Content area
Full Text
The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-Determination and a Just Peace. By SUMANTRA BOSE. New Delhi: Sage, 1997. 211 pp. $19.95 (cloth).
The Kashmir problem is notoriously complex. Mixed into it are variously proportioned helpings of Pakistani irredentism, Kashmiri separatism, and both Indian and Chinese nationalism. Originating in the events stemming from decolonization in 1947, it has evolved into a veritable cauldron of contentious territorial, political, and military-strategic issues. It has defied all efforts to resolve it for over fifty years. Sumantra Bose's book takes a fresh look at the problem and pronounces it overwhelmingly a product of India's own political failures.
Research and writing of the book appear to have followed a somewhat erratic course. Bose states in the introduction that the book was a byproduct of his research towards a doctoral dissertation at Columbia University. Commencing research in 1993, he finished a first draft in April 1994, about the time when the Kashmiri Muslim separatist militancy had reached its high point. Field research in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir followed in July-August 1995, by which time the militancy was showing visible signs of fatigue. The book's two final chapters, one an epilogue penned in April 1996, the other a postscript written in the autumn of that year following state assembly...