From the author
It is an authoritative and vivid account of the origins of the Kashmir conflict – based on more than forty interviews with people who lived through the turmoil which gripped this princely state in the Himalayan foothills in the closing weeks of 1947.
I have also used official and other archives, contemporary news reports and secondary sources to tell the story of the political turbulence in Kashmir as India and Pakistan gained independence – the invasion of the princely state by an army of tribesmen from Pakistan – the hasty and eventually successful airlift of Indian troops into the Kashmir Valley – the coming to power of the Kashmiri nationalist, Sheikh Abdullah – and the often hidden Kashmiri perspective on events which heralded decades of conflict and instability.