07-03-2005, 10:35 PM
THE INDIAN CLAIM TO JAMMU AND KASHMIR.
The formal overt Indian intervention in the internal affairs of the
State of Jammu and Kashmir began on about 9.00 a.m. on 27 October
1947, when Indian troops started landing at Srinagar airfield. India
has officially dated the commencement of its claim that the State was
part of Indian sovereign territory to a few hours earlier, at some
point in the afternoon or evening of 26 October. From their arrival
on 27 October 1947 to the present day, Indian troops have continued
to occupy a large proportion of the State of Jammu and Kashmir
despite the increasingly manifest opposition of a majority of the
population to their presence. To critics of India's position and
actions in the State of Jammu and Kashmir the Government of New Delhi
has consistently declared that the State of Jammu and Kashmir lies
entirely within the sphere of internal Indian policy. Do the facts
support the Indian contention in this respect?
The State of Jammu and Kashmir was a Princely State within the
British Indian Empire. By the rules of the British transfer of power
in Indian subcontinent in 1947 the Ruler of the State, Maharajah Sir
Hari Singh, with the departure of the British and the lapsing of
Paramountcy (as the relationship between State and British Crown was
termed), could opt to join either India or Pakistan or, by doing
nothing, become from 15 August 1947 the Ruler of an independent
polity. The choice was the Ruler's and his alone: there was no
provision for popular consultation in the Indian Princely States
during the final days of the British Raj. On 15th August 1947, by
default, the State of Jammu and Kashmir became independent.
India maintains that this period of independence, the existence of
which it has never challenged effectively, came to an end on 26/27
October as the result of two pairs of closely related transactions,
which we must now examine.
They are:
(a) an Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India which
the Maharajah is alleged to have signed on 26 October 1947, and;
(b) the acceptance of this Instrument by the Governor-General of
India, Lord Mountbatten, on 27 October 1947; plus
© a letter from the Maharajah to Lord Mountbatten, dated 26 October
1947, in which Indian military aid is sought in return for accession
to India (on terms stated in an allegedly enclosed Instrument) and
the appointment of Sheikh Abdullah to head an Interim Government of
the State; and
(d) a letter from Lord Mountbatten to the Maharajah, dated 27 October
1947, acknowledging the above and nothing that, once the affairs of
the State have been settled and law and order is restored, "the
question of the State's accession should be settled by a reference to
the people."
In both pairs of documents it will be noted that the date of the
communication from the maharajah, be it the alleged Instrument of
Accession or the letter to Lord Mountbatten, is given as 26 October
1947, that is to say before the Indian troops actually began overtly
to intervene in the State's affairs on the morning of 26 October
1947. It has been said that Lord Mountbatten insisted on the
Maharajah's signature as a precondition for his approval Indian
intervention in the affairs of what would otherwise be an independent
State.
The date, 26 October 1947, has hitherto been accepted as true by
virtually all observers, be they sympathetic or hostile to the Indian
case. It is to be found in an official communication by Lore
Mountbatten, as Governor General of India, on 1 November 1947; and it
is repeated in the White paper on Jammu and Kashmir which the
Government of India laid before the Indian Parliament in March 1948.
Pakistani diplomats have never challenged it. Recent research,
however, has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the date is
false. This fact emerges from the archives, and it is also quite
clear from such sources as the memoirs of the Prime Minister of Jammu
and Kashmir at the time, Mehr Chand Mahajan, and the recently
published correspondence of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime
Minister Circumstantial accounts of the events of 26 October
1947,notably that of V.P Menon (in his The Integration of the Indian
States, London 1965), who said he was actually present when the
Maharajah signed, are simply not true.
It is now absolutely clear that the two documents (a) the Instrument
of Accession, and © the letter to Lord Mountbatten, could not
possibly have been signed by the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir on 26
October 1947. The earliest possible time and date for their signature
would have to be the afternoon of 27 October 1947. During 26 October
1947 the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir was travelling by road from
Srinagar to Jammu. His Prime Minister, M.C. Mahajan, who was
negotiating with the Government of India, and the senior Indian
official concerned in State matters, V.P. Menon, were still in New
Delhi where they remained overnight, and where their presence was
noted by many observers. There was no communication of any sort
between New Delhi and the traveling Maharajah. Menon and Mahajan set
out by air form New Delhi to Jammu at about 10.00 a.m. on 27 October,
and the Maharajah learned from them for the first time the result of
his Prime Minister's negotiations in New Delhi in the early afternoon
of that day.
The key point, of course, a has already been noted above, is that it
is now obvious that these documents could only have been signed after
the overt Indian intervention in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. When
the Indian troops arrived at Srinagar air field, that State was still
independent. Any agreements favourable to India signed after such
intervention cannot escape the charge of having been produced under
duress. It was, one presumes, to escape just such a charge that the
false date 26 October 1947 was assigned to these two documents. The
deliberately distorted account of that very senior Indian official,
V.P. Menon, to which reference has already been made, was no doubt
executed for the same end. Falsification of such a fundamental
element as date of signature, however, once established, can only
cast grave doubt over the validity of the document as a whole .
An examination of the transactions behind these four documents in the
light of the new evidence produces a number of other serious doubts.
It is clear, for example, that in the case of © and (d), the
exchange of letters between the maharajah and Lord Mountbatten, Lore
Mountbatten's reply must antedate the letter to which it is an answer
unless, as seems more than probable, both were drafted by the
Government of India before being taken up to Jammu on 27 October 1947
(by V.P. Menon and Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister M.C. Mahajan,
whose movements, incidentally, are correctly reported in the London
Times of 28 October 1947) after the arrival of the Indian troops at
Srinagar airfield. The case is very strong, therefore, that document
©, the Maharajah's letter to Lord Mountbatten, was dictated to the
Maharajah.
Documents ( c ) and ( d ) were published by the Government of India
on 28 October 1947. The far more important document (a ), the alleged
Instrument of Accession, was not published until many years later, if
at all. It was not communicated to Pakistan at the outset of the
overt Indian intervention in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, nor was
it presented in facsimile to the United Nations in early 1948 as part
of the initial Indian reference to the Security Council. The 1948
White Paper in which the Government of India set out its formal case
in respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir, does not contain the
Instrument of Accession as claimed to have been signed by the
Maharajah: instead, it reproduces an unsigned from of Accession such
as, it is imposed, the Maharajah might have signed. To date no
satisfactory original of this Instrument as signed by the Maharajah
ever did sign an Instrument of Accession. There are, indeed, grounds
for suspecting that he did no such thing. The Instrument of Accession
referred to in document ( c ); a letter which as we have seen was
probably drafted by Indian officials prior to being shown to the
Maharajah, may never have existed, and can hardly have existed when
the letter was being prepared.
Even if there had been an Instrument of Accession, then if it
followed the form indicated in the unsigned example of such an
Instrument published in the Indian 1948 White Paper it would have
been extremely restrictive in the rights conferred upon the
Government of India. All that were in fact transferred from the State
to the Government of India by such an Instrument were the powers over
Defence, Foreign Relations and certain aspects of Communications,
Virtually all else was left with the State Government. Thanks to
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution of January 1950 (which, unlike
much else relating to the former Princely States, has survived to
some significant degree in current Indian constitution theory, if not
in practice), the State of Jammu and Kashmir was accorded a degree of
autonomy which does not sit at all comfortably with the current
authoritarian Indian administration of those parts of the State which
it holds.
Not only would such an Instrument have been restrictive, but also by
virtue of the provisions, of (d ), Lord Mountbatten's letter to the
Maharajah dated 27 October 1947, it would have been conditional Lord
Mountbatten, as Governor-General of India, made it clear that the
State of Jammu and Kashmir would only be incorporated permanently
within the Indian fold after approval as a result of some form of
reference to the people, a procedure which soon (with United Nations
participation) became defined as a fair and free plebiscite . India
has never permitted such a reference to the people to be made.
Why would the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir not have signed an
Instrument of Accession? The answer lies in the complex course of
events of August, September and October 1947 emerged. The Maharajah,
confronted with growing internal disorder (including a full scale
rebellion in the Poonch region of the State), sought Indian military
help without, it at all possible, surrendering his own independence.
The Government of India delayed assisting him in the hope that in
despair he would accede to India before any Indian actions had to be
taken. In the event, India had to move first. Having secured what he
wanted, Indian military assistance, the Maharajah would naturally
have wished to avoid paying the price of the surrender of his
independence by signing any instrument which he could possibly avoid
signing. From the Afternoon of 27 October 1947 onwards a smoke screen
conceals both the details and the immediate outcome of this struggle
of wills between the Government of India and the Maharajah of Jammu
and Kashmir. To judge from the 1948 White Paper an Instrument of
accession may not have been signed by March 1948, by which time the
Indian case for sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir was already being
argued before the United Nations.
The patently false dates of documents (a ) and ( c ) alter
fundamentally the nature of the overt Indian intervention in Jammu
and Kashmir on 27 October 1947. India was not defending its own but
intervening in a foreign State. There can be no reasonable doubt that
had Pakistan been aware of this falsification of the record it would
have argued very differently in international for from the outset of
the dispute; and had the United Nations understood the true
chronology it would have listened with for less sympathy to arguments
presented to it by successive Indian representatives. Given the facts
as they are now known, it may well be that an impartial international
tribunal would decided that India had no right at all to be in the
State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ciao Ciao...
The formal overt Indian intervention in the internal affairs of the
State of Jammu and Kashmir began on about 9.00 a.m. on 27 October
1947, when Indian troops started landing at Srinagar airfield. India
has officially dated the commencement of its claim that the State was
part of Indian sovereign territory to a few hours earlier, at some
point in the afternoon or evening of 26 October. From their arrival
on 27 October 1947 to the present day, Indian troops have continued
to occupy a large proportion of the State of Jammu and Kashmir
despite the increasingly manifest opposition of a majority of the
population to their presence. To critics of India's position and
actions in the State of Jammu and Kashmir the Government of New Delhi
has consistently declared that the State of Jammu and Kashmir lies
entirely within the sphere of internal Indian policy. Do the facts
support the Indian contention in this respect?
The State of Jammu and Kashmir was a Princely State within the
British Indian Empire. By the rules of the British transfer of power
in Indian subcontinent in 1947 the Ruler of the State, Maharajah Sir
Hari Singh, with the departure of the British and the lapsing of
Paramountcy (as the relationship between State and British Crown was
termed), could opt to join either India or Pakistan or, by doing
nothing, become from 15 August 1947 the Ruler of an independent
polity. The choice was the Ruler's and his alone: there was no
provision for popular consultation in the Indian Princely States
during the final days of the British Raj. On 15th August 1947, by
default, the State of Jammu and Kashmir became independent.
India maintains that this period of independence, the existence of
which it has never challenged effectively, came to an end on 26/27
October as the result of two pairs of closely related transactions,
which we must now examine.
They are:
(a) an Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India which
the Maharajah is alleged to have signed on 26 October 1947, and;
(b) the acceptance of this Instrument by the Governor-General of
India, Lord Mountbatten, on 27 October 1947; plus
© a letter from the Maharajah to Lord Mountbatten, dated 26 October
1947, in which Indian military aid is sought in return for accession
to India (on terms stated in an allegedly enclosed Instrument) and
the appointment of Sheikh Abdullah to head an Interim Government of
the State; and
(d) a letter from Lord Mountbatten to the Maharajah, dated 27 October
1947, acknowledging the above and nothing that, once the affairs of
the State have been settled and law and order is restored, "the
question of the State's accession should be settled by a reference to
the people."
In both pairs of documents it will be noted that the date of the
communication from the maharajah, be it the alleged Instrument of
Accession or the letter to Lord Mountbatten, is given as 26 October
1947, that is to say before the Indian troops actually began overtly
to intervene in the State's affairs on the morning of 26 October
1947. It has been said that Lord Mountbatten insisted on the
Maharajah's signature as a precondition for his approval Indian
intervention in the affairs of what would otherwise be an independent
State.
The date, 26 October 1947, has hitherto been accepted as true by
virtually all observers, be they sympathetic or hostile to the Indian
case. It is to be found in an official communication by Lore
Mountbatten, as Governor General of India, on 1 November 1947; and it
is repeated in the White paper on Jammu and Kashmir which the
Government of India laid before the Indian Parliament in March 1948.
Pakistani diplomats have never challenged it. Recent research,
however, has demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt that the date is
false. This fact emerges from the archives, and it is also quite
clear from such sources as the memoirs of the Prime Minister of Jammu
and Kashmir at the time, Mehr Chand Mahajan, and the recently
published correspondence of Jawaharlal Nehru, the Indian Prime
Minister Circumstantial accounts of the events of 26 October
1947,notably that of V.P Menon (in his The Integration of the Indian
States, London 1965), who said he was actually present when the
Maharajah signed, are simply not true.
It is now absolutely clear that the two documents (a) the Instrument
of Accession, and © the letter to Lord Mountbatten, could not
possibly have been signed by the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir on 26
October 1947. The earliest possible time and date for their signature
would have to be the afternoon of 27 October 1947. During 26 October
1947 the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir was travelling by road from
Srinagar to Jammu. His Prime Minister, M.C. Mahajan, who was
negotiating with the Government of India, and the senior Indian
official concerned in State matters, V.P. Menon, were still in New
Delhi where they remained overnight, and where their presence was
noted by many observers. There was no communication of any sort
between New Delhi and the traveling Maharajah. Menon and Mahajan set
out by air form New Delhi to Jammu at about 10.00 a.m. on 27 October,
and the Maharajah learned from them for the first time the result of
his Prime Minister's negotiations in New Delhi in the early afternoon
of that day.
The key point, of course, a has already been noted above, is that it
is now obvious that these documents could only have been signed after
the overt Indian intervention in the State of Jammu and Kashmir. When
the Indian troops arrived at Srinagar air field, that State was still
independent. Any agreements favourable to India signed after such
intervention cannot escape the charge of having been produced under
duress. It was, one presumes, to escape just such a charge that the
false date 26 October 1947 was assigned to these two documents. The
deliberately distorted account of that very senior Indian official,
V.P. Menon, to which reference has already been made, was no doubt
executed for the same end. Falsification of such a fundamental
element as date of signature, however, once established, can only
cast grave doubt over the validity of the document as a whole .
An examination of the transactions behind these four documents in the
light of the new evidence produces a number of other serious doubts.
It is clear, for example, that in the case of © and (d), the
exchange of letters between the maharajah and Lord Mountbatten, Lore
Mountbatten's reply must antedate the letter to which it is an answer
unless, as seems more than probable, both were drafted by the
Government of India before being taken up to Jammu on 27 October 1947
(by V.P. Menon and Jammu and Kashmir Prime Minister M.C. Mahajan,
whose movements, incidentally, are correctly reported in the London
Times of 28 October 1947) after the arrival of the Indian troops at
Srinagar airfield. The case is very strong, therefore, that document
©, the Maharajah's letter to Lord Mountbatten, was dictated to the
Maharajah.
Documents ( c ) and ( d ) were published by the Government of India
on 28 October 1947. The far more important document (a ), the alleged
Instrument of Accession, was not published until many years later, if
at all. It was not communicated to Pakistan at the outset of the
overt Indian intervention in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, nor was
it presented in facsimile to the United Nations in early 1948 as part
of the initial Indian reference to the Security Council. The 1948
White Paper in which the Government of India set out its formal case
in respect to the State of Jammu and Kashmir, does not contain the
Instrument of Accession as claimed to have been signed by the
Maharajah: instead, it reproduces an unsigned from of Accession such
as, it is imposed, the Maharajah might have signed. To date no
satisfactory original of this Instrument as signed by the Maharajah
ever did sign an Instrument of Accession. There are, indeed, grounds
for suspecting that he did no such thing. The Instrument of Accession
referred to in document ( c ); a letter which as we have seen was
probably drafted by Indian officials prior to being shown to the
Maharajah, may never have existed, and can hardly have existed when
the letter was being prepared.
Even if there had been an Instrument of Accession, then if it
followed the form indicated in the unsigned example of such an
Instrument published in the Indian 1948 White Paper it would have
been extremely restrictive in the rights conferred upon the
Government of India. All that were in fact transferred from the State
to the Government of India by such an Instrument were the powers over
Defence, Foreign Relations and certain aspects of Communications,
Virtually all else was left with the State Government. Thanks to
Article 370 of the Indian Constitution of January 1950 (which, unlike
much else relating to the former Princely States, has survived to
some significant degree in current Indian constitution theory, if not
in practice), the State of Jammu and Kashmir was accorded a degree of
autonomy which does not sit at all comfortably with the current
authoritarian Indian administration of those parts of the State which
it holds.
Not only would such an Instrument have been restrictive, but also by
virtue of the provisions, of (d ), Lord Mountbatten's letter to the
Maharajah dated 27 October 1947, it would have been conditional Lord
Mountbatten, as Governor-General of India, made it clear that the
State of Jammu and Kashmir would only be incorporated permanently
within the Indian fold after approval as a result of some form of
reference to the people, a procedure which soon (with United Nations
participation) became defined as a fair and free plebiscite . India
has never permitted such a reference to the people to be made.
Why would the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir not have signed an
Instrument of Accession? The answer lies in the complex course of
events of August, September and October 1947 emerged. The Maharajah,
confronted with growing internal disorder (including a full scale
rebellion in the Poonch region of the State), sought Indian military
help without, it at all possible, surrendering his own independence.
The Government of India delayed assisting him in the hope that in
despair he would accede to India before any Indian actions had to be
taken. In the event, India had to move first. Having secured what he
wanted, Indian military assistance, the Maharajah would naturally
have wished to avoid paying the price of the surrender of his
independence by signing any instrument which he could possibly avoid
signing. From the Afternoon of 27 October 1947 onwards a smoke screen
conceals both the details and the immediate outcome of this struggle
of wills between the Government of India and the Maharajah of Jammu
and Kashmir. To judge from the 1948 White Paper an Instrument of
accession may not have been signed by March 1948, by which time the
Indian case for sovereignty over Jammu and Kashmir was already being
argued before the United Nations.
The patently false dates of documents (a ) and ( c ) alter
fundamentally the nature of the overt Indian intervention in Jammu
and Kashmir on 27 October 1947. India was not defending its own but
intervening in a foreign State. There can be no reasonable doubt that
had Pakistan been aware of this falsification of the record it would
have argued very differently in international for from the outset of
the dispute; and had the United Nations understood the true
chronology it would have listened with for less sympathy to arguments
presented to it by successive Indian representatives. Given the facts
as they are now known, it may well be that an impartial international
tribunal would decided that India had no right at all to be in the
State of Jammu and Kashmir.
Ciao Ciao...