Many disenchanted Kashmiris continue to demand independence or freedom from India. Written by a leading authority on Kashmir’s troubled past, this book revisits the topic of independence for the region (also known as Jammu and Kashmir, or J&K), and explores exactly why this aspiration has never been fulfilled. In a rare India-Pakistan agreement, they concur that neither J&K, nor any part of it, can be independent. Charting a complex history and intense geo-political rivalry from Maharaja Hari Singh’s leadership in the mid-1920s to the present, this book offers an essential insight into the disputes that have shaped the region. As tensions continue to rise following government-imposed COVID-19 lockdowns, Snedden asks a vital question: what might independence look like and just how realistic is this aspiration?

A compelling biography of Sheikh Abdullah, the charismatic, combative, and controversial Kashmiri politician Written by the leading historian of modern Kashmir, this is a comprehensive portrayal of one of the most enigmatic politicians in modern South Asia, Sheikh Muhammad Abdullah, known as the Lion of Kashmir. Abdullah (1905-1982) devoted much of his life to mobilizing Kashmiris to assert their rights, to trying to achieve a fair resolution for their politically contested state, to shaping its turbulent relationship with India, and to bridging the divide between India and Pakistan. Although he forged ties with the Indian National Congress, Abdullah's support for Kashmir's accession to India and his advocacy for a more autonomous position for the state within the Indian Union complicated his relationship with India and led to his fall from grace, arrest, and imprisonment. In 1975 he reached a compromise with India that alienated generations of Kashmiris for whose self-determination he had long fought. The people of Kashmir, India, and Pakistan continue to grapple with and contest his legacy. Zutshi's rigorously researched and elegantly crafted biography brings this complex figure to life and offers a window onto the political fissures of twentieth-century South Asia more broadly.

Sir Charles Cunningham Watson the Political Secretary of the Viceroy made the following interesting observation in his own handwriting on the file regarding appointment of Lt.Col.Colvin as Prime Minister of Kashmir: "I am definitely of the opinion that if Col.Colvin is to be of full value both to the Govt of India and the Durbar he must not draw less than Rs.4000/pm. Otherwise it will be said in the bazars that he is a cheap figurehead imported by the Maharajah on the advice of the Kashmiri Pandits. This last is true; he must not start with any other handicap." This makes clear the reason for the appointment of Col.Colvin as the Prime Minister of the Maharaja and is referred to in Chapter 18 of this book. To put it in proper perspective for the modern reader the lowest paid government worker like the Government Silk Factory worker was paid about Rupees ten per month. Thus the salary recommended for the Prime Minister was 400 times the salary of the lowest paid worker. In modern India the lowest paid employee of the Central Government the peon is paid about Rupees 7000/p.m. while the Prime Minister gets a pay of about Rupees 160,000/p.m. i.e. just about 23 times the salary of the peon The Resident of Kashmir in his memorandum of September 1931 to the Government of India made the following observation about the July 1931 agitation: “.. At the present moment communal trouble, as such, has not come to notice. The tenseness of Muhammadan feeling is rather anti-Durbar than anti-Hindu.” This belies the attempt by some persons to dub the agitation by the people of Kashmir for their greater empowerment that began on 13th July 1931 as a communal riot. Amin Kamil (1924-2014) is a famous Kashmiri poet and writer.Appendix 3 of this edition has the english translation of his short story “Pyind Puran” which describes the sea change that came about in Kashmir after the abolition of feudalism by Sheikh Abdullah in1952. This is the first time that this story has been translated from Kashmiri into English. The story of Sheikh Abdullah’s life is a love story. It is the story of a man who loved Kashmir and “whose entire life was an expression of this love”. It is a story of his trials and tribulations, his successes and failures, of storms that he weathered and his halcyon days. It is a story that deserves to be read and reread for its sheer human interest by all those who have a place in their heart for that blighted paradise that is Kashmir.

Sheikh Abdullah: Tragic Hero of Kashmir is the first comprehensive, well-documented account of the life of the charismatic leader, the Lion of Kashmir, who contributed crucially to the making of modern India in terms of territory and more importantly to its founding ideology of secularism. The story begins well before independence. Kashmir was the scene of a distinctive political transformation in the late 1930s. In contrast to rise of the Muslim League in much of the subcontinent - which was to lead to partition - the most popular party in the valley turned away from communal politics and embraced secularism. On 11 June 1939, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah was successful in changing the name of the party he was leading from Kashmir Muslim Conference to National Conference, and invited all to join it. Backed by Nehru's friendship, Abdullah rose to become the first popular Prime Minister of the State, but also the target of conservative and communal forces in India. His demand that the pledge of special status for the State in the accession documents be honoured was described as anti-national, even pro-Pakistani. As revealed in the book, Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel offered to resign on the issue. The letters he and Nehru wrote to Gandhi explaining their differences make fascinating reading. The intrigue that led to Abdullah's downfall and arrest on 8 August 1953, is well documented as is the role of the Home Ministry's Intelligence Bureau. The elaborate conspiracy case it built up was belatedly rejected by Nehru himself. Drawing upon a wide range of sources, the author takes us through Abdullah's long, tragic periods of detention until he was persuaded to return to Jammu and Kashmir as Chief Minister. He demonstrated his continuing popularity by winning an election before his death in 1982.

This book is a compendium of the speeches and interviews of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who reigned as Prime Minister of the State of Jammu and Kashmir from 1948 to 1953, and who was a large presence on the political landscape of India for fifty years. The volume is designed to enable a student of South Asian politics, and the politics of Kashmir in particular, to analyze the ways in which experiences have been constructed historically and have changed overtime.