Extract from the speech made by Mr. Chakravarty represented India in the General Assembly meeting No. 1153 held on 15th October 1962.

Extract from the speech made by Mr. Chakravarty represented India in the General Assembly meeting No. 1153 held on 15th October 1962.

Coming now to the question of Kashmir, again the Foreign Minister summarized my arguments but evaded a straight answer. Does he challenge my statement that the British Government made it clear that the partition was of British India and that it did not apply to those States ruled by Indian princes ? No. Does he challenge my statement that both India and Pakistan, as also the United Kingdom, were partners to the decision that accession should be decided only by the princes ruling the State? No. He was not able to challenge my statement that the right to accede to either India or Pakistan was the right to be exercised by the princes; that the accession of a State had nothing to do with the principle on which British India was partitioned. He did not answer my question about whether Pakistan. would grant the right of self-determination to the people of the States whose rulers acceded to Pakistan. Does he question the legality of those accessions? He did not answer my question why Pakistan, if it believes in the principle of self-determination, had to invade the State of Kashmir in the first place. These are indeed inconvenient questions-best to be evaded.

While he evaded answers to my questions, I shall not evade an answer to his question whether I have the audacity, as he says, to maintain that it was for the feudal Maharaja alone to decide the destiny of the 4 million people of Kashmir. My answer is categorical and straight. Yes, that indeed was the decision and, what is more, a decision to which both Pakistan and India, as also the United Kingdom, were parties. That was the principle followed in the case of some 600 princely States which acceded either to India or to Pakistan. That the accession is not related to the principle of partition of British India is clear from the British Government's announcement of 3 June 1947, which said:

"His Majesty's Government wish to make it clear that the decisions announced [about partition]...relate only to British India and that their policy towards Indian States contained in the Cabinet Mission's Memorandum of 12th May, 1946, remains unchanged."

The Cabinet Mission's memorandum reads as follows:

"His Majesty's Government will cease to exercise the powers of paramountcy.. This means that the rights ...which flow from their relationship to the Crown will no longer exist and that all the rights surrendered by the States to the paramount power will return to the States. Political arrangements between the State on the one side and the British Crown...will thus be brought to an end. The void will have to be filled either by the States entering into a federal relationship with the success of the Government or Government in British India, or failing this, enter into particular political arrangements with it or them."