The land of Jammu and Kashmir, renowned for its natural beauty, is a riddle: an ancient state with a modern divided history; a Muslim majority Tantricism; a community made up of quite different cultural, religious and ethnic identities. It is also a political riddle, denoting a territorial entity whose peoples variously wish to be part of India, or join Pakistan, or form an independent state.
Since the partition of the Indian sub-continent in 1947, the territory had been the focus of conflict between India and Pakistan. Since 1989, it has witnessed an extraordinary degree of political and social violence, which had highlighted it in te awareness of the international community.
This book is about the people who have suffered from the conflict in Jammu and Kashmir for nearly half a century. It describes their historical and cultural background and examines the events that have led to their present plight. It seeks to perceive the Kashmir problem from their varied, and sometimes contradictory, positions an to relate these perceptions to regional and global politics.
Vernon Hewitt's wide knowledge of South Asia - its history and its modern social and political evolution - is enriched in this book by his observations made during an extensive field trip to Jammu and Kashmir in 1994. To read it is to understand what constitutes the Kashmir problem; how it has left thirteen million people bereft of hope, and why it is so intractable.