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Incomplete Partition: The Genesis of the Kashmir Dispute [quick read] by Saima Alvi 06 May 2002 08:34 UTC |
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DAWN INTERNET EDITION (dawn.com) 5 May 2002 Sunday BOOK REVIEW:How it all began by Shahid M. Amin ---------------------------------------------- Incomplete partition: the genesis of the Kashmir dispute, 1947-48 ================================================================= By Alastair Lamb Oxford University Press, 2002 Alastair Lamb's Incomplete partition: the genesis of the Kashmir dispute 1947-1948, which was first published in Britain in 1997, has now been reprinted in Pakistan. The book is based on meticulous research of the voluminous source material in the UK, Pakistan and India, as also the memoirs of some of the principal actors of the Partition era. In Pakistan, there has been a spate of rhetorical statements about the "betrayals" by Mountbatten, the last British Viceroy, and Radcliffe, the chairman of the Boundary Commission, as well as the evil machinations of the Indian leaders. However, few in Pakistan have bothered to substantiate these allegations with specific evidence. Against this background, Pakistanis have to thank Lamb for furnishing much documentary evidence, which gives substance to the Pakistani allegations. In the context of the partition of Punjab, and the genesis of the Kashmir dispute, Pakistan has charged that Mountbatten and Radcliffe had conspired (either together or separately) to deny to Pakistan the Muslim majority areas in Gurdaspur district which went to India and thus gave it an access to Kashmir. Thus was born the bitter Kashmir dispute that continues to create dangerous tensions in the subcontinent more than half a century later. Lamb has unearthed important evidence that, on the whole, endorses the Pakistani allegations. In particular, his book clearly establishes that Mountbatten had a pro-India bias and he was, moreover, guilty of prevarication, if not outright lying. Regarding the delimitation of the Punjab border, Lamb has shown that Radcliffe's border line was essentially based on the blueprint prepared by the previous Viceroy Lord Wavell and forwarded to the British Government in London in a telegram dated February 1946, about 17 months before Radcliffe arrived on the scene. This telegram was based on a draft prepared by a key official in the Viceroy's staff named V.P. Menon, who had close ties with the Congress leaders. In Wavell's partition blueprint, which Radcliffe seems to have followed, the tehsils of Gurdaspur and Batala were to be included in India. Wavell had explained, "Gurdaspur must go to Amritsar for geographical reasons and Amritsar being sacred to the Sikhs." Access to Kashmir for a future independent India was not a consideration for Wavell. Hence, contrary to a widely shared impression in Pakistan, on this score, it could not be said that Mountbatten influenced Radcliffe to change his award. Lamb also argues that Radcliffe did not have Kashmir in mind while awarding this area to India. He was thinking primarily to ensure the security of Amritsar, the holy city of the Sikhs, as well as following the natural river boundary in this region. It was in another sector that Mountbatten did intervene and persuade Radcliffe to change his original award. Lamb has clearly established that Radcliffe had decided to include in Pakistan the Ferozepore and Zira Tehsils (having a Muslim majority of 55.2 and 65.2 per cent respectively according to the 1941 census). They were contiguous to Pakistan and had a Muslim majority. These areas also had the Ferozepore headworks that were crucial for West Punjab's canal irrigation. (In April 1948, India in fact choked off water supply to Pakistan by using these very headworks.) On August 8, 1947, Christopher Beaumont, Radcliffe's secretary, prepared a typewritten note illustrated with a map showing this new boundary. Abell, Mountbatten's private secretary, sent both the map and the descriptive note at once to Lahore to Abbot, secretary to Sir Evan Jenkins, the governor of Punjab. (This document came in the hands of Pakistani authorities who published it in 1983.) On August 12, 1947, Radcliffe had a luncheon meeting with Mountbatten and Ismay, Mountbatten's chief of staff. It was here that Mountbatten was able to persuade or cajole Radcliffe into changing his award about the Ferozepore salient. Thus, his final award of August 12, 1947 differed significantly from the boundary he had given on August 8. Mountbatten, however, flatly denied at the time and subsequently that he had anything to do with the Radcliffe award or even knew about it before it was actually announced. On August 13, 1947, he wrote to both Jinnah and Nehru that the Radcliffe Award was still awaited and "at present, therefore, I have no idea of its contents". As Lamb observes: "This statement is, without a nugget of doubt, untrue." Similarly, when Liaquat Ali Khan complained to Ismay on August 11, about the manipulation of the award, the latter made a false statement, in writing, that Liaquat had no right "to imply that the Viceroy has influenced this award". For years thereafter, Mountbatten kept denying his role in the affair. What is even more shocking is that the highest British officials subsequently tried their best to cover up the true facts in order to save Mountbatten's reputation. Thus, records were destroyed or otherwise tampered with in this exercise. There is also the question about Radcliffe's own integrity and sense of justice. Why should he have succumbed to Mountbatten's pressure even when there was clear justification for awarding the Ferozepore salient to Pakistan? It had a Muslim majority and was contiguous to Pakistan. The Ferozepore headworks had a direct bearing on the economic welfare of Pakistan. These were the main criteria for the partition. The same criteria necessitated the award of the two eastern Tehsils of Gurdaspur to Pakistan. The argument that this would have threatened the security of Amritsar is odd. How could such a reasoning override the basic formula for partition on the basis of contiguity and Muslim or non-Muslim majority? At the same time, the thinking in Pakistan that Radcliffe was deliberately providing an access to India via Gurdaspur does not seem to be correct, in the light of the evidence provided by Lamb. One tehsil of Gurdaspur, namely, Pathankot, which had a non-Muslim majority of 61 per cent, had to go to India and would have provided it an access to Kashmir, even if the other two tehsils had gone to Pakistan. Coming next to the Kashmir dispute, the important point proved by Lamb is that the Indian military intervention on October 27, 1947 took place before the Maharaja had formally acceded to India. In fact, there remains a mystery if the Maharaja ever did sign an Instrument of Accession as this document is said to be "missing" from Indian records. Lamb shows that the record was falsified from the very beginning by claiming that V.P. Menon had travelled to Jammu on October 26 to secure such an Instrument. Hence, the Indian argument ever since that India had sent its forces to defend its own territory has no basis since by October 27, no Instrument of Accession had been signed. Moreover, at first, Mountbatten had insisted that it would have been "the height of folly" to send Indian troops into Jammu and Kashmir without prior accession. Lamb also questions the justification given for the Indian military intervention in Kashmir, namely, that there had been a massive intrusion in Kashmir by Pakistani tribal Pathans and that the "raiders" were involved in massacres and plunder. The reality was that a serious revolt had broken out in the Poonch area of the state by August 1947. It was entirely indigenous. Reacting to this revolt, Lamb notes that the Maharaja embarked upon a massacre of Muslims in Jammu in which at least 200,000 Muslims were killed. This slaughter of Muslims stirred the Pathan tribals who started to move into Kashmir around October 10, 1947. The then Deputy Prime Minister of Kashmir, R.L. Batra, had said on October 24 that the insurgent forces were "tribesmen who are out of control of the Pakistan government". Batra gave their number at around 2,000 and did not consider the state to be in real danger. But the Indian Defence Committee, meeting presided over by Mountbatten on October 25, saw this as "a systematic invasion by tribesmen sponsored by the government of Pakistan". The conclusion from the foregoing is clear. India had intervened in Kashmir without obtaining an Instrument of Accession from the Maharaja. Hence, the argument of self-defence and defending "Indian" territory was false. Nor was there any basis to the contention that Pakistan had committed aggression in Kashmir. The whole thing was a gross exaggeration if not outright fiction. The role of Mountbatten in this ignoble exercise has by now been laid bare. The poor information of the Pakistani leaders (including Jinnah and Liaquat), about the developments in Kashmir and the Radcliffe Commission, seems like a mystery. In fact, one gets the impression of inactivity on their part, with little anticipation of what was about to happen in Kashmir. On the part of Jinnah, there was somehow a lingering faith in the British sense of fairplay. He probably did not see what Mountbatten was doing until it was too late. It is clear that the friendship that both Mountbatten and his wife had developed with Nehru, as also Mountbatten's dislike for Jinnah, led to some disastrous consequences for Pakistan.
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