The Indian military intervention that followed the accession created the template for all future Kashmir conflicts, forever borrowing from the complex timeline of the past. A recurrent localized dispute that immediately escalated into an international crisis with global implications, and no hope for a resolution in sight.
We saw how the British Colonialist delusion mutated the image of Kashmir into a “Happy Valley”, while accusing the Russians of “romanticizing” Kashmir, and turning the historically victimized valley into a “Colonial Frontier”, ruled by a powerless Maharaja, whose authority was trimmed by a British “Resident”, in a “Home away from home”.
Moving ahead on the timeline, let’s watch Episode 3 of the Kashmir Series, titled “Partition”. Where the British thought they were “liberating” Kashmir, while they were actually condemning it to a continuous nightmare of territorial shuffling and human suffering that projects itself on Kashmiris to the present moment.
The Law Lord Draws a Line for the Maharaja!
When the British Empire finally decided to abandon the Indian subcontinent in 1947, they left behind a “partition plan” that was less a roadmap to independence and more a blueprint for perpetual conflict.
The British-American poet, Wystan H. Auden (1907-1973), started his 1966 Poem titled: “Partition”, with these two opening couplets:
“Unbiased, at least he was when he arrived on his mission,
Having never set eyes on the land, he was called to partition
Between two peoples fanatically at odds,
With their different diets and incompatible gods.”
Auden, in his poem written almost 20 years after the partition, is referring to the “Law Lord”, Sir Cyril Radcliffe. A British Lawyer who arrived to visit India for the first time ever, on July 8, 1947, on a “mission of partition”, based on the Indian Independence Act 1947, ratified by the UK Parliament, which gave Radcliffe the Chairmanship position of the two Boundary Committees, tasked to draw the borders between India and Pakistan.
The man who never travelled eastward beyond Paris went to India and started drawing a borderline to “create” not only two countries in the process, but an additional list of 565 Princely States, who were “gracefully” given their freedom to choose their side of the Radcliffe Line, which split both Punjab and Bengal in half.
Creating a scene, with millions of people fleeing in both directions, as they found themselves on the wrong side of the border.
Millions were killed and gravely injured in this mayhem, that even Radcliffe himself felt bad, as it is reported that he refused to receive his remuneration for this mission when he witnessed this horrible tragedy.
Hari Singh, the last Dogra Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir was trapped on the Radcliffe Line, as the “frontier” mutated into a cancerous cell in a fragmented geopolitical tissue, with no hope for a cure.
His state had a Muslim majority, more than 75% of the Kashmiri population, ruled by a Hindu Maharaja who had grown comfortable under British protection.
While the British, in their infinite Divide and Rule “wisdom”, had created the perfect conditions for disaster. Singh initially hoped to maintain Kashmir’s independence!
A fantasy that ignored both the demographic realities of his kingdom and the strategic appetites of the two newly created nation-states surrounding him. Pakistan, led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, naturally expected a Muslim-majority region to join the Islamic Republic. India, under Nehru’s leadership, couldn’t accept the creation of a large, independent state that could potentially align with Pakistan, threatening India’s north-western frontier.
Yet another chain added to Kashmir’s “frontier” shackles, which were already deeply entrenched in a timeline of empire shuffles and British colonialists’ evils and delusions.
The Pahstun Invasion and Accession Trap
The British created a power vacuum with their withdrawal from the scene, and violence quickly followed. Pashtun militants from what’s termed NWFP (North-West Frontier Province) decided to invade Kashmir.
The Pashtun raids involved pillaging and slaughter against both Sikhs and Hindus, especially in Srinagar, the capital of Jammu and Kashmir.
This raid got the Maharaja stuck between a rock and a hard place, exactly where the attacking Pakistanis wanted him to be. His choices went down to either seek help from India or fall into the hands of Pakistan. His choice was the first, as he decided on October 26, 1947, to sign the Instrument of Accession, to adjoin Kashmir with India, in exchange for security. A goal sought by India since 1935.
Important to note here, that newly born Pakistan has always denied the allegations that these attacks were supported by them or a part of a deliberate strategy of their device.
The Accession document was signed under extreme pressure, with tribal forces literally at the gates of the capital. More importantly, it was conditional, as the Maharaja and Indian leadership agreed that the final status of Kashmir would be determined by a plebiscite once peace was restored.
That 78-year-old plebiscite promise has never been kept, as no referendum has been conducted to this very day.
First Kashmir War: Bilateral Freeze!
The Indian military intervention that followed the accession created the template for all future Kashmir conflicts, forever borrowing from the complex timeline of the past. A recurrent localized dispute that immediately escalated into an international crisis with global implications, and no hope for a resolution in sight.
Indian military forces succeeded initially in breaking the Pakistani advance in Srinagar, although not being able to drum out the militants from Kashmir altogether.
The ensuing 1947-1948 First Indo-Pakistani War, not only established the military conflict character, it actually changed the wider geopolitical character of the Kashmir conflict entirely. The stage grew from being a bellicose localized territorial dispute between two nascent nations, to being a strategic indicator for the South Asia region as a whole, for the following 75 years, with geopolitical implications on a global scale.
On January 1, 1949, the United Nations succeeded in mediating a ceasefire agreement, giving birth to the Cease-Fire Line between the two belligerents, later renamed to the Line of Control (LoC) in 1972.
Needless to say, the LoC did not make any ethnic or religious sense, or even serve any military function. Again, it only renewed the freeze of military positions, leaving Kashmir split up between India with 65% under her control, which included the Kashmir valley plus Jammu, while the remaining 35%, namely Azad Kashmir and the northern regions of the area were held under Pakistan’s control.
The Third Player: Enter the Dragon
While the Bengal Tiger and the Markhor were combatively fixated on each other, the Dragon was infiltrating the Kashmiri scene. China’s entry into the Kashmir equation, since the eruption of the Sino-Indian War of 1962, has further mutated the strategic character of the conflict, adding a new layer of complexity to a clash that didn’t need any help getting more complicated.
The introduction of the Chinese Dragon into the game added a nuclear complexity to the Kashmir conflict that persists till the present day. More consequentially, the Chinese victory over India in the 1962 war, has shed doubt on the established fact, that military force is not the solution for the Kashmiri conflict. As Beijing gained control over Aksai Chin, a strategic conduit between Tibet and Xinjiang, located in eastern Kashmir, China demonstrated that its military power directed towards India, can be a decisive factor in the South Asia plateau in general, and the Kashmir plateau in particular.
Not to forget that the dragon has been capable of spitting nuclear fire since 1964, while the Bengal tiger achieved the same capability in 1974, and the Markhor grew his nuclear horns in 1998.
Further turning Kashmir into the most dangerous trilateral nuclear hotspot. With military fission deterrence in the hands of the three nations, a path toward a resolution of the Kashmir conflict became infinitely more challenging.
Trilateral Freeze and Pakistani Trim!
The Second Kashmir War of 1965 has once more illustrated the futility of any military resolution to the Kashmir conflict. The Pakistani guerrilla-style Operation Gibraltar, conducted in August of the same year, was nothing but another proof of the same fact.
This campaign not only ended with a disastrous failure; it actually expanded the conflict beyond Kashmir’s borders, and it did not succeed in achieving its designed objective of inciting an uprising against the Indian rule in Kashmir.
The second war ended on the terms of the Tashkent Agreement between the two combating sides, mediated by the USSR, which simply restored the previous status quo. Creating a status quo ante situation, while solving absolutely nothing.
Nothing could lead this conflict to a better place, it could only get worse.
The Third Kashmir War of 1971, added yet another critical layer with acute implications. As this war was a part of the Bangladesh Liberation War, the creation of Bangladesh, by trimming the eastern part of Pakistan, and the decisive Indian victory has crucially changed the power balance dynamics even further. As the recently trimmed, Pakistan’s national survival, it became ever-more reliant on its claim to Kashmir.
Furthermore, The Simla Agreement of 1972, which converted the Cease-fire Line into the Line of Control, was supposed to create a framework for bilateral resolution of the Kashmir dispute. But rather than achieving progress toward a resolution, it institutionalized the division and removed the international mediation factor from the Kashmiri equation. Which might be seen as India’s greatest triumph and Pakistan’s deepest nightmare.
But as all who understand the gravity of this conflict have expressed, this recurrent nightmare is not exclusive to Pakistan or split bilaterally between them and India, or even with a third player capable of spitting Dragon fire.
It’s a global nightmare, that seems to only get worse by the day.
To be continued…
Tamer Mansour, Egyptian Independent Writer & Researcher
