Jammu & Kashmir: Complexities of Conflict
by Prof. S.L. Pandit
In the midst of the conflict
and controversies now plaguing the current constantly fluctuating scenario
in Jammu and Kashmir, most people not adequately aware of the history of
our times may be surprised to be told that this princely domain of the
erstwhile British Indian empire was uniquely difficult to get smoothly
and peacefully adjusted within the scheme of Partition, hastily conceived
and implemented in the summer of 1947. It was a desperate remedy for a
desperate situation. For, since the eruption of the unprecedented communal
carnage, called the Great Calcutta Killing, unleashed by the United Bengal's
Muslim League government in August 1946, a violent communal divide spread
to the countryside in what was then East Bengal, leading to repercussions
in the neighbouring Hindu majority state of Bihar. In fact, we have not
even now come to the end of the chain reactions all over the subcontinent
unleashed by this carnage.
Sectarian Strife
As a result, an unprecedented sectarian civil strife
had engulfed large areas of North India to such an extent by the early
summer of 1947 that both the Congress Party and the British Government
had to concede the formation of the truncated Muslim- dominated state of
Pakistan covering the north- western and eastern Muslim majority regions
of the Indian subcontintent and divided by a thousand miles of what became
the residuary and continuing state of India. The whole plan, vastly irrational
by the logic of history and economics and the principles of centuries-old
inter-communal human relationships, was brought into being by an unprecedentedly
hastily planned and promulgated Act of the British Parliament. Obviously,
because of the inter- communal fires raging over large areas of the country,
this drastic political surgery had to be resorted to in order to prevent
a genenl breakdown of administration over the whole of North India. Human
history is not the result of merely of what Marx called "the class struggle",
but also of forces of violence engendered by irrational mass emotions of
fear and hate.
Now in this context of the human and political
situation that had come to a crisis by the summer of 1947, it might be
helpful to consider how the state of Jammu and Kashmir had to face the
future. Among such autocratic principalities, big and minor and tiny, all
told numbering over 560, Jammu and Kashmir was a unique domain in many
respects. In area it was the largest and in population second only to Hyderabad.
Its frontiers in the east and the north touched Tibet, Sinkiang (China)
and its most northern outpost of Gilgit, where it was once claimed that
the three empires (the Czarist, the Chinese and the British) met, it was
within the hailing distance of Soviet Russia. The hereditary ruler since
1846 was a Hindu of the Dogra Rajput clan based in Jammu, while Muslims
comprised nearly 70 per cent of its total population. As if this demographic
diversity was not enough, the Jammu Division was a marginally Hindu majority
area whereas the northern frontier province was dominated by the Buddhists
of Ladakh. Funher, neither ethnically nor linguistically could the state
be called a harmonious entity. Most of the Muslims of the Valley as also
those having a marginal majority in the Doda district of the Jammu Division
speak Kashmiri while the inhabitants of the Dogra belt of the Jammu region
have close affinities with their brethren in the Kangra District of Himachal
Pradesh. Moreover, the inhabitants of the landlocked Poonch district and
the Mirpur district adjoining the frontiers of what is now Pakistani Punjab
were mainly Muslims of the Punjabi-speaking stock.
Peculiar Situation
In the midst of this peculiar situation, demographic
and geographical, where did the state of Jammu and Kashmir stand once the
British paramount power was withdrawn from the subcontinent? Obviously,
this state could have smoothly and easily fitted into the picture of a
united federation of the whole of India. The anomaly of a Muslim majority
area being governed by a Hindu ruler could have been adjusted easily on
the basis of establishing an equally feasible democratic order as between
this state and Hyderabad, a Hindu majority principality governed by a Muslim
Nizam. It is a fact that in 1946, when the British authorities were seriously
committed to a speedy liquidation of their empire, all parties, including
most of the ruling chiefs and barring only the Muslim League, were wholeheartedly
for the establishment of a sovereign independent federation of India.
Unfortunately, the slogan of a separate sovereign
Muslim state was forcefully raised by the Muslim League in 1940 which had
unleashed an emotional upsurge among the Muslim middle class. So the subcontinent
was divided in 1947, unleashing an unprecedentedly immense mass exodus
of religious minorities across the border in the west and accompanied by
unmentionable brutalities.
According to the Indian Independence Act of 1947,
passed by the British Parliament in record haste, the provincial powers,
in what were then called "the British Indian" provinces, were to devolve
upon the truncated or intact provincial legislatures elected in early 1946,
while at the Centre the authority was to be wielded by the two sections
of the Constituent Assembly as indirectly elected in late 1946 and then
split into two sections as demanded by the Muslim League.
Princely Domain
As for the several hundred autocratic and hereditary
princely domains, the Act, while abrogating all previous treaties entered
into between the rulers and the British power, left it to the will of each
individual ruler to accede to India or the newly created dominion of Pakistan,
or to remain independent. And, because of the deep cleavage of policies
between the Congress and the Muslim League, no consensus could be arrived
at between them as to how the integration of these discarded children of
the British imperial policies should take place in the new set-up. While
the Congress Party all along had laid stress on the will of the people
of these princedoms, the leaders of the Muslim League, right till the end
of July 1947, proclaimed that the personal choice of the individual rulers
should prevail in this regard.
Given this peculiar legal and political situation,
what was Maharaja Hari Singh to do in that tragic summer of 1947? It was
obvious that his personal inclination was to accede to India, especially
as the boundary line drawn by Radcliff across Punjab provided him with
a viable, though precarious, link with the territory of the Indian Dominion.
But he knew that a vast section of the Punjabi-speaking Muslim inhabitants
of the western districts - Poonch and Mirpur - of the Jammu Division would
like to join Pakistan. As for the Kashmiri-speaking Muslims of the Valley
and the adjoining areas of what is now the Doda district, obviously they
were mostly adherents of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference led
by Sheikh Mohammad Abdullah, a pany that had refused to fall in line, like
the Red Shirts of the Nonh-West Frontier Province led by Khan Abdul Ghaffar
Khan, with the Muslim League ideology of dividing the subcontinent on the
basis of religion. But, unfonunately, this most important political organisation
of the state had been suppressed by the Dogra ruler and its leaders imprisoned
following the Quit Kashmir movement sponsored by Sheikh Abdullah in 1946.
Maharaja's Indecision
Consequently, the Maharaja did not accede either
to India or to Pakistan by the deadline of August 15, 1947. Obviously,
he was toying with the idea of remaining independent. In any case, the
Maharaja refused to make any decisive move even when Sardar Vallabhbhai
Patel sent word to him in July 1947 that India would not take it amiss
in case he decided to accede to Pakistan. Apart from his personal inclinations,
it was also clear that his own armed Dogra units were not prepared to have
any truck with Pakistan. As against this, the Muslim fighting clans of Poonch, with about 50,000 of them being linked by 1947 as fighting personnel
or pensioners of the undivided armed forces of British India, could not
easily be separated from what emerged as the defence forces of Pakistan
after the 1947 Partition.
In any case, soon after the British withdrawal
in August 1947, apart from the forcible occupation of the Gilgit base by
the Gilgit Scouts, a force locally raised and officered by the Britishers,
and some internal pro-Pakistan agitation in Poonch, most of the territory
of Jammu and Kashmir continued to remain for some time an island of peace
in spite of the fires of sectarian strife then raging in the contiguous
Punjab province since March 1947. In fact, till almost early October, thousands
of terror- stricken refugees, both Muslim and non-Muslim, found it possible
to move through Jammu in search of areas of security beyond the dividing
line drawn between West and East Punjab in August 1947.
Undeclared War
Ultimately, this state of uncertainty for Jammu and
Kashmir was ended by the unleashing of the tribal invasion of the valley
of Kashmir, as planned and sponsored by Pakistan, by October 20, 1947.
The armed regiments of the Maharaja's forces - scattered in small units
all over the state's extensive borders with Pakistan - were easily overpowered
along the Jhelum Valley motor road linking Srinagar with Rawalpindi. Within
a few days, these invaders had overrun most of the northern area of the
Valley and were within the striking distance of Srinagar in the last week
of October. So Maharaja Hari Singh, who had been just marking time since
August 15, had to seek military assistance from India and to accede to
the Indian Dominion. In the beginning, Pakistan, as in the case of the
current turmoil in the state, denied any responsibility for this development,
though some months later it could not conceal from the visiting UN Kashmir
Commission the fact that by May 1948 its regular army units were operating
in several sectors of Jammu and Kashmir.
It is pertinent to recall that, in the midst of
this undeclared state of war between India and Pakistan, the Valley remained
a haven of communal peace; its people freely giving succour and shelter
both to the non-Muslim refugees fleeing from the tribal atrocities unleashed
in the Valley and the Muslim refugees forced to seek security from the
attacks of the non-Mushm militant armed gangs in the Jammu region. The
credit for this unique phenomenon must be given by all historians to the
then leadership of the Jammu and Kashmir National Conference and to the
centuries-old traditions of religious tolerance that had characterised
the ethos and culture of all Kashmiris. Anyway, this phase of an undeclared
war between India and Pakistan came to a close on January 1,1949, according
to a ceasefire agreement through the intervention of the UN Security Council.
This left the whole of the Valley and large chunks of territory in Jammu
and the frontier regions in Indian hands, comprising about two-thirds of
the total area of the state and aboul three-fourths of its population.
As a corollary to this ceasefire, it was also proposed to arrange a plebiscite
in the state to settle its final alignment as between India and Pakistan,
after certain follow-up obligations were fulfilled by both India and Pakistan,
the most important of these being that Pakistan should wholly vacate the
territory of the state. The debate then passed on to the Security Council
at Lake Success, where the delegates of India and Pakistan eloquently held
forth from year to year their respective positions over these follow- up
provisions for arriving at a final agreement.
Futile Debate
This futile debate dragged on for nearly 16 years
till the unleashing of a short war between India and Pakistan in 1965 when
the latter tried to break through the ceasefire line in Jammu and Kashmir
in August 1965 and incidentally ignored the international frontier. This
led to an armed stalemate and later to a reversion to the ceasefire line
of January 1949 under the Tashkent Agreement of January 10, 1966, brought
about between India and Pakistan through the good offices of the then Soviet
Union. Even so, the stalemate over Kashmir continued till Pakistan sustained
a decisive defeat over the Bangladesh war in 1971 which it started in October
1971 to internationalise the issue. This paved the way for the Simla Agreement
of 1972 between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, according to which
the modified ceasefire line was renamed as the Line of Control and both
parties agreed not to disturb it till a mutually agreed settlement over
the Kashmir issue was arrived at.
Since 1989, the Pakistan authorities initiated
a new strategy to cause instability in Jammu and Kashmir by infiltrating
into the Valley a large number of Kashmiri youth trained in the use of
sophisticated weaponry for indulging in sabotage, killings, abduction and
assassination of innocent persons and in the disruption of vital communications.
It must have taken several years to plan and implement this strategy.
Pakistan's Main Objective
To make confusion worse confounded, a number of militant
outfits with diverse political objectives are ruling the roost in the chaos
now prevailing in the Valley and parts of the Doda district across the
mountain barrier of Pir Panchal. It is obvious that the main political
objective of the present authorities in Pakistan is to grab the Valley
by force or fraud. But the so-called Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front
based in Pakistan-held territory desires to establish an independent non-sectarian
state of Jammu and Kashmir. This must be very embarrassing to Pakistan,
especially as the Front appears to have gathered some substantial following
in the so-called "Azad Kashmir" now under the occupation of Pakistan. Moreover,
some extremely conservative militant groups now operating in Kashmir desire
to establish a fundamentalist Islamic regime, the type of which does not
operate at present either in Pakistan or in most other Muslim countries
spread out from Indonesia to Morocco. And all such diverse slogans are
being raised in the name of self- determination !
Let us consider for a moment how this principle
of self-determination can be applied to the creation of the apparently
attractive concept of an Independent Jammu and Kashmir. Those who raise
this slogan seem to target that Jammu and Kashmir state (from 1846 to 1947)
was not a unitary state but a conglomeration of a number of diverse sectarian,
ethnic and linguistic units held together by the firm authority of an absolute
ruler. As for the ceasefire line of 1949, Judge Owen Dixon - an observer
deputed by the UN Security Council during the fifties to probe and report
on the Kashmir tangle - observed: "The division that has taken place by
this line cannot be undone" and he further added that the whole question
boiled down to the "allotment" of the Valley either through a limited plebiscite
or by a mutual agreement between India and Pakistan.
Moreover, those who are dreaming of gaining the
whole state for Pakistan should realise that neither the Buddhist Ladakh
nor the Hindu-dominated areas of Jammu will ever agree to fall into such
a trap. Then there is the central and major population section of the Kashmiri-speaking
people. Unfortunately, they are spread out in sizeable numbers, apart from
the Valley, beyond the Pir Panchal Range in the Doda district of Jammu.
Suppose, for arguments sake, they are allowed to join politically their
ethnic and linguistic brethren in the Valley, this can cut them off physically
both from the Valley and their main economic lifeline through Jammu. In
short, how in the name of rationality and feasibility, can the principle
of self-determination be applied to Jammu and Kashmir with its diverse
racial and politically divided groups with any hope of success? Lastly,
what about more than 300,000 people, mostly Hindus and Sikhs with a sizeable section of peace- loving Muslims, who have been driven out of the Valley
under an unprecedented panic generated by the activities of armed militants
since early 1990? Where and how are these luckless so-called migrants to
be rehabilitated? And what about the huge losses inflicted on the Valley
by reckless arson of both government-owned and private movable and immovable
property? In the context of this bloody and confused scenario, it appears
just moonshine to talk of self-determination. Self-determination for whom,
for what purpose and where?
Occupied Areas SPLIT
As a footnote to clear the confusion spread by ignorant
media agencies, who are these agitators who desire to cross the Line of
Control from the Pakistan- occupied territory of the state? How many people
know that the Pakistan-occupied territories of Jammu and Kashmir have been
split by Pakistan into two separately administered units ? First, there
are the northern areas, comprising Gilgit and Baltistan, which have been
unilaterally, illegally and unconstitutionally merged with Pakistan. Then
there is the territory which they call "Azad Kashmir", comprising thc Punjabi-speaking
districts of Muzaffarabad, Mirpur and part of Poonch. Within this area,
there may now be residing a few thousand Kashmiris who migrated in 1947-48
from these parts in search of their dream of an Islamic earthly paradise
of Pakistan. And yet the world publicity media are glibly speaking of "Kashmiris"
trying to cross into the Valley across the Line of Control!
Insurrectionary Movements
It would seem that peace and prosperity are still
a long way off from the strife-torn areas of Jammu and Kashmir. True, free
India has had to deal with violent insurrectionary movements also in the
north- east. Apparently, these appear to have been largely brought under
control after many years of military and political moves. Even the long-drawn
and most bloody violent course of mi;itancy in Punjab appears to have turned
the corner. Possibly, the masses of Punjab are now realising the futility
of pursuing what a well-known Sikh intellectual called the "suicidal dream
of Khalistan". Most unfortunately, there is as yet no definite indication
of our reaching a similar turning point in the situation now prevailing
in the "unhappy valley". Nothing short of a political miracle can possibly
change qualitatively the present situation there. For example, one can
hope for a possibility of the emergence of a bold and sane leadership among
Kashmiri Muslims, a sort of leadership that can denounce the cult of the
gun and agree to talk to Delhi on the basis of guaranteeing feasible internal
autonomy and establishing to the full extent the fundamental democratic
rights provided for in the Constitution. For, ultimately, the situation
in the Valley cannot be resolved merely as a law and order problem. Similarly,
pouring into the state enormous funds, which may in the prevailing conditions
pass into questionable hands, cannot win over the alienated masses of the
common people.
Some close and objective observers of the current
scene in the state have made note of some indications of recently emerging
two hopeful features in the valley of Kashmir. For one, very few genuine
and educated Kashmiri youth are now eager or enthusiastic about joining
the ranks of the terrorists or to cross the Line of Control to receive
training in the use of highly sophisticated military hardware. The militant
outfits now operating in the Valley comprise largely foreign mercenaries.
Moreover, the masses of the totally unarmed Kashmiri common folk appear
to be fed up with continuing wide- ranging violence, the utter breakdown
of the rule of law since early 1990 and the excesses committed by many
militants on the unprotected peaceful people. True, the ground level trends
in these directions have received a setback following the utterly inept
mishandling of the obviously and potentially explosive situation at the
Chrar shrine. Possibly, with the likely settling down in the aftermath
of this mishap, the common people at large may again pine for the so-far
elusive state of peace and stability.
Possible Miracle
Before I close this review of current history as
affecting Kashmir, I may be excused for dreaming of another possible miracle
of history. Obviously, the present uncertain conditions of turmoil in the
state can drag on for years without either Pakistan or India achieving
a complete and decisive success in their respective objectives. May it
not be possible for the two countries and their peoples, with centuries-old
traditions of a shared culture and traditions of peaceful coexistence,
to come together on the basis of the existing Line of Control with guarantees
of easy travel and trade between Kashmir and what Pakistan calls "Azad
Kashmir"? All this could possibly be accomplished within the framework
of a common Indo-Pak defence agreement. The alternative, short of a mutually
ruinous open war between India and Pakistan, may lead to a prolonged, indecisive
struggle at a comparatively low cost to Pakistan but at a heavy cost to
India, a situation that can in the long run benefit the common people of
neither country and seriously impede their progress towards a happier style
of living. Such a denouement to a long-drawn phase of mutual distrust will
need statesmanship and vision of a high order hy the rulers on both sides.
I wonder whether it is just wishful thinking to hope for such a miracle
to take place. Most unfortunately, the story of mankind on this earth is
littered with calculated generation of mass-scale hate and fear and ignorance
that have provided roots to most of our never-ending and often futile violence
between groups and groups divided by race, religion, language and by what
they call political ideology.
|
