The purpose of this monograph is therefore to examine, in a balanced, impartial and thorough manner, what policies India and Pakistan develop vis-à-vis the territories of former Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir (PSJ&K); what impact the disputed region, currently administered by India and Pakistan, has on their domestic and international strategies; how the functioning of the two states as well as their geostrategic, political, religious and cultural ramifications influence their policies vis-à-vis Kashmir; how these policies impact the civil and human rights of the residents of Indian-administered Kashmir (IaJK) and Pakistan-administered Kashmir (PaJK) to the effect that these are in the end restricted, temporarily nullified or abused. The global and regional contexts are explored when necessary, in order to provide a broader analytical framework for the empirical deliberations on India and Pakistan and their respective policies towards Kashmir. The methodical contextualisation of Kashmir imbroglio within the current geostrategic situation, rivalry between India and Pakistan, which engages external powers such as the United States or China, aims to deliver analytically and empirically incisive glimpses into the complexities of this protracted conflict and the incessant predicaments of the people living on both sides of the Line of Control (LoC).

Part 1 (‘A Brief History of the Kashmir Conflict and Indo-Pakistani Relations’) provides a brief historical background to the intractable Kashmir conflict and explains the genesis and selected consecutive phases of Indo-Pakistani rivalry. Due to the unresolved dispute between the two major South Asian states, the region remains one of the most volatile in the world and is paying a high price in terms of constrained human development, civilisational progress and economic growth. With incessant political tensions, ferocious belligerence, disdain for compromises, mistrust, military stand-offs and open-armed confrontations coupled with costly arms race on conventional and nuclear levels, any radical improvement of living conditions of South-Asian population, advancement in terms of political liberties and civil rights, respect for human rights and potential regional development of multilevel cooperation and peaceful bilateral relations have been thwarted, along with chances for prosperity of both nations and de-militarisation of their policies. The historically inherited, ideologically motivated antagonisms led to large number of crises and armed conflicts, elaborated in this chapter. Much has been written on root causes and the history of Kashmir conflict; therefore, the purpose of this part of the monograph is not to present an exhaustive and detailed historical reconstruction of the India-Pakistan relations, but rather to enumerate and analyse those events that have been particularly relevant to escalation and de-escalation phases of the conflict and are vital for the adequate understanding of its dynamics. This also includes a survey of the problem of terrorism and proxy conflicts and investigates a wider regional context that also involves the role of other actors, such as China, the United States and Afghanistan. These historical ramifications constitute an important introduction to the investigation, which is pursued in subsequent chapters: what role Kashmir and the Kashmiris play in India’s and Pakistan’s internal and foreign policies.

Parts 2 (‘The role of Jammu and Kashmir in Pakistan’s domestic and foreign policy’) and 3 (‘The role of Jammu and Kashmir in India’s internal and international policies’) examine the role Kashmir plays in Pakistan’s and India’s internal and international policies: as the territory, as the people and as a potent symbol in national psyches. With respect to Pakistan, which unceasingly adheres to Kaśmīr banegā Pākistān (‘Kashmir will be [a part] of Pakistan’) motto, persistent territorial claims regarding Indian-administered chunk of Jammu and Kashmir remain the crucial aspect of its India-centric regional goals and historically inherited ideology based on the two-nation theory. Revisionism in Kashmir with emphasis of human rights abuses of Kashmiri Muslims by the Indian authorities, profoundly influences domestic affairs and international strategy based on providing support for jihādist proxies and remains a crucial element in Pakistan’s unceasing identity and nation-building efforts. The prolonged conflict along with composite regional security-related complexity with Pakistan being a frontline state in the US-led strategy in Afghanistan provides ramifications for the political and economic dominance of the military establishment (referred to as ‘the Deep State’ and comprising of the army and the ISI) of Pakistan, with military stakeholders availing themselves of Kashmir as a means to pursue their own agenda and exert their wide-reaching dominance. Internally, keeping the chunks of PaJK, namely Gilgit-Baltistan (GB) and Azad Jammu and Kashmir (AJK) in a state of legal limbo, without granting them constitutional rights equivalent to other regions, serves as a means and justification for state-imposed marginalisation and systemic restrictions on democratic freedoms of their inhabitants. The unilateral bifurcation of IaJK and deprivation of its already limited autonomy by Indian government in 2019 and more assertive encroachments of China into South Asia (Sino-Pakistani axis and Sino-Indian stand-offs in Ladakh) may precipitate a possible shift in Pakistan’s policy vis-à-vis PaJK, which may include altering the status of GB, augmented demographic engineering and centre-led control in strategically crucial regions.

In contrast to Pakistan’s persistently revisionist policy on Kashmir, India’s stance has gradually evolved, from original admission that its future should be determined according to the wishes of the Kashmiris, till it has reached the stage that Kashmir is not recognised as a disputed territory any longer, and it is rather Pakistan that illegally occupies the Western part of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir, which had lawfully accessed India. Treated as an integral and inalienable part of India, Kashmir has become a symbol of the territorial integrity of India, which has perceived threats to it both from the outside, primarily from the sides of Pakistan and China, and from within, in the form of separatist movements, which India has attempted to combat through various legal-constitutional, political, economic, military and extrajudicial ways. Kashmir has always played an important role in India’s psyche that has wanted to project itself as strictly secular, ergo fully democratic, modernist and forward-looking, unlike undemocratic and military-controlled Pakistan founded on religion. This single Muslim-majority state (now unconstitutionally split and reduced to two union territories)—of a centuries-long tradition of being a historical centre of Śivaism and with a distinct community of Hindu Kashmiri Pandits—remaining within the Indian Union has come to symbolise the secular, multicultural and tolerant face of India. Its religiously neutral and welcoming expression has been dramatically transforming into a Hindutva grimace in the last three decades, with the democratic make-up quickly peeling off, and the Kashmir conflict has had a role to play in shaping new identities both in India and in all the territories of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir. Like in the case of Pakistan, albeit to a lesser extent, it is the military that pull a number of the strings attached to the conflict and to India’s internal and external policies, and it is not surprising to discover that a large number of high-rank generals and ex-generals-turned-politicians own their swift careers to their service in Kashmir, which continues to be the most militarised region of the world with the ratio of armed personnel per civilians at staggeringly high 1:16.

The monograph is based on a wide range of sources that comprise both published and unpublished materials, reports, primary and secondary literature and archival material, but also on the authors’ first-hand experience and research carried out in the region during several visits to all the territories of the former State of Jammu and Kashmir, and numerous research visits to South Asia. The authors have greatly benefited over the years from innumerable personal contacts, discussions and correspondence with Kashmiri, Indian and Pakistani intellectuals, academics, human rights activists, researchers, journalists both living in the region but also barred from visiting it. Face-to-face contacts with the people of Kashmir, those living in the region and in the diaspora, have largely contributed to the authors’ understanding of the conflict and the final shape of the book. It is an outcome of a broader research on Kashmir and human rights in the context of the policies of India and Pakistan vis-à-vis Jammu and Kashmir, which also resulted in complementary monographs by the authors (Human rights violations in Kashmir and Law and conflict resolution in Kashmir, Routledge 2022).

The work is a result of joint labour and consists of chapters initially written separately by the co-authors, who are characterised by their distinctive analytical methodologies, insights and conclusions due to their different academic expertise and background, which is reflected in respective chapters. Following this same principle that ensures internal coherence of the whole project, each chapter has originally been written by one author, blue-pencilled by the co-author whose input, critique, feedback and comments are included in the final form. As a result, the work is characterised, as it is hoped, by a strong interdisciplinary and balanced approach, with expertise ranging from political science and international relations to political philosophy, cultural and religious studies, history and classical Indology, that enables the authors to view the conflict from a range of different perspectives and in a more perceptive manner.

An abundance of written material is available on the root causes, detailed history of the conflict in Kashmir and the dynamics of the relations between India and Pakistan.¹ Therefore, these deliberations are not aimed to reconstruct comprehensively Indo-Pakistani relations or provide exhaustive history of all parts of the erstwhile Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir (PSJ&K), which would exceed the scope of this book. The purpose is to investigate the genesis of the conflict, key phases of conflict’s escalation and de-escalation, important to understand the complexity of the rivalry, with its multidimensional manifestations and ideological explanations, in a tailored manner, referring to selected events and occurrences, where certain elements of bilateral relations and political narratives within Kashmir, considered as most substantial, are touched upon. Recapitulating the conflict’s history and contextualising it within specific political, security-related and ideological features, which shaped the discursive frameworks and triggered Indo-Pakistani antagonisms, enables to explore its dynamics and to deepen the understanding of diverse grievances in the former PSJ&K. Indo-Pakistani relations have to be regarded not only as a post-colonial legacy or a matter of bilateral antagonisms; it is also indispensable t...