The
United Nations, India And Kashmir
By
Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai
08 January,
2008
Countercurrents.org
If
promises are made to be broken, then Kashmir may be summoned to prove
the treacherous proposition. Broken promises haunt Kashmir's history,
and explain its tragedy.
The United
Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) passed a resolution
on January 5, 1949 wherein it was agreed that “the question of
the accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India or Pakistan
will be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial
plebiscite.” The resolution was negotiated with both India and
Pakistan and accepted by all five members of the Commission, Argentina,
Belgium, Columbia, Czechoslovakia and the United States. Professor Joseph
Korbel, father of Dr. Madeleine Albright was the Chairman of the Commission
at the time.
Sir Benegal
Rama Rau, the Indian delegate spoke during the 399th meeting of the
Security Council on January 13, 1949, “On behalf of my Government,
I can give the assurance that it will not only cooperate to the utmost
with the Commission itself towards a settlement in Kashmir, but also
with the United Nations in securing peace everywhere, because it believes
that this organization offers the only hope for peace for future generations,
on a secure basis.”
Sir Rau further
said at the Security Council on March 1, 1951, “The people of
Kashmir are not mere chattels to be disposed of according to a rigid
formula; their future must be decided on their own interest and in accordance
with their own desires.”
Mr. Setalwad,
another Indian delegate spoke during the 572nd meeting of the Security
Council on January 31, 1952, “I was the first to declare that
the people of Jammu and Kashmir should freely decide their own future.”
India, however,
was soon undeceived of its delusions over Kashmir's political yearning.
Recognizing that its people would never freely vote accession to India,
it contrived excuse after excuse to frustrate a plebiscite.
With the
lapse of British paramountcy on August 14, 1947, broken promises over
Kashmir came not like single spies but in battalions, to borrow from
Hamlet. Princely states enjoyed three options: accession to India, accession
to Pakistan, or independence. But the choice, according to India's Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and tacitly endorsed by the British, was to
be made by popular referendum in cases where the creed of the ruler
varied from the religion of the majority. That fundamental democratic
principle had been sternly applied by Nehru with military means in Hyderabad
and Junagadh where the rulers were Muslim but their inhabitants largely
Hindu. Kashmir presented a converse case: the Maharaja was Hindu but
the majority subscribed to Islam.
On November 2, 1947, Prime Minister Nehru reiterated, “We have
declared that the fate of Kashmir is ultimately to be decided by the
people. That pledge we have given and the Maharaja supported it, not
only to the people of Kashmir but to the world. We will not and cannot
back out of it."
In recent past, Dr. Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister of India and
General Pervez Musharraf, the President of Pakistan agreed at the United
Nations on September 24, 2004 “to explore all the possible options
to settle the issue of Kashmir.” Then exactly one year later,
Prime Minister said at the United Nations on September 16, 2005, “What
I do believe, I have also said that borders cannot be redrawn but we
must work together to make borders irrelevant.” One fails to understand
how can you explore all possible options when the only option available
is to make borders irrelevant (status quo).
On September
5, 2005, Dr. Manmohan Singh promised Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman,
All Parties Hurriyet Conference that India will have zero tolerance
on the human rights violations in Kashmir. Then he responded while replying
to a question during a press conference in New York that “The
fact that there is so much of violence (in Kashmir), the fact that cross
border infiltration continues, the terrorists are active, does impose
some burden on the ordinary citizens.”
The train
of broken promises over Kashmir might be forgiven if the consequences
were innocuous or inconsequential. But I submit the opposite is the
case. India exerts an iron-fisted rule over Kashmir. With approximately
700,000 military and paramilitary troops in the territory, gruesome
human rights violations are perpetrated with. Torture, rape, plunder,
abduction, arson, custodial disappearances, arbitrary detentions, and
ruthless suppression of peaceful political dissent have become commonplaces.
Let us hope
that the last promise over Kashmir has been broken.
Dr. Fai can
be reached at [email protected]
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