The Indian Analyst
 

Kashmir and Neighbors

 

 

Bibliographic Notes

Sources on Kashmir are abundant if one can find the occasion to visit the printed collections in India, Pakistan and Kashmir and utilize the sources in the outstanding libraries of the world. I had recourse to some of these opportunities. Since this book already made references to some published material on the subject, there is no need to reproduce a long list of books and articles. The reader may consult the bibliographical pages of a number of works, such as Sisir Gupta’s Kashmir, A.R. Desai’s now classic Social Background of Indian Nationalist and its sequel, Recent Trends… as well as Yu. V. Gankovskiy –L.R. Gordon Polonskaia’s Istoriia Pakistani M.T. Stepanyant’s Pakistan  and the like. Desai’s two volumes are perhaps the best account by an Indian scholar of the qualitative structural transformation that took place under the impact of British rule. John Garrett’s A Classical Dictionary of India is “illustrative of the mythology, philosophy, literature, antiquities, arts, manners, customs” and the like of the Hindus.

It is not difficult to trace political and polemical information about Kashmir Reports on Kashmir are stacked in several rooms in the United Nations Headquarters in New York. The U.N. itself printed documents and arguments, and the Governments of India and Pakistan have published more. For instance, Verinder Grover’s The Story of Kashmir and P.L Lakhanpal’s (ed) Essential Documents and Notes on Kashmir Dispute on the Indian side, as well as The Kashmir Question by Pakistan’s Institute of International Relations and White Paper on the Jammu and Kashmir Dispute by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Islamabad. In addition to the published Jammu and Kashmir Official Reports, Acts and Gazettes, the unpublished primary sources in the National Archives in New Delhi include the “Foreign Department Proceedings” of the government of India. The “Old English Records” of His Highness’ Government may be found in the Jammu and Kashmir State Archives (Jammu). For some selected primary sources, one may see R.K.K Bhatt’s bibliography in his Political and Constitutional Development of the Jammu and Kashmir State (Delhi, Seema, 1984). There are also unpublished private papers, such as the Halifax Collection at the Nehru Memorial Museum and Library in New Delhi, or the Private Papers of Lord Minton on microfilm, or the Private Records of Maharaja Pratap Singh.

The broad category on Kashmir’s history may be based on indigenous records, foreign chronicles, memoirs of travellers and contemporary works. There are references to Kashmir in early Greek, Chinese and Muslim records. The initial Indian chroniclers were poets as well as historians who utilized Sanskrit, the language for official business. Perhaps the oldest reliable writer is Kalhana (A.D. 12th century), who consulted even earlier informants to compose has own Rajatarangini in eight cantos of Sanskrit verse, translated into Persian (15the century) and English (1935). Being the history of various dynasties, Kalhana, not only consulted older works, but also first-hand sources not hiding the errors of kings in whose time he wrote. Jonaraja brought the chronicle of events to the reign of Sultan Zain-ul Abidin, his pupil Srivara adding four more chapters. Prajyabhatta’s Rajavalipataka ends with the year 1514, his work completed by his pupil Suka following Emperor Akbar’s conquest of Kashmir. Malik Haider Chaudura wrote a history of Kashmir in Persian down to his time in 1617. Khwaja Muhammad Azam Kaul’s Wuquat-e Kashmir (1735-46) was enriched by his son Muhammad Aslam. Maulvi Ghulam Hasan’s (1832-98) Tawarikh-e Kashmir (3 vols.) is on the geography, political history and the arts of the country. Pandit Anand Koul’s Geography of Jammu and Kashmir is in English. Ghulam Mohiud Din Sufi’s Kashir (so spelled by the local people) deals with the land after the entry of Islam.

Some of the first Europeans to visit Kashmir were Gerone Xavier who accompanied Akbar to the famine-stricken Valley, Francois Bernier who described life during the rule of the Moghuls, Desideri who passed to Ladakh after Srinagar, George Forster who witnessed the harsh Afghan rule, and Frederick Drew and Sir Walter Lawrence who both gave detailed accounts of the physical features of the country.

The Cambridge and Oxford histories of India are considered to be relevant and distinguished. The original Oxford history by V.A. Smith (1848-1920) has been rewritten by Percival Spear. The new Cambridge history, under the general editorship of Gordon Johnson, is to cover the centuries from the Moghul era to the present day in twenty-eight volumes (1988). Unlike the previous series (1922-53), each volume of the present series deals with a separate theme, written by a single author.

Leonard Mosley in The Last Days of the British Raj wrote that the official documents dealing with the transfer of power in India would not be released until 1999, but that in the interim period his book would throw some light on events hitherto obscured. The British side of the story, however, was unfolded soon, and twelve volumes of documents, under the general editorship of Nicholas Mansergh, entitled Constitutional Relations between Britain and India: the Transfer of Power, 1942-47 were published (1970-83).

Apart from Gandhi’s and Nehru’s several books, some prominent witnesses, inseparable from events, wrote or spoke on crucial developments: Lord Mountbatten (Time Only to Look Forward), Jinnah (Speeches; also: Muhammad Anwar’s Quaid-e-Azam Jinnah: a Selected Bibliography), Sheikh Abdullah (Flames of China), Liaquat Ali Khan (Pakistan), Joseph Korbel (Danger in Kashmir), M.C. Mahajan (Looking Backward), V.P. Menon (The Story of the Integration of the India States), Sir Francis Tucker (While Memory Serves), and the like. Among the biographies, Sir Penderal Moon’s Wavell: the Viceroy’s Journal contains some almost day-to-day accounts. Ziegler’s (Mountbatten:an Official Biography) and Campbell-Johnson’s (Missions with Mountbatten) books throw some more light on that crucial period (23 march-15 August 1947). Ayub Khan’s (Friends, Not Masters), Zulfikar Ali Bhutto’s (The Myth of Independence), and Benazir Bhutto’s (Daughter of the East) Chronicles are semi-memoirs.

Many books by researchers contain valuable contain valuable accounts: For instance, Michael Brecher (Nehru: a Political Biography), Hector Bolitho (Jinnah: Creator of Pakistan), H.V. Hodson (The Great Divide), Tara Chand (History of the Freedom Movement, New Delhi), Mahmud Hussainet at. (A History of the Freedom Movement Karachi), etc. Rasheeduddin Khan’s Bewildered India as a treatment of “identity, pluralism and discord”, and Prem Shankar Jha’s India as “a political economy of stagnation” as well as Chaudri Muhammad Ali’s (a former secretary of the Partition Council and later Prime Minister of Pakistan: a Withering State? And Tahir Amin’s Ethno-National Movements of Pakistan, all authoritative accounts, may be added.

Some of the books especially on Kashmir are: Shaheen Akthar (Uprising in India –held Jammu and Kashmir) Prem Nath Bazaz(Asad Kashmir), Lord Birdwood (Two Nations and Kashmir), Pran Chopra (India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Tangle), Vernon Hewitt (Reclaiming the Past? The Search for Political and Cultural Unity in Contemporary Jammu and Kashmir), Prem Shankar Jha (Kashmir 1947: Rival Versions of History), M. Anwar Khan (The Partition of India and the Kashmir Problem), Rahmatullah Khan (Kashmir and the United Nations), M.L.Kotru (The Disputed Legacy, 1846-1990), Arjun Ray (Kashmir Diary: Psychology of Militancy), B.L. Sharma (The Kashmir Story),Shafi Shauq, Qazi Zahoor and Shoukat Farooqi (Europeans on Kashmir), Tavlen Singh (Kashmir: Tragedy of Errors), Robert G. Wirsing (ed., Kashmir: Resolving Regional Conflict; India, Pakistan and the Kashmir Dispute), and Lars Blinkenberg (India-Pakistan:the History of Unsolved Conflicts). The last mentioned recent study consists of a re-edition of the original single volume and a new analytical volume containing an evaluation of many structural factors.

Terrorism continues to pose a serious threat to India’s security. The volatile situation in Kashmir has been discussed in a number of publications. The India Ministry of Home Affairs brings out periodic volumes on Profile of Terrorist Violence in Jammu and Kashmir, which contain descriptions of atrocities by militants. Ved Marwah, a former member of the India Police Service who held many important assignments in different states in India, traced the genesis of terrorist movements and analysed how extremist violence has taken deep roots, in his book entitled Uncivil Wars: Pathology of Terrorism in India. Manoj Joshi’s The Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties is a riveting account of the human drama in Kashmir. Tara Kartha’s Tools of Terror examines the connection between light weapons and India’s security. Beyond Terrorism by Salman Hurshid, the Indian Minister of State for External Affairs, provides a graphic account of the suffering in Kashmir and also looks beyond terrorism to a more peaceful future. Who new Indian periodicals, Aakrosh and  Faultines, concentrate on conflict, terrorism, and resolution. The former is published by the Forum for Strategic and Security Studies, and the latter by the Institute for Conflict Management, both in New Delhi. The founder of the Institute is K.P.S Gill, who served in a number of theatres of civil strife an low intensity warfare and led a successful campaign against terrorism in Punjab. Strategic Analysis, a monthly journal of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (IDSA), frequently caries articles on Kashmir and terrorism. IDSA, led by Air Commodore Jasjit Singh, also brings out books, a recent one entitled Kargil 1999, which may be described as Pakistan’s fourth war for Kashmir. The Kashmir Trends is a digest of news and views from J&K media files as well as international and Indian national press on Kashmir. Several other periodicals (Asian Affairs, Asian Strategic Review, BIISS Journal, Islamic Order, Kashmir Today, Kashmir Watch, Journal Of Peace Studies, Pakistan Defence Review, Pakistan Horizon, Pakistan Journal of History and Culture, Pakistan Perspectives, Peace Initiatives, Regional Studies, Secular Democracy, Seminar, South Asian Studies, Strategic Bulletin, Strategic Studies, U.S.I Journal, World Focus) are also useful. The past issues of some Indian daily papers are available at the main library of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi).

 

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