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? organizations 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 organizations 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.
Tolipir
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