Kashmir the Vajpayee Years

By A.S. with Sinha Dulat

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About the book

Srinagar in the winter of 1989 was an eerie ghost town witnessing the beginnings of a war dance. The dam burst the night boys from the separatist JKLF group were freed in exchange for the release of Rubaiya Sayeed, the Union home minister’s daughter. As Farooq Abdullah had predicted, the government’s caving in emboldened many Kashmiris into thinking that azaadi was possible. It was a long, slow haul to regaining control. From then to now, A.S. Dulat has had a continuous engagement with Kashmir in various capacities. The initiatives launched by the Vajpayee government, in power from 1998 to 2004, were the high point of this constant effort to keep balance in a delicate state. In this extraordinary memoir, Dulat gives a sweeping account of the difficulties, successes and near triumphs in the effort to bring back Kashmir from the brink. He shows the players, the politics, the strategies and the true intent and sheer ruthlessness of the meddlers from across the border. Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years paints an unforgettable portrait of politics in India’s most beautiful but troubled state.

Pages: 376

Available in: Paperback

Language: English

A.S. with Sinha Dulat

Amarjeet Singh Dulat served as the head of the Research and Analysis Wing (R&AW), India’s spy agency, under Prime Minister A.B. Vajpayee. He later joined Vajpayee’s Prime Minister’s Office (PMO), where his job was to ‘monitor, manage and direct’ the government of India’s peace initiative in Kashmir. Dulat was born in Sialkot, Punjab, in December 1940. With India’s Partition, his father Justice Shamsher Singh Dulat relocated his family to Delhi. After schooling in Delhi, Shimla and Chandigarh, Dulat joined the Indian Police Service (IPS) in 1965, and then the Intelligence Bureau (IB) in 1969, where he served for almost thirty years. At IB he headed the Kashmir Group during the turbulent 1990s till he joined and headed R&AW.Since leaving government in 2004, Dulat has been active on the Track II circuit, and has visited Pakistan. He has co-authored a paper with former Pakistani intelligence chief Lt. Gen. Asad Durrani on the benefits of intelligence cooperation between India and Pakistan. During service, Dulat accumulated a vast reservoir of goodwill with Kashmiris of all shades. As Jane’s Intelligence Digest put it in 2001: ‘Well known for his social skills, Dulat prefers dialogue to clandestine manoeuvres. He has built up an impressive network of personal contacts in Kashmir including militants.’ A decade after retirement, that goodwill remains intact, with Kashmiris dropping in on he and his wife Paran at their Friends Colony house in Delhi, to share gossip, information, and advice. Aditya Sinha has been a journalist since February 1987. He has been Editor-in-Chief of The New Indian Express and of Daily News and Analysis (DNA). His published work includes the biographies Farooq Abdullah: Kashmir’s Prodigal Son (1996) and Death of Dreams: A Terrorist’s Tale (2000).