Letter dated 6 July 1958 from the representative of India Arthur S. Lall to the President of the Security Council
Letter dated 6 July 1958 from the representative of India Arthur S. Lall to the President of the Security Council
In the interests of the functioning of the United Nations in accordance with the spirit and the letter of its Charter, it may well be best entirely to ignore the intemperate communication of 19 June 1958 addressed to you by the acting permanent representative of Pakistan and circulated as document S/4032. However, members of the Security Council in particular, and Members of the United Nations in general, will probably wish to know the facts relevant to the contents of the uncalled-for letter from the representative of Pakistan. I will therefore deal very briefly in this letter with some of the major misrepresentations contained in that letter.
In paragraph 3 of his letter, the acting permanent representative of Pakistan attacks in a most extraordinary manner. my use of the Daily Telegraph of London (issue dated 2 May 1958). It is perfectly admissible to use two extracts from the same publication-whether book or newspaper-in the form of a composite quotation. This is what was done in my letter of 11 June [S/4024] If the acting permanent representative of Pakistan had only bothered to read the letter carefully, he would have noticed a hyphen which breaks the quotation into two distinct parts. The first part, which is underlined by him, serves as a kind of heading or introductory passage for the distinct succeeding part which includes the essence, in the words of the special correspondent himself, of the dispatch mentioned in the first part of this composite quotation. I am sorry that this juxtaposition of two salient facts which naturally caused much discomfort to the representative of Pakistan, should have resulted in so much unfortunate vituperation and waste of words and effort by him
Incidentally, the representative of Pakistan has sought to support his untenable position by attaching as appendix I to his letter an alleged photostat copy of the relevant news despatch in the Daily Telegraph of 2 May 1958. I will refer a little later in this letter to the curious document furnished by him.
In paragraph 5 of his letter, the acting permeameter sensitive of Pakistan seeks to make much of the parenthetical phrase inserted in the last quotation in paragraph 5 of my letter of 11 June 1958. I would request you kindly to re read that part of my letter. It will be observed that the parenthetical portion inserted in the quotation from the Daily Telegraph of 3 May 1958 is meaningless in its present position. Obviously it was purely by a typographical error that it had been inserted after the pronoun "they" instead of before it. The words in parenthesis are meaningful and pertinent to the point contained in paragraph 5 of my letter of 11 June 1958 only if they are placed before the pronoun "they" instead of after it. I would request you therefore kindly to read that quotation with this correction. I am grateful that the attempted mudslinging by the representative of Pakistan has at any rate afforded us an opportunity to correct this typographical error and thereby to give added meaning to my own letter of 11 June 1958.
In the light of the foregoing remarks, the general accusations made by the acting permanent representative of Pakistan in various paragraphs of his letter are clearly groundless and do not warrant any further attention or comment.
In paragraph 3 above I have referred to the photostat of the news dispatch in the issue of the Daily Telegraph of London of 2 May. I am unaware of the edition of the Daily Telegraph to which the acting permanent representative of Pakistan is referred to as. With the present letter I am filing the original of the news dispatch as it appeared in the Daily Telegraph of 2 May, and I am reproducing a copy as an appendix to this letter. It will be observed that the text of the original dispatch filed with this letter, and the copy attached by me as an appendix, differ materially from the alleged photostat produced by the acting representative of Pakistan. For example, in the alleged photostat the words, "It seems to show that Sheikh Abdullah was a latent rather than an actual menace. But a menace he was' ', is put in the mouth of the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. The text of Mr. Gordon Shepherd's dispatch, which I have filed with this letter, shows that these words were not uttered by the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir. They are part of the comments made by the Daily Telegraph correspondent immediately following his quotation from the remarks of the Prime Minister which ends with the sentence, "I have been a little surprised at the lack of any reaction so far." Thus the representative of Pakistan, in order to bolster the incorrect meaning which he wishes to give to the words of the Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, has attributed to him words which in fact he did not use.
The following portions of Mr. Gordon Shepherd's published dispatch which are contained in the text field with this letter have been omitted from the alleged photostat filed by the acting permanent representative of Pakistan.
"When we had finished he strolled across the lawn to some benches where an assortment of Kashmiri were collecting. It was one of his twice-weekly general audience hours when any citizen is allowed to come in and present his grievances. Today's gathering, I was told, was neither more nor less than usual."
But the indications so far are that Sheikh Abdullah's followers are not getting very hot under their astrakhan hats and are finding discretion the better part of valour," As I have said, I do not know where the representative of Pakistan has procured his photostat, but it is quite clear that the portions which were omitted from his alleged photostat, and which appear in the original publication, do not assist his ill founded contentions.
The acting permanent representative of Pakistan seeks to justify his totally unconstitutional and supererogatory interest in the affairs of a constituent State of the Indian Union. Since Jammu and Kashmir acceded to the Indian Union in accordance with the terms of the statutory procedures laid down by an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom-the Government of India Act, 1935-and since these procedures have been accepted by the Governments of India and Pakistan, there can be no question that the type of interest which the acting permanent representative of Pakistan is taking in the domestic affairs of India is in violation of Article 2, paragraph 1, of the United Nations Charter. Moreover as repeatedly pointed out by India's representatives in the Security Council, not only is the fact that the State of Jammu and Kashmir is a constituent State of the Indian Union the basis of India's original complaint to the Security Council, but it is also the basis of the resolutions of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan dated 13 August 1948 [S/1100. para. 75] and 5 January 1949 [S1100, para 15] and of the assurances given by that Commission to the Prime Minister of India on behalf of the Security Council.
Finally, it is necessary to draw attention to the two quotations contained in paragraph 13 of the letter from the acting permanent representative of Pakistan. Statements of this character are unfortunately the exception in Pakistan and must be read alongside the continuous outpouring of vehement and warlike words emanating from responsible persons, journals of opinion and newspapers in Pakistan some of which were cited in my letter of 11 June 1958. Presumably, it was the intention of the representative of Pakistan, to lull the apprehensions of both the Security Council and of India by citing small portions from only two statements. However, rare utterances of this kind amount to no more than lip service to the comprehensive appeal for all measures calculated to improve the situation which was contained in the Security Council resolution of 17 January 1948 and to which both India and Pakistan pledged their adherence. Their impact on the situation and their value in terms of the Security Council resolution are entirely lost in the context of the frequently repeated and growing volume of statements from Pakistan indulging in threats of force.
I request that this communication be circulated as a Security Council document and brought to the notice of the members of the Security Council.
(Signed) Arthur S. LALL
Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary,
Permanent Representative of India
to the United Nations