October 27, 1947 - the day when India landed its forces in
Srinagar - veritably marks the birth of an unending tragedy that
continues to bleed to this very day. The day marked the culmination of a
conspiracy hatched by the Indian leadership in connivance with Lord
Louis Mountbatten, the then Governor General of India, to wrest Kashmir
with the force of arms.
The State of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K)
was one of 584 princely states, which, with the lapse of paramountcy of
the British Crown in August 1947, had to exercise the option of joining
either India or Pakistan. The state, which was ruled by the Hindu Dogra
Raja, Sir Hari Singh, had an overwhelming Muslim preponderance.
Notwithstanding its rule by Dogra Maharajas, whose ancestor, Maharaja
Gulab Singh, had been sold the Kashmir Valley along with its inhabitants
by the British for just Rs 75 lakh, there was no rationale under which
it could be absorbed into India under any pretext.
The
subcontinent was being divided in deference to the Two-Nation Theory,
which demanded carving out a nation state comprising contiguous Muslim
majority areas in undivided India. Kashmir’s union with Pakistan, based
on this criterion, was only too obvious. In addition, there were
compelling strategic compulsions recommending such a course. Sources of
three major rivers irrigating Pakistan - Indus, Jhelum and Chenab - lay
in Kashmir.
Besides, Kashmir’s outside linkages passed through the
territory that was to constitute Pakistan: Road
Pindi-Murree-Muzaffarabad-Srinagar comprised one route, while
Sialkot-Jammu-Banihal Pass-Srinagar constituted the other. The third
route - a dirt track - passed through the Muslim-dominated district of
Gurdaspur in the Punjab, providing a minor link to Srinagar through the
Pathankot railhead. It was certain that once Punjab was divided,
Gurdaspur being a Muslim-dominated district of Punjab and contiguous to
other Muslim majority areas, would form part of Pakistan.
However,
the Indian Prime Minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, himself a Kashmiri Pandit,
had a pathological fixation for acquiring Kashmir; by hook or crook. He
was joined in such scheming by the British Viceroy and the first
Governor General of India, Lord Mountbatten, whose antipathy to
Quaid-i-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Pakistan is no secret.
The
Mountbatten-Nehru duo hatched a deep-rooted conspiracy to wrest Kashmir
and thus sowed the seeds of a tragedy that has ever since overshadowed
the prospects of peace in South Asia.
The notorious design to
occupy Kashmir began to unfold on August 16, 1947, with the announcement
of the Radcliffe Boundary Award. The June 3 partition plan envisaged
establishing boundary in Bengal, Assam-Sylhet and Punjab under the
stewardship of Sir Cyril Radcliffe. When the Award was announced, its
most controversial decision dealt with awarding the Gurdaspur District
to India.
There is overwhelming evidence to suggest that
Mountbatten prevailed upon Radcliffe to configure the Award in line with
the conceived plan for subsequent occupation of Kashmir. The rationale
would remain a mystery, since Radcliffe had left India by the time it
was announced, taking all his papers with him. He died in 1977 without
ever uttering a word, either on or off record, to explain the underlying
reasons for his fateful Award.
With a land route now becoming
available for the Indian armed forces to move into Kashmir, the plan for
military occupation began to take shape. A political fig leaf had to be
in place to justify and validate the aggression. To this end, it was
essential to acquire an instrument of accession from the Maharaja and
the occupation had to be camouflaged in an open-ended commitment to hold
a plebiscite to decide the final fate of Kashmir’s accession. Nehru’s
political chicanery, at this juncture, becomes manifest in the manner in
which he used Sheikh Abdullah to advance his plans. Abdullah, was then
in jail and Nehru employed considerable effort to have him released in
the first week of October.
According to the plan, Abdullah, at
the behest of Nehru, was to endorse an accession by the Maharaja and
form a government in Kashmir, with the support of the Indian forces.
Nehru
outlined the role that was to be played by Abdullah in annexing
Kashmir, in a letter to Patel on September 27, 1947: “We have definitely
a great asset in the National Conference. Sheikh Abdullah has given
assurances of wishing to cooperate and of being opposed to Pakistan;
also to abide by my advice.”
As October progressed, Kashmir got
engulfed in strife. There was a rebellion in the state forces, which
revolted against the Maharaja’s authority and were joined by a small
number of Pathan tribesmen, who voluntarily joined the rebels.
Mounbatten, as Governor General of India, called a meeting of the
Defence Committee to assess the situation on October 25.
The
Committee under his chairmanship decided to immediately send V.P. Menon,
along with senior army and air force commanders, to land in Srinagar
the same day, reconnoitre the ground situation and advise the Maharaja
to abandon it for the safety of Jammu across the Banihal Pass.
Mountbatten
also ordered the British Commander of the Indian forces to assemble a
fleet of 10 transport aircraft for an airlift operation after 48 hours
for landing troops in Srinagar.
Menon’s visit on October 25 so
unnerved the Maharaja that he packed all his valuables and left for
Jammu by road in the morning of October 26 without signing any
instrument of accession. Hence, there is no evidence that establishes
that the Maharaja ever signed the instrument of accession. It has never
been shown in any official Indian document or held in any archives and
there is a widely held belief that it does not exist.
Mountbatten,
while chairing another meeting of the Defence Committee on October 26,
ordered the landing of the first battalion of the Sikh regiment in
Srinagar on October 27. At about 0900, hours the Sikh regiment began to
land at the deserted Srinagar Airport. It is to be poignantly noted that
on that fateful day, as the Indian aggression commenced, Jammu and
Kashmir existed in the same constitutional limbo of insecure
independence in which it had remained since August 15, 1947; following
the lapse of the British paramountcy.
As the Indian aggression
unfolded, Pakistan’s military response remained stymied by refusal of
General Gracey, the Acting Chief of Pakistan Army, to send forces in
Kashmir. It was with much delay that Pakistan was able to respond
militarily in Kashmir. On December 31, 1947, India made an appeal to the
UN Security Council to intervene and a ceasefire ultimately came into
effect on January 01, 1949, following the UN resolutions calling for a
plebiscite in Kashmir.
October 27, 1947, very early marked
India’s propensity for aggression in realising its territorial and
political ambitions. In doing so, it, however, failed to factor in the
will of the Kashmiri people, whose grassroots resistance to the Indian
occupation has been the major factor in New Delhi’s grudging
acknowledgement that Kashmir is a bleeding wound whose pain is only
getting worse with the passage of time.0
The writer is a freelance columnist.