finds redemption (which is the key to the plot). In the films by contrast, Mr Moto tends to “fill the screen and animate the whole series”. In the books Moto is “I.A. Moto”, a secret agent working for the imperial Japanese government, but in the films he is presented as “Kentaro Moto” (as his printed business card states), an Interpol agent. Moreover the two mediums craft quite different types of crime stories, the novels were international espionage adventures which Hollywood turned into formulaic detective stories on the screen, [Schneider, Michael A. “Mr. Moto: Improbable International Man of Mystery.” The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 22, no. 1, 2015, pp. 7–16. JSTORhttp://www.jstor.org/stable/43898402. Accessed 5 Nov. 2024].

Marquand’s No Hero (1935)

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Mr Moto’s talents don’t stop at crime solving. He’s also a polymath, polyglot, art connoisseur, a graduate of Stanford University, amateur archaeologist and importer–exporter on the side. In some of these roles he demonstrates his special flair for effecting disguise, a ploy he uses to deflect suspicion from himself, blending in to exotic locales while undertaking dangerous spying assignments [‘Observations on Film Art: Charlie, Meet Kentaro’, Kristin Thompson & David Bordwell; David Bordwell’s website on cinema, 16-Mar-2007, www.davidbordwell.net; “‘Asian Detectives’. An Overview’, Philippa Gates, Crime Culture, www.crimeculture.com].

Mr Moto in clownface (“Mr. Moto’s Last Warning”)

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The Charlie Chan nexus: With two highly bankable screen detectives at its disposal Fox recognised the value of cross-promotion when the opportunity arose. The 1938 Moto movie Mr. Moto’s Gamble was originally meant to be a Warner Oland-starring Charlie Chan feature, however Oland’s ill-health and untimely death squashed those plans. Fox substituted Mr. Moto’s Gamble for the canned Chan movie and the producers kept Oland’s co-star Keye Luke in his No. 1 son role opposition Lorre this time, even allowing Mr Moto to politely inquire with Lee Chan (Luke) as to his honourable father’s health.

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Moto, genial but ruthless: Irrespective of the connexions and references between Charlie Chan and Kentaro Moto, Lorre’s off-centre sense of humour ensures that on screen Moto is “no Chan clone”. Although Moto, like Chan, employs logic and deduction in his policing methods and is quiet, meek exceedingly polite in public dealings (and a milk drinker no less!), he is also very much a man of action, disposing of physical threats to him with his uncompromising ju-jitsu prowess…in the case of the story’s murderer, once revealed, Moto customarily dispenses with the need for trial, having no qualms about liquidating him with 007-like utter ruthlessness, something Chan with his high moral code would never contemplate (Gates).

Moto’s alpha side (“Think Fast, Mr. Moto”)

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Mr Moto‘s personal side is as shadowy as his profession, to the audience it’s a blank slate. He has no family and no love life and his only companion is his cat. The only hint of a possible romance is his liaison with Lela (or Lotus) Liu (Lotus Long) in Think Fast, Mr. Moto and Mysterious Mr. Moto, but she turns out to be an agent like him and their attachment seems to be more a matter of working together to solve the case. Moto is a “lone wolf” when investigating cases, working solo without assistants. Occasionally he does ally with a self-appointed sidekick—usually a naive or gormless American or English idiot—who sometimes inadvertently unearths crucial evidence but as always it’s Mr Moto who unravels the mystery.

”Them Nipponese sure are peculiar birds”: Mr Moto, a Japanese man in 1930s America, is inevitably exposed in the stories to the casual racism of various people he meets, but the prejudice he cops seems more overt than the more subtle racist slurs DI Chan is subjected to. Possibly, this was a reflection of growing pro-Chinese feelings in America then in the wake of unremitting Japanese aggression against China in Manchuria. Moto, unfazed by the jibes, manages to turn the racism back on the perpetrators without their realising it…though he speaks perfectly fluent English he sometimes pretends to indulge their expectations of the stereotypical Asian: “Ah, so!!! Suiting you?”, he mocks in his singsong repartee manner 🅓 (Thompson & Bordwell).

Versatile Mr Moto turns his hand (and voice) to ventriloquism (Mr. Moto’s Last Warning)

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What makes Lorre’s star turn as the mysterious Japanese secret agent so good is that he plays the role absolutely tongue-in-cheek and with considerable charm [‘A Guide to the Mr Moto Films’, Charles P. Mitchell, Classic Images, www.webarchive.org]. Although I wonder if Moto’s ever-smiling, ultra-polite, insufferable smugness with gleaming teeth while correcting lesser mortals as to the error of the misconceptions didn’t start to grate with some movie-watchers after a while?

“Mr Moto…the foxiest detective of them all!!!“

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As the series continued the film storylines and situations predictably became more formulaic. After eight features Peter Lorre called it quits, seeking a release from his Mr Moto contract. The Moto sub-genre was still very popular at the box office but it’s probable that Lorre’s concern was that he was being typecast again as Moto (having previously been stereotyped as a psycho killer), which he felt was limiting his choices of different parts (Gates).

Footnote: Where did Marquand get his inspiration for the character of Mr Moto? Marquand undertook a research tour of the Orient in 1934 to gather material for his Asian detective project. While in Japan he aroused the suspicions of a short, exceedingly polite police detective who started shadowing the American author on his journeys. Eventually the Japanese detective, realising that Marquand was no threat to the country, stopped tailing him. This chance encounter provided Marquand with the spark for the character of Moto.

Pearl Harbour effectively killed off novels for the American market about Japanese spies but Marquand did write a final “Mr Moto” after a lapse of nearly 20 years: a Cold War espionage thriller “Right You Are” with American agents hunting down communist infiltrators in Tokyo
🅐  leaving the series and Lorre open to retrospective criticism for engaging in “Yellowface”, although Moto hasn’t attracted the ire of modern critics to the same extent as the Charlie Chan series has for the steady stream of white actors who have portrayed the Chinese super-detective up until as recently as 1981 – see previous post ‘Charlie Chan, Murder Mystery-Buster Extraordinaire: A Positive Asian Stereotype or an Oriental “Uncle Tom”?’, (29 October 2024) 

🅑 Marquand’s focus in the books is on the clash of cultures, European/American vs Oriental (Japanese/Chinese), to a much greater degree that the films

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the first book, Your Turn, Mr. Moto, was originally titled No Hero, a reference to another character, not Moto

🅓 Mr. Moto Takes a Chance

Yasmar House: Gentleman’s Colonial Villa to Reformatory for Delinquent and Wayward Youth

Built Environment, Heritage & Conservation, Local history, Natural Environment, Town planning
Through the arboreal jungle: Road to juvenile remand

In the West Connex neighbourhood that is Parramatta Road, Haberfield, there’s an entire block on Cadigal land with the street frontage almost completely camouflaged by a dense outgrowth of foliage, overgrown Moreton Bay figs and other assorted large trees. If you stop and peer through the ancient but imposing gates, beyond the locked high wire fence, you’ll see a deserted, winding driveway, bisecting the sprawling green maze. At the end of this serpentine path is Yasmar House in the inner west suburb of Haberfield. The name sounds vaguely Middle Eastern (Arabic female name?), but is actually less exotic than it sounds, “Yasmar” is simply “Ramsay” spelt backwards. Ramsay is the name of an early 19th century landowner in what was originally called the Dobroyde Estate, David Ramsay𖤓. Ramsay’s son-in-law Alexander Learmonth and daughter Mary Louisa Ramsay commissioned architect John Bibb to design their Yasmar House as their family residence on a parcel of the estate land.

(source: Stanton & Son)

Yasmar House (1854–56), still extant today, is the sole remaining villa estate on Parramatta Road, Australia’s oldest and busiest road. The once grand building is U-shaped with rear wings (originally servants’ quarters and service rooms) and stables, the buildings set well back from the front entrance…architecturally, it is a Regency designed villa in the Greek Revival Style (John Bibb’s speciality). The classical gateposts, made of Italianate style sandstone with Gothic recesses and a ball motif atop them are connected to a high, ornate iron palisade fence. After Yasmar became a borstal the entrance was widened to accommodate prison trucks. The garden design of the arboretum and Georgian landscaping adhered to JC Loudon’s “Gardenesque” principles. During this period many exceptional and unusual species of flora were planted…to a large part this was the work of Mrs Learmonth’s brother Edward Ramsay who had a keen botanical interest. Among the rare or uncommon plantings that survive are palo blanco trees, Chilean wine/coquito palms, Pacific kauris and a Chinese midenhair tree [Jackson-Stepowski, Sue, Yasmar, Dictionary of Sydney, 2008, https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/yasmar, viewed 02 Nov 2024].

Yasmar House in its juvenile detention period

Yasmar House has had only three owners in its nearly 170-year history – the Learmonth family, the Grace family (co-founder of the iconic Grace Brothers Department Store Joseph Neal Grace and his wife Sarah Selina Smith) and the NSW state government.

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Beyond these gates… (photo: Michael Wayne)

Yasmar House has bore many names and many uses over the course of its existence, including Yasmar Hostel, Yasmar Detention Centre, Yasmar Child Welfare Home, Yasmar Shelter, Yasmar Juvenile Justice Centre, Ashfield Remand Home. It also functioned as a Sunday school in the 1860s. At one point the site included a reform school facility for girls, the Sunning Hill Education and Training Unit.

Carpentry class, Yasmar Shelter, 1948 (source: www.findandconnect.gov.au/)

Currently, the complex operates as the Yasmar Training Centre (administered by the Department of Corrective Services). The state government acquired the villa in 1944 after it had served as army officers’ quarters during the war. In 1946 Yasmar House became a remand centre for delinquent boys, with its grand reception rooms serving as a children’s court and other rooms assigned for attending magistrates.To accommodate the increase in juvenile inmate numbers at Yasmar, timber structures were built on top of the property’s tennis courts and croquet lawns§ (Jackson-Stepowski).

183–185 Parramatta Road

 In 1991 Juvenile Justice relocated away from Haberfield and Yasmar House became vacant, leading to a marked deterioration in the condition of the heritage-listed villa and the gardens. Consequently, Yasmar has been described as “a landscape at risk”, prompting locals from the Haberfield Association to volunteer their labour to try to restore the garden to its comely former state.

𖤓 nearby the Yasmar site there is both a Ramsay Street and a Yasmar Avenue

§ former inmates of the Yasmar institution from decades ago paint a picture of harsh living conditions, brutal treatment, beatings at the hands of the guards and other abuses of authority [‘Yasmar – Ashfield, NSW’, Past/Lives of the Near Future, (Michael Wayne), www.pastlivesofthenearfuture.com]