ABSTRACT:

The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan has been the major source of tension and the bottleneck to peace and security in South Asia. The dispute has caused three wars and several crises between these two major countries of the subcontinent. Despite their several bilateral or multi-lateral efforts since their independence, New Delhi and Islamabad have failed to break the stalemate. In addition, when the two countries went nuclear in 1998, Kashmir1 became, as the then US President, Bill Clinton called it, “the most dangerous [nuclear] flash point on earth.”2For finding or offering any solution to the intractability of the protracted Kashmir conflict, it is important to know its origin and subsequent internationalization. This paper is an attempt to critically analyze the same through a Kashmiri perspective