by John Keay
But, sporadic and essentially domestic, these outrages pale into insignificance compared to the horrors witnessed in Kashmir. In this former princely state, Partition’s business has yet to be concluded. Compounded by the excesses of the military and paramilitaries, the same atrocities prevailed at the end of the century as in 1947. The same arguments over the state’s status were being replayed and the same colossal troop levels maintained. More than anywhere else in South Asia, Kashmir was set to ensure that the legacy of Partition would not be forgotten.
3
Who Has Not Heard of the Vale of Cashmere?
‘But Sahib, we are Kashmiris, see. We are not Indians.’
The year was 1967 but the sentiments were those of 1947. My question to Ghulam Mohamed, a houseboat proprietor, had been why was he refusing to take bookings from Indians? His answer came from twenty years back. To a young would-be correspondent with not much to report, Kashmir seemed trapped in a time warp. On the leaf-strewn terrace outside Ahdoo’s bakery in Srinagar the cups were chipped, the coffee came in electroplated pots and the conversation was thick with dogma. Two decades of what Ghulam Mohamed called ‘Indian occupation’ had changed very little. Removing his lambskin fez, from which most of the wool had long since been rubbed, Ghulam Mohamed would listen, scratch his head with long bony fingers, then puckering his eyes, grin mischievously.
‘See, Kashmir. Kashmir is not India. India begins at Jammu – over there, across the Bannihal Pass. Here, this is not India.’
His English was excellent, though marred by a delivery as monotonous as that of a bumblebee, and whatever the subject it invariably cued a litany of complaints. These ranged from the price of mutton to Hindu toilet habits, bad manners in general, the iniquities of the British Labour Party and the supposed plight of the tourist trade. In Ghulam Mohamed’s conversational repertoire, bemoaning the ways of the world served as the default setting. It was how many Kashmiris dealt with their unhappy situation as South Asia’s bloodiest bone of contention.
By 1967 most of the Kashmir Valley had been under New Delhi’s rule for nineteen summers. Another Pakistani attempt to wrest it from India had just failed, and the Bannihal Pass, beneath whose summit the only access road now burrowed through a dripping tunnel, had been reopened. The tourists were returning; the political mud-slinging had resumed. Ahead loomed a spell of what Kashmiris liked best: business as usual. An engineering college was under construction, new emporia were opening and the powder-blue berets of UNMOGIP (the United Nations Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan) offered some assurance that Kashmir’s problems had not been forgotten by the world at large. Natives of the valley, like Ghulam Mohamed, might be loath to admit it, but there was much to be said for Indian rule.
And yet the place remained palpably un-Indian. Uniquely, here English and Urdu were the official languages, with Hindi not much heard or written. Islam was the prevailing faith, tweed the preferred textile, and shawls and carpets the main trade. Instead of the shady banyan and mango of the plains, sprightly willow and poplar lined the roadsides. The year had recognisable seasons; they came in the right order; and judging by the umbrellas and the galvanised roofing, rain could be expected in all of them. The tea was sometimes pink; the meat was cooked in milk. Kingfishers piped among the sedge; dahlias and marigolds bedecked the gardens; and timbered bridges cantilevered crazily over the waterways. In Srinagar, the capital, the puddled alleyways and the higgledy-piggledy houses with their latticed shutters reminded V.S. Naipaul, then writing his An Area of Darkness, of a dank medieval Europe. Instead of India’s heat and dust, here there was water everywhere, snow on the peaks and scarcely a sari to be seen. Of all the erstwhile princely states, Kashmir alone neither fitted the image of India nor felt like India.
Back in July 1947, when Mountbatten had undertaken to dragoon the princely states of British India into joining the new India, he had cavilled over their exact number. Likening the possibly 565 states to apples, he had enquired whether having, say, 560 ‘in the basket’ by the time of Independence would be good enough. Sardar Patel, the Congress leader who was Home Minister in the interim government with responsibility for the princely states, acquiesced. With less than a month in which to fill the basket, Patel and the ubiquitous V.P. Menon did the arm-twisting, Mountbatten turned on the charm, and the signed Instruments of Accession came rolling in.
Although historians, both South Asian and British, have found much to criticise in Mountbatten’s viceroyalty, his handling of the princely states, with the possible exception of Kashmir, has scarcely been faulted. The integration of the states has been called ‘a revolutionary, watershed event’, even ‘the world’s biggest bloodless revolution’.1 Mountbatten himself reckoned that by sweet-talking the princes into acceding to India he had ‘brought off a coup second only to the 3rd June plan [i.e. his masterplan for Independence-cum-Partition]’.2
Mountbatten’s talk to the Chamber of Princes [of 25 July 1947] was a tour de force [writes Ramachandra Guha]. In my opinion it ranks as the most significant of all his acts in India. It finally persuaded the princes that the British would no longer protect or patronise them and that independence for them was a mirage.3
Asked merely to relinquish responsibility for the defence, foreign relations and cross-border communications of their states, the princes were surrendering nothing they had not previously surrendered to the British; and in return they were being offered generous pensions, tax concessions, official postings and many lifetime privileges (like immunity from private prosecution, free electricity and medical care, exemption from customs duties, and a state funeral at the end). Mountbatten’s imprimatur merely added further reassurance by giving some imperial respectability to the horse-trading. His task was not onerous and he conducted it with his customary conviction.
Yet by 15 August considerably more than five of the pro-forma Instruments of Accession remained unsigned. Indore and Jodhpur were engaging in brinkmanship, Bhopal was prevaricating, some minor states in Saurashtra (Gujarat) were toying with accession to Pakistan, and on the distant border with Burma, Manipur was holding out for an independence that, if secured, would gouge a substantial chunk out of India’s already eccentric eastern profile.
Much more ominous, though, was the obduracy of Hyderabad state in peninsular India and of Jammu and Kashmir state in the extreme north. Together these two accounted for around half the total territory of princely India and about a third of its population. Additionally both were considered of enormous strategic and psychological value. Hyderabad had been negotiating for a lease of lands which would give it access to the west coast, so almost cutting off the extreme south of India from the rest of the country. And the composite state of Jammu and Kashmir not only adjoined both Pakistan and India but shared a long and mostly undemarcated frontier with Chinese-claimed Tibet and Soviet-friendly Afghanistan; the possibility of its making common cause with either of these formidable neighbours was viewed with alarm. Without Hyderabad, the new India would look nearly as ‘maimed and moth-eaten’ as Pakistan, and without the lake-strewn ‘vale of Cashmere’ it would be shorn of what, by common consent, was reckoned the subcontinent’s outstanding natural attraction. Moreover, the Nehru family originally hailed from the Kashmir Valley. ‘[It] affects me in a peculiar way,’ the Indian Prime Minister would confess. Like ‘a mild kind of intoxication … the very air of Kashmir has something mysterious and compelling about it’.4 The Nehrus holidayed there, considered the place as peculiarly their own and would make it a point of honour to claim it for India.
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Sardar Patel and V.P. Menon felt just as proprietorial about the princely states in general. What Menon embarrassingly termed ‘the final solution’ to the princely problem was regarded as a purely Indian affair and of no concern to anyone else. Others begged to differ. In particular, the Pakistan government in Karachi would follow events in Hyderabad and Kashmir with mounting alarm. Many in India, including Nehru, still regarded Pakistan as an exp
eriment that could well be doomed to failure. Possibly to them, and certainly to most Pakistanis, India’s speedy absorption of the otherwise independent princely states looked to be the prelude to a bid to reclaim parts, if not all, of Pakistan itself.
The British, too, retained an interest in the matter through the Commonwealth. Mountbatten had assured one reluctant princeling that ‘if you accede now [i.e. before 15 August] you will be joining a Dominion [i.e. India] with the King as Head … [and] if they change the Constitution to a republic and leave the Commonwealth, the Instrument of Accession does not bind you in any way to remain with the republic’.5 By implication, if the Indian government reneged on the terms of princely accession by abolishing hereditary rights, the princes might expect London’s moral support in any bid to reassert their sovereignty.
Other interested parties included those European powers, notably Portugal and France, which still clung to colonial toeholds on the subcontinent, the Portuguese principally in Goa, the French in Pondicherry. The Portuguese had been around since before the Mughals, and the French were entertaining the possibility of supporting Hyderabad’s claim to independence. Both could expect a rough ride from a Congress government that was sworn to eradicate all colonialisms, claimed to represent India’s peoples en masse and insisted on the integration of their territories in toto.
Similar concerns troubled the Himalayan kingdoms of Sikkim, Bhutan and Nepal. Technically sovereign states, none of these had been numbered among the princely states of British India, although each had entered into treaty arrangements with the British. Now feeling exposed by the British withdrawal, their monarchs were wary of New Delhi’s offers to reinstate the treaties and were especially sensitive to the anti-monarchist policies being promoted by India’s democratic and determinedly populist Congress.
Nor were any of these concerned parties much reassured by the tactics on display. In Travancore (Kerala) the state’s respected Dewan (Chief Minister) resisted Mountbatten’s blandishments, asserted his Maharajah’s right to independence, and was waylaid in the street and severely stabbed for doing so. After hospitalisation he survived, though not so his state: Travancore’s cowed Maharajah promptly signed on the dotted line. The Nawab of Bhopal, a personal friend of Mountbatten’s, preferred exile to the ignominy of puppet status. The ruler of Manipur was reportedly locked in a Shillong hotel until such time as he would sign away his inheritance.
Most of these incidents occurred prior to the handover of power. Afterwards, as the blood-letting of Partition subsided in October 1947, attention switched to the fate of the three princely states whose future was still contested. In the case of one, Junagadh in what is now Gujarat, its Nawab had already pronounced in favour of Pakistan; but Junagadh was not contiguous to Pakistan, and New Delhi had objected. In all three cases a much greater anomaly underlay the indecision; for in Junagadh and Hyderabad, a Muslim ruler presided over a largely Hindu population, while in Jammu and Kashmir it was the other way round: a Hindu Maharajah ruled over a Muslim majority. Each was thus impaled on the horns of a dilemma: the ruler’s personal preference was likely to be at variance with that of his subjects, as well as being inconsistent with the twin principles of Partition – the religion of the majority and contiguity to territory of a similar complexion.
All that could be said for sure was that, whatever the requirements for princely accession – whether a decision by the ruler, a preference clearly expressed by his subjects or a combination of both – it stood to reason that the Muslim-ruled states of Junagadh and Hyderabad would join one successor nation, and that Hindu-ruled Jammu and Kashmir would join the other. The possibility that all three might end up in the same successor state could logically be discounted – or so it seemed. With the three coming under pressure at the same time, it could scarcely be argued that circumstances had changed; and likewise, with princely independence having been declared an unacceptable ‘mirage’ by Mountbatten, fudging the issue by going it alone seemed out of the question.
In August all three had signed standstill agreements pending further negotiation. Though Delhi declined signing in respect of Kashmir, it was generally understood that India and Pakistan would refrain from active interference, while the states themselves were supposed to make no unilateral moves. But the standstill quickly broke down in Junagadh. Encouraged by Sardar Patel, two of Junagadh’s subsidiary statelets disavowed the Nawab and opted for India. Although the legality of this move was questionable, the Nawab could hardly be described as popular. ‘At the time an estimated 11 per cent of Junagadh’s revenues were earmarked for the upkeep of the royal kennels, where around 800 canine pensioners lived in a luxury denied to most of Junagadh’s other subjects.’6 In support of Junagadh’s dissident statelets a Junagadh government-in-exile headed by a nephew of Mahatma Gandhi was set up in Bombay. Pro-India troops massed along the state’s uncertain borders and Congress-supported rabble-rousers were busy within. In late October, under considerable pressure, the Nawab took fright. He boarded a plane and fled to Karachi ‘along with four wives and a like number of wagging companions’.
That left his Dewan, one Shah Nawaz Bhutto, to pick up the pieces. Dewan Bhutto had originally encouraged the Nawab to join Pakistan. As one of Sind’s great feudal landowners – and as the founder of Pakistan’s best-known political dynasty – he had nothing against hereditary rule. But as a scion of the Muslim League, Bhutto deferred to Jinnah, who read the situation differently.
For it so happened that just as the Nawab and his entourage were decamping from Junagadh, Jammu and Kashmir’s Maharajah, along with an impressive convoy of motor vehicles, was decamping over the Bannihal Pass from Srinagar. The two crises, hitherto unrelated, had coincided, and therein lay Pakistan’s great opportunity. For like a chessboard pawn, Junagadh might be sacrificed provided that, come the next move, Kashmir could be taken. Jinnah, and now Dewan Bhutto, therefore backtracked. By accepting an Indian proposal that in Junagadh the Nawab’s decision should be contingent on the outcome of a popular vote, they were establishing a precedent of vital relevance to the future of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir.
Though not mandatory, the idea that a prince’s accession should be endorsed by his subjects had been urged by both Mountbatten and the Congress leadership. Outside of princely India, referenda on whether to join India or Pakistan had already been held in the North-West Frontier Province and in the Sylhet district of Assam. In both cases the vote had gone in favour of Pakistan. Sylhet had been detached from Indian Assam and awarded to neighbouring East Pakistan; the North-West Frontier Province had been confirmed as a constituent part of West Pakistan. Though the Muslim League, unlike Congress, did not concede the need for popular endorsement, it soon came to recognise its value.
In Junagadh such a plebiscite was sure to overturn the Nawab’s earlier decision in favour of Pakistan – as it overwhelmingly would in February 1948; Bhutto would follow the Nawab and his dogs to Pakistan, and despite further objections from Karachi, the state was taken to have allocated itself to India. But by extension, applying the same principle to Jammu and Kashmir must mean there was every chance that it would fall on Pakistan’s side of the fence. In Kashmir too, the ruler was unpopular, both as a feudal autocrat and as a non-Muslim presiding over a Muslim majority. A plebiscite would therefore probably go against him. Indeed, the mere threat of it should be enough to dissuade him from opting for India. In short, by effectively abandoning Junagadh, Pakistan sought to secure Jammu and Kashmir.
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But for the Kashmiris themselves it was not quite as straightforward as that.
‘See, Pakistan is just like India. But Kashmir is not Pakistan and it is not India. We are neither, see.’
Twenty years later, a self-appointed spokesman like Ghulam Mohamed could still be decidedly ambivalent about whether the state should have joined Pakistan in 1947 – or whether, then or since, it would have so voted. By 1967 Pakistan had been exposed as a poor advertisement for democratic sovereig
nty, while Kashmir’s predicament never lent itself to simple solutions. There had, too, been other considerations back in 1947. For one thing, the situation had already deteriorated into the first Indo–Pakistan war; and for another, there was Hyderabad. The war betrayed the depth of feeling over Kashmir in both India and Pakistan, while Hyderabad was relevant because it hinted at the possibility of Kashmir scorning both suitors and going it alone.
As Pakistani eyes were being lifted unto the hills, India had kept one eye fixed firmly on the peninsula. There Hyderabad’s situation was directly analogous to that of Junagadh: a Muslim ruler, the immensely rich Nizam Mir Usman Ali, lorded it over a vast population, four-fifths of which was non-Muslim. His sprawling state was around fifty times the size of Junagadh, and about as far from Pakistan as could be. It was contiguous only with India, indeed surrounded by it. But to the Nizam this was neither here nor there. A miserly skinflint where most princes were conspicuous spendthrifts, he was no keener on conferring his state on Pakistan than he was on India. His preference was for playing off one nation against the other while cultivating his British and European contacts and hoarding his sovereignty as jealously as he did his diamonds. In effect he would prefer to sign, if he had to, not an Instrument of Accession to either state but sovereign treaties with both.