Includes bibliographical references and index.

Meanings of Freedom in the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir -- Freedom, Loyalty, Belonging: Kashmir after Decolonization -- Puppet Regimes: Collaboration and the Political Economy of -- Kashmiri Resistance -- The Politics of Plebiscite: Discontent and Regional Dissidence -- Mapping Kashmiri Imaginings of Freedom in the Inter-Regional -- and Global Arenas -- Jang-i-Azadi (War for Freedom): Religion, Politics and Resistance.

"Kashmir remains one of the world's most militarized areas of dispute, having been in the grips of an armed insurgency against India since the late 1980s. In existing scholarship, ideas of territoriality, state sovereignty, and national security have dominated the discourses on the Kashmir conflict. This book, in contrast, places Kashmir and Kashmiris at the center of historical debate and investigates a broad range of sources to illuminate a century of political players and social structures in contested Kashmir and to reveal Kashmiris' myriad imaginings of "freedom," transcending the borders of the nation-states that partition the region. It contends that the idea of territorial nationalism that has mesmerized India and Pakistan has failed to bring peace to the South Asian subcontinent. Instead, the trauma of partition continues to unfold in Kashmir as Kashmiris struggle for dignity and rights"-- Provided by publisher.