The Kashmir problem has been looming large Since1947. But most Indian politicians and publicists have failed to grasp the basic facts. The Nehruvian line has been exposed by the developing situation.

It is absurd to equate the Jammu and Kashmir State with the Kashmir valley. The valley is just a small speck on the vast kingdom Gulab Singh built up in the 19th century. The valley has an area of just about 3,000 square miles against the 84,471 square miles the state had in 1947.

Kashmir was Gulab Singh's last acquisition. He got de jure control over it under the treaty of Amritsar in 1846. But Gulab Singh had to wage a bloody war against the last Governor of Kashmir appointed by the Lahore Durbar in which thousands of Dogra jawans lost their lives. He then made Srinagar the summer capital of his kingdom.

The Kashmir state is a conglomeration of diverse and distinct regions which Gulab Singh conquered and added to his kingdom of Jammu from time to time. Ladakh, Baltistan and Gilgit are contiguous to Tibet and Himachal Pradesh. Ladakh is predominantly Buddhist whereas Gilgit and Baltistan, which border the Sinkiang region of China and North-West Frontier Province, are predominantly Muslim.

Azad Kashmir

The so-called Azad Kashmir, comprising the Muzaffarabad and Mirpur areas along the Jhelum, is also predominantly Muslim and adjoins West Punjab. It is entirely Punjabi-speaking and has nothing in common with the Kashmir Valley.

Jammu is predominantly Hindu. The Kashmir Valley is predominantly Muslim, and cut off from all other regions by high Himalayan ranges. It has a distinct linguistic and historical identity. Kashmiri is one of the Indo-Aryan languages and figures in the Eighth Schedule of the Indian Constitution.

The partition of India put Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir in a real dilemma. The choice to opt for India or Pakistan had been left to the rulers of princely States without reference to the people. The only guiding factor was geographical contiguity. That left most of the States, including Hyderabad, Bhopal and Junagarh, with no alternative but to join India. Kutch, Jodhpur, Bikaner, Jaisalmer, Bahawalpur and Jammu and Kashmir were close to both India and Pakistan. Bahawalpur acceded to Pakistan and the others, except Jammu and Kashmir, to India.

Hari Singh's own preference was for India. But he was hampered by the absence of a direct motorable road to India when Radcliffe announced his Award, giving Pathankot to this country. In the division of Punjab, Pathankot had been awarded to Pakistan.

Hari Singh also resented Nehru keeping Jammu and Kashmir beyond the purview of the Ministry of States, headed by Patel. Nehru insisted on handing over the administration of the State to Sheikh Abdullah as a pre-condition for accession of the State to India. Hari Singh, who knew the Sheikh too well, could not accept this. The Sheikh was then in jail.

Under the influence of his Prime Minister, Ram Chander Kak, Hari Singh toyed with the idea of keeping his State independent for some time. But he soon realised that Pakistan would not permit him to remain so for long. He dismissed Kak and began to prepare for accession to India. But his dilemma persisted because of Nehru's interest in the Sheikh.

In Two Minds

Released from jail in September, 1947, the Sheikh was in two minds. Knowing his Kashmiri Muslim followers, he favoured Pakistan. But the Sheikh first wanted to be assured that he would be given charge of Kashmir, and not treated like Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his brother, in the event of accession to Pakistan. He sent his trusted colleague, Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq, to Lahore on 5 October, 1946 to meet Jinnah, who bluntly told the emissary that Kashmir was going to fall into his lap like a ripe apple in any case. This put the Sheikh in a quandary. He decided to sit on the fence.

When Pakistan launched its armed attack on the night of 21st october, 1947, to clinch the issue by force, the Sheikh, who had left Kashmir for safety, did not utter a single word in condemnation. By then Hari Singh had realised that his small army could not stem the tide of Pakistani invaders. He decided to accede to, and sought armed help from, India.

But Nehru dragged his feet for fear of a war. It was then that Justice Mehar Chand Mahajan, Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, threatened to fly to Karachi and accede to Pakistan. To save more than 200,000 beleaguered Hindus in Srinagar, Nehru had to fall in line with Patel who was keen on accepting the accession. This was done on October 26 and airbone Indian troops, after receiving Gandhiji's blessings, reached Srinagar in the early morning of October 27.

The demand for a homeland for Kashmiri Hindus, about 500 square miles in the southern part of the valley, cannot be brushed aside. The rest of the valley be made a separate state with greater devolution of power within the framework of the constitution.

A vivid description of those hectic days has been given by the Sheikh in his autobiography, Atish-e-chinar. It would upset even his worst apologists.

The Instrument of Accession signed by Hari Singh was the same as those signed by rulers of other princely States. According to it, once accepted, accession was full, final, unconditional and irrevocable. This should have solved the problem of Jammu and Kashmir for all practical purposes. But Muslims of Kashmir like those who stayed back in truncated India after Partition had their sympathies for Pakistan. That is still true.

It was a blunder to force Hari Singh to hand over the administration to the Sheikh. In his fiery speech in Srinagar on the evening of 27th october, 1947 the Sheikh declared: "We have picked up the crown of Kashmir from dust. The question of whether we join India or Pakistan can wait. We have to complete our independence (Azadi) first".

In his hour-long oration he did not refer even once to the accession of the State to India and the heroic sacrifices of the Indian armed forces which had made his return to Srinagar possible. The militants and Pakistani agents in the valley are speaking the same language today.

Separation

The seeds of separatism in Kashmir, after the accession, were sown by the Sheikh. A self-seeker, who was primarily interested in making Kashmir an independent Sheikhdom under his thumb, he was no friend of India. Had the Sheikh been honest, he could have changed the minds of Kashmiri Muslims who had acquired a bitter taste of Pakistani Mujahideen. Had Kashmir gone to Pakistan, it would have been colonised by Punjabis and Pathans. Kashmiri Muslims would then have been groaning in agony like Sindhi Muslims.

Had the Sheikh genuinely loved Kashmir, he could have taken the initiative to reorganise the State and made Kashmiri the language of instruction and administration in the valley. That would have safeguarded the Kashmiri identity and brought the people closer to the rest of India. But the Sheikh was more keen on developing ties with Pakistan.

Nehru's offer of a plebiscite and reference of the issue of Pakistani aggression to the UN turned Sheikh Abdullah into an arbiter from a supplicant.

He worked up communal passions to give him virtual independence as a price for securing the votes of Kashmir Muslims in favour of India. The result was the inclusion of Article 370 in the Constitution.

Nehru sent the Sheikh to Dr B R Ambedkar, then Law Minister and Chairman of the Drafting Committee of the Constitution. After listening to the Sheikh's plea for a special status, Ambedkar's reaction was: "You want India to defend Kashmir, feed its people, give Kashmiris equal rights all over India, but you want to deny India and Indians all rights in Kashmir. I am the Law Minister of India. I cannot be a party to such a betrayal of national interests".

But Nehru stood committed to the Sheikh who had an inexplicable hold on him. He got the thing done through Gopalaswamy Iyenger, the latter having sought Patel's cooperation to save Nehru's honour. Thus this Article was added to the Constitution in September, 1949.

But in view of the determined opposition in the Constituent Assembly, a specific assurance was given that it was a purely temporary measure to tide over a difficult situation and would soon be abrogated. That is why it was put in the chapter of the Constitution entitled "Temporary and Transitional Provisions".

It is difficult to believe that people such as V.P. Singh and S B Chavan are ignorant of these basic facts. The Article has caused a gulf between Kashmir and the rest of India. To say that the accession of the State to India hinges on this temporary Article is indefensible. Because of this Article, citizens of the rest of India are denied. citizenship in Jammu and Kashmir. Even 100,000 refugees from West Punjab, who settled in Jammu and Kashmir after Partition, have met with this fate.

 

Invaders routed

Indian armed forces were in a position to throw out Pakistani invaders and establish de facto control over the entire State, which belongs to India because of the accession. But Nehru would not permit that. He ordered a ceasefire on 1 January 1949 when Indian forces were advancing on all fronts. This left Pakistan in de facto control of Baltistan, Gilgit and Muzaffarabad-Mirpur (Azad Kashmir), leaving only one Muslim majority region, the Kashmir valley, with India.

Baltistan and Gilgit have since been integrated into Pakistan, which has set up a puppet regime at Muzaffarabad, even though it has no legal right. But India has failed to incorporate Jammu, Ladakh and the Kashmir valley so far.

The UN resolution on Kashmir became irrelevant after Pakistan had committed its second aggression in 1965. Pakistan made a third attempt to grab Kashmir in 1971. In the process, it lost more than 5,000 square miles of fertile territory in the Lahore Sialkot region and more than 90,000 soldiers were made prisoners of war.

India lost the Chhamb area-about 100 square miles. It could have clinched the issue and forced Pakistan to vacate occupied parts of the State. But the Simla Agreement signed by Indira Gandhi and Bhutto turned a victory on the battlefield into a diplomatic defeat. It settled nothing. Pakistan got its territory back and all its prisoners of war. It also retained Chhamb.

India could not make Pakistan accept even the ceasefire line, which then came to be described as the Line of Actual control. It was the greatest betrayal of national interests.

The Simla Agreement recognised Pakistan as a party to the dispute. Till then India's stand had been that Pakistan had no locus standi in Kashmir, which was described as a purely internal problem of India. Operation Topac, launched by President Zia in 1988, has now entered its third phase. Pakistan has gone too far. It has logistic and demographic advantages in this proxy war. There is no reason to believe that it will pull back unless things become too hot for it. The demise of the Soviet Union has upset Pakistan's plans. But its internal compulsions continue. To seek a peaceful settlement with Pakistan in Kashmir is to run after a mirage.

Some Pakistani leaders have been trying to divert the attention of the gullible in India by talking of an "Independent Kashmir" as a solution to the problem. But this has few takers. Pakistan wants Kashmir for itself. Even if the valley is granted independence, it will not last. Pakistan will grab it in no time. Kashmiris know this better than anyone else.

Amanullah Khan of the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front, advocate of this idea, is not a Kashmiri. He comes from occupied Kashmir and has little following in the Valley. At the same time the international situation may not permit a war to liberate the occupied territory. The people there are now well-integrated with Pakistani nationals. It will not be worth India's while to wage a war on their behalf. Moreover, these areas no longer have any strategic importance for India.

 

Statesmanship and realism demand that India must concentrate on what is possible; acceptance of the Line of Actual Control as the international boundary. If Pakistan agrees, this line can be rationalised to meet defence needs on both sides. That may give Pakistan a couple of thousand square miles in the Krishan Ganga and Poonch sectors, and a few hundred square miles to India in the Jammu and Chhamb sectors.

India should take steps to integrate the 3 regions on its side of the Line of Actual Control fully with the rest of the country. This will involve extension of the Constitution and the law of citizenship without delay. Those waging a war for secession are little concerned with Article 370. It has, as Jagmohan has established with facts and figures in his book on Kashmir, only widened the gulf between Kashmir and the rest of India. Continuation of the Kashmir Valley in India does not depend on the will of Kashmiri Muslims. A majority of them have never been for India.

Befitting reply

Phillip Talbot, US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia during an interview asked me in Washington in 1991 whether it was not a fact that a large majority of Kashmiris were for Pakistan, and not for India. I replied, "Yes". He then asked why India was not permitting Kashmir to secede and join Pakistan. Thereupon I asked him whether it was not a fact that a majority of the people of Mississippi and Alabama wanted their states to get out of the USA. He said, "Yes", I then asked him why the USA was not permitting these States to secede.

His reply was refreshingly candid and clear. "The USA is a sovereign State and its Constitution does not permit secession. It fought civil war to prevent southern states from seceding. It cannot permit any state to secede regardless of the wishes of its people".

I then told him that the same was true of India and also referred to considerations of national  security. Talbot agreed with me.

There is a case for decentralization and devolution of powers to States, districts and villages all over India. That applies to Kashmir as well. But any suggestion to single out Kashmir for special treatment, because it happens to be a Muslim majority region, would be counter-productive. This has been proved by the experience of the last 45 years.

Kashmiri Hindus, who have left the valley for various reasons since 1944, number about 700,000. Their representatives met in a conclave at Jammu on 26-27 December 1991 and passed a resolution unanimously demanding a homeland in the valley. They have specified the area to the north and the east of the Jhelum in the southern part of the valley which they would like to be declared a Union Territory within India. They have pleaded for being made a party to any negotiations about Kashmir at the national and the international levels. This claim is unassailable. If Kashmiri Muslims and their Pakistani patrons persist in their present tactics, partition of the valley cannot be averted. Nor is this a new suggestion. Anglo-Americans put forth such a plan during the Chinese invasion of 1962. They had proposed transfer of the northern part of the valley including Baramulla, Sopore, Bandipur, Kupwara and Gulmarg, to Pakistan, leaving the southern, including the city of Srinagar, with India. That proposal fell through after China's unilateral ceasefire.

There is now no question of any part of the valley being given to Pakistan. The demand for a homeland for Kashmiri Hindus, about 500 square miles in the southern part of the valley, cannot be brushed aside. The rest of the valley can be made a separate state, with greater devolution of powers within the frame-work of the constitution. All this will, of course, have to follow restoration of peace and complete rout of Pakistani storm-troopers. War and peace cannot go together.

 

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Courtesy:  Kedar Nath Pandey and 1993  January  Koshur Samachar