Volume 40, Number 5 · March 4, 1993
Himalayan Ulster
By Edward W. Desmond
Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 1846–1990
by Alastair Lamb
Roxford Books, 368 pp., £16.25
My Frozen Turbulence in Kashmir
by R.M. Jagmohan
Allied Publishers, 723 pp., Rupees 275
Kashmir Under Siege: Human Rights in India
an Asia Watch Report
Human Rights Watch, 161 pp., $15.00 (paper)
India: Torture, Rape and Deaths in Custody
an Amnesty International Publication
195 pp., $7.00 (paper)
On a map of the western Himalayas, the valley of Kashmir shows up as a smooth, oval-shaped patch amid a sea of surrounding peaks in what is today India's Jammu and Kashmir state. For thousands of years, travelers, free-booters, and empire builders have set down their breathless impressions of this valley—the French writer François Bernier called it the 'paradise of the Indies'—with its towering pine forests, deep lakes, flower-carpeted meadows, and fields of iridescent saffron. The seventeenth-century Mughal emperor Jehangir sighed on his deathbed that his last wish was to visit Kashmir. Indians today revere the valley as the place they long to visit, and it serves as the setting for countless romantic Indian films.
Review, 4924 words
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