ABSTRACT
The second Kashmir war built on the experiences of the first, though there were important differences. This chapter examines India's attempts to incorporate Kashmir and Pakistan's successful resistance to the plan. It explores how the dispute on the subcontinent was affected by the UN mediation process and superpower politics. The intervening factor, the undermining of the ideology of Pakistan owing to the Indian actions in Kashmir, linked the situational and structural factors to produce war. India continued to believe that incorporating Kashmir into its domain was necessary to demonstrate effectively to both Pakistan and its own minorities that it was a genuine secular state. In 1951, the Grown Prince of Jammu and Kashmir, at the suggestion of Sheikh Abdullah, issued a proclamation setting up a Constituent Assembly on the basis of free elections. All citizens over twenty-one years of age were eligible to vote by secret and direct ballot.
