120 Whither Kashmir? (Part II) - Islamabad Policy Research Institute

22 IPRI Factfile
expressed wishes - all these from the country which claims to be the
world’s largest democratic secular state.
India’s first head of state, Lord Mountbatten, is on record having
said on Oct 27, 1947, that since the “question of accession [of Kashmir]
should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the
state, it is my government’s wish that as soon as law and order have been
restored in Kashmir... the question of the state’s accession should be
settled by a reference to the people.” Again, one of India’s founding
fathers and first prime minister, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru, whose
government took the Kashmir issue to the United Nations, told the
Indian Constituent Assembly on Nov 25, 1947, “In order to establish our
bona fides, we have suggested that, when the people [of Kashmir] are
given the chance to decide their future, this should be done under the
supervision of an impartial tribunal such as the United Nations.” On
June 26, 1952, Mr. Nehru told Indian parliament, “If ... the people of
Kashmir do not wish to remain with us, let them go by all means; we will
not keep them against their will, however painful it may [be] for us.”
Against these solemn words and relentless struggle of the people of
Kashmir, New Delhi today has only two lame excuses: one, the pledges
and the UN resolutions calling for a plebiscite in Kashmir have become
outdated; two, what is going on in the Kashmir valley is not a people’s
revolt but the result of “cross-border terrorism.” Both arguments are as
self-serving as they are laughable. Time cannot abrogate moral values nor
invalidate the international community’s right to intervene in flash-points
of conflict arising from denial of freedom and involving tyranny and
persecution. We have the recent example of East Timor, where a dispute
was settled through a reference to the wishes of the people under UN
supervision. Indonesia upheld the people’s verdict, however “painful” it
might have been to it.
For Kashmir, despite more than a half century’s lapse, all United
Nations resolutions and the Indian leaders’ own pledges remain
unfulfilled but valid because they are based on the time-honoured values
of freedom and inviolability of basic human rights.
Kashmir continues to be a flashpoint of conflict. Pakistan and India
have earlier fought two full-fledged wars on Kashmir, and they came close
to a third following December 2001’s mobilization of its forces by India
and amassing them on Pakistan’s borders under the plea of combating
terrorism. With both the South Asian neighbours armed with nuclear
weapons, another conventional war on Kashmir has the potential to turn