29011948 Text of the Speech of Mr. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Representative of India in the Security Council Meeting held on 29 January 1948

29011948 Text of the Speech of Mr. Gopalaswami Ayyangar, Representative of India in the Security Council Meeting held on 29 January 1948

I am very grateful to the President, to the representative of the United Kingdom, and to the representative of Pakistan for the good wishes they conveyed to me yesterday afternoon as regards the recovery of my voice, I have no doubt that their good wishes have contributed a great deal to the improvement which my listeners, I hope, do notice in the quality of the voice with I speak to them today.

Left to myself, I should have preferred to have been a listener until practically the end of this debate among the members of the Security Council before I elected to say any­thing at all on what has been placed before us this afternoon. However, I have decided to intervene at an earlier stage because I fear that those members of the Security Council who have not yet spoken might be under the wrong impression that the two draft resolutions which have been placed by the President before the Security Council have the agreement of both parties.

It may be that they have the assent of the representative of Pakistan; I do not know. I am here, however, to state that the draft resolutions as framed do not meet with the assent of the country which I represent here this afternoon. When I say that they do not command the assent of the ray country, I do not want the Security Council to suppose that I am opposing every word or every idea that is contained in the two draft resolutions. There are, however, substantial matters included in them to which we find ourselves unable to assent.

There was a difference of opinion between the representa­tive of the United Kingdom and myself yesterday afternoon over the question of priority, the question of whether the The Security Council first should debate the stoppage of fighting or the matter of the plebiscite. I always listen with the greatest respect to whatever falls from the lips of the representative of the United Kingdom. I listened yesterday with the greatest care, and I pondered over everything that he said after I had listened to his speech; but I must confess that on this one matter I am still unrepentant as to the position which I took yesterday afternoon.

In the course of his remarks, the representative of the United Kingdom made an observation which describes the present situation in the Security Council in the most graphic manner possible. As a result of the information which I receive every day from India as to what is happening in my own country, I know it is the opinion in India, which accords with my own view of the matter, that we seem here to be finding while Kashmir burns. That is a very true description of what is now engaging the attention of the Security Council. I wish to assure the members of the Security Council that I mean no disrespect to any of them. It is possible that their honest view of the matter is embodied in the two draft resolutions which have been placed before the Security Council. However, as I look back upon what has happened in my country and as I recollect and am reminded every day of what is happening in my country, I cannot help thinking that we are now spending time on issues which should be taken up much later in our consideration of the whole problem, rather than on the one issue which should take precedence over all others. That convic­tion still remains with me in spite of all that the representative of the United Kingdom said yesterday, and in spite of all that has been said by the speakers this afternoon.

I shall tell the Security Council exactly what is the state of affairs in my country. As the Security Council has proceeded to debate the two draft resolutions which have been submitted, I shall discuss the second of these draft resolutions because, in my opinion, that has some remote bearing on the issue which I consider should take precedence over everything else. Before I do so, I wish only to refer to one aspect of the way in which we have drifted into the debate on which we are now engaged.

I can well understand the inconvenience and the embarrass­ment which the President of the Security Council must have felt in having to decide between the two opposing views on the question of priority: between myself and the representative of the United Kingdom. It was not an easy decision for him to take. But he seems to have cut the Gordian knot and avoided having to decide between us at all. He has taken the view that both these questions should be put on an equal footing and that he will invite the Council to do something which is very unusual in a deliberative body; namely, he will place drafts of two resolutions simultaneously on the table for debate. Perhaps I have no right to offer any criticism of this procedure; I would only say that it is somewhat unusual.

There is one matter about which, however, I feel a sense of grievance, but the President has already anticipated it. While apparently the drafts of these two resolutions were communi­cated to every member of the Security Council, as I have to infer from the fact that several of them probably had come prepared to offer their views on the two drafts, I, and I take it the representative of Pakistan also, from what the President said, did not have the opportunity seeing these drafts in advance of the meeting so that we could apply our minds to them and come prepared to give full expression to whatever we had to say on the two drafts. Well, after all, that is a small matter.

The Security Council has drifted into this debate, and several members have already spoken. I have said that I would first offer my views on the second of these two drafts because I consider that it has some relation, though not an adequate relation, to the issue to which I consider the Security Council should first apply itself before it takes up anything else. That issue relates to the stoppage of the fighting. We put that issue in the forefront of our own proposals for a settlement. What we tried to do has apparently been brushed wide. We attempted to propose something concrete, something which a Council of this composition and influence could issue as a directive to the parties concerned in order to bring about the stoppage of the fighting. That has been passed over. Instead, there is a draft resolu­tion before the Security Council which is, if I may say so without offence, innocuous in the extreme. I say that deliberately, because what does it attempt to do? It directs that the Commission, which has been decided on but which has yet to come into existence and find its way to India, ". . . shall take into consideration that among the duties incumbent upon it are included those which would tend toward promoting" —I emphasize "tend" and "promoting"—"the cessation of acts of hostility and violence, and which are of a particularly urgent character."

If there are acts of hostility and violence, and I say they are being perpetrated every day, and if they are of an urgent character, we are now advising the Commission, which is to come into existence in the future and find its way to India, to take into consideration as one of its duties the duty of doing something which would "tend" to "promote" the cessation of acts of hostility. We want acts of hostility to be stopped, if possible at once, or in the very near future. The directive which the Security Council proposes to give to the members of the Commission is this: "You constitute yourselves, you travel per­haps thousands of miles to India, and when you arrive there you had better recognize that it is one of your duties to find 'ways' which will 'tend* to 'promote' the cessation of hostilities.

" Are we nearing the solution of the immediate problem, the cessation of hostilities, with respect to which the representative of the United Kingdom so emphatically agreed with me? Is this not an illustration of our trying to fiddle here while India is burning?

Let us consider what is happening in India today. I received only this morning a telegram which states in part that the following raids in Jammu and Kashmir have taken place since the night of 23-24 January: "23-24 January, raid at Arn; 23-24 January, 1,000 raiders at Ramgarh; 25-26 January, at Blare Chak, 13 miles south of Jammu, 300 raiders." Jammu is the headquarters of the Indian Army today in Kashmir. Thirteen miles from that place there was a raid by 300 raiders only three days ago. The telegram continues: "On 25-26 January another 400 raiders at Arn." They raided our territory and, when our troops went to meet them to drive them back, they retired into Pakistan territory.

This goes on, and later I shall give the members of the Security Council, an account of the fighting that has been continuing since we made our complaint to this body.

I should now like to draw the attention of the members to the fact that yesterday the representative of Pakistan pointed out that it was necessary for the Muslims of the Jammu and Kashmir State to be given an assurance beyond all cavil that their lives and property would be perfectly safe. I wish to point out that portions of the Indian Array landed at Srinagar, the summer capital of Kashmir, on 27 October. There was one very unfortunate killing of Muslims 200 miles away, near Jammu City, on 4 November. There was another attempt at a similar killing on 6 November, but the attackers had the worst of it. Our troops engaged them and inflicted 150 casualties. If these two incidents, which really constitute one incident, of group killing of Muslims are left out, it will be seen that during all the period that our troops have been in Kashmir there has not been another instance of group killing of Muslims.

What is the account on the other side? There were mass killings during the same period of non-Muslims by Muslims in the thousands at places like Mirpur, Bhimbar, and Rajaori. On 16 January, only about a fortnight ago, the village of Panayat, twenty-two miles northwest of Riasi, in the province of Jammu, was sacked by a Muslim mob of 4,000. Large numbers of Hindus were killed and a number of women abducted. That is the state of affairs.

I ask the members of the Security Council whether, while these incidents have been taking place, even in the recent past, while attacks have been made from day to day on our borders from the Pakistan side, and while raiders have been driven back only to take refuge in Pakistan territory, we are discharg­ing our obligations to world opinion if we ignore this situation, if we do not take the obvious, concrete step of asking that the facilities which these raiders enjoy for committing these murders and causing these depredations should be denied to them. Are we meeting our obligations? Should it not go directly from the Security Council that these killings should at least stop, begin­ning tomorrow?

What is it that we are asking? The halting of killings is all that we are asking. We have not even copied the example set by Pakistan when its representative asked that those who participated in massacres and killing in the past should be brought to justice to be hanged by their necks until they were dead, as if we were going to conduct another Nurnberg Trial in India. That is not what we have been asking. We say merely that incidents have happened, incidents are happening today. They happened because of facilities which are available in Pakistan. Should we not tell Pakistan: "Please put a restraint upon these incidents. Please deny these facilities. Please refuse this assistance, at least in the future?" Is that too much to ask? Even if there were a war between India and Pakistan and we were considering the question of bringing about peace between the two Dominions, what would be the first step that in common sense we should take? Is it not that the fighting should stop? Is it not that acts of hostility should at least be placed under a truce for the time being? Yet we do not do that. We say, let us look at the farthest end of the long-range solution, and let us decide that now. Then the fighting will stop of its own accord. Is that the proper way of looking at a problem which is costing lives, which is costing the honour of hundreds and thousands of women in my country?

Now, I have said that what we have been asking for is this simple thing. Members of the Council might well ask me, "Well, you assume that the Pakistan Government is responsible for these facilities being given to these raiders, these marauders and murderers. Do you have any proof that is true? Pakistan has denied it. We have created a Commission, and unless that Commission went out to India, made an inquiry and submitted a report, can we ask the Pakistan Government to do what you want it to do?" That is a very legitimate question to ask. I submit, however, that there is enough material before the Security Council to enable it, if not to find Pakistan guilty of what has happened in the past for purposes of punishment, at least to ask Pakistan to desist from giving the assistance which these raiders, marauders and murderers are finding in Pakistan territory.

It has been said that the responsibility of Pakistan is not very clear at all. I referred yesterday to some well recognized international obligations. I shall not quote any book on international law for that purpose; I am sure every member of the Security Council is aware what its international obligations are.

I shall quote only two passages from a report submitted to the- Security Council by a Commission appointed by it to make an. inquiry into a matter of similar nature in another part of the world, namely, Greece. Here is what the Commission said with reference to this matter:1 "the existence of disturbed conditions in Greece in no way relieves the three northern neighbours of their duty under international law to prevent and suppress

subversive activity in their territory aimed at another Govern­ment, nor does it relieve them of direct responsibility for their support of the Greek guerrillas."      

It is the contention of the representative of Pakistan that the trouble in Kashmir is due essentially to the fact that certain people in the Kashmir State revolted against constituted authority because of their grievances against it; that other people went to their assistance from outside—from Pakistan and from the tribal areas. Let us take those facts into consideration. On those facts, I say it is duty of the Pakistan Government to prevent that assistance going to insurgents in Kashmir, The quotation to which I have just referred, from the report of the Commis­sion established by the Security Council, was blessed, if not by the unanimous opinion of the Security Council, at least by the great majority of its members. That is a sufficient indication of what the obligations of Pakistan are, even on the basis of its. own admission.

Another portion of the same report I have referred to states the following2:

"In the light of the situation investigated by it, the Commis­sion believes that in the area of its investigation future cases of

1See report to the Security Council by the Commission of Investiga­tion concerning Greek Frontier Incidents (document S/360), volume I', p. 181 (mimeographed text).

2See report to the Security Council by the Commission of Investigation concerning Greek Frontier Incidents (document S/360), volume I,.p. 248 (mimeographed text).

support of armed bands formed on the territory of one State and crossing into the territory of another State, or of refusal by a Government, in spite of the demands of the State concerned, to take all possible measures on its own territory to deprive such bands of aid or protection, should be consi­dered by the Security Council"—I would ask the Security Council to mark these words—"should be considered by the Security Council as a threat to the peace within the meaning of the Charter of the United Nations."

I have said that the material already before the Security Council is more than sufficient to pin this obligation upon Pakistan. Times without numbers India has asked Pakistan, appealed to it, and pleaded with it to stop this aid and assistance. We did not succeed in India. We therefore came to a body the first duty of which we thought—and I hope the Security Council will enable us to think so permanently—was to see that what is recognized as a proper international obligation was discharged by every one of the Members of the United Nations. We came and asked the Security Council to send forth this fiat: "Here is a well-recognized obligation; we say that you have not discharged it, on your own admission. Will you discharge it at least for the future?" The answer we have recei­ved in reply to our proposal is, "Our Commission has been appointed; it will go to India and will recognize among its duties the duty of doing something which will 'tend' to 'promote' the cessation of hostilities."

I said that, on the admissions of Pakistan itself, there is sufficient material before the Security Council with reference to this matter. I shall now refer, in some detail, to these admissions, and after I have finished with them, I shall invite the Security Council's attention to the evidence of some eye# witnesses. In order that the evidence might not be suspect, I have selected eye-witnesses who cannot be convicted of bias on either side.

I wish to turn to the admissions department. In document No. I, attached to the letter dated 15 January 1948, from the Minister for Foreign Affairs to Pakistan to the Security Council [document S/646], which is a reply to the Indian Government's letter of 1 January 1948 [document SI628], it is admitted in-paragraph 3 that "...a certain number of independent tribesmen-and persons from Pakistan are helping the Azad Kashmir Government in its struggle for liberty as volunteers.' My case is that, even if we concede that it was a struggle for liberty in Kashmir and that the people who went over to assist those who were fighting for liberty in Kashmir were volunteers, if '' they came from Pakistan it is the duty of the Pakistan Government to prevent them from giving that assistance.

In document No. Ill, which is attached to the same letter the following is stated in paragraph 18: "Consequently, some of these refugees and other Muslims from contiguous areas? who had numerous ties of relationship with the persecuted Muslims of the Stage, went across to assist their kinsmen in the struggle for freedom and indeed for existence itself." Is that not an admission that these people went from Pakistan, since the only contiguous areas are those of Pakistan in the south and west? It is not the Pakistan Government's case that people from the east from the Dominion of India, went to the assistance of these insurgents in Kashmir. On the fourth side there are only the high Himalayas. If people went from contiguous areas to the assistance of these people, they must have gone from Pakistan.

In paragraph 21 of the same document is stated the following: "In view of this background, it is not surprising if independent tribesmen and persons from Pakistan, in parti­cular the Muslim refugees (who, it must be remembered, are nationals of the Indian Union)...." This is an extraordinary remark in this document. These Muslims, because of the two-nation theory* had migrated from India to Pakistan, because they wanted to be in what they believed would be an Islamic State. No doubt in theory, and until their nationality in the Indian Union is snapped by legal methods, they are Indian nationals. However, to lay emphasis on that fact in a document of this nature passes my understanding. The document states: "It is not surprising if independent tribesmen and persons from Pakistan, in particular the Muslim refugees (who, it must be remembered, are nationals of the Indian Union) from East Punjab, are taking part in the struggle for the liberation of Kashmir as part of the forces of the Azad Kashmir Govern­ment." This is another admission that these people have gone from Pakistan.

In the course of his speech on 16 January 1948 before the Security Council [228th meeting], the representative of Pakistan stated the following while referring to the people of Poonch in Kashmir: "They were compelled, in view of the horrors com­mitted elsewhere, with which they were now faced, to evaluate their women and children, take them out of Poonch, and put them in West Punjab, and then come back to fight with weapons borrowed or taken from their friends or relatives in West Punjab." This is a tardy admission, no doubt, but an admission which shows that weapons were either borrowed or taken from friends or relatives in West Punjab and were taken to the scene of this conflict for the aid of the insurgents.

The representative of Pakistan had further repeated what the Prime Minister of Pakistan had stated much earlier— namely: "Kashmiris —and especially the inhabitants of Poonch —had many relatives in Hazara and in West Punjab. Conse­quently, feelings in certain parts of Pakistan rose very high and some people from the North West Frontier Province and the tribal areas, stirred by the atrocities in Kashmir, rushed to the aid of their brethren.*'

The Prime Minister of Pakistan, in a telegram to the Prime Minister of India—and this is quoted in the recent address [228th meeting] of the representative of Pakistan—stated as follows: "In Poonch Muslims were attacked, and those in Jammu massacred by mobs led by Kashmir State forces, and when it was evident that there was to be a repetition in Kashmir of what had happened in East Punjab, it became impossible wholly to prevent tribes from entering that State without using troops, who would have created a situation on the frontier that might well have got out of control."

In this connexion I wish to refer to one very important point which has emerged from the statement made by the representative of Pakistan from time to time. The representative of Pakistan contended that, in so far as these tribsmen are concerned, the Government of Pakistan tried to discourage their proceeding to Kashmir by every means short of war. Let us assume that it is a fact that the Government has attempted to discourage these tribesmen from going to Kashmir. The fact remains that these tribesmen have entered Kashmir in their thousands; they are now in Kashmir in their thousands; more tribesmen are on their way to Kashmir in their thousands. A discouragement short of war has apparently had no appreciable effect on these tribesmen.

I submit to the Security Council and to the representative of Pakistan that, if measures short of war fail to prevent the infiltration of these people into Kashmir, it is the obligation of the Government of Pakistan to resort to measures of war against these tribesmen. I consider that this is a point on which the Security Council may usefully spend some time in debate, if not for resolving the trouble between the Government of Pakistan and India, at least for the guidance of nations which may come into conflict in the future in similar circumstances.

That duty, which we contend rests upon Pakistan, has yet to be discharged by its Government. There have been varying estimates as to the numbers of these Pakistanis that are in Kashmir today, whether residents of the settled tracts of Pakistan or residents of the tribal areas. But that it is a sub­stantial number goes without saying. The lowest percentage that the delegation of Pakistan has relied on for these Pakistanis in Kashmir, both tribesmen and others, is 35 per cent. Our con­tention is that it is a much larger percentage. However, assum­ing that 35 per cent is the correct estimate, the obligation still rests upon Pakistan to prevent this augmentation of the ranks of insurgents in Kashmir by as much as 35 per cent insurgents against the constituted authority in the State. These tribesmen are present in Kashmir.

What do we say the Pakistan Government has been doing? Our case is that the Pakistan Government, or at any rate officers connected with the Pakistan Government, are not altogether exempt from the charge of having actively offered help and encouragement, and thereby having made it easier for these raiders to proceed to Kashmir. I shall quote some testi­mony in this regard shortly.

For the moment, I shall deal with the question of what the Pakistan Government may be said to have admitted. We contend that these tribesmen and others have bases in Pakistan. There has been some denial of this fact. We contend that tribesmen have passed through Pakistan to Kashmir, and some argu­ment has been advanced that this has not been established beyond all doubt.

In his speech, the representative of Pakistan stated that a tribesman's leader had said, in the course of-an address present­ed at the time of the Pakistan Prime Minister's visit to the tribal areas, that Pakistan had not given them sufficient help and had prevented them from going into Kashmir, so they were taking the route via the State of Swat. The representative of Pakistan said, "The State of Swat—if again the members of the Security Council will turn to their maps—is almost on the border of Kashmir itself and is contiguous with the whole of the rest of the tribal area. That is one answer to the allegations of the representative of India that nothing was being done by the Pakistan Government to stop these tribes, namely, the complaint of the tribes themselves that, owing to the lack of cooperation of the Pakistan Government, they found it neces­sary to cross the frontier from Swat to Kashmir."

I would beseech the patience of the members of the Security Council and ask them to look at their maps once again. Swat is no doubt contiguous to the tribe! area; it is not contiguous to Kashmir. There is a bit of the North West Frontier Province stretching out like a kind of tongue between the Swat State and the Kashmir State. That perhaps explains why the represen­tative of Pakistan was careful to qualify his observation by using the word "almost". But what he said subsequently might have given the members of the Security Council the impression that because the Pakistan Government prevented the tribesmen from passing through Pakistan territory into Kashmir, the tribesmen used some territory other than Pakistan territory as a route for reaching Kashmir.

If my recollection is correct, Swat as a State has acceded to Pakistan. I am subject to correction on this point. But even If Swat had not accepted Pakistan, it would still be geogra­phically impossible for any tribesman from the tribal areas to reach Kashmir except through Pakistan territory. If Swat has acceded to Pakistan he would travel the whole way from his tribal area to Kashmir through Pakistan territory. If Swat has not acceded to Pakistan he would still, after crossing Swat, have to pass through the North West Frontier Province in order to reach Kashmir territory. That is a very minor point, but it is necessary for us to eschew, if possible, wrong impres­sions that might have been created.

I have referred to the recent tour of the tribal areas by the Prime Minister of Pakistan. He went there on an official trip accompanied, I take it, by a number of foreign correspondents. The following is an extract from a speech made by him in reply to an address of welcome by Afridi tribesmen, as reported in a bulletin entitled "Pakistan Affairs' ', for which we have to be grateful to the Ambassador of Pakistan in the United States. It says:

"Mr. Liaquat Ali Khan assured them that, as an autono­mous part of Pakistan, the tribal belt would receive full consideration and sympathy from the Central Government." He proceeds: "You have played a prominent part in the achievement of our cherished goal of Pakistan. I assure you that you will be treated on an equal footing with people in settled districts, enjoying the same rights and privileges."

The report continues: "He thanked the tribesmen for reiterating their allegiance to Pakistan, and pointed out that the-State would prosper only with complete solidarity among its nationals."

By implication, the Prime Minister of Pakistan counted tribesmen among Pakistan nationals. I have been in some doubt for days past as to whether I could describe these tribesmen as Pakistan nationals, but whether or not they are such in law, here is the Prime Minister of Pakistan describing them by implication. He added: "The tribal people are flesh of our flesh, and they shall be sharers in our schemes for economic, educational and political uplift for our people."

That is an aspect which must convince the Security Council that people in Pakistan, whether in the settled districts or in the autonomous tribal areas, have gone over in thousands into Kashmir State for the purpose—let us suppose, for the moment —of helping certain insurgents in their great fight for liberty and national freedom in that State. On the strength of that admission I think that the Security Council should consider it its duty to tell Pakistan that it has no right to allow this sort of thing and must stop it from now on. That is what we are asking.

I said that we had made other allegations, namely, that Pakistan provides bases, supplies, arms and ammunition. Pakistan has categorically denied that anything of this kind is being done. There is, however, one very significant document in this connexon, and as it is the latest of its kind I should like, with the indulgence of the Security Council, to read it fairly fully. It is a dispatch which appeared in this morning's New York Times, and it gives the report of an interview which the representative of that paper in India had with an ex-officer of the United States Army named Russell K. Haight Jr. who, for two months, is supposed to have held the rank of Brigadier-General of the rebel forces in Kashmir State.

(SCOR, 3rd Year, Mtg. No. 237, pp. 293-303)