Delinking 1950 report from J&K delimitation

Luv Puri

Journalist and Author

ON September 15, 1950, at the village of Lake Success in Nassau county of New York State, temporary home of the United Nations from 1946 to 1951, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) received a report from the former Chief Justice of Australia, Owen Dixon, on Jammu and Kashmir. Appointed by the UNSC to mediate between India and Pakistan on J&K, the 64-year-old Australian jurist made some categorical recommendations.

Dixon had visited J&K on both sides of the Line of Control, shuttled between New Delhi and Karachi, and brokered a meeting between the two prime ministers on July 20, 1950. He recommended that the Hindu-majority Jammu plains should go to India whereas their culturally and linguistically akin Muslim areas of Rajouri-Poonch, situated near the Line of Control, should go to Pakistan. It gave Ladakh to India, Gilgit-Baltistan and Pakistan-occupied Kashmir (PoK) to Pakistan. The Dixon report remained a non-starter as it was a de facto invitation to Partition-type mass killings and mass displacement within J&K. In hindsight, the report lacked the rigour to reflect the complex realities of the former princely state, in terms of a complex layout of religious, linguistic and ethnic patterns that defied binary interpretations of the majority-minority.

Surprisingly, in 2022, as soon as extracts of the J&K Delimitation Commission report became public, the 1950 Dixon proposal got invoked by political actors from J&K, including former Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, as they alleged that the recent delimitation report is inspired from the same. The bulk of the preliminary Delimitation Commission report relates to the new constituencies of the proposed legislative assembly of J&K in the post-August 5, 2019, scenario. The alleged linkage of the Dixon report with the voluminous Delimitation Commission report hinges on the proposal of redrawing of the Kashmir valley’s former Anantnag parliamentary seat. The report recommends merging parts of the old Anantnag parliamentary seat with the Muslim-majority Rajouri and Poonch districts which were earlier part of the Hindu-majority Jammu-Poonch parliamentary constituency. De facto, two culturally distinct Muslim-majority areas on either side of the Pir Panjal mountain range were combined to form a parliamentary constituency.

The UT of J&K, with just five Lok Sabha seats, matters little to the broader electoral considerations in government formation process in New Delhi. However, the creation of the newly demarcated parliamentary seat seems to have touched a raw nerve. This can better be explained by the multi-dimensional tragedy that had hit J&K in 1947 and the impact of institutionalised inter-generational Partition-related memories. Muslim-majority Kashmir valley remained peaceful in 1947. The areas to the south of Pir Panjal that formed nearly 60 per cent of former princely state’s population shared linguistic, cultural and strong familial ties with neighbouring Punjab. Just like undivided Punjab, outside Kashmir valley, Muslims suffered in the Hindu-majority areas and Hindus as well as Sikhs in the Muslim-majority areas of J&K. The division of J&K between the two countries was largely a de facto bifurcation of culturally akin non-Kashmiri speaking segment. However, the Muslim-majority districts of Rajouri-Poonch areas, the area that adjoins PoK and has significant Hindu-minority population, remained a component of Jammu province’s administrative as well as electoral jurisdictions. A few long-time observers viewed this as a secularising and stabilising force. For instance, in the overwhelmingly Hindu-majority Jammu-Poonch parliamentary constituency, a Gujjar Muslim candidate Talib Hussain Chowdhary won in the 2002 bypoll. Rajouri-Poonch had nearly one-third of the total electorate.

Ethnic and cultural differences apart, the mighty Pir Panjal, a group of mountains in the Lesser Himalayan region, separates Rajouri-Poonch from the Anantnag district of Kashmir valley. Logistically, the two areas are connected by a fair weather route, better known as Mughal road, as the Mughals took this route as they headed to Kashmir for summer vacations. This road can only be traversed during the 3-4 months of summers and is snow-clad for the rest of the year. Otherwise, an elected candidate of the proposed constituency will have to travel 500 km from Rajouri-Poonch to Anantnag district via Jammu plains. The old all-weather road connection with Kashmir valley of this belt was via Uri but that is blocked by the Haji Pir mountain pass which is now part of PoK. Notably, Rajouri-Poonch hilly areas along the Line of Control came out of militancy around 2005. Feeble demands for separating the districts of Rajouri and Poonch from Jammu province were made by various quarters. Former Jamiat-e-Islami leader from Kashmir valley, Syed Ali Shah Geelani, reportedly asked the people of Rajouri-Poonch to demand merger with Kashmir valley, a concept better known as Greater Kashmir.

In 1998, the ruling National Conference officially proposed separate provincial status to Rajouri-Poonch. This proposal too was alleged to be inspired by the Dixon report, as it asked for separation of Muslim-majority areas from the Hindu-majority province. These proposals instilled anxieties among Muslims in Hindu-majority areas and vice-versa.

Embarrassed by the criticism of the 1998 report, a few years later, National Conference leader Omar Abdullah, on a television show, distanced himself from the proposal. Meanwhile, in Hindu-dominated Jammu plains, there were occasional demands for separation of Jammu from the Kashmir valley. This triggered a reaction in Rajouri-Poonch as some demanded separation from Jammu plains. However, this is the first time that a statutory body has de facto recommended bifurcation of an old parliamentary constituency and combined two culturally distinct Muslim societies to form a new one.

The claims of alleged linkage of the 1950 Dixon report with any proposal of the draft report of the 2022 J&K Delimitation Commission led by Ranjana Prakash Desai, a former judge of the Supreme Court, are stretched. One was the UNSC report and another is the report of a commission created by the Indian government to propose the redrawing and allocation of assembly seats in the post-August 5, 2019, scenario. The international context is vastly different in 2022. The only significance is the fact that even the redrawing of two parliamentary constituencies could potentially disturb the tenuous social bond and equilibrium. And it can rake up old anxieties that are connected with the turbulent events of 1947. 

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