This is a bonus episode of The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Dexter Filkins has spent a lot of time in conflict zones, whether it's the war in Afghanistan,

the American occupation of Iraq, and the uprisings in Syria and Yemen. But one conflict older still

than all of those wars is the trouble in Kashmir, the only Muslim majority state in India.

Dexter traveled to Kashmir earlier this year to observe firsthand a violent crackdown

instigated by the Indian government. And his article, Blood and Soil in Narendra Modi's India, was just published by the New Yorker.

Here's Dexter.

Like so many things in the modern world, the current conflict between India and Pakistan over Kashmir

dates to the dissolution of the British Empire in 1947. And what happened was,

it's a fascinating story. Generally speaking, the Muslim majority states became Pakistan. The Hindu

majority states became India. Kashmir nestled high up in the Himalayas is split in half,

basically two-thirds to India, one-third to

Pakistan, and it's been that way ever since. And in the beginning, when the Indians wrote the

Constitution, they gave Kashmir a special status, essentially recognizing it as its only

Muslim majority state. And the special provisions in the

Constitution were essentially designed to preserve that character, that special character. And

basically what they did was grant really broad powers of autonomy and self-rule. But since the

very beginning, there was always a strain, a very

powerful strain in Indian politics, and there was always a strain of Indian political leaders

who resented the special status that Kashmir got and resented the fact that what they regarded

as special treatment, favorable treatment for Muslims. And they always vowed that they would change it.

And they never did. They kind of paid lip service to it. They never had the power to do it.

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