Location
The State of Jammu and Kashmir is bordered in north by
China, east by autonomous region of Tibet, south by Indian
states of Himachal Pradesh and Punjab, and west by
Pakistan. 63 per cent of the territory is under Indian
occupation; while the rest, 37 per cent, is with Pakistan,
called Azad (independent) Jammu and Kashmir (AJK).
Area
151,360 square kilometers
Indian-occupied Kashmir: 95,356 sq.kms
Azad Jammu and Kashmir : 56,003 sq.kms
Population
13 million (approximate)
Indian-occupied Kashmir: 7.7 million (projected figures, as
census has not been held since 1991) Azad Jammu
Kashmir: 2.58 million (1990 figure) Refugees in Pakistan:
1.5 million Expatriates: 1.5 million
The Paradise Lost: Kashmir's Wular Lake, one of the largest in Asia
World’s Oldest Dispute
The Kashmir dispute is the oldest unresolved international conflict
in the world today. Pakistan considers
Kashmir as its core political dispute with India. So does the international
community, except India. While Indian
security forces are practicing an unprecedented reign of terror in
Occupied Kashmir being widely reported
world-wide; the Indian government, currently led by Hindu nationalist
Bharatiya Janata Party, is neither willing to
negotiate the issue multilaterally—through international mediation—nor
is it ready to sort it out with Pakistan
through bilateral negotiations. India and Pakistan have already fought
two wars over Kashmir. The exchange of
fire between their forces across the Line of Control, which separates
Azad Kashmir from Occupied Kashmir, is
a routine affair. Now that both India and Pakistan have acquired nuclear
weapons potential, the possibility of a
third war between them over Kashmir, which may involve the use of nuclear
weapons, cannot be ruled out. The
likely nuclear disaster in South Asia, whose cause may be Kashmir,
can be averted with an intervention by the
international community. Such an intervention is urgently required
to put an end to Indian atrocities in Occupied
Kashmir and prepare the ground for the implementation of UN resolutions,
which call for the holding of a
plebiscite to determine the wishes of the Kashmiri people.
Cause Of The Kashmir Dispute
India’s forcible occupation of the State of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947
is the main cause of the dispute. India
claims to have ‘signed’ a controversial document, the Instrument of
Accession, on 26 October 1947 with the
Maharaja of Kashmir, in which the Maharaja obtained India’s military
help against popular insurgency. The
people of Kashmir and Pakistan do not accept the Indian claim. There
are doubts about the very existence of
the Instrument of Accesion. The United Nations also does not consider
Indian claim as legally valid: it
recognises Kashmir as a disputed territory. Except India, the entire
world community recognises Kashmir as a
disputed territory. The fact is that all the principles on the basis
of which the Indian subcontinent was
partitioned by the British in 1947 justify Kashmir becoming a part
of Pakistan: the State had majority Muslim
population, and it not only enjoyed geographical proximity with Pakistan
but also had essential economic
linkages with the territories constituting Pakistan.
History Of The Dispute
The State of Jammu and Kashmir has historically remained independent,
except in the anarchical conditions of
the late 18th and first half of the 19th century, or when incorporated
in the vast empires set up by the Mauryas
(3rd century BC), the Mughals (16th to 18th century) and the British
(mid-19th to mid-20th century). All these
empires included not only present-day India and Pakistan but some other
countries of the region as well. Until
1846, Kashmir was part of the Sikh empire. In that year, the British
defeated the Sikhs and sold Kashmir to
Gulab Singh of Jammu for Rs. 7.5 million under the Treaty of
Amritsar. Gulab Singh, the Mahraja, signed a
separate treaty with the British which gave him the status of an independent
princely ruler of Kashmir. Gulab
Singh died in 1857 and was replaced by Rambir Singh (1857-1885).
Two other Marajas, Partab Singh
(1885-1925) and Hari Singh (1925-1949) ruled in succession.
Gulab Singh and his successors ruled Kashmir in a tyrannical and repressive
way. The people of Kashmir,
nearly 80 per cent of whom were Muslims, rose against Maharaja
Hari Singh’s rule. He ruthlessly crushed a
mass uprising in 1931. In 1932, Sheikh Abdullah formed Kashmir’s first
political party—the All Jammu &
Kashmir Muslim Conference (renamed as National Conference in 1939).
In 1934, the Maharaja gave way and
allowed limited democracy in the form of a Legislative Assembly. However,
unease with the Maharaja’s rule
continued. According to the instruments of partition of India,
the rulers of princely states were given the choice
to freely accede to either India or Pakistan, or to remain independent.
They were, however, advised to accede
to the contiguous dominion, taking into consideration the geographical
and ethnic issues.
In Kashmir, however, the Maharaja hesitated. The principally Muslim
population, having seen the early and
covert arrival of Indian troops, rebelled and things got out of the
Maharaja’s hands. The people of Kashmir were
demanding to join Pakistan. The Maharaja, fearing tribal warfare, eventually
gave way to the Indian pressure
and agreed to join India by, as India claims, ‘signing’ the controversial
Instrument of Accession on 26 October
1947. Kashmir was provisionally accepted into the Indian Union pending
a free and impartial plebiscite. This
was spelled out in a letter from the Governor General of India, Lord
Mountbatten, to the Maharaja on 27 October
1947. In the letter, accepting the accession, Mountbatten made it clear
that the State would only be
incorporated into the Indian Union after a reference had been made
to the people of Kashmir. Having accepted
the principle of a plebiscite, India has since obstructed all attempts
at holding a plebiscite.
In 1947, India and Pakistan went to war over Kashmir. During
the war, it was India which first took the
Kashmir dispute to the United Nations on 1 January 1948 The following
year, on 1 January 1949, the UN
helped enforce ceasefire between the two countries. The ceasefire line
is called the Line of Control. It was an
outcome of a mutual consent by India and Pakistan that
the UN Security Council (UNSC) and UN
Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) passed several resolutions
in years following the 1947-48 war. The
UNSC Resolution of 21 April 1948--one of the principal UN resolutions
on Kashmir—stated that “both India and
Pakistan desire that the question of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir
to India or Pakistan should be
decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite”.
Subsequent UNSC Resolutions
reiterated the same stand. UNCIP Resolutions of 3 August 1948 and 5
January 1949 reinforced UNSC
resolutions.
Nehru’s Betrayal
India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made a pledge to resolve
the Kashmir dispute in accordance with
these resolutions. The sole criteria to settle the issue, he said,
would be the “wishes of the Kashmir people”. A
pledge that Prime Minister Nehru started violating soon after the UN
resolutions were passed. The Article 370,
which gave ‘special status’ to ‘Jammu and Kashmir’, was inserted in
the Indian constitution. The ‘Jammu and
Kashmir Constituent Assembly’ was created on 5 November 1951. Prime
minister Nehru also signed the Delhi
Agreement with the then ‘ruler’ of the disputed State, Sheikh Adbullah,
which incorporated Article 370. In 1957,
the disputed State was incorporated into the Indian Union under a new
Constitution. This was done in direct
contravention of resolutions of the UNSC and UNCIP and the conditions
of the controversial Instrument of
Accession. The said constitutional provision was rushed through by
the then puppet ‘State’ government of
Bakshi Ghulam Mohammed. The people of Kashmir were not consulted.
In 1965, India and Pakistan once again went to war over Kashmir. A cease-fire
was established in September
1965. Indian Prime Minister Lal Bhadur Shastri and Pakistani president
Ayub Khan signed the Tashkent
Declaration on 1 January 1966. They resolved to try to end the dispute
by peaceful means. Although Kashmir
was not the cause of 1971 war between the two countries, a limited
war did occur on the Kashmir front in
December 1971. The 1971 war was followed by the signing of the Simla
Accord, under which India and
Pakistan are obliged to resolve the dispute through bilateral talks.
Until the early 1997, India never bothered to
discuss Kashmir with Pakistan even bilaterally. The direct foreign-secretaries-level
talks between the two
countries did resume in the start of the 1990s; but, in 1994, they
collapsed. This happened because India was
not ready even to accept Kashmir a dispute as such, contrary to what
the Tashkent Declaration and the Simla
Accord had recommended and what the UNSC and UNCIP in their resolutions
had stated.
The government of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, after coming to power
in February 1997, took the initiative of
resuming the foreign secretaries-level talks with India. The process
resumed in March 1997 in New Delhi. At the
second round of these talks in June 1997 in Islamabad, India and Pakistan
agreed to constitute a Joint Working
Group on Kashmir. But soon after the talks, India backtracked from
the agreement, the same way as Prime
Minister Nehru had done back in the 1950s by violating his own pledge
regarding the implementation of UN
resolutions seeking Kashmir settlement according to, as Mr Nehru himself
described, “the wishes of the
Kashmiri people.” The third round of India-Pakistan foreign secretaries-level
talks was held in New Delhi in
September 1997, but no progress was achieved as India continued dithering
on the question of forming a Joint
Working Group on Kashmir. The Hindu nationalist government of prime
minister Atal Behari Vajpaee is neither
ready to accept any international mediation on Kashmir, nor is it prepared
to seriously negotiate the issue
bilaterally with Pakistan.
Popular Uprising Since 1989
Since 1989, the situation in Occupied Kashmir has undergone a qualitative
change. In that year, disappointed
by decades-old indifference of the world community towards their just
cause and threatened by growing Indian
state suppression, the Kashmiri Muslim people rose in revolt against
India. A popular uprising that has gained
momentum with every passing day—unlike the previous two popular uprisings
by Kashmiris (1947-48, first
against Dogra rule and then against Indian occupation; and 1963, against
Indian rule, triggered by the
disappearance of Holy relic), which were of a limited scale.
The initial Indian response to the 1989 Kashmiri uprising was the imposition
of Governor’s Rule in the disputed
State in 1990, which was done after dissolving the government of Farooq
Abdullah, the son of Sheikh Abdullah.
From July 1990 to October 1996, the occupied State remained under direct
Indian presidential rule. In
September 1996, India stage-managed ‘State Assembly’ elections in Occupied
Kashmir, and Farooq Abdullah
assumed power in October 1996. Since then, the situation in the occupied
territories has further deteriorated.
Not only has the Indian military presence in the disputed land increased
fundamentally, the reported incidents
of killing, rape, loot and plunder of its people by Indian security
forces have also quadrupled.
To crush the Kashmiri freedom movement, India has employed various means
of state terrorism, including a
number of draconian laws, massive counter-insurgency operations, and
other oppressive measures. The
draconian laws, besides several others, include the Armed Forces (Jammu
and Kashmir) Special Powers Act,
1990; Terrorist and Disruptive Activities Act (TADA), 1990; the
Jammu & Kashmir Public Safety Act, 1978
(amended in 1990); and the Jammu & Kashmir Disturbed Areas Act,
1990.
Most Densely-Soldiered Territory
The Indian troops-to-Kashmiri people ratio in the occupied Kashmir is
the largest ever soldiers-to-civilians ratio
in the world. There are approximately 600,000 Indian military forces—including
regular army, para-military
troops, border security force and police—currently deployed in the
occupied Kashmir. This is in addition to
thousands of “counter-militants”—the civilians hired by the Indian
forces to crush the uprising.
Since the start of popular uprising, thousands of innocent Kashmir people
have been killed by the Indian
occupation forces. There are various estimates of these killings.
According to government of India estimates,
the number of persons killed in Occupied Kashmir between 1989 and 1996
was 15,002. Other Indian leaders
have stated a much higher figure. For instance, former Home Minister
Mohammad Maqbool Dar said nearly
40,000 people were killed in the Valley “over the past seven years.”
Farooq Abdullah’s 1996 statement
estimated 50,000 killings “since the beginning of the uprising.” The
All-Parties Hurriyat Conference
(APHC)--which is a representative body of over a dozen Kashmiri freedom
fighters’ organisations—also cites
the same number. Estimates of world news agencies and international
human rights organisations are over
20,000 killed.
Indian human rights violations in Occupied Kashmir include indiscriminate
killings and mass murders, torturing
and extra-judicial executions, and destruction of business and residential
properties, molesting and raping
women. These have been extensively documented by Amnesty International,
US Human Rights Watch-Asia,
and Physicians for Human Rights, International Commission of Jurists
(Geneva), Contact Group on Kashmir of
the Organization of Islamic Countries—and, in India, by Peoples Union
for Civil Liberties, the Coordination
Committee on Kashmir, and the Jammu and Kashmir Peoples’ Basic Rights
Protection Committee. Despite
repeated requests over the years by world human rights organisations
such as the Amnesty International, the
Indian government has not permitted them any access to occupied territories.
In 1997, it even refused the
United Nations representatives permission to visit there.
Settling The Kashmir Issue
For decades, India has defied with impunity all the UN resolutions on
Kashmir, which call for the holding of a
“free and fair” plebiscite under UN supervision to determine the wishes
of the Kashmiri people. Not just this. A
massive Indian military campaign has been on, especially since the
start of the popular Kashmiri uprising in
1989, to usurp the basic rights of the Kashmiri people. Killing, torture,
rape and other inhuman practices by
nearly 600,000 Indian soldiers are a norm of the day in Occupied Kashmir.
The Kashmir problem will be solved the moment international community
decides to intervene
in the matter—to put an end to Indian state terrorism in Occupied Kashmir
and to implement
UN resolutions. These resolutions recommend demilitarization of Kashmir
(through
withdrawal of all outside forces), followed immediately by a plebiscite
under UN supervision to
determine the future status of Kashmir. The intervention of the international
community is all
the more necessary, given the consistent Indian opposition to both
bilateral and multilateral
options to settle the Kashmir issue. Such an intervention is also urgently
required to stop the
ever-growing Indian brutalities against the innocent Muslim people
of Kashmir, who have
been long denied their just right to self-determination.
Averting The Nuclear Disaster
If the world community failed to realize the gravity of the Kashmir
problem now, there is every likelihood of
Kashmir once again becoming the cause of another war between India
and Pakistan. And, since both the
countries have acquired overt nuclear weapons potential, and since
India led by Hindu nationalists has clearly
shown its aggressive intentions towards Kashmir after declaring itself
a nuclear state, a third India-Pakistan war
over Kashmir is a possibility, a war that may result in a South
Asian nuclear catastrophe. The world
community, therefore, has all the reasons for settling Kashmir, the
core unresolved political dispute between
Islamabad and New Delhi.
Like many other international disputes, the Kashmir issue remained a
victim of world power politics during the
Cold War period. When the dispute was first brought to the UN, the
Security Council, with a firm backing of the
United Sates, stressed the settlement of the issue through plebiscite.
Initially, the Soviet Union did not dissent
from it. Later, however, because of its ideological rivalry with the
United States, it blocked every Resolution of
the UN Security Council calling for implementation of the settlement
plan.
In the post-Cold War period—when cooperation not conflict is the fast
emerging norm of
international politics, a factor which has helped resolve some other
regional disputes—the
absence of any credible international mediation on Kashmir contradicts
the very spirit of the
times. An India-Pakistan nuclear war over Kashmir? Or, settlement of
the Kashmir issue,
which may eventually pave the way for setting up a credible global
nuclear arms control and
non-proliferation regime? The choice is with the world community, especially
the principal
players of the international system.