Er P L Khushu
The 1947 Indian Independence Act is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom that partitioned British India into two new independent countries viz India and Pakistan. The Act received Royal Assent on 18 July 1947 and thus India and Pakistan, comprising West (modern day Pakistan) and East (modern day Bangladesh) regions, came into being. India celebrated its Independence at midnight on August 14-15, Pakistan chose to celebrate independence on the 14th August. Indian Independence Act was subsequently repealed in Article 395 of the Constitution of India, to bring about greater independence for new states.
At the time of the British withdrawal, 565 princely states were officially recognized in the Indian subcontinent, apart from thousands of Zamindari estates and Jagirs. In 1947, princely states covered 40 per cent of area of pre-independence India and constituted 23 per cent of its population. The most important states had their own British Political Residencies: Hyderabad of the Nizams, Mysore and Travancore in the South followed by Jammu & Kashmir, and Sikkim in the Himalayas, and Indore in Central India.
Lord Mountbatten of Burma, the last Viceroy, was asked by Indian leaders to continue as Governor-General of India. Jawaharlal Nehru became the Prime Minister of India and Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel became the Home Minister.
Over 560 princely states acceded to India by 15 August. The exceptions were Junagadh, Hyderabad and Jammu & Kashmir. The state of Jammu & Kashmir was contiguous to both India and Pakistan, but its Hindu ruler Maharaja Hari Singh chose to remain initially independent. Following a Pakistani tribal invasion, he acceded to India on 26 October 1947. The state of Junagadh initially acceded to Pakistan, but faced a revolt from its Hindu population. Eventually, Patel ordered the forcible annexation of Junagadh’s three principalities. Junagadh’s State Government, facing financial collapse and lacking forces with which to resist Indian force, invited the Government of India to take control. A plebiscite was conducted in which approximately 99.95 per cent of the people chose India over Pakistan. Following a breakdown of law and order, its Dewan requested India to take over the administration on 8 November 1947.
The state of Hyderabad, with the majority Hindu population, but Muslim ruler faced intense turmoil and sectarian violence. On 11 June 1947, Nizam issued a declaration to the effect that he had decided not to participate in the Constituent Assembly of either Pakistan or India. Indian troops invaded Hyderabad from all points of the compass. Thus, India intervened in the state on 13th September 1948, the Nizam’s army surrendered, following which the ruler of the state signed the Instrument of Accession, joining India. India then incorporated the state of Hyderabad and ended rule of the Nizams. Muhammad Ali Jinnah became the Governor-General of Pakistan, and Liaquat Ali Khan became the Prime Minister of Pakistan. Between October 1947 and March 1948, the rulers of several Muslim-majority states signed instruments of accession to join Pakistan. These included Amb, Bahawalpur, Chitral, Dir, Kalat, Khairpur, Kharan, Makran and Swat etc.
When India got Independence and was partitioned to create Pakistan in August 1947, Jammu & Kashmir was a princely state ruled by Maharaja Hari Singh. Partition of India was done on communal ground and it had its impact in Jammu & Kashmir as well, particularly in Poonch region. Maharaja Hari Singh had decided not to accede either to India or Pakistan. The princely rulers had been authorized by the Indian Independence Act of 1947, passed by the British parliament to grant Independence to India and create Pakistan, to join either of the countries. Maharaja Hari Singh had his own vision of the future and wanted a standstill agreement with both the countries. Partition related violence was rampant particularly in border areas. By mid-October, small bands of armed mercenaries , now viewed as Pakistan’s attempt to test whether Indian forces were rushing to rescue the King – had started guerrilla raids on bordering villages. Maharaja Hari Singh sent cables to the Pakistan government asking it to stop raiding bands from entering his princely state, but he was snubbed and his outreach was ignored. The stage was now set for Pakistan to launch an all-out strike. It is said that this was also the time when Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah was in communication with Hari Singh trying to convince him to accede to Pakistan, but Maharaja Hari Singh did not move. Pakistan was now ready to invade the Kashmir Valley but it carried out its military mission masquerading as raids by tribal invaders. In truth, the whole operation, codenamed Operation Gulmarg, was placed under Pakistan Army’s officers. On October 22, thousands of tribal mercenaries and Pakistan Army regulars invaded Kashmir Valley overrunning the outposts manned by the King’s forces in Muzaffarabad and other places as they headed towards Srinagar, their ultimate target. Maharaja Hari Singh did not have a large army. Additionally, he found his Muslim soldiers, who were in equal numbers as Hindu Dogra troops, join the Pakistani invaders in carrying out the attacks on the King’s forces and resisting civilians. Large-scale atrocities were committed by the invading forces. Civilians mostly Hindus, were looted, women raped, a number of them killed and even hospitals were attacked. Sherwani, a prominent local leader of repute with secular credentials, was killed by the raiders after they found out that he had tricked them by setting them on a different route when they asked him for the direction to Srinagar airport. Capturing airport was a crucial part of Operation Gulmarg of Pakistan Army.
This has been detailed in a recently published book by Pakistan Army’s retired Major-General Akbar Khan, who was part of the military plan. “The Indo-Pakistani War of 1947-1948 or the First Kashmir War was an armed conflict that was fought between India and Pakistan over the princely state of Jammu & Kashmir from 1947 to 1948. It was the first of four Indo-Pakistani wars that was fought between the two newly-independent nations. On 22 October 1947, amidst Pakistani fears of the Maharaja potentially acceding his Muslim-majority princely state to India, Pakistan precipitated the war a few weeks after its independence by launching tribals as (militias) from Waziristan, in an effort to capture Kashmir, the future of which hung in the balance. The inconclusive result of the war still affects the geopolitics of both countries”.
In this background of devastation, Maharaja Hari Singh reached out to the Indian government in Delhi. He signed the Instrument of Accession and the Indian troops started landing in Jammu & Kashmir on October 27. The Indian troops launched a counter-attack. By November 8, the Indian forces secured Srinagar, the seat of the princely state. The pushback continued till mid-November, when the scale of war was reduced. The war continued with lower intensity till the end of 1948. The ceasefire agreement was officially signed in January 1949, when a ceasefire was accepted through the UN mediation. A ceasefire line was agreed by the two sides. After another Kashmir War in 1965, and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971 (which saw Bangladesh become independent), only minor modifications had been effected in the original ceasefire line. In the ensuing Simla Agreement in 1972, the two countries agreed to convert the ceasefire line into a ‘Line of Control’ and observe it as a de facto border that should not be violated by armed action.
This is where Pakistan started the trouble and is thus the perpetrator of the Kashmir Imbroglio, with an obsession about Jammu & Kashmir to have it, while resorting to almost four wars with India including tribal raiders attack on Jammu & Kashmir in 1948, without any gains by Pakistan, yet India had to defend which it did with all its might. India has been equivocally telling Pakistan and the world over that Kashmir is an integral part of India. If at all there is some dispute, it is about the forced invasion and the captivating of Pakistan over Indian Territory known as Pak occupied Kashmir (PoK), which is under the forced occupation of Pakistan.
In addition to such wars Pakistan in its utter frustration laid the foundation of the proxy war in Jammu & Kashmir through its trained and well equipped terrorists, apart from instilling the concept of insurgency in some of the innocent youths of Kashmir, which is still continuing. It is now almost the 32nd year of such a proxy war through terrorism which Pakistan is still bent upon to perform. Ever since the division of the sub-continent in 1947, the foundations were laid by the rulers of Pakistan, particularly at the behest of its army, for creating the long-standing conflict in and around the regions of Jammu & Kashmir that persists till today. Tensions and issues around these disputes continue to feed wider regional instability, being provoked and abetted by Pakistan and its military intelligence wing ISI.
There have been numerous attempts by India, to improve the relationship, notably the Shimla Summit, the Agra summit, and the Lahore summit. But Pakistan has never been sincere in its approach to barter peace with India for its domestic compulsions. Since the early 1980s, relations between the two nations have grown increasingly sour, particularly after Pakistan’s the Siachen misadventure, and the intensification of the Kashmir insurgency in 1989. The 1999 Kargil War, was another major factor which spoiled the relations further. Certain confidence-building measures, such as the 2003 ceasefire agreement and the Delhi-Lahore Bus service, have been successful in de-escalating tensions. However, these efforts of peace by India were got impeded by periodic terrorist attacks from Pakistan. The 2001 Indian Parliament attack brought the two nations to the brink of a nuclear war. The 2008 Mumbai attacks carried out by Pakistani terrorists resulted in a severe blow to the ongoing India-Pakistan peace talks.
Bilateral discussions between the two countries again got stalled after the 2016 Pathankot attack. In September 2016, a terrorist attack on an Indian military base, killed 19 Indian Army soldiers, the deadliest such attack in years. This attack had been orchestrated by a Pakistan-supported terrorists group, which was as usual backed by ISI of Pakistan. This attack on Indian army soldiers sparked a military confrontation across the Line of Control, with an escalation in ceasefire violations and further militant attacks on Indian security forces. Since 2016, the ongoing confrontation sponsored by Pakistan and its ISI, with continued terrorist attacks, has resulted in the collapse of bilateral relations. Notably, following the 2019 Pulwama attack, the Indian government revoked Pakistan’s most favored nation trade status, which it had granted to Pakistan in 1996.
In November 2015, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif agreed to the resumption of bilateral talks; the following month, Modi made a brief, unscheduled visit to Pakistan while en route to India, becoming the first Indian Prime Minister to visit Pakistan since 2004. Despite those efforts, relations between the countries have remained frigid, following repeated acts of cross-border terrorism by Pakistan.
There was an attack at the Parliament of India in New Delhi on 13 December 2001, during which fourteen people, including the five men who attacked the building, were killed. The perpetrators were Lashkar-e-Taiba (Let) and Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) terrorists. The attack led to the deaths of five terrorists, six Delhi Police personnel, two Parliament Security Service personnel and a gardener, in total 14 which increased tensions between India and Pakistan. Apart from this, the most condemnable was the hijacking of Indian Airlines Flight IC 814 en route New Delhi from Kathmandu, Nepal. The plane was hijacked on 24 December 1999 approximately one hour after takeoff and was taken to Amritsar airport and then to Lahore in Pakistan. Under intense internal pressure, for the security of other Indian passengers, Maulana Masood Azhar, the dreaded terrorist, was freed from its captivity, in return for the freedom of the Indian passengers on the flight. Maulana Azar, later became the leader of Jaish-e-Mohammed, an organization which has carried out several terrorist acts against Indian security forces in Kashmir.
The 2008 Mumbai attacks by ten Pakistani terrorists killed over 173 and wounded 308. The sole surviving terrorist gunman Ajmal Kasab, who was arrested during the attacks, was found to be a Pakistani national. This fact was acknowledged by Pakistani authorities. In May 2010, an Indian court convicted him on four counts of murder, waging war against India, conspiracy and terrorism offences, and sentenced him to death.
These are referral incidents of terrorists attacks sponsored by Pakistan in the other parts of India, outside Jammu & Kashmir, to keep the so called Kashmir Imbroglio alive before the world community, when such incidents of terrorists attacks sponsored by Pakistan and ISI, in Jammu & Kashmir, particularly in Kashmir, are going on without break, having killed thousands of innocent people of Kashmir, the security forces and the local police personals. Terrorism and terror has ruined Jammu & Kashmir and its people, particularly from the valley. Apart from that this Kashmir Imbroglio created and abetted by Pakistan has resulted in major debacles to the development of Jammu & Kashmir, apart from brain washing the misguided youth of Kashmir to take to guns to fight the Indian forces in Kashmir. It has taken a heavy toll of the youth of Kashmir, along with the devastation of so many families.
With the abrogation of Articles 370 and 35 A, making Jammu & Kashmir as good a state of India as any other Indian state, should remove all the doubts about the full and final accession of Jammu & Kashmir with India, of all those elements, particularly Pakistan, who presume and think that keeping the Kashmir Imbroglio alive as a hot spot, will pay them dividends in this regard. No it is a misnomer for all of them. The present government at the centre has shown enough political will to erase these two temporary provisions of Articles 370 and 35A, from the presumptive scene, thus putting an end to its coaxial misusages both on the domestic front as also in the international forums. Pakistan was caught off guard with the revocation and in a dilemma as to how to deal with the changed status of J&K. Pakistan approached the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) for an immediate meeting to discuss the Kashmir issue. However, Saudi Arabia reportedly turned down the request. After failing to procure the desired support from its allies, Pakistan turned to its ‘all-weather friend,’ China. On China’s insistence, revocation of Article 370 was discussed at the informal UNSC closed-door meeting; however, under international pressure, no formal statement could be issued.
In all fairness of shunning the stupidity of its mind by Pakistan about Kashmir, the only wise alternative left for Pakistan is that it should now understand the language of peace and harmony and try to live with its immediate neighbor India with peace and harmony. It should shun its path of LOC violations, cross border skirmishes, adopting of the uncivilized routes of proxy war in Kashmir, through the infiltrating of its trained terrorists in Kashmir, to foment the trouble of uncertainty and horror in Kashmir, as also close its training camps of terror hubs, and refrain from inducting the innocent youth of Kashmir into the clutches of so called ‘Jehad’, thus getting them killed for no fault of theirs. Let Pakistan know that India is today a force to be reckoned with in the international scenario and forget about Kashmir. Let Pakistan maintain its identity as a civilized nation and look after its own governance and economy which is deplete due to its own stigmas. Any misadventure of Pakistan by instigating India to go for a bigger war about Kashmir or the like may mean its seizure and end. Hope better sense prevails upon Pakistan in the name of humanity, in its own interest.
(The author is a Chartered consultant civil engineer, who loves his Mother-land the Union Territory of Jammu & Kashmir).