The roots of the conflict

PRAVEEN SWAMI

AT the heart of the conflict between India and Pakistan over Jammu and Kashmir lies the fact that it was the sole Muslim-majority state which acceded to India at the time of Independence. Unlike princely Hyderabad or Khairpur, which were forced by reasons of geography to accede to India and Pakistan respectively, Jammu and Kashmir posed several unique problems. A Muslim-majority state ruled by a Hindu Maharaja, Hari Singh, Kashmir abutted both India and Pakistan. The course of Pakistan's independence movement compelled that country to make communal claims on Kashmir, while for the Indian national movement, Jammu and Kashmir symbolised its core secular ideological beliefs. To complicate things further, Hari Singh himself favoured independence, and studiously resisted pressures to accede to either of the new nations.

The need to ensure that Muslim-majority Kashmir did not accede to India led Pakistan to launch columns of Pathan tribal irregulars, along with Army personnel in mufti, into the state. The invasion is by most Indian accounts believed to have been planned by Pakistan's Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan and Major-General Akbar Khan, with Mohammad Ali Jinnah's authorisation. On October 22, 1947, the advancing Pakistani column took Muzaffarabad, now in Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir.

This development forced Hari Singh's hand, and after troops borrowed from the Maharaja of Patiala failed to halt the column, he appealed to the British Governor-General, Louis Mountbatten, for help. Along with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and Home Minister Vallabhbhai Patel, Mountbatten decided that Indian troops could be committed only if Hari Singh acceded to India, in exercise of his powers under the Independence of India Act. Mountbatten introduced one key caveat: that the people of Kashmir would have to ratify the accession. Nehru agreed - with fateful consequences.

On October 25, V.P. Menon flew to Srinagar to obtain Hari Singh's signature on the Instrument of Accession. Two days later, Mountbatten accepted the document. With Pakistan's columns at Srinagar's gates, Indian paratroopers landed in Srinagar and beat back the invaders. The conflict led to a full-scale war between India and Pakistan in November 1947, which dragged on until December, with Pakistan holding some one-third of the disputed territory. At Mountbatten's suggestion, and by some accounts in the face of Vallabhbhai Patel's strenuous objections, the Indian Cabinet referred the entire conflict to the United Nations Security Council. After protracted negotiations, a ceasefire was negotiated in January 1948. On August 13, 1948, the Security Council submitted a signal resolution that was to shape the terms of India-Pakistan engagement on Kashmir for half a century.

THE August 13 resolution, which both India and Pakistan agreed to honour, had three parts. The first part called for a ceasefire to come into force. The second part mandated that "since the presence of troops of Pakistan constitutes a material change since it was represented by the Government of Pakistan before the Security Council, the Government of Pakistan agrees to withdraw its troops." Pakistan was also committed "to use its best endeavour" to secure the withdrawal of tribesmen and its other nations present there for the purposes of war. Section B of this second part of the resolution held that when the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) certified that Pakistani tribesmen and troops had withdrawn, India would withdraw from the State all but a minimum level of forces needed to maintain law and order. Subsequently, Part Three of the resolution mandated, the future of Jammu and Kashmir would be decided "in accordance with the will of the people."

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, and (right) Benazir Bhutto, in Shimla in July 1972, when India and Pakistan signed an agreement that committed both countries to work for "a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir."

Much debate on Jammu and Kashmir has centred around what would have happened if Nehru had not agreed to a plebiscite, and the consequences of one had it been held. In the event, Pakistan never withdrew its troops, scuttling the implementation of the August 13 Security Council Resolution. A series of U.N. resolutions were passed to bring about progress, but with little effect. On December 2, 1957, for example, the Security Council passed a resolution expressing concern over the lack of progress in realising earlier resolutions, after Sweden's representative, Gunnar V. Jarring, submitted a report which "explore(d) what was impeding their full resolution." Significantly, this 1957 resolution constituted the last instance of the U.N. considering the future of Jammu and Kashmir in a serious manner - until the Security Council's most recent call for India-Pakistan dialogue on the issue. India and Pakistan were left to conduct bilateral talks on Kashmir from December 27, 1962. Almost sabotaged at the outset by Pakistan's decision to hand over 2,060 square miles of territory in its part of Kashmir to China, the talks dragged on desultorily, and collapsed after six rounds.

THE two major subsequent agreements on Jammu and Kashmir were both the outcome of wars. Pakistan's Operation Gibraltar, Field Marshal Ayub Khan's effort to achieve what remained undone in 1947, saw five major task forces of specially trained Pakistanis moving into Kashmir in the summer of 1965, under the command of Major-General Akhtar Husain Malik's headquarters at Murree. Gibraltar too was beaten back, and after Pakistan's plans to use its troops to initiate a civil uprising failed, the U.N. brokered a ceasefire. In January 1966, under international pressure, Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri and President Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent Agreement, which dealt specifically with the Kashmir issue. Both countries reaffirmed their commitment to "settle their disputes through peaceful means." They noted that "the interests of the peoples of India and Pakistan were not served by the continuance of tension between the two countries." "It was against this background," the Tashkent Agreement reads, "that Jammu and Kashmir was discussed, and each of the sides set forth its respective position."

The final major bilateral engagement on the future of Kashmir came after Pakistan's humiliating defeat in the war of 1971. This agreement, signed by Prime Ministers Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto on July 3, 1972, committed both countries to work for "a final settlement of Jammu and Kashmir." The agreement did not see any specific discussion of how this might come about, but it was mandated that meanwhile "neither side shall unilaterally alter the situation and both shall prevent the organisation, assistance or encouragement of any acts detrimental to the maintenance of peaceful and harmonious relations."

By some accounts, Indira Gandhi and Bhutto arrived at an unwritten agreement that the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir would be accepted as the border. Bhutto pleaded that he be not compelled to commit this in print, which would have undermined his political standing in Pakistan. Evidence of such a deal is purely circumstantial. Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Farooq Abdullah, for instance, recently revealed in a television interview that he was informed of it by Bhutto's personal secretary during his 1974 visit to Pakistan.

Hopes of a resolution of the question of Jammu and Kashmir's status virtually receded from the world's collective consciousness for two decades. But Pakistan's emergence as a key front in the U.S. assault on Soviet influence in Afghanistan changed that situation. By the mid-1980s, Pakistan was working on Operation Topac, a revised version of its 1947 and 1965 enterprises, this time built around a sustained low-intensity conflict in Kashmir followed by a mass uprising.

The rise of terrorism in 1989 put an effective end to India-Pakistan bilateral initiatives. Prime Ministers I.K. Gujral and Nawaz Sharif sought to revive a process of dialogue, but their initiative proved of limited utility owing to a variety of reasons. What shape future dialogue on Jammu and Kashmir will take is far from clear.

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