Sumantra Bose locates his study on Kashmir within a comparative perspective on problems of self-determination and democratic conflict resolution that enables him to take an engaged but non-partisan view. Both this approach and the reliance on ordinary citizens and grassroots activists rather than on establishment sources, permit him to break away from the nationalist rhetorics of both India and Pakistan. He makes a strong case for an open dialogue between the contending protagonists in the framework of the right for self-determination.

In 2002, nuclear-armed adversaries India and Pakistan mobilized for war over the long-disputed territory of Kashmir, sparking panic around the world. Drawing on extensive firsthand experience in the contested region, Sumantra Bose reveals how the conflict became a grave threat to South Asia and the world and suggests feasible steps toward peace. Though the roots of conflict lie in the end of empire and the partition of the subcontinent in 1947, the contemporary problem owes more to subsequent developments, particularly the severe authoritarianism of Indian rule. Deadly dimensions have been added since 1990 with the rise of a Kashmiri independence movement and guerrilla war waged by Islamist groups. Bose explains the intricate mix of regional, ethnic, linguistic, religious, and caste communities that populate Kashmir, and emphasizes that a viable framework for peace must take into account the sovereignty concerns of India and Pakistan and popular aspirations to self-rule as well as conflicting loyalties within Kashmir. He calls for the establishment of inclusive, representative political structures in Indian Kashmir, and cross-border links between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir. Bose also invokes compelling comparisons to other cases, particularly the peace-building framework in Northern Ireland, which offers important lessons for a settlement in Kashmir. The Western world has not fully appreciated the desperate tragedy of Kashmir: between 1989 and 2003 violence claimed up to 80,000 lives. Informative, balanced, and accessible, Kashmir is vital reading for anyone wishing to understand one of the world's most dangerous conflicts.

This Book Is A Most Timely And Welcome Addition To The Growing Body Of Literature On Cbms In South Asia. It Provides Reasons For Hope As There Are Many Reasons To Be Dispirited About The Absence Of Proper Confidence Building Measures In South Asia.

This book examines the recent evolution of online spaces and their impact on networked democracy. Through an illuminating mix of theoretical and methodological analysis, contributors provide an understanding of how a range of individuals and groups, including activists and NGOs, governments and griefers, are using digital technologies to influence public debates. Contributions consider these phenomena in a global contemporary context, providing within the same volume rigorous examinations of the design of digital platforms for deliberation, users’ attempts to manipulate those platforms, and the ways activists and governments are responding to emerging threats to democratic discourse. Providing diverse, global case studies, this collection is a valuable tool for academics within and beyond the fields of new media, communication, and information policy and governance.

This book presents a study of the international dimensions of the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan from before its outbreak in October 1947 until the Tashkent Summit in January 1966. By focusing on Kashmir’s under-researched transnational dimensions, it represents a different approach to this intractable territorial conflict. Concentrating on the global context(s) in which the dispute unfolded, it argues that the dispute’s evolution was determined by international concerns that existed from before and went beyond the Indian subcontinent. Based on new and diverse official and personal papers across four countries, the book foregrounds the Kashmir dispute in a twin setting of Decolonisation and the Cold War, and investigates the international understanding around it within the imperatives of these two processes. In doing so, it traces Kashmir’s journey from being a residual irritant of the British Indian Empire, to becoming a Commonwealth embarrassment and its eventual metamorphosis into a security concern in the Cold War climate(s). A princely state of exceptional geo-strategic location, complex religious composition and unique significance in the context of Indian and Pakistani notions of nation and statehood, Kashmir also complicated their relations with Britain, the United States, Soviet Union, China, the Commonwealth countries and the Afro-Arab-Asian world. This book is of interest to scholars in the field of Asian History, Cold War History, Decolonisation and South Asian Studies.

Historically grounded study of post-partition Kashmir that places Kashmir and Kashmiris at the centre of the historical debate.