Kashmir & the blame game: What history tells us

PRIME MINISTER Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah stated in Parliament on July 29 that the ceasefire in Kashmir in 1947 without securing Jammu & Kashmir, its referral to the UN and the ignoring of Sardar Patel's advice were Jawaharlal Nehru's three blunders which gave India a festering wound in perpetuity.The lapse of paramountcy following India’s independence made the accession of the 565 princely states to the respective dominions of India and Pakistan clear. Even as Nehru set up the States Department on July 5, 1947 under Sardar Patel to facilitate the accession, the Maharaja of Jammu & Kashmir delayed his decision. Patel, initially, preferred that J&K accede to Pakistan. Maharaja Hari Singh proposed to sign standstill agreements with both his 'neighbours'. Pakistan signed immediately. Routed through Lahore, the letter to Delhi was delayed.Unexpectedly, the Pakistani army, with nearly 13,000-strong tribal hordes, marched towards Kashmir. Nehru informed Patel in his letter on September 27, 1947, of the urgency of the situation as Indian intervention without accession was tricky. Patel had, meanwhile, changed his mind on September 13 after Pakistan accepted the accession of Junagadh in early October and agreed to the accession of Kashmir to India.By sending tribal forces towards Srinagar, pillaging villages en route and raping women, by October 24 Pakistan had gained considerable advantage. Kashmir Prime Minister Mehr Chand Mahajan requested Nehru to send Indian troops to Kashmir. Patel’s adviser and secretary VP Menon was sent to Srinagar to assess the position. While the Maharaja procrastinated, Mahajan, Patel and Sheikh Abdullah persuaded Nehru to immediately send troops to Srinagar. The Maharaja signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26. It’s clear, therefore, that decision-making on Kashmir at that critical time was a team affair.With the conflict escalating, the British were aware that an aggressive Jinnah would push for a full-scale war. Irked by the British tilt towards Pakistan, Nehru ordered the Army to drive out the tribals from J&K. He felt he should give up his prime-ministership and ‘take a rifle himself, and lead the men of India against the invasion.'As a full-scale war appeared inevitable, India’s Commander-in-Chief Gen Auchinleck and Jinnah's adviser Lord Ismay (Mountbatten’s Chief of Staff) sought to persuade Nehru to take the matter to the UN.Initially Nehru rejected the idea. Any reference to the UN, Nehru said, could only be on whether or not Pakistan had supported the aggression against Kashmir, and not on its accession to India.During the Defence Committee meeting on October 28, 1947, Gen Auchinleck called Mountbatten from Lahore, and told him he had persuaded Jinnah to cancel the order to send Pakistan troops to Kashmir. An anxious Mountbatten, along with Lord Ismay and Gen Auchinleck, proposed talks between Nehru and Jinnah in Lahore. Nehru agreed despite Patel’s objecting to it as 'appeasement'.But Nehru fell sick and had to cancel his visit. So Mountbatten travelled to Lahore alone to meet Jinnah, who denounced India. Jinnah indicated his complicity in the tribal raids by offering to “call the whole thing off” if India agreed to withdraw her troops; he rejected the proposal for a plebiscite in Kashmir to be conducted by the UN.Mountbatten kept trying to persuade Nehru to refer the dispute to the UN under Article 35, which enables it to settle such disputes.Charging Pakistan with having deliberately organised “the whole business of Kashmir raids”, Nehru told Mountbatten, “They helped the tribesmen to collect; they supplied them with implements of war, with lorries, with petrol and with officers. They are continuing to do so. Indeed, their high officials openly declare so.”Eventually, Nehru agreed to write to the UN with a limited reference relating to Pakistan’s invasion and “illegal” occupation of territory.His December 31 letter to the Security Council was explicit. India sought the UN’s intervention in ending Pakistan’s armed invasion and its withdrawal from Kashmir: “The Government of India requests the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance which is an act of aggression against India.”Though he threatened to take military action against the invaders, the new Commander-in-Chief of India, Gen Francis Robert Roy Bucher, cautioned Nehru on November 28, 1948, that India was not in a position to withstand a continued military operation in Kashmir for long as Indian troops were fatigued. He advised a political compromise. Patel and Gandhi ultimately consented, but in their hearts, they were against it.Nehru was determined to drive the infiltrators out and “see this Kashmir business through. We do not believe in leaving things half-done. We will send more troops. We will muster all our resources and fight till we succeed.”He wrote to Mountbatten: “… on no account would we submit to this barbarity whatever the cost .... I am convinced that any surrender on our part to this kind of aggression would lead to continuing aggression elsewhere, and whether we want it or not, war would become inevitable between India and Pakistan. We are dealing with a State carrying on an informal war. The present objective is Kashmir. The next declared objective is Patiala, East Punjab, and Delhi ... we must not carry on our own operations in a weak defensive way, which can produce no effective impression on the enemy. We have refrained from crossing into Pakistani territory because of our desire to avoid complications leading to open war.”This stern message does not draw a picture of an inane and dithering Nehru taking the Kashmir issue to the UN, complicating what could have been militarily solved.Patel and Gandhi were temporarily persuaded by Mountbatten. We must also realise the immense pressure imposed by the big powers, the UK and US, who were wary of another war after World War II.However, the cause was lost in the Security Council. Nehru wrote to Vijaylakshmi Pandit, “The US and Britain have played a dirty role, Britain probably being the chief actor behind the scenes. I have expressed myself strongly to Attlee about it….”Ajay K Mehra, a political scientist, is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Multilevel Federalism.

Kashmir & the blame game: What history tells us

Ajay K Mehra

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