Review: Kashmir at the Crossroads by Sumantra Bose

The unique contribution of this bold, fair and honest book on a fraught subject is its study of the recent past, following the dissolution of the state of Jammu and Kashmir

Among all the conflicts that have bedevilled India since Independence, the one in the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir has attracted the most journalistic, scholarly and literary attention over the years, for good reason: the conflict involves three nuclear powers – India, Pakistan and China. The diverse peoples of Jammu and Kashmir, and especially the residents of the Kashmir Valley, have suffered grievously for generations amidst the conflicting territorial claims of these competing countries. They are, however, not merely victims caught in crossfire; their political aspirations also make them participants in the tragedy. The majority of the Kashmiris, Sumantra Bose reminds readers in his latest book, would prefer Kashmir as an independent country. In this political history of the protracted conflict, which he describes early on in the text as a “by-product of the partition of India in August 1947”, Bose says that the carnage that engulfed Jammu and Kashmir from 1990 is “a grim lesson in the ruinous potential… of nationalisms competing for supremacy”.

Kashmir: Unquiet beauty (Shutterstock)

435pp; PanMacmillan India

The book is structured chronologically, into five sections. The first section, titled The Dispute, is an overview of the conflict from 1947 to 1989. The next, titled The Carnage, chronicles the years of insurgency until 2004, and the brutal state repression. The years from 2005-19 form a section titled The Stone Pelters. From 2019 onwards, the conflict has entered a new phase, according to the author, marked in this book by a chapter on The Hindu Nationalist Offensive.

Several books, including two by Bose himself, have dealt with different aspects of the Kashmir conflict. There are comprehensive works on its history running up to the start of the Kashmir insurgency by writers such as AG Noorani, covering the period from 1947-2012, and Alastair Lamb, covering the period from 1846 – when the erstwhile princely state was established – and 1990, when the insurgency broke out. The unique contribution of this work by Bose is probably its study of the recent past, following the overnight liquidation of the state of Jammu and Kashmir on 5th August 2019. Bose is clear that the burial of the skeleton of Article 370 by the Hindu nationalist government in Delhi was barely consequential. It was the erasure of J&K’s statehood, along with the removal of Article 35A that gave certain protections to all permanent residents of Kashmir, Jammu and Ladakh, and the unilateral redrawing of the map splitting the state into two union territories, that has inaugurated a new phase in the history of the Kashmir dispute.

“Modi and Shah almost certainly anticipated that the Pakistani reaction to their new, iron-fisted Kashmir policy would verge on the hysterical, and that this reaction would help them sell their policy to the Indian public”, writes Bose. “It is almost as certain” he adds in a later passage, “that the strongman duo in New Delhi did not anticipate the nature and severity of China’s response”. On 6 August 2019, a day after the move separating Ladakh from J&K, the Chinese foreign ministry issued a statement criticising the action for unilaterally changing the status quo and exacerbating tensions. “India has continued to undermine China’s territorial sovereignty by unilaterally changing its domestic law (on J&K). This is unacceptable”, the Chinese statement had said.

Author Sumantra Bose (Courtesy the publisher)

In 2020, Bose writes, China moved from lurking in the background to looming in the foreground of the India-Pakistan Kashmir conflict. “The Hindu nationalist attempt to radically reset the Kashmir question has resulted in the regional geopolitics of the conflict becoming explicitly trilateral – India-Pakistan-China – at the beginning of the third decade of the twenty-first century”, according to him. The current situation is one he describes as “highly flammable”.

Kashmir at the Crossroads is a sobering, depressing, frightening, but ultimately eye-opening read. It is slightly repetitive in parts, as the author takes pains to add context and background at every reference – often covering ground that has been covered earlier in the text – but that is a minor quibble. On the whole, this is a work of solid, unafraid scholarship peppered with personal reminiscences from the author’s decades of engagement with the area and the subject. It is commendable not only for what it is, but also for what it is not. Polarizing subjects such as this can induce writers to passionately take sides as they argue for or against one party to the dispute. Bose largely avoids that pitfall as he advocates rapprochement between “equally legitimate political aspirations” following the example of Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement. This relatively neutral stance results in a bold, fair and honest book on a fraught subject whose truths have been hidden from the public under decades of lies.

Samrat Choudhury is a journalist and author. His latest book is The Braided River; A Journey Along the Brahmaputra