The origins of the struggle of the people of Kashmir to determine their own future, following Partition and the subsequent refusal of the newly independent State of India to grant a promised plebiscite, are here examined from the unique perspective of the granddaughter of Kashmir’s first Prime Minister examining the coup of 1953. Using family archival material, the author unearths both a family’s story and the background to the decades’ long suppression of this cause. She recounts the measures taken against the Plebiscite Front, and the more than ten-year imprisonment of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, during which the struggle was spearheaded by his indomitable wife, Akbar Jehan.
From Sheikh-Sadiq correspondence (August to October1956) (Delhi, Roop-Bharti Printers, Mridula Sarabhai, 1958), pp. 3–4.
2.
Extracts from commentary by Edward R. Murrow, CBS Radio Network (1May1958).
3.
NairA. R., ‘Two unforgettable days: tour with Sheik a happy revelation’, Minorities View (1968), p. 30.
4.
Ibid., pp. 31–32.
5.
QasimSyed Mir, My Life and Times (New Delhi, Allied Publishers, 1992), p. 132.
6.
Sardar Muhammad Ibrahim Khan, The Kashmir Saga (Lahore, Ripon Printing Press, 1965), p. 34.
7.
Email from Iftikhar Ahmad to author, 31January2012.
8.
BhattacharjeaAjit, Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah: tragic hero of Kashmir (New Delhi, Lotus Collection, 2008), pp. 43–44.
9.
The Times, London (1May1958).
10.
AbdullahSheikh MohammadGundeviaY. D.The Testament of Sheikh Abdullah (New Delhi, Abhinav Publications, 1968 and 1974), pp. 111–13 and 116.
11.
MullickB. N. quoted in ibid., pp. 86–94.
12.
Quoted in Mirza Afzal Beg, Sheikh Abdullah Defended (Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir Legal Defense Committee, 1962), p. 37.
13.
Ibid., p. 38.
14.
The Times, London (6May1958).
15.
Murrow, op. cit.
16.
Chicago Daily Tribune (5May1958).
17.
Al-Zaman, Beirut (7May1958).
18.
AbdullahSheikh Mohammad, ‘Breach of Pledge’, in India’s Prisoner in Kashmir: foreign observers’ report (New York, Free Kashmir Center, 1958), pp. 31–32.
19.
AbdullahSheikh Mohammad, ‘The Kashmiri viewpoint’, in ibid, pp. 40–41.
