17041948 Text of the Speech made by Mr. Noel Baker (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 284 held on 17 April, 1948
Text of the Speech made by Mr. Noel Baker (United Kingdom) in the Security Council Meeting No. 284 held on 17 April, 1948
I wish to join with the President and the representatives of China, Canada and Belgium in recommending this draft resolution to the favourable consideration of our esteemed and patient colleagues from India and Pakistan. I want to ask the representatives of those two States-as I also want to ask the Security Council-to consider the alternative before them, before their Governments and their peoples, if this effort fails.
This resolution, as the President has said, is the result of long debates and of much patient labour by the Security. Council over many weeks. Its paragraphs, or many of them, have their roots in our discussions in those dark January days when our work began. I believed then, as I believe now, that the Kashmir dispute is the greatest and the gravest single issue in international affairs.
The Security Council, and, with respect, the parties, can only judge this resolution against the background of what has happened in the last three months When the Government of India brought its complaint before the Security Council both parties told us told us with an urgency and conviction which we could not disregard-that their differences about Kashmir might lead them into war. Scores of witnesses of many nationalities told me that war at that time was very near.
Those men who best knew India and Pakistan believed that if war had happened, it might have been as dangerous and destructive a conflict as any in the history of mankind. Only two months before, the Governments, by superb personal heroism, by statesmanlike co-operation of no ordinary kind, had brought the communal troubles in the Punjab to an end. But if war had happened, if the armies had been locked in battle at the front, who could have stopped the communal strife from breaking out again? There are nearly forty million Muslims in India, and many non-Muslims on the other side. If war had happened, tribesmen might have come down not in tens, but in hundreds of thousands. They might have been a mortal danger to both the Governments of India and Pakistan. A sub-continental war involving four hundred million people, a fifth of all mankind, would have been an immeasurable. disaster to India, to Pakistan and to the world. And it might. have happened. Indeed, in the view of men whom I judge much wiser and more experienced than myself, it would have happened but for the wisdom and the statesmanship which brought the matter before the Security Council. It was certain that when the first phase of our labour was ended, when the Indian delegation returned to Delhi to consult its Government, the risk of war, by general consent, had grown much less. Who can doubt that the discussions in the Security Council had played their part in that result ?
Mr. Austin, in a penetrating review of the work of the United Nations in this month's issue of United Nations World has shown that the Security Council, and the other institutions to which it is linked, have had a record of achievement much greater than the defeatists think. But if the Security Council had done nothing else but help India and Pakistan to avoid a conflict, that alone would have earned it the gratitude of all mankind. That fact that great improvement in the situation which resulted, at least in part, from the first phase. of our labours of which we were barely conscious then-should be present in our minds as we near the conclusion of the second phase of our labours here today. It should be present in our minds because plainly it may bear on the value of the draft resolution, for which I hope we shall obtain the unanimous endorsement of the Security Council.
May I now, like the representative of China, speak briefly of the draft resolution and explain how my Government understands it. To my Government it is in no sense an award, a verdict, a judgement between the parties; it is a plan, a body of measures-which the Security Council, I hope, will propose to India and Pakistan this afternoon-designed to stop the present fighting in Kashmir and to provide machinery for the fair and impartial plebiscite on Kashmir's future, which both India and Pakistan desire.
The draft resolution was proposed by the six delegations whom the President, in his discretion, thought it useful to consult. That means that the draft resolution is a collective effort. That means that none of us, if he could have done it for himself, would have drawn it exactly as it stands. But we take individual and collective responsibility for the result because we think that these measures, if they are adopted, will give the best hope for a peaceful settlement of the dispute, and a settlement honourable to both India and Pakistan. We believe, moreover, that something along those lines would, in the light of the history of the dispute, have been proposed by almost anybody of impartial men.
Of course, the whole plan depends upon co-operation between the Governments of the two parties, co-operation between those Governments and the Commission which the Security Council will send out. The draft resolution is a directive to that Commission. It can be altered, amplified and improved if the two Governments should so agree. I hope, therefore, that the representatives of India and Pakistan will not hastily reject this draft resolution.
May I draw attention, as the representative of China has done, to some of the main features which I hope the representatives of Pakistan and India will bear in mind.
First and foremost, the draft resolution declares that while the threat to peace, though it has been diminished, has not yet disappeared, there is still costly and disastrous fighting in Kashmir; there is still the risk that a wider conflict might occur. Something, some plans must, in the general interest, be adopted with a minimum of delay.
Secondly, as I have said, these measures depend on the co-operation of the parties to the dispute, and I add that without cooperation freely and generously accorded, not only this plan, but no plan can work.
Thirdly, the draft resolution imposes a heavy duty on Pakistan in helping to stop the fighting and to prevent it breaking out again. I believe this draft resolution should point the way to the Government of Pakistan towards fulfilment of this duty and, indeed, its fulfilment is surely, in the long run, in the highest and enduring interests of Pakistan itself. It must be Pakistan's overwhelming interest that the fighting shall cease; that the tribesmen shall go home; that the volunteers shall return from Kashmir to Pakistan and that, at last, argument and reason shall supersede disorder.
Fourthly, the Commission will be stronger, thanks to the President, than we first intended. Its link with the Security Council will be closer, and I hope it will be quickly at its work, for the part to be played by the Commission is essential to the plan.
Fifthly, and most important, the draft resolution boldly faces the main problems which our discussions have revealed.
We all know what they are; we have debated them for months the plebiscite, the occupation, the administration of the country until the plebiscite has been held.
In my Government's belief, the proposals for the plebiscite are bold and fair.
The Secretary-General, as the representative of China has explained, will nominate a plebiscite administrator who, in the name of the Government of Kashmir
-but with direct access to the Commission, and through the Commission to the Security Council-will organise and carry out this consultation with the people, which India and Pakistan desire. In the name of the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and with the assistance of the Secretary-General, he will build up his own administration; he will draft the regulations under which the plebiscite will be conducted, and the Government of India will ensure that the State will give to his regulations the force of law, and that the State will delegate to him such powers as he in his discretion he may require to make the plebiscite as fair and as impartial as it ought to be. And at any moment, if he thinks things are going wrong, he can report directly to the Commission, and through the Commission to the Security Council and to the Governments of Kashmir, of India and Pakistan, and it will be his duty to report on any circumstance which, in his opinion, may interfere with the freedom of the vote.
It has been said that these arrangements, though admirable, in themselves, may be frustrated by the troops which occupy the country or by the Government of the State which is in power. Let me speak of occupation. I ask anyone who takes that view to consider fairly the measures proposed regarding the occupation in par. graphs 2, 3, 4, 5 and 8. I find it difficult to believe that, taken together and supervised by the Commission and its observers, for which paragraph 17 provides, these measures will not remove the dangers of intimidation by armed forces in the State. Indeed, I believe that at one time we were near agreement between the parties on this question, and I hope that agreement may yet be obtained.
By far the hardest problem has been, and still remains, that of governing the country while the plebiscite is being prepared and carried through. Some people feet that whatever power the plebiscite administrator may possess, the people who must vote might be influenced by the determined but hidden power of the Government then in office. Paragraph 6 contains the solution which we propose. I have no doubt that both India and Pakistan will raise objections to it. I have no doubt that if, in the end, they should adopt it, this most intractable of all our problems would be solved. Indeed, I go so far as to say this: that unless it can be solved on the basis of the formula which this paragraph contains, I doubt if any peaceful settlement can be obtained at all.
I know that some people think that these measures fall short of what the Security Council should require, that there are loopholes still for improper pressure, for under influence on the people of Kashmir.
I ask these people to consider the guarantees that lie behind these measures which we have proposed. There is the fundamental guarantee that protects the liberty of voting in every country where men are free. I mean the right of every political party to hold its meetings, to canvass, to move about, to conduct its electoral campaign at its desires. It is the right of every individual leader or follower of any party to take complaints to the plebiscite administrator or to the Commission. There are the members of the plebiscite administration, the observers whom the Commission will appoint-observers who will have the right to go wherever they will and to report to the Commission on any matter dealt with in this plan. There are the general guarantees for the rights of minorities which our paragraphs set up.
Lastly, it is the duty of the Commission to report on the plebiscite, to pronounce in judgement whether, in its opinion, it has been just and fair. Who will face an adverse verdict of the Commission ? I find it hard to think that, with these guarantees, the measures we have proposed will not succeed in guaranteeing full freedom and safety to all concerned.
I know that the Governments of India and Pakistan I will have to study this plan as a whole, together with the practical details of its application. I hope they will not decide their action on too meticulous a survey of the paper details of what we here propose. In government, it is the spirit behind the paper, the will to make it work, that really counts. The Weimar Republic had the most perfect paper constitution in the world, built on the pure word of John Stuart Mill. Our House of Commons has no paper constitution at all. The Reichstag perished in Hitler's fire. Hitler's bombs destroyed our chamber but our House lives on.
I have explained how my Government views this draft resolution. May I now say why I hope its measures may find favour with both parties to the dispute, and may find it without prolonged delay? To begin with, the sands of time, in literal truth, are running out. Kashmir is a land of mountains. In October the snow begins to fall. If the plebiscite which both sides desire is to be held this year, the Commission and the administrator must be at work within a month. The alternative is a summer, perhaps another winter, of uncertainty, maybe of fighting, with all that that would mean.
I think this draft resolution deserves success because the Security Council, if I may say so, has done an honest, a patient and a careful piece of work. It has been accused by: reckless outsiders of favouring one side or the other, of playing politics, of yielding to threats and blackmail. I am not always here among the representatives on the Security Council. I can look at the Security Council with a detached and impartial eye. I venture to say that all such suggestions as I have quoted are arrant nonsense. The Security Council has sought only to do right and justice, with equal friendship for the peoples and equal affection for the representatives of India and Pakistan, and I am encouraged to hope that this draft resolution will succeed by the very attitude which the parties have adopted from the start.
I said almost in the first words I used in January last [229th meeting] that I believed that in their heart of hearts both Governments desired to settle. I believe it even more today. Both Governments want a plebiscite in Kashmir; both want it to be fair.
Sir Zafrullah told us on 10 March 1948 [266th meeting] that if there were any condition in his proposals to which even a suspicion might attach that that condition would put pressure on an elector to vote in favour of Pakistan, he would gladly give it up. On that same day the leader of the Indian delegation told us that his Government was as anxious as anyone could be that the plebiscite should be conducted in a perfectly free and unfettered manner. He told us that it wanted the conduct of the plebiscite to be fully independent; that it wanted the Kashmir voters to be free from every pressure, whether by the Government, by the army or by the police.
The Security Council accepts these assurances in the full good faith in which they are made. I say to Sir Zafrullah that unless I was honestly and wholeheartedly convinced that the measures in this resolution would result in an honest plebiscite and a fair and just result, I would never have spoken on it and I would never have commended it to his favourable consideration, as I have done today. I any to the leader of the Indian delegation that I am certain there is nothing in this draft resolution which the Indian Government could not safely and honourably accept.
What is the alternative to something like this resolution ? Let us suppose that both sides reject it; no commission goes to India ; no plebiscite is held. Is it not clear that the situation will not stay as it is today; that it will inevitably, perhaps immediately, grow worse that forces may be unleashed which it may be very difficult or even impossible to control?
And what are the real interests involved in this dispute ? The people of Kashmir are one per cent of the population of India and Pakistan. Their economic wealth may be 0.1 per cent. What both Governments want is that the people of Kashmir shall live in peace and freedom under the Government which they themselves choose. That is a common interest which surely far outweighs any conflicting interests which there may be.
On 10 March [266th meeting, the Indian representative told us in his brave and generous speech that he would come back fully equipped to participate in our debate with greater chances of achieving a result which would be satisfactory to both India and Pakistan. His words recall to me that noble declaration made by his Government on its Independence Day:
"We have proclaimed that we as a nation and a people stand for world peace and co-operation among nations... We stand for democracy. The method of democracy is to find peaceful solutions for all problems... By violence and hatred no problem is solved." The proclamation ended as follows:
For though Pakistan may be separated from India by political boundaries, yet the essential spiritual unity of the country, like its geographic unity, cannot and should not be broken up. Any injury to one part of the country. hurts the other parts."
India and Pakistan have an overriding common interest in settling this question and in settling it now. Kashmir has become the very pivot of their relations, on which all else turns. It is the crossroads at which the course of future. history will be decided. The decision means everything to them. It means little less to Asia and the world.
The representative of India speaks for three hundred million people, people with vast resources and an ancient culture. The representative of Pakistan speaks for seventy million people, more than Hitler had when he launched his war. The influence of India and Pakistan as great nations in Asia, as great nations in the world, must be, is, and will be inevitably great. We know that both believe in peace, that both place their hopes in the United Nations. Their action now will have a worldwide and permanent effect. A settlement would bring hope to every nation, would strengthen faith in international peace and friendship, would enhance the glory. of both peoples as no victory of arms could ever do.
On Independence Day, the Prime Minister of India told his people that they were writing history anew. I came across a letter which he wrote to his little daughter on her thirteenth birthday. He said:
"Ordinary people are not usually heroic, but a time comes when a whole people are filled with faith for a great cause and then even simple ordinary men and women become heroes, and history becomes stirring and epoch-making. Great leaders have something in them which inspires a whole people and makes them do great deeds."
That is supremely true of the world in which we live today.
On Monday last, speaking to my countrymen, Mrs. Rossevelt told us how we could win the great historic struggle for peace, happiness and freedom in which all nations are now. engaged. Mrs. Rossvelt said:
"It must be done by strong men and women, strong in their convictions and the love which casts out fear and makes men free. It must be done by strong nations whose ways are rooted in individual freedom and belief in justice and laws...... ...The great are humble and cannot be humiliated.........Pray God, we join together and invite all others to join us in
creating a world there justice, truth and good faith rule."
That is the very spirit of the United Nations. May it, in this great matter, now prevail.