Kashmir: Wars over a Divided Valley
The former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir is split between Pakistan and India after the war of 1947–48 and has been fought over again in 1965, 1999 and in repeated crises since.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
- Kashmir: Paths to Peace — Robert W. Bradnock, Chatham House (2010)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- Resolution 47 (1948) on the India–Pakistan Question — United Nations Security Council, United Nations (1948)
- Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris — Christopher Snedden, Hurst (2015)
1947: the war at the start
At Partition, the 560-odd princely states could choose India or Pakistan. Jammu and Kashmir had a Muslim majority, about three-quarters of its people, but a Hindu ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh, who hesitated. In the autumn of 1947 Muslims in Poonch rose against him, and in October thousands of Pashtun tribesmen from Pakistan’s frontier invaded, reaching the outskirts of Srinagar. The Maharaja signed an Instrument of Accession to India on 26 October, Indian troops were flown in, and Pakistan’s army was soon fighting them.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
A UN-brokered ceasefire came into force on 1 January 1949. The Security Council had called in 1948 for a plebiscite once forces withdrew; it never took place. Pakistan kept what it calls Azad (“Free”) Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan, more than a third of the former state; India held the Kashmir Valley, Jammu and Ladakh.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
1965 and 1971
In August 1965 Pakistan sent infiltrators into the Valley in Operation Gibraltar, hoping to spark an uprising. It did not come, and India struck across the international border towards Lahore. After about three weeks of fighting the war ended in stalemate, and a Soviet-brokered agreement at Tashkent in January 1966 restored the old lines. Pakistanis still mark 6 September as Defence Day, remembering how Lahore was held.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
Insurgency and Kargil
In 1989, after a disputed 1987 state election, a revolt broke out in the Indian-administered Valley. It began with the pro-independence JKLF but was soon dominated by Pakistan-backed Islamist groups. India responded with a massive troop presence; tens of thousands of people have died, and almost all of the Valley’s Hindu Pandits fled in 1990.
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
In 1999, a year after both countries tested nuclear weapons, Pakistani troops and militants occupied heights near Kargil on India’s side of the Line of Control. India drove them back, and US pressure forced Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to withdraw. The fiasco helped lead to General Musharraf’s coup months later.
- Pakistan: A New History — Ian Talbot, Hurst (2012)
- The Army and Democracy: Military Politics in Pakistan — Aqil Shah, Harvard University Press (2014)
Recent crises
Attacks by Pakistan-based militant groups, in Mumbai in 2008 and Pulwama in 2019, brought the two nuclear powers close to war. On 5 August 2019 India revoked the special autonomous status of Jammu and Kashmir under Article 370 and split it into two union territories, a move Pakistan condemned. In May 2025, after militants killed 26 people, mostly tourists, at Pahalgam, India struck targets in Pakistan and the two sides fought several days of missile, drone and air battles before a ceasefire on 10 May. Each side claimed victory.
- Pakistan — Encyclopaedia Britannica
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
Why it runs so deep
For Pakistan, Kashmir is about the logic of its creation: if a Muslim-majority region could belong to India, what was Pakistan for? For India it is about secular nationhood. Kashmiris, caught between, have their own voice that both states tend to talk over.
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
A Muslim-majority region that should have joined Pakistan in 1947 was taken by India through a Hindu ruler's accession under duress. The UN Security Council called for a plebiscite in 1948 that India never held, and Kashmiris in the Indian-administered valley face military repression. Pakistan says it offers them moral, political and diplomatic support.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- The Idea of Pakistan — Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution Press (2004)
The Maharaja legally acceded to India in October 1947 after Pakistani tribal raiders invaded, so all of Jammu and Kashmir is Indian. The plebiscite lapsed because Pakistan never withdrew its forces, and the insurgency since 1989 has been fuelled by Pakistan-backed militant groups.
- Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War — Victoria Schofield, I.B. Tauris (2000)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
Many in the Kashmir Valley want *azadi* (freedom) from both countries and resent being treated as territory rather than people. A 2010 Chatham House survey found strong support for independence in the Valley, but very different views in Hindu-majority Jammu, Buddhist Ladakh and Pakistan-administered areas.
- Kashmir: Paths to Peace — Robert W. Bradnock, Chatham House (2010)
- Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace — Sumantra Bose, Harvard University Press (2003)
Why it matters today
Kashmir is called Pakistan's "jugular vein" and its unfinished business of Partition. 5 February is Kashmir Solidarity Day, the rivers that water Pakistan's farms rise there, and the dispute has shaped the army's dominance, the defence budget and the rivalry with India. Many British Pakistanis have family roots in Mirpur, in Pakistan-administered Kashmir.
The Line of Control is not an abstraction for Kashmiris: it divides villages, families and a shared language, and those who live along it have spent decades under shelling. For people in the valley, the wars of 1947, 1965 and 1999 and every crisis since were fought over their home by two states, with their own wishes rarely asked. The unheld plebiscite of 1948 remains the touchstone of the demand for self-determination; many Kashmiris would like to be treated as people, not territory.