“Kashmir” carries the burden of being known as one of the world’s biggest flashpoints. If a novel, TV show, or video game wants an easy international crisis, there’s a good chance Kashmir will be the crisis of choice.

But while Kashmir is globally known, few understand the roots of the conflict—or what the people that live in Kashmir actually think.

For those that do, Professor Sumantra Bose’s Kashmir at the Crossroads: Inside a 21st-Century Conflict (Yale University Press, 2021) walks readers through the origins, developments, and potential future of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir, going right to the present day with the Modi administration’s turning of the state into two Union territories.

In this interview, we run through the history of Kashmir, and how we should think about recent developments in this part of the world.

Sumantra Bose is one of the world’s foremost experts on the Kashmir conflict. He is the author of seven previous books including Contested Lands: Israel-Palestine, Kashmir, Bosnia, Cyprus and Sri Lanka (Harvard University Press: 2007) and Secular States, Religious Politics: India, Turkey, and the Future of Secularism (Cambridge University Press: 2018).

You can find more reviews, excerpts, interviews, and essays at The Asian Review of Books, including its review of Kashmir at the Crossroads. Follow on Facebook or on Twitter at @BookReviewsAsia.

Nicholas Gordon is an associate editor for a global magazine, and a reviewer for the Asian Review of Books. He can be found on Twitter at @nickrigordon.

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