Pakistan aggression on Kashmir

Pakistan aggression on Kashmir

In 1947 India was divided and Pakistan came into existence, with the British Paramountcy on the princely states lapsing. The princely states were given the option to choose joining either India or Pakistan.  Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir was vacillating, unable to decide. The Indian government didn’t bring any pressure on him. Pakistan tried to annex the State by force and then declaring its accession. It brought serious external pressure on Kashmir by refusing to supply essential commodities, such as foodgrains, salt, sugar and petrol, attempting to strangle the State economically and compel it to accede to Pakistan, as it was not easy for Kashmir to obtain these essential supplies from India due to the difficulty of communications.

Home Minister Sardar Patel was willing to trade off Kashmir.  V Shankar,  his Political Secretary, in his book My Reminiscences of Sardar Patel wrote: “the Sardar was content to leave the decision to the Ruler (of Jammu and Kashmir) and that if the Ruler felt that his and his State’s interest lay in accession to Pakistan, he would not stand in his way.” And if “Jinnah allowed the King (Hyderabad) and the pawn (Junagadh) to go to India, Patel might have let the Queen (Kashmir) go to Pakistan, but Jinnah rejected the deal.”

Jinnah tried to coerce the Maharaja to make the State accede to Pakistan. Having failed,his Government instigated the armed bandits to invade Kashmir. On 24 October 1947, a large number of armed raiders, consisting   of tribesmen from the Frontier and the ex-servicemen, with the active support of Pakistan, attacked Kashmir, crossed Muzzafarabad and were heading for Srinagar, looting, burning villages, abducting women and murdering people. The invaders, using the tactics of modern warfare, were equipped with modern weapons-Bren Guns, machine-guns, mortars and flame-throwers and had at their disposal a large number of transport vehicles. There was no military detachment cable of stopping them.  At this stage, the Maharaja and Sheikh Abdullah- a popular leader and the President of the National Conference-expressed willingness to accept the accession of the State to the Indian Union.

The Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26 and appealed to the Government of India for armed intervention to save Kashmir from the invaders. The powers of the Government of India were confined to Defense, External Affairs and Communications. In a letter sent to Maharaja  on 27 October 1947, Governor General of India Lord Mountbatten accepted the accession conditionally: " as soon as law and order have been restored in Jammu and Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invaders the question of the State's accession should be settled by a reference to the people."  Indian troops were despatched to Kashmir. The troops succeeded in saving the Kashmir Valley and the city of Srinagar from falling to the invaders.

This writer’s research for his doctoral degree on Nehru (Jawaharlal Nehru: His contribution to World Peace, published as a book Nehru and World Peace) revealed certain historical facts. The Indian troops made the armed bandits retreat from the Kashmir Valley and drove them into the Jhelum Valley. The fighting was stopped midway on Gandhi’s insistence instead of forcing the invaders to retreat completely from the State, leaving a part of it under the occupation of Pakistan, known as the ‘Azad Kashmir’ (POK). Both on the question of sending Indian army into Kashmir and stopping the fighting with the invaders, Gandhi was consulted. Nehru was regularly briefing him about the developments in Kashmir.

Nehru, the idealist and a democrat to the core, a true inheritor of the Mahatma’ legacy, was in a moral dilemma.  Though the Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession, making Kashmir part of the Indian Union, Nehru felt India should not be seen taking advantage of the war situation in Kashmir forcing the accession. Therefore, he agreed to have a reference to the people on the issue of accession. As he said in the Constituent Assembly on November 25, 1947,"We did not want a mere accession from the top but an association in accordance with the will of her people.” And on March 5, 1948, he reaffirmed his faith in the choice of the people: “…we are prepared to have a plebiscite, with every protection for fair voting and to abide by the decision of the people of Kashmir.” 

To Nehru it was an article of faith that, given the free choice and in the context of the armed invasion from across the Frontier, the people of Kashmir would choose to join the Union of India for peace and progress. It was not a Hindu-Muslim question: “We have become too used in India, to thinking of every problem … in terms of communalism of Hindu versus Muslim or Hindu and Sikh versus Muslim…That has been an unfortunate legacy of ours, and the extent to which it took us cannot be forgotten by us or the tragedies that it has led to.  We are trying to get rid of the spirit of communalism.” Kashmir was a political fight and the people fought for the freedom.

On November 30, 1947, Nehru, as the one who believed in the UN system to secure international peace and security, took the issue of Pakistan aggression to the Security Council hoping to get justice. His justification:"Our making a reference to the Security Council of the United Nation was an act of faith because we believe in the progressive realization of World Order… In spite of many shocks, we have adhered to the ideals represented by the United Nations.”  Unfortunately, the Kashmir became a cold war issue and the UN failed to act against Pakistan. Noel Baker, UK’s ambassador to the UN ignored the instructions of his own Government. Mountbatten sent a cable to Prime Minister Attlee expressing his displeasure.  The cable read: “Any prestige that I may previously have had…has of course been largely lost by my having insisted that they should make a reference to the UNO, with the assurance that they would get a square deal there.”

Sheikh Abdullah took over the emergency administration in the State.The Maharaja appointed him as the Interim Prime Minister, pending making of a democratic constitution for the State.  The Article 370, according special status to Jammu and Kashmir, owes its origin to the terms of the Instrument of Accession conceived and crafted by Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar, Gopalaswami Ayyangar and V P Menon. It was incorporated in the Constitution, after consulting Sheikh Abdullah, by the Constituent Assembly on October 17, 1949. The special status to Jammu and Kashmir was necessitated due to the extraordinary situation prevailing, following the partition of India and Kashmir being a predominantly Muslim State, strategically located sharing frontiers with Pakistan, China, Afghanistan and the Soviet Union, posing serious security threat to India.  

And following the Kashmir Constituent Assembly’s endorsement of the State’s accession to India, Pakistan tried to sabotage it in the UN. It was left to Krishna Menon- a close friend and aide of Nehru and his principal spokesman on foreign policy, found his intellectual match only in Nehru, and considered the second most powerful man in India, after him, to rescue Kashmir from the chessboard of power politics. Pakistan Foreign Minister Firoz Khan Noon was trying to blackmail America, threatening to abandon the military alliances with the US. Menon delivered an epic 8- hour  speech in the Security Council -a record in the UN history- on January 23 and 24, 1957, marked by intellectual brilliance, legal acumen, political vigor and debating skill – a tour de force -tearing into the Pakistan propaganda on Kashmir, asking Pakistan to vacate the occupied Kashmir,earning him widespread popularity and the sobriquet ‘Hero of Kashmir’. During the marathon speech, running high temperature,Menon collapsed midway and had to be hospitalized,people warning Nehru that he would die if he wasn’t stopped. But he returned after a while and continued his blast on Pakistan... spoke for hours without consulting notes. The long speech blunted the Pakistan's case and won the Soviet Union's support. Consequently, the Soviet Union vetoed the UN resolution on Kashmir. Indira Gandhi paying tribute to Menon on his death in 1974 described it ‘the extinct of a human volcano.’