May 31, 1999
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THE
LOST REBELLION War in the Valley The Indian state has shown its iron fist. Now it may be time for the velvet glove. By Amitabh Mattoo THE LOST REBELLION
Fluently written, in a style that combines the reader-friendly approach of a journalist with the understanding of a military historian, The Lost Rebellion-despite the exhaustive, sometimes repetitive details-makes for fascinating and gripping reading. Although there are rarely any attributions, the book has quite obviously relied heavily on the "confessions" of captured militants and their "debriefing" by Indian security and intelligence agencies. The anecdotal asides in the book are particularly engaging. Consider this one about Robin Raphel, the former American assistant secretary for south Asia who quickly became the bete noire of the Indian establishment for her stand on Kashmir: "Her calls on India to reduce human-rights abuses and 'clean up your act' in Kashmir or 'get your act together' hit a raw nerve. The mandarins did not want to hear this message, not from an American and that too a woman. IB officials tapping her line added spice to this by reporting to their masters the not-very-complimentary terms in which they were referred to by Raphel." Critics will most certainly find Joshi's book to be too sympathetic to the Indian state and to its mistakes and unwilling to really engage at any great length with the deeper reasons behind the alienation of the Kashmiri people. And while Joshi does identify and narrate instances of civil-rights violations by Indian security forces, he seems to ultimately suggest that they were inevitable in what was a singularly "dirty" war. However, to be fair to Joshi, The Lost Rebellion is principally about the uncivil war in Kashmir rather than the deeper roots of that violence. And he does draw a distinction between the professionalism of the Indian Army and the callous, careless approach of agencies like the BSF. Moreover, behind the military-history garb and the no-nonsense "guns and ammo" approach, The Lost Rebellion is ultimately a reflection of the Indian state: hard on the surface and liberal at the core. This is reflected particularly in many of the passages in the concluding chapter, including this one: "Pakistan's neurotic obsession with Kashmir has been matched by New Delhi's singular inability to forge a policy that is more effective in anticipating developments, sensitive to human rights and consequently more attuned to winning back the hearts and minds of the Kashmiri Muslims of the Valley." Ultimately then, the book seems to suggest that the Indian state has shown its hard face to the Kashmiri people in the '90s, and it is now time to start the process of healing to ensure that the scars of the "lost" rebellion are well and truly erased. NEW RELEASES » Homeopathy
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The troubles in Kashmir have
produced a small library of books in the past decade. Propagandists, pamphleteers and
scholars alike have probed into almost every aspect of the Kashmir "question".
And yet, the story of the precise manner in which the insurgency was organised by the
militants and the strategies used by the Indian security forces to combat it have not been
narrated in any great depth. Manoj Joshi's is the first detailed account of the full scale
of the militant operation and the Indian state's response to what was probably the
strongest challenge faced by it since 1947. 
