Thursday, March 28, 2024
03:59 PM (GMT +5)

Go Back   CSS Forums > CSS Compulsory Subjects > Pakistan Affairs

Reply Share Thread: Submit Thread to Facebook Facebook     Submit Thread to Twitter Twitter     Submit Thread to Google+ Google+    
 
LinkBack Thread Tools Search this Thread
  #1  
Old Monday, December 25, 2006
Member
 
Join Date: Nov 2006
Location: Multan
Posts: 65
Thanks: 3
Thanked 11 Times in 5 Posts
ahsanghalib is on a distinguished road
Default Hewitt, Vernon, "Kashmir: the unanswered question," History Today, (v47 n9), Sep 1997

Hewitt, Vernon, "Kashmir: the unanswered question," History Today, (v47 n9), Sep 1997

Few commentators in 1947 would have predicted that, fifty years on, the Kashmir dispute would remain unsolved and seemingly irresolvable. The official position of both india and Pakistan remains that of each laying claim to the former Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir in its entirety, despite border adjustments between China and Pakistan, and despite the 1972 Simla Accord which implicitly recognised the partition of the former Princely State between the two successor states of the British Raj. Pakistan still refuses to believe that the signing of the Instrument of Accession by Maharaja Hari Singh in October 1947 legitimises India's `occupation' of the area, while the Indians refuse to recognise Pakistan's control of the area known as `Azad' Kashmir, and that the Northern Territories of Hunza and Gilgit give the state any locus standi in the dispute at all.

Since the late 1980s, the Kashmir problem has been complicated by a serious outbreak of political unrest within Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, and the growth of a pan-Kashmiri identity, which has spawned a whole series of political and militant groups demanding a separate, sovereign state of Jammu and Kashmir. Some of these call for an independent Islamic state, some for the creation of a secular republic. Yet like their pro-Indian and pro-Pakistani counterparts, these groups define their future sovereign state on the territorial outlines of the former Dogra kingdom without adjustments, and without seemingly recognising the cultural and social diversity of the present territory.

The relationships between British India and Princely India within the Empire was in origin, pragmatic. By the late 1930s, British India consisted of ten provinces administered in large part by Indian politicians, elected on a small percentage of the adult franchise, and working under a British constituted centre. Princely India consisted of over 600 states of varying sizes, making up almost two-fifths of the Empire. The Princely States were the remains of the various regional kingdoms conquered by the British in the expansive phases of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Essentially feudal, these states were associated directly with the Crown through the principle of `paramountcy', a vague concept under which the British granted the princes considerable autonomy of action in exchange for their political loyalty and the surrendering of foreign policy and defence to the supremacy of British imperial interests.

Constitutionally, British and Princely India did not co-exist well with each other. The conflict between representative government (however limited) and monarchy was fudged during the long period of constitutional reform that set in at the turn of the century. From the 1890s until the adoption of the 1935 Government of India Act, the doctrine of Paramountcy shielded the princes from the need to reform their governments along representative lines, although some chose to do so through expedience. By the late 1930s, Jammu and Kashmir had an indirectly elected assembly (the Praja Sabha) and an embryonic party-based system made up of the National Conference and the Muslim Conference. In this regard, the Dogra kingdom was an exception, but even so, the Maharaja appointed his wazir (or prime minister) without regard to party representation within the assembly, or to wider popular sentiment.

As the British moved towards the inevitability of Indian independence, the fate of Princely India was sealed. Both Wavell and Mountbatten were slow to disabuse several leading princes of the notion that, once Paramountcy had lapsed, they could become sovereigns in their own rights. Reluctantly (and somewhat inconsistently) the British attempted to persuade the princes to federate with a new independent Indian republic, and then, after Mountbatten's declaration on June 3rd, 1947, to decide between joining either Pakistan or india. There remained great confusion in the official mind until the very eve of partition, with Mountbatten noting that he was so preoccupied with British India that he had neglected the constitutional issues raised by Princely India almost entirely.

By July 1947, the newly constituted Department of States clarified the following procedures for the transfer of power for the Princely States. In the first instance, a temporary facilitating agreement would be signed that allowed for the continuation of transport, trade and communication links with either dominion (the so-called `stand-still agreement'). The princes would then be asked to sign a permanent Instrument of Accession, in which power was handed over, in the first instance, in the areas of external affairs, finance and defence to either New Delhi or Karachi. Unlike British India, the basis for deciding whether or not a Princely State would join India or Pakistan was not to be determined by the religious composition of the state. The decision of the Radcliffe boundary commission to demarcate the future international border within British India on the basis of Muslim majority areas was not deemed appropriate to Princely India, given the socio-religious complexity of the Princely States, in which Hindu monarchs often presided over Muslim populations and vice-versa.

The only apparent consideration that preoccupied the British was the need to retain the territorial integrity of the states of Pakistan and India by ensuring that kingdoms geographically contiguous with Pakistan join Karachi, and kingdoms contiguous with India joined New Delhi. In this regard, the British were at one with the leaders of the Indian National Congress and the Muslim League, despite Jinnah's initial recognition that the Princely States could, in fact, revert to sovereign entities following the British withdrawal. It was on this basis that the British tried to persuade the Nizam of Hyderabad, a Muslim, to join India, despite his desire to become an independent state or to sign up to Pakistan.

Significantly, the Dogra kingdom of Kashmir was one of the few large Princely States that, due to its geographical location, could join either India or Pakistan. Moreover, as the British were increasingly aware throughout the summer of 1947, the Maharaja Hari Singh was thinking of joining neither state, but of becoming an independent country in his own right. Jammu and Kashmir had signed stand-still agreements with India and with Pakistan, but had delayed on signing the Instrument of Accession. Hari Singh was to hold out for an independent state until October 1947, when tribal incursions coming from the vicinity of Poonch, a district close to the new Pakistani border, forced him to join India in exchange for Indian military help. In his letter to the Governor-General of India (Mountbatten) of October 26th the Maharaja blamed Pakistan for the invasion, alleging that it had failed to honour the stand-still agreement as part of a concerted effort to coerce Hari Singh into joining Pakistan. The Maharaja also wrote that he intended to appoint Sheikh Abdullah, leader of the National Conference and a man closely associated with Nehru, to the post of prime minister in a new interim government.

From the perspective of the Indian government, several key events established the legitimacy of Indian sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir. Foremost is the actual signing of the Instrument of Accession by Maharaja Hari Singh, on or about October 26th, 1947. This, along with the stand-still agreement, fulfilled the established procedures whereby Princely India opted to join either India or Pakistan. In a formal sense, the legality of the document is not in serious doubt, although some have suggested that either the signature has been forged, the date changed, or the whole document fabricated.

Paradoxically, however, the Indian emphasis upon the Instrument of Accession was weakened almost immediately by their decision to hold a referendum to ratify the decision of the Maharaja. This was not part of the procedures devised by the Department of States to facilitate integration.

The decision is revealing in the sense that both Nehru and, apparently, Mountbatten felt that `in the case of any state where the Instrument of Accession has been the subject of dispute [sic], the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people'. In his reply to Hari Singh's letter asking for military help from India. Mountbatten noted that `It is my government's wish that, as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir, the question of the state's accession was itself the subject of a dispute, and that some form of election was needed to further -- and perhaps critically -- legitimise the instrument of Accession. Many critics of the Indian position, point out that this enthusiasm for an election was less to do with a point of principle, than the belief that, with the appointment of Sheikh Abdullah to office, his pro-Indian stance would ensure a victorious outcome in the poll. The referendum was not to be held.

Following India's referral of the case to the United Nations, the UN-sponsored cease-fire of 1949 and the establishment of a cease-fire line, India and Pakistan sat down to discuss the terms of the proposed referendum. However, the necessary conditions to ensure a free and fair result were never agreed. The Pakistanis insisted that the entire kingdom be placed under a `neutral' administration, while the Indians insisted that the Pakistanis should vacate the areas they occupied by 1949. Over time, India's position on this issue has changed radically. From 1954 onwards, the Indians were increasingly reluctant to discuss the holding of a referendum at all, leading to various allegations that, with the onset of hostilities between Sheikh Abdullah and Nehru, New Delhi was no longer confident of success, or indeed of the wider loyalties of the National Conference.

The Indians themselves argue firstly, that Pakistani intransigence made the referendum unworkable. Secondly, that the subsequent participation of Indian citizens within Jammu and Kashmir in several national and state elections means that, de facto, they have given their consent to the accession of the kingdom to the Indian Republic. Moreover, the Indians argue that they have granted Jammu and Kashmir specific status within the Indian Union in recognition of its special status, and with special attention given to its Muslim majority status. Thirdly they claim that, following the signing of a bilateral agreement between India and Pakistan in 1972, it was agreed to abandon the referendum altogether.

Much has been written about the so-called Simla Accord. Following the collapse of East Pakistan in 1972, the Indian and Pakistani governments appeared to accept a crude partition along the Line of Control (LOC) -- the renamed cease-fire line -- which, with a few notable exceptions, divided the state into Indian and Pakistani spheres of influence. Central to the Simla process were two convictions: that the LOC would be a `soft' border, facilitating trade and cultural interaction and in effect reuniting the old territories of the Dogra kingdom, and that the Simla Accord removed any basis for maintaining the need to hold a referendum on the issue of the Instrument of Accession, superseding the United Nation Resolutions (38, 39, 47 and 51 respectively). Both of these convictions failed to bear fruit. Little movement has taken place between the former territories of the Dogra kingdom, and since 1988, various Pakistani governments have made reference to the UN resolutions dealing with Kashmir, and have renewed calls for a referendum.

The Pakistani explanation for their apparent reneging of the Simla agreement in the late 1980s concerns their belief that the accord was signed in the wake of military defeat and in the context of the political turmoil associated with the Pakistani civil war and the eventual independence of East Pakistan. It is argued that Zulfikar Bhutto was placed under unreasonable pressure to sign a document never perceived by the Pakistani Elite as legitimate. Furthermore, both Pakistani and Kashmiri activists argue that the Kashmiris themselves were not party to Simla, despite the fact that the accord was `ratified' in the Kashmir assembly in Srinagar. It is argued that the agreement, and subsequent de facto partitioning of the state, goes against a growing assertion of a Kashmiri identity against both the Indian and Pakistani presence.

With regard to the crisis within Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir since 1989-90, it is significant to note that the Indian government's response has been to blame Pakistani-backed insurgency as the prime cause for the collapse of the political process. The onset of widespread social unrest, and the rise of numerous militant outfits fighting for a variety of positions (pro-Pakistani, in favour of an Independent Islamic Republic of Kashmir, in favour of a secular Republic of Kashmir, and since 1995-96, militants fighting to stay with India) is not seen as a failure of the Indian government to satisfy Kashmir aspirations, or the failure of Kashmir's own political elite associated with the National Conference, but as the result of foreign intervention.

In late 1996 it was estimated that up to thirty-four groups were operating within the valley districts alone. Likewise, the holding of state elections in the autumn of 1996 were seen by New Delhi as indicative that Pakistan had, in response to international pressure, significantly scaled down its covert operations across the Line of Control. India believes that, with a restored popular government in Srinagar, the crisis is all but over. Such a view seriously undermines the political and economic problems associated with the Kashmir crisis, problems which are indigenous to the workings of the Indian federal system, and the failure of party politics generally.

The Pakistani case for claiming Kashmir is a complex one. It lacks the central focus afforded to the Indians by their possession of a signed Instrument of Accession and their de facto possession of two-thirds of the state. The first basis of the Pakistan claim is associated with the so-called two nation theory. From the late 1930s onwards, Jinnah and the Muslim League argued that the Muslims of South Asia required their own state, since they were culturally different from their predominantly Hindu neighbours and not represented within the Indian National Congress. Despite initial resistance from both the British and the politicians of the Indian National Congress, Jinnah was able to wrest control of the Muslim majority provinces of former British India.

The only Muslim majority area outside Pakistan was to be the Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir. It is this fact alone that provides the gist of the Pakistan claim, despite the fact that the communal `contiguity' did not apply to Princely India. Moreover, since the Indian National Congress refused to accept the premise of the two nation theory, the religious identity of the majority of Kashmir is seen as irrelevant to their respective state loyalties. However, it has been suggested that India's retention of Jammu and Kashmir as a Muslim majority state was not coincidental, but was essential to its continuing claims to be a secular state. In 1948, Nehru noted in a letter to Sir Stafford Cripps that:

Kashmir's accession to India helps us greatly to deal with the minority problem in India. If Kashmir went [to Pakistan], the position of the Muslims in India would become more difficult.

The Pakistani position seeks to undermine the legitimacy of the Instrument of Accession by noting that the Maharaja was a Hindu, presiding over a predominately Sunni Muslim kingdom, and by no means representative of his state, and that, in fact, throughout 1947, following British withdrawal, there was an indigenous rebellion taking place within Jammu and Kashmir against Dogra rule, that started in the Poonch district. The authenticity of the Poonch rebellion as an indigenous, Muslim revolt against a usurious Hindu dynasty would go some way to discrediting the authority of the Maharaja in signing away his kingdom to India, although it would not itself undermine the legality of the instrument of Accession.

The Poonch rebellion becomes central to the Pakistani claim that it did not so much engineer a tribal invasion to force the maharaja to join Pakistan, but merely failed to prevent fellow tribals (from the adjacent areas of the North West Frontier Province) responding to calls for a jihad from Muslims within the Poonch area, and that the rebellion was spontaneous and of a religious nature. Certainly, in the chaos following partition, the authority of the new Pakistani state was seriously compromised in the tribal areas, while the reconstitution of the Pakistani army (which, until 1948, operated under the same joint command structure as its Indian counterpart) was sufficiently confused to allow for unauthorised action at the initiative of individual commanders.

There exists a clear basis on which the Pakistani government can argue that it was unable to control events in the Poonch district and that a tribal incursion took on a momentum of its own. Additionally, several Pakistani commentators question the exact chronology of the Indian response, and have suggested that sections of the Indian army were already positioned in jammu and Kashmir before Hari Singh actually signed the instrument of Accession. Such doubts add weight to the allegations that it was the Indians who acted illegally, and that their intervention into Kashmir was planned and executed before it was legitimised by the Maharaja's signature.

On the other hand, it is often noted that the organisation of the so-called tribals or Afridis), and the amount of material they had at their disposal in the opening days of the raid, denoted official sanction, at least at the provisional level of the North West Frontier government. Lord Birdwood, commenting on the events ten years later, in 1957, stated that `the general conclusion is that while there was no plan of control by the Pakistani government at the highest level, there was knowledge and tacit consent' about the subsequent rebellion. This collusion even extended to various British personnel seconded to the new Pakistani administration. Since that date, very little fresh evidence has come to light to clarify these events.

Pakistan would have much to gain by proving its general ignorance of the events of 1947, since its association with a covert tribal invasion has done much to tarnish its reputation. Unfortunately, the association between Pakistan and coercion was reinforced during 1965, when in the opening campaigns of the second Indo-Pakistan war, Pakistan began to infiltrate trained Kashmiri operatives across the then international cease-fire line, to help `liberate' their fellow Kashmiris. To many analysts, it was to this tried and trusted method that the Pakistani government reverted in 1989-90, when the onset of social unrest within Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir invited the prospects of successful intervention.

In response to Indian allegations over insurgency since 1989, the Pakistani government has strenuously denied materially assisting the pro-Pakistani, and more generally pro-Islamic Kashmiri militant outfits. Officially, the Pakistan government claims to support the aims of a selection of militant groups. Pakistan believes that it has an obligation to bring India's violation of Muslim human rights in Indian `occupied' Jammu and Kashmir to the attention of the international community. In various forums, most notably the Organisation of Islamic Conference (OIC) Pakistan has sponsored debates highlighting the tactics and approaches adopted by the Indian security forces in their various counter-insurgency strategies. Yet, as Islamabad has discovered to its cost, a focusing on human rights in India has raised issues about its own records, both in Azad Kashmir and the Northern Territories, and throughout Pakistan generally.

Pakistan's insistence that it is not associated with insurgency flies in the face of a growing amount of international evidence linking sections of its government -- in particular the so-called Inter Services Intelligence Bureau -- with training camps and supply depots along the LOC. There is circumstantial evidence that links Pakistani operations in Afghanistan in the mid-1980s (during the time of General Zia) to covert operations in Kashmir after the ending of the Afghan civil war. The extent and significance of official involvement is disguised by the existence of `parallel government' in Pakistan, in which it remained. until recently, perfectly feasible for the civilian government to lack any control of the army and the security forces.

Recent constitutional changes under Nawaz Sharif may go a long way toward democratising the structure of the Pakistani state. As domestic violence within Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir declines, the present Pakistani government appears to be backing away from supporting covert operations, and from publicly supporting the case of the militants, but as yet there is no sign that either state is prepared to depart from their historic positions. There is also no sign that Sharif can yet risk using any language that associates his government with the Simla Agreement and the abandonment of the referendum position.

Like much of former Princely India, the state of Jammu and Kashmir was the product of dynastic expansion by the Rajput Dogras, and had, by the late 1890s, witnessed the passing of many regional kingdoms, associated with Hindus, Muslims (both Sunni and Shi'ite) and in the more distant past, Buddhists. While some argue that Kashmiri identity transcends religion and is based on territory, shared culture and language (the so-called Kashmiriyat), others have noted that, in response to external and internal events, Kashmiri identity had increasingly fragmented by the late 1970s.

The most blatant example of this fragmentation is the alienation of the Kashmiri Pandit community, the indigenous Hindus, who were allegedly forced out of Srinagar in the riots of 1989-90 by Sunni Muslims. As a result, many pandits have co-opted the language of ethnic exclusiveness, claiming that they constitute the original Kashmir `race' and that, as such, they ought to be given specific protection in their own state.

On both sides of the Line of Control, there is very clear evidence that numerous Kashmiri identities have become more assertive and are calling for greater degrees of political and economic involvement, if not outright independence. The demands of the Kashmiris are varied and complex, ranging from greater degrees of autonomy within either India or Pakistan, to calls for an independent secular or religious republic via a referendum. The proliferation of Kashmiri groups adds to the difficulties faced in attempts to aggregate public opinion and to attach it to any specific agenda.

It is this fragmentation that, along with the implacable opposition of both india and Pakistan, rules out the viability of an independent state for the foreseeable future. In the light of this I would like to suggest that the solution to the crisis lies in the states of India and Pakistan, and within the region of South Asia as a whole. Despite its continuing unpopularity in Pakistan, the Simla Accord still offers the outlines of a comprehensive settlement, fifty years after British withdrawal, and twenty-four years after it was first signed in the former summer capital of the British Raj.

The reasons for this are as follows. The most important element of the Simla Accord concerned the creation of a `soft' border, a recognition of the importance of a pan-Kashmiri regional identity, independent of India and Pakistani administrations. Since the late 1980s, the political circumstances in both India and in Pakistan are much more conducive for the kind of interaction envisaged by Simla. Moreover, the Indian polity is now dominated by regional parties, all of which are concerned with increasing federalism within India, and in deepening the democratic process to the regional and even the district levels. The recently elected National Conference government of Farooq Abdullah has recognised this change and has called for greater autonomy within Kashmir. Farooq is also attempting to recognise Buddhist and so-called tribal concerns in the state.

Even in Pakistan, a state in which the process of federalism has been most problematic, there is now a growing recognition that centralism generated the very regional stresses and secessionist movements it was designed to prevent. What is now possible is that Simla becomes part of a sort of `widening and deepening' debate in which significant powers of autonomy are granted (or, from a differing perspective, restored) to Indian administered Jammu and Kashmir, and extended to Azad Kashmir and the Northern Territories, both areas of which still have very few statutory rights within the current Pakistani constitution.

Indo-Pakistani efforts to respect Kashmiri rights could, in turn, initiate a process of extending co-operation, decentralisation and autonomy across the LOC. Whether such a process will satisfy the various demands for an `Azadi' Kashmir remains to be seen. Some will argue that such a process is either crude `devolution' (which can, at the whim of any central government, be removed), or that it will begin a momentum towards independence and conflict. However, fifty years on, that is the one real hope of a solution, which frees itself from a detailed examination of the past, and the old stale arguments of legitimacy and representation that have been bandied about, ad nauseam, since October 1947. A critical re-examination of Simla recognises that, at the heart of the Kashmir crisis is a crisis of accountability and multiple identity which cannot be resolved by crude references to nationalism, be it Indian, Pakistani or Kashmiri, but by the processes of federalism.

Vernon Hewitt is Lecturer in Politics at the University of Bristol and author of The New International Politics of South Asia (Manchester University Press, 1997).

COPYRIGHT 1997 History Today Ltd. (UK)

COPYRIGHT 1997 Information Access Company
__________________
Email ID shared! Your signature violates the rules -- Forum Management
Reply With Quote
Reply

Thread Tools Search this Thread
Search this Thread:

Advanced Search

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Trackbacks are On
Pingbacks are On
Refbacks are On


Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
History an overview Naseer Ahmed Chandio Topics and Notes 4 Monday, March 29, 2021 12:16 PM
What is History, Lessons we learn from it, benefits of its study. Xeric History of Pakistan & India 0 Tuesday, May 19, 2009 08:23 PM
A breif history about Museum Muhammad Adnan General Knowledge, Quizzes, IQ Tests 4 Friday, February 16, 2007 05:01 PM
indo-pak relations atifch Current Affairs 0 Monday, December 11, 2006 09:01 PM


CSS Forum on Facebook Follow CSS Forum on Twitter

Disclaimer: All messages made available as part of this discussion group (including any bulletin boards and chat rooms) and any opinions, advice, statements or other information contained in any messages posted or transmitted by any third party are the responsibility of the author of that message and not of CSSForum.com.pk (unless CSSForum.com.pk is specifically identified as the author of the message). The fact that a particular message is posted on or transmitted using this web site does not mean that CSSForum has endorsed that message in any way or verified the accuracy, completeness or usefulness of any message. We encourage visitors to the forum to report any objectionable message in site feedback. This forum is not monitored 24/7.

Sponsors: ArgusVision   vBulletin, Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.