Kashmir Under 370: A Personal History by J&K’s Former Director General of Police

Mahendra Sabharwal was the first IPS officer to be directly assigned the Jammu and Kashmir cadre, in 1964. But when he retired in 2001, after serving as chief of the state’s police, he was not permitted to buy land and settle down there. Sabharwal was seen as an outsider, an interloper, in the state he loved and had served for close to four decades. This book is a sharply observed and astutely analytical personal history of J&K. It is a lament for the years and lives lost, and a critique of the cynical politics that have hamstrung the state.

In Kashmir Under 370, we meet a cast of characters – the prime ministers, governors, chief ministers and politicians – who have controlled Kashmir’s fate. We see them through Sabharwal’s eyes and hear the words and thoughts they expressed behind closed doors. We get an unsparing assessment of key players, with an unusual moral clarity. But more than that we see and get a feel of what it means to be ‘boots on the ground’. From dodging a mob and containing the fallout of Zulfikar Bhutto’s hanging to handling the sieges of Hazratbal and managing the funeral marches of fallen separatists, we get an extraordinary ringside view of politics and policing in J&K. Based on intelligence gathered from captured Pakistani terrorists, he even warned American security officials – long before 9/11 – about plans to target them but he was ignored.

With the abrogation of Article 370, audacious cross-border retaliation for Pakistan-sponsored terror strikes and India’s economic rise, Sabharwal sees reasons for optimism. The ingredients, he argues, for a more hopeful future have come together for the first time in history. And while much yet needs to be done, a promising start has been made.