Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War

A very detailed and dense account of the origin of the conflict and of the course it has taken up to 2003, when this second edition was published. It suffers from two drawbacks for those readers who are not already quite intimately knowledgeable: the first is the use of Indian words for administrative districts, titles etc. The Glossary lists only the many political organizations mentioned in the text (and that list is incomplete): it needs to be much more extensive and also to include abbreviations. The second is that, although there are nine maps, many places mentioned in the text cannot be found on any of them, and it takes time to look for them on all the nine maps. Victoria Schofield quotes conflicting statements made by various politicians, observers and in memoirs after the events, generally without committing herself to which is correct. Even so, what surely emerges from this account is that India has no real moral case and must bear the major responsibility for the troubles in Kashmir. The Sikh dynasty which was ruling Kashmir before 1947 was unpopular with the majority of its people, not only because 80% of the population were Muslim, but also because the dynasty was autocratic. The Maharajah would have liked to remain independent of both India and Pakistan (he naturally refused a plebiscite on the issue), but for the ten weeks following the independence of India and Pakistan, he took a number of steps which enraged his Muslim subjects: he disarmed the Muslim but not the Hindu troops that had served in the army of British India; and the Muslims then purchased arms from the Muslim tribesmen in the North-West Frontier Province. Soon these tribesmen staged incursions into Kashmir and forced the Maharajah to flee from Srinagar to the Hindu and Sikh heartland of Jammu. He appealed to India for help, and accepted the condition that he should first accede to India, so that India could claim to be defending her own territory. Indian troops then occupied two-thirds of the country, whilst the West and the Northern Areas came under Pakistani control, the West becoming known as Azad (Free) Kashmir. Nehru's family came from Kashmir and he was emotionally attached to it. The case went to the United Nations. Nehru was initially prepared to discuss partitioning the state, but the Pakistanis refused that: they claim that the whole state must be free of India. A UN Commission would side with India: the Maharajah's accession gave India the right to be in Kashmir. Since then India has always refused outside mediation between Indian and Pakistan on the grounds that Kashmir was a purely internal matter; and although occasionally there were meetings between the Prime Ministers of the two countries, they never achieved a solution. Pakistan claimed that a successful and popular revolution had driven the Maharajah from his capital before the accession, which was therefore illegitimate. For some time the Indians claimed to be in favour of a re

This book is a good read. It does show some very important highlights about the conflict. Dont read Kafir's comments. He sounds like a disgruntled hindu radical who only survive because of hating somebody. Kashmir is a part of India and I think should remain so. Kashmir is not based on any hindu culture. India itself was ruled by muslims for over thousand years. Kashmir was well liked by the emperors and has a deep history of muslims. The problem with India has been the fact that the first prime minister of India was a pandit himself and during independence he had an agenda of keeping Kashmir being a pandit himself. This has caused problems for over 60 years now. The Indian government made some wrong decisions as far as kashmir but also some wise ones. Kashmir has the highest concentration of troops per square inch anywhere in the world. The Indian army commits many crimes there as they are ones in power there. Many kashmir women are raped on a regular basis and innocent civilians killed. This happens even more because Indian army has more hindus in it and the kashmiri people are muslims. They see the kashmiri people not as indians but just some muslims. And because of this attitude you cannot blame the kashmiri people for wanting to have a separate state. I think instead of spending so much manpower and money on India, the Indian government should focus more on the terrorist organizations like RSS, VHP and SS. They are more trouble for our country's future.

This was one of the books I used for for my dissertation and it was certainly among the most useful sources I came across. In this book, Schofield gives a succint history of the dispute and then vividly describes how it has evolved over the past half century while presenting a detailed analysis of the many wars fought on both the military and diplomatic fronts. As an outsider and a neutral observer, Schofield very successfully presents a balanced viewpoint in describing both the Indian and Pakistani sides of the dispute. This, I felt, was very important because it is not common to come across a book on Kashmir which hasn't in any way been influenced by either side. Among the most important aspects of this book is the fact that Victoria Schofield has carried out a lot of field work research in Kashmir itself and gives a voice to the Kashmiri people, an extremely important source which is often ignored in similar research work carried out on Kashmir.I recommend this book highly to anyone who wants to use it for academic research work.

Cancer of Islam? The reviewer below seems to be in the wrong category. Even though the author of this book has its main sources in India and British Libraries, it still gives a unbiased account which is a hard balance for many people related to this topic to maintain.