A Critique on “Kashmir Dispute”—book written by by A G Noorani
By Dr Mohan Kishen Teng August 5, 2013
During the last sixty five years of the Indian freedom, there is nothing that has not gone wrong in the way, India has dealt with Pakistan and the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir. This is the gut feeling that a reader gets after going through the two volume book, The Kashmir Dispute, written by A G Nooorani, a senior advocate of the Supreme Court of India, a constitutional expert and writer of many books, among them books written on Islam and the constitutional history of Jammu and Kashmir. The book is so interwoven in its organization that the reader is usually left lost in deciding where to stop to ponder over what the author has written. Written well in connected episodes, miles apart from each other, the Study seeks to convey the message that justice should have been done to the Muslims of Kashmir in 1947, and in the later years and since it was not done to them either in 1947 when Pakistan claimed the State of Jammu and Kashmir on the basis of its Muslim majority population, and ever after , because India refused to fulfill the pledge it had made to the Muslims of the State, Muslims in Pakistan, the British and the United Nations, the time had come, that justice was done to them now.
Men in India, greatest of them and indeed the noblest and the most patriotic, and men outside India, who had understood the pain of the Muslims in Kashmir, have been quoted by the author profusely, to tell the Indian people of the wrong that was done to the Muslims of Jammu and Kashmir, whose only fault was their quest for freedom. The author has been candidly clear in spelling out the content and character of the freedom the Muslims in Kashmir sought, and without reserve or compunction emphasizes that the freedom, the Muslims in Kashmir sought, was not necessarily the freedom that the people in India had fought for, but the freedom which enabled them to satisfy the aspirations, their Muslim identity reflected.
A G Noorani is a lawyer , who has the experience of having argued in the court where rules of the game are laid down , the structure of the imperatives which govern the proceedings are clearly visible and boundaries of the law applied are drawn permanently and without variations. Perhaps conscious of the reality that the objectivity placed behind every adjudication of a legal case is arbitrarily determined, he has followed a course, where he seems to have presumed , that so far as the determination of the future of Jammu and Kashmir was concerned and the freedom, its people had a right to, was determined only by the British and the Muslim League, while the people of India and the people of Jammu and Kashmir who were not Muslims, had no right to interfere with the course already laid down for the Muslims of the State.
The two volume book that Mr. Noorani has written leaves a keener student of history and politics, not to speak of an expert in the field, with a feeling that he has transgressed into a field where he himself is a stranger. In the dynamics of history and the variables which govern the course of political sociology historians do not make history. They only record its course and describe the forces and narrate the events, which are a reality that the historians cannot distort or deny. There is a method in all historical processes. And there is a method in all political development. For Hitler the invasion of Russia was a historical necessity. Nazism was an ideology and Germany was an ideological state. So was Italy and Japan. Japan also struck Pearl Harbor out of a historical necessity. That they would be defeated is a matter of the course, history of the Second World War took. Historical facts cannot be manipulated.
There was a time, a century before the Second World War, which ushered in the worldwide movement for decolonization, when the flag bearers of the Concert of European imperialist powers, manipulated history to serve their power interests. The British called India a geographical expression. So did the Muslim League. Both sought to bat for the perpetuation of the British Empire in India. They realized deep inside them that India was a nation, the expression of a six-thousand year old civilisational grid, an incredible continuity of history and a stunning expanse of civilisational frontiers, when they faced India in revolt in 1942, the Naval Mutiny of 1946, and the dogged resistance the State Army of Jammu and Kashmir offered to the invading forces of Pakistan for five days, till the Indian Army arrived in Srinagar.
History is relentless. It doesn’t forgive. It doesn’t forget. Noorani has written these two volumes to rationalize Muslim separatist movement in India of which the Muslim separatist movement of Jammu and Kashmir is a part. Jinnah agreed with the Congress leaders, till the Congress leaders professed faith in Indian destiny within the British Empire. Why should the Muslim League have taken birth in 1906, when the Swaraj and Swadeshi resolution of the Indian National Congress was adopted the same year? Why did Sir Mohammad Iqbal, in his presidential address to the Muslim League Session at Allahabad in 1930 call for a Muslim confederacy in the North-West, North-East, the north and south of India, after the Indian National Congress adopted the Purna Swaraj Resolution in early 1930? Why did Jinnah threaten Gandhi to non-cooperate with the Congress, if the Congress extended its movement to the princely States and virtually compelled the latter to exclude the States peoples’ movements from the national movement of India, a course the Congress adopted, which brought it to the brink of disaster in 1947? Why should the Muslim League have adopted the Lahore Resolution for Pakistan in 1940 when the British were fighting with their back to the wall? Had the Muslim League realized that the end of British Empire in India had come?
Jinnah was no votary of the Indian freedom from the British rule, nor did he visualize a united India. Instead when he insisted upon the lapse of Paramountacy, he envisioned Pakistan, spread across the whole of India, with its mainland constituted of the Muslim majority areas of the British India in north-east and north-west and pockets of its territory constituted of the Muslim majority States and the Muslim ruled States, interspersed among the provinces and the acceding States of the Indian Dominion.
The author of the two volumes of Kashmir Dispute has perhaps been never aware of the fact that Jammu and Kashmir was geographically a part of the northern India and not the North West of India. It formed the central spur of the frontier of India in the north, which is crucially important for the unity of India and the security of its entire northern frontier. Only a small part of the borders of Jammu and Kashmir were contiguous to the borders of Pakistan in the south and north-west. A larger part of the border of the State stretched along the borders of Afghanistan, mainly the Wakhan Valley, Chinese Sinkiang in the north-east and the Tibet in the east, with a long border contiguous with East Punjab in the south and the Punjab Hill States in the north-east. The much maligned Radcliff Award, did not do anything wrong in its Boundary Award. Sir Radcliff was not a British politician and he, contrary to the fond hopes of the Muslim League leaders, that he would oblige them on the biding of the British, at home and in India, did not do so. Pathankot the largest Tehsil of the Gurdaspur District was predominantly Hindu and could by no stretch of mind be included in the West Punjab. Contrary to the figures quoted by the author in his book, the Gurdaspur District had a minimal 0.8 per cent Muslim majority. The Boundary Commission did not follow District boundaries as the basis of the demarcation of the dividing line between the West Punjab and the East Punjab. The author appears to be completely ignorant of the fact that besides the Jhelum valley road connecting Srinagar with Rawalpindi, a railway link connected Jammu with Sialkot and a tarmac road ran along the railway line, connecting Sialkot with Jammu. He also does not seem to be aware of the fact that a cart-road, which was improvised by the ruler of the State, stretched between Jammu and Madhopur in Pathankot, over which transport moved without any difficulty, taking few hours to travel from Jammu to Madhopur.
The author does not accept and in fact takes a reverse position on the basic fact that neither the partition of India nor the lapse of the Paramountacy create a prior right for the Muslims of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to opt for an alternative to the accession to India, independence or accession to Pakistan. The author’s assertive reference to the intention of Hari Singh to assume independence is a total surmise and a travesty of history. Mountbatten flew to Srinagar in the third week of June, not more than two weeks after the 3 June Declaration of 1947, and shook the Maharaja out of his wits by tendering him the advice to come to terms with Pakistan. Hari Singh used stratagem to send the Crown Representative back to the Indian capital, empty handed. Accession to Pakistan was the last act he was prepared to perform. Hari Singh was not the man to have misunderstood Mountbatten, who warned him against any attempt to assume independence. In fact there is not the slightest of hints or pronouncements on record to suggest that Hari Singh intended to assume independence. Four personal emissaries of Jinnah, met Hari Singh secretly, and to everyone he told that he would take a decision by himself and his decision would keep in view the interests of his people. Ram Chand Kak, a devout confident of Hari sing, acted as his interface, with the Muslim League and his strategy worked to save the State from being plunged into a civil war during the crucial months intervening between the 3 June Declaration and the date of the transfer of power.
The author has conveniently omitted to refer to and discuss the implications of the proclamation of a “Provisional Government of Azad Kashmir” by the Muslim Conference leaders and cadres at Tradkhel in Mirpur on 28 August 1947, only thirteen days after the transfer of power in India. After the proclamation of the “Provisional Government of Azad Kashmir”, anti-Hindu riots spread across the Muslim majority districts of Jammu province bordering Pakistan.
Facts of History cannot be bent to rationalize political events or influence their course. The Indian partition was foisted on the people of India by the Muslim League with the support of the British. The opinion of the people of India was not elicited on the partition of the country. Had the partition been referred to them, they would have rejected it and Pakistan would have never come into existence. The lapse of Paramountacy was also foisted on the people of the States, and when the Congress leaders beseeched the Muslim League leaders and the British to seek the opinion of the people of the princely States about the right to determine their future, Jinnah as well as Mountbatten did not listen to the Congress entreaties. Had the people of the States been accorded the right of determining their future the crisis which overtook Junahgar, the war in Hyderabad and Jammu and Kashmir would have never taken place. In Jammu and Kashmir the Hindus, Sikhs and the Buddhists, who constituted nearly twenty eight percent of the population of the State at that time, and with the Kashmiri speaking Muslims together formed the two thirds of the population of the State. The Kashmiri-speaking Muslims were dead set to evade accession to Pakistan, because they had opposed the Muslim League struggle for Pakistan and they knew that dreams of their freedom would be scuttled with the ascendance of the Muslim Conference, supported by the non-Kashmiri speaking Muslims of the Jammu province, to power in the State, if it acceded to Pakistan. It is a misnomer that the accession of the State to India was brought about with the support of the Muslims alone. In fact it was because of the Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists along with the Kashmiri-speaking Muslims that the accession of the State to India was brought about.
In the resistance against the invasion of the State by Pakistan, the Hindus and Sikhs formed the frontline of defense against it in the provinces of Jammu and Kashmir and the Buddhists in the Frontier Division of Ladhakh. In Ladhakh the Buddhists kept the invaders at bay under the leadership of the legendary soldiers Captain Pirthi Chand and Captain Thapa. The left flanks of the National Conference largely constituted of the Hindus of Kashmir amongst whom were ideologues of National Conference and veteran fighters of freedom in Jammu and Kashmir. Niranjan Nath Raina Saraf, Pran Nath Jalali and Omkar Nath Trisal, defended Srinagar. The National Conference rank and file brought the rear of the resistance. Nearly forty thousand Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists were killed in the invasion of the State. More than ten thousand of Hindu, Sikh and Buddhist women were abducted by the invading hordes and those who escaped death, were driven out of the territories that the invaders overrun. The refugees of the territories occupied by Pakistan, Hindus and Sikhs, a million people, live in Jammu on the Indian side of the Line of Actual Control, still awaiting rehabilitation.
The premises, which the author of the Study has adopted, though arbitrarily, that the Kashmir dispute revolves round the freedom of the Muslims living in the part of the State on the Indian side of Line of Control, is only the half truth of the Kashmir dispute. The whole truth is that the Kashmir dispute revolves round the freedom of the Hindus, Sikhs and the Buddhists of the State who constitute four million of the population of the state, easily comparable with the six million of the Muslims who live on the same side. The dispute also revolves round the future of nearly two million of the Hindu and Sikh refugees, who form nearly half of the population of the Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists of the State. Among them are more than a million refugees from the territories occupied by Pakistan, half a million of Hindus of Kashmir-Kashmiri Pandits and non- Kashmiri Pandit Hindus, who were driven out of the Kashmir province by the Jehad launched by Pakistani Jehadi-war groups operating from that State, the militant regimes and the Muslim separatist forces in Kashmir; the Hindus driven out from their land and forced to take refuge in Jammu and the Hindus and Sikhs refugees driven out of the border areas of Jammu province from time to time, besides the Hindus of the Muslim majority areas of Jammu province driven out of their homes and hearths by the Jehad , as it spread into Jammu province in 1990, and after.
The Kashmir dispute also revolves round the territories of the Jammu and Kashmir State, which are under occupation of Pakistan. They are constituted of the parts of the province of Kashmir and the province of Jammu and the Gilgit- Baltistan regions of the frontier divisions of Ladhakh along with the Dardic Dependencies of the State, Hunza, Nagar, Punial, Yasin, Ishkoman, Darel and Koh Gizir, which formed the part of the Jammu and Kashmir State and which constituted the strategic outer flanks of the western horn of the northern frontier of the State and the northern most outposts of the British Empire in India.
The occupied territories are an integral part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir, which were invaded by Pakistan against all tenants of international law as reported by the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, and accepted by the Security Council. The Security Council resolution envisaged the evacuation of the occupation forces from the occupied territories before the bulk of the Indian forces would begin to withdraw. The restoration of the administrative control of the occupied territories to the State Government was a precedent condition for the induction of the United Nations Plebiscite Administration into the State. The claim that the author has made, that the bulk of Indian forces were to commence evacuation when the occupation forces were nearing the completion of their evacuation, virtually suggesting that the evacuation of the occupation forces was proposed to be concurrent is a gross distortion of facts. The United Nations documents and the Indian correspondence in regard to them, are unambiguous and clear, leaving no room for such misinterpretation that the author has attempted mainly to prove that India was on the wrong foot.
Pakistan and the Western powers dragged the Kashmir issue into Cold War., because the western powers needed to turn Gilgit-Baltistan into an advance military post, in their policy of the containment of the communist influence in Asia, and Pakistan, sought to turn the United Nations intervention in Jammu and Kashmir into an instrument to destabilize the part of the State on the Indian side of the Cease-fire Line, to put India on a defensive and consolidate its hold over the territories under its occupation. In fact Britain and its allies in the Security Council shifted their basic stand to push India to accept the induction of a Plebiscite Administration while the invading forces remained in the occupied territories along with the Muslim militia of thirty thousand men raised in the occupied territories by Pakistan there. The Indian leaders were persuaded to allow Pakistan retain a part of its forces, about one third of the forces that India retained in the State. The agreement fell through because the United Nations military mediators tampered with the figures of the quantum of troops to be retained by the two armies in the State, forcing India to stall the agreement and the fiasco came to be known as the notorious “ Delvoi Affair”.
Neither Pakistan, nor the British and their allies were interested in an impartial plebiscite in the State. They were interested in enabling Pakistan to swallow the occupied territories and then use them as a spring- board to dislodge India from the rest of the State, establishing their hold on the Shivalik plains west of river Ravi. In the post war configuration of power in Asia, the whole stretch of Kashmir valley, the rugged mountain fastnesses of the Pahar and Jhupal regions of the Jammu province and the Shivalik plains stretching to the west of the river Ravi had assumed the strategic importance, they had never acquired earlier, even in the days of the Great Game. For India, Jammu and Kashmir was central to the defense of its northern frontiers and its strategic interests in the Sanskrit Himalayas.
The stand taken by the British and their allies in the Political Committee of the United Nations General Assembly in the debate on Tibetan complaint against the Chinese aggression delivered a severe blow to the outlook of the Indian leaders about the Asian solidarity. Nehru ducked for some time under the shield of Panchsheel. But he learnt a bitter lesson when the Chinese repudiated the McMahan Line. In the post Cold War balance of World power, India cannot go the way A. G Noorani apparently suggests. All demands for separate freedom, for whoever they are made, conflict with the Unity of India.
It must be understood by everybody in India, whatever, the station he has in the Indian political class, that the British divided India at the bidding of Muslim League, to create a Muslim power on the subcontinent to safeguard their own interests in and around India. The Indian people, the people of British India as well as the people of Indian princely States, were not the retainers of the British colonial rule in India. They had fought for a united India and its independence. How should they have allowed the Balkanization of the rest of British India and the Indian States, which were geographically contiguous with India and which were placed outside the territories earmarked for Pakistan? In fact the League leaders had lost bitter time to smother into submission all the princely States within its territories, some of them including the State of Kalat, against the wishes of their rulers as well as their people. Why should the Indian people have allowed Pakistan to grab Jammu and Kashmir, which would have demolished the entire northern frontier of India?
The Indian princely States were placed outside the partition of India and virtually detached from British India by the lapse of British Paramountacy, which like the partition of India was foisted upon the people of the Indian States by the Muslim League and the British against their will and against the remonstrations of the Congress leaders. The partition of India did not, even remotely, create any prior right for Pakistan to claim the State of Jammu and Kashmir, on the basis of the Muslim majority composition of its population. The Muslim League leaders, even whether they were still in India or had left India, could not question the right of the Indian people to unite the remaining parts of the British India and the Indian States within its territories and contiguous with the Indian borders, to undo the wrong done to them by the Muslims and the British by foisting the partition against their will, and turned down the entreaties of the Congress leadership and the leadership of All India States People’s Conference, to recognize the right of the people of the States to determine their future. The author notes right at the outset in his book,” A plebiscite in Kashmir was a moral imperative, besides being a democratic imperative.” If the plebiscite was a moral imperative and a democratic necessity in Kashmir, was it not a moral imperative and a democratic necessity in not forcing the partition on the people of the British India? Was a plebiscite in the princely States not a moral imperative and a democratic necessity, when the lapse of the Paramountacy was imposed upon the people living in the princely States? Was a plebiscite not a moral imperative and a democratic necessity to determine the future disposition of the States?
Pakistan was not created in accordance with any moral imperative and its creation was not a democratic necessity. And if Pakistan would not have been created, the people of the five hundred and sixty-two States, including, not only the Jammu and Kashmir, but Hyderabad and Junahgarh would have united with India and repudiated the princely rule.
The partition of India was a political maneuver in which the Muslim League and the British were partners and which was intended to Balkanize India and reduce it to a geographical expression. In fact for the Indian people it was a moral imperative and democratic necessity to unite, whatever was left of India after the partition, without any consideration of whether any use of forces was involved. They had to defeat the designs of the Muslim League as well as the British. Had they faltered, they would have been defeated instead. Jammu and Kashmir was crucial to their efforts to recreate a united India. The author has rightly pointed out, “Truth to tell, India and Pakistan launched a cold war even while they were in the embryo of history.” The bitter truth is that Pakistan launched an offensive right from the time the partition plan was accepted to balkanize India and recommence the process of a second partition of India by seeking to support Muslim separatism in Jammu and Kashmir.
(To be continued)