Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Rediff on Net
Date: February 13, 2002
With India and Pakistan having become
nuclear powers after their historic tests in mid-1998, it has become fashionable
for the USA, and therefore the Western world, to talk of the Jammu &
Kashmir imbroglio as being the globe's "nuclear flashpoint" -- to be avoided
at all costs. As a matter of fact, the alarm of a total war on the issue
would seem to have been sounded 36 years ago in a book of which large extracts
are now posted on the Web at http://www.parep.org.sg/dangerinkashmir/Dangerinkasmir.htm
Now, one had seen a reference or
two to that book Danger in Kashmir by Josef Korbel in Justice A S Anand's
scholarly treatise on the Jammu & Kashmir State Constitution. But the
Internet site cites the cover-page blurb about "the value of this book"
and then dubs it in a headline as the 'US Administration's Recommended
Reading On Kashmir'. One therefore simply had to go through it, especially
because the first paragraph under that headline goes as follows:
"At a White House briefing on 4
July, 1999, after three-hour meetings between Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif
and President Bill Clinton, a senior Administration Official was asked
about the US position on Security Council Resolutions on Kashmir. The reply
was "we are very aware of the history of Kashmir. In fact, if any of you
wish to, you can go back to Secretary Albright's father's book 'Danger
In Kashmir' that he wrote after being on the first UN commission [on Kashmir]."
Now now. The American president
and his officials engaged in serious three-hour meetings on the nation's
sacrosanct Fourth of July? It lit a red light all right, but made one continue
reading.
Next there is Korbel's conclusion
based on "certain factors [that] stand out in the history of the conflict
as immutable guidelines". Second among the factors listed is the assertion
attributed to him that "the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir
cannot be considered as valid by canons of international law".
The red light was so blazing now
that it made one jump to the end of the page. It said, "Copies of 'Danger
In Kashmir' by Josef Korbel available from the Pakistan High Commission,
1 Scotts Road... Singapore."
The game was up. Pakistan had once
again used propaganda to convey its views to the huge Internet world.
The fact that the book publisher's
name -- Princeton University Press, Princeton -- and the date of its publication
-- (revised) edition, 1966 -- were ignored were more indicators that Pakistan
was not bothered about the niceties of such a matter, but about the juicy
meat in the book, not hesitating to spice it up on its own. Nevertheless,
it all compelled one to read on.
And the discovery made was that
none of the 64 pages of extracts from that book on the Internet site made
that above point about J&K's accession to India being invalid by canons
of international law. Was it then just a liberal dose of Paki sauce and
spice? Read on.
On page 66 of his book on the Constitution
of J&K published by Universal Law Publishing Co Pvt Ltd, New Delhi,
in 1998, our ex-chief justice, Dr Anand, states that the public statement
of the British government did not sustain Korbel's contention that "...the
basic pattern for accession by the Princely States was being decided exclusively
on a communal basis" (page 71, Danger In Kashmir, 1954 edition).
To prove his point, Dr Anand cited
the statement of June 3, 1947, of His Majesty's government on the grant
of independence. It stipulated that the Muslim-majority areas in provinces
comprising British India should constitute the Dominion of Pakistan and
the Hindu-majority area the Dominion of India. The statement made it clear
that, on withdrawal of paramountcy, the communal basis of the division
of India would not affect the princely states at all.
Actual events had also proved Korbel
wrong. Despite having a predominant Hindu population as his subjects, Junagadh
State's nawab acceded to Pakistan, though a unique people's agitation later
forced the nawab and Pakistan to rescind that decision in writing. Hyderabad
State, with over 85 per cent Hindu population, chose to be independent,
even a member of the British Commonwealth (!), because its Muslim ruler,
the nizam, was a vainglorious person. (His two ordinances banning the export
of metals from Hyderabad to the rest of India and declaring the Indian
currency as not being legal tender in his state ultimately cooked his goose
and he came to the Indian fold like a lamb in 1948.)
The Hindu maharaja of predominantly
Muslim-populated Jammu & Kashmir State also had visions of being an
independent entity until the invasion of thousands of marauding tribals
from the Pakistan side compelled him to make up his mind and accede to
India.
Korbel's contention about the accession
of princely states on an "exclusively communal basis" was thus not based
on homework.
Korbel also goofed up in respect
of several other parts of his book as excerpted on the Internet document.
For instance:
In Chapter 3, he mentions the existence
of 584 princely states at the time of India's independence; the actual
number was 562. In Chapter 8, he accuses the government in Srinagar of
"doing everything in its power" to delay a plebiscite which he dubs as
the "day of reckoning". Korbel forgot here that it was the Indian government
in New Delhi -- not the state government in Srinagar -- that was to take
the decision on plebiscite. He also forgot that the five-member UN Commission
for India and Pakistan (of which he himself was a member) had made the
withdrawal of all Pakistani troops and nationals from J&K a pre-condition
for a plebiscite. Since Pakistan did not comply with that condition till
Korbel revised his book in 1966 -- and even till today -- the charge of
delaying the "day of reckoning" should have been rightfully made against
Pakistan. In Chapter 9, (added to the 1954 edition to pass off as the 1966
edition), Korbel mentions that when the prime ministers of India and Pakistan
met in May 1955, India suggested that the status quo be maintained along
the Ceasefire Line and that the fate of the vale be placed in the hands
of a newly elected Constituent Assembly. He construed this to mean that
"India had at least conceded the idea of an election of one kind or another
in the Vale". That contention is fictitious because the 75-member J&K
Constituent Assembly, elected in October 1951 on the basis of universal
adult franchise, had ratified the state's accession to India in February
1954 itself. Moreover, India had, on the floor of the UN, no less, agreed
as early as 1948 to a plebiscite in the whole of J&K, without waiting
to meet the Pakistani PM in 1955.
Did Korbel then also goof up that
"the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India cannot be considered as valid
by canons of international law"? That assertion, merely attributed to him
in the Internet document without citing anything in support, could be verified
only by reading his book's 1954 as well as 1966 editions in the original
from cover to cover.
Unable to access both those versions
in Mumbai, this writer sought the help of Atanu Dey, doing his doctorate
in Berkeley University, USA, and currently undergoing a stint as a Reuters
Digital Vision Fellow, Stanford University. After burning the midnight
oil on the two editions of Korbel's book borrowed from the university library,
Dey reported on email the other day that "there is not a single sentence
that justifies his [Korbel's] conclusion that the accession was contrary
to the canons of international law".
If so, it's elementary, dear Atanu,
that the conclusion attributed to Korbel in the Internet document hosted
by Pakistan was probably not Korbel's at all! His error lay in merely believing
that even the princely states were to be acceded on a communal basis under
the British Parliament's enactment. It was the Paki hosts who must have
added spice and sauce to his view and transformed it into a blatantly anti-Indian
conclusion. In the process, they concealed the fact that under the monarchical
system of government, the ruler of a sovereign entity personified and represented
his state as per law recognised in international practice.
The encouragement to do that must
have come from the fact that Korbel's book raises strong communal feelings
between Muslims and Hindus and is generally pro-Pakistan. He mentions,
for instance, that after the Hindu Dogras took over the territory after
the Treaty of Amritsar signed with the British in 1846, "they immediately
set out upon a policy of unlimited cruelty that seemed to vent upon the
hapless Kashmiris all the pent-up hatred of the Hindus for the five centuries
of Muslim rule. The willing instruments of this policy became the Kashmiri
Pandits who shared with the Maharaja his contempt for his Muslim subjects."
He also writes that the Hindus and Sikhs of J&K "intensified the bitterness
of their thrust against Pakistan" and that "the Muslims of Kashmir fell
before the rifles and swords of the Dogras" leading to the call for a jihad
that exploded on October 22, 1947, with the tribal invasion of J&K
from Pakistan. Was Korbel then justifying that invasion?
Now, Korbel was a Czech diplomat
who later became professor of international politics at Denver University,
USA, and is known to have been a mentor of Condoleezza Rice, National Security
Adviser in the current Bush administration. Although Czechoslovakia was
India's choice as one of the five members of the UN Commission for India
and Pakistan to resolve the J&K question, Korbel did not hesitate to
take a pro-Pakistan stand. That, of course, is in keeping with the Western
world's attitude all along towards India's righteous legal and moral position
on J&K ever since the state was invaded by thousands tribesmen from
Pakistan on October 22, 1947.
It is this blatantly unjust partisanship
of the West that continues to be India's biggest 'danger in Kashmir'. Nothing
short of a fearless, clear-cut and constant reiteration of our righteous
and legal stand will reduce that danger -- not even nuclear heads fitted
on our Agni missiles.
