Why I wrote Kashmir: Dawn of a New Era
Why I wrote Kashmir: Dawn of a New Era . In 2016, I came out with my first book on Kashmir titled, Kashmir: Towards Demilitarisation. As the name suggests, the object was to recommend a reduction in the numbers of uniformed personnel deployed in the Kashmir Valley without compromising on national security; the underlying idea being that projecting a sense of normalcy in the state of Jammu and Kashmir would not be convincing in the presence of an excessive and overbearing number of service personnel. The book was generally well received, as the actions taken by the government in the subsequent years indicated. Thereafter, I undertook the writing of a kind of sequel to the original to evaluate what had been achieved by the government and to recommend further steps if any. However, the initiatives of the Modi government post 2016 caught everyone, including myself, by surprise at their sheer audacity and gumption. Actions like the surgical strikes, bifurcation of the state into 2...
