Page 6 - Pakistan Link - June 25, 2021

P6 – PAKISTAN LINK – JUNE 25, 2021 OPINION
n By Dr Ghulam Nabi Fai Solving the Kashmir Dispute mir came not like single spies but in battal-
Washington, DC ions, to borrow from Hamlet. Princely states
enjoyed three options: accession to India,
f promises are made to be broken, then accession to Pakistan, or independence. But
Kashmir may be summoned to prove the the choice, according to India’s Prime Minis-
Itreacherous proposition. Broken prom- ter Jawaharlal Nehru and tacitly endorsed by
ises haunt Kashmir’s history, and explain its the British was to be made by popular refer-

tragedy. I will confine myself endum in cases where the creed of the ruler
to the last century as a con- varied from the religion of the majority. That

cession to the shortness of fundamental democratic principle had been
life. sternly applied by Nehru with military
Under the 1846 Treaty of means in Hyderabad and Junagadh w h e r e
Amritsar, Great Britain sold the rulers were Muslim but their inhabitants
Kashmir and its then 2 million largely Hindu. Kashmir presented a converse

people to a Sikh ruler, Gulab case: The Maharaja was Hindu but the major-
Singh, like sheep and cattle. The strutting Brit- ity subscribed to Islam.

ish Empire valued Kashmiris every bit as much When paramountcy lapsed in Kashmir,
as it did the Irish then undergoing the Potato the Maharaja’s despotic regime was tottering.
famine, which many in New York condemn as An indigenous rebellion was in full swing.
a British genocide. But that was of little solace Instead of submitting to a referendum, Ma-
to their South Asian counterparts. haraja’s vaulting and mean-spirited ambition
Kashmir was a princely state under Gulab prompted a plea to the Indian army for in-
Singh and his successors, Ranbir Singh, Partap tervention. Nehru responded with alacrity on
Singh, and Hari Singh. A princely state was October 27, 1947, and intrigued to generate
not directly ruled by the British raj like India, a bogus instrument of Kashmiri accession to
but was subject only to British dictation over India to justify its aggression. British scholar
matters of defense and foreign policy. Alistair Lamb has persuasively exposed the
Maharaja Hari Singh, a Hindu, began his forgery, a first cousin to the Tzar’s Protocols of

princely rule over Kashmir in 1925. The peo- the Elders of Zion.
ple of the land were predominantly Muslim, Indigenous Kashmiris fought Indian
but lived a warm coexistence with Hindus, troops to a standstill. Contemporaneously,
Buddhists, and Sikhs. Their understanding of India’s head of state, Lord Mountbatten, offi-

Islam had taught them mutual respect, har- to correct or ameliorate their grievances dur- The British, predictably, did nothing. Af- cially promised a Kashmiri plebiscite in plain

mony, and ecumenism. ing his 1924 visit were sent into exile and their ter all, it was difficult to distinguish the Maha- language over which only Mr Pickwick might

The Maharaja inherited a regime ear- properties confiscated. The British then ap- raja’s savagery from the mass killings of Indi- puzzle: “[I] n consistence with their policy

marked by brutal repression of Muslims. pointed a commission headed by B.J. Clancy ans by the British in 1919, known as Amritsar that in the case of any state where the issue of

Heavy taxation, discriminatory laws, forced to investigate the grievances. It confirmed massacre. I would argue that this British cal- accession has been the subject of dispute, the
labor, and the absence of representation in their authenticity, recommended remedial lousness or aloofness was a pre-partition bro- question of accession should be decided in
services and lack of educational facilities were measures, which were largely neglected by the ken promise number one. As Rudyard Kipling accordance with the wishes of the people of

chief grievances. The slaughtering of a cow Maharaja. had versified to the world in 1899, the Brit- the state. It is my government’s wish that as
was a capital crime and mosques were con- A Kashmiri national movement was gal- ish Empire and suzerainties had been under- soon as law and order have been restored in
trolled by the state. vanized in 1931 when a state factotum for- taken to discharge the “White Man’s burden” Kashmir and its soil cleared of the invaders,
All dissent or political protest was bru- bade the Imam to deliver a sermon before the of civilizing backward races or religions. But the question of the state’s accession should be
tally suppressed. For instance, the Maharaja customary Friday prayer. Mr Abdul Qadeer in Kashmir, it had apostatized from its prom- settled by a reference to the people.”

summarily drowned state silk factory workers answered with a fiery speech denouncing the ise and abandoned Muslims to the law of the India then raced to the United Nations
in 1924 for the audacity of demanding higher Maharaja’s anti-Islamic injunctions. Mus- jungle. Security Council on January 1, 1948, and
wages than the likes of Oliver Twist. Muslims lims rallied to protest his arrest, and 22 were With the lapse of British paramountcy on championed a pair of resolutions on August

who petitioned British Viceroy Lord Reading slaughtered when the police opened fire. August 15, 1947, broken promises over Kash- KASHMIR, P7

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