India and Pakistan have disputed over many 'facts' related to their 1947-49 conflict over Jammu & Kashmir but none so heavily as India's conviction that the government of Pakistan was involved in the tribal invasion of Jammu & Kashmir in October 1947. This study is a re-examination of that conflict, its immediate background and aftermath, against the twin backdrops of de-colonisation and the early Cold War. Simultaneously, it attempts to go beyond and cover the comparatively less written about British interests and initiatives in Kashmir. Covering the early history and the historiography of the dispute, it is a chronologically arranged narrative from the events in Poonch and Gilgit over August-September 1947, through the action-packed months of October-December, the diplomacy around the war, to the summer and winter battles of 1948 and ceasefire of January 1949. It is a story of individuals, issues, the times in which they emerged and their inter-connectedness with the fears and hopes of others who shared that time and space. It is a story of the sub-continental desires and the international within which the dispute evolved in its first two years. It traces a diverse and dynamic geo-political context of the conflict and shows the elements of continuity and change from the historical understanding of the defence of the Indian sub-continent, in the aftermath of its independence and partition. Based on considerable primary and published sources, this study takes a re-look at the hopes, fears and desires of India, Pakistan and Britain from the 1947-49 Kashmir conflict. Emerging alongside the embers of partition of British India in 1947, the dispute continues to smoulder. In this case too, as Ilan Pappe demonstrated elsewhere, the deeply involved British offer the 'best vantage point' for describing conflicts in the wake of empire. These can be helpfully understood by situating them in their wider context and by examining the inter-linkages between their local, regional and international dimensions. |
