22011948 Speech made by Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan (Pakistan} in the Security Council Meeting held on 22nd January 1948 on Demand for Change in Agenda of the Meeting
22011948 Speech made by Sir Mohammed Zafrullah Khan (Pakistan} in the Security Council Meeting held on 22nd January 1948 on Demand for Change in Agenda of the Meeting
I do not know that it is now necessary for me to add much to the discussion on this point, particularly after the representatives of the United Kingdom and the United States have
expressed their views. I do not desire to take up any purely technical points with regard to this matter.
So far as we can visualize the question of the agenda, the Security Council is dealing with matters that are disturbing the relations between India and Pakistan, matters which, if they are not satisfactorily resolved, might endanger the maintenance of international peace and security. One of those matters is that of Jammu and Kashmir. Other matters are set out in my letter of 15 January 1948. The Government of India knows that has been our position from the very beginning.
In answer to a letter from the Government of India of 22 December 1947, in which it informed us that it proposed to carry the question of Jammu and Kashmir to the Security Council, we said as follows in our letter of 30 December 1947, paragraph 2:
"Despite the ominous hint contained in paragraph 3, I trust I am right in assuming that your letter is not an ultimatum but a forerunner of a formal reference of the matter to the United Nations. If so, nothing could be more welcome, for you will recollect that this is exactly what the Pakistan Government has been suggesting throughout as the most effective method of ironing out our mutual differences. I am, therefore, sincerely glad to find that you propose at last to adopt this particular line of approach to our problems."
Paragraph 3 goes on to add: "I must, however, confess my disappointment that your proposal apparently restricts the reference to the single issue of Kashmir. The episode of Kashmir, considered by itself, would look like a sentence torn out of its context. It is but an act in the unparalleled tragedy which is being enacted before our eyes ever since the announcement of the scheme of partition. The reference to the United Nations, therefore, in my opinion, must cover much larger ground and embrace all the fundamentals of the differences between the two Dominions. As I see it, it is neither Kashmir alone nor Junagadh or Manavadar, nor even the terrible tragedy of wholesale massacres of Muslim men, women and children in extensive areas of the Indian Dominion, but a totality of these horrors and iniquities, indicating but one consistent sinister pattern which should rightly form the subject-matter of international investigation. If the root causes of the evil which is vitiating our relations are not determined and removed, it is much to be feared that fresh incidents will continue to threaten the peace not only between the two Dominions, but in a much wider field."
I should like to draw attention here to document II, sub-paragraph C, of the document which we submitted to the Security Council [document S/646], where we save, in dealing with Kashmir:
"The tragic events and the happenings in East Punjab and the Sikh and Hindu States in and around that Province had convinced the Muslim population of Kashmir and Jamrau State that the accession of the State to the Indian Union would be tantamount to the signing of their death warrant. When the massacres started the Muslim population of the State realized that the fate that had overtaken their coreligionists in Kapurthala, Faridkot, Nabha, Jind, Patiala, Bharatpur and Alwar, et cetera, was about to overtake them also. A wave of terror thus ran throughout the State and the neighbouring districts of West Punjab and the West Frontier Province. In their desperate situation the Muslim population of the State decided to make a final bid for liberty and indeed for their very existence, in which they had the full sympathy of their relations and fellow Muslims in the neighbouring districts of Pakistan. Several thousands of the Muslim people of the State, particularly in the area of Poonch, had served in support of the cause of the United Nations during the Second World War, and they decided to sell their lives dearly in the struggle with which they were now faced.
"The Maharaja made this excuse to 'accede' to the Union of India and the Government of India thereupon landed its troops in the State without consultation with or even any notice to the Government of Pakistan, with whom the State had concluded a standstill agreement, and to the territories of which it was contiguous throughout practically the whole of its southern and western border."
This portion of our document makes it perfectly clear that, at least as we view the struggle which is going on inside Kashmir, it is directly related to what had happened previously in East Punjab and some of the Indian States.
In our document III [document S/646], we said the following:
"It is to be noted that the first outside incursion into the State occurred more than a week after the Prime Minister of Kashmir had threatened to call in outside assistance. It is clear that the sole responsibility for these events must rest on the Maharajah's Government, which ordered the oppression of the Muslims as a matter of State policy on the mode] of what had happened in East Punjab and State like Patiala, Bharatpur, Alwar, et cetera, in conspiracy with the Indian Government, they seized upon this incursion as occasion for putting into effect the pre-planned scheme for the accession of Kashmir as a coup d'etat and for the occupation of Kashmir by the Indian troops simultaneously with the acceptance of the accession by India.
"The Pakistan Government has not accepted and cannot accept the accession of the Jammu and Kashmir State of India. In their view the accession is based on violence and fraud. It was fraudulent inasmuch as it was achieved by deliberately creating a set of circumstances with the object of finding an excuse to stage the 'accession'. It was based on violence because it furthered the plan of the Kashmir Government to liquidate the Muslim population of the State."
Here again, the events in East Punjab and the other Indian States are set out as forming the background of what happened in Kashmir, and the question of the legality and the validity of
- accession is raised. That is the most important question of all these matters that have to be resolved between India and Pakistan.
The solution of that question would apply not only to Kashmir, but also to Junagadh. As the members of the Security Council are aware, the Junagadh State acceded to Pakistan long before the Kashmir State acceded to India, and the Junagadh State today is under the military occupation of the forces of the Government of India. When one addresses himself to the problem of what principle to apply to the question of how a State is to be deemed to have validly acceded to one Dominion or the other, surely he cannot exclude a parallel case from consideration. Otherwise, he might find himself in this position: having applied certain considerations to the case of Kashmir, he might find, when he came to deal with the case of Junagadh, that the elements in the situation were not susceptible—they might be, but it is also true that they might not be—of having the same considerations applied to the determination of accession there.
Our case throughout, then, has been that there is a situation or a number of situations which have unfortunately arisen between Pakistan and India, and that these incidents are the manifestations of those situations, and we have come here with the request that the Security Council should intervene to bring about an amicable adjustment and settlement of all these questions.
The order in which it may appear convenient and reasonable to the Security Council to deal with these matters is eminently a matter for the Council to decide. As I have said, I am not concerned with the technicalities of the question. So long as it is deemed that all these questions are before the Security Council and on its agenda, I do not insist that a particular heading be applied and I do not care whether the questions are set out as a, b, and c, or as 1, 2 and 3.
Naturally, I was forced to draw the attention of the President and the Council to these other documents, in spite of the fact that our letter of 15 January had already stated; ' It is requested that these documents may be placed before the Security Council and that the Security Council may be requested to deal with the complaint referred to in document II at the earliest possible date. It is further requested that all action required by the rules in connexion with these documents may kindly be taken as early as possible."
In spite of the fact, I say, that this request had already been received, I was compelled to address to the President a further letter, my letter of 20 January. I was compelled to do this in view of the fact that in our conversations under the guidance of the President, as soon as I attempted to draw even a parallel between the situation in Kashmir and the situation in Junagadh, or to make any reference to any of the other matters which were set out, my learned friends on the other side sought to shut me out on the excuse that these matters were not even on the agenda of the Security Council, that for the moment the Security Council had nothing to do with them, and that therefore I was not at ail in order even to make a reference to these matters.
All that I desire is that these matters should be formally declared to be on the agenda of the Security Council. If they are already there, my object is served. As a matter of fact, during our conversations with the President, I had submitted to my friends on the other side the view that these matters were already on the agenda. The point taken by the representative of the United States was taken by me. I shall not say that I was overruled—the President gave no ruling on these matters—but I was unable to persuade my learned friends that these matters were on the agenda.
The point which I desire to have established clearly is that the Security Council is now seized of the situation between India and Pakistan and that situation has many facets, of which Jammu & Kashmir is only one. Once that is made clear, I do not press for any particular technical arrangement of the agenda. No doubt, the Security Council is proceeding with the matter of Jammu & Kashmir. If it finds it convenient to continue to do so, we are all anxious that it should continue. As has been observed by the representative of the United Kingdom, our efforts should be directed to finding, by agreement—or, if that should unfortunately prove impossible, then by and through the Security Council—a swift solution of the Jammu & Kashmir question.
If such a solution is attained, then the other matters can immediately be taken up. If the Jammu & Kashmir question appears to proceed too slowly and efforts are being made— either in the Council or, under the guidance of the President, outside the Council—to arrive at a settlement, and if there is time, consideration of these other matters by the Council as a whole may also be started. That, naturally, must be left to the President and to the Council itself. As I have said, these are technical matters with which I am not concerned. So long as it is understood that all these matters are before the Council and properly on its agenda, and that the Council is seized of the whole matter, I am satisfied.
(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. no. 231,PP- 157-160)
When it is said that we should proceed immediately with the question of Jammu and Kashmir, I have no objection to that, as I have already stated. But I made it clear from what I said that my position was not that we must necessarily await the conclusion of the whole matter of Jammu and Kashmir before any of the other matters are taken up by the Security Council. I did say that if we proceed swiftly with it, and find that the matter occupies the whole time either of the President or of the Security Council, obviously we cannot start with anything else. But if we should arrive at any stage where either the Security Council or the President is unoccupied—particularly the Security Council-and it is felt that the stage has been arrived at when a discussion of the other matter might usefully be started, that possibility should not be excluded.
(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. no. 231, p 164)