ABSTRACT
India and Pakistan took their painful births of independence marked by bloody partition and the war of Kashmir. This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book 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. The book examines 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. 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.
