Kashmir evokes strong emotions in both India and Pakistan. For so long has the dispute been looked at from the respective nationalistic viewpoints, always mutually exclusive and hostile, that objectivity has come to be regarded as' treason´. Both countries present carefully chiseled ´truths´ to undermine the variant point of view. This puts immense pressure on individuals who might want to dispassionately analyse the situation and punch holes in the sanctified official versions.
Tavleen Singh´s book is just such an attempt. It is a chronological account of how New Delhi lost Kashmir. Childhood memories of Kashmir, interwoven with the narrative at the beginning of the book, show the writer´s empathy towards Kashmir and Kashmiris. They serve as a good starting point for Ms Singh, now grown up and striving to understand the land and its people, and the contrast between myth (stereotypes) and reality.
'The first political remark I ever re member hearing about Kashmir is: All Kashmiris are traitors. Everyone believed it, everyone said it, all the time. As a child, during holidays in Kashmir, I remember hearing it constantly…' The point that Ms Singh makes from the very outset, and which forms the motif of her work, is that at no time since 1947 when the 'National Conference…brought the state to India' has the rest of India, including the rulers in New Delhi, accepted Kashmiris as Indians.
But the worst comes later. We are told that the intelligentsia, especially the Indian press, shares New Delhi´s myopic view, dishing out the same untruths and half-truths that form the routine official line. It is this which makes the editor censor Tavleen Singh´s copy and challenge the veracity of her facts even when he is all too happy to accept other stories which have been put together on telephone.