The Shadow of the Great Game

by Narendra Singh Sarila

  Kashmir’s northern frontiers, as you are aware, run in common with those of three countries, Afghanistan, the USSR and China. Security of Kashmir…is vital to security of India especially since part of the northern boundary of Kashmir and India is common. Helping Kashmir, therefore, is an obligation of national interest of India.14

  Yet, some four months later, i.e., on 20 February 1948, the prime minister wrote to Krishna Menon, the Indian high commissioner in the UK, as follows:

  Even Mountbatten “has hinted at partition of Kashmir”, Jammu for India and the rest including lovely Vale of Kashmir to Pakistan. This is totally unacceptable to us.… Although if the worst comes to the worst I am prepared to accept Poonch and Gilgit being partitioned off [italics added].15

  Lord Mountbatten was anxious to settle the Kashmir dispute before he relinquished the governor-generalship in June 1948. At his behest, V.P. Menon and Sir Gopalswami Iyengar, the minister without portfolio, drew up a plan for the partition of the state, complete with maps (which left Gilgit to Pakistan). It is difficult to believe that the Indian ministers remained ignorant of this exercise. Nothing came of it but the proposal was not kept confidential. V.P. Menon, on 23 July 1948, told the chargé d’affaires of the US Embassy in Delhi that the ‘Government of India will accept settlement based on accession of Mirpur, Poonch, Muzaffarabad and Gilgit to Pakistan’.16 Such a statement cut the ground from under the US’s stand that to leave the occupied areas in Pakistan’s control ‘would be highly unacceptable to GOI’.

  Josef Korbel was a member of the UNCIP, which visited Delhi in July 1948. He has written that Sir Girja Shanker Bajpai, secretary-general of the Indian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, while talking to UNCIP members on 13 July 1948, sought the withdrawal of the Pakistani forces from J&K (which would include Gilgit) before all else and said ‘…the sands of time are running out. If the problem is not resolved by reason, the sword will find the solution’.17 This was in line with India’s complaint to the Security Council. However, Korbel goes on to say that, a few days later, the Indian prime minister told him: ‘He would not be opposed to the idea of dividing the country between India and Pakistan.’18 This meant leaving Gilgit to Pakistan.

  Lars Blinkenberg, a Danish diplomat, has recorded that:

  On 20 August [1948], Nehru in a separate letter to the UNCIP Chairman stated “that the authority over the region (the Northern Areas) as a whole has not been challenged or disturbed, except by roving bands of hostile or, in some places, by irregulars or by Pakistani troops…we desire that after Pakistani troops and irregulars have withdrawn from the territory, the responsibility for the administration of the evacuated areas should revert to the Government of Kashmir and that for defence to us…. We must be free to maintain garrisons at selected points in this area”.19

  The chairman, in his reply, fudged the issue: ‘The question raised in your letter could be considered in the implementation of the Resolution.’20 However, the question was never pressed diligently afterwards.

  On 4 November 1948, a Pakistan Air Force Dakota on a supply-dropping flight to Gilgit was attacked by Indian planes. As a result the Pakistani Cabinet decided that fighter escorts would be provided for supply-dropping missions to Gilgit that was cut off in the winter from Pakistan. Whitehall was worried that if this was done, India may then try to take on the Pakistan Air Force and attack airfields in Pakistan. After consulting the UK high commissioner in Delhi, Air Marshal Thomas Elmherst, the chief of the Indian Air Force, then called on the prime minister and held an hour-long discussion on the subject with him. During this discussion, he succeeded in persuading Nehru to ignore the Pakistani aircraft supply-dropping missions to Gilgit. Besides abandoning the simplest way to cut off Gilgit from Pakistan in the coming winter months, this decision amounted to recognizing Pakistan’s presence in the Northern Areas. It may be noted that no offensive was ever planned by India to regain Gilgit. Admittedly, the Army had constraints in reaching the Northern Areas during 1948 but the matter was never raised at any cabinet or Joint Defence Committee meeting.

  In view of the erratic positions adopted by India on Gilgit, it is not surprising that the UNCIP proposals of August 1948 were amended by interested parties in Pakistan’s favour, so that the Pakistani vacation of Gilgit (and other occupied areas) did not remain unconditional. India failed to exploit the US support for its juridical position in Kashmir; indeed, it made statements that undermined the favourable stand taken by the Americans.

  After India accepted, in December 1948, a ceasefire on UNCIP terms that left Gilgit in Pakistani control, the US dropped its insistence on a Pakistani withdrawal from Gilgit. The US State Department had sought the opinion of John Hall Paxton, its consul in Tihwa in Sinkiang, on the feelings of the Muslims there on the issue. The consul replied that the Sinkiang Muslims felt closer affinities with the Muslims than the Hindus of the subcontinent. He also reported that most of the trade between India and Sinkiang was in the hands of Muslims.21 This information also possibly persuaded the US to accept the status quo.

  The other area of J&K that Britain definitely wanted to go Pakistan, as mentioned at the beginning of the chapter, was the western strip of territory from Naushera to Muzaffarabad lying along Pakistani Punjab. The reason why Britain felt this area had to go to Pakistan is best told in the words of General Douglas Gracey, the British commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army:

  Its [this area’s] going to India would [mean facing] “the Indian Army on the long Pakistan border within 30 miles of the strategic railway leading from Peshawar through West Punjab to Lahore”…. Occupation of Bhimber and Mirpur [two important places in that area] will give India the strategic advantage of…sitting on our doorsteps, threatening the Jhelum bridge which is so vital for us. It will also give them control of the Mangla Headworks placing the irrigation in Jhelum and other districts at their mercy…. Furthermore, loss of Muzaffarabad-Kohala [a strategically located place] would have the most far-reaching effect on the security of Pakistan. It would enable the Indian Army to secure the rear gateway to Pakistan through which it can march in at any time it wishes…. It will encourage subversive elements such as Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan and his party, [the Fakir of] Ipi and [those in] Afghanistan. If Pakistan is not to face another serious refugee problem…if civilian and military morale is not to be affected to a dangerous extent; and if subversive political forces are not to be encouraged and let loose in Pakistan itself it is imperative that the Indian Army is not allowed to advance beyond the general line Uri-Poonch-Naoshera.22

  To make Pakistan a confident and willing member of the British team, it had to be made to feel secure.

  Unlike Gilgit, India and Pakistan fought for over a year to take control of this belt along the Pakistani part of Punjab. This matter presented a very complicated diplomatic tangle. Before we proceed to deal with this story, let us take a quick look at J&K’s topography, its relevant past and the events leading to the crisis and subsequent war.

  Nearly the size of France, the state extended from the subcontinental plains to the Pamirs. Three great mountain ranges ran across it, east to west, and their spurs, north to south, cut up the vast area into different segments, so that people of different racial stocks and different cultures, who spoke different languages and professed different faiths, were found in this patchwork.

  The Karakoram range separated the state from Central Asia. This range contained glaciers larger than any seen beyond the Poles and massive mountains – K2 (8610 metres), the second tallest peak in the world, and a host of other giants over 7600 metres. The Himalayan range ran through its middle, with the massif of the Nanga Parbat (8126 metres) at its western extremity. The Pir Panjal range separated these highlands from the southern foothills, where the Dogra stronghold of Jammu was situated.

  The Kashmir Valley, or Kashmir Proper, was situated in the western reaches of the mountains with the ancient city of Srinagar, on the Dal Lake. The valley occupied less than 10 per cent of the total area of the st
ate though it contained well over half the state’s population of about four million. The only all-weather road from this isolated and beautiful valley ran along the Jhelum river to the west towards Pakistan. From Srinagar to Jammu there existed a fair-weather road through the Banihal Pass (2700 metres), closed during winter.

  The Northern Areas were inhabited by Shia Muslims including Ismalias; eastern Ladakh along Tibet, with Leh as its capital, by Lamaistic Buddhists; Jammu province by Dogras and other Hindus; and its western strip, along Pakistan, by Sunni Muslims of the same stock as the Punjabi Muslims across the border. The Kashmir Valley had 80 per cent Sunni Muslims, the rest being Sikhs and Kashmiri Pandits (the last, because of their talents, having spread to occupy important posts throughout India). The valley enjoyed a distinct cultural identity (Kashmiriyat), the main characteristic of which was a tolerant form of Islam – thanks to the Sufis who had proselytized there in the Middle Ages and to its relative isolation. Or was it because rare is the union of beauty and purity?

  Till the fourteenth century, the Kashmir Valley and some of the areas of the present state were ruled by a series of Buddhist and Hindu dynasties, which later were supplanted by Muslim rulers. In the sixteenth century, Akbar the Great started to spend the summer months in Srinagar. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, the area passed into the grasp of the Afghans, from whom the Sikh king, Ranjit Singh, wrested it in 1819.

  The origin of the state dated from 1846. After the British defeated the Sikhs decisively and annexed the Punjab that year, they handed over the mountainous territory to the north of the Punjab to Gulab Singh, the Dogra chieftain of Jammu – for a monetary consideration. Gulab Singh and his generals extended Dogra sovereignty up to the Pamirs and Tibet. They united and held together this fragmentary land, the maharaja providing the focal point and a certain razzmatazz. The British were content to let the Dogras enlarge the territories of the Empire up to Central Asia, cost free. As the Russians started moving southwards in the 1860s and the Great Game began, the viceroy assumed greater control over the territory by stationing political agents in it. In the 1880s the British built the track from Gilgit to Kashgar in Sinkiang via the Mintaka Pass in the Karakoram, referred to earlier. Kashmir became even more important for Britain after the Bolsheviks took hold of Russia in the 1920s and started to penetrate frontiers ‘with the invisible force of ideology’, sending communist agents and literature into India. They used the unfrequented Kashmir passes, including the 5575-metre-high Karakoram Pass on the track from Leh to Yarkand.* Agents of both sides used Kashmir rather than the more exposed routes via Afghanistan. Colonel F.M. Bailey, on his famous mission to Tashkent in 1918, left via Kashmir.

  Till March 1947, it was expected that the rulers of some of the bigger princely states, such as J&K, might choose independence and remain associated with Britain, particularly in the vital sphere of defence. However, as indicated in the last chapter, British policy in April 1947 suddenly changed, and the princely states were advised to accede to one or the other dominion. As soon as the agreement on partition was reached, Lord Mountbatten himself, on 17 June 1947, travelled to Srinagar to discuss the future of this strategically placed area with the ruler, Maharaja Hari Singh. They were old acquaintances, having served together as aides-de-camp to the Prince of Wales (later King Edward VIII) during his fairly lengthy tour of India in 1921. Mountbatten broached the subject with the maharaja, during a car drive, with Hari Singh at the wheel of his Bentley. Mountbatten told me many years later:

  I explained to HH [His Highness] that his choice was between acceding to India or Pakistan and made it clear that I had assurances from the Indian leaders that if he acceded to Pakistan they would not take it amiss.

  According to V.P. Menon: ‘These assurances had been given by Sardar Patel, the Home Minister, himself.’23* H.V. Hodson, who was given permission to see the Mountbatten papers that are still unavailable to others, has written that the viceroy also told Hari Singh not to take a decision till the Pakistan Constituent Assembly had been convened.24 While briefing Jinnah on 1 November 1947, at Lahore, Mountbatten maintained that he had advised the maharaja ‘to ascertain the will of the people and then accede to the Dominion of the people’s choice’.25

  The loss of the option of independence came as a shock to Hari Singh. He shut himself up like an oyster, avoiding thereby further discussions with the viceroy. He probably felt that his friend wanted him to join Pakistan. This he was absolutely unwilling to do. It would outrage his entire Dogra base and could lead to his elimination by the Muslim fanatics gathering in Pakistan. If he acceded to India he risked alienating a large section of his Muslim subjects. Besides, there was no safety for him in India either. Sheikh Abdullah, the leader of the National Conference – then the strongest party in the Kashmir Valley – posed a major threat to his throne and Dogra rule, against which Abdullah and his followers had been agitating since the 1930s. The fact that Abdullah’s party was allied to the Indian National Congress and that he himself was admired by Nehru presented a double danger. Hari Singh had been compelled to take the future prime minister into custody in 1946 when he had tried to enter Kashmir to agitate for Abdullah’s release from prison. The fact that a majority of the 80 per cent of the Muslims of the Kashmir Valley acknowledged Abdullah as their leader excited Nehru greatly. Here was a Muslim leader who rejected Jinnah’s two-nation theory; who would serve as a bridge between Kashmir and India; who would help to make his ancestral home a symbol of Indian secularism.

  Karan Singh, Hari Singh’s heir apparent, has observed:

  I suspect that in his heart of hearts my father still did not believe that the British would actually leave…. Independence could perhaps have been an attractive proposition but to carry that off would have required careful preparation and prolonged negotiations and diplomatic ability…. Instead of taking advantage of Mountbatten’s visit to discuss the whole situation meaningfully and trying to arrive at a rational decision, he first sent the Viceroy out on a prolonged fishing trip to Thricker (where Mountbatten shocked our staff by sun-bathing in the nude) and then – having fixed a meeting just before his departure – got out of it on the plea that he had suddenly developed a severe attack of colic…. Thus the last real chance of working out a viable political settlement was lost.26

  Mountbatten reached out to the maharaja again at the time of India’s independence. Lord Ismay visited Srinagar on a ‘holiday’ during the Independence Day celebrations in India and met him there. According to Philip Ziegler, he applied pressure on the maharaja. When Ismay referred to the Muslim population of Kashmir, the maharaja replied that the Kashmir Valley’s Muslims (where two-thirds of the Muslims of Kashmir lived) were very different from the Punjabi Muslims. ‘All he would talk about was Polo in Cheltenham in 1935 [Ismay was then military secretary to the viceroy, Lord Willingdon] and the prospect of his colt in the Indian Derby.’27

  The Maharaja of Kashmir had not been invited to the last meeting of the Chamber of Princes on 25 July 1947, in which Mountbatten launched his operation to rope in the princes (see Chapter 11 for details). V.P. Menon, who was the secretary dealing with the princely states, has written: ‘If truth be told I for one had simply no time to think of Kashmir’,28 an amazing statement from a live wire like him, unless Mountbatten, whose closest adviser he was, had infected him with his apathy for building up an India– Kashmir connection.

  In his personal report to the secretary of state (of July 1947), while enumerating the states that might join Pakistan, Mountbatten mentioned ‘the possibility of Kashmir joining Pakistan’.29 This report was sent after he had seen Hari Singh. On 10 October 1947, Mountbatten saw the diwan of Kashmir and told him that while there was no legal objection to Kashmir acceding to India, if it did so against the wishes of the majority of the population, such a step would not only mean immense trouble for Kashmir but might also lead to trouble for the dominion of India. Whatever the future of Kashmir, a plebiscite must be the first step. Mountbatten, while repor
ting the above to London, said that he had informed Nehru and Patel of the discussions ‘and they both accepted what I had said’.30

  Jinnah and the Muslim League from the very start believed that J&K should come to them and that Britain would assist them in this acquisition, if for no other reason, then for strategic considerations. The acquisition of Kashmir was the least that the Muslim League could expect after having been handed out a ‘moth-eaten’ and truncated Pakistan, one-fifth the size of India. The Kashmiris of the western belt of the state were of the same stock and faith as the Punjabi Muslims. Admittedly, those of the valley were different, less communal and under the political spell of Abdullah. But, in the end, they were likely to harken to the call of Islam. There was the security angle also, as explained earlier in General Gracey’s words. It is a matter of speculation whether it ever occurred to Jinnah that the acquisition of the Northern Areas might one day help Pakistan develop ties with China.

  Jinnah had commissioned an architect to design a house for himself in the Kashmir Valley. The matter seemed straightforward. Srinagar was just 135 miles from the Pakistan border. The only proper all-weather road into it was from Pakistan. If Pakistan could seize Srinagar in a lightning strike, no help could possibly reach the maharaja from anywhere. But there were constraints.