000			01755 a2200217 4500
008			240516b |||||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d
020			_a9788195838547 (PB)
041			_aeng
080			_a94(54) _bKAN
100			_aKanjwal, Hafsa
245			_aA Fate Written on Matchboxes _b: State-Building in Kashmir Under India
260			_bNavayana Publishing _c2023 _aNew Delhi
300			_axiii, 366p.
504			_aIncludes Bibliography (329-350) and Index
520			_a In 1953, Sheikh Abdullah, the first prime minister of Jammu and Kashmir, was jailed for being too ‘anti-India’. His deputy Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed then took the reins, and was tasked with securing Kashmir’s contested accession to India. A Fate Written on Matchboxes tells the story of Bakshi’s ten-year client regime and the varying modes of control and governance it deployed. His “politics of life” foregrounded the day-to-day concerns of employment, subsidized rations, free education, and basic services while questions of self-determination were suppressed. To integrate and empower Kashmiris, Bakshi often doled out jobs by writing appointments on matchboxes and slips of paper. Drawing on bureaucratic documents, propaganda materials, memoirs, literary sources, and oral interviews, Hafsa Kanjwal shows us how Bakshi’s theory of politics and state-building was marked by tension, corruption, and repression. This decade in Kashmir’s post–1947 history entrenched Indian rule. As Jawaharlal Nehru had once told Abdullah, “India would bind Kashmir in golden chains.” However, it also paved the way for local resistance.
650			_aIndian History
650			_aPolitics
650			_aKashmir -- History
690			_aGeneral
942			_cBK
999			_c60275 _d60275