CONFLICT UNENDING: India-Pakistan Tensions since 1947

Every since Independence, India and Pakistan have been locked in seemingly unending conflict. This book investigates this mutual hostility, offering a detailed account of the four wars and several crises that have punctuated Indo-Pakistani relations. In a timely epilogue, the author assesses the repercussions of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the political balance of the region.

The author explains how memories of Partition, divergent conceptions of nationhood and territorial claim on Kashmir have repeatedly propelled the two states toward conflict. The Indian government, which has faced a number of secessionist movements across the country, has been singularly inwilling to make any territorial concessions in Kashmir. For the Pakistani leadership, to give up its claims on Kashmir would amount to political hara-kiri. This book shines a powerful light on this central dispute and its likely consequences for both sides.

Ganguly also presents a set of factors that he calls opportunistic precipitants to the Indo-Pakistani wars. False optimism on the part of the Pakistani military leadership, he contends, prevented a rational calculation of the costs and benefits of warring with India. In addition, windows of opportunity gave both sides incentives to resort to war at particular moments in history.

This author also examines the changes wrought by the open demonstration of nuclear weapons by both countries in 1998. He illustrates the changed dynamics of Indo-Pakistani relations with evidence from the 1999 Kargil war and more recent events.

The only full-length study of Indo-Pakistani tensions, Conflict Unending will be a standard reference for political scientists, policy-makers, journalists, and anyone else interested in the past or the future of war and peace in South Asia.

Sumit Ganguly is Professor of Asian Studies and Government at the University of Texas at Austin. His other books include The Crisis in Kashmir and Mending Fences: Confidence and Security Building Measures in South Asia (co-edited with Ted greenwood).

About the Book:

This outstanding examination of the India-Pakistan conflict is indispensable reading for the scholar and policy-maker. Sumit Ganguly offers a guide to tis deeper origins and its dangerous manifestations with clarity and rigour. Dr Ganguly has explored the reasons for India-Pakistan discard, his book is a major contribution to our understanding of what has emerged as one of the world's major trouble spots.'

Stephen P. Cohen, Brookings Institution

This is a worthy successor to the Origins of War in South Asia, the author's well-known study of conflict between India and Pakistan: Conflict Unending reworks the first three wars and includes entirely new chapters on the crises of the 1980s and 1990s, the resurgence of the Kashmir dispute, the nuclearization of the subcontinent, the Kargil war, and the aftermath of September 11. The book is a highly readable and instructive guide to this deeply troubled and violent relationship, and a must for scholars of South Asia, students of intractable international conflicts, and policy-maker.'

Kanti Bajpai, Jawaharlal Nehru University