📕 Balraj Puri, Kashmir: Towards Insurgency

(Most of these thoughts were first published on tumblr)

Over the past two years, I've been tracking down and reading books from the Tracts for the Times series, published by Orient Longman (now Orient Blackswan) between 1993 and 2012, and while I've been impressed by entries like Khaki Shorts and Saffron Flags, Environmental Consciousness and Urban Planning, Ayodhya: Archaeology After Demolition, and Hindi Nationalism; Balraj Puri's Kashmir: Towards Insurgency was a complete and utter disappointment.

I will say that the book was fairly informative, however, the facts presented in it have been presented elsewhere, and in a far less editorialised form. Nevertheless, I remain unsympathetic to the liberal sentiments expressed in the book. But more importantly, I have issues with the sources and citations in the text. Puri is known for his role as a prolific and influential journalist in Kashmir, and over the course of the book, he never hesitates to mention the many times he has personally met and advised Jawaharlal Nehru and Sheikh Abdullah, and yet, he fails to speak of the mass torture and rape of civilians by the Indian army at Kunan Poshpora, and goes so far as to quote B.G. Verghese who, as part of the Press Council of India, famously denied the atrocity, going on to call it a militant hoax. The Press Council's fraudulent report was published in 1991, while Puri's book was published in 1995, there is no excuse for this oversight.

Further, he quotes M.J. Akbar, a former union minister, who was was spotted participating in propaganda for Operation Sindoor earlier this year (click through, it gets worse!), and worst of all, Puri sings praises of Shyama Prasad Mukherjee's attitude towards Kashmir, and goes on to brag about his personal interaction with Mukherjee. Mukherjee, of course, is better known for his role as an ideologue for the Hindu Mahasabha and Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (R.S.S.) in addition to being the founder of the Bharatiya Jana Sangh (B.J.S.), or the antecedent to the Bharatiya Janata Party (B.J.P.), the current, fascist ruling party in India. I genuinely did not expect a series that boasts the renowned historian Romila Thapar as part of its editorial board to platform such voices, but here we are.

Now, I wrote the words that precede this sentence some time ago, in July. Since then, there have been further developments in the realm of knowledge production concerning Kashmir. Twenty five books have been banned, here they are;

Human Rights Violations in Kashmir by Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska

Kashmir’s Fight for Freedom by Mohd Yosuf Saraf

Colonizing Kashmir: State-Building under Indian Occupation by Hafsa Kanjwal

Kashmir Politics and Plebiscite by Dr. Abdul Jabbar Gockhami

Do You Remember Kunan Poshpora? by Essar Batool et. al.

Mujahid ki Azaan by Imam Hasan Al-Bana Shaheed, edited by Maulana Mohammad Enayatullah Subhani

Al Jihadul fil Islam by Moulana Abul A’la Maududi

Independent Kashmir by Christopher Snedden

Resisting Occupation in Kashmir by Haley Duschinski, Mona Bhat, Ather Zia, and Cynthia Mahmood

Between Democracy and Nation: Gender and Militarization in Kashmir by Seema Kazi, Contested Lands by Sumantra Bose

In Search of a Future: The Story of Kashmir by David Devadas

Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War by Victoria Schofield

The Kashmir Dispute 1947–2012 by A.G. Noorani,

Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st Century Conflict by Sumantra Bose

Contested Lands by Sumantra Bose

A Dismantled State: The Untold Story of Kashmir after Article 370 by Anuradha Bhasin

Resisting Disappearance: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir by Ather Zia

Confronting Terrorism edited by Maroof Raza (with contributions by Stephen P. Cohen noted in some sources)

Freedom in Captivity: Negotiations of Belonging Along Kashmiri Frontier by Radhika Gupta

Kashmir: The Case for Freedom by Tariq Ali, Hilal Bhatt, Angana P. Chatterji, Pankaj Mishra, and Arundhati Roy,

Azadi by Arundhati Roy

USA and Kashmir by Dr. Shamshad Shan

Law and Conflict Resolution in Kashmir by Piotr Balcerowicz and Agnieszka Kuszewska, Tarikh-i-Siyasat

Kashmir by Dr. Afaq

Kashmir and the Future of South Asia by Sugata Bose and Ayesha Jalal

Aside from constituting a very good list for brushing up on the modern history and exploitation of Kashmir by India (wink, wink, nudge, nudge), the reader will notice that, quite predictably, the book I have just reviewed is absent from the list. I wouldn't say it was an influential book to begin with, but the reactionary character of its content does make it a text that is completely acceptable to the Indian nation state in the colonisation of Kashmir, and I would even go so far as to say that its sentiments actively aid the state's colonial project.