Kashmir has once again emerged as a major flashpoint between South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals, India and Pakistan. The Indian government’s August 2019 withdrawal of statehood status for the Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir region intensified disaffection among separatists and the Kashmiri public. This report explores the strategies India and Pakistan have adopted toward Kashmir in the year since August 2019, and examines a potential road map for resolving the Kashmir conflict.

This book uses an innovative people-centered approach to the Kashmir problem to shed new light on why postcolonial partitions remain unfinished and why the wounds of postcolonial nation-state formation in South Asia continue to fester. "Kashmir" is viewed as a metaphor for the permanent internal wars of partition that mark the South Asian experience. Chapters sensitively bring Kashmiri voices to the fore to examine Kashmir in the national discourses of India and Pakistan, resistance in the Kashmiri imagination and the Kashmir conflict in a global context. The book foregrounds how the space of Kashmir as a cultural, historical and political sphere persists and continues to haunt the postcolonial national present as the people of Kashmir and their cultural, literary and artistic productions cannot be contained within the regnant paradigms of the nations across which the region is partitioned. Additionally, the book explores how long-term resolution would demand engagement with historical forces, political actors and social formations that exceed the nation-state. An important contribution to the study of this troubled region, this book will be of interest to academics and researchers of modern South Asian history and politics as well as comparative politics and international relations.

India, which had been created as a civic polity, initially sought to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to demonstrate its secular credentials. Pakistan, in turn, had laid claim to Kashmir because it had been created as the homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. After the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 the Pakistani irredentist claim to Kashmir lost substantial ground. If Pakistan could not cohere on the basis of religion alone it had few moral claims on its co-religionists in Kashmir. Similarly, in the 1980s, as the practice of Indian secularism was eroded, India's claim to Kashmir on the grounds of secularism largely came apart. Today their respective claims to Kashmir are mostly on the basis of statecraft. This title provides a comprehensive assessment of a number of different facets of the on-going dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Among other matters, it examines the respective endgames of both states, the evolution of American policy toward the dispute, the dangers of nuclear esculation in the region and the state of the insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed state.

This book provides analysis of the legal status of territories of the former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir, considering potential opportunities for Kashmir conflict resolution. Containing a detailed survey of relevant legislation and international documents, chapters throughout this book investigate the attempts and failures of Kashmir conflict resolution, holding up factors which could enable more peaceful relations between India and Pakistan with inclusion of the inhabitants of the erstwhile Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir. The book goes further than outlining how India and Pakistan determine the legal status of their portions of Kashmir by demonstrating the complexity of legal arrangements and why this protracted conflict is so difficult to resolve. As the Kashmir conflict is not only about territory and irredentism, themes such as cultural and national identity, power procurement, territorial security, communal rivalry, religious radicalisation, economic factors, and social issues are all taken into consideration. Law and Conflict Resolution in Kashmir will appeal to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, international relations, international law studies, and South Asian studies. Chapter 15 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

A riveting account of how a popularly elected leader has steered the world's largest democracy toward authoritarianism and intolerance Over the past two decades, thanks to Narendra Modi, Hindu nationalism has been coupled with a form of national-populism that has ensured its success at the polls, first in Gujarat and then in India at large. Modi managed to seduce a substantial number of citizens by promising them development and polarizing the electorate along ethno-religious lines. Both facets of this national-populism found expression in a highly personalized political style as Modi related directly to the voters through all kinds of channels of communication in order to saturate the public space. Drawing on original interviews conducted across India, Christophe Jaffrelot shows how Modi's government has moved India toward a new form of democracy, an ethnic democracy that equates the majoritarian community with the nation and relegates Muslims and Christians to second-class citizens who are harassed by vigilante groups. He discusses how the promotion of Hindu nationalism has resulted in attacks against secularists, intellectuals, universities, and NGOs. Jaffrelot explains how the political system of India has acquired authoritarian features for other reasons, too. Eager to govern not only in New Delhi, but also in the states, the government has centralized power at the expense of federalism and undermined institutions that were part of the checks and balances, including India's Supreme Court. Modi's India is a sobering account of how a once-vibrant democracy can go wrong when a government backed by popular consent suppresses dissent while growing increasingly intolerant of ethnic and religious minorities.

India, which had been created as a civic polity, initially sought to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to demonstrate its secular credentials. Pakistan, in turn, had laid claim to Kashmir because it had been created as the homeland for the Muslims of South Asia. After the break-up of Pakistan in 1971 the Pakistani irredentist claim to Kashmir lost substantial ground. If Pakistan could not cohere on the basis of religion alone it had few moral claims on its co-religionists in Kashmir. Similarly, in the 1980s, as the practice of Indian secularism was eroded, India's claim to Kashmir on the grounds of secularism largely came apart. Today their respective claims to Kashmir are mostly on the basis of statecraft. This title provides a comprehensive assessment of a number of different facets of the on-going dispute over Kashmir between India and Pakistan. Among other matters, it examines the respective endgames of both states, the evolution of American policy toward the dispute, the dangers of nuclear esculation in the region and the state of the insurgency in the Indian-controlled portion of the disputed state.