1, 2, 3, what are we fighting for?

Here’s another great example. There’s a place called Kashmir to the north of India. A country called Pakistan believes it owns a part of it. India doesn’t agree. China, to the north, sort of feels a part of it may belong to it. No one is happy about the situation, and it’s only getting worse. It’s not much fun being a Kashmiri these days.

Here’s another stunning example. There’s a man who spells his name with two y’s at the end, called Zelenskyy, who, along with 37.72 million people, believes that a place called Ukraine belongs to them. A large, pugnacious country nearby, called Russia, disagrees.

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You know the rest of the story. The world is full of people who agree with Zelenskyy or the ruler of Russia, a really nasty, crafty dude called Putin. And the drones are still going both ways, bombing away. It’s not much fun being a Ukrainian these days.

Then there’s a place that doesn’t exist, called Palestine. Palestinians, most of them dead now, believe that it belongs to them. About 140 other countries agree with them. But a nearby country called Israel has disagreed for a long time. They believe they were there first and own the place. They believe the only good Palestinian is a dead Palestinian. It’s no fun being a dead Palestinian.

As always, my mind went wandering. Are there any other places on earth like these, which believe they exist and others don’t? How many? Do the people there have fun?

Since no central authority issues a certificate of country-ship, so to speak, I turn to the United Nations, which consists of countries that no one else claims as theirs. There are 193 of them as I write this. Bet you didn’t know that.

In addition, there are over 10 countries that believe they exist and belong to themselves, though some others disagree. Such self-declared countries include Taiwan (12 agree; China disagrees); Kosovo (over 100 agree; Serbia says no); Transnistria (no one else agrees; Moldova says no); Somaliland (no one agrees; Somalia says no).

There are also more than 15 places that don’t claim to be countries but which are at the centre of squabbles. Such as the Golan Heights (controlled by Israel, claimed by Syria); the Kuril Islands (claimed by Japan, controlled by Russia); and the poor Spratly and Paracel Islands, which China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan, and Brunei are scrabbling over.

This is not like two people fighting over a handkerchief. People live on that handkerchief, sometimes millions of them. My best computations showed that, taken together, those doomed to live in non-existent or disputed countries total about 64 million. That would roughly be equal to the combined populations of Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh.

They can’t travel much, because no one will even look at the passports of countries like Transnistria, Somaliland, and North Cyprus. They can’t have credit cards or use SWIFT codes to do bank transfers. They can’t even have working banks. If there were another pandemic, these countries would not get vaccines. Victims of war, trafficking, or abuse cannot appeal to any global bodies for help.

Checkpoints, shelling, landmines, military occupation, and frequent displacement are as normal a part of daily life as going to the corner store. People can’t say what they think, and many of them are ruled by bullies or authoritarian despots. Wait, that sounds like another famous country ruled by a man with orange hair. Best strike that from the record.

I believe if you travelled back in time, say, 1000 years, all these countries, nation-states, or disputed countries would simply disappear. Jews, Arabs, Semites, Philistines, Canaanites, and so on existed together, more or less in the same region — but hello, there was neither Israel nor Palestine.

Similarly, there was never a single, stable, unchanging area called India. No single empire ruled all of what is now India. Conquerors came and went, each calling their empire India. Before 1947, India consisted of about 565 semi-autonomous princely states (like Hyderabad, Mysore, Kashmir), ruled by Indian monarchs under British suzerainty. The country we call India only recently acquired the borders we treat as sacred.

The ground has always shifted under our feet; history is all about borders being drawn and redrawn. I wonder why we’re killing thousands of innocent families and children over land that never belonged 
to anyone.

It was always a gift meant to be shared.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.

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