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The question to which of the two states -India or Pakistan- the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir would belong after independence from British colonial rule is one of the defining conflicts that has poisoned the relationship between India and Pakistan since 1947.
In the course of history about this conflict several wars have been fought between the two countries and their military spending make up a considerable part of their respective budgets. At times low-intensity wars have cost the lives of people living along the LoC that forms the border between both neighbours for the time being. Because the princely state ofJammu&Kashmir in 1947 was not a sovereign national state but a kingdom dependent on the British, the sovereignty of its borders was not defined in the way it is in a sovereign nation state. That added additional problems regarding the belonging of those territories that came under the ‘Gilgit lease’ and comprise today the former Northern Areas, renamed Gilgit-Baltistan, of Pakistan.
The Kashmir conflict that is a main impediment in Indo-Pakistani relations mainly arises from the insufficiency of the British partition rules that were in accordance with the two-nation theory based on the principle of continuous Muslim majority areas to be separated and formed into the newly founded state of Pakistan after British withdrawal.
The Indian Independence Act – the legal basis for partition- was based on the Mountbatten plan for partition that was announced by the last Viceroy of Britain Lord Mountbatten on June 3rd, 1947after it had been agreed to by the INC and All-India Muslim League. Unfortunately, this main legal instrument did not mention the princely states at all; in his press conference on 3 June Mountbatten only verbally ‘advised’ them against remaining independent and ‘urged’ them to join one of the two new dominions. That means there was no decision regarding the future status of princely states; it was left to the princely states what to do. Even a third option– that of staying independent- was not excluded.
Both newly independent states India and Pakistan were eager to draw the princely state of J&K into their folds for many reasons, among them military-strategic, emotional and political. One major reason for Pakistan was the two-nation-theory that demanded continuous Muslim majority areas to be included into Pakistan. For India a major reason was to deny the validity of the two-nation theory and thus of the validity of partition itself and to insist that in a secular India Muslims would have an equally good home.
To get what they wanted India devised its strategy. Power in the princely states belonged to the princes despite of the fact that most of them under the pressure of Britain and their own popular movements had introduced a kind of popular representation with restricted powers.
The creation of institution of more than 500 princely states in the subcontinent was a political coup that the British had managed in the 19thcentury in order to secure support for their colonial rule and exploitation of India from the historically obsolete group of kings, princes and other feudal nobility; a fact that hampered the modernization of sub continental society in no small measure. In the case of the Kashmir state it goes to prove that British had some hidden agenda, the territory now Gilgit-Baltistan was taken on long lease by British in 1935 from the Maharaja, but suddenly on 1st August 1947this lease was cancelled and the territory was handed back to Maharaja perhaps to sustain their future geo-political game.
On partition in 1947 the question arose who would decide about the future: the Maharaja or the Kashmiri people. It was the ‘socialist’ and ‘democratic’ government of Pundit Nehru who decided to better rely on the good offices of the feudal Maharaja than on a democratic decision of the Kashmiri people because the Maharaja could be manipulated and bought with promises of staying in power much more easily than to deal with a Muslim majority population. The rest as they say is history.
And this is the situation until today. Until today India is refusing to allow a democratic decision of the Kashmiri people about their future but insist that the Maharaja had decided once and for all and was alone entitled to do so. And that despite an earlier promise of Mr. Nehru in a radio transmission in November1947 to the Kashmiri people to have the decision of the Maharaja validated by a referendum at a later point of time. That time also never came. Of course, since then a lot of money has been spent to influence successive Kashmiri parliamentarians to agree with and vote in favour of Indian Union.
The political manipulations of Delhi in Kashmir and of each and every election in Kashmir are well documented and have culminated under the current Indian Prime Minister Mr. Modi to attempts of fully incorporating Kashmir into the Indian Union by erasing the special status that has been enshrined in the Indian constitution for Kashmir but has been undermined in the course of history.
On the Pakistani side the question of where Kashmir should belong was equally important but on a different level than in India. Here it was more a popular quest of the two-nation theory among people and lower-level politicians than of the Pakistani government. The Pakistani state just born and –according to some historians -equipped with only a single type writer and not enough petrol to run their few cars was not in a position to develop and execute a stringent policy on Kashmir.
In addition, the strained resources were kept engaged by the refugee crisis that was evolving. The study of documents from that time also points to the fact that Mr. Jinnah who had most authority in the government did not give the future of Kashmir the kind of urgency that India did. The first ‘Kashmir war’ of 1947 at least during the initial four months was initiated and fought by irregular tribal fighters aided by sympathetic members of the still not fully established Pakistan army.
Sources reveal that Jinnah received delegation of the Kashmiri leader Sheikh Abdullah in Pakistan in September1947 who was sent to inquire about Jinnah’s opinion on the Kashmir question. Jinnah is reported to have been undecided to throw his lot with Sheikh Abdullah’s party. Being a constitutional lawyer he seems to have been wary about the constitutional situation. There is no document available proving that Jinnah or the Pakistani government ordered in October 1947 an attack on the state of J&K. But the fundamental change that the end of colonial rule and the lapse of British suzerainty and paramountcy had introduced resulted in setting free those popular forces that were critical of princely and feudal rule.
In Gilgit –the territory that had been under British administration due to the lease agreement between the Maharaja and the British since 1935 the people resented their lapse into the rule of a cruel and anti-Muslim maharaja and local population revolted against this British act.
On the Baltistan front the local ex-serviceman had taken control of all the strategic passes to cut the communication line between India and Kargil-Laddakh, who were in 1949 forced to withdraw after UNSC declared ceasefire with the promise of holding plebiscite. Finally on 1 November 1947 the people of Gilgit-Baltistan succeeded to get freedom, marking an end to the cruel Dogra Raj, and established an independent state which lived for a period of two weeks with a provisional government. It was on 16th of November that the newly born state of Gilgit-Baltistan decided to merge with Pakistan though until today this has not been fully recognized by Pakistan itself.
In a another place of J&K in 1947 the people in the Jammu province engaged in anti-Maharaja actions that divided J&K and confirmed that the princely state was not deliverable in its entirety to India or Pakistan. An anti-Maharaja uprising by Muslim Poonchis in western Jammu started from mid-August 1947 when the state of Pakistan had become a reality that liberated large parts of this area from the Maharaja’s control.
In addition, major inter-religious violence started in the province that caused upheaval and death, including a possible massacre of Muslims. As a result the Provisional Azad (Free) Government was created in areas liberated by the Poonch uprising. On 24th October 1947 two days before the disputed accession of the Maharaja to India the state of ‘Azad Kashmir’ was created with a government and constitution of its own.
That means that the territory of Gilgit-Baltistan and of Azad Kashmir are former parts of the princely state that have been self-liberated from princely rule and are actually different from the Kashmir that has been fraudulently made part of India on 26th October 1947.
It was the Indian government on the insistence of its Prime Minister Pundit Nehru that had approached on 1st January 1948 the UNSC asking them to force Pakistan to agree on ceasefire, withdrawal of troops and then hold plebiscite in Kashmir to determine their future. The UNSC on its part issued a number of resolutions that asked for withdrawal of troops of both sides and for initiating a referendum, deputed US Admiral Chester Nimitz as plebiscite administrator with UN Military observer group to oversee and maintain peace.
Over the decades of the post-World War II era the UNSC has proven a weak instrument for solving disputes. Lately its structure and rules of conduct have come under international criticism which has added to the weakness of the UNSC rather than strengthening it. That is why now it is not a good move of the Pakistani government to revert its Kashmir policy back to the demand of implementation of the UNSC resolutions for which there is no chance. Rather Pakistan should take up the matter with the International Court and prove Indian atrocities in Kashmir as genocide and crime against humanity. The UNSC is not in a position to solve the conflict as it has shown with the Palestinian conflict, with Syria and others. Nor has the international community at large any interest in solving the Kashmir conflict. Neither is there any oil available nor any other resources that would tempt any of the world powers to act against the wishes of India – a promising market for their products and a possible partner in their efforts to contain China.
The only solution for the Kashmir conflict lies in a rapprochement between India and Pakistan, possibly with the quiet interaction of an Asian power like Russia or China or an organization like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It is a matter of regret that the initiatives that had been taken by the Musharraf government and that had progressed quite well have been abandoned.
Former Foreign Minister Kasuri in his recently published book explained that the strategy had been to transform borders that were dividing territories into connecting them. “We looked at the interest of Kashmiris, Kashmiris wanted demilitarization,” he said during an interview.
He also claimed that the Sir Creek agreement was decided and only needed to be signed. On the issue of Siachen, he says that India had accepted Pakistan’s proposal and an in-principle deal was in sight. Though that opportunity of those years might be lost and unavailable today the main principle of approaching the issue seems to have much more potential than the reliance on UNSC and their resolutions of yesteryear.
And there is another thought as well. With the decision of the Pak-China Economic Corridor taken and so much investment of money and trust and expectation for improvement connected to it there seems to be slight problem when we consider that the corridor passes through a territory that is not fully Pakistani and thought even by the Pakistani government to be somehow related to the Kashmir conflict. Gilgit-Baltistan needs to be made a full-fledged province of Pakistan in order to secure the economic corridor project.
Though this is an acceptance of the LoC as the borderline between India and Pakistan trying to reverse that borderline forcefully means war between two nuclear powers.
The better way is to convert the border into a connecting line between the Kashmiri people and thus aid the demilitarization of Indian Kashmir that is a major trouble for the population in view of the daily deaths, rapes and other human rights violations under Indian army occupation and our continued silence shows complicity of our rulers. Look how US, NATO and others are justifying their action in Syria, Yemen, and Afghanistan etc. Pakistan can reshape its stand with closer cooperation and assurances from China and Russia, the new emerging power of the world. GOD Bless Pakistan & Humanity.
(Ali Ashraf Khan is Pakistan based Journalist.)
(This is a personal blog and the views expressed above are the author’s own. Kashmir Patriot neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)
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