Christopher Snedden

Christopher Snedden is an Australian political scientist, politico-strategic analyst, academic researcher and author. In 2012, he has authored the book The Untold Story of the People of Azad Kashmir, where he proposed that the origins of the Kashmir dispute lay, not in the invasion by Pushtoon tribesmen from Pakistan, but in the protests by the people of Poonch and Mirpur against the Government of Maharaja Hari Singh.

Christopher Snedden has received B.A. in Modern Languages from the University of Canberra in 1981, focusing in Russian and Political Science. He completed a Ph.D. at La Trobe University in Melbourne in 2001, in which he explored the origins of the Kashmir dispute.

Snedden has worked for the Australian Department of Defence in its Joint Intelligence Organisation (1984–1989), Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (1989–1990), and the Australian Transaction Reports and analysis Centre (1990–1994). From 1994 to 2002, Snedden ran his own consultancy, Asia Calling, focusing on South Asian matters.

After 2002, Snedden worked as an academic in the La Trobe University (2002-2004) and in the Centre for Defence and Strategic Studies of the Deakin University (2004-2009) as the Director of the M.A. (Strategic Studies) programme for senior military and civilian officers. He is currently a Professor specialising in South Asian studies at the Asia-Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

Idrees Kanth of Leiden University notes the main thesis of the Untold Story as saying that the Jammuites, who later became Azad Kashmiris, had a central role in instigating the Kashmir dispute, giving a "new spin" to the Kashmir issue that makes us rethink the accepted narratives. It is not Maharaja Hari Singh's "indecisiveness" that led to the Kashmir dispute, but rather the different accessional desires of the State's peoples. Three events in the Jammu division of the State shaped these desires: first, the pro-Pakistan, anti-Maharaja uprising by the Muslim inhabitants of the Poonch jagir; second, a major communal violence in the eastern districts of Jammu that caused upheaval and death, including a massacre of Muslims; third, the establishment of a provisional Azad Kashmir government in areas "liberated" by the Poonch uprising. These three events, which happened well before 26 October 1947, divided the Jammu province into pro-Pakistan and pro-India areas "politically, physically and militarily."

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