A recent terrorist attack in Pahalgam, a town in the Kashmir Valley, has led to the escalation of hostilities between India and Pakistan. Most international students who live in the region have responded with fear, shock and confusion, calling home to hear about blackouts and air raid warnings. Concerning, however, is the tone of many diaspora students, raised in the West with no lived experience of conflict. It seems to reflect an uncomfortable enthusiasm for an escalation in violence. Fuelled by social media algorithms that report nationalistic framing of events on both sides of the conflict, those who have no memory of the Kargil War now appear to romanticise military conflict. I write this as a British Indian myself, concerned about the ease with which some are prepared to accept government actions that would bring about considerable human suffering.
Oxford’s India and Pakistan Societies are among the University’s largest – serving as a place for students to have a community away from home that keeps them in touch with their culture. The societies also play a political role; they are perceived as representing the collective opinion of Indian and Pakistani students. Whether or not this is fair, it remains the case that any public statement should be carefully worded and avoid deepening divisions. This is a serious responsibility, and one that was handled disappointingly. Pak Soc released a statement calling for “peace, justice and liberation”, while India Soc later responded by cancelling the inter-society cricket match, an understandable choice to avoid a scene at the game, but also condemning “the Pakistani military’s continued support for terrorism as state-policy and disregard for international law”. The latter statement serves only to fuel tension– it is irresponsible for a student society to make such claims, regardless of one’s view of them, in a University with a diverse student body which needs calming, not incitement. This is not to argue that student societies should entirely avoid politics, but instead to ask that those who have influence recognise their responsibilities. This was a missed opportunity to come together and release a joint statement that denounces violence and calls for peace – which would help students feel safe at University at such an emotionally charged time. It is these aims which both societies should work towards, rather than to act as pseudo-embassies of national governments.
Setting societies aside, the wider student response, largely driven by Instagram and TikTok, shows an ignorance of the true nature of war. The US-led misadventures in Afghanistan and Iraq are not memories for most students, but features of textbooks. The lessons of the past, that war brings devastation, suffering and instability, have been forgotten, and the mistaken conclusions reached by Blair and Bush have re-emerged in mainstream discourse in both Indian and Pakistani national media, which has filtered through to students online.
Those who enthusiastically endorse escalation today are often those who have no memory of past wars, and forget the personal risk they face from a future one. It is their extended family in India and Pakistan who are threatened by a resumption of conflict, and to repost articles calling for “retribution” from the safety and comfort of a foreign country is to emotionally detach from the costs. War, as Tony Benn remarked in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, has become a “news item” or “computer game” for young people, rather than a lived experience.
Social media algorithms, and the decline of quality media coverage in India and Pakistan, threaten to become a vehicle for the quiet radicalisation of the South Asian diaspora in the UK. Many posts that have reached young people on Instagram stem from WhatsApp groups, which are the favoured campaign strategy of India’s ruling party, the Hindu nationalist BJP.
The creation of a feedback loop between WhatsApp propaganda targeting middle-aged parents, and duplications on Instagram and TikTok targeting Gen Z, has the potential to encourage sectarianism not only among students, but among older Indians and Pakistanis in the UK who are told that their children are at risk.
A frequently forwarded WhatsApp poster produced by Insight UK, which calls itself a “social movement of British Hindus and Indians”, includes a claim that “Hindu or Indian students are being targeted or harassed by other students, including those of Pakistani origin”. Meanwhile, political figures like Akhmed Yakoob suggest that the Indian government is engaged in a conspiracy with Israel, arguing that “Zionists want to take away Pakistan’s nuclear weapons”. Yakoob came within 3,421 votes of becoming an MP at the last General Election and, given the Labour government’s dire polling numbers, would be even better placed to win in 2029. Men who spread such views should not be in Parliament, but if young people follow their parents in voting on identitarian lines then many more like him will be elected at the next election.
This is not only an argument that concerns people from the subcontinent, but a broader comment on the normalisation of aggressive political rhetoric at universities. Student societies should not try to emulate the worst instincts of foreign nationalist governments; they have a responsibility to be a positive forum for solidarity and de-escalation. What students say may not affect the conflict abroad, but it will determine whether it is carried in our communities at home.
