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К. Warikoo, Xinjiang-China s Northwest Frontier. London & New York: Routledge, 2016. 211 pp
Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) of China, which is commonly known as Xinjiang, is situated on the northwestern part of the country abutting eight nations, three of which are nuclear nations (Russia, India and Pakistan). This region is important for China for its geostrategic and geopolitical significance in addition to being the lynch-pin of China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Xinjiang has been in news in recent times because of the reports that over a million Uyghurs, who are in majority of Xinjiang's population, are kept forcibly in camps, which the West describes as "concentration camps", whereas China claims these as "re-education" or "vocational training camps." The entire gamut of issues related to Xinjiang has been explained through different narratives. There is of course a Chinese narrative, which says Xinjiang has been a "core issue" and an integral part of China since the Han dynasty. The other narrative is the one by the Uyghurs, which delineates that the region Chinese claim as "Xinjiang" is in fact "East Turkestan" and the Uyghurs are the original inhabitants of the region, with a 6,000-year old rich historical past. Most of the Western scholarship subscribes to the Uyghur narrative. Against this background, the book under review provides a "third view" with a detailed analyses of "ethnic relations, Uyghur resistance, China's policy in Xinjiang and its economic relations with its Central Asian neighbours in an integrated manner." This edited volume is an amalgamation of 15 scholarly papers containing the views of eminent academics and area specialists from India, China, Central Asia and Russia. The editor, K. Warikoo, a well known Indian expert and researcher on Xinjiang studies for the last four decades, has shared his experiences in Xinjiang through three chapters (Chapters 2, 4 and 15), in addition to a brilliant introduction on the state of affairs in Xinjiang.
It is a well-known fact that issues like culture, ethnicity, religion and nationalism have been some of the essential features of the Xinjiang problem in modern and contemporary times. In this context, it is imperative to unfold...