Will Indo-Pak relations ever be good? (Part 7)

Kashmir has kept the wounds of partition from healing. The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to the Indian Union when its Hindu king, Maharaja Hari Singh, signed the Instrument of Accession with the Indian Government headed by Jawaharlal Nehru, and under the watchful eyes of Lord Mountbatten who was still around at the time. The Maharaja had initially entertained the thought of retaining the independence of his state and transforming it into some kind of a “Switzerland of the East”. Meanwhile, Jinnah felt that the state had to be integrated into the new nation of Pakistan as it had a Muslim majority.

Jinnah had watched how Sardar Patel had got more than 500 princely states in the Indian subcontinent to become a part of the Indian republic. These included Hyderabad and Junagadh, which were Muslim-majority states. In any case, these states could not have become a part of Pakistan because they were small in size and were not geographically contiguous with the new Islamic nation that had been carved out of British India. However, the case of Jammu and Kashmir was different. According to the partition plan, it had been decided that all geographically contiguous areas that had Muslim-majority populations would be grouped together to constitute the new nation of Pakistan.

Kashmir met both these conditions. And yet, it had acceded to India, felt Pakistan, entirely due to the whim of its Hindu king, and the guiles of Nehru and Mountbatten who had enticed him into doing it. One must not forget Kashmir forms a vital part of the very idea of Pakistan. In fact the letter ‘K’ in the name Pakistan stands for Kashmir. Yes. Rahmat Ali, a student at Oxford, had first mooted the idea of a separate homeland for the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent through pamphlets that were widely circulated in Britain. He had suggested a name for the new nation. He called it PAKSTAN. It did not have the ‘I’ in it then, which was added later. P stood for Punjab, A for the Afghan province (Northwest Frontier Province) K stood for Kashmir, S for Sindh and TAN were taken from Baluchistan.

Hence, there is no way Pakistan will ever give up its claim on Kashmir. It considers the entire state as disputed territory and its accession to India illegal. If Pakistan ever accepts the state of Jammu and Kashmir as a part of India, it would amount to surrendering the very raison d'être for its existence, which it can never do. That is why despite its much smaller size and military inferiority vis-à-vis India, Pakistan has dared to engage India in three wars over Kashmir. Meanwhile, India cannot afford to surrender Kashmir to Pakistan either for its own ideological and geo-political reasons.

Kashmir is a test of Indian democracy and its secular credentials. India does not have an official state religion like other countries in its immediate neighbourhood do. The Indian Constitution guarantees to all its citizens equality of status before the law and the freedom to profess, practise and propagate their religion. Article 370 of the Indian Constitution accords the state of Jammu and Kashmir special status within the Indian Union. This was done to accommodate the legitimate, democratic aspirations of this Muslim-majority state and allay the fears of some who thought they would be unsafe in Hindu-majority India. It is another matter that despite such extraordinary Constitutional safeguards, Kashmiris have felt alienated and the insurgency in the Valley has continued unabated. Perhaps, successive governments at the Centre have failed to integrate the state with the rest of India.

* To be continued...