Calling the Turn in Kashmir

...And the four million people of Kashmir, their morale continually undermined by the uncertainty of their political future, have become the victims of a war of nerves...

...But behind its outward confidence lie deep-seated doubts...

...the understanding, though, was that they could accede either to India or Pakistan...

...Once the Court's opinion is obtained, the Security Council must insist, without fear or favor, on the implementation of the resolutions...

...Yet few people today seem to remember that these resolutions were ever passed...

...All the recommendations made by the Commission were based on this finding, and were embodied in two resolutions passed by the Security Council—the first on August 13, 1948, the second on January 5, 1949...

...Kashmir was one of the larger of these...

...Pakistan is extremely allergic to any mention of the two resolutions passed by the Security Council...

...A solution to the Kashmir dispute has been rendered even more difficult by cold war politics...

...The belief that it can will only render the Security Council itself obsolete...

...The benevolent neutrality of the United States and the masterly inactivity of Britain in the Kashmir dispute may be expedient in the short run, but their complacency might be rudely shaken one day when ignorant armies clash by night in Kashmir...

...While these attitudes are understandable, Britain and the U.S...

...Why, then, has the dispute not been settled after 15 years...

...The second resolution provides for the holding of a plebiscite, but only after "it shall be found by the Commission that the cease-fire and the truce agreements set forth in the resolution of August 13, 1948 have been carried out" and "the Commission is satisfied that peaceful conditions have been restored.' Contrary to popular misconception, therefore, a basis for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute does exist...

...Both India and Pakistan are members of the Commonwealth, and Britain does not wish to offend either by taking sides...

...ought to remember that as members of the Security Council they have an obligation to be not merely pleasant but just...

...Though India had never attempted such outright blackmail before, the recent intemperate outburst of its permanent representative to the United Nations, C. S. Tha, who declared that "the United States lost China 12 years ago by sheer folly and may lose India the same way," was so impolitic as to cast doubts on India's integrity...

...But just before the Commission was to arrive, Pakistan made the rather damaging admission that its troops were deployed in Kashmir...

...The Government of Pakistan," the resolution reads, "agrees to withdraw its troops" from Kashmir and also agrees to the "withdrawal of tribesmen and Pakistani nationals not resident therein, who have entered the State for the purposes of fighting...

...The genesis of the Kashmir dispute can be traced to the fact that Britain ruled only about two-thirds of the Indian Subcontinent, while the other third was ruled by native princes under the paramountcy of the Crown...

...There is now a greater recognition that religion has little to do with politics, and the 50 million Moslems who live peacefully in India—the screaming headlines to the contrary in the Pakistani press notwithstanding—are a daily reminder to the people of Kashmir that the devil they know is preferable to the devil they do not know...

...While it might be cold comfort to obtain the support of a country which has itself committed or aided others in aggression elsewhere, the Soviet position on Kashmir is legally sound, and it is at least some kind of stand...

...There are no definitive answers to this intriguing question, but a few clues suggest themselves...

...expressed in the case of Britain's role in Suez in 1956 did not prove as disastrous to the Anglo-American alliance as was originally feared...

...Thus far the Soviet Union is the only great power to take a side...

...If Pakistan truly desired a plebiscite in Kashmir, it could have put India on the spot by withdrawing its troops as it had agreed to do under the Security Council's resolutions...

...Whatever the failings and shortcomings of the generation of politicians responsible for the partition of India, there was still the hope that the younger generation on both sides would in time see the folly of continued strife between two countries inhabited by people of the same flesh and blood...

...Eager to avoid an immediate decision on the question of accession, the Hindu Maharaja of largely Moslem Kashmir entered into an agreement with Pakistan under which the status quo was to be maintained for a year...

...There was also the hope that the blessings of education and enlightenment would blunt the sharp edge of religious animosity and produce that liberal political temper which finds the proper place in the hierarchy of values for religion...

...Pakistan, for instance, has time and again questioned the efficacy of her alliance with the United States, and pressured both Britain and U.S...

...There were some 550 such principalities, with less than half a dozen possessing sufficient territory to become viable political units...

...If the approach to the heart is through Kashmir's stomach, India has the advantage over Pakistan...

...India's Governor General at the time, Lord Louis Mountbatten, after conferring with the Nehru government, advised the Maharaja to accede to India so that Indian troops could be sent to Kashmir...

...Because the Security Council as a whole has not taken a firm stand on the Kashmir issue, one way or the other, some of its individual members are now threatened by the disputants...

...Anand Mohan is editor of the Hyphen, a Bombay political journal...

...India contends that it refuses to hold a plebiscite now because the people of Kashmir have already had an opportunity to express their wishes in India's own periodic general elections...

...It was out of British India that the India Independence Act, passed by the British Parliament on July 18, 1947, carved the separate nations of India and Pakistan...

...It has condemned Pakistani aggression in Kashmir and—perhaps as a reward for New Delhi's neutralism—supported India...

...But, since supply routes with India were virtually nonexistent, Kashmir was dependent on Pakistan for daily commodities, and soon the Maharaja was complaining of unfair pressure to force the joining of the two states...

...for support on the Kashmir issue as the price of continuing that alliance...

...Pakistan, hotly denying the charge, ascribed the trouble to a revolt of the Moslem inhabitants of Kashmir against their Hindu ruler...

...One reason for this is that the UN Commission recognized the sovereignty of India over Kashmir, and called for the total withdrawal of Pakistani troops as a prerequisite to a plebiscite...

...Britain and the United States, on the other hand, have kept scrupulously aloof from the Kashmir dispute...

...The Pakistanis have felt that the political stability of India would count for a good deal in influencing the Kashmiris to throw in their lot with India...

...Pakistan keeps urging a plebiscite because it is confident that the Kashmiris, by virtue of their Islamic faith, will choose to accede to it...

...As for the United States, it is an ally of one and a friend to the other, and like Britain it does not wish to offend either...

...And, following its investigations, the UN Commission declared that "the presence of troops of Pakistan in 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...

...After all, the vigorous dissent which the U.S...

...It further argues that Pakistan, which has not given its own people the right to vote, is hardly in a position to point an accusing finger...

...The ceasefire fine to this day divides the third of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan from the two-thirds occupied by India...

...SECURITY COUNCIL'S WILLINGNESS TO ACT IS KEY TO DISPUTE Calling the Turn in Kashmir By Anand Mohan In the welter of confusion created by the periodic resumption of the Kashmir debate, which after a lapse of over four years was again taken up this month by the Security Council, the human cost of the dispute between India and Pakistan is often forgotten: Although desperately in need of economic resources to raise living standards, both countries maintain huge military establishments in the belief that a clash for control of the 86,000-square mile territory which lies between them is imminent...

...Thus, within two months, the Maharaja was appealing to India for help in resisting an invasion by tribesmen from Pakistan's northwest frontier...

...A second reason is that India has poured vast sums of money into Kashmir for economic development, and the contrast between the Indian-held sector and the Pakistani-held sector calls to mind the contrast between West and East Germany...

...Finally, whatever charm the twonation theory by which India was originally partitioned might have had for the Moslems in 1947, it does not capture their imagination in the 1960s...

...The Maharaja was legally free to accede to either nation, and his subsequent accession to India was entirely unexceptionable...

...If there is a difference of opinion between the two countries about their respective obligations under the Security Council resolutions, then the Council can properly request the International Court of Justice to interpret their meaning...

...By not doing so, it has afforded India an excuse to sit tight on the ground that Pakistan has not yet fulfilled the preconditions for a plebiscite...

...The first resolution recommended an immediate cease-fire...

...Moreover, neither India, nor Pakistan, nor any member of the Security Council appears to relish the thought of recalling their content and the solemn pledges of all concerned to implement them...

...India is also genuinely fearful that Hindu-Moslem friction may be generated once again throughout the Subcontinent as a result of the communal passions a plebiscite might revive...

...In the military operations that followed, it was discovered that the invading tribesmen were being aided and abetted by Pakistan, whose regular forces were participating in the hostilities...

...ANY PRACTICABLE solution to the Kashmir dispute must have the consent of both India and Pakistan...

...But all these hopes have been spoiled by the festering sore of the Kashmir dispute...

...The earlier deliberate suppression of this fact greatly annoyed Prime Minister Nehru, who to this day complains that the entire Pakistani case rests on "a tissue of lies...

...Consequently, on January 1, 1948, India lodged a complaint in the Security Council alleging that Pakistan was guilty of aggression in Kashmir, and produced evidence in the form of captured Pakistani military equipment...

...The Act, which went into effect August 15 of the same year, was silent on the future of the native princes...

...Both were accepted by India and Pakistan...

...Similarly, the deterioration of Pakistan's own internal political situation has hardly been flattering...

...In accepting the Maharaja's decision, however, Nehru said that once the invaders were driven out, Kashmir would be given an opportunity to decide its own future through a plebiscite...

...This is, of course, not very convincing, since there is a good deal of difference between an ordinary election to choose representatives and a plebiscite to ascertain the people's wishes about their political future...

...If the Security Council seeks refuge in the comfortable illusion that security can be found outside the framework of the rule of law, it is paving the way for global insecurity...

...The resolution also authorizes India to "maintain within the lines existing at the moment of the cease-fire the minimum strength of its forces considered necessary to assist local authorities in the observance of law and order...

...The Kashmir problem cannot be solved through obsolescence...

...After hearing both sides, the Security Council appointed the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan to visit the area, ascertain the facts and recommend a solution...

...It further provides that "when the Commission shall have notified the Government of India that the tribesmen and Pakistan nationals have withdrawn, thereby terminating the situation which was represented by the Government of India to the Security Council as having occasioned the presence of Indian forces in Kashmir, and further that Pakistan forces are being withdrawn from the State of Kashmir, the Government of India agrees to begin the withdrawal of the bulk of its forces from the State in stages to be agreed upon with the Commission...