The unnamed writer of the article "Jammu & Kashmir Dispute" posted
on the
Pak Foreign Ministry's website packs a lot of dynamite in just one single
paragraph and a single sentence thereafter that run as follows:
"But Indian leaders, including Jawahar
lal Nehru, the Prime Minister and
Lord Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India, solemnly declared
that the final status of Jammu and Kashmir would be decided by the people
of the State. This declaration was reiterated by India at the UN Security
Council when the dispute was referred to that august body, under Chapter
6 of
the UN Charter relating to peaceful settlement of disputes. The Security
Council adopted a number of resolutions on the issue, providing for holding
of a fair and impartial plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir under UN auspices
to
enable the Kashmiri people to exercise their right of self-determination
and
join either Pakistan or India. The UN also deployed the United Nations
Military Observer Group (UNMOGIP) to monitor the cease-fire between the
Liberated or Azad
Kashmir and the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK). These resolutions were accepted
by India and
Pakistan and constitute an agreed legal basis for settlement of the dispute."
"India, however, thwarted all attempts by the United Nations to organize
a plebiscite in the State
of Jammu and Kashmir."
The several emphases supplied by this commentator in the above quote is
deliberately done in order
to defuse the Pak planted "dynamite" for internet readers worldwide and
to show that:
It contains just one truth -- about Nehru -- (but see how our venerable
prime minister's first
name is split)
Three half-truths about the reference to (i) Mountbatten, (ii) UN resolutions
for a plebiscite in
J&K and (iii) India's support there for such a plebiscite
All the rest is simply Paki poppycock.
Now Nehru's public statements supporting plebiscite (or its synonym "referendum")
in J&K is
on record -- no question of that.
But it is also on record that the Maharaja Hari Singh of J&K wanted
to rule over an
independent sovereign state after the end of the British rule over India.
That is why, on
August 12, 1947, he telegraphically asked both the Dominions of India and
Pakistan to sign a
Standstill Agreement with him till he could make up his mind to join India
or Pakistan or
remain independent. What then was India expected to do? Force a plebiscite
down the
Maharaja's throat?
What is also on record, more importantly, is that the Nehru government
did in fact offer a
referendum both to the nawab of Junagadh and to the nizam of Hyderabad.
The latter refused
it on his own.
In the case of Junagadh, Pak's prime minister, Liaquat Ali Khan, interceded,
saying that the
plebiscite was a matter between the ruler and his subjects while arguing,
correctly, that under
the monarchical system, a princely ruler had the absolute right to accede
without reference to
the moral or ethnic aspects of accession. That is how Pakistan accepted
the accession of
Junagadh without a plebiscite (before losing it due to public pressure)
and also Hunza and
Nagar, the component territories of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Why,
then, can't
Pakistan accept the accession of Maharaja Hari Singh's J&K state to
India without a
referendum?
So much then for mush Musharraf's latest public averment of January 12,
2002 that "Kashmir
runs in our (Pak's) blood." Really, Pakistan's self-proclaimed president
of a self-declared
military dictatorship badly needs to study the authentic history of the
Indian subcontinent from
1947 till J&K state's democratically elected Constituent Assembly formulated
a written,
full-fledged Constitution for itself on November 17, 1956. He must memorise
Section 3 of
that very Constitution which proclaims, "The State of Jammu and Kashmir
is and shall be an
integral part of the Union of India." He must also note, and ask his ISI
and corps
commanders to note that Section 147 of that very J&K State Constitution
provides that "no
bill or amendment seeking to make any change …in the provisions of Section
3 …shall be
introduced or moved in either House of the Legislature." And all of them
must lastly note that
Section 147 is itself beyond amendment under the state Constitution!
It is a half-truth for Pak's foreign ministry's website to say that Lord
Mountbatten, as
governor general of India, declared to the maharaja of J&K "… it is
my Government's wish
that…the question of State's accession should be settled by a reference
to the people."
That sentence was not "declared solemnly" as Abdul Sattar's ministry would
have us believe.
Rather, that wish of his government was conveyed by Mountbatten in a personal
letter to the
maharaja of J&K after he had officially accepted the Instrument of
Accession signed by the
maharaja on October 26, 1947. More importantly, Mountbatten stated in that
letter that "the
question of State's accession by a reference to the people" was to be resorted
to "as soon as
law and order have been restored in Kashmir and its soil cleared of the
invader." Has the last
happened till now, President Musharraf?
The second half-truth of the Pak foreign ministry's article "Jammu &
Kashmir Dispute" being
analysed today is that the J&K matter was referred to the UN Security
Council under the
UN Charter. Yes, that was indeed so, but apart from its error of dubbing
Chapter VI as
Chapter 6. And dubbing that chapter as bearing the title "Peaceful Settlement
of Disputes"
instead of the correct one of "Pacific Settlement of Disputes", the Pakistani
article conceals
the fact that --
It was India, not Pakistan, that went to the UN (on January 1, 1948). Its
complaint
said, inter alia, that "Since the aid which the invaders are receiving
from Pakistan is an
act of aggression against India, the Government of India are entitled,
in international
law, to send their armed forces across Pakistan territory for dealing effectively
with the
invaders. As such action might involve armed conflict with Pakistan, the
Government
of India…desire to report the situation to the Security Council in accordance
with
provisions of Article 35 of the Charter." Among the four requests they
made to the
Council was "to prevent Pakistan government personnel, military and civil,
participating
in or assisting the invasion of Jammu and Kashmir." (A History of Kashmir,
page 704,
by P N K Bamzai, Metropolitan Book Co Private Ltd, Delhi, 1962, with a
Foreword
by Jawaharlal Nehru).
The word "situation" above has been emphasised by this writer to bring
home the point
that though Chapter VI bears the word "Dispute" in its title, it also deals
with any
"situation which might lead to international friction" in all its Articles
33, 34 and 35,
whereas the remaining two Articles, 36 and 37, refer exclusively to a "dispute".
India's
complaint to the UN Security Council drew attention to "any situation which
might lead
to international friction or… endanger the maintenance of international
peace and
security." (Reference http://un.org/aboutun/charter/chapter6.htm)
The very first sentence of the very first resolution of January 17, 1948
of the Security
Council on J&K starts with the words "Having heard the statements on
the situation in
Kashmir from representatives of the Governments of India and Pakistan…."
Further,
in the para numbered 1 in that resolution, the Security Council mentions
the word
"situation"-- not "dispute". So what does Pak keep talking of the Kashmir
"dispute" or
"J&K 'dispute'"?
The word "situation" is also used twice adopted by the United Nations Commission
for
India and Pakistan (UNCIP) in its resolution of August 13, 1948 -- the
most vital
resolution proposing, in its Part III portion, that "the future status
of the State of Jammu
and Kashmir shall be determined in accordance with the will of the people
and to that
end, upon acceptance of the Truce Agreement …." And what did that Truce
Agreement (titled PART II) say? Its two paragraphs, A (1) and A (2), assert
that:
"As the presence of troops of Pakistan in the territory of the State of
Jammu and
Kashmir constitutes a material change in the situation since it was represented
by the
Government of Pakistan before the Security Council the Government of Pakistan
agrees to withdraw its troops from the State.
The Government of Pakistan will use its best endeavour to secure the withdrawal
from
the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesemen and Pakistan nationals not
normally
resident therein who have entered the State for the purpose of fighting."
The UNCIP resolution of January 5, 1949 was even more specific. It said
in para
numbered 2 that "A plebiscite will be held when it shall be found by the
Commission
that the cease-fire and truce arrangements set forth in Parts I and II
of the
Commission's resolution of August 13, 1948, have been carried out and arrangements
for the plebiscite have been completed."
Finally, Pakistan's foreign ministry must look up history to realise that
the UN Security
Council did not adopt "a number of resolutions" on a plebiscite in J&K,
but just two:
the one of April 21, 1948 "Noting with satisfaction that both India and
Pakistan desire
that the question of accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan
should be
decided through the democratic method of a free and fair and impartial
plebiscite" and
the second one of March 14,1950 "Commending the Governments of India and
Pakistan for …reaching the agreements of August 13, 1948 and January 5
1949…."
As seen earlier, the latter two resolutions were of UNCIP, and not of the
Security
Council.
If, Pervez Musharraf, the self-proclaimed president of a self-declared
military dictatorship
called Pakistan, now wants the international community to accept him as
a man of honour, he
must first accept that the above two paragraphs A (1) and A (2) of the
UNCIP resolution of
August 13, 1948 euphemistically branded (i) Pakistan as a nation that had
lied initially on the
situation about which India had complained on January 1, 1948 and (ii)
Pakistan had, in
fact, committed aggression in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 as
complained by
India.
It should be crystal clear now that whatever fiction Pakistan may have
created for over half a
century and wants the world to believe even today, "Jammu & Kashmir"
has never been a
"dispute" between the two countries but a "situation" brought about solely
because of the
invasion of Pakistan-instigated-cum-aided tribals in October 1947 into
the legally and
constitutionally acceded Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. Yet, at one
place, the Pak
website article has the audacity to say that "The Indian armed intervention
in the State of
Jammu and Kashmir was illegal."
Equally obvious is that Pakistan has never, from August 13, 1948 till today,
withdrawn its
forces from the state of Jammu & Kashmir as required by the UNCIP resolution
of that date.
How then could even a plan for plebiscite there be chalked out? Yet,
Sattar's foreign ministry
has the cheek to post the internet lie that "India thwarted all attempts
by the United Nations
to organize plebiscite in the State of Jammu and Kashmir."
Another outright lie on the Pakistan website under reference is that "The
UN also deployed
the United Nations Military Observer Group (UNMOGIP) to monitor the cease-fire
line
between the Liberated or Azad Kashmir and the Indian Held Kashmir (IHK)."
Believe it or
not readers, the "Cease-Fire Order" (under Part I) of the UNCIP resolution
of August 13,
1948 does not even mention the phrases "Azad Kashmir" and "Indian Held
Kashmir." For
that matter, not a solitary UN resolution used either of those two obnoxious
phrases.
So much then again for Musharraf's latest pronouncement of January 12,
2002 that Pakistan
would never "budge from its principled stand on Kashmir." "Principled stand?"
What
principle, President Musharraf? Of using half-truths and lies first, and
then to tell India to "lay
off" is it?
Arvind Lavakare