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THE CHALLENGE IN KASHMIR: DEMOCRACY, SELF-DETERMINATION AND JUST PEACE by Sumantra Bose (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997)
CITIZENSHIP AND NATIONAL IDENTITY: FROM COLONIALISM TO GLOBALISM T.K. Oommen (ed.) (New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997)
Kashmir is India's only Muslim majority province. Though it appears considerably larger in the Indian survey and ordinance and political maps, almost 40% of the total territory of Kashmir in the north-west is controlled by Pakistan. In the fifty years, since their independence, both India and Pakistan have fought three major wars over Kashmir. A permanent UN presence in the Indo-Pak Line of Control (LOK) in Kashmir has averted many a major skirmish from metamorphosing into actual war. Like East Timor, the sovereignty and status of Kashmir remains in dispute and it continues to provoke the Indo-Pak Cold War.
Since this is the nature of controversy, unsurprisingly over the years the literature on Kashmir has been on a steady rise. While scholars from both India and Pakistan have presented their versions of arguments, confirming to the preservation and promotion of their own national interest those from outside the sub-continent have maintained a dispassionate stand. Though passionate what makes Sumantra Bose's book outstanding is its departure from, state to people-centred argument and analysis. Until recently, as a rule, most of the works on Kashmir tried to define the problem of Kashmir from a statist point of view. Bose's is a bold attempt to analyse Kashmir from a Kashmiri standpoint.
The contents of the book includes an introductory chapter. Chapter 2, contains a brief history of conflict in Kashmir followed by another chapter that accommodates arguments on India's gross negligence in protection of democratic values in the province. While the fourth chapter probes the struggle for "self-determination" among Kashmiris in the nineties, the fifth chapter puts the entire issue in perspective. This is followed by conclusion and an epilogue. And as a postscript to the general election held in 1996 there is a last minute inclusion in the form of chapter seven. The work is well argued and a unique piece of scholarship both in terms of content and analysis. Furthermore, there is a dash of originality in the work due to the authors personal involvement in Kashmir; among Kashmiris and all those people...