THE KASHMIR QUESTION
© Prakash Mascarenhas, 22nd December 2001
THE ORIGIN OF KASHMIR
Kashmir was and is an ancient part of the Indian civilisation. Previously it had been Hindu, but when Buddhism came to dominate India, Kashmir too turned Buddhist. But following the advent of Islam into India, as always and everywhere bloody, Islam was forcibly imposed on Kashmir.
The name Kashmir is derived from the original "Kashyapmarh," that is Kashyap's Plateau, the valley plain that, according to Aryan legend, was drained and colonised by the sage Kashyap.
Kashmir at times in the past managed to gain its independence, as did many if not all the nations of the Indian civilisation, and there were times when Kashmir came to dominate its neighbours in an Empire. But it was more often that Kashmir was ruled as part of one great Indian Empire after another. After the collapse of the Mughal Empire, the Sikh Empire arose in the west of India, and following their liberation from the Muslims, they began to encroach on their neighbours on all sides forming the Sikh Empire, extending over all of the Punjab, the Dogra homeland, Kashmir, Ladakh and other parts of the Tibetan civilisation, besides the newly independent Emirate of Afghanistan, formerly the Iranian province of Aspavaghan.
However, not all the leaders of the Sikh Empire were Sikhs, for the Dogra princely vassals, who provided the military leadership were actually Hindus or at least half-Sikh and half-Hindu.
The Dogra nation was ruled for a long time by the 'Dogra' kings - a branch of an ancient royal family, the Suryavanshi. The Dogra kings had mixed fortunes: They had been reduced to vassals by the Mughals, then, after a short spell of independence following the collapse of the Mughal empire, they were swept over by Ranjit Singh's shortlived Sikh Empire.
Under Ranjit Singh, the Dogras dominated the Army leadership, and were crucial to the Empire's expansion into Kashmir, the north, Ladakh and into proper Tibet. The boundaries of modern India, at present disputed by the Chinese Empire in Tibet and Eastern Turkistan, were set during this time, by the Dogras of the Sikh Empire.
Following the mutinies of the Sikh misaldars, the Sikh and other nobles of the Empire, tired of the tyrannies of these mutineers and aided the English conquest. At this time, the Dogras paid off the English for their homeland, the Dogranchal, which is, Jammu and its environs. In the bargain, they also got Kashmir, Ladakh and the northern territories of Baltitstan and Shinaki. Thus was founded the Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir.
Parts of the Dogra Kingdom were later leased by the English to form, together with parts of the Punjab province, the new province of the North-West Frontier - intended as a barrier against suspected Russian invasion. This was the territory of Chitral, etc. which too are legally parts of the former Dogra Kingdom, and therefore of the Indian Union.
ETHNIC COMPOSITION OF THE KINGDOM
Many are under the misapprehension that the people of this territory are one. In fact nothing could be further from the truth.
The land is populated by different nations having different histories, cultures and religions.
The largest or most populous nation is the Kashmirian, which inhabits the actual Kashmir, a valley in the centre of the territory. Then there are the Hindu Dogras, the Muslim Hindko, Baltits and Shinaki, and the Buddhist Ladakhians. On the whole the Muslims predominate the population.
IMMEDIATE PRE-INDEPENDENCE HISTORY
Kashmir, the land immediately to the east of the Dogranchal, was a Muslim land for many centuries, and was also ruled by successive Muslim dynasties and empires, ending with the Mughal Empire. Following the collapse of the Mughal Empire, Kashmir briefly gained its independence, only to be conquered by the Dogra vassals of the Sikh Empire. Then with the collapse of that empire, it was constituted a part of the Dogra Kingdom, actually an empire. Kashmirian disaffection finally took the shape, in this century of the Muslim Conference, a political movement for Kashmirian self-administration.
As the Muslim Conference was sucked into the larger picture of Indian disaffection, and more particularly as a result of Gandhi's support of the Khilafat Movement that brought in the Indian Muslims into the fold of the Congress or as its affiliates and allies, the Muslim Conference broadened itself into a movement for democracy representing all the citizens of the Dogra Kingdom, and renamed itself as the National Conference.
As the agitation for the creation of a Muslim "nation" to be carved out of India picked up momentum, the Gandhian Muslims, such as Badshah Khan, the Ali Brothers and Sheikh Abdullah, the charismatic leader of the National Conference, remained patriotic.
Thus when Pakistan was created, despite the agitation of a section of Hindko Muslims from Mirpur and its environs, the National Conference favoured merger into India, while the Hindu King and his advisors favoured, for the same reasons, Pakistan. That is, Nehru's proposed course of Socialism and of abolition of aristocratic privileges appalled the King and his party!
HOW KASHMIR ENTERED THE INDIAN UNION
When at last, weary of the resistance of the Indian people, England decided to cede India Independence, she also ceded the near infinite number of princely states their independence. The princely states had the right as sovereign states to remain independent or to merge themselves into the Dominions of India or Pakistan, etc. The King or Maharaja of the Dogra Kingdom of Jammu and Kashmir, Hari Singh Dogra, under the influence of his conservative advisors who disliked Nehru's socialism, preferred to accede to Pakistan rather than to India. However, the dominant political party, the National Conference, formerly the Muslim Conference, of Sheikh Abdullah, the Kashmirian leader, tended towards its fellow-socialists in the Indian National Congress Party of the Indian Union.
Negotiations were on between the Dogra Royalists and Pakistan, but Pakistan wearied of their slowness, and also feared, seeing the reversal of the aristocratic Bikaner and other Rajput princely states, that the Dogra Kingdom too would succumb to the intense Hindu pressure and cede to the Indian Union, Jinnah sent in his troops in civilian garb assisted by tribal levees from the North-West Frontier Province. These raiders hoped to sweep all before them and perpetrated enormous atrocities on the non-Muslims, men, women and children, who had the misfortune of falling into their hands, and thus created an atmosphere of terror as they progressed towards the capital, Srinagar. The King and his family fled to their palace on the Indian frontier, and there sought Indian military assistance.
India had already signed a "Standstill Agreement" with the state, as it had with most of the other princely states, and under that was obliged to provide security to them. However, while Indian troops already present in the state assisted the state's troops in the Resistance to the Pakistanian invasion, India refused to make any major military commitment until the King acceded to the Indian Union. Finally, given the hopelessness of the situation, the King acceded the state.
This accession of the state to the Indian Union was approved also by the politically ascendant Crown Prince or Raj Kunwar, Karan Singh Dogra and also by the democratically elected Parliament of the state, dominated as it was by the Gandhian National Conference.
Following the accession, the Indian Union began a massive injection of forces into the state, airlifting vital reinforcements to Srinagar. The injection of Indian troops into the state dramatically changed the situation, and the raiders began to fall away before the Indians. Jinnah then pushed in the regular Pakistan army.
India referred the war between itself and Pakistan to the United Nation Organisation, under the mistaken idealism of Nehru. Nehru also, in his idealist zeal, promised a Plebiscite to the peoples of the state, and repeated this offer in the UNO.
The UNO, in its resolution commanded Pakistan to evacuate the state following which a Plebiscite was to be conducted in the state. Pakistan however refused to do so. Again, the UNO passed a new resolution under which Pakistan was not required to evacuate but only demilitarise its occupation, with the Plebiscite to be held, as before, under Indian auspices. This too was rejected by Pakistan.
The rejection of these resolutions by Pakistan made them unenforceable and therefore caused them to lapse.
Further, it is a fact that Nehru was not the sovereign or King of India but only its democratically elected Prime Minister and as such had no power to alienate the Dogra Kingdom even if, in his Plebiscite, it voted against the Accession! The Nehruvian offer of a Plebiscite, even that which was made in the UNO, was never ratified by the Indian Parliament and so had no legal and binding value.
In the meantime, as a result of the negotiations between the party of the Raj Kunwar Karan Singh Dogra and the National Conference on the one part and the Indian Union on the other part, certain constitutional privileges for the former Dogra Kingdom were written into the Indian constitution. Thus, the old Dogra right forbidding outsiders from owning property and becoming citizens was retained, the Prime Minister of the state would retain his title and the state its constitution.
CAUSES OF CURRENT DISAFFECTION
The War in the former Dogra Kingdom came to an end with an armistice, and the situation stabilized within the Free parts of the state. However, the leaders of the Indian Union sought to establish Political Unitarianism: the uniformisation of the Indian state and its apparatuses. The provinces were renamed as 'states' in imitation of the states of the United States of America, while following the Unitarist need to reduce their importance and ability to act independently of the Central / Federal Government, their Prime Ministers and Supreme Courts were renamed as Chief Ministers and High Courts, and overall, their powers were immensely reduced.. But the same could not be carried out in the former Dogra Kingdom owing to its separate and guaranteed constitution. Thus the former Dogra Kingdom came to stick out like a sore thumb in an otherwise uniformised India.
The current disaffection of the Kashmirians is entirely the result of the actions of the Indian Union and its Central Government which has actively subverted the state's constitution and sought to force its peoples into the Procrustean bed of Indian Unitarianism. This is proved by the fact that despite Pakistan's constant efforts to alienate the affection of the state's people, it failed miserably until the present Insurgency began in 1989!
Thus it came about that Indian Philistinism gave birth to Kashmirian Secessionism!
The only logical way to set about to regain the affection of the state's peoples is to first of all admit this wrong and apologize for it, and to revert to the original status of the state. This will not cause all the insurgents to abandon secessionism, but it will be the beginning, and it is the only possible beginning!
It was only the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, when, following the massive influx of American arms into Pakistan, that Pakistan was able to give free arms to the Kashmirian and Sikh secessionists in the Punjab, that the disaffection found the means to be converted into a real secessionist struggle.
The secessionists are basically divided into two parts: the secularists and the Islamists. These latter, under the malign influence of Pakistan and its Jihadist patrons, America, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, etc., came to dominate the scene.
It is a fact that without any kind of provocation whatsoever, the Hindu, Sikh and Christian Kashmirians have been subjected to deliberate genocide in Kashmir and the other national homelands that constitute this territory at the hands of the Muslims.
Islam teaches that the world is divided into the Dar ul Salam and the Dar ul Harb. The former is where Islam is the civil law; the latter is where it is not. Islam teaches that it is the duty of every Muslim to bring all the countries of the earth to subjection to Islam. It is why Islam is the only religion in the world that routinely recourses to violence, for its propagation as a matter of religious policy. Mu'Ahmad, the founder of Islam, sent out armies to impose his invention upon the then predominantly Christian Arabia and its neighbouring territories.
No other founder of a religion did that. Not the Buddha, not Mahavir Jaina, not Confucius, not Guru Nanak, not the Messiah - Jesus Christ, not the Shankaracharya, the re-founder of Hinduism.
The last few centuries have seen the establishment of very many new religions: Khasyaism, Mormonism, Scientology, etc, but none of their founders have recoursed to violence as a means of propagating their inventions.
INDIA - PAKISTAN EQUALITY?
The Pakistanians mischievously purvey the myth that it was agreed that British India would be partitioned into two nations: Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India.
In matter of fact, there was no such agreement.
The leaders of India tried their best to avoid the secession of Pakistan, but when there was no way of avoiding it, they acquiesced to this secession with what grace they could. At no time did they covenant with anybody that the old British India would cease to be and be replaced by two equal successor states.
Precisely, no founder of the Indian Union, whether Gandhi, Nehru or the Indian National Congress made any kind of agreement, covenant or commitment whether with England or with Mohammad Ali Jinnah or the Muslim League that the state of British India would be replaced by two new and equal sates of Muslim Pakistan and Hindu India, nor is the state of the Indian Union predicated upon any such document.
I challenge any one to produce and prove it if there is any such document!
Moreover, if according to this fabulous agreement Muslim-majority Kashmir should be included into Pakistan, then on what basis are the Indian Muslims allowed to remain in India? Pakistan, with a population of 150 million Muslims, must first, before claiming Kashmir on the basis of this imaginary agreement, provide for the resettlement of some 250 million more Indian Muslims, and only then could it have a right to raise the question of Kashmir!
Can Pakistan do this: house another 250 million Muslims? It cannot even absorb the small number of the 'Mohajirs,' Muslims who emigrated from the Indian Union!
As a matter of fact, because the international community recognised the Indian Union as the natural successor of the old British Indian Empire, a co-founder of the United Nations, it was not required to make a fresh application for membership in that organisation, following its independence, as Pakistan was required to do.
The International Community and the United Nations, by this act, recognized the Indian Union as the one and only legal successor state of the old British India.
INDIA'S PARAMOUNTCY
India is a natural state and has been in existence since millennia. It is a product, not of manipulation, but of nature. Therefore, India has a natural right of Paramountcy and of Pre-Eminence over every part of the Indian territory that is / was artificially and / or unjustly separated from her, whether it is a subsidiary princely state or a secedent territory such as Pakistan.
Nature abhors a vacuum. What should have been done when in a princely state the mechanism of governance collapses? It is naturally the right of the Indian Union to intervene and stabilise the situation. It is the Indian Union's right because every part of India, even if it constitutes a separate state, is nevertheless still a part of India, and in India, although there are many states, none of them are representative of the entire India as the Indian Union is. Pakistan as an artificial state does not have any such or similar right, leave alone a right on its own territory.
ACCESSION
It is necessary to reiterate the facts regarding the accession of this territory to the Indian Union.
As far as the law and as far as moral requirements are concerned, since each and every of the princely states were artificial entities, and more so the former Dogra Kingdom, India had and has a natural right of Pre-Eminence over them and their territories.
This right gives India the right to override the wishes of their nominal sovereigns - largely the creation of the English imperialists.
As far as the law and as far as moral requirements are concerned, it is sufficient that a prince cede his territory to the Indian Union for it to become an integral and constitutional part of the Indian Union. In the case of the former Dogra Kingdom, the erstwhile Dogra princes, Maharaja Hari Singh Dogra and his heir, Kunwar Karan Singh Dogra both ceded the Dogra Kingdom to the Indian Union.
Apart from this cession to the Union, the then Prime Minister of the Indian Union, Mr. Jawaharlal Nehru promised a Plebiscite to ascertain the wishes of the former princely state's peoples, given the protest of a section of its peoples, principally from among the Hindko nation that inhabitates Mirpur and its environs. It is this promised Plebiscite that the secessionists and Pakistan harps on.
However, they ignore material facts:
We know where India stands in Kashmir: As the Paramount Power and Guarantor of its law and order, AND as the state into which it was legally merged by its king. Therefore, from the Indian viewpoint, Kashmir and the rest of the former Dogra Kingdom, including Dogranchal, Ladakh, Baltitstan, Shinaki and Hindko is an integral part of the Indian state. Not so however with Pakistan: and Pakistan cannot even make this claim. Nevertheless, Pakistan has blatantly and ignoring the sensibilities of its own puppet creation - "The Islamic Republic of Azad Kashmir" - annexed Baltitstan and Shinakistan and ceded the Trans-Karakoram to China. Even China is aware that Pakistan has no legal title to the Trans-Karakoram and therefore, since it did not belong to Pakistan, Pakistan cannot gift it to China or anyone else. Nevertheless, it has entered into a robbers' bargain with Pakistan, its fellow pirate-state!
"AZAD KASHMIR" A STANDING JOKE!
"Azad Kashmir" is a standing joke. It is neither Azad nor Kashmir, precisely because its population is Hindko without any native Kashmirians! And such a sorry joke that a pretended sovereign state has no authority over itself, but its Supreme Court is actually merely a "High Court" - subsidiary of the Pakistan Judiciary, and its rejection of the blatantly illegal transfer of the Trans-Karakoram to the Chinese Empire and the equally blatant annexation of Baltitstan and the Shinaki homelands to Pakistan being blasely overruled by the Supreme Court of Pakistan, admittedly a foreign country! Woe, that even the fig leaf of a pretended sovereignty is so unfeelingly torn away from the delicate constitution of our fair blushing maiden that goes by the name of "Azad Kashmir!" Not even the hated "Indians" treat their "Kashmir Colony" in so shameless a manner!
THE CORE ISSUE: PAKISTAN, NOT KASHMIR!
The actual issue at the heart of the Indo-Pakistanian conflict is not Kashmir, or any particular territory. It is the fact that Pakistan is a lie and a perversity. It was created deliberately as a Beach-head of Islam against non-Muslim India: the Beachhead of the Dar ul Salam against the Dar ul Harb.
Pakistan is not only a lie, it is acutely conscious of the lie. It seeks eternal justification for its self. It can justify itself only by exterminating and supplanting India in its entirety.
An inhabitant of Pakistan, whatever his religion, is actually an Indian, because he is an inhabitant of India and a descendant and partaker, willy-nilly, of Indian culture. Nature calls upon him to acknowledge himself an Indian. His tradition as a Muslim and a Pakistanian calls upon him to be unnatural, to resist nature and live a lie.
Where is his patriotism? How can he be a Pakistanian patriot? That is a worse lie than being merely a Pakistanian. If he must be a patriot, he must necessarily be an Indian patriot: he must acknowledge his Indian-ness and his duty and obligation to India and therefore necessarily against the lie called Pakistan. But he is brainwashed against this truth by his religion which teaches him to abhor what should be the natural recipient of his patriotic affection as being alien - the land of Kafirs! This too is the condition of very many of his co-religionists in the Indian Union and in the Diaspora: Being faithful to their religion teaches them to be unfaithful to their natural homeland: India, and to favour Pakistan or some other Muslim state.
THE END