Why J&K Assembly election is a watershed event

An old story seems to be taking a new turn.

The polls are going on in Jammu and Kashmir. On September 18, 24 constituencies across seven districts voted for the first time in 10 years for the Assembly elections. The first phase of the first election since the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution witnessed over 60 per cent voter turnout, the highest in the past seven Assembly polls. The upcoming round of polls will be held on September 25.

The recent Assembly elections bring to mind the tumultuous history of the state, particularly the first months of 1948.

It did not start well for India; Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru soon realised that he had fallen into a trap by asking the United Nations to condemn the raiders’ invasion of Kashmir two months earlier.

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In January, the blows started pouring down, and by the end of the month, the prime minister lost his mentor to the bullets of a fanatic who thought that the Mahatma had gone too far in appeasing the Muslims.

But let’s start at the beginning. On December 31, 1947, on the advice of the Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten, Nehru had appealed to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, asking him to pressure Pakistan to stop the raids on Kashmir.

The Government of India filed its complaint using Article 35 of the UN Charter, which specifies that any member may draw the attention of the Security Council to a situation the continuation of which may endanger the maintenance of international peace and security.

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India called upon Pakistan “to immediately end its support [to the invading raiders] … an act of aggression against India. If Pakistan does not do so, the Government of India will be compelled, in self-defence, to enter Pakistani territory in order to take military action against the invaders”.

The complaint added that the Government of India had exercised persuasion and extreme patience to change Pakistani behaviour, but that this had failed; in conclusion, Delhi threatened would have no other option “but to take effective military measures to rid the State of Jammu and Kashmir of its invaders” (something Delhi never did, mainly due to the perfidy of the British).

It is true that this was perhaps the first time (and the last) in the history of the United Nations that a member state warned in advance that it would go to war with another state. Jinnah had no such qualms when, just a few weeks after partition, he decided to send the Pathan raiders into Kashmir. Unfortunately for India, Mountbatten’s very nefarious influence on the prime minister led India into a quagmire from which, 76 years later, the country is just emerging.

It must be remembered that the military situation in Jammu and Kashmir was not good; the garrison of Jhangar had fallen, and that of Naushara was surrounded by nearly 6,000 raiders. More than 50,000 men of a Pakistan ‘liberation’ force, composed of tribes from the northwest as well as regular soldiers from the Pakistani army, were already inside the state. It is clear that it was in India’s interest to take radical measures to save what could be saved.

But Lord Mountbatten and his generals had decided to do everything to derail any action taken by Delhi to repel the invaders from Kashmir. Despite the Defence Council’s decision of December 20, 1947, which stated that India would appeal to the United Nations and at the same time make plans for a military counterattack, the British generals had shelved the plans without looking at them.

Another Villain

During the first weeks of 1948, Noel Baker, the Commonwealth Relations Secretary, demonstrated how the interests of his own country (Great Britain) could take precedence over general interests and the truth, despite pretending to be the arbitrator.

At the UN, the misdeeds of the raiders and India’s rightful legal position, including the annexation documents signed by Maharaja Hari Singh, were completely forgotten.

Noel Baker’s orders were clear: “In view of the critical situation in Palestine, Mr Bevin [Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs] thinks that we must be very careful to guard against the danger of an alignment which would set the whole Islamic world against us, which would be the case if Pakistan got a wrong impression of our attitude in the Security Council.” London had to support Pakistan against India.

The Security Council was then composed of 11 members, with Belgium presiding.

The British delegation had little difficulty convincing the Belgians that action should be taken along the lines indicated by Noel Baker.

On January 6, a first, rather vague resolution was passed, asking the two nations “to exercise restraint so as not to take decisions incompatible with the Charter and which would cause the situation to worsen”.

It was not until January 15 that the Council was able to hear the representatives of India, Gopalaswami Ayyangar and Pakistan’s External Affairs Minister Zafrullah Khan, who gave a speech that lasted for over five hours. Like Jinnah, he believed that India’s only objective was to ‘undo’ partition and reunite the subcontinent.

It is true that the very concept of Pakistan, the ‘two-nation theory’, was never accepted in India for the simple reason that India, in the course of its long history, has seen Muslims and Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs living side by side without any real inter-communal problems for centuries. But how does it justify the invasion of Kashmir?

On January 15, Resolution 38 (1948) submitted by the Belgian representative was adopted by the Security Council.

The resolution states that the Security Council “recognises the urgency of the situation… and calls upon both the governments of India and Pakistan to take immediately all measures (including public appeals to their people) that they consider necessary to improve the situation and to refrain from any statement, making or causing or permitting any action which might aggravate the situation”.

Three days later, the Security Council, by a new resolution, created a Commission to “investigate any dispute or situation which, if continued, would endanger international peace and security”.

India had lodged a complaint against Pakistan for sending the raiders into Indian territory; not only was no reference made to the original complaint, but on the contrary, it was India that found itself in the dock as Noel Baker had decided to send Pakistani troops in India to bring back peace!

The US State Department was more balanced; it was “troubled by the potentially far-reaching implications of a Security Council resolution that would recommend the use of foreign troops belonging to one side of the dispute on the territory of the other side”. An American note explained that the American government could also not agree with the British representative, who said that the territory of Kashmir was a ‘disputed territory’.

It is only when GS Bajpai, the Secretary for Indian External Affairs and Commonwealth, warned London in no uncertain terms that the British policy would only result in driving Delhi into the arms of the Soviet Union that suddenly, the British woke up: for a few gains in the Middle East, they risked seeing the Indian giant go over to the Soviet side.

For Delhi, the appeal to the United Nations was a crash course in international politics. At the end of January, in a letter to Baldev Singh, Nehru ordered his defence minister to prepare plans to destroy the raider bases in Pakistan, since the British generals, who had been ordered to draw up these plans on 20 December, had done nothing. But once again, nothing happened.

Nehru’s monumental blunder gave Pakistan renewed confidence that by asking for the moon one could get a lot; it also bogged India (and Pakistan) down in a quagmire from which it is emerging only now.

Abdullah for Kashmir Independence

Interestingly, Warren Austin, the United States Representative at the United Nations, briefed the US Secretary of State about several meetings he had on January 28, 1948; Austin’s first visitor was Sheikh Abdullah, who in fact had no real locus standi for the appeal to the UN.

Austin noted: “It is possible that [the] principal purpose of Abdullah’s visit was to make clear to the US that there is a third alternative, namely, independence. He seemed overly anxious to get this point across and made quite a long and impassioned statement on the subject. He said in effect that whether Kashmir went to Pakistan or India [,] the other dominion would always be against the solution. Kashmir would thus be a bone of contention. It is a rich country. He did not want his people torn by dissension between Pakistan and India. It would be much better if Kashmir were independent and could seek American and British aid for development of [the] country. I, of course, gave Abdullah no encouragement on this line.”

And the Sheikh was Nehru’s trusted envoy to argue India’s views at the UN!

Hopefully, the present elections will be a turning point… until the next phase, which is the recovery of Gilgit-Baltistan and all other areas occupied by Pakistan in the Maharaja’s state.

The writer is Distinguished Fellow, Centre of Excellence for Himalayan Studies, Shiv Nadar Institution of Eminence (Delhi). Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect Firstpost’s views.