17031964 Text of the speech made by Mr. Bhutto (Pakistan) in the Security Council meeting No. 1104 held on 17 March 1964.
17031964 Text of the speech made by Mr. Bhutto (Pakistan) in the Security Council meeting No. 1104 held on 17 March 1964.
Mr. President, I am grateful to you and to the other members of the Council for convening this meeting to resume the Council's consideration of the situation in Jammu and Kashmir and its grave repercussions on the relations between India and Pakistan. At the 1093rd meeting of the Council, I requested postponement of a few days in the Council's proceedings. My Government deeply appreciates that this request was granted by the council.
My purpose in addressing the Council again is first, to give a brief account of the situation in Kashmir as it has developed since our last meeting and, secondly, to clarify my Government's position in relation to the perspectives that emerged during the Council's discussion in February.
It will be recalled that the situation which we brought to the Council's attention had as its immediate background the announced intention of the Government of India to integrate Jammu and Kashmir with the territory of the India Union in violation of the international agreement regarding the State, an agreement binding upon both parties to the dispute. The announcement of this policy of the Government of India evoked the utmost resentment of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The result was an outbreak of open rebellion against India in Kashmir.
After the Council had heard both parties, every member expressed deep anxiety for a prompt and peaceful solution of the dispute. An appeal to the two parties to refrain from measures which might aggravate the situation was clear in the statements made by the members of the Council without exception. It is my painful duty to report that this appeal has not been heeded by the Government of India. On the contrary, the Minister of Education of India, in a statement of 24 February 1964, made in the Indian Parliament, even tried to distort the statements of the members of the Security Council and interpreted them as conveying a tacit acceptance of further measures of integration of the State of Jammu and Kashmir into India.
Thus three facts have emerged during the interval since. our last meeting: first, the movement of protest in the State of Jammu and Kashmir has continued; secondly, India has shown no signs of relenting in its policy of repression against the people of the State; thirdly, the Government of India has shown itself to be best on adopting those very measures towards the annexation of the State against which Pakistan had specifically protested to the Council. Thus, during the interval, there has been no mitigation of the gravity of the situation between India and Pakistan.
Let me cite some important developments that have occurred since our last meeting. On 20 February 1964, India's Minister of Home Affairs, Mr. Gulzarilal Nanda, indicated in the Indian Parliament that "the special constitutional provisions that differentiated Jammu and Kashmir from other states of the Indian Union would soon disappear". He added that "conditions as they developed called for speedier action now".
on the same day, a correspondent of The Times of London, reporting from Srinagar, said that Delhi would "cobble up an arrangement" in-Kashmir. The arrangement that was cobbled was the installation of a new puppet Premier in Indian-occupied Kashmir on 28 February 1964. It is significant that this was done in defiance of the warnings given by saner elements within India itself. A prominent member of the Indian Parliament, Mr. M. R. Masani, stated on 26 February that "replacing Mr. Shamsuddin with Mr. G. M. Sadiq the Prime Minister could not stabilize the situation in the State for long". Indeed, the new puppet was installed even though The Times reported on 25 February that "resentment against Delhi's insistence on imposing him had increased considerably in Kashmir".
It is evident that Mr. Sadiq was nominated to head the Indian-sponsored regime in Kashmir because he had been demanding complete integration with the rest of India and the ending of Kashmir's special status. He fulfilled the expectations of his patrons by announcing on 1 March 1964 that his Government would remove all barriers to the territory's integration with "the rest of India". To this end, the new Indian-sponsored regime in Kashmir introduced a bill in the so-called State Assembly on 10 March 1964, which seeks to change the designation of the Head of State and the Head of Government of Indian-occupied Kashmir, and provides for replacement of the State flag by the flag of India.
India's new agent in Kashmir has gone even further and has called for the appointment of the Government of Indian occupied Kashmir by the President of India instead of his being elected by the State ``Legislature". The new Cabinet includes a Minister belonging to an extremist Hindu organization, whose avowed object is to convert by means of violence and by large-scale immigration from India, Kashmir into Hindu-majority area. Furthermore, key posts in the civil and police administration of Indian-occupied Kashmir have been turned over to non-Kashmiri officials. These include the post of Chief Secretary, to which an official of the Government of India has been appointed with full powers to fill other sensitive posts by the officials of the Government of India.
It is hardly necessary to explain at length the effect which these measures are designed to have. Their meaning is unmistakable. They are designed to carry out the annexation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to the Indian Union. They are designed to destroy the identity of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. As I said in my statements in February, the question at issue is not what provision India should retain in, or eliminate from, its Constitution. The question at issue is India intends to facilitate the exercise of free choice by the people of Jammu and Kashmir or work to prevent it. Inasmuch as India, at an early stage, sought to give a symbolic recognition to the identity of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in article 370 of its Constitution, the abrogation of this article to be understood in no other light than India's intention to present the United Nations with a fait accompli and to try to close all avenues of escape for the people of Jammu and Kashmir,
We have protested to the Security Council against India keeping the accredited leaders of the people of Jammu and Kashmir in gaol. But what we are witnessing now is the wholesale imprisonment of an entire people and an attempt at reinforcing and multiplying the bars of steel behind which they have been encaged. Permit me to say that no act of the Government of India could be more calculated to serve as a grave provocation to Pakistan and to demonstrate complete defiance of the wishes of the United Nations for an amicable settlement of the dispute. Considering the timing and the rapidity of the execution of these measures for the integration of Indian-occupied Kashmir with India, how is it possible, I ask, for us to understand them except as evidence of India's determination to bring matters to a head and stage a show down? This is the situation that we are bringing to the Council's attention.
It will be recalled that, when we drew the Council's attention to the upsurge of popular feeling in Kashmir against India, the Indian representative emphatically replied that "the demonstrations in Kashmir were aimed at the local administration" and had no bearing upon Kashmir's relation with India or Pakistan. The question naturally arises: what is the truth?
The truth could be found out by an independent fact finding agency of the Security Council, if one existed, and my Government would be under necessity to elaborate the point further. In the absence of such an agency, however, one can only turn to the reports of impartial foreign observers. Out of the many which have appeared recently, I shall quote only a few. The The Time of London, of February 1964, for example, reported:
"Intense feeling in the Valley against the ruling party in the State, the National Conference, has been projected against Delhi as well, and feeling there has probably never been more strongly against integration with India than it is now".
I might recall here that in my statements before the Council in February, I had said that it was the revelations brought about by the Hazratbal incident, rather than the incident itself, to which we were seeking to draw the Council's attention. All subsequent developments in Kashmir have borne out the truth of our submission. Here, for example, is a report in The New York Times of 29 February 1964, which says:
"The riots that followed the theft from a mosque of a hair revered as a relic of"-the Prophet-"Mohammed brought to light strong anti-Government feeling in
Kashmir... "New Delhi was alarmed by the pro-Pakistan sentiments of the people, which continued to be expressed after the relic had been restored".
Here is another report in The Evening Star Washington of 14 March 1964, which says:
"India maintained that the popular uprising was directed against the local puppet government and did not express resentment against India itself. Weeks after tens of thousands of Kashmiris demonstrated in the streets of Kashmir's capital, Srinagar, demanding a plebiscite, independence or to join Pakistan, Prime Minister Nehru's new deputy, Lal Bahadur Shastri, told Parliament that the people of Kashmir welcomed full integration with India".
The correspondent then talks of "the cloud of gloom and despair" in the Kashmir valley because of "a combination of armed police and imported Indian administrators", and then he adds: "India now seeks a breathing spell to regain its shaky hold on Kashmir and wants time to absorb it gradually into India".
This testimony about the facts of the situation in Kashmir is further strengthened by reports in the Indian Press itself. According to The Times of India of 20 February 1964, most of the shops in Srinagar remained closed on 19 February in response to a call given by the Action Committee for observance of a general strike as a mark of protest against the convening of the State Assembly which "was not a true representative body". An article entitled "Inside Kashmir" by a columnist, Nandan B. Kagal, in the same newspaper on 26 February said:
"Whether one likes it or not, the Action Committee set up by Maulana Masoodi after the Hazratbal theft has within the space of a few weeks seemingly become the voice of the people of the Kashmir valley. It appears to have a wider popular base than any other political group in Kashmir today. It has called for Sheikh Abdullah's release and also for Choudhury Ghulam Abbas's return to Kashmir. When these demands are coupled with the allegation that the State Assembly does not truly. reflect the will of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, the political objectives of Maulana Masoodi and the Action Committee become quite clear. Once the representative nature of the Kashmir Assembly is challenged, though it might remain legally valid, their meaningfulness in terms of democratic principles is reduced. Maulana Masoodi in effect says that Kashmir's accession to India is neither final nor irrevocable..."
Then The Times of India on 21 February said that: "It is now quite plain that Maulana Masoodi and his colleagues on the Action Committee want to reopen the accession issue."
What clearer refutation, I ask, could emanate from India itself of the thesis advanced by the representative of India here that "the demonstrations in Kashmir were aimed at the local administration".
As a matter of fact, the latest reports leave one in no doubt about the nature of the popular movement in Kashmir. According to The Statesman of Delhi of 17 March 1964, the Action Committee in Srinagar, which has elsewhere been described as "the voice of the people", affirmed in a resolution on 15 March that the people of the State would not accept any solution of the Kashmir issue which is not based on the freely expressed will of the people, and called for immediate implementation in full of all pledges given to the people. They demanded the resolution of the dispute once and for all on the basis of a free and fair vote. The Kashmir Political Conference issued a statement on 16 March 1964, demanding that an appropriate atmosphere be established for the meeting of the leaders of India and Pakistan to solve the Kashmir question in accordance with the wishes of the people of Jammu and Kashmir.
The truth is that India knows full well the reality of the people's movement in Kashmir and the cause of the continued crisis. Yet what is the response of the Government of India ? It is to proceed with greater speed to integrate Kashmir into the Indian Union. It is to threaten stern action against anyone in Kashmir who stands in the way. When the Government of India threatens dire consequences for it the people of Jammu and Kashmir take the stand that they are entitled to decide their own destiny, it brings out the explosive nature of the present situation more clearly than it can be described. It shows that India, which is a Member of the United Nations, a signatory to the Charter, pledged to respect the authority of the Security Council, is prepared to persecute a people for no other act than their making manifest the demand that a principle of the Charter, and the decisions of the Security Council based on it, should implemented in their case. Even if there had been other disquieting factors in the present situation, this attitude of the Government of India would itself be enough justification for Pakistan to seek the Council's intervention.
Actually, there are other disquieting factors which I have already reported. They emphasize the critical, cancerous nature of the present situation between India and Pakistan. The situation on the cease-fire line, always uneasy, is today more troubled than ever before. Serious incidents have taken place in recent weeks, leading to heavy exchanges of fire, resulting in a number of deaths. The urgency of the situation is poignant. There is no international agency but Security Council which can meet it and thus help to avert the danger to peace, which is otherwise being dangerously augmented day by day.
The danger to peace is indicated by the statements of responsible Indian spokesmen. On 15 March 1964, India's Minister for Works and Rehabilitation, Mr. Khanna, said that Pakistan is "India's enemy No. 1" and urged Indian students to follow the path of Shivaji and Govind Singh". These were war-lords in Indian history who fought against the Muslims and who were defeated by the Muslims. These were the war-lords to which the Indians referred during the Sino Indian conflict. The Defence Minister of India has added to this statement that India will be "Pakistan's graveyard". Those are the words spoken by the Defence Minister of India the other day. While Pakistan, of course, remains unafraid of these threats, it is evident that they cannot be disregarded as an appraisal of the present situation.
The Council's consideration of the question in February helped to bring out again those aspects of the issue which, we believe, must not be obscured if a just and peaceful settlement is to be achieved. The pronouncements made by the members. The Council showed again that the United Nations is not sensitive to those principles upon which alone a structure of peace can be enduringly built.
The problem, however, remains that those pronouncements have to be brought to bear in reality in the situation which confronts us. One of the trends of the Council's debate has been to emphasize the necessity of resuming negotiations between India and Pakistan. I hardly remind the Council that this advice is not, and could never be, unwelcome to Pakistan. Throughout the existence of the dispute, the Government of Pakistan has been anxious to utilize all reasonable methods for its peaceful and equitable solution. When Member States of the Council talk of negotiations between India and Pakistan, I would merely ask them to take into account our long experience of this particular method of trying to resolve the dispute.
There were conversations between the Prime Ministers of India and Pakistan even before the issue was brought to the Council in 1948. There was a long correspondence in 1950 and 1951, punctuated by personal contacts between the Prime Ministers of both countries, about formulating the principles which should be given to the settlement of disputes between the two countries. There were negotiations again between the two Prime Ministers in 1953 and 1940. There were some direct talks in 1955. From 1958 to 1954 the President of Pakistan made sustained endeavours to source a just and peaceful settlement of the dispute by direct negotiation. Then again, as the members are well aware, six rounds of talks were held between India and Pakistan from December 1962 to May 1963. It can, therefore, hardly be said that we have failed to explore the possibilities of this method, far less spurned it.
Since all direct negotiations between India and Pakistan so far have failed, we believe that it is necessary to bear in mind the reason for their failure. When one party refers to the governing principles of the case and the other relies on its might, when one seeks the reality of negotiation and the other wants only to contrive its semblance, when one seeks to expedite the process and the other is determined to stall it, what is the result? The inevitable result is that the parties talk at cross purposes with each other. There is then nothing to prevent negotiations not only from being wasteful but, through their futility, from worsening a tense situation. Even mediation does not help greatly in such a case, unless the mediator is in a position to direct the negotiations and to relate them to a framework which is reasonably precise. That alone can give the negotiations some coherence and purpose. To ask a mediator to assist in achieving a solution without a defined basis is to place an unfair burden on him.
It was said in this Council in February that the negotiations required in this debate should be constructive and sincere, But the problem is, how do we make the negotiations with India constructive and sincere, if the Indian position is that which was stated in the Council? What promise of success can we discern when the Minister of Education of India, reporting the Council's proceedings to his Parliament on 24 February 1964, said: "I think we have laid the ghost once and for all for the holding of a plebiscite in Kashmir."
This kind of statement is probably an apt reminder to the Security Council that no formula for negotiations can help if it is vague and lends itself easily to distortion. Given the authority of the United Nations and his personal standing, the mediator's good offices will certainly be a positive element. But this element, in order to be constructive, needs a foundation and a base. It needs precise terms of reference that can be objectively commended.
What point of departure can be more objectively commended than the principles of the Charter and the international agreement which has been solemnly accepted by both parties? This agreement was not imposed by the Council. It is based on the common denominator between the declared standpoints of the parties and, in itself, embodies a compromise between their respective claims. It is an agreement to which the Security Council itself is a party and to the clarification of which the thought and effort of scores of Member States and the eminent individuals who have served as representatives in the Security Council have been devoted.
That the agreement embodied the pledge given by India and Pakistan to the people of the State is a fact which has been constantly affirmed and reaffirmed by the Security Council. Thus, the agreement has had behind it the recognition of all members of the United Nations. If anything was wanted in making this recognition universal, that, too, has now been done.
I must, in this context, stress before the Council that plebiscite in Kashmir is not just a slogan of Pakistan. It is not any consideration of prestige which attaches us to the international agreement on the state of Jammu and Kashmir, that is the two resolutions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan. We invoke the principle of self-determination because it is the only basis-I repeat, the only basis-on which a solution of this problem can endure. Let us keep in mind the nature of this problem. It is not the problem of a border. It is not a dispute over a piece of territory. It is not a clash of economic interests. It is not a rivalry between two systems. It is the problem of the life and future of nearly 5,000,000 people who inhabit a territory six times as large as Switzerland. In this day and age, how can we possibly dispose of this problem without impartially consulting the wishes of these people? Whether from an ethical or from a political point of view, there is no getting away from the fact that no solution of this question will be viable if it is arbitrary and if it is not based on, and sanctioned by, the freely expressed will of the people concerned.
Suppose, in a mood of real politic and mindful only of the changing experiences of politics and power, we were to try to hustle through what is called a political settlement. It is a likely proposition that this settlement will be conducive to peace if it is opposed by the people involved? It is natural that some men of goodwill should feel the need for a fresh approach to a problem that has persisted for sixteen years. But -and here is the cold fact of the matter-no fresh approach is likely to be anything but perverse if it does not have the support of the people of Jammu and Kashmir. That is why we remain unshaken in our conviction that any deviation from the principles of the two resolutions will result, not in an easement of the problem, but only in its aggravation.
We have grappled with this question all these years and one thought abides with us. Suppose the state were sponging clear and you were to consider the problem as if it had arisen now, not in 1948, but today. What would happen? In your search, however pragmatic, for an equitable settlement, you would be driven to the conclusion that there is only one sure way-the way of finding out what the people of Jammu and Kashmir themselves want. You would thus be driven to write again the substance of the resolutions.
At the Council's meetings in February, it was one of the stark statements of the Indian representative that the resolutions are obsolete. I would like to raise two questions. The first is general. If these resolutions are obsolete, does that mean that the people of Jammu and Kashmir are also obsolete and that their right of self-determination is also obsolete? The second question is one of even more urgent implications and it needs to be concretely answered by the Security Council, on the one side, and by India, on the other. The question is this: If we accept the position of the Government of India that it regards these resolutions as obsolete, then does it follow that the cease-fire in Kashmir is also obsolete, because there is no other sanction behind the cease-fire than the validity of these resolutions and their acceptance by India and Pakistan? It is evident that this is not a rhetorical question and we do not ask it in order to score a point. On the contrary, consequences of extremely practical nature will flow from the answer that will be given to us by the Government of India.
We have been gratified by the references made in the statements of the members of the Security Council to the realities of the situation. We welcome the suggestions that a solution must pay due regard to these realities. So people of Jammu and Kashmir are not any less of a reality today than they were in 1949. Will this statement be contested? The primary reality of the situation is the fact that the passage of time notwithstanding, these people are not reconciled to Indian occupation. The primary reality is their frustration and discontent. Her primary reality is their revolt. And the direct consequences of this reality is the fact that the dispute over Kashmir has brought about a threatening confrontation between India and Pakistan. The reality is that there has never been a time when the strain of the dispute in the entire India-Pakistan situation has shown any sign of being cased or when the tensions that it engenders have relaxed. It is to these realities that the efforts towards the peaceful solution of this problem have to be oriented if they are to bear any fruit. No so-called fresh approach can discover a substitute for a people's right to self-determination. No fresh approach can improve upon the substance of the resolutions, which is the ascertaining of the popular will in Jammu and Kashmir without coercion, corruption or interference from outside.
These are the considerations that must govern any endeavour towards a settlement, if that endeavour is really. a serious one. While there is no doubt that they have been implicit in the thoughts expressed here in the Council, the situation in Jammu and Kashmir demands suitable international action based on them. When I say that this action has been lacking, it will, I hope, be understood that I am not unappreciative of the efforts made by the members of the Security Council during the series of meetings in February to bridge the gulf between the parties. It is, however, discouraging that the spokesmen of the Government of India should have lost no time in distorting the expressed views of the Council members and in questioning the very basis of a consensus. This attitude underlines the necessity of the Council to adopt a precise and concrete formula for setting in motion a process that will result. in an amicable and honourable settlement of the dispute. We do not deny the values of appeals and exhortations. But it is essential that an appeal should constitute an adequate response to the urgent demands of the present situation. A suggestion to the two parties to negotiate is nothing more than an exhortation, unless some insurance is provided for the negotiations to be meaningful. I am certain that there is no member of the Security Council who will be satisfied by the parties merely going through the motions of negotiations and, as a result, increasing a dangerous feeling of futility in Jammu and Kashmir and in India and Pakistan.
We have come here again to offer our cooperation to the Council for the betterment of the situation between India and Pakistan. While we appreciate the spirit of the agreed opinionof the members of the Security Council and endorse its contents, we beg to remind the Council that this opinion needs to be clothed in such a form and conveyed in such terms as will tangibly help to move the situation towards a just, a peaceful and an honourable settlement of the dispute of Jammu and Kashmir.