Chapter 4: Obsolete Resolutions

Pakistan tried to impose a military solution by launching a war against India in 1965. The pattern was familiar. Massive infiltration was followed by invasion of Indian territory on September 1, 1965.

A cease-fire came about after a 22-day war with India in possession of large tracts of Pakistan's territory. An agreement was signed at Tashkent between India and Pakistan on January 10,1966 with both countries agreeing to withdraw to the international border and the cease-fire line in Jammu and Kashmir.

Pakistan imposed yet another war in 1971 invading India on December 3. It again failed in its objective despite millions of East Pakistanis being brutally exterminated by the Pakistan Army. East Pakistan became an independent country. As many as 93,000 Pakistani soldiers surrendered to the Indian Army and after 16 days of war, the Indian Army was once again in possession of Pakistani territory in the Western Sector. After the war, bilateral talks were held in June/July 1972. Under the terms of this Agreement, the two countries undertook to resolve all differences bilaterally. Pakistan, through its commitment in the Agreement agreed to shift once for all the Kashmir question from the UN to the bilateral plane.

For meaningful dialogue Pakistan was expected to create the right climate. Instead, after a few years Pakistan began its familiar game again by supporting terrorism in Punjab and Kashmir. This, to say the least, was in utter disregard of the Shimla Accord, apart from being unfriendly and provocative in the extreme.

SELF-DETERMINATION

The other favorite argument put forward by Pakistan is of self-determination It has tried to elicit world support on the plea that the people of Jammu and Kashmir have been denied the right of self-determination.

India fully subscribes to the principle of self-determination. It can be operative only when one is dealing with a nation as a whole, and the context in which it can be applicable is the context of conquest or of foreign domination or of colonial exploitation. It could lead to dangerous consequences if the expression were extended to apply to an integral part of any country or sections of its population or to enable such integrated part or sections of the population to secede. The principle of self-determination cannot and must not be applied to bring about the fragmentation of a country or its people.

History tells us that the United States fought a bloody civil war to prevent the whole of the South of the Union from seceding and constituting itself into an independent country. A large majority of the people of that part of the United States were opposed to Abraham Lincoln and his policies and they wanted the freedom to refuse to emancipate the slaves, and yet the United States government, very rightly and properly, refused to break up the country by permitting a part of it to secede.

REACTIONARY THESIS

Pakistan's thesis is a reactionary and obscurantist one. The thesis of self- determination which Pakistan advocates, has been used in the recent past by colonialists and neo-colonialists for the disruption of newly emergent states. Pakistan would have the hands of the clock set backwards and would go back to the days when countries permitted only one religion and persecuted those who followed another faith.

India has already exercised the right of self-determination through a Constituent Assembly of elected representatives, in which the people of Jammu and Kashmir participated. The Indian people gave to themselves a Constitution which has been in force for over four decades. Under the constitution, ten general elections based on universal adult suffrage have been held.

In order to draw up a Constitution for internal administration of the State, within the larger framework of the Constitution of India, the people of Jammu and Kashmir elected representatives on the basis of universal franchise thus giving a practical demonstration of the exercise of their right of self-determination.

The stateÕs Constituent Assembly drew up a democratic constitution under which the people of the state enjoy political freedom and civil liberties. General elections in the state have been held under the supervision of the Election Commission of India except in the last few years when, because of continued terrorist activities, the State Assembly has had to be suspended.

One cannot resist the temptation of asking Pakistan a few pertinent questions. Did Pakistan permit the people of Princely States in Pakistan to exercise the right of self-determination after the ruler acceded to Pakistan? As was disclosed in the West Pakistan High Court a few years ago, the accession of Bahawalpur had been forced on the ruler of the State. The Khan of Kalat revolted against accession and was arrested and detained in 1958. In neither case was the principle of self-determination applied. When Pakistan purchased, mark the word "purchased", the territory of Gwadur from the Sultan of Muscat, what happened to Pakistan's solicitous regard for the people's right to self- determination? No opportunity was given to the people of Gwadur to say whether in the second half of the twentieth century they wished to be bought like chattel.

Pakistan's harping on self-determination today, against the principles of the UN Charter on self-determination which are meant to apply to colonial territories and not to integral parts of countries, is only a cover for territorial ambitions.

As far as the UN resolutions on Kashmir were concerned, two UN mediators had warned that they were getting obsolete. The report by the president of the Security Council, Gunnar Jarring, warned: "The implementation of international agreements of an ad hoc character which has not been achieved fairly speedily, may become progressively more difficult because the situation with which they were to cope has indeed to change." That was said on April 29,1957.

The very last report by a UN mediator was that of Dr. Frank Graham's dated 28 March, 1958. It referred to a major clause regarding mutual troops withdrawal and said that "the execution of the provisions of the resolution of 1948 might create more serious difficulties than were foreseen at the time the parties agreed to that. Whether the UN representative would be able to reconstitute the status quo which had obtained 10 years ago, would seem to he doubtful." Thirty-six years have elapsed since.

It also needs to be recalled why Pakistan insists on a solution as per the nearly half-century old UN resolutions and why it is untenable. Pakistan did at no time observe the resolutions, either in spirit or letter. It has its own interpretation of the UN resolutions to offer, even when the self-same resolutions give a lie to the Pakistani view. Take Pakistan-occupied Kashmir for instance. If there has to be a plebiscite it will he confined only to the Indian parts of Jammu and Kashmir. Not the Pakistan-occupied territories. And there again the only choice the Kashmiris have is to choose between Pakistan and India.

And yet as late as January 29, 1994, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) leader, Amanullah Khan, speaking in Muzaffarabad, tartly reminded Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto that Pakistan's persistent rejection of the third option of independence for Kashmir is "tantamount to denying the very right of self-determination" Pakistan has been harping about a right which, he asserted, cannot be "limited, conditioned or circumscribed". But Pakistan's espousal of the right to self-determination has always been self-servingly conditional and circumscribed.

Apart from other provisions, one has only to read para 6 of the Plebiscite Resolution to realize that it is incapable of enforcement. The para provides for the return of State citizens who left it on account of the disturbances of 1947.

The resolution of August 13, 1948, provided that "pending a final solution, the territory evacuated by Pakistani troops will be administered by the local authorities under the surveillance of the Commission". Pakistan has planted a "State" there in breach of this provision. We shall talk about it in the next chapter.