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April 28, 2002
REVIEW: Kashmir: the Indian view
SELF-righteousness, in varying degrees, is to be found in almost all writings on Kashmir by Indians and Pakistanis. The present volume is no exception. However, it differs from the usual Indian presentations in that the author does not resort to ‘meta-political’ factors to justify India’s case — India’s secularism, the reaction against Indian Muslims, of Kashmir’s defection and so on and so forth.
He rests his case almost wholly on what he calls India’s ‘position of legal rectitude’: the Maharaja acceded to India under the Indian Independence Act, thereby making Kashmir Indian territory, and that is that. In support he cites Pakistan’s own acceptance of Junagadh’s accession, without regard to the wishes of the people of the state. Indeed Jinnah rejected India’s proposal that where a ruler of a state belonged to a different community than the majority of the population, the question of accession should be decided by a reference to the people.
According to the author, Jinnah offered to exchange Junagadh for Kashmir but would not agree to applying the formula to Hyderabad, because its ruler had indicated a wish to become independent.
The author has a point but why, in that case, does he consider Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan to have been ‘politically and morally indefensible?’ And why, indeed, did India propose a plebiscite to determine Kashmir’s accession if the Maharaja’s decision was enough for the purpose? Dasgupta suggests that Nehru was manoeuvred by Mountbatten into making the offer.
It is Mountbatten too, whom he blames for preventing Indian troops from going into Pakistan to destroy the bases of the so-called raiders and taking over the whole of the state. The author’s grievance against Mountbatten seems contrived given that without the Viceroy’s gerrymander of the Radcliffe Award (a matter the author passes over in silence) Kashmir would have had no physical link with India and little possibility of being attached to it.
The book deals with the military and diplomatic skirmishes of the Kashmir conflict in its first two years. That first Kashmir war, in the author’s words, was “unique in the annals of warfare”. Both opposing armies were led by serving British officers who were in regular touch with each other and acted ultimately in the interest of their home country rather than on the instructions of the governments they were serving.
In Dasgupta’s account, the whole of Jammu and Kashmir was India’s for the taking but for the mixed loyalties of the British Services chiefs. However, elsewhere he records the fact that India’s 1948 spring offensive ground to a halt within days and later, when the regular Pakistan Army moved in, it was able to hold the line against superior Indian numbers and weapons.
A similar complaint against its British officers could be made with greater reason by Pakistan. For Pakistan’s British C-in-C, General Gracey, had refused the Quaid’s order to move troops into Kashmir at a moment when the move might have decisively pre-empted India’s attempt to take Kashmir. India’s British military chiefs, on the other hand, acting under the guidance of the British Governor General, did plan and organize the Indian occupation of Kashmir.
Subsequently, they tried to discourage and forestall Indian attempts to occupy the Western districts of Kashmir. The author cites British sources to the effect that the occupation of these districts by depriving Pakistan of defensive depth in the Rawalpindi area, giving India control over the Jhelum river and causing a fresh flood of refugees, could put Pakistan’s very existence in jeopardy. That may of course have been the main attraction of the move for India and possibly that was what Nehru had in mind when on more than one occasion he declared that Kashmir was vital to the very existence of India.
At the United Nations, Dasgupta again finds cause for complaint against the British, in particular, foreign secretary Noel Baker, whom he describes as ‘the villain of the piece’. Noel-Baker’s ‘villainy’ consisted seemingly of his attempt to give the two claimants to Kashmir equal status and influence during the holding of the proposed plebiscite in order to ensure its fairness and impartiality.
Though the author argues India’s case mainly on legal grounds he does try to buttress it by an occasional reference to “political and moral factors”. Thus, he affirms that the major political organization of the state, the Kashmir National Conference, had joined the Maharaja in requesting accession to India. However, he skips the fact that not long afterwards its leader, Shaikh Abdullah, was removed from office and spent, off and on, fifteen years in Indian jails.
The underlying reality emerges nevertheless in passing references. The full-fledged revolt in Poonch, that the Maharaja’s Dogra troops failed to put down despite their customary brutality, is mentioned but only as “a local agrarian uprising”. Well before any ‘raiders’ appeared in Kashmir, the Maharaja had appealed — successfully — to India to send him military equipment and to station Indian troops near the State borders — just in case. India’s case has been that her troops went to Kashmir to repeal raiders from across the border.
However, in an appraisal of the situation in May 1948, General Bucher, India’s C-in-C, informed the defence minister, “so long as the Poonchis, Mirpuris and Muzaffarabadis offered resistance, it would NOT be possible for India to over-run these areas”.
War and diplomacy in Kashmir, 1947-48
By C. Dasgupta
Sage Publications, M 32 Market, Greater Kailash 1, New Delhi-110 048
Email: marketing@indiasage.com
ISBN 0-7619-9589-7 239pp. Indian Rs250
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