Chapter 11: Pakistan Keeps the Booty and Shares Some

When some people from POK protested against this gross violation of the State's territorial integrity they were asked to shut up. It doesn't end there. The arbitrary takeover by Pakistan of these territories was challenged in the High Court of POK and even the court felt impelled to declare Gilgit, Skardu, Baltistan etc. as part of POK. There were public protests even in these so-called territories as well as in POK but the Government in Islamabad ignored the protests as well as the court verdict.

And to think of it, the so-called Northern Territories are stretched across a 60000 km. landmass with a population of 900000. Not content with this the Pakistan Government chose to make a goodwill gesture to China by ceding another 5180 km. of the Northern Territories to it to facilitate the construction of the Karakoram highway. And China already had under its occupation another 37550 sq. kilometers of the state's territory in the region. Thus Chin a has come to occupy 42730 kilometers of the state of Jammu and Kashmir, thanks mainly to Pakistan's "generosity".

Then given the Pakistan-imposed constitution of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir, the people inhabiting the area have no right to opt out of Pakistan even if they wanted to. Which means that they have no right to decide their own future, the very right which it demands for the rest of the population of Jammu and Kashmir. Besides, who is to decide for the 900,000, who, having been declared residents of Northern Territories of Pakistan, have as per the Pakistani diktat ceased to be citizens of Jammu and Kashmir. To go by the Pakistani logic they have already decided their future like their "brethren" in POK.

Contrast this with the extra-ordinary care taken by India to protect the Kashmiri identity. The founding fathers of the Indian republic, sitting as the Constituent Assembly of the Union, inserted a special provision (Article 370) in the Federal Constitution conferring special rights on the people of the State. This was in addition to the constitution which elected representatives of the Kashmiri people gave to themselves within the framework of the Indian Constitution. Minor aberrations apart, the Union of India has respected the uniqueness of Kashmir, a State of the Union which had a distinct history of its own. In the words of India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru (Lok Sabha, June 26, 1952): "Do not think you are dealing with a part of Uttar-Pradesh, Bihar or Gujarat. You are dealing with an area historically and geographically and in all manner of things with a certain background .... Real integration comes of the mind and heart and not of some clause which you may impose on other people."

COLONISATION OF POK

And mind you this is not something unique to the Indian federation. Take the United States of America. What stirs a Californian or a Texan may leave a New Yorker or Bostonian completely unmoved. Yet such was the concern that the Indian leadership of the day had for what is generally described as the Kashmiri identity. To retain that identity the Indian Government scrupulously honored a law (enforced by the Dogra Maharajas of the State) which forbade any non- Kashmiri, someone not born or a resident of the State, from acquiring immovable property of any kind in the State. This was done to ensure that the demographic character of the State is not altered. The law exists and is enforced even today.

Contrast this with the virtual colonization of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and also of the so-called Northern Areas of Pakistan.

It speaks well of the Indian polity that notwithstanding the odd noise made occasionally by one political party or another about the abrogation of Article 370 (conferring special rights on the State) of the Indian Constitution, the leadership of the country has stood firmly by this commitment. Initially the State's accession to the Union was limited to Defense, Foreign Affairs, Communication and applied only specified parts of the federal Constitution to the State. Other subjects and other Constitutional provisions could be extended only with the concurrence of the State Government. It's likely, though, that in some cases there may be a feeling that the concurrence was obtained without proper consultation with the State government. But that is more an exception than the rule. What's is important is that the system did by and large work to the satisfaction of the Union and the State Governments. Given India's awareness of the sensitivities of the people of Jammu and Kashmir it is not unlikely that leaders in New Delhi and those in the State have been periodically endeavoring to set the record straight by removing some discrepancies that may have crept into the Constitutional relationship between the Union and the State. That's the way democracies function, not by diktat but by mutual consultation.

The people of the State have participated in the general elections along with the rest of the country. And like in some parts of the country it must be conceded that there were some instances of malpractice . Even in mature democracies electoral malpractice do occur. But this does not mean that people should abandon the democratic process and resort to arms to seek redressal of grievances genuine or imagined.

What has Pakistan offered to the people living in the territory occupied by it except an enactment which has virtually reduced the people living there to the level of virtual serfs. Flouting the UN resolutions it now flaunts at anyone who cares to listen, the then leader of Pakistan Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto virtually annexed the POK with one stroke of his pen. The Azad Jammu and Kashmir Act of 1974, to repeat, declared (Article 3) Islam to be the state religion of POK, forbade activities prejudicial or detrimental to the ideology of the State's accession to Pakistan (Article 7), disqualified non-Muslims from election to the Presidency and prescribed in the oath of office the pledge "to remain loyal to the country and the cause of accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to Pakistan". Then it proceeded to set up a State Council for POK named and controlled by Islamabad. And this was not a provisional regime. It was a declaration proclaiming POK as an integral part of Pakistan. It is a regime installed by Pakistan, riveted firmly to its administrative apparatus and committed to exist as one of its integral parts.

With that enactment, depriving the people of Pakistan occupied territory in Jammu and Kashmir of all their democratic rights Pakistan has forfeited the right to tom-tom its concern for people's right to self-determination.

THE COMMUNAL PERFIDY

Earlier on we had spoken of the various distinct units that form the State of Jammu and Kashmir - some predominantly Hindu, some predominantly Muslim and some predominantly Buddhist. To go by the Pakistan - ordained constitution for Pak-Occupied Kashmir, no non-Muslim has a say in determining the future of Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan's sole interest thus would appear to be to somehow, by hook or by crook, get hold of the Valley, to convince itself that the two-nation theory (Muslim and Hindu) is still valid. Thus you find the Pakistanis, a half century and three wars after the partitioning of the sub- continent, seeking to further their interests by fomenting an armed insurgency. They tend to forget the fact that India has the second largest Muslim population in the world. So far as Indian Muslims are concerned they surely don't look up to Pakistan as their protector. If they have problems at home so have other segments of Indian society. Even in relation to its Muslim population - given its size, you cannot call it a minority- India has a better record than Pakistan. The atrocities being committed even today, on Muslims who migrated to Pakistan in 1947, are heart-rending. And nowhere in Pakistan is this epidemic more rampant than in Sindh, home to the founder of Pakistan, M. A. Jinnah, the present Prime Minister Ms. Benazir Bhutto and her father Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Pakistani concern for the Muslim brethren in Kashmir is at best an effort to hoodwink the gullible, to confuse the Muslim world and arouse the sympathy of the do-gooders who would stake their all in the name of self-determination or human rights. Listen to this one from Qaid-e-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan, just days before the dawn of independence in the sub- continent. Said he on June 17, 1947: "Constitutionally and legally the Indian (princely) States will be independent sovereign states on the termination of (British) paramountcy and they will be free to decide for themselves to adopt any course they like - accede to India or Pakistan or decide to remain independent. But this right belonged to the ruler. We do not wish to interfere with the internal affairs of any state, for that is a matter primarily to be resolved between the rulers and the peoples of the states." Not one word about the rights of the people.

SHARP CONTRAST

In sharp contrast stood the resolution passed on June 15, 1947 by the All India Congress Committee. It said: The people of the (Princely) States must have a dominating voice in any decision regarding them. Had the proposition been accepted by Jinnah all three non-acceding states then - Kashmir, Junagadh on India's western coast, and Hyderabad - would have had a plebiscite. No, Jinnah would have none of that. He sought Jodhpur's accession and accepted Junagadh's if only to harass the Indians.

Opportunity beckoned Jinnah again, six days after Kashmir's accession on October 26, 1947. Lord Louis Mountbatten, the last Viceroy and Governor General, went to Lahore on November 1 and put forth a written proposal offering a plebiscite in all the three states.

Mountbatten recorded Jinnah's rejection of the idea of a plebiscite. "It was redundant and undesirable to have a plebiscite when it was quite clear that the states should go according to their majority population, and if we (India) would give him the accession of Kashmir he would offer Junagadh direct to India?"

The truth is that Jinnah was then unsure of the outcome of a plebiscite in Kashmir. He told one of the pre-eminent Pakistani leaders of the day, Mian Iftikharuddin that he wanted to keep Hyderabad as a thorn in India's side.

So, when you look back at this period of history the conclusion is obvious. Jinnah, the astute man that he was, knew that even in an ordinary opinion poll, forget a full-fledged plebiscite in Kashmir then, the result could have gone against him. What followed was a natural corollary - the attack by Pakistan on the Valley, the accession of the state to India fully backed up by its people, India complaining to the UN against Pakistani aggression, the UN Security Council and UNCIP resolution laying down the ground rules for a plebiscite, Pakistan reneging on all the commitments made by it et-al.

Two further wars and two agreements later- both committing the two countries to resolve their problems bilaterally ... Pakistan has now chosen to harp on resolutions that have lost their relevance.

As the futility of the insurgency unleashed by it becomes evident, Pakistan, predictably is becoming ever more desperate to keep the issue alive. That's how you have this sudden Pakistani concern for human rights violations in Kashmir. There have undoubtedly been, as we said before, some cases of excesses by the Indian security forces which have occurred when they faced armed militants. But action has been taken to identify and punish the offenders.

HAZRATBAL - THE LITMUS TEST

What Pakistan forgets to mention is that it is the one which has inflicted the hardships of the past four years on the Kashmiri people by sending in trained and well armed terrorists into the state. No state can countenance such brazen violation of its unity and integrity and if laymen get caught in the crossfire between the militants and the security forces they have to thank Pakistan for it.

Nothing brings out the Indian commitment to democracy and democratic values as strikingly as its handling of the seizure of Kashmir's holiest shrine Hazratbal by Pakistani-backed terrorists in 1993. It was a diabolical plan whose purpose was to tarnish India's image by trying to provoke Indian security forces to react and force their way into the Shrine. In the event the raising of a month- long cordon around the Shrine complex broke the will of the armed men inside and led them to surrender themselves to the security forces.

Here again one saw Indian democracy in action. When a group of lawyers moved the Kashmir High Court seeking food and medical attention for the terrorists inside the Shrine the court readily granted the prayer and the state administration was equally prompt in carrying out the court directive. Thus, for days on end, food was carried to the extremists and doctors allowed to get into the Shrine complex to tend to the sick who, as it turned out, were largely lay men and women and some children held captive inside by the terrorists.

Such things can happen only in living, vibrant democracies. And democracies do not have to stage plebiscites at the drop of someone else's hat just to counter baseless charges like the Indian state having let loose a reign of terror in the State. The capacity to be just and fair is the hallmark of a democracy and the inclination to be unjust makes for what Pakistan has been trying to sell all these past nearly live decades.