The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir, ; co-published by Columbia University Press in the United States; also by HarperCollins India under the title Kashmir: The Unwritten History, and.
Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris,.
Idrees Kanth of Leiden University notes the main thesis of the Untold Story as saying that the Jammuites, who later became Azad Kashmiris, had a central role in instigating the Kashmir dispute, giving a "new spin" to the Kashmir issue that makes us rethink the accepted narratives. It is not Maharaja Hari Singh's "indecisiveness" that led to the Kashmir dispute, but rather the different accessional desires of the State's peoples. Three events in the Jammu division of the State shaped these desires: first, the pro-Pakistan, anti-Maharaja uprising by the Muslim inhabitants of the Poonch jagir; second, a major communal violence in the eastern districts of Jammu that caused upheaval and death, including a massacre of Muslims; third, the establishment of a provisional Azad Kashmir government in areas "liberated" by the Poonch uprising. These three events, which happened well before 26 October 1947, divided the Jammu province into pro-Pakistan and pro-India areas "politically, physically and militarily." However, Idrees Kanth finds that Snedden has oversimplified the narrative of the 'pro-India' part of the State to that of a secular attitude of Kashmiriyat. He argues that the role of the Congress party as well as the colonial state in Kashmir were also important factors. Satish Kumar of the Foundation for National Security Research in New Delhi finds the new material on the Poonch uprising contains considerable detail. However, he finds the assertion of the uprising as the main cause of the Kashmir dispute to be questionable. He points out that a local uprising internal to the State by itself cannot turn a dispute into an international dispute. However, he credits Snedden for having made a "realistic assessment" that there is no possibility of Jammu and Kashmir either getting independence or being unified. Priyanka Singh of the Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses finds the book meticulously researched providing a wealth of empirical evidence. However, she states that Snedden takes a `moderate view' on Pakistan in the first half of the book and disagrees with India's position that Pakistan incited the tribal invasion of Kashmir. These arguments she finds 'more or less in sync with conventional Western approach' of putting the onus on India for not holding a plebiscite without insisting on a Pakistani withdrawal. She says that Snedden's conclusions and recommendations come from a 'partial reading of history', perceiving it as problem of the Muslims and disregarding the issues of Jammu and Ladakh. She finds his proposed solution of 'let the people decide' disappointing as it disregards the fundamental ideological differences between India and Pakistan and the complications issuing from cross-border terrorism.
