SikhSpectrum.com Quarterly Issue No.31, March 2008
United Nations, India & Kashmir
Ghulam Nabi Fai
If promises are made to be broken, then Kashmir may be
summoned to prove the treacherous proposition. Broken
promises haunt Kashmir's history and explain its
tragedy.
The United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan
(UNCIP) passed a resolution on January 5, 1949 wherein
it was agreed that “the question of the accession of
the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan
will be decided through the democratic method of a
free and impartial plebiscite.” The resolution was
negotiated with both India and Pakistan and accepted
by all five members of the Commission, Argentina,
Belgium, Columbia, Czechoslovakia and the United
States. Professor Joseph Korbel, father of Dr.
Madeleine Albright was the Chairman of the Commission
at the time.
Sir Benegal Rama Rau, the Indian delegate spoke during
the 399th meeting of the Security Council on January
13, 1949, “On behalf of my Government, I can give the
assurance that it will not only cooperate to the
utmost with the Commission itself towards a settlement
in Kashmir, but also with the United Nations in
securing peace everywhere, because it believes that
this organization offers the only hope for peace for
future generations, on a secure basis.”
Sir Rau further said at the Security Council on March
1, 1951, “The people of Kashmir are not mere chattels
to be disposed of according to a rigid formula; their
future must be decided on their own interest and in
accordance with their own desires.”
Mr. Setalwad, another Indian delegate spoke during the
572nd meeting of the Security Council on January 31,
1952, “I was the first to declare that the people of
Jammu and Kashmir should freely decide their own
future.”
India, however, was soon undeceived of its delusions
over Kashmir's political yearning. Recognizing that
its people would never freely vote accession to India,
it contrived excuse after excuse to frustrate a
plebiscite.
With the lapse of British paramountcy on August 14,
1947, broken promises over Kashmir came not like
single spies but in battalions, to borrow from Hamlet.
Princely states enjoyed three options: accession to
India, accession to Pakistan, or independence. But
the choice, according to India's Prime Minister
Jawaharlal Nehru and tacitly endorsed by the British,
was to be made by popular referendum in cases where
the creed of the ruler varied from the religion of the
majority. That fundamental democratic principle had
been sternly applied by Nehru with military means in
Hyderabad and Junagadh where the rulers were Muslim
but their inhabitants largely Hindu. Kashmir
presented a converse case: the Maharaja was Hindu but
the majority subscribed to Islam.
On November 2, 1947, Prime Minister Nehru reiterated,
”We have declared that the fate of Kashmir is
ultimately to be decided by the people. That pledge
we have given and the Maharaja supported it, not only
to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will
not and cannot back out of it."
In recent past, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister
of India and General Pervez Musharraf, the President
of Pakistan agreed at the United Nations on September
24, 2004 “to explore all the possible options to
settle the issue of Kashmir.” Then exactly one year
later, Prime Minister said at the United Nations on
September 16, 2005, “What I do believe, I have also
said that borders cannot be redrawn but we must work
together to make borders irrelevant.” One fails to
understand how can you explore all possible options
when the only option available is to make borders
irrelevant (status quo).
On September 5, 2005, Dr. Manmohan Singh promised
Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman, All Parties Hurriyet
Conference that India will have zero tolerance on the
human rights violations in Kashmir. Then he responded
while replying to a question during a press conference
in New York that “The fact that there is so much of
violence (in Kashmir), the fact that cross border
infiltration continues, the terrorists are active,
does impose some burden on the ordinary citizens.”
The train of broken promises over Kashmir might be
forgiven if the consequences were innocuous or
inconsequential. But I submit the opposite is the
case. India exerts an iron-fisted rule over Kashmir.
With approximately 700,000 military and paramilitary
troops in the territory, gruesome human rights
violations are perpetrated with. Torture, rape,
plunder, abduction, arson, custodial disappearances,
arbitrary detentions, and ruthless suppression of
peaceful political dissent have become commonplaces.
Let us hope that the last promise over Kashmir has
been broken.
