Conflict Between India And Pakistan

This up-to-date encyclopedia examines the conflict between India and Pakistan from Independence to the present day, with an authoritative treatment that presents the issues evenhandedly and from both countries' perspectives. Tensions between India and Pakistan are deeply rooted. Many go back to 1947 or earlier, when, with the partitioning of the provinces of Punjab and Bengal, British India was succeeded by two independent countries: a primarily Hindu India and a Muslim Pakistan. Subsequently, the two countries have fought three wars and come close to open war several other times, especially over Kashmir. Conflict Between India and Pakistan begins with a discussion of the partition of India and those who figured prominently in it, notably: Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Clem Attlee, the last viceroy, Admiral Louis Mountbatten, and Jawaharlal Nehru. Then, in a series of evenhanded, carefully crafted portraits, it describes the people, political parties, foreign and domestic policies, and economic, religious, and cultural pressures that have played a role in the conflicts between these nations from 1947 to the present.

The escalating tensions between India and Pakistan have received renewed attention of late. Since their genesis in 1947, the nations of India and Pakistan have been locked in a seemingly endless spiral of hostility over the disputed territory of Kashmir. Ganguly asserts that the two nations remain mired in conflict due to inherent features of their nationalist agendas. Indian nationalist leadership chose to hold on to this Muslim-majority state to prove that minorities could thrive in a plural, secular polity. Pakistani nationalists argued with equal force that they could not part with Kashmir as part of the homeland created for the Muslims of South Asia. Ganguly authoritatively analyzes why hostility persists even after the dissipation of the pristine ideological visions of the two states and discusses their dual path to overt acquisition of nuclear weapons, as well as the current prospects for war and peace in the region.

As the Kashmir dispute brings India and Pakistan ominously close to nuclear war this book provides a compelling account of the history and politics of these two great South Asian rivals. Like the Israel-Palestine struggle, the Indian-Pakistan rivalry is a legacy of history. The two countries went to war within months of becoming independent and, over the following half-century, they have fought three other wars and clashed at the United Nations and every other global forum. It is a complex conflict, over religion and territory with two diametrically opposed views of nationhood and national imagination. J.N. Dixit, former Foreign Secretary of India, and one of the world's leading authorities on the region, has written a balanced and very readable account of the most tempestuous and potentially dangerous flashpoint in international politics.

"Stanley Wolpert's new book, India and Pakistan, represents another major contribution to his analysis of the subcontinent. In this work, he provides a hopeful yet realistic solution to the tensions between these two neighbors." MICHAEL D. INTRILIGATOR, University of California, Los Angeles, and the Milken Institute --

In this groundbreaking book, Raghavan uses previously untapped archival sources to weave together new stories about the experiences of post-partition state-making in South Asia. Through meticulous research, it challenges the existing wisdom about the preponderance of animosity and the rhetoric of war. The book shows how amity and a spirit of cordiality governed relations between the states of India and Pakistan in the first five years after partition. Arguing that a hitherto overlooked set of considerations have to be integrated more closely into the analysis of bilateral dialogue, this book analyses the developments leading to the No War correspondence between Nehru and Liaquat Ali Khan, the signing of a 'Minorities' Pact between the two prime ministers, and the early stages of the Indus Waters negotiations, as well as exploring the calculations of Indian and Pakistani delegates at a series of interdominion conferences held in the years after partition. This book will be of interest to specialists in histories of diplomatic practice as well as a general audience in search of narratives of peace in the South Asia region.