Double Betrayal

Abstract

Since 1989, more Kasluniris have died in the struggle against Indian rule than the cumulative number of Bosnian casualties of Serb attacks in Sarajevo and of Palestinians during the intifada. Even so, not many people are aware of the mass freedom movement that has gripped the northern Himalayan state of Jammu and Kashmir for the past six years. Reasons for such apathy are not hard to gauge: Western stakes in Kashmir are of a different kind than those in the Balkans or the oil-rich Middle- East Consequently, the uprising in Kashmir and the massive human rights vio­ lations there have been relegated to the fringe of the Western media. Overburdened by its post-cold war concerns, the Western conscience seems to be on recess in Kashmir. A corollary to the lack of international concern over Kashmir is the virtual absence of literature on contemporary Kashmiri reality. The study by Paula Newberg, a senior associate at the Camegie Endowment who has visited Kashmir several times, is an apt response to this double deficit. Academically unpretentious and refreshingly free of prescriptive solutions, Double Betrayal (available from The Brooking Institution in Washington, DC) etches a disturbing image of mass resistance and insular mass repression in this land-locked Indian-administered state. The book encapsulates the nature of the Kashmiri insurgency, Indian repression, and the agony of an entire population whose suffering the world refuses to fathom ...