Mahatma Gandhi's Last hundred Days and the
Kashmir Crisis: The Making of a Dispute
By Suryakant Nath
Abstract
India and Pakistan have battled over the territory of
Kashmir for over sixty years. The two nuclear-armed states have not only fought
three bloody wars in the region but have also been fighting shadow wars for
quite some time. Of late, Kashmir has been one of the contemporary world’s most
troubled and dangerous places, even a ‘nuclear flash point’ in what India calls
‘terrorist insurgency’ and Pakistan ‘a freedom movement’. Today there is a
flood of literature on Kashmir. However, even though we frequently read about
Pt Nehru or Sardar Patel’s views on the subject, very little is said about the
kind of views that Mahatma Gandhi held towards the Kashmir issue and the role
which he played with regard to the Kashmir issue during the last few months of
his life. This paper attempts to study Gandhi’s views on the then
newly-emerging Kashmir dispute which in later years would eventually culminate
into a nuclear flash point in contemporary history and continue to remain one
of the most vulnerable areas in the world. It would be purely speculative to
hazard a guess if Gandhian methods could have been successful in diffusing the
crisis in Kashmir.
