Kashmir's founding tragedy

In Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris, the author describes Hari Singh's accession dilemma and takes a critical look at how both Pakistani-held Kashmir and Indian J&K have fared in the decades since

Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris

Christopher Snedden

Speaking Tiger

Pages 372; Rs 699

The Kashmir dispute turns seventy later this month-- the invasion of the Kashmir Valley by Pashtun tribesmen, the formation of “Azad Kashmir”, maharaja Hari Singh’s accession to India, his SOS to the Indian government, and the airlift of Indian troops to Srinagar to thwart the invaders, all took place between October 22 and October 27, 1947. In Understanding Kashmir and Kashmiris, Christopher Snedden, an Australian academic, describes Hari Singh’s accession dilemma and the circumstances in which his state fragmented within three months of the British withdrawal, and takes a critical look at how both Pakistani-held Kashmir and Indian J&K have fared in the decades since. 

Mr Snedden actually places the origin of the problem a century earlier -- in 1846, the year the Dogra dynasty and the princely state of J&K were established, when the cash-strapped East India Company sold Kashmir to Gulab Singh, the Jammu raja and founder of the Dogra dynasty, a week after seizing it from the Sikhs. Had the British retained direct control of the two regions (Jammu and Kashmir) and administered this combined entity themselves, he argues, the dispute over J&K’s status may never have occurred. The British “would then have been compelled to determine this region’s international fate in 1947 -- and not the indecisive ruler of J&K”. The logic is impeccable, because in 1947 only British India was partitioned, while the princes (who ruled one-third of the country) were made solely responsible for acceding to India or Pakistan.

Successive governments in J&K and at the Centre have been almost as guilty of misrule as the Dogras, who alienated large segments of the population, Mr Snedden argues. New Delhi ensured that “strongly pro-India” chief ministers tied J&K ever closer to India and engineered a creeping integration with India, despite Article 370 of the country’s Constitution. Of the eight Assembly elections between 1951 and 1987, only the 1977 and 1983 polls were free and fair. “All others were rigged.” Local feeling boiled over after the 1987 rigged election, paving the way for anti-Indian protests from 1988 and full-fledged militancy in 1990. 

Mr Snedden is equally critical of Pakistan for “sidelining” the Kashmiris. Both “Azad Kashmir” and Gilgit-Baltistan (north of the Valley, which Pakistan gained in November 1947), he writes, have been treated like “glorified municipalities”. The former has never been given de jure recognition, only de facto acceptance, while the latter isn’t administratively a province of Pakistan.

Mr Snedden, the author of a book on “Azad Kashmir”, writes that contrary to the Indian government’s claim that the invasion by Pashtun tribesmen led to the creation of “Azad Kashmir”, it was actually an anti-maharaja uprising by pro-Pakistan Muslims in western Jammu’s Poonch and Mirpur districts that brought this entity into being on October 24, 1947, two days after the tribal invasion began. The 3,000 invading tribesmen -- armed, financed and provided with trucks by Pakistan -- only “stiffened the resolve” of the rebels, he writes. 

Mr Snedden often contradicts himself. He says at one point that given a choice of two options (India or Pakistan, without the option of independence), Kashmiri Muslims “probably favoured joining secular India over joining Islamic Pakistan”, as a result of the influence of Sheikh Abdullah; a page later, he says, “Many J&K Muslims were strongly pro-Pakistan.” 

His explanation of how India lost the Gilgit area (north of the Kashmir Valley) to Pakistan, also does not match the account by the man who was at the centre of it all. Mr Snedden writes that, motivated by Hari Singh’s accession, the people of Gilgit rose up in revolt in early November with the support of the Gilgit Scouts “and some visiting Pukhtoons”, established a provisional government, and asked Karachi to send an administrator, which it did later that month. Baltistan, north-east of the Valley, soon followed.

In fact, Major William Brown, acting commandant of the Gilgit Scouts, has recorded in his memoir, Gilgit Rebellion: The Major who Mutinied over Partition of India, that on November 4 he ousted Hari Singh’s recently-arrived governor and telegraphed to Karachi, asking Pakistan to take over the region, which it duly did. (Brown was awarded the MBE by the British and the Star of Pakistan by that country.) Mr Snedden denies that Brown played any role, but correctly points out that he had no administrative standing, as the British had returned control of Gilgit (which it held on lease from the maharaja for strategic reasons) to Hari Singh on August 1, 1947. 

Gilgit-Baltistan is over five times the size of “Azad Kashmir”, and the China Pakistan Economic Corridor passes through it. India claims this vast region, but Pakistan’s stance is that it is not part of the Kashmir dispute. Mr Snedden explains its strategic importance in the following terms: the Karakoram Highway passes through it; had India retained it, it would have enabled access to Afghanistan through the Wakhan Corridor located north of J&K, bypassing Pakistan. And the Kargil war was triggered when Pakistani troops crossed the Line of Control from Baltistan.

One of the more interesting discussions in the book concerns the findings of “the first-ever, credible, wide-ranging survey” of Kashmiris on both sides of the LOC, carried out in 2009 by Ipsos-MORI, and sourced from the Chatham House report of 2010, Kashmir: Paths to Peace, authored by Robert W Bradnock. The survey covered most of “Azad Kashmir” (except for one district), most of Kashmir (except for three districts), and Ladakh and Jammu, but excluded Gilgit-Baltistan. Among those polled, the proportion favouring independence for J&K was 44 per cent in “Azad Kashmir”, zero in all Jammu districts, and 30 per cent and 20 per cent in the Leh and Kargil districts of Ladakh. In the Kashmir Valley’s disturbed districts, the proportion was: Anantag, 74 per cent; Badgam, 75 per cent; Baramulla, 95 per cent; Srinagar, 82 per cent.

This survey -- whose findings and methodology Indian strategic analysts have questioned -- was carried out after considerable anti-India feeling had grown in the Valley. (Mr Snedden himself, who concedes that the sample was small and had an urban bias, doesn’t offer an explanation for the low percentage of “Azad Kashmiris” favouring independence for J&K.) Had a referendum been carried out at a time when Sheikh Abdullah and his National Conference still held sway over Kashmiris, the results could have been different. In the referendum in the erstwhile North West Frontier Province in July 1947, only 50.49 per cent of eligible electors voted to join Pakistan, despite a Congress boycott.  

The Kashmir dispute will continue for the forseeable future, Mr Snedden writes, because neither India nor Pakistan has any compelling reason to resolve it. Only the simultaneous emergence of powerful, visionary leaders in the two countries, he suggests, can pave the way for a solution. Alas, such leaders cannot be “manufactured”, and the baggage of the past also precludes any such possibility. A younger generation devoid of such baggage may therefore be needed. 

Mr Snedden explains the antecedents of the Kashmir dispute in exhaustive detail for a generalist audience, writing sympathetically about all those currently living within the boundaries of the erstwhile princely state. A 25-page bibliography also indicates the thoroughness of his research. However, the post-2000 years are cursorily dealt with. And while the Indian edition comes two years after the UK edition, it covers developments only until early 2014.