The India Pakistan Conflict

Comprehensive account of India's relations with the outside world.

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.

"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 --