The events of 1953 in Jammu and Kashmir

The origins of the struggle of the people of Kashmir to determine their own future, following Partition and the subsequent refusal of the newly independent State of India to grant a promised plebiscite, are here examined from the unique perspective of the granddaughter of Kashmir’s first Prime Minister examining the coup of 1953. Using family archival material, the author unearths both a family’s story and the background to the decades’ long suppression of this cause. She recounts the measures taken against the Plebiscite Front, and the more than ten-year imprisonment of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, during which the struggle was spearheaded by his indomitable wife, Akbar Jehan.