Springer Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah’s Reflections on Kashmir

This book is a compendium of the speeches and interviews of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, who reigned as Prime Minister of the State of Jammu and Kashmir from 1948 to 1953, and who was a large presence on the political landscape of India for fifty years. The volume is designed to enable a student of South Asian politics, and the politics of Kashmir in particular, to analyze the ways in which experiences have been constructed historically and have changed overtime. Review “This book contains a compendium of Abdullah’s letters, lectures, and press articles, which carefully document his laws-into-sausages struggle to achieve a free, independent Kashmir based on pluralism, a rejection of the religious split between Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs that ultimately truncated South Asia into endlessly combative, nationalistic, and regressive regimes. … This book is an intuitive primer in democracy for anyone who would take a practical, holistic view of the democratic enterprise.” (Jim Drummond, World Literature Today, Vol. 93 (3), 2019) “The book taken as a whole is an interesting read because it not only presents us the ideas of sheikh Abdullah in the form of his letters, speeches and press conferences but also give as a clear peep into Khan’s own understanding of the situation as it exists in Kashmir at present. … The Book reflects her frustration with the Violence, purposelessness, and senselessness, that the Present-day politics has started representing." (Rekha Chowdhary, The Book Review, Vol. 63 (3), March, 2019) Review “An important collection of Sheikh Abdullah's speeches and correspondence, it provides solid evidence for the distinctiveness of Muslim political thought outside the Pakistan Movement, which has generally been dismissed either as inconsequential or entirely dependent on the Congress. The volume forces us to reconsider the dualistic narrative which has dominated India's modern history until the present.” (Faisal Devji, Reader in Indian History, University of Oxford, UK) “This exceptional book should be taught at all institutions of higher learning in India and Pakistan, as it recuperates and reintroduces the erased voice of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah, the founding father of a pluralist and progressive Kashmiri nationalism. For the Pakistani readers, Khan’s book will provide a necessary and enlightening antidote to the often maligned and unjust representations of Sheikh Abdullah in the Pakistani media and historiography.” (Masood Ashraf Raja, Associate Professor of English, University of North Texas, USA) “Nyla Khan had done vital service to our understanding of the plight of the Kashmiri people by putting together the writings and speeches of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah. Sheikh Abdullah - decades after his death - remains an important voice for justice and peace in the region. Any observer of the region who ignores his words will fail to grasp the possibilities for Kashmir's future.” (Vijay Prashad, author of No Free Left: The Futures of Indian Communism) “This book reflects Dr Nyla Ali Khan's meticulous intellectual engagement with the larger-than-life Kashmiri leader Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah who was much more than a politician. Abdullah opened up the possibilities of imagining a different Kashmir than what the nationalism projects of India and Pakistan dictated. His speeches, letters and interviews explain why Kashmiri voices have been subsumed by jingoism in the subcontinent - to deflect and undermine the inclusive and pluralist Kashmiri identity. This is an invaluable resource for students, researchers and all those who wish to understand conflict ridden subcontinent and its elusive Paradise called Kashmir.” (Raza Rumi, author, journalist, and editor of Daily Times, Pakistan) “This book is much more than a collection of "reflections" by Sheikh Abdullah: it provides a documentary foundation for a much fuller understanding of the Kashmir crisis today than could ever