Author: Arvind Lavakare
Publication: Reidff on Net
Date: June 27, 2001
Journalistic deadlines can be deadly
in effect. Thus it was a slip of the pen in this column last week that
put the price for allowing the thief to retain our stolen property of Pak
Occupied Kashmir at Rs 10 billion when, in fact, the mind's intent was
$ 10 billion for India forfeiting that territory and accepting the LoC
as the international border.
While that error is regretted, there
is no slip in putting the tag of some Rs 480 billion on 78,114 sq kms of
our stolen property. Remember, PoK touches the border of Pakistan on the
west, kisses Afghanistan (read Taleban) on the north-west and touches China
on the east. It is therefore a gigantic, critically strategic crown that
could well bottle up Srinagar along with the rest of India lying south
if the centrifugal forces of economic uncertainty and social unrest stirring
across PoK as well as Pak itself ultimately become a whirlpool of unimaginable
proportions under fundamentalist fangs and the red dragon's fire.
No 'analyst' from Outlook maga zine
or JNU or the proliferating institutes of strategic studies and think-tanks
has even hinted at that danger of centrifugal forces whirring in our north.
Although Pranawa Deshmukh, a professor of atomic and molecular physics
at IIT, Chennai, has drawn attention to it in his book on Jammu & Kashmir
that, alas, has not yet found a publisher --- possibly because it expounds
the hypothesis that J&K is the fountainhead of ancient Hindu culture
and civilisation.
Consider what constitutes PoK which,
Vajpayee now belatedly says, he will 'discuss' with the new three-in-one
Musharraf. But knowing that Vajpayee is a master wordsmith, 'discuss' may
not preclude giving it away in order to be on his 'high road to peace'
on the LoC. It is therefore vital that Indians should at least fully understand
the PoK pullav.
PoK has three constituents:
1. 'Azad' Kashmir with its 'capital'
at Muzaffarabad on the edge of the original Pakistan created at the behest
of Jinnah's TNT -- two-nation theory. Very close to Muzaffarabad is Domel,
180 kms north-west of Srinagar.
2. Chitral-Gilgit-Baltistan region
in the north and hence called the Northern Areas that have been ruled over
by Islamabad since the time of a LoCal rebellion in Gilgit, which is some
360 kms by road from Srinagar.
3. China Occupied Kashmir (COK
I) of 5,248 sq kms -- the gifting of which by Pak was announced on its
radio when, believe it or not, a high-level Indian team was in Rawalpindi
on December 22, 1962 to begin the first of six summits held under Nehru.
(COK II in Ladakh District measures 52,307 sq kms outside PoK.)
Since no map of Jammu and Kashmir
approved by the Government of India shows the above position, the map below,
not drawn to scale, is only indicative of the above position so as to enable
an understanding of the geography of PoK, the Chinese inroads and the J&K
that is left for the Indian nation to defend as well as feed but for Farooq
Abdullah to govern or misgovern.
Muzaffarabad is where our J&K
cancer originated. Sporadic raids from Pakistan into the princely state
had begun during the 1947 communal riots of Punjab; these snowballed when
the extremely poor, uncivilised and belligerent inhabitants of the hilly
tribal territory -- lying between Afghanistan and North West Frontier Provinces
and that had passed on to Pakistan after Partition -- were pushed into
J&K by their co-religionists in Pakistan so as to secure for them the
paradise on earth.
Marching through miles of Pak territory,
a large force of these tribals, long appeased by the British out of Indian
revenues, entered the mouth of the Kashmir Valley at Muzaffarabad in 300
lorries. They began looting and burning, armed with Bren guns, Sten guns,
grenades, heavy mortars, anti-tank rifles, land mines and a seemingly endless
supply of ammunition. The Pakistan hand behind all this was invisible only
to the blind.
After sacking Muzaffarabad, the
invaders continued their march along the Jhelum Valley road to reach Uri,
105 kms from Srinagar, and thence to Baramulla which they sacked for three
days before entering Srinagar to be confronted by the Indian Army that
had landed in Srinagar on October 27, 1947, a day after the J&K Maharaja
had signed his state's accession to India legally and constitutionally
under the Indian Independence Act, 1947.
Even as the Indian Army fought the
snows and the logistics in pushing the tribals and the accompanying Pak
Army back to Muzaffarabad, there came the cease-fire a minute before midnight
on the first day of the year 1949. It came because Nehru chose to approach
the United Nations rather than to let the valiant Indian Army capture Muzaffarabad
and thereby abort the birth of 'Azad' Kashmir as well as of the remaining
PoK. It was not to be; the stupid 'high road to peace' psyche of India
had ensured the birth of a fundamentalist Frankenstein on our own sacred
soil.
And what is the state of 'Azad'
Kashmir today? A summary of the conditions there is available from the
interview with Arif Shahid, a LoCal political leader, appearing in The
Times of India, Mumbai, of November 26, 2000. Following are telling excerpts
from that interview:
* "At least 60 per cent of the population
understand that Pakistan is merely exploiting them
* "Our Prime Minister and President
can be pushed around even by junior bureaucrats
* "We have no medical college, no
engineering college
*"Our natural resources are usurped
by Pakistan
*"Election nomination forms require
us to take an oath that we believe in Kashmir's accession to Pakistan
*"We do not want to be slaves."
All who urge greater 'autonomy'
to Abdullah's bankrupt J&K should note the above. So should Vajpayee
when Musharraf mentions 'the will of the Kashmiri people' to him
Let's now go to Gilgit, 360 kms
by road to the north of Srinagar. This region is one of perpetual intrigue
and political turmoil. Though permanently annexed to J&K in 1859, the
British became very suspicious of what they called 'the advance of Russia
up to the frontiers of Afghanistan' and believed that 'the northern passes
of Hindukush afford a force large enough to cause excitement if nothing
worse in Kashmir'. Hence, the de facto administration of the Gilgit frontier
passed into the hands of the British in 1889 through the political agency
called the Gilgit Agency.
In pursuit of the British government's
announcement that the control and administration of Gilgit would be returned
to J&K State, the Maharaja deputed one of his men as governor of Gilgit
in July 1947. But under the direction of certain British and Muslim officers
of the military outfit known as Gilgit Scouts there was a revolt by which
the governor was arrested on October 31, 1947 and a provisional government
was formed under one Major Brown. On November 4, he ceremoniously hoisted
the Pakistan flag in Gilgit and, two weeks later, Peshawar sent its agent
to rule over Gilgit.
A few months later, Pak annexed
Chitral, LoCated just below the Afghan border and some 150 kms north-west
of Gilgit.
Before the UN-sponsored cease-fire
could come into effect, the Chitral-Gilgit-Hunza-Nagir-Baltistan region
-- called the Northern Areas -- was under Pakistan's control.
And what is the condition today
of those Northern Areas of Pakistan? According to an unconfirmed account,
the Pak Supreme Court ruled in May 1999 that 'Northern Areas are a disputed
territory and the Government of Pakistan has no claim whatsoever over it.'
However, Arif Shahid says that the 'Azad' Kashmir Supreme Court has held
that these Northern Areas must be merged with 'Azad' Kashmir but the Pak
Supreme Court has not ratified that verdict.
Whatever be the judicial truth,
the fact is that Pakistan continues to divide the people of that region
on Shia-Sunni basis even as the discontent there is spreading, with various
political units agitating for people's rights on a wide spectrum. For details
of the chaos and deprivation in the Northern Areas see Stirrings of rebellion
in Gilgit.
Lastly, there's that audacious gift
of 5,248 sq kms of PoK to China in February 1963 at an official function
attended by Zulfiqar Bhutto in Peking. India didn't even squeal then. Will
Vajpayee dare to "discuss" it now with the three-in-one nawab of Pakistan?
Judging by the prevailing ignorance-cum-indifference
among Indians about PoK, it won't be a surprise if Vajpayee escapes with
a mere blink on the issue. And, god forbid, even give some concessions
on India-held J&K -- all in the interest of peace with Pakistan.
It will not be surprising because
the New Delhi press conference on June 12 held by the president of the
Panthers Party got scanty publicity although what he announced was, going
by the UNI report, front page news: a march of 50,000 people to the capital
to give Musharraf a memorandum with a million signatures demanding that
Pakistan withdraw totally from PoK as mandated by the UN Resolution of
August 13, 1948.
About our Freudian fixation for
peace-at-any-cost with Pakistan, you see, nothing has changed from Nehru's
times to those of VOI -- Vajpayee Occupied India.
