Fifty years on, the Kashmir dispute between
India and Pakistan seems to be no nearer solution than it was in
1947 when the British Indian Empire ended with the Partition of
the Indian Subcontinent. Alastair Lamb argues, on the basis of
research into a great deal of archival and other documentary
material, that in many ways the Kashmir question was a direct
product of a process of Partition which in important respects was
never completed; and any serious attempt at.its resolution will
inevitably involve a conscious effort to complete that process.
This book expands greatly (and in places modifies) the material
in the author’s Birth of a Tragedy: Kashmir 1947 which
appeared in 1994, and adds a detailed study of the treatment of
the Kashmir issue by the United Nations during the course of
1948. A concluding Chapter considers these events of 1947 and
1948 in the light of the current situation and explores the
possibilities k~r some kind of settlement of a dispute which has
so profoundly disrupted relations between India and Pakistan for
virtually the whole of their lives as sovereign states.
