Sardar Patel's Correspondence 1945-50. (Volume: 1-10)

Sardar Patel's Correspondence Volume I New Light on Kashmir This volume, the first in a series of ten, relates to the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. It lifts the curtain of the high drama behind the scenes from the moment Pakistan launched its attack on the State to the time when Sheikh Abdullah first aired his preference for an "independent Kashmir." The letters to the Sardar from Jawaharlal Nehru, Mountbatten, Maharaja Hari Singh and Sheikh Abdullah, and his replies to them also reveal the clash of personalities and conflict of ideas on Jammu and Kashmir, which is still free India's biggest problem of external policy and security. The State has been the cause of two wars between India and Pakistan. A by-product of partition, Pakistan has made Jammu and Kashmir a focal point of its unremitting hostility to India and of its search for a national identity. Further, it has provided the Super Powers with a convenient and continuing excuse for intervention in Indo-Pakistan relations. To Pakistan, J & K is a symbol of its theocratic basis which stands discredited by the current democratic upsurge in East Bengal - Bangla Desh. To India, it is a symbol of the secular, multi-racial and multi-religious concept of nationhood.