| Details | | Publication Date: | 1996-05-23 |
| Size | | Length: | 151 pages | | Height: | 9.0 in | | Width: | 6.0 in | | Thickness: | 0.5 in | | Weight: | 12.0 oz |
Publisher's Note
This book is an exhaustive and careful documentation of the accession of Kashmir in 1947. It is based on declassified papers, correspondence and reports that have become available in recent years. Kashmir, 1947 provides a virtually day-to-day account of the critical times when the fate of Kashmir was 'decided' in the context of Britain's geo-political compulsions and strategies. Over the years, two completely different versions of Kashmir's accession to India have come into being. The author critically examines both versions using the recently declassified Transfer of Power Documents as well as personal accounts of the main participants in the events of that period. This helps him to reconstruct the two years which culminated in Kashmir's accession to India. Jha's book will interest all Kashmir watchers including historians and policy-makers in the subcontinent, journalists, students of international relations and general readers.
Industry Reviews
Jha contributes a refreshing, spirited, and well written study to the corpus of literature on Kashmir. He clearly succeeds in renewing awareness that there is an Indian version about Kashmir and that it can be argued persuasively. He is most effective when uncovering the moral presumptiveness and not infrequent anti-Indian bias of his adversaries. He raises provocative questions not only about the specific events of the accession era but about the scholarly standards employed in reconstructing and interpreting them. Unfortunately, Jha's arguments are themselves laced with partisanship, and he repeatedly overstates the strength and finality of his findings. . . . In sum, this sometimes breezy but always though-provoking book deserves a wide readership. Although it fails to deliver a knockout punch to Pakistan's version of events in 1947, it undoubtedly issues a serious challenge to it.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Wirsing
[The author] seeks to rehabiliate the last Maharaja of Kashmir, Hari Singh, whose accession to India in October 1947 has left his Muslim-majority state the main India-Pakistan battleground ever since. In [this book] Jha represents the accession decision as the Maharaja's own and exonerates Mountbatten of undue influence. He does elucidate a pro-Pakistan, anti-Mounbatten stance that emerged at the Commonwealth Relations Office. While this will not be the last re-examination of Kashmir's accession, it should end controversy over Mountbatten's alleged tampering to India's advantage with Lord Radcliffe's partition of the Punjab.
Annotation copyright H.W. Wilson Company.
Wirsing
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