Abstract
Most explanations tend to claim that ‘ideology’ played single most important role in initiating the Indo-Pakistani rivalry. This study argues that Kashmir’s territorial saliency and proximity with the challenger state, Pakistan, also played fundamental role to begin this rivalry. By adopting a conceptual framework underpinned by the conception of enduring rivalry, this article shows how the fusion of ideology, territorial saliency, and geographic contiguity formed a stronger core which influenced external strategic factors and collectively formulated a ‘hub-and-spokes’ framework to move the cartwheel of India–Pakistan rivalry. Placed within this framework, once India and Pakistan’s bilateral conflict over Kashmir had taken roots, ever-increasing interaction between ‘hub’ and ‘spokes’ brought in centripetal and centrifugal stress on the embryonic rivalry by unfolding a process of change, that is, the gradual augmentation in hostility and accumulation of grievances, which locked them into a longstanding rivalry.
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