National Security
War with Pakistan Over Kashmir - Irrational & Disastrous
Dt: 30/9/16
War with Pakistan Over Kashmir -
Irrational & Disastrous
Dr T.H.Chowdary*
The attacks on the Pathankot Indian Airforce’s base station and a Brigade Headquarters of the Indian Army in Uri have enraged the entire Indian nation. People are calling for decisive military action to punish the Pakistani forces which are at the root of the ceaseless terrorist attacks not only in Jammu & Kashmir but in several cities of India for years past. Any military action against terrorist training or other camps in the Pak occupied Kashmir or other places of Pakistan could lead to a nuclear war between the two countries. In a non-nuclear war India is certain not only to cross the border but reach and overrun Lahore. That prospect certainly makes Pakistan unleash its atom bombs on Indian cities primarily Delhi and Mumbai. India has committed to the world that it would not be the first to use nuclear weapons in any conflict with any country. Pakistan did not commit itself to such a civilised declaration. A nuclear war means two different things to the two combatants, India and Pakistan. Pakistan’s soldiers and people believe that by killing or getting killed by infidels in war they will go to heaven and that the infidels will be incinerated. Indians believes that killing humans by use of nuclear weapons is a sin and crime against humanity and so they go to hell. These two value positions are different, Pakistan, as one of its senior diplomats has already warned, will use nuclear weapons. Are we prepared to accept such an event, a nuclear holocaust?
2. A senior retired diplomat of the Indian Foreign Service, Rajiv Dogra in his book, “Bleeding Borders” has mentioned that a Pakistani soldier had once unwittingly told him of the pledge that every Pakistani soldier takes when he joins the armed forces. The pledge is that he would wage a jihad against India. Rajiv Dogra also revealed a conversation with a retired Pakistani diplomat who said that his prayer to Allah is that he should be given two nuclear weapons one of which he would drop on Mumbai and the other on Delhi. The Parliament of Pakistan was told of the resolve and plan of the armed forces to use nuclear weapons in any conflict with India. This is the mindset of the decision -makers especially of the armed forces of Pakistan in regard to India.
3. Is it necessary and right that we should stake all our wealth and armed forces to have Kashmir with us? India was divided on the basis that Muslims are not part of the Indian nation; that they are a separate nation. In vindication of which there were hundreds of riots in India culminating in the killing of 10 ,000 Hindus on the first day of Muslim League’s Direct Action on the 16 Aug 1946 under the aegis of the then Muslim League’s government in Bengal. Congress could not prevent the partition of India. Mahatma Gandhi who said that India would be divided only on his dead body had to undergo the shame of himself having pleaded at the AICC meeting in June 1947, for accepting the partition of India.
4. India did not accept the accession of Hindu majority Junagadh to Pakistan. The people rose in revolt and Junagadh merged with India. Hyderabad under the rule of the Nizam wanted to be independent. We could not suffer it. We had to liberate the state by using our armed forces and integrated with India. Not only geography but the religion of the majority of the people was also a deciding factor for accession of the princely states to India or Pakistan. J&K was a little India but in reverse with Kashmir and Baltistan and Gilgit having Muslim majority and Jammu and Laddak having Hindu Buddhist majority. Just as India was divided, Hari Singh, the Hindu ruler of J&K could have divided his state into a Muslim area and a Hindu Buddhist area; and accede the Muslim area to Pakistan and the Hindu Buddhist areas to India. That would have been the fairest solution.
5. Shaikh Abdullah, the supposedly non-communal leader of the Muslim population in J&K was having the idea of eventual independence for Kashmir. That would never be acceptable to Md. Ali Jinnah and Pakistan. Abdullah could expect the substance of independence if he acceded to India with some conditions. Independent India’s Governor General, Mountbatten was thinking of a treaty with Nizam and not accession. Shaikh Abdullah in execution of his long term dream of independence consented to conditional accession to India with himself as the Prime Minister of J&K. This was what happened on the eve of Pakistani soldiers (raiders) reached the outskirts of Srinagar and Nehru unilaterally promised a plebiscite. Article - 370 of the Indian constitution gave a special status to J&K .
6. The ruling and leading elements in Kashmir never seem to have reconciled to full integration with India. Events like the dismissal of Shaikh Abdullah as Prime Minister of J&K and his imprisonment and later periodical intifadas (mass violence) against the continuance of J&K with India, the expulsion of all Hindus from the Muslim majority Kashmir Valley and the latest nearly three month old intifada and Pakistan ‘s repeated attempts to inflame the Muslims to intifada, and two wars ( 1947,1965) over Kashmir have been costing India very dearly. 1% of India’s population in J&K has been receiving 10% of all the money transfers by the Central government to the states. Yet, the Muslim population (of J&K is only 65%) are not satisfied. We are having continuous deaths of our armed forces and civilians (together, over 40,000) because of the periodic intifada in Kashmir . Are these worth incurring ?
7. It is necessary to recall what that great statesman and patriot, Dr B.R Ambedkar said in the Parliament of India. He resigned from the Cabinet because of his differences with Nehru on various issues including that of Kashmir. On 10 of Oct 1951 he made a statement in the Parliament about his resignation from the cabinet. He said : “ our quarrel with Pakistan is a part of our foreign policy about which I feel deeply dissatisfied . There are two grounds which have disturbed our relations with Pakistan - one is Kashmir and the other is the condition of our people in East Bengal ( East Pakistan ) . I felt that we should be more deeply concerned with East Bengal where the conditions of our people seem from all the newspapers, intolerable than with Kashmir. Notwithstanding this, we have been staking our all on the Kashmir issue. Even then I feel that we have been fighting on an unreal issue. The issue on which we are fighting most of the time is who is in the right and who is in the wrong. The real issue to my mind is not who is in the right but what is right. Taking that to be the main question, my view has always been that the right solution is to partition Kashmir. Give the Hindu and Buddhist part to India and the Muslim part to Pakistan as we did in the case of India. We are really not concerned with the Muslim part of Kashmir. It is a matter between the Muslims of Kashmir and Pakistan. They may decide the issue as they like. Or if you like, divide it into three parts; the ceasefire zone, the Valley and the Jammu -Ladhak region and have a plebiscite only in the Valley. What I am afraid of is that in the proposed plebiscite which is to be an overall plebiscite the Hindus and Buddhists of Kashmir are likely to be dragged into Pakistan against their wishes and we may have to face the same problem as we are facing today in East Bengal”.
8. Dr Ambedkar has been prophetic not only in regard to Kashmir but in regard to another matter, partition of India. He proposed ( soon after Muslim League’s Lahore resolution for Pakistan in March 1940) that the minority populations should be exchanged between India and Pakistan in full. Only then there would be a final settlement to the unmitigated and unresolvable Hindu-Muslim problem in an undivided country/state. The Muslim League and Md Ali Jinnah were for this proposal but Gandhi and Congress rejected it with the result that while all Hindu Sikh population has been expelled from Pakistan, 95% of Muslims in what is India since 1948, who agitated for the partition have stayed here and their proportion is continually increasing from 9.8% in 1951 to more than 15% by now. Same separatism is once again on the offensive.
9. The permanent solution should be not war over Kashmir but solution on the lines of what Dr Ambedkar suggested. And this involves amendment to the Constitution. As part of the final solution while Jammu & Ladhak would be fully integrated with India as a separate state(s), the problem of minorities ( i.e Muslims) and their separatism should be exorcised by dropping every reference to “minorities” in the Constitution and treating every citizen under the same laws. That is implementation of the uniform civil code as envisaged in the Constitution but which is opposed by the same elements who had been cherishing separatism. Articles 25 to 30 should be amended to remove all distinctions between various religious, Dharmic and linguistic communities so that citizens have rights as individuals and not as members/followers of religious, caste or linguistic groups.
10. There is one more point of relevance while considering the issue of war with Pakistan. The war to overthrow the existing system of India’s government and establish “dictatorship of the proletariat” as conceived by Marxism /Communism is being waged by Naxalites/ Maoists with their Peoples War Guerrilla armies since 1976, over a period of 40 years. The war of the Maoists is being supported by above -ground Maoists under various descriptions like revolutionary writers, Peoples Unions for Civil Liberties, democratic freedoms, social justice and so on. The mighty state of India has not been able to defeat it because of lack of resolution or actual inability of our military and paramilitary forces to score victory over them If such is the situation in regard to Maoist civil war, what could be the situation in total war against Pakistan, a nuclear armed State and people who believe in martyrdom in the cause of their God? (1,731 words)
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