The Shadow of the Great Game

by Narendra Singh Sarila

  The first was the British attitude. Although London favoured Kashmir’s attachment to Pakistan, it wished this ‘on agreed terms’ with India. Therefore, if the Pakistanis wished to jump the gun, they evidently could not take HMG into confidence. There is, however, some circumstantial evidence that certain people in the Commonwealth Relations Office (CRO) were aware of Pakistan’s designs, the principal staff officer to the secretary of state, General Geoffrey Scoones (an ardent supporter of Pakistan), as we shall see, amongst them. The matter had to be kept hush-hush, especially from Mountbatten in Delhi, whom Jinnah did not trust.

  Secondly, the situation in the valley – Kashmir ‘Proper’ – was not promising for Pakistan. There, the National Conference led by Sheikh Abdullah had the upper hand over the Muslim Conference allied to the Muslim League. According to a report of the British resident, W.P. Webb, Agha Shaukat Ali of the Muslim Conference had threatened ‘direct action’ in Kashmir in 1946 but ‘failed to unite the warring factions of the Muslim Conference proving there was no communal feeling’.31 This was the main reason why Jinnah had hummed and hawed over a plebiscite when one under UN auspices was suggested to him by Mountbatten on 1 November 1947 in Lahore. On the other hand, a forcible seizure – a daring display of dash – might break Abdullah’s spell on the valley’s Muslims.

  Even in the west, along the Punjab border, there was no massive spontaneous revolt against the maharaja to justify an incursion by Pakistan to save the Muslims. According to H.V. Hodson, the trouble that broke out in Poonch was ‘sporadic for most part’ and there was ‘some evidence of Pakistan taking part’. He says: ‘The above was nothing surprising or pretentious in view of Punjab happenings…. To justify action (by Pakistan) in Kashmir on the above basis would be incorrect.’32 The reports of Webb, the British resident in J&K, and of the British commander-in-chief of the Kashmir State Forces, General Victor Scott, confirm Hodson’s assessment. According to Webb, ‘relations between Hindus and Muslims began to grow uneasy and in some areas strained as communal violence flared up in the plains around the State. Kashmir remained free from communal disturbances. The unease was more confined to Jammu and along the frontier areas adjoining Pathan Tribal Agencies’.33 General Scott reported in September 1947 that: ‘The State troops had escorted one lakh Muslims through Jammu territory on their way to Pakistan and an equal number of Sikhs and Hindus going the other way’,34 signifying that the communal situation in J&K was totally different from that in the Punjab. Lars Blinkenberg, the Danish diplomat, has pointed out: ‘The Maharaja with Mehr Chand Mahajan [his prime minister] toured the western part of Jammu from 18 to 23 October 1947. The local revolt in the areas of Poonch and Jammu made out by Pakistan was therefore not sufficiently powerful to obstruct the Maharaja’s circulation.’35

  The most formidable obstacle in Pakistan’s path was Maharaja Hari Singh. He had absolutely no desire to accede to Pakistan. It was no secret to Jinnah that the replacement of Pandit Ram Chandra Kak as the prime minister of J&K by Mahajan in the middle of September 1947 signified that Hari Singh had decided to accede to India. The Pandit detested Sheikh Abdullah like his master and had kept playing a diplomatic game with Pakistan to counterbalance the Abdullah–Nehru pressure. For his part, Kak hoped to work for J&K’s independence with guarantees from both India and Pakistan to uphold the same.* His hopes were dashed as a result of the change in British policy in April 1947 that the princely states should accede to one or the other dominion. In July 1947, Mountbatten had introduced Kak to Jinnah in Delhi to discuss the possibility of J&K’s accession to Pakistan and Jinnah had sent his private secretary to Srinagar on a long sojourn to keep in touch with the situation there. After Kak’s fall, despite the existence of a Standstill Agreement between Pakistan and J&K, Pakistan started to pressurize the state, starting with an economic blockade.

  Meanwhile, the matter of the state’s accession to India was being delayed only because of Prime Minister Nehru’s insistence that the maharaja hand over power to Sheikh Abdullah and install a fully representative government before any further step could be contemplated. Hari Singh was unwilling to do so. On 27 September 1947, Nehru wrote to Sardar Patel, who was keeping in touch with the maharaja, as follows:

  I understand that the Pakistan strategy is to infiltrate into Kashmir now and to take some big action as soon as Kashmir is more or less isolated because of the coming winter…. It becomes important therefore that the Maharaja should make friends with the National Conference so that there may be this popular support against Pakistan…. Once the State accedes to India it will become very difficult for Pakistan to invade it officially or unofficially without coming into conflict with the Indian Union…. It seems to me urgently necessary therefore that the accession to the Indian Union should take place early.36

  Patel wrote to Hari Singh on 2 October:

  I need hardly say how pleased we all are at the general amnesty which your Highness has proclaimed [meaning the release of Sheikh Abdullah]. I have no doubt that this would rally round you the men who might otherwise have been a thorn in your side. I can assure Your Highness of abiding sympathy with you in your difficulties nor need I hide the instinctive response I feel for ensuring the safety and integrity of your State…. In the meantime I am expediting as much as possible the link-up of the State with the Indian Dominion by means of telegraph, telephone, wireless and radio.37

  Time was obviously running out for Jinnah. To avoid an open conflict with India, pro-Muslim League tribesmen from the frontier areas (Masoods, Afridis and Hazzaras) would be used as proxies, enticed with the promise of loot and more. They would be recruited by Pakistani officers of the old Indian Political Service who had a vast knowledge of the tribes and armed and transported by Pakistan and led by Pakistani officers. (We have seen, in Chapter 11, the confidence Jinnah and Liaqat Ali reposed in some senior Muslim members of the Political Service in the episode related by Humayun Mirza, the son of Iskander Mirza; the father was at this time the defence secretary in the Pakistan Government.)

  Mohammed Yunus, the nephew of Khan Abdul Ghaffar Khan, the Frontier Gandhi, has narrated an interesting anecdote in his memoirs. Yunus recounts that one day his uncle received a message from George Cunningham, governor of the NWFP, that one way to rehabilitate himself with Jinnah would be for Ghaffar Khan to lead a tribal lashkar (militia) into Kashmir. Yunus says that he passed on this information to Pandit Brij Kishen Mohan, the teacher of Yuvraj Karan Singh, who conveyed it to his mother, the maharani. According to Yunus, the maharaja sent for him to get more details but Prime Minister Kak convinced Hari Singh that Yunus was acting for the Congress Party and was trying to frighten him into acceding to India, apart from releasing and making up with Sheikh Abdullah. Much later, when I enquired from Dr Karan Singh about the veracity of this episode, he replied (on 13 December 2002) as follows:

  I do recollect that such a message was in fact passed on to Pt. Brij Kishen Mohan and then to my mother who mentioned it to my father. If I remember correctly Yunus and one of his cousins did call upon my father at the Gulab Bhawan although I am not sure what transpired at the meeting.

  Colonel (later major general) Akbar Khan of the Pakistan Army has described in his book how the ‘tribal operation’ was planned under the direct supervision of Prime Minister Liaqat Ali Khan. Akbar Khan was the military member of the Liberation Committee. He has written in his book:

  Upon my seeking a clarification of our military objective, the Prime Minister said that all he wanted was to keep the fight going for three months which would be enough time to achieve our political objective by negotiations and other means.38

  Did Liaqat Ali Khan expect that Pakistan’s occupation of the Kashmir Valley would force India to accept a settlement in J&K, satisfactory to Pakistan, under British aegis?

  It is not my purpose to follow the course of the war in any detail. The Pakistani attempt to seize Srinagar failed. The Dogra commander of the J&K Forces, Rajindar Singh,* held back the tribal hordes (the first at
tack was by about 5000 tribesmen) for three days at the entrance of the valley, till he was killed. Then two days were lost by the invaders in pillage and rapine in Baramullah, at the entrance of the valley. Moreover, according to one source, ‘the rapidity with which Indians flew into Srinagar was outside Jinnah’s calculations’.39 For carrying out this operation, almost all the commercial planes flying in India were commandeered.

  On 14 November 1947 Akbar Khan found himself in Uri, 100 kilometres on the road to Srinagar with the tribesmen retreating from the valley after their clash with the Indian forces at the gates of Srinagar at Shelatang. They had suffered 600 casualties. He was attempting to reason with them not to abandon the battle:

  Some had held out hope of cooperating. Some had even got into their lorries and started towards the enemy, but then changed their minds and turned back.… At 9 p.m. the taillights of the last departing vehicle disappeared in the distance. Taking stock of what was left, I discovered that in the rush my Staff Officer, Captain Taskin-ud-din and the wireless set had also gone. Barring about a dozen people, nothing remained. The volunteers, the tribesmen, and other Pathans, had all gone.… My mission had ended in complete failure.…

  But I did not think I could go back yet. I had already, as it were, burnt my boats behind me by adopting the name of General Tariq. I had no pretensions to that great name but I felt it would provide an inspiration, as well as conceal my identity. Tariq, twelve centuries earlier, upon landing on the coast of Spain, had burnt his boats, and when told that it was unwise to have abandoned their only means of going back to their own country had replied, in the words of [Mohammad] Iqbal: “Every country is our country because it is our God’s country.”40

  Akbar Khan continues:

  In India, in the absence of homogeneity, a penetration in any direction can result in…separation of different units geographically as well as morally because there is no basic unity among the Shudras (low castes), Brahmins, Sikhs, Hindus and Muslims who will follow their own different interests. At present, and for a long time to come, India is in the same position as she was centuries ago, exposed to disintegration in emergencies.41

  This analysis has to be juxtaposed with what V.P. Menon has written:

  Personally when I recommended to the Government of India the acceptance of accession of the Maharaja of Kashmir, I had in mind one consideration and one consideration alone, viz., that the invasion of Kashmir by the raiders was a great threat to the integrity of India. Ever since the times of Mahmud Ghazni, that is to say, for nearly eight centuries…India had been subjected to periodical invasions from the north-west.… And within less than ten weeks of the establishment of the new State of Pakistan, its very first act was to let loose a tribal invasion through the north-west. Srinagar today, Delhi tomorrow.42*

  Uri (where we found Akbar Khan stranded), Naoshera to Uri’s south on the southern side of the Pir Panjal range and Tithwal to Uri’s north were approximately at the eastern extremities of the belt of territory which General Douglas Gracey had argued was necessary for Pakistan’s security. Pakistani raiders advancing in early November 1947 had occupied a large portion of this area. After the tribal lashkar had fled from the Kashmir Valley and Uri had been recaptured on 14 November 1947, India considered the question of recovering all of this territory, including the Jhelum Valley road from Uri to Domel, situated on the Pakistan border. Before we proceed further, let us focus on two factors that played a significant role in the struggle for the above territory.

  The first was Mountbatten’s metamorphosis. From being ‘almost neutral’ with even a slight pro-Indian edge, by the end of October, following the directions received from London, he began to tilt towards Pakistan. On learning of the tribal invasion of J&K, his first thought was to somehow avoid an interdominion war, which would undo all the good work he had done for Britain in the subcontinent in the past six months. He explained this dilemma to the King as follows:

  It would still be legally correct to send troops at [its] request to a friendly neighbouring country even if it did not accede but the risk of Pakistan also sending troops would be considerable. The accession would fully regularize the position, and reduce the risk of an armed clash with Pakistan forces to a minimum because then they will be entering a foreign country.43

  India was committed to holding plebiscites in the princely states which became disputed. Mountbatten was confident that he could subsequently arrange matters, with Indian agreement, to Pakistan’s satisfaction, through either a plebiscite or a partition of the state of J&K. In his report to the King, he continued that ‘forming an Interim Government under Sheikh Abdullah [had]…increased India’s chances of retaining Kashmir in the ultimate plebiscite…though I still think that a country with so large a Muslim population will finally vote for Pakistan’.44

  Mountbatten had accepted the maharaja’s accession in his capacity as governor-general. With the cabinet’s approval, he simultaneously wrote a personal letter to the maharaja in which he declared:

  As soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invaders, the question of the State’s accession should be settled by reference to the people.45

  This letter was not the legal acceptance of the Instrument of Accession. Such an acceptance had been given on the instrument itself in accordance with the Government of India Act, 1935, as amended and in force on 15 August 1947; the letter was a supplementary written due to the extraordinary situation in which the accession was sought. Its contents would later form the background of the basic conflict between India and Pakistan.*

  A factor that had weighed with Mountbatten was the necessity to save the British residents living in and around Srinagar from the fate that had befallen the nuns of the Convent of Jesus and Mary in Baramullah at the Pathans’ hands. General Claude Auchinleck, the supreme commander, wanted to send British troops to escort the British residents out of J&K. Mountbatten, however, prohibited this. ‘Blood will be on your hands’, Auchinleck had protested.

  Mountbatten’s metamorphosis started on 31 October 1947. On that day a policy directive on J&K issued by the Commonwealth Relations Office (partly quoted at the start of this chapter) was brought to Mountbatten’s notice by the British high commissioner. Besides stating that Kashmir had to go to Pakistan, though ‘on agreed terms’, this directive went on:

  On the one hand Pakistan had connived at the tribal invasion into Kashmir, “supplied artillery and transport” for the same and on the other India had made “provocative mistakes” in accepting Kashmir’s accession since that was not really required for sending military help (to prevent tribal depredations)... “had not consulted Pakistan and [had] used Sikh troops” [italics added].47

  Prime Minister Attlee was obviously not sure that the accession could be so easily made to ‘vanish’ by the Mountbatten magic in Delhi, as the governor-general believed. Other means would, therefore, have to be employed to offset the advantage gained by India through this legal process. The first of these would be to establish Pakistan’s locus standi in J&K, using the presence of the Pakistani tribals and volunteers inside Kashmir for the purpose. The second would be to bring in the weight of international, particularly US, opinion, to pressurize India to make concessions. This explains Attlee’s icy blast directed at Nehru when the latter explained to him the reasons for his government accepting Kashmir’s accession to India:

  I do not think it would be helpful if I were to comment on the action your Government has taken.48

  Side by side Noel-Baker wired to Lord Ismay: ‘Prime Minister is…unwilling to send a message to Jinnah (drawing his attention to the help the tribals had obtained from Pakistan) which, in fact, charges him (Jinnah) with responsibility.’49

  On the same day, Attlee wired to Liaqat Ali Khan: ‘If in the talks with the Indians [scheduled for the next day] there was agreement that accession “is not to prejudice in any way the ultimate decision of the future of Kashmir” [Attlee trusted] he [Liaqat] and Jinnah would ma
ke such appeal in the way you will know best to ensure those not immediately under your control may fully weigh your counsel to them.’50 This was an extraordinarily convoluted way of referring to the tribesmen in order to absolve Pakistan of blame for the invasion. But the message was clear: If there was no agreement and if India used the Instrument of Accession to justify its position in Kashmir, you stay put (do not pull back the tribals).

  Attlee had disapproved Mountbatten’s action on accession. Like the good soldier that he was, Mountbatten immediately fell in step with HMG. On the very next day (1 November) on meeting Jinnah at Lahore (for nearly four hours), he launched, together with Ismay, a far-reaching initiative taking into account Attlee’s objectives:

  It is the sincere desire of the Government of India that a plebiscite should be held in Kashmir at the earliest possible date and in the fairest possible way…. They suggest that UNO might be asked to provide supervisors for this plebiscite, and they are prepared to agree that a joint India–Pakistan force should hold the ring while the plebiscite is being held.51

  Mountbatten had no authority from the Government of India to suggest a reference to the UN or for the induction of Pakistan’s forces into J&K. His hope was that if Jinnah gave a nod to the proposal, he would try to get India to agree to it. Jinnah refused for reasons mentioned earlier; he was not confident of winning the plebiscite. It was during this conversation that Jinnah suggested ‘both sides should withdraw simultaneously’. When Mountbatten asked him: ‘How the tribesmen [who, Pakistan maintained, were acting independently] were to be called off?’ Jinnah replied (in the oft-quoted remark): ‘All he had to do was to give them an order to come out.’52

  At the meeting, Mountbatten upbraided Jinnah for making out that the accession ‘rested on fraud and violence’. He said that the accession was perfectly legal and that the tribesmen, for whom Pakistan was responsible, had indulged in violence. On 28 October 1947 General Auchinleck, the supreme commander, had threatened to pull out all British troops from the Pakistan Army, which Pakistan could ill afford to allow to happen. This threat had resulted in Jinnah cancelling his order to General Douglas Gracey, the acting commander-in-chief of the Pakistan Army, to send in regular troops into the Kashmir Valley to clear the Indian troops arriving there by air and to secure the Banihal Pass. London had welcomed Auchinleck’s intervention, which probably averted an interdominion war. Mountbatten’s warning was part of the same British effort to restrain Pakistan from further adventures. The British, throughout the crisis, supported Pakistan but restrained it from taking actions that might result in an Indian invasion of West Punjab and a full-scale war.