Dialogue with the deaf

Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India on the afternoon of October 26, 1947. At dawn the following day our troops were flown from Delhi to Srinagar. All Dakotas with private airlines were made available to us and we managed to fly 800 sorties from Safdarjung Airport to Srinagar in a fortnight. This saved the Kashmir Valley.

I was general staff operations officer in the rank of major, the only Indian on the staff of Lt. Gen. Sir Dudley Russell, Army commander of our newly raised command headquarters. The government in the UK had placed an embargo on British Army officers still serving in the Indian or Pakistan Army going to Jammu and Kashmir for obvious reasons. Russell told me that I had to go to Kashmir with the first lot of troops and act as his eyes and ears. I was also made in charge of airlift of troops.

We were fighting a local war with Pakistan in Kashmir. I was intimately connected with planning and conduct of all major battles during that over one-year war. Our taking the Kashmir dispute to the United Nations came in the way of our throwing out the Pakistani invaders from the state. By November 14, 1947, we cleared the Valley floor of Kashmir and reached Uri, 60 miles from Srinagar. Russell was strongly of the view that we should continue the pursuit of an enemy withdrawing in disarray, advance to Muzaffarabad and seal the Kashmir-Pakistan border. However, three top military personalities in Delhi, pursuing the agenda of their home government, advised Jawaharlal Nehru to the contrary. These were Lord Mountbatten, the governor general, Lt. Gen. Archibald Nye, the British high commissioner, and Gen. Sir Rob Lockhart, the Indian Army Chief. They maintained that continuing the pursuit of Pakistan forces to the border may lead to an all-out war between two Commonwealth countries. Nehru also had political reasons to stop our advance at Uri. A golden opportunity was lost. The UN had started working out an agreement between India and Pakistan to resolve the Kashmir dispute. The UN ceasefire agreement of August 13, 1948, was sent to both countries. India immediately accepted the resolution, but Pakistan did so only in December 1948. A UN conference was convened at Karachi and attended by both the Indian and Pakistani delegations. The Indian delegation was led by Gen. S. Shrinagesh, with defence secretary H.M. Patel and Kashmir affairs secretary as civilian members and Maj. Gen. K.S. Thimayya and Brig. Manekshaw as military members. The Pakistan delegation was led by Gen. Cawthorn, with Maj. Gen. Nazir Ahmed and Brig. Sher Khan as military members and two civil servants as civilian members. I was nominated as the secretary of the delegation and Sher Khan was the member secretary on the other side. The 700-km-long ceasefire line was delineated at this conference after one week of heated discussions.

I got an exposure to both military and diplomatic aspects of the Kashmir problem. Thereafter, I served for nearly 10 years in Jammu and Kashmir in different ranks. Subsequently, I was governor of the state from 2003 to 2008.

The agreement arrived at the UN conference was violated by Pakistan in not withdrawing its forces from Kashmir to permit plebiscite. Every agreement on Kashmir entered into by Pakistan has been violated during the last 68 years, whether it was the Standstill Agreement of 1947, the Ceasefire Agreement of 1949 or Simla Agreement of 1971. Another constant feature has been Pakistan’s persistent denial of its attempt to somehow grab Kashmir. Pakistan has been in constant denial of cross-border terrorism in pursuit of its policy of “a thousand cuts”. In 1947, Pakistan maintained that there was a people’s uprising in Kashmir and tribesmen were provoked to go to the rescue of their co-religionists. The lie to this was exposed by Maj. Gen. Akbar Khan, who was commanding the invasion of Kashmir comprising both regular troops and tribesmen, in his book Raiders in Kashmir. The 1965 war was again sought to be projected as a people’s uprising and not as Pakistan’s massive infiltration into Kashmir. This again got exposed by Gen. Musa Khan, the then Pakistan Army Chief, in his book My Version. Thereafter, starting with the strategy of “a thousand cuts”, cross-border terrorism was sought to be depicted as home-grown terrorism of Kashmiris. There were subsequent denials at each stage of complicity of Pakistan followed by similar volte-face. Pervez Musharraf, in keeping with this tradition of perfidy, has admitted the Pakistan Army’s intrusion in Kargil in his autobiography. In a recent statement he admitted that Pakistan was sending terrorists across the border despite his assurance to Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee in January 2004.

Sir Syed Ahmed, the founder of Aligarh Muslim University, in his speech at Meerut on March 14, 1888, stated: “Hindus and Muslims are two nations who cannot sit on the same throne. If the Mahomedans are not allowed to rule, then our Mussalman brothers, the Pathans, would come out as a swarm of locusts from their mountain valleys, and make rivers of blood to flow from their frontier in the north to the extreme end of Bengal.” No wonder in 1947 the popular slogan among Muslims in Pakistan was “Hans ke liya hai Pakistan, Ladke lenge Hindustan”. In 1965, Ayub Khan boasted that he would have his tanks rolling down the plains of Panipat. The 1947 Indo-Pak war was a jolt to Pakistan, the 1965 war was a setback and the 1971 war shattered this ambition.

The Kashmir issue is basically confined to the demand of the Kashmiri-speaking Sunni Muslims in the Valley. Nearly 90 per cent of the land space of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir, and the majority of the population of the state, comprising Shias of Ladakh, Gujjars and Bakarwals plus Hindus, Buddhists and Sikhs, are peaceful and want to remain in India. The solution of the Kashmir problem has to be J&K-centric and not only Valley-centric.

The report of Baroness Emma Nicholson, member, European Parliament, refers to Pakistan-administered Kashmir not having democracy and to Gilgit-Baltistan as the world’s only surviving colony. It commented favourably on Indian-administered Kashmir. Pakistan’s attempt to scuttle that report failed miserably when the European Parliament endorsed it by 400 votes against only nine.

There has been an ongoing violent movement in Gilgit-Baltistan for freedom against Pakistani colonial rule. The Shia ideology of the people is being scuttled through doctored and anti-Shia textbooks. The demography of the region is being changed, settling Punjabis and Pathans. This movement for freedom is being suppressed by the Pakistan Army. Although legally this region is part of India, we have scrupulously avoided even extending moral support to the separatists. Therefore there is no justification whatsoever in Pakistan having a direct dialogue with Kashmiri separatists. The Modi government needs to be complimented for cancelling the foreign secretary-level talks and later the NSA talks getting stalled. However, every effort must be made to continue dialogue with Pakistan even though it may be only a dialogue with the deaf.

The writer, a retired lieutenant-general, was Vice-Chief of Army Staff and has served as governor of Assam and Jammu and Kashmir