What happens when you close your eyes? Does your mind get inundated by fond memories?Certainly! Over the past many years, my family has been bearing with my flashback moments. They have been kind by not bundling me off. They stay clear-off my territory when I collapse my eyelids.‘The Kashmir That Was’ is a collection of those flashback moments. It is a point where the unseen, unheard and unimagined sides of Kashmir converge; to let the people in the world know that Kashmir was far more than what they know of her now.Kashmir was a cauldron of modernity, philosophy, spirituality, rich culture and progressiveness. Each story in this book is a page from the simple lives that Kashmiri’s lived, many moons ago. I wish that these stories bring smiles and joyous nostalgia to the readers.

"Charmed by the generous people and exquisite beauty of Kashmir, celebrated photographer John Isaac set out to honor this enchanting land that is unknown to so many. The 160 photographs in The Vale of Kashmir present the people and landscape of this remote and exotic region and the unique way of life that has developed on Dal Lake." "Nestled in the lush area where India, China, and Pakistan meet, the Vale of Kashmir is a vast garden dotted with lakes, marshes, orchards, and terraced fields, surrounded by the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas. Isaac's spectacular photographs show us canals crowded with houseboats, floating gardens on Dal Lake, and the ancient city of Srinagar. The varied details of daily life-the harvesting of saffron, Hindu pilgrimages through the mountains, shepherds on the Himalayan slopes, and prayers at the mosque-come alive in these pages." "In addition to capturing the breathtaking natural beauty of the Vale, Isaac also honors the private realm of family life in Kashmir, with images of the merchants, farmers, weavers, and fishermen who live on the lake. Though renowned for its abundance of superb handicrafts, including carpets, shawls, silks, woodwork, and papier-mache boxes, Kashmir and its people are largely uncelebrated; Isaac's tender portraits honor these hard-working families. This arresting view of the land and Kashmiri people is put into a historical and geographical context by author Art Davidson's insightful and sensitive introduction."--BOOK JACKET.

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir considers the social and legal dimensions of India's occupation of Kashmir and the ways in which Kashmiri youth are drawing on the region's history of armed rebellion to reimagine the freedom struggle in the twenty-first century.

Kashmir is one of the most protracted and bloody occupations in the world—and one of the most ignored. Under an Indian military rule that, at half a million strong, exceeds the total number of US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, freedom of speech is non-existent, and human- rights abuses and atrocities are routinely visited on its Muslim-majority population. In the last two decades alone, over seventy thousand people have died. Ignored by its own corrupt politicians, abandoned by Pakistan and the West, which refuses to bring pressure to bear on its regional ally, India, the Kashmiri people’s ongoing quest for justice and self- determination continues to be brutally suppressed. Exploring the causes and consequences of the occupation, Kashmir: The Case for Freedom is a passionate call for the end of occupation, and for the right of self- determination for the Kashmiri people.

Azad (Free) Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)) is that part of Kashmir within Pakistan, separated by a Line of Control from Indian territory. This book is a rarity: it offers a fresh interpretive history of the largely forgotten four million people of Azad Kashmir. The author contends that in October 1947, pro-Pakistan Muslims in south-western J&K instigated the Kashmir dispute-not Pashtun tribesmen invading from Pakistan, as India has consistently claimed. Later called Azad Kashmiris, these people, Snedden argues, are legitimate stakeholders in an unresolved dispute. He provides comprehensive new information that critically examines Azad Kashmir's administration, economy, political system, and its subordinate relationship with Pakistan. Azad Kashmiris considered their administration to be the only legitimate government in J&K and expected that it would rule after J&K was re-unified by a UN-supervised plebiscite. This poll has never been conducted and Azad Kashmir has effectively, if not yet legally, become a (dependent) part of Pakistan. Long disenchanted with Islamabad, some Azad Kashmiris now favour independence for J&K, hoping that they may survive and prosper without recourse to either of their bigger neighbours. Snedden concludes his book by assessing the various proposals to resolve Azad Kashmir's international status and the broader Kashmir dispute.

MJ Akbar is among those who have made a significant impact on Indian society by their writing, whether as authors or editors. Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the seminal newsmagazine, Sunday, in 1976 and The Telegraph in 1982, he revolutionized Indian journalism in the 1970s and 80s. In the 1990s he launched The Asian Age, a multi-edition daily that once again had substantive impact on the profession. He has also served as the Editorial Director of India Today, Headlines Today and as the editor of the Deccan Chronicle and the Sunday Guardian. MJ, as he is popularly known, first entered public life in 1989, when he was elected to the Lok Sabha. He went back to media in 1993 and returned to the political area in 2014, when he joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and became the party’s national spokesperson during the 2014 campaign led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. In July 2016, he was named the Minister of State for External Affairs by Prime Minister Modi. His seven books have achieved great international acclaim: India: The Siege Within; Nehru: The Making of India; Riot-after-Riot; Kashmir: Behind the Vale; The Shade of Swords: Jihad and the Conflict between Islam and Christianity, Tinderbox: The Past and Future of Pakistan and Blood Brothers, his only work of fiction. In addition, there have been four collections of his columns, reportage and essays.

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.

Kashmir remains one of the world's most militarized areas of dispute, having been in the grips of an armed insurgency against India since the late 1980s. In existing scholarship, ideas of territoriality, state sovereignty, and national security have dominated the discourses on the Kashmir conflict. This book, in contrast, places Kashmir and Kashmiris at the center of historical debate and investigates a broad range of sources to illuminate a century of political players and social structures on both sides of divided Kashmir and in the wider Kashmiri diaspora. In the process, it broadens the contours of Kashmir's postcolonial and resistance history, complicates the meaning of Kashmiri identity, and reveals Kashmiris' myriad imaginings of freedom. It asserts that 'Kashmir' has emerged as a political imaginary in postcolonial era, a vision that grounds Kashmiris in their negotiations for rights not only in India and Pakistan, but also in global political spaces.

A result of territorial disputes between India and Pakistan since 1947, exacerbated by armed freedom movements since 1989, the ongoing conflict over Kashmir is consistently in the news. Taking a unique multidisciplinary approach, Territory of Desire asks how, and why, Kashmir came to be so intensely desired within Indian, Pakistani, and Kashmiri nationalistic imaginations.

Forgotten Kashmir examines the evolution of Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (POK) over the past seven decades. It includes major milestones like the 'tribal' invasion in 1947-48, the Sudhan revolt in the 1950s, the Ayub era, the Simla Agreement, the adoption of an 'Interim Constitution of 1974' and the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). It is not simply a historical account but one that analyses the events in POK against the background of developments in Pakistan's polity to better understand Pakistan's motivations for its policies in the region. The book delves into contentious issues such as the right of self-determination - that is distinct from the concept of plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir which was debated in the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). More recently, the Chinese presence in the region has been considered, which is bound to grow with the development of CPEC, which runs through the Northern Areas. The book covers internal developments in that remote area. The author, a seasoned diplomat, provides a wealth of information that comes from his stint in Karachi, involvement in the Jammu and Kashmir issue at the Ministry of External Affairs, discussions in the United Nations, and as a member of bilateral working groups to counter-terrorism with the US, EU, UK, and Canada.