REVIEW ARTICLE

Kashmir in retrospect

A.G. NOORANI

War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 1947-48 by C. Dasgupta; Sage; pages 239 Rs.250.

Incomplete Partition: The Genesis of the Kashmir Dispute 1947-1948 by Alastair Lamb; Oxford University Press; pages 373; Rs.595.

CHANDRASHEKHAR DASGUPTA is one of "the brightest and the best" of India's Foreign Service. He was India's Ambassador to China (1993-96) and to the European Union (1996-2000). Since he does not permit himself the luxury of a Preface, with its customary acknowledgements, one can only admire the industry he expended, while in Brussels, in trips to London, to delve into the archives there.

The scholarship, however, is not celibate. It is married to the distinct nationalistic fervour with which South Block infects most. He views events of 1947-48 from the perspectives of today and angrily rails at the incongruities of the times, when we were weak, though independent. The memories irk.

THE HINDU PHOTO LIBRARY
Mohammed Ali Jinnah, Lord Mountbatten and Jawaharlal Nehru at the conference in which Mountbatten disclosed the British plan for the partition of India.

Most of the book is about the Albion perfide, a later corruption of Bossnet's "L'Angleterre, ah! La perfide Angleterre" (England, Oh, perfidious England). Around the time of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's visit to the subcontinent last January, he went to town, with articles in dailies more than one, recalling British infidelities over half a century ago citing "newly-researched material" in his book. In one, he concluded: "In 1947-48 Britain chose to ignore the implications of the clandestine war launched by Pakistan. This led to an increasing Pakistani appetite for such actions, resulting ultimately in the massive terrorist campaign unleashed by the ISI. If Blair seriously wants to play a calming role in the sub-continent, he must do everything in his power to ensure that the terrorists are rooted out from Pakistan and Pakistan-occupied territory. If the terrorists are not brought to justice, India will be left with no other choice than to 'bring justice' to them, to borrow President Bush's felicitous phrase."

It is a palpably unhistorical approach and a self-righteous one, too: History stopped between 1948 and 1988 when Zia-ul-Haq launched the covert operation in Kashmir; India committed no wrongs; the wishes of the people matter not; and it is a pure case of terrorism. Blair was treated with suspicion because of British policies in 1947-48.

Pakistani perceptions of Blair's stand were altogether different. The reviewer met, around the time of Blair's visit, two of Pakistan's most distinguished diplomats at the Sind Club in Karachi, which maintains standards of excellence unsurpassed by any in the region. Both were convinced of Blair's "tilt" towards India; both are known advocates of reconciliation with India.

In reacting thus, Dasgupta lapsed from a reflective approach besides, ironically, from his nationalist stance. Why do we ask the Blairs and the Bushes to do our job for us?

Dasgupta's reflections in his introduction bear quotation in extenso: "The conflict which broke out between India and Pakistan in 1947 was unique in the annals of modern warfare: it was a war in which both the opposing armies were led by nationals of a third country. British generals commanded the armies of the newly independent states of India and Pakistan... While it was unique in this one respect, the first Indo-Pakistan war was also a typical Third World conflict from a broader perspective. External factors tend to play a major part in wars between medium or small states. Their dependence on major powers for military supplies, economic assistance and diplomatic support makes these states vulnerable to external pressures. Thus the positions taken by the great powers can influence the duration, intensity and even the outcome of such conflicts. The Kashmir war of 1947-48 is one such example. For both India and Pakistan, Britain was the leading overseas partner in trade, industry and finance. Both countries turned to Britain for military equipment, spares and oil supplies. The war was unique only in the extent to which the two states were vulnerable to British influence on account of the presence of British officers at the seniormost levels of their armed forces. These officers were in a position to directly influence the course of the war through the advice they tendered to their respective governments and the manner in which they implemented - or ignored - government directives."

The presence of British officers in India in 1947-48 was but one factor. The other and more fundamental was the fact that the Third World needs external support for its military ventures, as the author acknowledges at the end of the book: "In wars in the Third World, secrecy, surprise and speed are essential political requirements for a decisive campaign. In the absence of these factors, an offensive runs the risk of being aborted by external intervention in the shape of a Security Council resolution or simply by a warning from one or more of the great powers. Unless a benign superpower is prepared to hold the ring - by exercising its veto against a Security Council resolution or deterring intervention by other powers - secrecy, surprise and speed are of fundamental importance from a diplomatic as well as military point of view."

Why, then, pursue a policy of confrontation rather than one of conciliation?

In 1965, India had no option but to attack West Pakistan because Pakistan had gone for the jugular vein (Akhnur in Jammu), the lifeline to Srinagar. But, India entered East Pakistan in November 1971, as a prelude to war, only after Indira Gandhi had secured assurances of support from "a benign superpower", a reluctant Soviet Union. It had signed the Treaty with India (August 9, 1971) to restrain India and continued to maintain a balance of sorts in Indo-Pak relations, a fact which is little understood. What Andre Fontaine of Le Monde called "the great switch" came about in September as a result of Indira Gandhi's tough talk in the Kremlin. Even so, Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin told Indian correspondents. "This basic problem must be solved by peaceful political means and not by military conflict." Had Z.A. Bhutto accepted the Soviet-inspired Polish resolution in the Security Council in December 1971, there would have been a direct transfer of power from Pakistan to Bangladesh. Not a single prisoner of war (POW) nor a sliver of territory would have come into India's hands.

There would have been no Shimla Pact. In a sense, Soviet presence loomed large even at Shimla and thereafter. P.N. Dhar was "puzzled by her loss of temper" when he advised Indira Gandhi against "the immediate return of the territories we had won". Why? "My hunch is that she was under pressure - This could only have been from the Soviets - to return the occupied territories" (Indira Gandhi, the "Emergency and Indian Democracy; Oxford University Press; p. 209).

Both little Israel and a power like China were careful to secure winks of approval from the United States before embarking on their military ventures. Zeev Schiff and Ehud Ya'ari's book, Israel's Lebanon War (1984) disclosed Ariel Sharon's talks in Washington D.C. with Secretary of State Alexander Haig: "From the substance of this meeting one can glean an understanding of how Sharon - and through him Begin and the rest of the Israeli Cabinet - concluded that Washington would not interfere with an Israeli action in Lebanon" (p. 72). Claudia Wright reported in New Statesman (June 18, 1982) the details of the talks from May 22-27.

Deng Xiaoping met President Jimmy Carter in the White House on January 29, 1979. Towards the end of the talks he proposed that the aides depart "so that he could discuss a more confidential matter with me... the Chinese leader outlined his tentative plans for China to make a punitive strike across the border into Vietnam." Carter puts it exquisitely: "I tried to discourage him" (Keeping the Faith: Memoirs of a President; p. 206).

Dasgupta's analysis is realistic; his nationalistic lament contradicts it. In 1947, as in 2002, the Big Powers would not have allowed Pakistan militarily to wrest Kashmir out of the Indian Union; nor India to resolve the dispute unilaterally by military means, regardless of the wishes of the people of the State and a settlement with Pakistan.

In 1947, within a day of his assuming office as Viceroy, Lord Mountbatten sought to impress on Jawaharlal Nehru "the need to retain British officers in order to prevent a breakdown of law and order. Nehru was unimpressed; he said that India wished to retain friendly ties with Britain but she could not stay on in the Commonwealth." This represented the position the Congress had taken for nearly two decades on Nehru's insistence. The talk took place on March 24, 1947. In but a few months, he changed his stand and agreed not only to India's membership in the Commonwealth but also to retention of Mountbatten as Governor-General, a conversion as radical as St. Paul's on the road to Damascus.

Nehru acted in India's interests, as he perceived them. But the compromise entailed a price of which Nehru was well aware - Mountbatten, the three Service Chiefs and other British officers would pursue British interests; harmonise them with India's, if possible, but pursue Britain's exclusively, if not. A war between India and Pakistan was contrary to British as well as Indian interests. Time and again Nehru contemplated direct hits against Pakistan during the Kashmir war as Dasgupta documents. He accuses them of thwarting Nehru a word utterly inappropriate for the Prime Minister of India. He acquiesced most of the time because India could not have "gone it alone".

The Governor-General, a constitutional head of state, presided over two vital Committees of the Cabinet - the Emergency Committee and the Defence Committee. His biographer Philip Ziegler records how it happened. When at a meeting with Nehru and Vallabhai Patel, Mountbatten "proposed that an Emergency Committee be set up to deal with every aspect of the troubles, the Indian leaders agreed with alacrity on the understanding that he would be the Chairman". Set up on September 5, less than three weeks after India became independent, it received from the Cabinet "overriding authority and priority in dealing with the emergency", powers which Mountbatten exercised "with will... The Emergency Committee interfered in almost every field of national life" (Mountbatten: pp. 432-3).

In the same month, Nehru contemplated moving into Junagadh, after it acceded to Pakistan. The three British service Chiefs wrote a joint letter to the Cabinet counselling against the move, the armed forces were in no position to undertake the campaign and British soldiers could not take part in any operation which involved clashes with another member of the Commonwealth. They were clumsily making a grey zone darker. Nehru protested at this defiance. Mountbatten and Claude Auchinleck, Supreme Commander in India and Pakistan, explained it away to Nehru, while privately sympathising with the Service Chiefs.

Ziegler adds: "To make sure that such incidents did not recur, a Defence Committee of the Cabinet was set up. Mountbatten was asked to act as its first Chairman and agreed to do so" (p. 443).

NEHRU'S biographer S. Gopal records how and why he "recruited the services of Mountbatten (in the administration) even though he was a constitutional head of state". Mountbatten was present at the press conference on September 13 when Nehru announced that the Governor-General would preside over the Emergency Committee (Jawaharlal Nehru; Vol. 2, p.17). On Junagadh Mountbatten "threw his weight against military action". Gopal mentions the Service Chiefs' letter and when the government objected, "Mountbatten took on the chairmanship of the Indian Cabinet and thus ensured that no military decision was taken without his knowledge" (ibid. p. 19). The sequence showed the purpose behind the Chairmanship. It had the consent of both Nehru and Patel. That was the price they paid for the retention of the British officials and for Mountbatten's services on India's side; a factor Dasgupta tends to overlook. Nor, surely, could they have been oblivious of his loyalty to the British government.

But to Dasgupta, Mountbatten "contrived to obtain the chairmanship... on the basis of his military experience. The full political and constitutional implications of this arrangement seemed to have eluded the Indian government... Mountbatten was to stretch his new powers to their fullest extent during the Kashmir operations, working tirelessly behind the scenes to restrain Indian defence initiatives" (p. 26). He is wrong in ascribing naivety to Nehru and Patel; right in describing the effect of the arrangement; and wrong, again, in berating Mountbatten for playing a role which everyone knew he would play. Yet, whenever Nehru firmly decided on a course of action, the Service Chiefs complied. The fact that he did not veto their disagreement or sack them, as he could well have done, testifies to his realism. India depended on British supplies. On one occasion they were withheld to deliver a message.

Dasgupta is in gross error when he asserts: "Contrary to popular belief, he achieved his ends mainly by exercising his official powers, not by influencing Nehru's thinking behind the scenes. The fact that India's first Governor-General was not a mere constitutional figurehead has gone almost unnoticed. Mountbatten's appointment as Chairman of the Cabinet's Defence Committee invested him with very real executive authority in an area of vital importance to the state. By securing this appointment, Mountbatten manoeuvred himself into a position from where he could directly influence government policy, where possible, or undermine it, where necessary."

A Committee of the Cabinet is its creature. It can be overridden or even dissolved whenever the Cabinet (that is, the Prime Minister) so willed. To assert that Mountbatten had "real executive authority" as Chairman of the Committee is to assert a constitutional monstrosity. He acted with Indian leaders' consent - and acquiescence.

This is the core of Dasgupta's laboured thesis; a rewriting of history from the perspectives of today and with the fervour of nationalism. He is consistently tendentious on Indo-Pakistan relations and is weak on the diplomatic aspect. "Mountbatten took the position that Junagadh had become Pakistani territory by virtue of the Nawab's accession, even though the accession was clearly indefensible on moral grounds" (p. 201). In regard to Junagadh, then, morality should prevail over legality. But, not so on Kashmir. References to Sheikh Abdullah's popularity miss one important aspect: On the issue of accession, the people had a right to exercise their option. It might have been different from the Sheikh's. Are we sure that if a referendum on India's membership of the Commonwealth was held in 1947 or 1949, the people would have blindly followed Nehru and Patel, much as they loved them?

On May 14, 1948, even as the war was being fought in Kashmir, Indira Gandhi wrote to Nehru from Srinagar: "They say that only Sheikh Saheb is confident of winning the plebiscite" (Sonia Gandhi; Two Alone, Two Together; p. 551). Nehru's note of August 25, 1952, which Dasgupta cites, makes contemptuous references to the people of the State ("soft and addicted to easy living"). He cites it to show that Nehru had decided against a plebiscite in late 1948, but misses an important fact. To Pakistan and to the Kashmiris Nehru kept repeating his commitment to a plebiscite right till 1954, which, he knew was at variance with his own private resolve. He wrote as much to Sheikh Abdullah on January 12, 1949; but counselled him not to reveal it.

On three crucial points - the force of the Instrument of Accession, the communal factor and the use of force, the positions which India and Pakistan took on Junagadh in September 1947 conflicted with their respective stands on Kashmir in the next month (Vide the writer's "Jinnah and Junagadh"; Frontline; October 12 and 26, 2001). Junagadh acceded to Pakistan on September 15, 1947. A mere two days later, as Mountbatten reported to London, "members of the Indian Cabinet had... decided among themselves that military action was the only answer" - to the accession itself; not in defence of Junagadh's feudatory. Dasgupta's chapter "Junagadh - A Curtain Raiser" ignores India's disdain for the Instrument of Accession (on which it relies in the case of Kashmir); omits to mention India's insistence that the plebiscite in Junagadh was to be arranged by India and Junagadh to the exclusion of Pakistan and depicts its military moves as intended "to protect Babariawad". Worse, he omits mention of Somaldas Gandhi's expedition which Patel supported.

Of a British document (on "Stand Down" of its officers here in the event of a war), he writes: "The minute... reflects the political calculations underlying British policy on Kashmir." This is not naivety in this veteran diplomat. It is fervour. Surely, all states, Indian included, are actuated by "political calculations".

His research renders much service to historical truth. No student can ignore it. A lot is newly unearthed - Philip Noel-Baker's pro-Pakistan stance for which Attlee reprimanded him; the liaison between the British Chiefs of Army Staff of India and Pakistan - so much so that on March 19, 1948 they confabulated on deployment of three battalions of Pakistan's Army in Kashmir - and their regular reporting to the British High Commissioners in their respective countries. Nehru and Patel could not have been ignorant of that or of Mountbatten's regular reporting to London and his use of U.K.'s High Commissioner in Delhi to report to London. Mountbatten would tip off Prime Minister Attlee about Nehru's intentions and, thus, secure Attlee's demarche to Nehru.

U.K.'s High Commissioner Terence Shone informed London on December 28, 1947: "I... understand that for some days past Nehru and the Inner Cabinet have not been discussing their military plans frankly with Mountbatten or Lockhart but have been taking advice from Indian military experts."

Britain's main concern was to prevent war. "If Auchinleck prevented Jinnah from sending the Pakistani army into Kashmir, Mountbatten thwarted Nehru from ordering the Indian Army into Pakistan."

Attlee wrote to Nehru in November 1948: "I am sure neither of you (India and Pakistan) would wish to settle the fate of Kashmir by military force." War would have become inevitable if, say, Uri fell to Pakistani forces or Indian forces went close to Kashmir's border with Pakistan. On November 24, 1947, Mountbatten wrote to Nehru: "I have on several occasions repeated my views on the question of sending Indian troops into these Western areas... During my absence in London this object changed. It then evidently became the purpose of the Government of India to impose their military will on the Poonch and Mirpur areas." He thus bared his basic approach in full candour to Nehru as early as then.

In December 1948, the U.K. High Commission in Pakistan reported to London: "For the first time Pakistan forces... are so placed that they can deliver a blow... against Indian lines of communication in Kashmir, splitting Indian Army and endangering the safety of a large part of it. Any such counter offensive would, of course, entail major clash between two Dominion armies which could hardly fail to extend beyond Kashmir."

ALASTAIR LAMB'S scholarship is not questioned; but while Dasgupta always provides full references to the documents he cites or quotes, Lamb omits to do so. The second edition of Incomplete Partition notes in its preface events up to the Agra summit in July 2001. These two works must be read together. Lamb's book is admirably documented and has a much fuller account of the diplomatic moves. His pro-Pakistan bias is not concealed.

Two issues deserve mention. Dasgupta proves to the hilt the disloyalty of General Rob Lockhart, the first Commander-in-Chief of independent India: "At the end of 1947, Nehru discovered that his Commander-in-Chief, General Lockhart, had received an early indication about the tribal invasion of the Kashmir valley but had withheld the information from the Indian government. Lockhart handed in his resignation and was succeeded by the fellow British officer (General Roy Bucher) who, he believed, bad 'betrayed' him to the Prime Minister." It was on the testimony of Lockhart, narrated by his stooge Major General Rudra and one Major General D.K. Palit, whose role in 1962 was dubious, that Jaswant Singh retailed in his book Defending India the libel that Nehru told Lockhart "Scrap the Army; the police is good enough to meet our security needs". Nehru's memo of February 3, 1947 on Defence Policy alone belied it. Jaswant Singh not only ignored it, despite a handsome research grant from the Dorab Tata trust, but falsified the record by attributing to Nehru the views of Gandhi as summarised by Nehru in his Discovery of India (p. 443). In the very next paragraph, Nehru made plain his disagreement and that of the Congress. Both were for "the development of the Army". Jaswant Singh's falsification of the record is deplorable (vide Defending India, p. 45).

Secondly, is it not humiliating that the Minutes of the Defence Committee of the Indian Cabinet are available in the Mountbatten Papers in India office records in the British Library in London? I reproduce a letter which V.P. Menon wrote in 1965 for publication. I had written an article for Opinion, a weekly edited by A.D. Gorwala, ICS, who stood up bravely during the Emergency. (Its annual subscription was Rs.2.) I criticised the Government of India for partiality in giving their Records to Leonard Mosley, a British journalist. I was misled by the fact that throughout his book, The Last Days of the British Raj, Mosley cited "the Government of India Records". V.P. Menon wrote a letter correcting me and authorised me to publish it. The Government of India "never gave any papers to Mr. Leonard Mosley to write his book because the Government of India have no papers themselves regarding the transfer of power. I was the Constitutional Adviser to Lord Linlithgow, Lord Wavell and Lord Mountbatten. Generally after the term of office, every Governor-General took away his papers to England with him. Some they destroyed but as a special case, they allowed me to keep my papers. Mr. Mosley came to Bangalore with an introduction letter from a very dear friend of mine and I helped him to put the facts together. In the course of our discussion I did show him some of my papers on the strict understanding that he would not quote from them. He also promised me that he would show me the manuscript. He did not keep his promise and whenever he quoted from my documents he put it as Government of India documents in order to give it more authenticity. He certainly betrayed my confidence and I could not do anything about it. When I wrote my book on the Transfer of Power, I did not show it to the Government of India because I did not use any papers belonging to them, but I took the permission of HM's Government to use some of the papers belonging to the past Governors General" (Opinion; August 24, 1965).

The time is come for academia to demand a more liberal policy on disclosure of archival material and for the retrieval of documents concerning the country's history.

The time is also come for serious reflection on whether it is wise and dignified to seek great power status on the coat-tails of the U.S. in order to impose a Kashmir settlement on Pakistan rather than follow the regional route to greatness, through a policy of conciliation with all our neighbours - Pakistan and China, included. Why complain about the British today? They had grandiose plans for a treaty of alliance. Nehru foiled them. None other than Sir B.N. Rau prepared a draft treaty on Mutual Defence of 12 articles. Under it, India pledged to its erstwhile rulers to respect the fundamental rights of its own citizens. His covering letter of April 30, 1946, demonstrated that he could not even read the United Nations Charter correctly on a crucial question - attack on India by a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council. Sir B.N. rose high in independent India.