07021964 Text of the speech made by Mr. Bhutto (Pakistan) in the Security Council meeting No. 1089 held on 7, February 1964.

07021964 Text of the speech made by Mr. Bhutto (Pakistan) in the Security Council meeting No. 1089 held on 7, February 1964.

 

In the first paragraph of his statement at the last meeting two days ago, the education Minister of India uttered the admonition that the Security Council is not intended as a platform for propaganda against any Member State. The members of the Council will have had time to study the statement of the representative of India and to judge in what manner be allowed his own dictum.

 

From the beginning to the end the representative of India, consistently refusing to face the facts and issues resolutely ignoring the arguments presented by Pakistan devoted himself to hurling irresponsible charges against Pakistan and accusing it of the most unbelievable crimes. First, the very fact that Pakistan has dared to come before the Security Council, an organ charged with the primary responsibility for the maintenance of peace, is, in the eyes of India, a misdemeanor on Pakistan's part and evidence of its "agitational" approach.

 

Then Pakistan was accused of being a theocratic State while India which has witnessed 550 communal riots, since it became independent, is a secular State, India, the resentative of India said, has a modern, rational and secular attitude while Pakistan is reactionary. Pakistan's philosophy, according to him, is that in the very nature of things, Muslims must hate the Hindus

and the Hindus must hate the Muslims. Pakistan's policy is based on communal hatred and fanaticism and the Pakistan Government, he stated, "deliberately and for set purposes created an atmosphere so that riots should break out in East Pakistan" [1038th meeting, para. 59]. Then turning from accuser to judge, he delivered judgement, saying that "the Pakistan Government cannot be absolved of its responsibility for the death of these innocent people" [ibid]. He stated that the real reason why Pakistan was insisting on a plebiscite was: "..... to try and see whether it cannot inflame communal passions in Kashmir by making the inhabitants of that State believe that their religion is in danger, and bring about the recurrence of the terrible events of the partition of India in 1947: blood-shed, migrations, untold human misery" [1088th meeting, para. 32].

 

Then again, Pakistan was, in the view of the representative of India, playing the Chinese game of weakening India internally and undermining its defence against China [Ibid., para, 8] in order to prevent India from fulfilling its self-appointed role of saving the whole world from China. The permanent representative of India had promised on the eve of the meeting of the Security Council that there would be a good deal of mud-throwing at this meeting. Members will agree that the Minister of Education of India has not disappointed the expectations of his Permanent Representative. I reject, with all the emphasis at my command, the false absurd charges that he has hurled against my Government.

 

On Kashmir itself, what the representative of India had to say was not new. Members who have studied the case will be familiar with all the his arguments on Pakistan's alleged aggression, the absolute right of the despotic Maharajah to sign away the rights of the people of Kashmir, the acquisition by India of the imperial mantle of paramountcy, the three elections held in Kashmir under the surveillance of the four Indian divisions stationed there. These arguments are as contradictory as they are unconvincing. I must nevertheless, for the record, correct the misstatements and distortions with which the representative of India has sought to vitiate the simple issue of self-determination involved in the Kashmir dispute. But before I do so, may I be permitted to deal briefly with the grave accusations and charges levelled against my Government and my country by the representative of India.

 

It is with the utmost reluctance that I turn to the matter of communal riots which recently broke out in my country and in India. In my earlier submission to the Council [1087th meeting] I refrained from dealing at length with the communal situation in order not to worsen the existing grave situation. The Minister of Education of India, by making irresponsible, unfounded and provocative charges against my country, has in effect added fuel to the fire, and I must regret that he should have chosen the path of calumny and slander to bolster India's bad case on Kashmir. I would be failing in my duty if I did not put the record straight on the treatment of minorities in "secular, modern, rational" India.

 

The Education Minister of India said: "...if we are left to ourselves we will have no communal trouble whatsoever" [1088th meeting, para, 59]. How does he reconcile this statement with the fact that since the Minorities Agreement concluded between the Prime Ministers of Pakistan and India in April 1950, there have been more than 550 riots in India? In fact, hardly a Muslim festival has passed in India since 1950 without the Muslim community being subjected to attacks of communal frenzy in one part of India or another in contrast, there has been complete communal peace in Pakistan, but for two or three riots, until the recent disturbance broke out in March 1961, scores of Muslims were killed in Jubulpore and the Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh was reported to have said that the city "looked like a cremation ground". Was not India being left to itself then?

 

In October 1961, the Home Minister of the State of Uttar Pradesh admitted that behind the then current anti-Muslim riots, there was a wide and deep-laid conspiracy. He declared:

 

"It can go on record that a common pattern is discernible behind all these incidents. Murders were committed in individual knife attacks by young people coming from the section of our society whose members would faint at the sight of blood,"

 

He went on to say:

 

"This shows that these people have received training in the art of killing. One would not be surprised, as days pass, if communal incidents increase in number and in intensity."

 

Did this Indian official say that Pakistan was training these murderers? Could he say that Pakistan was behind the deep conspiracy? Was Pakistan inciting the Hindus of India to kill Muslims? Was not then India being left to itself?

 

Speaking in the Indian Parliament Mr Syed Bardudduja, a veteran of the Indian Struggle for independence, expressed the agony that the Indian Muslim were suffering soon after the gruesome atrocities of Jubbulpore and Malda were perpetrated:

 

"Even in this secular democracy, Mussulmans and all the minorities of India have suffered terribly. We apprehended that minorities would have no quarter, no shelter, no opportunity for self-expression. Polítically, socially, culturally, economically and even physically they would be at the mercy of forces of reaction. That is exactly what has happened."

 

Continuing, this member of the Indian Parliament said;

 

"Mussulmans have been pursued to the bitter end. They have been tortured with every refinement of cruelty and barbarous savagery. In malignity, in cruelty, in savagery, in criminality, the records of Jubbulpore and Malda sur pass any records during the British regime."

 

This systematic massacre of Muslim followed a pattern which was particularly noticeable during the recent riots, when the attacks were aimed at driving the Muslims out of West Bengal, forcing them to seek shelter in East Pakistan. Although a large number of men, women and children were killed, the emphasis was on setting fire to their houses, looting and destroying their shops and industrial establishments so as to deprive them, at once, of their shelter and their means of livelihood. The fact that there have since been open demands by militant Hindu organizations for a population exchange tends to support my Government's fear that the real intention of those responsible for riots is to drive the Muslims out of West Bengal into East Pakistan.

 

The representative of India accused Pakistan of having incited the recent riots. I do not wish to harrow the Council with a recital of the blood-curdling headlines and reports carried in the Indian West Bengal Press on the regrettable incidents which occurred in Khulna and Jessore. Let us turn instead to the testimony of impartial, foreign observers. As regards the recent riots in Calcutta, here is a report from Calcutta by James Mitchell, correspondent of The Observer of London, published on 25 January:

 

"While rioters made no great secret of their plans, the police force in the first days seemed always to be everywhere except in the streets attacked."

 

He blames what he calls "the black week of Calcutta '' on "police laxity" and says that the authorities "let the situation get completely out of hand" and that the result was that about 500 people were killed. According to this report, tens of thousands lost their homes because, after the riots started, interested people paid big sums of money to keep them up, so that landlords would clear their land of poor tenants. Did Pakistan. inspire this cold-blooded design?

 

We hear a great deal about the secular outlook in India. A Calcutta daily, the New Age, of 19 January 1264 said:

 

"Unfortunately the secular parties could not take proper initiative in the matter and the so-called nationalist papers fanned up communal hatred. The Jan Sangh and Hindu Mahasabha were already in a field whipping up frenzy. All these contributed to the rapid deterioration in the situation."

 

I had no intention to bring out these gruesome facts but I had been compelled to do so by the allegations levelled against my Government before this Council. I was shocked that the Education Minister of India fell victim to the temptation of quoting highly exaggerated figures of deaths during the recent troubles in East Pakistan on the basis of a Reuters dispatch. The sources in Dacca quoted by the correspondent of Reuters have themselves contradicted the wildly exaggerated figures that were given out. I regret that the Education Minister of India had to resort to the use of unverified reports which he should have known were contradicted. The Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi issued an immediate contradiction on 24 January. The irresponsibility of the Indian Government's news media in giving circulation to such false and inflammatory reports earned the well merited stricture of The Times of London. In the issue of 23 January, its Delhi correspondent observed:

 

"The Indian Government's seriousness in discouraging circulation of news about communal violence in Pakistan was put into doubt today by All-India Radio's treatment of the Reuters correspondent's report from Dacca. The midday news broadcasts made that report their first item and it still figured prominently in bulletins later tonight. All-India Radio is a completely subservient agent of the Government and its treatment of the report must suggest that Delhi is not as apprehensive about dangers of repercussions in West Bengal as its recent experience should have made it."

 

My Government firmly believes that communal peace and security is an essential condition of civilized life. My Government mobilized all its resources to bring the situation under complete control in Pakistan. I had to go into this question at some length, not only to disprove the false allegations made by India, but to emphasize one central fact: It is that the denial of the right of self-determination to the people of Jammu and Kashmir is a constant source of tension. It is embittering the relations between India and Pakistan. As a result of this festering dispute, recurring brutal attacks on the Muslim minority. have been taking place in India ever since its independence in 1947.

 

It is this attitude of the Government of India which has created a vicious climate in Kashmir and in certain parts of India, to which I invited your attention in my letter of 16 January 1964 [S/5517] from which I quote:

 

"It is this climate, in which the political, religious and cultural rights of the people of the State are treated with scorn by their Indian rulers that has made possible such criminal acts of sacrilege and vandalism as the recent theft of the sacred hair from the shrine near Srinagar and the attempt to burn a Muslim shrine in Kishtwar in Jammu Province."

 

Is this same climate which encourages militant organizations in India to launch frequent communal attacks and outrage on the Muslims and call for their expulsion from India in exchange for the Hindu minority in Pakistan. It is this disregard of human rights which is the root cause of the existing upheaval in Kashmir and of the grave communal tension in West Bengal. It all flows from the fact that the Kashmir dispute has been allowed to fester for sixteen years.

 

While speaking about the eviction of Indian Muslims from Tripura, Assam and the border districts of West Bengal, the Education Minister of India took shelter behind a massive array of census figures. He named the districts of Noakhali, Comilla, Sylhet and Bakarganj, where the relatively slow growth of population is attributed to the migration of Muslim population to India. Of these, Bakarganj has no common border with any part of India and can have no relevance to the issue. It is interesting to note that only three border districts were named by the representative of India, whereas My men singh, Rangpur, Dinajpur, Rajshahi, Kushtia and others are also border districts, but he carefully left them out. The reasons are not far to seek. The West Bengal districts in which a relatively high increase of Muslim population was shown by him are not contiguous to the Pakistan districts where a slow rate of increase of Muslim population was recorded. Obviously, therefore, there can be no possible connexion between these trends of population growth. It is possible to refute the arguments that he has advanced by quoting extensively from the census reports of India and Pakistan to prove that the case he wants to establish is based merely on a jugglery of figures. Even without going into a detailed examination of the census reports, one can draw certain obvious conclusions from common sense.

 

A system of passports and visas was introduced in 1952 to comprehensively regulate the movements of Indians and Pakistan across the border. The Indian authorities introduce a strict system of border checkpoints to prevent the entry of non-Indians through unauthorized routes into Indian territory. These restrictive measures ressited in almost complete stoppage of entry to Assam, Tripura and West Bengal.

 

Apart from these restrictions, one has to remember the communal feelings and tensions existing at the time of partition of the India-Pakistan sub-continent to appreciate the improba bility of large-scale Muslim migration from Pakistan to India. With memories of incredible sufferings, of loss of human lives and destruction of property, it is inconceivable that hundreds of thousands of Muslims, as alleged by India, would surrender the safety and security of their homeland in Pakistan to migrate with their women and children to the uncertainty and perils awaiting them in a hostile land beyond the frontier.

 

But let us not get involved in a pedantic controversy, for we deal here not with cold statistics but with human tragedy. The fact of the matter is that hundreds and thousands of inno cent men, women and children have been driven across the border as part of a premeditated and cold-blooded plot to get rid of Muslim citizens from Indian territory bordering on East Pakistan. The special correspondent of The Times of London in his dispatch of 5 December 1963 carried a vivid eye-witness account of his experience:

 

"In camps and compounds in the Comilla district of Pakistan there are thousands of Muslims who have been forcibly evicted from their homes in India and driven into East Pakistan. The pretext for the eviction is that these people had illegally entered the Indian territory of Tripura ...and that they have now simply been sent back: but the evidence available from them shows that most were long settled in Tripura, even for generations."

 

Continuing, he said:

 

"But the long settled Muslims who are expelled come into East Pakistan as broken refugees with nowhere to turn, and the Government here now has about 47,000 on its hands. The evictions began in the middle of last year and continued at a rate of hundreds each week, the flow being augmented now by those Muslims who flee from the inimical climate apparently created in Tripura by the mass evictions.

 

"Putting it at its best, the established residents of Tripura, Indian citizens by right, who have been uprooted and dumped over the border with no formalities, or only the sketchiest, are the victims of local authorities in that territory whose excesses are not fully appreciated in Delhi. They may be acting in response to local forces of communal enmity and greed for land, but they are acting with injustice and inhumanity."

 

The special correspondent of The Times went on to say:

 

"Some received 'Show cause' notices warning them that they would be expelled unless they could prove that they had been in India before 1952. They say that they went to court with their papers and were told that the Magistrate would make further investigations-but that a day or two later the police and lorries came to their villages and they were forced in and driven to the border. Others received no notices nor warning before the police vehicles arrived. Some of their papers were kept by the court or destroyed by the police who expelled them...."

 

And yet the Education Minister of India waxed eloquent about the respect for the processes of law in his country. He said: "I also wish to point out that no one is evicted from India without complying with the provisions of the rule of law." [1088th meeting, para. 75.] In view of impartial observers. I have to say about the compliance with the rule of law, I believe further comments are superfluous. Concluding his dispatch, the correspondent of The Times said:

 

"... it is undeniable that a great wrong is being done to the Indian Muslims in Tripura. In considering what it regards as the problem of Muslims settled in that territory who have no legal right to be there, the Indian Government might consider the analogous problem in Ceylon, where the Government would like to get rid of a million Indians."

 

That is what an impartial observer of a leading British newspaper has to say about the brutal and inhuman methods adopted for the mass eviction of Indian Muslims from Assam, Tripura and West Bengal. The President of the Hindu Maha sabha, Mr. V. G. Deshpande, declared on 15 January 1964 that an exchange of population on Government level was the only way to ensure the safety of minorities in India and Pakistan. He said: "They"-the Hindus-"must be brought to India and the Muslim population in Assam and West Bengal must be sent to East Pakistan". An exchange of population was demanded in public meetings and newspaper editorials in many parts of India. All these point towards one conclusion, namely, that there is a move to expel Indian Muslims by illegal and inhumane methods from Indian territory bordering on East Pakistan for no fault of theirs but the fact that they happen to be Muslims.

 

The Education Minister of India claimed that all these tens of thousands of Indian Muslims who were forcibly evicted from their homes and homes and pushed across the border into East Pakistan are not Indian nationals. If that be so, India should have no objection to having the facts verified by an impartial inquiry.

 

Speaking on this matter before the General Assembly of the United Nations on 30 September 1963, I said:

 

"I would declare here before you that the question whether these people are being evicted or whether they are infiltrators can be decided by a United Nations inquiry commission, by an international inquiry commission. or by any third-party commission agreed to by India and Pakistan. These are ascertainable facts. It can be ascertained by any inquiry commission whether these unfortunate, helpless people driven by the Indian bayonet into Pakistan are Indians or Pakistanis."

 

We stand by this declaration even now. We are prepared to have the matter examined by an international commission of inquiry. If India's hands are clean, as it claims, let it come forward and agree to an international commission to verify the facts. The truth in this case is that India is guilty of inhuman and brutal treatment of its own citizens on the ground of their religion. It is indeed a sad commentary on its secularist pretensions.

 

The Education Minister of India stated that the President of Pakistan refused to issue a joint declaration with the President of India to our respective peoples appealing for peace and harmony and that Pakistan, in effect, also rejected the proposal of the Government of India that the Home Ministers of the two countries should meet and visit the scenes of disturbance and suggest what further steps should be taken to prevent such happenings.

 

I have already dealt in my statement of 3 February [1087th meeting] with the subject of a joint declaration by the two Presidents. The President of Pakistan pointed out that he had already appealed to the people of Pakistan to maintain communal peace and harmony and what was really needed was to take deterrent measures against communal and criminal elements which were responsible for the riots in both the countries and to re-establish conditions of security for the refugees of the minority communities to enable them to return to their homes. This action my Government for its part took at once, and the flames of communal disturbance were stamped out in my country.

 

Pakistan did not reject the proposal of the Government of India for a meeting between the Home Ministers of the two Governments. We have made a positive and constructive response. This is that once order has been restored, the two Ministers could meet in Rawalpindi in Pakistan or Delhi in India to discuss measures necessary to enable the refugees from the communal disturbances, as well as those who have been evicted by India from Assam, Tripura and West Bengal during the last two years, to return to their homes.

 

It is the policy of my Government to encourage the refugees to return to their homes. My Government is pledged to ensure the security of their lives and property and to restore their confidence. The Indian Home Minister's statement of 29 January that conditions in East Pakistan have become such as to make the migration of Hindus inevitable and that conditions for the granting of migration certificates to them in East Pakistan would have to be eased is bound to have an unsettling effect on them and to encourage their exodus. We regret this statement all the more because communal harmony has been fully restored in East Pakistan. My Government is apprehensive that if a new influx of Hindus into India takes place as a result of the Indian Policy of facilitating migration, the position of the Muslim minority in East Bengal, Calcutta and, for that matter, in all other parts of India will be further imperilled.

 

The Pakistan High Commissioner in Calcutta was besieged owing to the communal riots in that city by the thousands of Muslims demanding emergency certificates to migrate to East Pakistan. We did not respond. In spite of the carnage which took place in Calcutta, no Pakistani leader made any statement or offered encouragement to Muslims in West Bengal or elsewhere in India to move into Pakistan. In our view, the solution of this problem, I must reiterate, lies in bringing about peace and security, establishing a sense of confidence among the minorities and in taking energetic measures for their rehabilitation and resettlement. We seek the cooperation of the Government of India in enabling the refugees to return to their homes.

 

The representative of India permitted himself to make disparaging remarks about the democratic institutions of Pakistan. May I remind him that each country must fashion its self-governing institutions according to its own genius. It is not necessary for me to cite examples of modern and progressive countries which have found, as a result of their experience, that the system of indirect elections and electoral colleges best meets their political and constitutional requirements. Pakistan is not the only country which elects its President and Parliament by an electoral college. The parliamentary form of government is not the only form of democratic government. Many countries, particularly those of Asia, Africa and Latin America, and even of Europe and the United States, have found the Presidential system to be necessary to ensure their stability and economic progress.

 

The Education Minister of India called Pakistan "a theocratic State". May I ask him whether we are governed by a hierarchy of priests? The official name of our State is the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Does this nomenclature make us a theocracy? Several Muslim countries, Members of the United Nations, have the same description or have given recognition to Islam as the official religion of the State. Then are they all priest-ridden? There are also Western European and Latin American States, the Constitutions of which provide a place for Christianity as the established State religion. The representative of India, I am certain, would not on that account classify them as theocracies.

 

We have often been told that in the Indian Union fundamental rights are guaranteed. This is surely not a unique phenomenon. All Member States of the United Nations are pledged to respect human rights, and it is their general practice to ensure its observance. The Constitution of Pakistan is no exception, and we see no reason to claim any special credit for treating all the citizens of our multiracial, multireligious and multilingual Republic as equals before the law. We do not therefore consider it in the least anomalous that the head of the judiciary of our Islamic Republic should be a Pakistani Christian. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Pakistan is a Pakistani Christian belonging to the Roman Catholic denomination who, under our Constitution, is the final authority in the interpretation of all laws, including the personal and religious laws of the Muslims, who constitute the majority in Pakistan. We have given representation in the highest services of our State to the minority communities whose leaders have publicly borne testimony to the precept and practice of tolerance in Pakistan.

 

We are told that India is more democratic than Pakistan. Comparisons are odious. But in this context let me take the liberty of quoting the President of India himself, as reported by the Indian Express of Bombay of 4 October 1963. President Radhakrishnan is reported to have said:

 

"What we have in India today is not real democracy but only a phony democracy. If we are true democrats, which I may say we are not, there would not have been so much discontent and ill will. Then they would not have any kind of nepotism, corruption and communal prejudice which have brought down the country to degradation."

 

The representative of India also attacked the philosophical and spiritual foundations of Pakistan. He admitted that India and Pakistan are two nations but rejected the "two-nations' '. The basis of this "theory" is that, because Hindu Society is organized on the religious caste system of antiquity, in which personal status is determined by birth into a particular caste in an ascending and descending series of worth and dignity, we the people of Pakistan wished to have established a State of our own in the contangos Muslim majority areas in the north-west and the north-east of the sub-continent, wherein we could live our own way of life governed by the principles of equality which are enshrined in the religion of Islam. The caste system is by its very nature exclusive. It governs those within its fold from the cradle to the grave. Notwithstanding the fundamental rights spelled out in the Indian Constitution, the caste system has not been made illegal, though untouchability has been forbidden, at last-but only in the law. Distinguished philosophers of history have established that exclusive societies invite disintegration from within. This is what happened in the sub-continent in 1947.

 

We cannot understand whenever a dispute is involved, India seeks to make reference to its democratic and secular character, although Indian society is steeped in the caste system, in a venal system to the exclusion of all other people belonging to all other creeds. It is a system confined to the Hindus. Anyone outside the pale of the caste system is worse than an untouchable, a sub-human. So I say that with such a society, with such a situation, with this mentality prevailing in India, with its treatment of minorities, with the manner in which it has held Kashmir in bondage, there can really be no peace between our two countries. Remove the dispute of Kashmir, and you will find that we can live in peace and we must live in peace, because it is Kashmir alone that divides us.

 

It is no use making ultra vires references to democracy. India displays its democracy is like a sensible person displaying his false teeth. Its democracy is false as the teeth of a senile person who parades his false teeth everywhere. There is democracy in the United Kingdom. Does the United Kingdom always make mention of its democratic institutions when it comes into the Security Council? We have old and established democracies in France and in the United States of America. Is reference always made to the democratic character of their societies in seeking the adjudication and settlement of disputes ? The United Nations Charter is wedded to the principle of the equality of all nations, irrespective of their internal system. What has the internal system of Pakistan to do with the settlement of the Kashmir dispute ?

 

Let me therefore now turn to the main question before the Security Council. The representative of India made no attempt to explain the declarations of the Government of India, which I quoted in my last statement to the Security Council, that the so-called accession was only provisional, conditional and subject to ratification by the people of Jammu and Kashmir through a plebiscite under international auspices. Instead he chose to dismiss my submissions as "a mixture of misstatements, omissions of material facts and refusal to face up to the clear provisions of the Indian Independence Act" [1088th meeting, para 17]. A case is not proved by glossing over or ignoring convenient facts.

 

In our previous representations before the Council, we have endeavoured to explain at ample length our position regarding the accession of States to India or to Pakistan. Of course, there was no controversy regarding those States where the Ruler and the people were of the same view, and no conflict arose between India and Pakistan on that score. cases, naturally, the Rules signed the Instrument of Accession In all those to one or the other country, and no trouble ensured either between him and his people or between India and Pakistan. The question arose regarding those States where there was disagreement between the Ruler and his people in regard to accession. On this question, the Indian Education Minister made three statements, and I shall invite the Council to examine them not in relation to our arguments, but in the light of the position internationally advanced by the Government of India. I shall take each of those statements separately.

 

The first statement is :

 

"It is significant there was no provision for the people of the princely States concerned. Nor was there any provision that the accession had to be ratified by ascertaining the wishes of the people of the acceding States." [Ibid., para. 11.]

 

Contrast this statement with the following, quoted from the White Paper of the Government of India issued on 10th August 1948:

 

"The Government of India are firmly of the view that whatever sovereign rights reverted to these States on the lapse of paramountcy, they vest in the people, and conditions must be created in every State for a free and unfettered exercise of these rights."

 

Or, contrast it with this solemn statement made by the Indian representative at the 227th meeting of the Security Council:

 

"Or the question of accession, the Government of India has always enunciated the policy that in all cases of dispute the people of the State concerned should make the decision."

 

These are clear words. The position is not only that the people have to be consulted: It is they who have to make the decision.

 

And how can the statement now made by the Education Minister of India be sustained by the one made by the Indian representative at the 264th meeting of the Security Council? He said:

 

"No doubt the Ruler, as the head of the State, has to take action in respect of accession. When he and his people are in agreement as to the Dominion to which they should accede, he applies for accession to that Dominion. However, when he takes one view and his people take another view, the wishes of the people have to be ascertained. When so ascertained, the Ruler has to take action in accordance with the verdict of the people. That is our position.``

 

By "our position" he means the position of the Government of India. The words are to be noted: "That is our position." This is not the position now advanced by the Education Minister of India.

 

And what would he make of this statement of the Prime Minister of India himself, his Prime Minister, made at a public meeting in New Delhi and reported by The Times of India of Bombay, of 7 July 1952:

 

"In any event, from the start, India was committed to the principle of letting the final word regarding accession rest with the people of the princely States and" let us mark these words "there could be no getting away from that commitment. In fact, that was why India had accepted Kashmir's accession only provisionally in 1947, pending the expression of the will of the people."

 

That is the statement of the Prime Minister of India. I could elaborate this argument, but the statement of the Prime Minister of India should at least suffice to take care of the thesis that the Education Minister of India now seeks to foist upon us. The second statement of the Education Minister of India is :

 

"There was no question whatsoever with regard to the religious complexion of the population of the princely States. The question whether one princely State should accede to India or Pakistan was left to the determination of the Ruler of the State." [1018th meeting, para. 12.] Is that true? I ask, was there no question whatsoever with regard to the religious complexion of the population of the princely States? The Education Minister of India says no. But how was the question answered by his Prime Minister in his telegram of 8 November 1947 addressed to the Prime Minister of Pakistan? He said:

 

"...but it is essential, in order to restore good relations between the two Dominions, that there should be acceptance of the principle that, where the Ruler of a State does not belong to the community to which the majority of his subject belong, and where the State has not accepted to that Dominion whose majority community is the same as the States, the question whether the State has finally accepted to one or the other Dominion should be ascertained by reference to the will of the people."

 

Then, again, if there was "no question whatsoever with regard to the religious complexion of the population of the princely States' ', why did the Government of India protest against the accession of the State of Junagadh, which had a Hindu majority, to Pakistan? What did I actually protest about? They said, and I quote from the telegram of the Governor-General of India addressed to the Governor-General of Pakistan on 22 September 1947:

 

Pakistan Government have unilaterally proceeded to action which it was made plain Government of India could never and do not acquiesce in. Such acceptance of accession by Pakistan cannot but be regarded by the Government of India as an encroachment on India's sovereignty and territory and inconsistent with friendly relations that should exist between the two Dominions. This action of Pakistan is considered by the Government of India to be a clear attempt to cause disruption in the integrity of India by extending influence and boundaries of Dominion of Pakistan in utter violation of principles on which partition was agreed upon and effected… "...possibility of Junagadh's accession of Pakistan Dominion in teeth opposition from its Hindu population of over eighty percent has given rise the serious concern and apprehension to local population and all surrounding States which have acceded to Indian Dominion."

 

Finally, if there was no question whatsoever with regard to the religious complexion of the population of the princely States, how does one understand the following account given by no other person than Mr. V. P. Menon, the eminent official of the Government of India who was handling the accession of the princely States to India? On page 117 of his book, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States, Mr. Menon states:

 

"Lord Mountbatten made it clear that from a purely legal standpoint there was no objection to the ruler of Jodhpur acceding to Pakistan; but the Maharajah should, he stressed, consider seriously the consequences of his doing so, having regard to the fact that he himself was a Hindu; that his State was populated predominantly by Hindus and that the same applied to the States surrounding Jodhpur. In the light of these considerations, if the Maharajah were to accede to Pakistan, his action would surely be in conflict with the principle underlying the partition of India on the basis of Muslim and non-Muslim majority areas; and serious communal trouble inside the State would be the inevitable consequence of such affiliation."

 

If a Hindu State wanted to accede to India, India invoked the principle of partition, namely, religious composition and geographical contiguity. When it is a question of a Muslim State acceding to Pakistan, India says that the principles of partition do not apply to princely States. Surely some measure of consistency is essential in all human relations, whether individual or international. If so, how does the distinguished Education Minister of India expect us to regard his statement now that there was "no question with regard to the religious complexion of the population of the princely States''? He stated: "The question of religion did not come into play at all." [1088th meeting, para. 14.] Did it not come into play with respect to Junagadh ? And Jodhpur ? And Hyderabad ? It did. So, why should it not come into play with respect to Kashmir?

 

The third statement of the distinguished Education Minister of India is :

 

"...there is no substance in the suggestion that the accession of Jammu and Kashmir was not complete and absolute because the people of that State had not been consulted nor been given the opportunity to express their choice."

 

He added later :

 

"Jammu and Kashmir became an integral part of India when the Instrument of Accession was signed and accepted and from that day till today it continues to occupy the same position vis-a-vis the Indian Union and no question. can possibly arise from annexing Kashmir or further integrating it into the Indian Union. You cannot make more complete what is already complete." [Ibid,, paras. 15 and 16.]

 

I repeat: "You cannot make more complete what is already complete." That sounds very nice. The key words here are 'complete' and 'absolute'. Contrast these with the adjectives employed by the representatives of India in the past to describe this so-called accession. The representatives of India at that time said in the Security Council, referring to the so-called accession of Kashmir to India: "it acceded, tentatively, in October 1947" [463rd meeting, p. 20]. The word here is 'tentative', which is far from 'absolute' and 'complete".

 

Then again, if the accession was 'complete' and 'absolute" what did the Prime Minister of India say in a telegram he sent to the Prime Minister of Pakistan on 28 October 1947-just after the so called accession 7 He said: "In regard to accession also, it has been made clear that this is subject to reference to people of State and their decision." It was either absolute and complete or it was subject to reference to the people. The distinguished Education Minister of India says it was the one; the Prime Minister of India says it was the other. Whom is the United Nations to believe? Whom are we to believe? What does one make of this statement made by the Prime Minister of India on 2 November 1947:

 

"...let me make it clear that it has been our policy all along that where there is a dispute about the accession of a State of either Dominion, the accession must be made by the people of that State. It is in accordance with this policy that we have added a proviso to the Instrument of Accession of Kashmir."

 

Finally, if Kashmir is an integral part of India, what question is left to be adjusted and adjudicated between India and Pakistan? What is it that we have been negotiating about, and what is it that we can negotiate about now ? May I here refer to the joint communique issued by the Governments of India and Pakistan at the conclusion of the bilateral negotiations which I conducted on behalf of Pakistan and which were held at the ministerial level between India and Pakistan from December 1962 to May 1963 for six months. The communique said, at the conclusion of the six months of talks on the Kashmir dispute, as follows: "..the two Ministers recorded with regret that no agreement could be reached on the settlement of the Kashmir dispute." If Kashmir is an integral part of India, and if this integration is absolute and complete, what is this "Kashmir dispute'', and what were we trying to settle? What agreement is there for us to reach? The distinguished representative of India says, referring to Azad Kashmir, that it is "a part of territory which by International law is as much a part of Indian territory as Bombay or Delhi is' '. [1088th meeting, para, 8.]

 

Adept comment on the attitude behind this statement is furnished by another statement of the Prime Minister of India made in the Indian Parliament on 26 June 1952. The Indian Prime Minister said then :

 

"It is...a matter of dealing with a situation which is very delicate, very difficult and the decision for which ultimately lies with the few million people in Kashmir- not even with this Parliament India is a great country Kashmir is almost the heart of Asia. There is an enormous difference, not only in geography, but in all kinds of factors there. Do not think you are dealing with a part of U. P. [the United Provisional], Bihar or Gujarat.."

 

The United Provinces or Bihar or Gujarat are Indian states, and the Indian Prime Minister emphasized that there is an 'enormous difference between these States and Kashmir. The position taken by the distinguished representative of India here is that there is no difference and he states that Kashmir is as much a part of India as Bombay and Delhi.

 

In the context of the question of accession, the distinguished representative of India stated that when India was partitioned, "a part of the country seceding" constituted itself into Pakistan, and he claimed: " the present Government of India was the successor Government to the Government of the United Kingdom Pakistan was a new State which came into existence" [1088th meeting para. 11]. May I remind him that Pakistan came into existence on the partition of the sub-continent not as a new State but as a co successor State, together with India, to the British Government in India. The same excerpt which he has quoted from the Cabinet Mission's memorandum of 12 May 1946 speaks of "the succession Government or Governments in British India." This memorandum was published more than a year before partition. At that time it was not certain that the sub-continent would be partitioned into two states; but this was a clear possibility. The Cabinet Mission's memorandum provided for this possibility and hence the reference to more than one successor Government in British India.

 

It is true that Pakistan was admitted to the United Nations and other international organizations as a new State, but this was done by virtue of its express consent under the Indian Independence (International Arrangements) Order of 1947. In all other respects the same Order provided, as for instance, in regard to the rights and obligations devolving from treaties and international agreements to which undivided India was a party, that both India and Pakistan were to inherit these rights and obligations as successor States of the British Government in India. I would not like to take up the time of the Security Council to adduce further arguments in support of this submission. A reference to the preamble and the various sections of the Indian Independence Act, 1947, will make it clear that the Act speaks of "two Independent Dominions" to be set up in India to be known respectively as India and Pakistan as from 15 August 1947. In passing, may I observe that the paramountcy which ended with the entering into force of the Indian Independence Act of 1947 was a doctrine not of international law, but sui generis and, according to British legal authorities, peculiar to the constitutional development of the British Indian Empire.

 

I pass over the account given by the Minister of India of the circumstances in Kashmir which formed the genesis of the dispute. I do so because the truthful and balanced account of 1 of these circumstances is on record in the Security Council, set forth at length in its proceedings. I also do so because it is irrelevant whether one or the other account is true. In terms of the Charter of the United Nations and in terms of the moral and legal obligations of States, the controversies which existed before the acceptance of an agreement cannot be revived in connexion with the implementation of the agreement. Once an agreement is reached, you cannot revive the controversy which was resolved by the agreement. The controversy closes as soon as there is an agreement in the Kashmir dispute, the allegations of aggression by the two parties against each other were debated in the Council and in the United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan before that body's resolutions were adopted. The adoption of these resolutions and their acceptance by the two parties evidently disposed of the continuous issues which existed prior to them.

 

You cannot enter into an international agreement and then refuse to implement it on the basis of the issues which the agreement is meant to address. The assumption that the resolutions of the Commission could not be repudiated by either party without dishonouring an international agreement and committing an act inimical to peace has been confirmed repeatedly by numerous declarations made on behalf of the Government of India. The Indian representative, at the 608th meeting of the Security Council, said:

 

"We cannot be a party to the reversal of previous decisions taken by the United Nations Commission with the agreement of the parties." [608th meeting, para. 36]

 

At the 769th meeting of the Council, then representative of India said the following:

 

"I said the other day that this engagement bound our two countries. I would like to say that there are three parties engaged in this whole process.

 

"The Security Council is a party to the resolution of 131 August 1948..." [769th meeting, paras. 77 and 78.]

 

The same representative stated the following at the 773rd meeting of the Council:

 

"The resolution of 17 January 1948, and the resolutions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, the assurances given, these are all resolutions which carry a greater weight-that is because we have accepted them, we are parties to them, whether we like them or not" [773rd meeting, para. 83.]

 

This, in brief, has been the status of the agreement arrived at between India and Pakistan through the effort and authority of the United Nations. The obligatory character of these resolutions arose not only from the consent of the parties, but also from the fact that the agreement "enshrined" the principle of self-determination which is integral to the concepts of Chapter. It was further enhanced by the fact that it was only on the basis of the acceptance of the two resolutions that the cease-fire agreement was reached between India and Pakistan and the people of Kashmir who were fighting against the Indian army were persuaded to lay down their arms.

Now the representative of India says that the –

 

"... two resolutions of the Security Council dealing with plebiscite were conditional and contingent on Pakistan vacating its aggression, and that condition not been complied with. It is really more than a condition. It was the very basis on which these two resolutions were found, and the condition not having been complied with and the basis having disappeared, these resolutions are no longer binding on us. In any case, by the passage of time and various factors intervening they have become obsolete." [1088th meeting, para. 33.]

 

I dealt, I hope sufficiently, in my statement to the Security Council on 3 February [1087th meeting] with this theory of passage of time to show how untenable it is. I shall not, therefore, dwell on the subject any further, apart from adding that to characterize the decisions of the Security Council as obsolete shows what little importance India attaches to this extremely important organ of the United Nations.

 

The Government of India accepted the resolutions of the United Nations Commission of 13 August 1948 and 5 January 1949 providing for a cease-fire, a truce agreement, and a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir to determine the question of its accession to India or to Pakistan after-and I stress "after" this question of aggression had been considered. The question of a conditional and contingent acceptance of those two resolutions, therefore, does not arise. The Security Council is fully aware that Pakistan is not required by the terms of the two resolutions to make a unilateral and unconditional withdrawal of its military forces from the State. The withdrawals have to be reciprocal and synchronized in such a manner that at the end of the process, while all the armed forces of Pakistan have left the state, the bulk of the Indian armed forces have also vacated the State. The obligation of Pakistan to withdraw comes into force and operation only after the conclusion of a truce agreement under the resolution of 13 August 1948, which provides for a synchronized withdrawal in the manner and to the extent stipulated.

 

Who is responsible for the deadlock with respect to the truce agreement, that is, with respect to the demilitarization of the State? India balked at the synchronization of the withdrawal of the forces on the two sides. India withheld its co-operation in formulating a truce agreement. India refused to help in establishing conditions which would involve the complete withdrawal of the Pakistan forces from Kashmir. India rejected the proposal for stationing a United Nations force there for the purpose. After having done all those things, India began to complain that the Pakistan forces had not withdrawn. Certainly it requires no "deep knowledge of law", to quote the expression of the Education Minister of India, to understand that a party cannot challenge the binding character of an agreement by pleading its own failure to perform it.

 

India has always charged Pakistan with the responsibility for this deadlock, while refusing to submit its assertion to impartial scrutiny by investigation or to limited arbitration. In my statement of 3 February I referred to the offer made by Pakistan to the Security Council in 1962, that if an impartial determination should show that Pakistan is in fact responsible for the situation, my Government would rectify the default "through the speediest method at the earliest possible moment so that the way may be opened towards full implementation of the resolutions'' [1008th meeting, pasa, 166]. The fact that India has rejected this offer shows that its accusation against

 

Pakistan is only a pretext for continuing its unlawful occupation of the State and its refusal to enable the people of Jammu and Kashmir to exercise the right of self-determination.

 

But even if we might suppose for a moment, for the purpose of argument, that there is some strength in this allegation of non compliance by us, what is its effect ? Any infraction of Pakistan cannot be allowed, in fairness, to rob the people of Kashmir of the right to decide their future which they have been assured by the resolutions of the United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan. Surely, the people of Kashmir cannot be penalized for the faults of Pakistan.

 

If you ponder this consideration, you will realize that the entire case of the Education Minister of India rests on the exclusion of the rights and interests of the people of Kashmir. He wants to convert the whole issue into a pseudo-legal one between India and Pakistan and make it void of all human and moral significance. I say "pseudo-legal" advisedly because, if the representatives of India were serious in formulating the legal issues implicit in the dispute, then they would also be prepared to accept their determination by a competent authority. But they merely try to give it a legal character in order to confuse issues and to divert attention from the rights and interests of the people of Kashmir. This reflection is sustained further by their repeated allegations of aggression against Pakistan.

 

What is there in this allegation that can be at all relevant to the solution of the problem from a human point of view ? The question whether Pakistan did or did not commit aggression in Kashmir can be answered only by the people of Kashmir. For, if Pakistan did commit aggression in Kashmir, then evidently it was the people of Kashmir who were its victims. Surely then, India should be insistent on an unfettered plebiscite in Kashmir which would enable the victims to return an overwhelming verdict against the aggressor. That it is Pakistan that seeks this plebiscite, and India that rejects it, shows how much truth the Government of India feels there is in its contentions. It proves which of the two parties bears the burden of guilt. Pakistan has nothing to hide: it is prepared to stand the light of day, which means a clear and open ascertainment of the will of the people of Kashmir. It is India that seeks to ensure that that light should never dawn. But the light of day will dawn.

 

In regard to the measures of annexation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, to which I drew attention in my letter to the President of the Security Council of 16 January 1965 [S/5517], and in my statement of 3 February, the distinguished representative of India has extolled the alleged benefits that those measures would confer upon the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The point that I have the honour to make in regard to these measures is not that they are or are not a blessing to people of Kashmir but that they are being imposed by an unlawful authority, in disregard of the injunctions of the Security Council, as set forth in the resolutions of the Council of 30 March 1951 and 24 January 1957. I would request the Security Council to note that the Government of India remains impenitent in regard to the further extension of such measures; and, on the contrary, as declared by the representative of India, it is set on imposing them.

 

This brings us to the heart of the problem with which, in our submission, the Council is faced in regard to the India Pakistan question On the one hand, the representative of India says that Pakistan has "no locus standi whatsoever to make any complaint with regard to what India is doing" in Kashmir, that "no amount of declamation from Pakistan will deter the Government of India" from proceeding to further implement its designs of annexation of the State, that the resolutions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan "have become obsolete" and that the Government of India will under no circumstances agree to the holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir".

 

On the other hand, the representative of India makes an offer to discuss with Pakistan all our outstanding differences".

 

The question is: How can the offer be taken at all seriously if the position of the Government of India is as the Indian representative describes it? How can these differences be resolved if the Government of India maintains its rigid position, as it did during the bilateral negotiations of 1962-19637 These negotiations failed, as did all negotiations before. The Government of India says that mediation will not help. Now, the representative of India adds that: ".. the passing of resolutions" by the Council. "will not be helpful. It is likely to aggravate feelings." The Government of India has taken the rigid position that it will not agree to submit to limited arbitration the points of difference that exist between the parties over questions of fact in regard to the implementation of the international agreement on Kashmir.

 

I would like to put the question before the Council: If negotiations have repeatedly failed and it is impossible for them. To bear any fruit, if the Government of India is averse to mediation, if it rejects limited arbitration, if it warns the Security Council's passing any resolutions, then is not the position that all avenues of peaceful settlement are barred and closed to us?

 

This brings me to India's offer of a so-called "no-war declaration". We have said again and again that we have already signed a "no-war declaration" when we pledged our adherence to the United Nations Charter. The representative of India asks if we have any mental reservation. Did India have mental reservations when it signed the Charter of the United Nations? If not, what is the necessity of a "no-war declaration? What is needed is not another declaration but to devise specific methods for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute. This would remove the sole cause of conflict between the two countries.

 

We have been trying to impress this point on the Government of India since 1950, when we proposed "no-war declaration" which would contain provisions for negotiations between India and Pakistan, and, in the case of the failure of negotiations, for recourse to mediation and in the event of the failure of mediation, for the submission of the points of dispute to either an appropriate arbitration or judicial determination. To our regret, and to the misfortune of our peoples and, above all, of the people of Kashmir, the Government of India has persistently refused to accept our offer and to recognize that a "no war declaration" is a mere platitude unless it is accompanied by a simultaneous commitment to the use of methods for the pacific settlement of disputes.

 

While our position has been greatly misrepresented in the past, it is gratifying that the principles for which we have sought to gain acceptance are now finding expression in the dialogue between the heads of Government of the United States and the Soviet Union. In his recent statement regarding the peaceful settlement of territorial disputes, Chairman Khrushchev said:

 

"Life shows that the majority of territorial disputes are fraught with the danger of complicating the relations between the parties with the possibility of a serious armed conflict, and that they consequently constitute a potential threat to universal peace."

 

He added:

 

"It it that the Soviet Union proposes to cross out with one stroke all territorial issues between States, to abandon attempts to settle them as if these issues do not exist at all? No, this is not the point. We realize that some countries have weighty reasons for their claims."

 

He continued:

 

"A peaceful settlement of territorial disputes is also favoured by the fact that in the practice of international relations there already exists a store of improved methods of peaceful settlement of outstanding issues: direct negotiations between the States concerned, use of good offices. request of assistance from an international organization…

 

On this basis, Chairman Khrushchev proposed an agreement which should include "an undertaking to settle all territorial disputes exclusively by peaceful means, such as negotiations, mediation, conciliatory procedure, and also other peaceful means at the choice of the parties concerned in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations."

 

Let us take this statement of the Chairman of the Council. of the Minister of the USSR and apply it to the Kashmir dispute, even though this dispute hinges on a people's right to self-determination. According to this statement, it is not at all justifiable to abandon all attempts to settle the dispute, as if it did not exist at all. But that is precisely what India seeks to have the Council do. According to this statement. there is to be an undertaking to settle the dispute by peaceful means. But after the failure of these means, that is, negotiation, India blocks the other means. And still India proposes a "no-war declaration"?

 

Let us now refer to the statement of President Johnson of of the United States made in his letter of 18 January 1964 addressed to Chairman Khruschev, in which the President proposes the following "guideline" to implement the principle of the renunciation of the use of force for the solution of international disputes:

 

".. the parties to any serious dispute.shall seek a solution by peaceful - means resorting to negotiation, mediation, conciliation, arbitration, judicial settlement, action by a regional or appropriate United Nations agency or other peaceful means of their own choice.

 

How does this apply to the question before us? Since negotiation between India and Pakistan has failed, is India prepared for limited arbitration or judicial settlement of those points of difference between the parties which are capable either of arbitration or of being judicially determined ? India has rejected these means again. India is even rejecting today the assistance of the United Nations in the settlement of this dispute. And yet Indía proposes a "no-war declaration"

 

The President of the United States adds in his statement : "The prevention of wars over territorial and other disputes requires not only general principles but also the 'growth and improvement' regarding the machinery and methods for peaceful settlement. The United States believes that the peace-keeping processes of the United Nations and specifically its Security Council-should be more fully used and strengthened

 

It is these peace-keeping processes of the United Nations which India spurns with regard to Kashmir. When it came to the question of how the forces of India and Pakistan could be withdrawn from the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and the security of the State preserved, we proposed the stationing of a United Nation force which would be impartial to both India and Pakistan. India rejected the proposal and threatened that any country which would attempt to inject a United Nations force in Indian-occupied Kashmir would be regarded as unfriendly to India. We went further and conveyed our acceptance to the United Nations representative in 1958 of his suggestion that the possibility of stationing a United Nations force on the Pakistan side of the Jammu and kashmir border be examined to ensure the security of the area after the withdrawal of the Pakistan forces. India said that it would "regret" the stationing of such a force in the territory of Pakistan. This made it impossible to have recourse to the peace keeping machinery of the United Nations for a solution of the Kashmir dispute. What is more, India obstructs even a resolution of this Council. And yet India proposes a "no-war declaration"!

 

There is another important consideration involved here with respect to India's offer to "talk with us to resolve our "differences". Any impartial observer will note that the word "differences" is being significantly used here. Its intent can be nothing but to confuse the issues. For, after all, what "differences" are there except the Kashmir dispute ? There may be many minor differences between India and

 

Pakistan, as there would be between any two neighbouring countries, but none of them has presented a major obstacle. There is the question of the minorities, for instance, but that is obviously within the scope of the domestic responsibility of each Government. The minorities in India can :protected. only by the Government of India, and the minorities in Pakistan can be protected only by the Government of Pakistan. What room is there for any international mediation to bring about any tangible improvement in this regard? Apart from each Government taking firm action to give its minorities the fullest sense of security, what is required here is co-operation between the two countries to enable the refugees to return to their homes. Even more, there should be an overall improvement in the relations between India and Pakistan and in the development of a fraternal spirit between the Hindus and the Muslims in the two countries. But a lasting improvement can take place only with the settlement of the Kashmir dispute. India would evade this settlement and yet talk of resolving "differences''. Its position is, I am constrained to say, so transparently disingenuous that it cannot possibly delude anyone.

 

The representative of India professed not to believe the sentiments I expressed the other day regarding the peaceful settlement of international disputes. He accused Pakistan of indulging in threats of violence. The Kashmir dispute has been before the Council for sixteen long years. Numerous efforts have been made during these years to reach a peaceful solution to the problem. No less than twenty different proposals have been made at one time or another by eminent personalities, including the president of the United States and Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, in order to bring about an agreement between India and Pakistan. Every one of these proposals was accepted by Pakistan. Every one of them was rejected by India. If this does not constitute proof of Pakistan's willingness to seek peaceful settlement of disputes, then I am at a loss to know how to satisfy India.

 

It was the Defence Minister of India who declared that India had not adjourned the use of armed force and that it reserved the right to resort to force when its interests so demanded. It was the same Defence Minister who publicly described Pakistan as India's "enemy number one". We have come here not with a threat, but with an appeal-an appeal to you to remember that this Organization was established "to maintain international peace and security, ..to bring about by peaceful means, and in conformity with the principles of justice and international law, adjustment or settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace". We appeal to you to remember that the history of mankind has been marked by war and violence, that if this Organization in which men have placed their hopes for future peace turns a deaf ear to the pleas of the downtrodden, then what hope is there for peace in our time?

 

For India, the situation is simple. It is in possession of the major part of the State of Jammu Kashmir and would like nothing better than to be left alone. But when we seeing our kith and kin, our flesh and blood, suffer tyranny and oppression, shall we remain silent spectators? We who can see and feel the surge of a people determined to be free, shall we not warn of the consequences and dangers of letting the situation drift like this?

 

The representative of India has sought to blame Pakistan and the conclusion of the Sino-Pakistan boundary agreement for the failure of the bilateral talks which took place between our two countries in 1962 and 1963. He goes on to charge that the talks were finally broken off by me in spite of all efforts on the part of his Government to keep them going. Let me place the relevant facts before the Security Council.

 

In pursuance of the policy of the Government of Pakistan to promote friendly relations with all nations of the world, and in particular with those which are its neighbours, we concluded boundary agreements with Iran, Burma and to some extent even with India. It was in pursuance of this policy that the Government of Pakistan formally proposed to the Government of the people's Republic of China in March 1961 that the two Governments should enter into negotiations to reach an understanding on the location and alignment of the non-demarcated border between the Chinese province of Sinkiang and the contiguous areas, the defence of which is the responsibility of the Government of Pakistan.

 

The Government of the People's Republic of China made an affirmative response at the end of February 1962, and a few months later, in May, a joint communique was issued by the two Governments stating that they had decided to enter into negotiations to reach an understanding on the boundary question on the basis of mutual accommodation and in the spirit of friendly relations between neighbours. The negotiations commenced in Peking a few weeks before the outbreak of the Sino Indian border conflict, in October 1962. That was a conflict between two powerful nations of the East. That was a crisis which was not of our making. We could neither prevent it nor influence its course.

 

When the joint communique of the President of Pakistan and the Prime Minister of India was issued on 29 November 1962, agreeing to make renewed efforts to resolve the Kashmir dispute on a just and honourable basis, India knew full well that Pakistan and China had commenced negotiations on a boundary agreement in Peking much earlier. On the eve of the commencement of the bilateral talks in Rawalpindi, on 27 December 1962 complete agreement in principle between Pakistan and China on the alignment of the boundary between Sinkiang and the contiguous areas, for the defence of which Pakistan was responsible, was announced. We took this course before the bilateral negotiations with India commenced. Had we not done so, the Government of India would have accused us of withholding this information and thereby acting contrary to the spirit of the joint communique of 29 November 1962. The Peking negotiations took their course. I signed the agreement in Peaking on 2 March 1963.

 

The representative of India calls the conclusion of this boundary agreement a "provocation" and gives credit to his Government for not breaking off the Kashmir negotiations with Pakistan. He accuses me of this action. In May 1963, during the last round of talks, I repeatedly told the Indian Minister, Sardar Swaran Singh, the leader of the Indian negotiation team, that I would be willing to stay on in Delhi if he was at all prepared to consider the Pakistan suggestions to break the complete deadlock that had been reached since the third round. I got no response. Therefore the negotiations ended.

 

The representative of India has thought it fit to accuse us of carrying on "flirtations with China'' and that "Pakistan does not want India to be strong; it wants to weaken India both internationally and domestically" Mr. President, was this remark about "flirtations with China'' meant for your ears? Was it meant for the ears of everyone in this Council? Obviously not. It was supposed to be a dialogue. However, I would like to say that no one in this Council is so innocent as not to know the difference between an ally and an opportunist. We are allies, we are committed in two defence alliances with our friends, and we stand by those commitments and alliances. We take the advantages and the disadvantages of alliances. We take the benefits and non-benefits of alliances. We are willing perhaps to face nuclear annihilation for a common cause and common destiny and common values. Perhaps one of the reasons why no progress has been made in the settlement of the Kashmir dispute is because we are committed firmly to our alliances. No one then can delude anybody that Pakistan is flirting with Communist China. We have a boundary agreement with all countries, with Burma, with Iran China happens to be our neighbour as well and, as with all others, we have concluded a boundary agreement with that neighbour in the interests of peace and security and stability to remove all possible sources of friction, so that peace is consolidated, so that there is not a repetition of the conflict that India is involved in with so many countries. This was in the interest not only of our alliances, this was in the interest of world peace. We have recognized reality; many countries have recognized the reality. Have they been accused of flirting with Communist China? May we remind the representative of the Government of India of the ten years of seduction that existed between the Government of India and the People's Republic of China ?

 

We here in this Council are accused of flirtations with a neighbour merely because we have normal relations, but no one in this Council is so naive as to be taken in by this propaganda of the Government of India, and those friends and allies of ours, whom we stand by firmly and resolutely, know it better than anyone else. What is this flirtation? When the Pancha Shila was proclaimed by India after it had reached agreement with China over Tibet in 1954 as the magic formula which would ensure world peace in our time, that was not flirtation. If slogans of "Chini Hindi Bhai Bhai '' [the Chinese and the Indians are brothers] rent the Indian skies for years, that was not flirtation. But when Pakistan concludes a boundary agreement with China in the interest of peace and tranquility in Asia, that becomes flirtation. It is obvious that India has a double standard of international conduct, one for itself and quite another for Pakistan.

 

We are accused of weakening India domestically and internationally. I have dealt sufficiently with the domestic aspect. How have we weakened India internationally? Must we remain on unfriendly terms with India's neighbours because India's relations with most of them are unfriendly? It is not alone with Pakistan that India has differences. India has differences with almost all its neighbours. If those differences had been only with Pakistan, then perhaps there might have been some blame that could be apportioned to Pakistan. But apparently India is right in every case and the rest of the world-and in particular its neighbours-is wrong in every case.

 

We are accused of having given away to China as a result of the boundary agreement 2,000 square miles of Kashmir. I think the representative of India for reducing the charge to this more modest dimension. Immediately after the conclusion of the boundary agreement, the Prime Minister of India stated in the Indian Parliament on 5 March 1963 that Pakistan had "surrendered" 13,000 square miles of territory to China. Now we come down to 2,000 square miles. The fact is that Pakistan did not surrender a single inch of territory to the People's Republic of China.

 

The representative of India has also asserted that the people of Kashmir were perfectly happy under the benevolent rule of India and should not therefore be given the right of self-determination. He told the Council that the revenue of the State of Jammu and Kashmir had increased; so had food production. There were more schools, more hospitals, better roads, electricity and so forth, then there were ten years ago. This glowing report, permit me to say, reminded one of nothing so much as an account of its administration of a territory given by a colonial Power before the Trusteeship Council. The argument that the people are well fed and happy under foreign rule, that the benevolent ruler knows what is best for the people and that those who speak for freedom are disgruntled agitators is one with which this world Organization is all too familiar. How many times have we not heard the Foreigh Minister of South Africa stand at the costrum of the General Assembly and extol, in terms of hospital beds, schoolrooms, roads, kilowatts and megawatts the benefits brought about by his Government to the indigenous people of South West Africa ? Like the Education Minister of India, the Foreign Minister of South Africa too feels that if only his Government were left alone, all would be well. He too would like the world to believe that those who decry the denial of human rights to the people of South Africa and South West Africa are agitators uninitiated in the ways of Christianity and democracy and secularism, and involved in an international conspiracy against South Africa and the peace of the world. The number and diversity of reasons put forward by the representative of India for not fulfilling the pledge given by his Government is so great that it is not easy to follow the thread of his argument.

 

We have always considered Kashmir to be a vitally important question because it is, above all, a human question on whose just and honourable resolution depends on the fate and future of nearly 600 million people who inhabit the India Pakistan subcontinent. It is the Indian pretension that Kashmir is a symbol and guarantee of their secularism. I venture to submit that Kashmir is a test of the ability of the world community to resolve disputes through peaceful means. If Kashmir is to be a symbol and guarantee, let it be the symbol of the willingness of nations to solve disputes through peaceful means and a guarantee that justice will be done to all States and all people, big and small.

 

The Kashmir dispute has persisted for many years. The complexities that surround it are the complexities of politics and powers. The issue involved is simple and clear the right of a people to self-determination and the obligation of States to honour international commitments. We heard a scholastic discourse the other day from the Education Minister of India on the meaning of the word "self-determination". To those of us in these halls who fought and struggled for this right, to those of us who symbolize by our presence here the triumph of this principle, the meaning of self-determination is quite clear.

 

Pakistan is not playing with the idea of self-determination when it talks of Kashmir any more than when it speaks of self-determination for Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia and South West Africa. "What is self ?" asked the representative of India, Mr. Chagla, the other day, as if he were unaware of the commitments given by his Government to the people of Kashmir, to Pakistan and to the Security Council. This is how the Prime Minister of India, his Prime Minister, answered the question on three different occasions. In 1947, in a broadcast to the Indian nation, Mr. Nehru said; "We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge we have given not only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot back out of it."

 

In 1951, in that unfortunate city of Srinagar in which blood is flowing at this very hour while we gather here, he declared :

 

"I want to repeat to the Government of India that I will stand by that pledge, whatever happens. That pledge itself stated that it is for the people of Kashmir to decide their fate without external interference."

 

Then, in the Indian Parliament, in February 1951, the Prime Minister of India declared :

 

"We have given our pledge to the people of Kashmir and subsequently to the United Nations. We stood by it and we stand by it today. Let the people of Kashmir decide."

 

The words are simple, their meaning clear-"Let the people of Kashmir decide." There is no equivocation here, no quibbling about what is self-determination, no fear that the unity, solidarity and integrity of India was at stake,

 

Yet, now we are told that the right of self-determination is something the countries of Africa and Asia ought to fear. In his short lesson on the history of the United States, the representative of India recalled for us the bloody Civil War fought in the United States to prevent the South from seceding. The analogy is inaccurate since Kashmir not a part of India trying to secede, nor a slave-owning society attempting to retain slavery. Kashmir is an entity and a people, and to quote Mr. Nehru, it is a people "with a soul of its own and an individuality of its own" to whom the promise was made sixteen years ago that it would be free to decide its own future. The interesting and revealing feature of the analogy drawn by the representative of India is that he

obviously sees the situation in Kashmir as one in which an unwilling people have, by force of arms, to be held within the Indian Union for the fulfilment of some high and noble purpose of which India is the self-appointed instrument.

 

Pakistan has come here not to seek your support for the right of a minority to secede from the Indian Union. It comes to seek a reaffirmation of the pledge given to all the people of Kashmir that they will be enabled to decide the future of their land. The people of Kashmir are not an Indian minority. They will never be an Indian minority. "Kashmir is not the property of either India or Pakistan. It belongs to the people of Kashmir", and the people of Kashmir alone will decide as to what their future affiliation and course of action will be. The words I have just spoken once again are the words of the Prime Minister of India.

 

The Education Minister of India tried to raise the spectre of fragmentation of the States of Africa and Asia, many of which have minorities within their borders, if the principle of self-determination were to be applied. On previous occasions, Indian spokesmen have made a transparent bid for African sympathy by comparing Kashmir with Katanga. It would be naive for me to enter into his game, but let me say that if Kashmir is Katanga, then its despotic Maharajah, whose forefathers purchased the valley and its people from the British for a handful of silver, is the Tshombe of Kashmir. The representative of India was outraged when I referred to the colonial nature of India's hold over Kashmir. Yet when we hear him hold forth on the complexities and dangers of self determination, when we hear him extol the virtues of multi racialism, do we not hear echoes of the sentiments expressed by President Salazar of Portugal in his declaration on Africa ?

 

In his broadcast of 12 August 1963, Mr. Salazar asked the following questions:

 

"If self-determination aims fundamentally at verifying the assent given to the form of state or of government under which populations live, it is not understood how there can be a single method of achieving this purpose or of determining that assent, the single method being a plebiscite following the illegitimate demands of Nations." of the United

 

According to Mr. Salazar, Angola and Mozambique are an integral part of Portugal because Portuguese law says so, and any attempt to ascertain the wishes of the people of Angola and Mozambique is to be viewed as a dangerous negation of the noble and high-minded policy of multiracialism which Portugal has been attempting, for the last 500 years, to follow in Africa.

 

The representative of India considers that the future of the world depends on the evolution of multiracial nations and States in different parts of the world. Perhaps that may be so; it is not a contention with which we quarrel in principle. Pakistan itself is a country in which people profess different faiths, speaking different languages, belonging to diverse racial origins. Our difference on this matter with India -as with Portugal - is that we believe that the evolution toward multi-racial States and societies should come about not by force, not on the basis of legal fictions, but on the willing consent of the people. If this is a reactionary policy, then we plead guilty.

 

The representative of India sought to enlighten about India's crusade against imperialism and colonialism. He claims, I venture to submit, would have been far more convincing if, in the same statement, he had not built his whole case regarding Kashmir on the rights of the ruler, a feudal chief, a tyrant who had been protected from his own people only under an imperialist dispensation. Moreover, it is unfortunate for the claims of the representative of India regarding India's anti-imperialist mentality that when he wants to prove Kashmir's affiliation with India, he cites the evidence that Kashmir was a part of the empire of Emperor Asoka. only Kashmir but the whole of Pakistan and most of Afghanistan were included in the empire of Asoka. And it is fatal for Mr. Chagas thesis that the political thought of modern India has been articulated in other terms by her most prominent writers and authors "The small national state is doomed" these are not anti-colonialist words: they are the words of Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru in his book, The Discovery of India. And India's ambitions are well expressed by the distinguished Indian author and diplomatist, the late Mr. K.M. Panikkar who on page 16 of his book India and the Indian Ocean writes:

 

"Our vision has been obscured by an un-Indian wave of pacifism. 'Ahimsa' "- non-violence-" is no doubt a great religious creed, but that is a creed which India rejected when she refused to follow Gautama Buddha. The Hindu theory at all times, especially in the period of her historic greatness, was one of active assertion of the right, if necessary through the force of arms..To the Indian ocean, we shall then have to turn, as our ancestors. did, who conquered Socotra long before the Christian Era, and established an Empire in the Pacific

 

Surely the attitude that is projected here is one of expansionism, an attitude that would extend India's hegemony from Somalia to Indonesia, and from the Hindu Kush to the Mekong River, that is, over all countries and territories touched by the waters of the Indian Oceans. It is, I submit, hardly an anti colonialist attitude.

 

Who has not heard of the epic freedom struggle of the peoples inhabiting the sub-continent? For many years all of us fought side by side, although even while the struggle continued, the present leadership of India opposed, tooth and nail, the right of Pakistan to be a free and independent country. It pains us, therefore, that a country so recently liberated from foreign rule, should itself now employ the arguments and maneuvers associated with colonial powers to deny the priceless gift of freedom to the people of Kashmir.

 

The representative of India stated that democracy, like charity, must begin at home. I would remind him that this is true of all virtue and that self-righteousness is no substitute for righteousness. He asserted that India has fought unceasingly in the United Nations for the cause of freedom in Asia and Africa. I do not think that it is even necessary for me to remind the members of the council of the humble contribution that Pakistan itself has tried to make to the struggles of the peoples of Asia and Africa to free themselves from foreign. domination. We take no credit for this. We seek no credit for it. It is our duty. It is our responsibility to world peace and to anti-colonialism. It is a natural thing. It is a normal thing; it is not a phenomenon. Nor do we wish to suggest that Pakistan's impact has been of a singular or decisive nature. The credit must go in every case to the people themselves and to their leaders who fought and struggled, even as the people of Kashmir are doing today.

 

How can India reconcile its record in Kashmir with the role it sees for itself as the leader, the prime mover, and the inspiration of freedom movements all over the word? Those of us who have worked in the United Nations on these problems, know full well the equivocations and hesitations of India whenever the question has come up of self-determination in any part of the world.

 

I am afraid that, in his zeal to contradict my statement, the distinguished representative of India forgot to read it carefully. He attributes to me some pacans of praise with regard to Sheikh Abdullah. Actually, though I cannot fail to honour the suffering and admire the sacrifice of Sheikh Abdullah since 1953, the laudatory phrases about him that were contained in my statement were not mine; they came from the Prime Minister of India and they were all within quotation marks. If the distinguished representative of India contradicts them, he contradicts them, he contradicts his own Prime Minister and does not contradict me. Then, he claims that the trial of Sheikh Abdullah has been with due process of law. This claim can be judged from the following report published in The Times of London on 30 September 1963:

 

"In June, the senior prosecuting counsel, Mr. Pande retired from the case. He said that the money for his fees could be better used. The trial, he said, could go on for another five to seven years."

 

It can also be judged from the letter addressed to the Prime Minister of India by fifty members of the Indian Parliament in September 1963. The report of this letter, published in The Times of London in the same issue said:

 

"In view of the adverse effect which the trial of Shaikh Abdullah and his associates was having overseas and of 'the colossal and abnormal amounts believed to have been spent' on the case, this was the 'opportune and favourable time' for the withdrawal of the charges, the members argued.

 

"If the Government of India could find a graceful and politically safe way of withdrawing the charges against the Shaikh they would need no urging by the Opposition. Although the interminable proceedings in Jammu lend themselves to forgetfulness, they sit uncomfortably on Delhi's political conscience and, quite apart from the fate of the Shaikh himself, there are many who deplore the effect of this transparently political trial on the independence and self-confidence of the Indian judiciary.

 

"If Shaikh Abdullah could be brought to bind himself not to take up again the cause of an independent Kashmir or of a plebiscite to decide its future, Delhi might be pleased to release him. The Shaikh himself has said that he holds the key to his prison but will not give the assurances that are demanded."

 

But the Sheikh releasing and calling for a change in the present status in Kashmir would be an upsetting influence, to say the least. This, as I said before, is a report of the letter addressed to the Prime Minister of India by fifty members of the Indian Parliament, and comments thereon.

 

The representative of India stated in his opening remarks that "no new situation has arisen to aggravate the existing conditions in Jammu and Kashmir'' [1088th meeting, para, 4]. There is no alien power occupying a territory against the wishes of its people which will ever admit the existence of a new or troubled situation in that territory. It would require high statesmanship and unusual admission of facts for India to acknowledge the present situation. What has actually been taking place in the last several weeks in the Indian-occupied area has been, in the words of President Mohammed Ayub Khan, "a spontaneous referendum of the people '' in which the people returned an overwhelming verdict against India. Let me quote some further testimony on the new situation in Kashmir. The correspondent of The Times of London wrote from Srinagar, on 2 February 1964:

 

"Whenever crowds gather-and the sight of foreign correspondents, of whom there are only two just now, can be enough to attract a clamouring mob shouts are raised for Sheikh Abdullah, for a plebiscite, and even for Pakistan

 

He adds,

 

"...but the affair of the hair has brought to the surface all the stored resentments of the Kashmir is and the crumbling of the local regime and its replacement by administrators and police from outside from India' as a Kashmiri would say have made it likely that the resentments will now be focussed on Delhi. Discussion of the Kashmir problem in the past has always been comfortably informed with the belief that at least it would not be complicated by violent expressions of their own will by the Kashmiris. When the matter is before the United Nations again this week, it may have to be noted that there is a new factor in the old equation, the self-assertion of the Kashmiris."

 

This is a foreign observer talking of a "new factor in the old equation", but here we have the representative of India saying that there is no new situation.

 

Then there is the dispatch in The New York Times written from Srinagar on 5 February:

 

"The Government of India was described today as 'completely out of touch with the real sentiments' of the people of the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.

 

"That was the view of several Kashmiri business leaders, including Hindus, in this predominantly Moslem region.

 

"According to these men, who asked not to be identified, 'since 1954 the Moslem majority of Kashmir has been pro-Pakistan.

 

"Their view was completely different from that expressed yesterday." by Lal Bahadur Shastri, the Indian Minister Without Portfolio, after his return to New Delhi.

 

"Mr. Shastri said that the feeling in Kashmir was 'definitely pro-Indian'. "The Kashmiri business leaders, however, insisted that most of the people here were pro-Pakistan."

 

Here is a record of the opinion in Kashmir which serves to refute the Indian representative's suggestion that the unrest is directed solely against the local administration.

 

The correspondent of The Sunday Star, Washington, wrote on 26 January :

 

"For four weeks now the Kashmiris, in an impressively disciplined non-violent rebellion, have demonstrated their hostility toward closer links with India and their determination to decide their destiny.

 

"India's peacemaking overtures and righteous indignation are not an effective substitute for the probably only lasting solution-finally granting the Kashmiris self-determination."

 

He added:

 

"The United States cannot now commit itself to a long term arms aid to India within the next few weeks, as it has planned to, without seriously questioning the possible repercussions of what amounts to indirectly supporting India's virtual colonial overlordship of Kashmir."

 

In the same dispatch, the correspondent says that "the Indian Government has not chosen to reveal a true picture of events in Srinagar". Considering that remark, it is not all surprising to hear the denial by the representative of India that there is no new situation in Kashmir.

 

There are further statements of foreign observervers for example, the report in the Baltimore Sun of 5 February, which says "the hair, which Muslims believe came originally from the Prophet, is only a symptom of the problems in the Indian two-thirds of Kashmir" but I am forced to content myself with these in order to avoid undue length. The representative of India has tried to make it appear that the theft of the holy relic was an isolated incident, and that, with alleged recovery of the relic, the incident is closed. While the Government and the people of Pakistan were gravely perturbed over this theft and took no position regarding the genuineness of its recovery. I must make it clear that it is the revelations brought about by this incident, rather than the incident itself, which are seeking to draw the Council's attention.

 

There is a significant report in The Times of India relating to the situation after what purported to be the exposition of the holy relic. According to this dispatch from Srinagar, the President of the People's Action Committee said that the ban imposed by the Committee on the opening of shops on Fridays would continue until their demands had been conceded. It was after the recovery of the relic, again, that Maulan Masoodi, according to a Reuters dispatch said that Indian-held Kashmir was "too much a police State, with every Minister moving around with police protection.", and not only did he demand the release of Sheikh Abdullah but also criticized the expulsion of Ghulam Abbas and Yusuf Shah, two Kashmiri leaders who, since 1947 have led the movement for the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan. It is also after the recovery of the holy relic that reports continue of strikes in Srinagar, of the momentum in other towns of Kashmir besides Srinagar and of discriminate arrest.

 

In this connexion, I must mention some recent utterances of Bakshi Ghulam Mohammaed who for ten years, beginning in 1953, was the so-called Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and, therefore, India's main prop in the State. I have already quoted [1087th meeting] his statement of 17 January 1964 that the demands of the people of Kashmir were for the release of Sheikh Abdullah and the holding of a plebiscite. This statement was later "clarified" in a manner which furnished strong grounds for the belief that the "clarification" was made under pressure. We have now a statement from Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed, according to reliable reports, still uncontradicted and circulated in Delhi. The statement said:

 

"Consequent upon the dismissal and arrest in 1953 of Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah because be had asked India to withdraw troops from Kashmir preparatory to holding of the promised plebiscite, I accepted premiership of the State as it was my honest conviction then that majority community of Kashmir could be brought round to staying on with India and that they would really be better off and more secure with secular India than with communal Pakistan.

 

"For a full decade. I did all I could towards this end, but year after year I became wiser by observing that events in India reflected on the psychology of Kashmiris."

 

Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed went no to say:

 

"The recent episode of the Holy Relic at Hazratbal has extremely shocked sensitive Kashmiri Muslims who now openly declare that even their religion and culture is not safe with India. They also say that Pakistan is no more a Muslim State than India is a Hindu State and the very fact that everything that befalls Hindus in Pakistan retaliates all the more severely on Muslims in India belies the claim of India to be a secular State, a State above religion. They fear their fate tomorrow will be no different from or not better than that of Calcutta Muslims.

 

"Of their three immediate demands, namely the release of Sheikh Abdulla, the holding of a plebiscite and the inquiry into affairs that led to the events of 1953, I have already apprised the Press."

 

He continued:

 

"I frankly admit that what Sheikh Abdullah said in 1953, I say today after a further ten years of experiment. Even today I am honest and faithful to India and if it comes to a plebiscite, I might vote for India but to keep the Indian Government and the Indian people in the dark about the inner working of the mind of Kaskmiri Mussulmans is a sin and a disservice.

 

"Many people may well call this statement of mine blackmail, but I make it clear, once and for all, that I am by no means eager or willing to become Premier of Kashmir again, and even if I am asked to, I will never accept that post; nor do I oppose the change of the present Government in the State, nor for that matter the establishment of President rule or Sadr-i-Riyasat rule, or whatever the Government of India and the people of Kashmir desire."

 

Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed has up to now been one of the main instruments of India's designs in Jammu and Kashmir. A statement of this nature, coming from India's chief agent in the State, acquires a singular importance. We have reports that currently he is under extreme pressure from the Indian Government and that he is either to be arrested and imprisoned - like his predecessor, Sheikh Abdullah-or forced to rescind his statements. A strong suspicion that the Government of India will mete out severe punishment to him for his audacity in confessing the facts about Kashmir is created by the statement of two former members of the Government, Sham Lal Saraf and Girdhari Lal Dogra, charging him with damaging the interests of India.

 

These are some of the facts which give an indication of the present situation in India-occupied Kashmir. If killing by police firing of scores of people, general strikes paralyzing whole cities and towns, massive demonstrations by virtually the entire adult population of capital city and sullen resentment spontaneously expressing itself before foreign observers do not constitute a grave situation, then what will, except an outbreak of hostilities?

 

That is the restraining hand of the Pakistan Government alone which preserves place in Kashmir-all the charges against us levelled by the Indian representative notwithstanding -is apparent from the repeated demands made by the Azad Kashmir Government, and the All Jammu and Kashmir Muslim Conference for the abrogation of the cease-fire agreement. These demands are not lightly made. They are the spontaneous expression of the tension in Azad Kashmir which is a direct result of the repression under which the Indian-occupied and Indian dominated area of Jammu and Kashmir groans.

 

The Indian representative denies the gravity of the situation and flings epithets at us for narrating "a horror story" fandor being victims of a "vivid imagination". If the evidence we have offered is not sufficient, let the Security Council employ whatever machinery is feasible for a thorough and impartial fact finding of the situation in the Indian-occupied area of Jammu and Kashmir which should include taking the evidence of all political prisoners in the area. We do not see how the truth can be finally established except by an impartial inquiry. In fact, we do not see how the Security Council can avert a danger to international peace and security except by keeping the situation in Indian-occupied Kashmir under its constant and independent scrutiny.

 

We have drawn the Council's attention to the present situation in the State of Jammu and Kashmir and to the serious. deterioration in the relations between India and Pakistan which is the direct consequence of that situation. In doing so, we believe we have done the duty that the Charter has imposed on us, the duty of seeking assistance from this world Organization. In ameliorating the situation, in arresting the deterioration, in preventing an accentuated conflict. Upon the assistance that the Council, in its wisdom and in its sense of the collective responsibility of mankind, will render us, rest the hopes for peace in our region. We pray that these hopes may not receive a setback.