Demystify Kashmir

Show them the reality and let them judge

Z. G. Muhammad

In India’s 1.25 billion population not even .0005 percent people are familiar with the story of the Kashmir Dispute. ‘India’s middle class according to Global Wealth Report 2015 stands at 2 to 3 percent of the adult or total population when measured by wealth or income. The definition of middle class here is income between 10 to 20 dollars a day adjusted for purchasing power parity.’ That indicates ninety-seven percent Indians are poor of which about thirty percent live below poverty line. So it would be expecting too much from the masses in India caught up in the morass of poverty to know about the longest pending dispute on the agenda of the United Nations Security Council. That has caused three wars between India and Pakistan, continues to hold them up in military and diplomatic standoffs and has immensely contributed to their poverty.

The ignorance of common people about the Kashmir story is not surprising.  Moreover, they believe what politicians tell them is not unexpected. Nonetheless, what is disappointing, the largest fraternity of the journalists and academia in India have also no better knowledge of the Kashmir Dispute than the common masses. Even those of the journalists, columnists, intellectuals and academia working on the Kashmir Desk in newspapers or television channels or writing on Kashmir have been building their discourses on the official handouts or government versions. For some “intellectuals” and “academicians” documents like the White Paper issued by the GoI  in 1947” are the gospels on Kashmir. Those, who have tried to tear apart these straitjacket narratives are just a few like Arundhati Roy and Swaminathan Ayar.

It is not to say that all historians, academicians, intellectuals and journalists in India are biased towards  Kashmir or dishonest to the Kashmir narrative. Two important contemporary women historians author of two scholarly books on Kashmir at present also working on two more books in separate meetings complained about denial of access to scholars and researchers to Kashmir related documents from 1819 onwards in the National Archives. The policy of denying access to the  Kashmir documents and files in the National Archives, Nehru Museum, and other important archives, in fact, has been an impediment even for the genuine and honest scholars in India to tell the whole Kashmir story.  Seen in perspective, this iron curtain policy on Kashmir and some scholars, columnists, writers and journalist orchestrating the State versions about the genesis of this problem have contributed to the perpetuation of this problem. In fact, these orchestrated discourses and narratives to this day have made New Delhi’s Kashmir policy captive to Jawaharlal Nehru’s Cold War time politics; guided by the propaganda that the United States had intentions of converting Kashmir as it military base in the region.

The Nehru’s Kashmir policy is full of potholes. It is these potholes that despite best intentions have often upset the peace process apple cart between Islamabad and New Delhi. In November  1947, after the meeting between the Governor Generals of India and Pakistan,  what made him turn down the proposal of holding a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir under the supervision of the Governor-Generals of the two countries instead under some international agencies. And at the same time writing a letter to Maharaja Hari Singh suggesting him four options for arriving a final decision on Kashmir with Pakistan. And also telling him candidly, “Even if military force held Kashmir for a while a later consequences might be a strong reaction against this.” Then, despite being engaged bilaterally with Pakistan for settling  Kashmir what prompted him to take the Kashmir issue to the  Security Council. Most of Nehru’s biographers have written that he was shocked for India’s Waterloo in the Security Council and ‘bitterly regretted’ the decision of taking the issue to the Security Council. If it had was decided at the behest of the Soviet Union?  The question that continues to bother historians to this day. Moreover, what made him renege the international commitment. “From 1947-1953, Nehru was profuse in proclaiming his commitment to hold a plebiscite. On record also are speeches of Kashmir’s Prime Minister Sheikh Abdullah from 1947  till 1952 which reflected a strong disapproval of plebiscite.” (Noorani) Sheikh Abdullah at that time had no respect for the UN resolution and wanted the State Constituent Assembly to ratify the accession. Nehru at this time was against it and ‘in a note to Girja Shanker Bajpai of 18 September 1951; he wrote to him “ the Constituent Assembly cannot decide finally about the accession of the State”.  On June 1952, at a press conference, he almost reiterated the same thing and said that he had asked Sheikh Abdullah in this regard could ‘embarrass India before the United Nations’.  Many in India then believed that  Sheikh Abdullah’s  support India would have won the plebiscite. “Notwithstanding this assertion being a story of ifs and buts, the question remains what had made  Nehru look for an alibi for procrastinating settlement of Kashmir and finally reneging. How true are the assertions that   Nehru reneged for holding a plebiscite in Jammu and Kashmir as Russia suspected US intentions in the region and on that intelligence deposed and arrested Abdullah.  In 1984, former Indian Prime Minister, Morarji Desi told me in an interview that in 1953, Jawaharlal Nehru had shown him some papers that had prompted Abdullah’s arrest in 1953. Seen in 1953 ushered in yet another era of political uncertainty in Jammu and Kashmir and also became a spoiler in India and Pakistan relations. For the iron curtain policy, this uncertainty perpetuates. Even the most enterprising historians and writers have failed to tell people in India the real Kashmir.

New Delhi needs to adopt a glasnost policy on Kashmir and declassify all papers including Nehru- Sheikh Abdullah correspondence, papers about 1948, development, the 1953 military operation and deposition of Sheikh Abdullah and 1964, lifting of the Holy Relic from Hazratbal.