India dissolves Kashmir assembly, fresh polls likely

[HalfMoon]

This is a baseless assertion.
The Cease-Fire line was redesignated as LOC after Simla Agreement
Had there been an agreement between ZAB and Indira, they would have declared it IB then

And why was cease-fire line renamed as LOC?

 

[M. Sarmad]

And why was cease-fire line renamed as LOC?

Because ZAB refused to accept it as IB

 

[HalfMoon]

Because ZAB refused to accept it as IB

Here is the full story.

Did Bhutto outwit Indira Gandhi?

To Understand the political climate prevalent in the subcontinent in June-July 1972, when the Simla Conference was held, it is necessary to recall the events that preceded it - events that altered some basic perceptions that the Pakistan leadership had held dear. The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state had starkly shown the inadequacy of religion as the sole basis of nationality. It also repudiated the two-nation theory and struck a deadly blow to Pakistan's claim, implicit as well as explicit, that it spoke on behalf of the Muslims of the subcontinent. Bhutto was acutely conscious of this fundamental change of context and he stated this frankly in his preliminary conversation with Indira Gandhi. He referred critically to his own views on these subjects, which he had articulated in extremely bellicose language earlier. He even lamented the tripartite division of the Muslim community in the subcontinent and hoped that, in the new circumstances, the community would become a strong force for peace and stability in the region.Furthermore, Bhutto said he was convinced by the events of 1971 that Pakistan could not acquire Kashmir via military intervention. In March 1972, a month before the meeting of emissaries in Murree, he told Indian journalists that a settlement of the Kashmir issue would emerge on the basis of a "line of peace" and that the right of self-determination, in his view, was not to be exported from outside. "Kashmir troubles me a lot," Bhutto said. He did not want its dark shadow looming over Indo-Pak. relations. He wanted his countrymen to get over the trauma of the emergence of its eastern wing as a separate independent state as quickly as possible and concentrate on making the now smaller Pakistan a prosperous country. He told Indira Gandhi in his meeting with her on July 1: "I have been saying in Pakistan: how can we fight for rights of Kashmiris? I have prepared public opinion for days ahead. But we cannot do it under compulsion." Bhutto was personally inclined to accept the status quo as a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem. However, he had several constraints in this regard which he spelt out as follows:

(a) His political enemies at home, especially the army bosses, would denounce him for surrendering what many in Pakistan considered their vital national interest. This would endanger the democratic set-up which had emerged after fourteen years of army rule. In this context, Bhutto repeatedly talked about his fear of what he called the Lahore lobby, though he never clearly explained what it was.

(b) He was anxious to obtain the support of all political elements in Pakistan in favour of any agreement that might emerge at Simla. He made this point at the beginning of the conference, while apologising for bringing with him an unusually large delegation, consisting of about 84 members, who represented the entire political spectrum of Pakistan. He wanted all members of the delegation to support and be committed to the outcome of the conference. He said there should be no dissenters in his delegation when he left Simla. He was probably thinking of his own negative role vis-a-vis Ayub Khan after the Tashkent Declaration in 1966.

Bhutto was very keen on the support of Aziz Ahmed, who led the Pakistan negotiating team. Ahmed was Pakistan's senior-most civil servant and carried great weight in the ranks of its bureaucracy. He also had the reputation of being a hardliner. Ahmed's support would secure Bhutto the support of Pakistan's officialdom, which constituted a very powerful segment of the country's political elite.

Aziz Ahmed was against enlarging the agenda to include Kashmir. But he yielded ground when the Indian side explained it was not insisting on an immediate and formal acceptance of the status quo, which they believed could be looked upon as the imposition of harsh terms by the victor in war. P. N. Haksar, who had assumed the leadership of the Indian team when D. P. Dhar suddenly took ill, felt that such a move might nurture a revanchist ideology in Pakistan. He reminded his colleagues of the consequence of the Treaty of Versailles and persuaded them against doing anything which could be the basis of another war. The Indian side therefore put their proposal in a low key and in an indirect manner by proposing that the name of the line dividing India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir be changed from the "cease-fire line" to the "line of control". Aziz Ahmed objected to this. He pointed out quite rightly, that the proposed change in terminology would mean a change in the status of the line. He put forth this view vehemently and said he was not prepared to accept the change in nomenclature.

* * *

In the afternoon meeting on July 2, which was to consider the third and last Indian draft agreement, Aziz Ahmed said: "This is our last meeting... Pakistan cannot accept that the ceasefire line has ceased to exist. That is the main reason why we are not accepting the Indian draft." For the Indian side this was a retreat from the statement made by Bhutto in his previous day's meeting with Indira Gandhi in the presence of officials. In that meeting, after Aziz Ahmed's remark that "We have agreed to everything except Kashmir", Bhutto intervened and said: "I have, in a way, agreed to Kashmir being resolved by peaceful means... As regards the Kashmir dispute, an agreement will emerge in the foreseeable future. It will evolve into a settlement. Let there be a line of peace; let people come and go; let us not fight over it."

The transformation of the ceasefire line into the line of control was the core of the Indian solution to the Kashmir problem. The de facto line of control was meant to be graduated to the level of a de jure border. Since no agreement was reached on this point, negotiations were called off and the curtain came down on five days of hectic negotiations which had begun with great hopes throughout the subcontinent. This was the afternoon of July 2. The Pakistan delegation was scheduled to leave Simla the next morning.

Soon, word spread that the conference had failed. Media men rushed off to announce the failure. In the midst of this enveloping gloom Bhutto asked to see Mrs. Gandhi and a meeting was fixed for 6 p.m. at the Retreat, where she was staying. When Bhutto came to see Mrs. Gandhi, he met P.N. Haksar and myself briefly and said: "You officials give up too easily". Mrs. Gandhi and Bhutto then met for an hour while Haksar and I waited in the adjoining room. Emerging from his tete-a-tete with Mrs. Gandhi, Bhutto looked pleased and said, "we have settled the matter and decided to give you some work to do before dinner." After we saw Bhutto off, Mrs. Gandhi briefed us on what had transpired.

Mrs. Gandhi elaborated the merits of the Indian proposal in the following terms: It was the only feasible solution. An important feature of the proposal was that neither country was gaining or losing territory on account of war. It did not involve transfers of population from one side to the other. Kashmiris as an ethnic community were left undivided on the Indian side. The line of control was therefore largely an ethnic and linguistic frontier. In fact in 1947, at the time of partition, it was also an ideological frontier, being the limit of the political influence of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah and his National Conference party. True, there were some anomalies in this otherwise neatly etched picture, but these, Mrs. Gandhi pointed out, could be removed by mutual consent.

Bhutto resounded with feeling and apparent sincerity. After long reflection he had come to the conclusion that the Indian proposal was the only feasible one. But he could not agree to incorporating it in the agreement for the reasons he had stated earlier. He would, however, work towards its implementation in practice and over time. Mrs. Gandhi herself was worried that a formal withdrawal of the Indian claim on Pak-occupied Kashmir could create political trouble for her. She agreed that the solution should not be recorded in the agreement for the reasons advanced by Bhutto, but it should be implemented gradually, as he had suggested.

It was also agreed that the understanding would not be a written one. The insertion of secret clauses in the agreement was considered inconsistent with the desire to build a structure of durable peace. It was decided, however, that the agreement would be worded in a manner that would not create difficulties of implementation for Pakistan. This resulted in some last-minute negotiations which were carried on during the return banquet of the president of Pakistan on the eve of his departure for his country. Thus, some clauses included in the draft agreement had to be deleted to accommodate Bhutto.

The most important part of the agreement, sub-clause 4(ii), says: In Jammu and Kashmir, the line of control resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971 shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side. Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this line. The phrase "without prejudice" to the recognised position of either side was a concession to Bhutto to save him from domestic critics. The second and third sentences were assumed to prevent the abuse of this concession and to lay the foundation for a future settlement of the Kashmir issue.

* * *

Bhutto also knew that the Government of India had opened a dialogue with Sheikh Abdullah. He realised that India was in effect meeting the demand of separatist Kashmiris for representation at India-Pak negotiations on Kashmir via simultaneous but separate talks with Sheikh Abdullah. From his own sources and from reports in the Indian press he was aware of the probability of the Sheikh joining Indian mainstream politics. He knew that the ban on the Sheikh's entry into Kashmir was about to be removed. And when it was removed, three weeks after the Simla conference, the Sheikh told his audience in Srinagar that the tragic events of Bangladesh had proved how correct Kashmiris were in rejecting union with thecoratic Pakistan. The Sheikh's withdrawal of his demand for a plebiscite was expected to help Bhutto face the criticism of people at home.

* * *

Bhutto agreed not only to change the ceasefire line into line of control, for which he had earlier proposed the term "line of peace", he also agreed that the line would be gradually endowed with the characteristics of an international border (his words). The transition was to take place in the following manner. After the resumption of traffic between India and Pakistan across the international border had gained momentum, the movement of traffic would be allowed at specified points across the line of control. At these points of entry, immigration control and customs clearance offices would be established. Furthermore, Pakistan- occupied Kashmir would be incorporated into Pakistan. To begin with, Bhutto's party would set up its branches there, and later the area would be taken over by the administration. India would make proforma protests in a low key (This is what actually happened in 1974, when Bhutto made Azad Kashmir constitutionally a province of Pakistan without much protest from India). It was thought that with the gradual use of the line of control as the de facto frontier, public opinion on both sides would become reconciled to its permanence. In the meanwhile, the opening of trade and commerce and cooperation between India and Pakistan would result in easing tensions between the two countries. When Mrs. Gandhi, after recounting their points of agreement, finally asked Bhutto: "Is this the understanding on which we will proceed? He replied, "Absolutely, aap mujh par bharosa keejiye (you can rely on me).

One of Bhutto's aides, who was also very close to the Americans, fully briefed James P. Sterba (the New York Times correspondent) on the understanding that this leader had reached with Mrs. Gandhi. In his news analysis, which appeared within hours of the signing, Sterba, after referring to the inflexible positions of the two governments on the Kashmir problem, wrote: "these positions have been drummed into the minds of the peoples of each side to the point where any compromise would be viewed largely as a "sell out" in both countries. And for years, such a sell out would have probably toppled the rulers who agreed to it". Sterba added:

President Butto, Pakistan's first civilian leader in fourteen years, came to Simla ready to compromise. According to sources close to him, he was willing to forsake the Indian held two- thirds of Kashmir that contains four-fifths of the population and the prized valley called the 'Vale', and agree that a ceasefire line to be negotiated would gradually become the border between the two countries. The key word is 'gradually' (emphasis added)... President Bhutto wants a softening of the ceasefire line with trade and travel across it and a secret agreement with Mrs. Gandhi that a formally recognised border would emerge after a few years, during which he would condition his people to it without riots and an overthrow of his Government.

This was the understanding between the leaders of the two countries and this was the Simla Solution of the Kashmir problem. The agreement that was signed at Simla in the first hour of July 3, 1972 was the launching pad for an implementation of the Simla Solution. Some Pakistanis maintain that recent events in Kashmir have overtaken the agreement, while Indians insist that the dispute should be resolved through bilateral negotiations, as stipulated under it. This debate misses the crucial point that the Simla Agreement provided not only a mechanism for the solution of the Kashmir problem but also envisaged the solution itself.

The Simla Solution seemed the only way in which the political leadership of the two countries could resolve their conflicting claims over Kashmir. It is still the only way that remains open to them. To be sure, the aspirations of Valley Muslims need to be satisfied. The Indira-Abdullah Accord, which was an answer to this question, has come unstuck due partly to New Delhi's hamhandedness and largely due to the growth of Muslim fundamentalism in the Valley, as also because of the massive intervention of Pakistan, in flagrant violation of the Simla commitments. Had the Simla understanding been converted into the final solution of the problem, the Kashmir issue would have simply become an internal problem for India, namely one of altering the existing centre-state relations in a manner that would satisfy the Kashmiri demand for greater autonomy.

* * *


It was in the context of an utter disregard for the Simla commitments by Pakistan that I decided to make public the substance of the Simla understanding. I did this through a two- part article which was published in the Times of India in April 1995. Pakistani response to this came in an avalanche of statements and comments from the government, political leaders, columnists, and editorial writers questioning the veracity of what I had said. About the only person in authority who did not react was Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

The expressions of disbelief in the existence of a verbal understanding between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were often accompanied by high praise of what Humayun Gauhar called Bhutto's diplomatic artistry. Writing on this subject in the Political and Business Weekly of May 15, 1995, Gauhar wrote:

If it took a private talk between Mr. Bhutto and Mrs. Gandhi in which he made certain commitments to her but which he was clever enough not to have written down in the Simla Agreement or on a separate piece of paper, then it was diplomatic artistry of the highest order. He would have known wn better than anyone else that such a private secret agreement, which is only verbal, was worthless. Face it Mr. Dhar, even if we accept what you say, Mr. Bhutto fooled your Prime Minister.

Gauhar explains the nature of Bhutto's artistry in Bhutto's own words. Three months before the Simla Conference Bhutto told Oriana Falaci, the Italian journalist: "Well, in politics you sometimes have to have light and flexible fingers... have you ever seen a bird sitting on its eggs in the nest? Well, a politician must have fairly light, fairly flexible fingers, to insinuate them under the bird and take away the eggs. One by one . Without the bird realising it."

Commenting on Pakistani rejoinders to my article, Alistair Lamb, the well-known author of several books on the Kashmir question (in which he has vigorously supported Pakistan's point of view), says: "Pakistani refutations of P. N. Dhar's claims (that Z. A. Bhutto did privately agree with the Indian Prime Minister that this was exactly the way in which the Kashmir problem would be settled, with the line of control being allowed to evolve gradually into an international border) have not to date been particularly impressive or convincing though circumstances have removed over the years any significance they may ever have possessed... Its essential veracity has been implied by Akram Zaki, former Pakistan Secretary General, Foreign Affairs". In India too my article was widely noted by the media and the predominant view was not very different from that of Humayun Gauhar, namely that India had lost on the negotiating table what its armed forces had gained in the battlefield.

Extracted from: Indira Gandhi: The Emergency and Indian Democracy,


P. N. Dhar, Oxford University Press, Rs.545.

https://www.thehindu.com/2000/02/06/stories/1306067g.htm

 

[M. Sarmad]

Here is the full story.

Did Bhutto outwit Indira Gandhi?

To Understand the political climate prevalent in the subcontinent in June-July 1972, when the Simla Conference was held, it is necessary to recall the events that preceded it - events that altered some basic perceptions that the Pakistan leadership had held dear. The emergence of Bangladesh as a sovereign state had starkly shown the inadequacy of religion as the sole basis of nationality. It also repudiated the two-nation theory and struck a deadly blow to Pakistan's claim, implicit as well as explicit, that it spoke on behalf of the Muslims of the subcontinent. Bhutto was acutely conscious of this fundamental change of context and he stated this frankly in his preliminary conversation with Indira Gandhi. He referred critically to his own views on these subjects, which he had articulated in extremely bellicose language earlier. He even lamented the tripartite division of the Muslim community in the subcontinent and hoped that, in the new circumstances, the community would become a strong force for peace and stability in the region.Furthermore, Bhutto said he was convinced by the events of 1971 that Pakistan could not acquire Kashmir via military intervention. In March 1972, a month before the meeting of emissaries in Murree, he told Indian journalists that a settlement of the Kashmir issue would emerge on the basis of a "line of peace" and that the right of self-determination, in his view, was not to be exported from outside. "Kashmir troubles me a lot," Bhutto said. He did not want its dark shadow looming over Indo-Pak. relations. He wanted his countrymen to get over the trauma of the emergence of its eastern wing as a separate independent state as quickly as possible and concentrate on making the now smaller Pakistan a prosperous country. He told Indira Gandhi in his meeting with her on July 1: "I have been saying in Pakistan: how can we fight for rights of Kashmiris? I have prepared public opinion for days ahead. But we cannot do it under compulsion." Bhutto was personally inclined to accept the status quo as a permanent solution to the Kashmir problem. However, he had several constraints in this regard which he spelt out as follows:

(a) His political enemies at home, especially the army bosses, would denounce him for surrendering what many in Pakistan considered their vital national interest. This would endanger the democratic set-up which had emerged after fourteen years of army rule. In this context, Bhutto repeatedly talked about his fear of what he called the Lahore lobby, though he never clearly explained what it was.

(b) He was anxious to obtain the support of all political elements in Pakistan in favour of any agreement that might emerge at Simla. He made this point at the beginning of the conference, while apologising for bringing with him an unusually large delegation, consisting of about 84 members, who represented the entire political spectrum of Pakistan. He wanted all members of the delegation to support and be committed to the outcome of the conference. He said there should be no dissenters in his delegation when he left Simla. He was probably thinking of his own negative role vis-a-vis Ayub Khan after the Tashkent Declaration in 1966.

Bhutto was very keen on the support of Aziz Ahmed, who led the Pakistan negotiating team. Ahmed was Pakistan's senior-most civil servant and carried great weight in the ranks of its bureaucracy. He also had the reputation of being a hardliner. Ahmed's support would secure Bhutto the support of Pakistan's officialdom, which constituted a very powerful segment of the country's political elite.

Aziz Ahmed was against enlarging the agenda to include Kashmir. But he yielded ground when the Indian side explained it was not insisting on an immediate and formal acceptance of the status quo, which they believed could be looked upon as the imposition of harsh terms by the victor in war. P. N. Haksar, who had assumed the leadership of the Indian team when D. P. Dhar suddenly took ill, felt that such a move might nurture a revanchist ideology in Pakistan. He reminded his colleagues of the consequence of the Treaty of Versailles and persuaded them against doing anything which could be the basis of another war. The Indian side therefore put their proposal in a low key and in an indirect manner by proposing that the name of the line dividing India and Pakistan in Jammu and Kashmir be changed from the "cease-fire line" to the "line of control". Aziz Ahmed objected to this. He pointed out quite rightly, that the proposed change in terminology would mean a change in the status of the line. He put forth this view vehemently and said he was not prepared to accept the change in nomenclature.

* * *

In the afternoon meeting on July 2, which was to consider the third and last Indian draft agreement, Aziz Ahmed said: "This is our last meeting... Pakistan cannot accept that the ceasefire line has ceased to exist. That is the main reason why we are not accepting the Indian draft." For the Indian side this was a retreat from the statement made by Bhutto in his previous day's meeting with Indira Gandhi in the presence of officials. In that meeting, after Aziz Ahmed's remark that "We have agreed to everything except Kashmir", Bhutto intervened and said: "I have, in a way, agreed to Kashmir being resolved by peaceful means... As regards the Kashmir dispute, an agreement will emerge in the foreseeable future. It will evolve into a settlement. Let there be a line of peace; let people come and go; let us not fight over it."

The transformation of the ceasefire line into the line of control was the core of the Indian solution to the Kashmir problem. The de facto line of control was meant to be graduated to the level of a de jure border. Since no agreement was reached on this point, negotiations were called off and the curtain came down on five days of hectic negotiations which had begun with great hopes throughout the subcontinent. This was the afternoon of July 2. The Pakistan delegation was scheduled to leave Simla the next morning.

Soon, word spread that the conference had failed. Media men rushed off to announce the failure. In the midst of this enveloping gloom Bhutto asked to see Mrs. Gandhi and a meeting was fixed for 6 p.m. at the Retreat, where she was staying. When Bhutto came to see Mrs. Gandhi, he met P.N. Haksar and myself briefly and said: "You officials give up too easily". Mrs. Gandhi and Bhutto then met for an hour while Haksar and I waited in the adjoining room. Emerging from his tete-a-tete with Mrs. Gandhi, Bhutto looked pleased and said, "we have settled the matter and decided to give you some work to do before dinner." After we saw Bhutto off, Mrs. Gandhi briefed us on what had transpired.

Mrs. Gandhi elaborated the merits of the Indian proposal in the following terms: It was the only feasible solution. An important feature of the proposal was that neither country was gaining or losing territory on account of war. It did not involve transfers of population from one side to the other. Kashmiris as an ethnic community were left undivided on the Indian side. The line of control was therefore largely an ethnic and linguistic frontier. In fact in 1947, at the time of partition, it was also an ideological frontier, being the limit of the political influence of Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah and his National Conference party. True, there were some anomalies in this otherwise neatly etched picture, but these, Mrs. Gandhi pointed out, could be removed by mutual consent.

Bhutto resounded with feeling and apparent sincerity. After long reflection he had come to the conclusion that the Indian proposal was the only feasible one. But he could not agree to incorporating it in the agreement for the reasons he had stated earlier. He would, however, work towards its implementation in practice and over time. Mrs. Gandhi herself was worried that a formal withdrawal of the Indian claim on Pak-occupied Kashmir could create political trouble for her. She agreed that the solution should not be recorded in the agreement for the reasons advanced by Bhutto, but it should be implemented gradually, as he had suggested.

It was also agreed that the understanding would not be a written one. The insertion of secret clauses in the agreement was considered inconsistent with the desire to build a structure of durable peace. It was decided, however, that the agreement would be worded in a manner that would not create difficulties of implementation for Pakistan. This resulted in some last-minute negotiations which were carried on during the return banquet of the president of Pakistan on the eve of his departure for his country. Thus, some clauses included in the draft agreement had to be deleted to accommodate Bhutto.

The most important part of the agreement, sub-clause 4(ii), says: In Jammu and Kashmir, the line of control resulting from the ceasefire of December 17, 1971 shall be respected by both sides without prejudice to the recognised position of either side. Neither side shall seek to alter it unilaterally, irrespective of mutual differences and legal interpretations. Both sides further undertake to refrain from the threat or the use of force in violation of this line. The phrase "without prejudice" to the recognised position of either side was a concession to Bhutto to save him from domestic critics. The second and third sentences were assumed to prevent the abuse of this concession and to lay the foundation for a future settlement of the Kashmir issue.

* * *

Bhutto also knew that the Government of India had opened a dialogue with Sheikh Abdullah. He realised that India was in effect meeting the demand of separatist Kashmiris for representation at India-Pak negotiations on Kashmir via simultaneous but separate talks with Sheikh Abdullah. From his own sources and from reports in the Indian press he was aware of the probability of the Sheikh joining Indian mainstream politics. He knew that the ban on the Sheikh's entry into Kashmir was about to be removed. And when it was removed, three weeks after the Simla conference, the Sheikh told his audience in Srinagar that the tragic events of Bangladesh had proved how correct Kashmiris were in rejecting union with thecoratic Pakistan. The Sheikh's withdrawal of his demand for a plebiscite was expected to help Bhutto face the criticism of people at home.

* * *

Bhutto agreed not only to change the ceasefire line into line of control, for which he had earlier proposed the term "line of peace", he also agreed that the line would be gradually endowed with the characteristics of an international border (his words). The transition was to take place in the following manner. After the resumption of traffic between India and Pakistan across the international border had gained momentum, the movement of traffic would be allowed at specified points across the line of control. At these points of entry, immigration control and customs clearance offices would be established. Furthermore, Pakistan- occupied Kashmir would be incorporated into Pakistan. To begin with, Bhutto's party would set up its branches there, and later the area would be taken over by the administration. India would make proforma protests in a low key (This is what actually happened in 1974, when Bhutto made Azad Kashmir constitutionally a province of Pakistan without much protest from India). It was thought that with the gradual use of the line of control as the de facto frontier, public opinion on both sides would become reconciled to its permanence. In the meanwhile, the opening of trade and commerce and cooperation between India and Pakistan would result in easing tensions between the two countries. When Mrs. Gandhi, after recounting their points of agreement, finally asked Bhutto: "Is this the understanding on which we will proceed? He replied, "Absolutely, aap mujh par bharosa keejiye (you can rely on me).

One of Bhutto's aides, who was also very close to the Americans, fully briefed James P. Sterba (the New York Times correspondent) on the understanding that this leader had reached with Mrs. Gandhi. In his news analysis, which appeared within hours of the signing, Sterba, after referring to the inflexible positions of the two governments on the Kashmir problem, wrote: "these positions have been drummed into the minds of the peoples of each side to the point where any compromise would be viewed largely as a "sell out" in both countries. And for years, such a sell out would have probably toppled the rulers who agreed to it". Sterba added:

President Butto, Pakistan's first civilian leader in fourteen years, came to Simla ready to compromise. According to sources close to him, he was willing to forsake the Indian held two- thirds of Kashmir that contains four-fifths of the population and the prized valley called the 'Vale', and agree that a ceasefire line to be negotiated would gradually become the border between the two countries. The key word is 'gradually' (emphasis added)... President Bhutto wants a softening of the ceasefire line with trade and travel across it and a secret agreement with Mrs. Gandhi that a formally recognised border would emerge after a few years, during which he would condition his people to it without riots and an overthrow of his Government.

This was the understanding between the leaders of the two countries and this was the Simla Solution of the Kashmir problem. The agreement that was signed at Simla in the first hour of July 3, 1972 was the launching pad for an implementation of the Simla Solution. Some Pakistanis maintain that recent events in Kashmir have overtaken the agreement, while Indians insist that the dispute should be resolved through bilateral negotiations, as stipulated under it. This debate misses the crucial point that the Simla Agreement provided not only a mechanism for the solution of the Kashmir problem but also envisaged the solution itself.

The Simla Solution seemed the only way in which the political leadership of the two countries could resolve their conflicting claims over Kashmir. It is still the only way that remains open to them. To be sure, the aspirations of Valley Muslims need to be satisfied. The Indira-Abdullah Accord, which was an answer to this question, has come unstuck due partly to New Delhi's hamhandedness and largely due to the growth of Muslim fundamentalism in the Valley, as also because of the massive intervention of Pakistan, in flagrant violation of the Simla commitments. Had the Simla understanding been converted into the final solution of the problem, the Kashmir issue would have simply become an internal problem for India, namely one of altering the existing centre-state relations in a manner that would satisfy the Kashmiri demand for greater autonomy.

* * *


It was in the context of an utter disregard for the Simla commitments by Pakistan that I decided to make public the substance of the Simla understanding. I did this through a two- part article which was published in the Times of India in April 1995. Pakistani response to this came in an avalanche of statements and comments from the government, political leaders, columnists, and editorial writers questioning the veracity of what I had said. About the only person in authority who did not react was Pakistan's Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto.

The expressions of disbelief in the existence of a verbal understanding between Indira Gandhi and Zulfikar Ali Bhutto were often accompanied by high praise of what Humayun Gauhar called Bhutto's diplomatic artistry. Writing on this subject in the Political and Business Weekly of May 15, 1995, Gauhar wrote:

If it took a private talk between Mr. Bhutto and Mrs. Gandhi in which he made certain commitments to her but which he was clever enough not to have written down in the Simla Agreement or on a separate piece of paper, then it was diplomatic artistry of the highest order. He would have known wn better than anyone else that such a private secret agreement, which is only verbal, was worthless. Face it Mr. Dhar, even if we accept what you say, Mr. Bhutto fooled your Prime Minister.

Gauhar explains the nature of Bhutto's artistry in Bhutto's own words. Three months before the Simla Conference Bhutto told Oriana Falaci, the Italian journalist: "Well, in politics you sometimes have to have light and flexible fingers... have you ever seen a bird sitting on its eggs in the nest? Well, a politician must have fairly light, fairly flexible fingers, to insinuate them under the bird and take away the eggs. One by one . Without the bird realising it."

Commenting on Pakistani rejoinders to my article, Alistair Lamb, the well-known author of several books on the Kashmir question (in which he has vigorously supported Pakistan's point of view), says: "Pakistani refutations of P. N. Dhar's claims (that Z. A. Bhutto did privately agree with the Indian Prime Minister that this was exactly the way in which the Kashmir problem would be settled, with the line of control being allowed to evolve gradually into an international border) have not to date been particularly impressive or convincing though circumstances have removed over the years any significance they may ever have possessed... Its essential veracity has been implied by Akram Zaki, former Pakistan Secretary General, Foreign Affairs". In India too my article was widely noted by the media and the predominant view was not very different from that of Humayun Gauhar, namely that India had lost on the negotiating table what its armed forces had gained in the battlefield.

Extracted from: Indira Gandhi: The Emergency and Indian Democracy,


P. N. Dhar, Oxford University Press, Rs.545.

https://www.thehindu.com/2000/02/06/stories/1306067g.htm

Have read many similar "stories" from Indian authors
Bring forward proof / evidence if you can
Such claims and assertions prove nothing

 

[HalfMoon]

Have read many similar "stories" from Indian authors
Bring forward proof / evidence if you can
Such claims and assertions prove nothing

you can't wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

If you were really keen to know you would have asked yourself why Pakistan army did not claim the bodies of the dead during Kargil? Why didn't India cross LOC during Kargil? Why did the US ask sanctity of LOC be respected?


Vajpayee stood firm during Kargil conflict: Clinton aide

PTI | May 19, 2002, 09:47 IST

WASHINGTON: Giving a deep insight to the intense backroom diplomacy by the US during the 1999 Kargil conflict, a top Clinton aide has revealed how Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee stood firm on India''s demand for unconditional withdrawal of Pakistani troops and his then counterpart Nawaz Sharif buckled to Washington''s dictat.
"There was no give in," Bruce Riedel, Special Assistant to former US President Bill Clinton said in an article. Riedel was part of the entire parleys the US had with Pakistan to force it to withdraw from Kargil unconditionally.
Clinton had invited Vajpayee to Washington for a face-to-face meeting with Sharif but the Indian Prime Minister had declined to undertake the visit in view of the then security situation.
Clinton had informed Vajpayee after intensive parleys with Sharif in Washington in early July 1999 that he was "holding firm on demanding the withdrawal of Pakistani troops to the Line of Control."
Interestingly, according to Riedel''s account, Sharif briefed an angry Clinton on his frantic efforts during that period to engage Vajpayee and get a deal that would allow Pakistan to withdraw with some face saving.
"Sharif''s brief was confused and vague on many details but he seemed a man possessed with fear of war," Riedel said. Riedel said the US was quick to make known its view that Pakistan should withdraw its forces back behind the Line of Control (LoC) immediately.
At first, Clinton aides Rick Inderfurth and Thomas Pickering conveyed this view privately to the Pakistani and Indian Ambassador in Washington late May that year after the outbreak of the conflict.
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called Sharif two days later followed by similar tough talk by General Tony Zinni who also spoke to then Army Chief Pervez Musharraf.
"These message did not not work. So we went public and called upon Pakistan to respect the LoC," Riedel said adding that Clinton called both Vajpayee and Sharif in mid June and sent letters to each pressing for Pakistani withdrawal and restraint from Indian side.
Sharif became increasingly desperate as he saw how isolated Pakistan''s position had become and sought urgent American intervention. In the last days of June, Sharif began to ask to see Clinton directly to plead his case.
On July 2, Sharif called Clinton and appealed to him to intervene and stop the fighting and also help resolve the Kashmir issue. Clinton made it clear that he could help only if Pakistan first withdrew to the LoC.
Clinton also consulted Vajpayee on phone, Riedel said, observing that the Indians were adamant. Vajpayee would not not negotiate under the threat of aggression. Clinton sought to assure the Indian leader that Washington would not not countenance Pakistani aggression nor nor reward them for violating the LoC, he said adding the US stood committed to the Lahore peace process. On 3rd July, Sharif was more desperate and told President Clinton he was ready to come immediately to Washington to seek help. "The President repeated his caution ''Come only if you are ready to withdraw, I can''t help you if you are not ready to pull back''," Riedel wrote. Sharif said he was coming and would be there on 4th.
Riedel said Sharif''s intention also became clearer. He was bringing his wife and children with him to Washington, a possible indication he was afraid he might not be able to go home if the summit failed or that the military was telling him to leave.
Clinton started his discussion with Sharif on July 4 by handing him a cartoon from the day''s Chicago Tribune newspaper that showed Pakistan and India as nuclear bombs fighting with each other.
During the parleys, the US leader, according to Riedel, reminded Sharif that Washington played a role in the Arab-Israeli conflict because both sides invited it to mediate. But this was not not the case with Kashmir.
Clinton advised that the best approach was the road begun at Lahore, that is direct contact with India. He bluntly told Sharif that Pakistan had completely undermined that opening by attacking at Kargil and it must retreat before disaster set in.
"The room was tense and Sharif visibly worried," Riedel wrote. Sharif also warned that fundamentalists in Pakistan would move agaisnt him and this meeting would be the last with him. Clinton was clear and firm. Sharif had a choice -- withdraw behind the LoC and the moral compass would tilt back towards Pakistan or stay and fight a dangerous war with India without American sympathy.
The President told Sharif he had draft statement ready to issue that would pin all the blame for the Kargil crisis on Pakistan. "The President was getting angry."
After 90 minutes of intense discussions, the meeting broke to allow each leader to meet with his team and consider next steps.
Clinton put through a short call to New Delhi just to tell Vajpayee that he was holding firm on demanding the withdrawal to the LoC, Riedel said, adding Vajpayee had little to say, even asking the President "What do you want me to say"?
Riedel said there was no view in New Delhi and none was asked for.
"After an hour, when the President, Sharif and I returned to the discussions, the President put on the table a short statement to be issued to the press to announce agreement on withdrawal to the LoC," he said.
The statement also called for a ceasefire once the withdrawal was completed and restoration of the Lahore process. It also included a reaffirmation of the President''s longstanding plans to visit South Asia.
"Sharif read the statement several times quietly. He asked to talk with his team and we adjourned again," Riedel said. "After a few minutes Sharif returned with good news. The statement was acceptable with one addition," Riedel said, adding Sharif wanted a sentence added to say ''The President would take personal interest to encourage an expeditious resumption and intensification of bilateral efforts (i.e. Lahore process) once the sanctity of the LoC was fully restored.
The President then called Vajpayee to preview the statement, Riedel said.

https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com...onflict-Clinton-aide/articleshow/10341644.cms

 

[M. Sarmad]

you can't wake someone who is pretending to be asleep.

Indeed

Why didn't India cross LOC during Kargil?

Because India wants to convert LOC into IB since Nehru's time
Pakistan has never accepted Indian position/offer

Why did the US ask sanctity of LOC be respected?

A full-fledged war, probably a nuclear one, was in no one's interest

 

[HalfMoon]

Because India wants to convert LOC into IB since Nehru's time
Pakistan has never accepted Indian position/offer

You can keep repeat what you want like a broken record without answering any of the key questions but reality does not change.

Pakistan always tried to chew more than it can eat ending up losing what it had on offer.

India offers to trade Kashmir for Hyderabad - Pakistan says no and loses both.

India offers to convert LOC as IB - Pakistan says no and loses AJK & GB?

I am happy if Pakistan continues that path.

 

[M. Sarmad]

You can keep repeat what you want like a broken record without answering any of the key questions but reality does not change.

Yes, reality does not change.
Your childish questions cannot be taken seriously

India offers to trade Kashmir for Hyderabad - Pakistan says no and loses both.

India offers to convert LOC as IB - Pakistan says no and loses AJK & GB?

I am happy if Pakistan continues that path.

It's good for you that dreaming makes you happier
Goodnight

 

[HalfMoon]

A full-fledged war, probably a nuclear one, was in no one's interest

Yeah it still does not explain why Pakistan did not accept the bodies of its soldiers. Does it? Did India threaten to nuclear war against Pakistan or Was Pakistan threatening to go nuclear against India?

Guess what, Non acceptance of LOC as IB overtly by Pakistan is giving an opening to India to claim that CPEC is passing through its territory. As I said I am happy with Pakistan continuing this path. India would always have upper hand as it has the instrument of accession.

 

[M. Sarmad]

the instrument of accession.

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/indi...unsc-resolution-fo.441379/page-2#post-8513175

 

[HalfMoon]

https://defence.pk/pdf/threads/indi...unsc-resolution-fo.441379/page-2#post-8513175

Another Day, Another Thread on Kashmir, And as usual clueless Indians blabbering on about things they know nothing about ......



Which Instrument of Accession ??

1) International law clearly states that every treaty entered into by a member of the United Nations must be registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations. "The Instrument of Accession" was neither presented to the United Nations nor to Pakistan. Hence India cannot invoke the treaty before any organ of the United Nations.


2) The legality of the Instrument of Accession may also be questioned on grounds that it was obtained under coercion. The International Court of Justice has stated that there "can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void."..... India’s military intervention in Kashmir was provisional upon the Maharaja’s signing of the Instrument of Accession. More importantly, however, the evidence suggests that Indian troops were pouring into Srinigar even before the Maharaja had signed the treaty. This fact would suggest that the treaty was signed under duress.


3) The Maharaja had no authority to sign the treaty, hence the Instrument of Accession can be considered without legal standing . The situation on the ground demonstrates that the Maharaja was hardly in control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hari Singh was in flight from the state capital, Srinigar. And it is highly doubtful that the Maharaja could claim that his government had a reasonable chance of staying in power .....



Thus, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding the signing of the Instrument of Accession shows that the accession of Kashmir to India was neither complete nor legal, as Delhi has vociferously contended for over sixty years.


The Fate of Kashmir
International Law or Lawlessness?
BY VIKAS KAPUR AND VIPIN NARANG
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/3.1.06_kapur-narang.html


----

Excerpts from 'The Myth of Indian Claim to JAMMU & KASHMIR ––A REAPPRAISAL'

by Alastair Lamb

THE INDIAN CLAIM TO JAMMU & KASHMIR A REAPPRAISAL

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/autonomy...ipe-for-disaster.440287/page-12#ixzz4FhRGU9hA


Moreover, further shedding doubt on the treaty`s validity, in 1995 Indian authorities claimed that the original copy of the treaty (letter of accession) was either stolen or lost !!!




The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), based in Geneva, passed a resolution in 1995 proclaiming Kashmir's accession to India as bogus and null and void.

------------------------------


Voluntary Resolutions ??

1) UN maintains that "NO SECURITY COUNCIL RESOLUTION CAN BE DESCRIBED AS UNENFORCEABLE."


2) India approached UN under Chapter VI of the UN charter , BUT the decision taken by UN reflected that its resolutions were not based exclusively on this chapter .... The resolutions , apart from chapter VI , are based upon other chapters , including chapter VII

The fact that there does not exist any provision for the deputing of UN peace keeping mission under chapter VI makes it obvious that UN resolutions were not exclusively based on chapter VI .... The interim measures which included cease fire and deputation of United Nations Military Observer Group were based on Article 40 of chapter VII ...

Besides chapter VI and VII , UN resolutions are based on other chapters also(i.e Article 1 , Chapter I (2) and Article 55 , Chapter IX) ...

^^ And this is not my personal opinion. That is Rosalyn Higgins' opinion on 'Kashmir Resolutions and under which chapter they were passed' .. Source: 'Higgins, Rosalyn. United Nations Peace Keeping 1946-67: Documents and Commentary. London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1970. (349-51)

(Rosalyn Higgins is an expert on International Law; a Doctor of Juridical Science. She has served as a Judge in the International Court of Justice for fourteen years (and was elected President in 2006). Her competence has been recognised by many academic institutions, having received at least thirteen honorary doctorates)


3) Moreover, there always has been a general inability of the Permanent Five to agree upon imaginative and expansive applications of Chapter VI ... In Somalia, the Security Council deployed the UN's first operation, UNOSOM I, in mid-1992 to separate warring combatants and help delivery of humanitarian relief ....

UNOSOM I entered and operated without invoking Chapter VII

Further Reading: http://www.ejil.org/pdfs/6/1/1305.pdf



The binding nature of these UN resolutions (acknowledgement from India at a government level)



Finally some quotes from Indian officials on Kashmir exemplifying their commitment to plebiscite rather than forced accession as history has found them do :-

We adhere strictly to our pledge of plebiscite in Kashmir – a pledge made to the people because they believe in democratic government …… We don’t regard Kashmir as a commodity to be trafficked in
-Krishna Menon (Press statement in London, reported in the Statesman,
New Delhi, 2nd August, 1951)

The Government of India not only reaffirms its acceptance of the principle that the question of the continuing accession of the State of Jammu and Kashmir to India shall be decided through the democratic method of a free and impartial plebiscite under the auspices of the United Nations, but is anxious that the conditions necessary for such a plebiscite should be created as quickly as possible
-Letter from Govt. of India to UN Representative for India and Pakistan, 11th September, 1951

I want to say for the purpose of the record that there is nothing that has been said on behalf of the Government of India which in the slightest degree indicates that the Government of India or the Union of India will dishonour any international obligations it has undertaken.
-Krishna Menon (Statement at UN Security Council, 24th January, 1957)

The resolutions of January 17, 1948 and the resolutions of the UNICP, the assurances given, these are all resolutions which carry a greater weight – that is because we have accepted them, we are parties to them, whether we like them or not.
-Krishna Menon, (Statement at UN Security Council, 20th February, 1957)

These documents (UNCIP reports) and declarations and the resolutions of the Security Council are decisions; they are resolutions, there has been some resolving of a question of one character or another, there has been a meeting of minds on this question where we have committed ourselves to it.
-Krishna Menon, (Statement at the Security Council, 9th October, 1957)


India believes that sovereignty rests in the people and should return to them.
-Krishna Menon, (The Statesman, Delhi, 19th January, 1962)







The POWs were repatriated under Delhi Agreement (1973/74), the Simla Agreement (1972) had failed to resolve this issue...


The UN refuses to accept the Indian position. Almost 44 years since the signing of the Simla Agreement between India and Pakistan but the UN refuses to terminate UNMOGIP ..


The Simla Agreement does not preclude raising of Kashmir issue at the United Nations:


1) Para 1 (i) specifically provides that the UN Charter “shall govern” relations between the parties.

2) Para 1 (ii) providing for settlement of differences by peaceful means, does not exclude resort to the means of pacific settlement of disputes and differences provided in the UN Charter.

3) The UN Security Council remains seized of the Kashmir issue which remains on the Council’s agenda.

4) Articles 34 and 35 of the UN Charter specifically empower the Security Council to investigate any dispute independently or at the request of a member State. These provisions cannot be made subservient to any bilateral agreement.

5) According to Article 103 of UN Charter, member States obligations under the Charter take precedence over obligations under a bilateral agreement.

6) Presence of United Nations Military Observes Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP) at the Line of Control in Kashmir is a clear evidence of UN’s involvement in the Kashmir issue.





Moreover, this Indian claim has been refuted by various UN representatives who, on several occasions, have clarified that, only a bilateral agreement, which solves the problem, would legally supersede the numerous existing UN resolutions on that dispute. Also, in the absence of any fundamental change in the circumstances, the UN resolutions can become invalid only when the UN Security Council declares them null and viod. For example in 1956, the then UN Secretary General, Dag Hammarskjold, had clearly stated that ‘the UN decision is valid until it has been invalidated by the organ which took it. ......In April 1990, the UN Representative, Francis Guiliani, clarified: ‘a bilateral agreement, which solved the problem, would supersede the resolution aimed at solving the issue. However, as long as the problem remained, the resolutions would remain in effect regardless of when they were adopted .....

Exclusive: For the First Time, a True Copy of Jammu & Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession
Sourced from the National Archives of India, The Wire presents a key document from India's modern history

Venkatesh Nayak
296
interactions
HISTORY
26/OCT/2016



First page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession
October 26, 2016 mark the 70th anniversary of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. On account of the troubled times that J&K has been passing through since July, there is little space for celebrating this event, but a sober commemoration of this historic moment is necessary. The Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh has become the object of a never-ending controversy, unlike similar accession instruments signed by other princely states. The author seeks to reinvigorate informed debate on this issue by placing a true copy of the signed accession instrument in the public domain. The copy was obtained from the National Archives of India. This article also critically examines some of the popular claims regarding this document by making a reference to other contemporaneous official records.

Re-discovering the J&K Instrument of Accession

On a hot and humid mid-September afternoon, I walked in to the research room of the National Archives in New Delhi to find out if my search for a “historic” document had borne results. The document in question was the original Instrument of Accession (IoA) signed in October 1947 by the then ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh and accepted by Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was Governor General of India at the time. Earlier, the Union ministry of home affairs had transferred to the National Archives my RTI application seeking a copy of this document and a handful of IoAs signed by other Rulers[1]. Subsequently, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the National Archives invited me to access the documents under the Public Records Act, 1993[2].

I walked towards the shelves situated at the end of the hall, my shoes squeaking across the extra smooth flooring, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. The J&K IoA lay in a cream coloured folder at one corner of a shelf waiting to be picked up. The last time I got as excited was a few days earlier, when I spotted a reference to this document in the Index of 1,847 treaties and agreements transferred by the Central government to the National Archives for safe keeping.[3]

The J&K IoA has been the subject of one of the biggest and long drawn controversies in independent India. Does it really exist or not? One academic doubted its authenticity and reportedly dismissed its very existence.[4] Andrew Whitehead has claimed that he was denied access to this document on the ground that it was “classified”.[5] The retyped text of this document is currently accessible on a privately hosted website.[6] Whitehead writes that a facsimile of the J&K IoA was displayed on the website of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for some time.[7] I could not trace this facsimile copy on the MHA site.

Through this article in The Wire, I can confirm that the J&K IoA exists for real, is safe and well preserved in the collection of the National Archives.

I have elected to place in the public domain a copy of the J&K IoA obtained legitimately from the National Archives for the purpose of facilitating informed debate amongst those interested in the subject.

I have also placed copies of the IoAs of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur obtained by me from the National Archives in the public domain so that readers may compare them with the J&K IoA for ascertaining its genuineness.[8]

Is the J&K IOA held by the National Archives a genuine document?

I am not a forensics expert, nor was I familiar with the signatures of the Maharaja of J&K and Lord Mountbatten before I looked at these five IoAs. However, at least three indicators seem to testify to the genuineness of the J&K IoA.

First, like several other IoAs, the document signed by the Maharaja of J&K is in two parts. The first three pages contain the text of the terms of the accession- this is the IoA proper. Page 2 of the document bears the signature of Maharaja Hari Singh and the acceptance of the instrument signed by Lord Mountbatten. Page 3 contains the list of subjects on which the Dominion Legislature’s powers to make laws applicable to J&K were accepted by the Maharaja by virtue of this accession instrument. Pages 4 and 5 contain the standstill agreement between J&K and the Dominion of India, as it was called in 1947 before India became a republic. IoAs signed by the several other princely States contain a standstill agreement between them and the Dominion of India as annexures.[9]


First page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession

Schedule attached to Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession

Standstill agreement with Jammu and Kashmir

Schedule attached to Jammu and Kashmir’s standstill agreement.
Second, in all the IoAs signed by the rulers of Mysore,[10] Manipur,[11] Tehri Garhwal[12] and Udaipur[13], Lord Mountbatten signed his acceptance of the instruments and mentioned the date of acceptance in green ink – just like he did while accepting the J&K IoA.[14] Further, the overall faded appearance of this document – just like the other IoAs I picked up – clearly hints to its vintage.

Third, the appended standstill agreements are an added element confirming the authenticity of the Jammu and Kashmir IoA.

At the time of independence, various parts of the Indian sub-continent were under different kinds of administrative arrangements. Chiefly, there were two kinds of jurisdictions – the principalities – large and small which were ruled by hereditary princes and provinces which were directly under British administration. The British Raj had entered into separate treaties and agreements with several princely states for a variety of purposes, such as the construction and the maintenance of roads and power supply facilities, railway tracks, communication facilities including posts, telegraph and wireless, flights, taxation, currency and coinage, external affairs etc. With the ousting of the British Raj, these treaties would become void automatically. So the newly established Department of States drew up an agreement in consultation with the Chamber of Princes (comprising of the rulers of princely states) to ensure that these administrative arrangements would continue unaltered (i.e., standstill) until the new Constitution was drawn up. Almost all princely states that had such treaties and agreements with the British Raj signed a standstill agreement along with the Instrument of Accession to the Dominion of India.


First page of Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Schedule attached to Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Standstill agreement with Mysore

Schedule attached to Mysore’s standstill agreement.
As can be seen from the documents posted here, the Rulers of Mysore, Tehri Garhwal, Manipur and Udaipur did not sign the standstill agreements annexed to the IoAs, nor did Lord Mountbatten append his signature to the same. In all these cases, the standstill agreements were signed by the rulers’ subordinates. In the case of Mysore, the standstill agreement was signed by the dewan (prime minister) of Mysore, in the case of Manipur, it was signed by the private secretary to the maharaja, in the case of Tehri Garhwal it was signed by the chief secretary of the state and in the case of Udaipur it was signed by the then acting prime minister.


First page of Udaipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Udaipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Schedule attached to Udaipur’s Instrument of Accession

Standstill agreement with Udaipur

Schedule attached to Udaipur’s standstill agreement.
The J&K standstill agreement, however, was signed by Maharaja Hari Singh himself and for good reason. All writers commenting on the events leading to the accession of J&K to the Indian Dominion are unanimous on one fact, i.e., the then prime minister of J&K, Justice M. C. Mahajan[15] was in New Delhi on October 26 – the date on which Maharaja Hari Singh is said to have signed the IoA. So there was probably no authority other than the Maharaja in Kashmir who could sign the standstill agreement. In all five cases, the standstill agreements were signed by Shri V. P. Menon on behalf of the Dominion of India.

Readers may ask, what about the letter that Maharaja Hari Singh is purported to have sent to Lord Mountbatten along with the signed IoA and the reply the latter sent back to the maharaja. Those documents, whose existence is not in doubt, thankfully, are not included in the file containing the IoA and the standstill agreement. They seem to remain in the custody of the Union home ministry. The text of this correspondence is published in a document published by the Political Branch of the Ministry of States.[16]

 

[HalfMoon]

What about the overwriting in the J&K IoA?

Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. Credit: Wikimedia

Some writers have commented on the overwriting visible in the J&K IoA to argue that it is not a genuine document.[17] This issue can be explained by the fact that a common template was used for the purpose of the IoAs. The printed stationery mentioned the month of August, leaving a blank space for filling up the exact date of accession at the time of signature by each Ruler. While a large number of Rulers signed their respective IoAs in August itself, Maharaja Hari Singh signed it in October when his hands were forced by the invasion from across the State’s borders. This explains the striking out of “August” to insert “October” in the IoA.

Making such minor technicalities as the basis to contest the authenticity of the J&K IoA may not help advance the debate much because overwriting is seen in at least one other IoA whose copy I was able to obtain form the National Archives. For example, in the Mysore IoA, the date of acceptance was initially mentioned as the “ninth” day of August in black ink. Lord Mountbatten seems to have put in the correct date, namely, the “sixteenth” while appending his signature. The correction is made in green ink – the same colour he used for signing his acceptance of every IoA that I have looked at. Further, in the case of the standstill agreement with Mysore, the dewan signed on the portion which was reserved for the signature of the Secretary of the States Department of the Dominion. So the designation of V. P. Menon had to be typed up manually at the bottom of this document.

While the title of the rulers of Manipur and Udaipur were type-written on the IoAs, those of their counterparts in the case of the IoAs of Mysore, Tehri Garhwal were hand written. Should this discrepancy then be used to dispute the validity of the accession of any of these princely States to the Dominion?

Interestingly, while the IoAs and the standstill agreements in the case of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur indicate that they were drawn up in the names of the rulers of those states and the Dominion of India, in the case of J&K, both documents are drawn up in the name of the Jammu and Kashmir State.[18] Should this curious titling be taken to imply that the residents of J&K had consented to the accession, when they were not even consulted on this matter? Such nitpicking does not help informed debate on the subject. Given the trying circumstances in 1947 and the sheer number of documents that had to be signed from across the country, such discrepancies are highly likely to occur, especially in a newly created department that was short staffed and had set a near impossible deadline for itself to secure the integration of India.

Is the J&K IoA a unique document?

There is a general consensus that unlike other princely states, J&K acceded to the Dominion of India under unique circumstances. I do not intend to delve into these circumstances to examine the claims and counter claims in this brief article. However, another myth that popular lore about J&K has perpetuated is that Maharaja Hari Singh signed a specially drafted Instrument of Accession that took care of his demands. Almost every layperson I met with in J&K during my travel to promote awareness and the use of the state’s RTI Act would point out during informal discussions that the maharaja had recognised the powers of the Dominion to make and implement laws only on three subjects matter, namely foreign affairs, defence and communications. Until I began my research on this subject, I had also harboured a similar misconception.

A comparison of the four IoAs of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur that I accessed from the National Archives and a careful reading of V. P. Menon’s narrative account of the process by which India was integrated, indicates otherwise.


First page of Manipur’s Instrument of Accession

Second page of Manipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Schedule attached to Manipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Standstill agreement with Manipur

Schedule attached to Manipur’s standstill agreement.
Every one of the 140 princely states that signed IoAs with the Dominion of India agreed to the same terms and conditions as J&K. All these rulers also initially acceded to the Dominion limited to the same three subjects. The remaining powers were retained by them just as the maharaja of J&K had sought to do. However, eventually some of them signed instruments of merger, to form larger administrative units such as the Matsya Union, Vindhya Pradesh, PEPSU, Travancore and Cochin etc. and finally accepted the scheme of administration laid down by the new Constitution. The then yuvaraj of J&Km who exercised all powers delegated to him by the Maharaja, issued a proclamation on November 25, 1949 stating that the soon-to-be-adopted Constitution of India would govern the relations between J&K and the Union only to such extent as its provisions would apply to J&K. Article 309 – which would later become Article 370 – laid down the terms and conditions of this relationship. Interestingly, the provisions under Article 370 were intended to be transitional and temporary in nature. Menon’s tome contains a detailed account of these developments. Subsequently, Noorani[19] and others have extensively dwelt upon the manner in which the protection provided by Article 370 was eroded from the very beginning. I do not intend to go into those matters in this brief article.

Tabling of the IoAs in the Constituent Assembly (Legislative)

In fact, my inspiration to seek copies of the IoAs including that of J&K came from a reading of three pieces of legislation, namely, The Government of India Act, 1935 (GoI Act), the India Independence Act, 1947 and The India (Provisional Constitution) Order, 1947.

While the GOI Act had laid down the accession procedure for the princely states (to the undivided Dominion of India as was envisaged then), the provisional constitutional order made an important amendment to its provisions, amongst several others. Section 6 of the GOI Act relating to the accession of the Indian states to the Dominion was amended to incorporate several changes. Sub-section 6 of the new Section 6 required the laying of copies of the Instrument of Accession on the table of the dominion legislature soon after they were accepted by the governor general. Eventually, the dominion legislature came to be known as the Constituent Assembly-Legislative (CA-L) when it was performing legislative functions outside of its main mandate, namely the framing of a constitution for India.

When the MHA did not respond to my request for copies of the IoAs, I filed an RTI application with the Lok Sabha secretariat seeking access to the same documents and the CA-L debates. I pointed out that the IoAs were required to be tabled before the CAL and the Lok Sabha being a successor body to the CA-L, ought to have maintained copies of these documents. The CPIO of the Lok Sabha has not responded to my RTI application till date. Subsequently, I secured access to the library of Parliament and located the debates of the CA-L for the period 1947-1948.[20]

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as the deputy prime minister, in charge of the Ministry of States, tabled the IoA of J&K along with those signed by 116 other princely states before the CA-L on 19 November 19, 1947.[21] Kashmir is listed at #68 in Schedule I Part A of the paper laid on the table of the house. The date of signature of the IOA is mentioned as October 26, 1947 and the date of acceptance as October 27, 1947. Several writers have raised doubts about these dates. This is an area I intend to research next, so I will not offer any comment on this matter for now.

Before closing, it is necessary to dispel one more myth popularised by those who question the existence of the J&K IoA. Its origin seems to be based on the write-up attributed to Prof. Lamb.[22]If he has truly written that the signed copy of the IoA was never attached to the White Paper on J&K that the Government issued in 1948 or included in the documents that the Indian government sent to the UN Security Council that year, that discrepancy may also be explained in simple terms. It must be remembered that during the late 1940s and 1950s, photocopying and mimeography were not available in India. So the government perhaps appended only a copy of the IoA template which was commonly used to secure the accession of the 140 princely States to these documents. I have already shown that the text of the IoA templates was retyped for the purpose of laying them before the CA-L. Of course the government could have anticipated its future acerbic and often vituperative critics and included photographs of the signed copy of the J&K IoA in all these documents. It was within its powers to so do. Why it elected not to do so, is not my job to explain. That explanation should come from the government of India.

My objective in this article is limited – to place legitimately obtained true-to-the original images of the J&K Instrument of Accession along with other comparable and supporting documents to encourage informed debate across the country and elsewhere on this subject. I trust this article has accomplished this objective.

It will not be an exaggeration to describe the IoAs and the standstill agreements as the threads that knit the disparate administrative jurisdictions into a Union. Instead of tucking them away and providing access to researchers only on demand, the National Archives should work with the government to display them in a museum which people can visit at will. Citizens have the right to know more about these building blocks that became India.

Venkatesh Nayak is an RTI activist and a history researcher based in New Delhi. He works with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Endnotes

[1] While the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the MHA did not bother to reply to my request, my RTI application was transferred to the National Archives only after I submitted the first appeal to the appellate authority in MHA. According to Section 7(2) of The Right to Information Act, 2005 where a CPIO fails to send a reply to an RTI application within 30 days, it will be deemed that he or she has refused to the request for information and the right of the applicant to submit a first appeal gets activated automatically.

[2] The Public Records Act, 1993 and the Public Records Rules, 1997 lay down the statutory framework for the declassification and the archivisation of official records, including those labelled “top secret”, “secret” or “confidential”, held by public authorities under the Central Government. The National Archives is the custodian of such archived records and provides access to such records to researchers. Similar laws and rules have been put in place by several State Governments for the purpose of placing their old records with their own State-level Archives.

[3] National Archives Register No. R.R. 271, page no. 27. The J&K IOA is preserved in file no. P-I/20/47, Year 1947. Strangely, the National Archives refused to provide a photocopy of this page. This register indexes various treaties and agreements signed between 1831 and 1985

[4] This is what Prof. Alastair Lamb wrote about the J&K IoA in 1991: “The actual Instrument of Accession…was, in fact, no more than a printed form, not unlike an application for a driving licence, with blank spaces left for the name of the State, the signature of the Maharaja and the date; and it also contained a printed form of acceptance which required dating and signature by Mountbatten as Governor-General.” See Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990, Roxford Books, Hertfordshire,1990, page 137: accessed on 22 October, 2016. In an alleged excerpt from another work attributed to him: The Myth of Indian Claim to Jammu and Kashmir: A Reappraisal, uploaded on the website of Pakistan’s Ministry of External Affairs, the following statement is displayed: “The far more important document (a), the alleged Instrument of Accession, was not published until many years later, if at all…. The 1948 White Paper in which the Government of India set out its formal case in respect to the State of Jammu & Kashmir, does not contain the Instrument of Accession as claimed to have been signed by the Maharajah: instead, it reproduces an unsigned form of Accession such as, it is implied, the Maharajah might have signed. To date no satisfactory original of this Instrument as signed by the Maharajah has been produced: though a highly suspect version, complete with the false date 26 October 1947, has been circulated by the Indian side since the 1960s. On the present evidence it is by no means clear that the Maharaja ever did sign an Instrument of Accession. There are, indeed, grounds for suspecting that he did no such thing. The Instrument of Accession referred to in document (c), a letter which as we have seen was probably drafted by Indian officials prior to being shown to the Maharajah, may never have existed, and can hardly have existed when the letter was being prepared.”:, accessed on 22 October, 2016. Despite several efforts I could not locate on the Internet reliable bibliographical information about this work attributed to Prof. Lamb. There is no mention of this work in subsequent scholarly publications on Kashmir such as Andrew Whitehead’s Mission in Kashmir, etc. (see f.n. #4 below) or in Victoria Schofield’s Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War”: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., London, 2003) and A. G. Noorani’s, The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012, Vol. 1, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2013.

[5] “The Instrument of Accession is in the holdings of India’s National Archive. I have been refused permission to consult the document because it is, apparently classified. A facsimile of the entire document was posted in 2005 at the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs website”. See f.n. #29 in Chapter 6: Signing up to India in Andrew Whitehead, Mission in Kashmir, Viking, Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 2007, New Delhi, page no. 255, accessible online on the author’s website, accessed on 22 October, 2016.

[6] See: http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/instrument_of_accession.html, accessed on 22 October, 2016. This document is surprisingly replicated on the website of the Commissioner of Customs, Excise and Service Tax, Hydebarad-IV, accessed on 22 October, 2016.

[7] See f.n. #29 in Chapter 6: Signing up to India in Andrew Whitehead’s Mission in Kashmir etc. (see f.n. #5 above).

[8] Please note that the image files have been created from the images I obtained legitimately upon payment of the prescribed fees at the National Archives. All copyright vis-à-vis these IoAs is claimed by the National Archives. I request readers to access these files in the original from the National Archives using the file numbers mentioned in these foot notes.

[9] With deep respect to Prof. Lamb, it must be said that the parallel he drew in 1991, between the template on which the J&K IoA was drawn up and an application for a driver’s license, is uncalled for, for multiple reasons (see f.n. #4 above). First, the integration of the princely States into the Dominion could not afford a diversity of arrangements, if integration were to be achieved at all. The process by which the common text of the IoA template was drawn up by the newly established Ministry of States under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the stewardship of its Secretary, Shri V. P. Menon is documented in Chapter V of his well known publication: The Story of the Integration of the Indian States, Longmans Green & Co. London, 1956, pages 67ff. Second, practicality, based on common sense, dictated the need for printing a common template for the IoA to be used for securing the accession of all major princely States instead of having to retype each document. This would have required at least 280 documents to have been typed up i.e. 140 sets of 2 documents each – one copy for the Ruler who signed the IoAs and another for the government of the Dominion. Given the pressing times, I believe this would have been a cumbersome course of action to follow, resulting in delays which the country could ill afford.

[10] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 22. The Mysore IoA is preserved in File No. M-II/1/47, Year 1947.

[11] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 1. The Manipur IoA is preserved in File No. A-I/1/47, Year 1947.

[12] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 34. The Tehri Garhwal IoA is preserved in File No. U-I/8/47, Year 1947.

[13] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no.20. The Udaipur IoA is preserved in File No. I/33/47, Year 1947.

[14] Although I had sought copies of the IoAs signed by the Rulers of 16 Princely States in my RTI application to MHA, the duplication fee rates (Rs. 20 per page) charged by the National Archives for providing photographs of the IOAs forced me to limit them to five. So I elected to pick up one IoA from each part of India – east, west, north and south as representative samples. Perhaps if I had a handsome fellowship to work on this task full time, I might have secured scanned images of all IoAs signed by the Rulers in India. The National Archives also provides photocopies of these documents. As monochrome copies do not satisfactorily reproduce the appearance of the original documents, I elected to obtain coloured images for publishing them in this article.

[15] See the works of Prof. Lamb, Andrew Whitehead and Victoria Schofield, cited at f.n. #4 and 5 above. After serving in J&K, Justice Mahajan was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court established by the new Constitution, in 1950 and became the third Chief Justice of India, in January 1954.

[16] File No. 11(8)-PR/47 on the subject: Kashmir Affairs – Accession of Kashmir State to the Dominion of India. The author has in his possession a legitimately obtained photocopy of Copy No. 4 of this long document form the National Archives. Some parts of this document are published in Noorani’s Article 370… etc. (see f.n. #19 below).

[17] While I have not read the original work, Kashmir: Triumphs and Tragedies, Gulshan Books, Srinagar, 2014, authored by Dr. Abdul Ahad, an archivist of repute (this book is out of stock on all e-seller websites), I found a reference to his claims in Abdul Majid Zargar, “Kashmir Accession Document Shrouded in False Myths”, Counter Currents, 27 October, 2013.

[18] See the title of both documents in the images accompanying this article.

[19] For example, see A. G. Noorani, The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012, Vols. 1 & 2, etc. and A. G. Noorani, Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011. Interestingly, Mr. Noorani dedicates Article 370 to Ms. Mridula Sarabhai. While researching the IoAs and declassified files relating to J&K in the National Archives, I came across multiple files containing the correspondence between Ms. Sarabhai and the Government of India, particularly in relation to the abducted women and children after the partition of the sub-continent. The Indices of Proceedings of the Ministries of State and Home Affairs, 1947 onwards, contain references to several files which demonstrate the leading role played by her in the relief and rehabilitation efforts. This is a subject matter for other scholars to research and bring to light her contributions to alleviating the sufferings of the worst affected during the chaos caused by the partition of the sub-continent. These documents are open for researchers to access at the National Archives.

[20] I am grateful to Shri Husain Dalwai, MP, Rajya Sabha, and his secretarial staff for facilitating easy access to the library of Parliament for doing this research. I am also grateful to the staff of the library for providing immediate access to the volumes containing the CA-L debates and facilitating photocopying of the relevant pages despite the fact that the monsoon session of Parliament was on at that time.

[21] The text of the IoA signed by the 140 States similar to that of J&K were also laid down before the House. There were other templates for the IoA of the smaller princely States, especially, the rulers of small sized principalities in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. These IoAs along with the names of acceding Princely States were also tabled before the CA-L. The text of these IoAs is also reproduced in the record of the CA-L proceedings from 19 November, 1947. Earlier members of the CA-L had raised starred queries seeking to know the status of integration of princely States into the Dominion of India. On the same day Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made a statement on the events in J&K at the CA-L.

[22] See f.n. #4 above.

https://thewire.in/history/public-first-time-jammu-kashmirs-instrument-accession-india

 

[M. Sarmad]

Exclusive: For the First Time, a True Copy of Jammu & Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession
Sourced from the National Archives of India, The Wire presents a key document from India's modern history

Venkatesh Nayak
296
interactions
HISTORY
26/OCT/2016



First page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession
October 26, 2016 mark the 70th anniversary of the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. On account of the troubled times that J&K has been passing through since July, there is little space for celebrating this event, but a sober commemoration of this historic moment is necessary. The Instrument of Accession signed by Maharaja Hari Singh has become the object of a never-ending controversy, unlike similar accession instruments signed by other princely states. The author seeks to reinvigorate informed debate on this issue by placing a true copy of the signed accession instrument in the public domain. The copy was obtained from the National Archives of India. This article also critically examines some of the popular claims regarding this document by making a reference to other contemporaneous official records.

Re-discovering the J&K Instrument of Accession

On a hot and humid mid-September afternoon, I walked in to the research room of the National Archives in New Delhi to find out if my search for a “historic” document had borne results. The document in question was the original Instrument of Accession (IoA) signed in October 1947 by the then ruler of Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh and accepted by Lord Mountbatten of Burma, who was Governor General of India at the time. Earlier, the Union ministry of home affairs had transferred to the National Archives my RTI application seeking a copy of this document and a handful of IoAs signed by other Rulers[1]. Subsequently, the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the National Archives invited me to access the documents under the Public Records Act, 1993[2].

I walked towards the shelves situated at the end of the hall, my shoes squeaking across the extra smooth flooring, butterflies fluttering in my stomach. The J&K IoA lay in a cream coloured folder at one corner of a shelf waiting to be picked up. The last time I got as excited was a few days earlier, when I spotted a reference to this document in the Index of 1,847 treaties and agreements transferred by the Central government to the National Archives for safe keeping.[3]

The J&K IoA has been the subject of one of the biggest and long drawn controversies in independent India. Does it really exist or not? One academic doubted its authenticity and reportedly dismissed its very existence.[4] Andrew Whitehead has claimed that he was denied access to this document on the ground that it was “classified”.[5] The retyped text of this document is currently accessible on a privately hosted website.[6] Whitehead writes that a facsimile of the J&K IoA was displayed on the website of the Union Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) for some time.[7] I could not trace this facsimile copy on the MHA site.

Through this article in The Wire, I can confirm that the J&K IoA exists for real, is safe and well preserved in the collection of the National Archives.

I have elected to place in the public domain a copy of the J&K IoA obtained legitimately from the National Archives for the purpose of facilitating informed debate amongst those interested in the subject.

I have also placed copies of the IoAs of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur obtained by me from the National Archives in the public domain so that readers may compare them with the J&K IoA for ascertaining its genuineness.[8]

Is the J&K IOA held by the National Archives a genuine document?

I am not a forensics expert, nor was I familiar with the signatures of the Maharaja of J&K and Lord Mountbatten before I looked at these five IoAs. However, at least three indicators seem to testify to the genuineness of the J&K IoA.

First, like several other IoAs, the document signed by the Maharaja of J&K is in two parts. The first three pages contain the text of the terms of the accession- this is the IoA proper. Page 2 of the document bears the signature of Maharaja Hari Singh and the acceptance of the instrument signed by Lord Mountbatten. Page 3 contains the list of subjects on which the Dominion Legislature’s powers to make laws applicable to J&K were accepted by the Maharaja by virtue of this accession instrument. Pages 4 and 5 contain the standstill agreement between J&K and the Dominion of India, as it was called in 1947 before India became a republic. IoAs signed by the several other princely States contain a standstill agreement between them and the Dominion of India as annexures.[9]


First page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession

Schedule attached to Jammu and Kashmir’s Instrument of Accession

Standstill agreement with Jammu and Kashmir

Schedule attached to Jammu and Kashmir’s standstill agreement.
Second, in all the IoAs signed by the rulers of Mysore,[10] Manipur,[11] Tehri Garhwal[12] and Udaipur[13], Lord Mountbatten signed his acceptance of the instruments and mentioned the date of acceptance in green ink – just like he did while accepting the J&K IoA.[14] Further, the overall faded appearance of this document – just like the other IoAs I picked up – clearly hints to its vintage.

Third, the appended standstill agreements are an added element confirming the authenticity of the Jammu and Kashmir IoA.

At the time of independence, various parts of the Indian sub-continent were under different kinds of administrative arrangements. Chiefly, there were two kinds of jurisdictions – the principalities – large and small which were ruled by hereditary princes and provinces which were directly under British administration. The British Raj had entered into separate treaties and agreements with several princely states for a variety of purposes, such as the construction and the maintenance of roads and power supply facilities, railway tracks, communication facilities including posts, telegraph and wireless, flights, taxation, currency and coinage, external affairs etc. With the ousting of the British Raj, these treaties would become void automatically. So the newly established Department of States drew up an agreement in consultation with the Chamber of Princes (comprising of the rulers of princely states) to ensure that these administrative arrangements would continue unaltered (i.e., standstill) until the new Constitution was drawn up. Almost all princely states that had such treaties and agreements with the British Raj signed a standstill agreement along with the Instrument of Accession to the Dominion of India.


First page of Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Second page of Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Schedule attached to Mysore’s Instrument of Accession.

Standstill agreement with Mysore

Schedule attached to Mysore’s standstill agreement.
As can be seen from the documents posted here, the Rulers of Mysore, Tehri Garhwal, Manipur and Udaipur did not sign the standstill agreements annexed to the IoAs, nor did Lord Mountbatten append his signature to the same. In all these cases, the standstill agreements were signed by the rulers’ subordinates. In the case of Mysore, the standstill agreement was signed by the dewan (prime minister) of Mysore, in the case of Manipur, it was signed by the private secretary to
Schedule attached to Udaipur’s standstill agreement.
The J&K standstill agreement, however, was signed by Maharaja Hari Singh himself and for good reason. All writers commenting on the events leading to the accession of J&K to the Indian Dominion are unanimous on one fact, i.e., the then prime minister of J&K, Justice M. C. Mahajan[15] was in New Delhi on October 26 – the date on which Maharaja Hari Singh is said to have signed the IoA. So there was probably no authority other than the Maharaja in Kashmir who could sign the standstill agreement. In all five cases, the standstill agreements were signed by Shri V. P. Menon on behalf of the Dominion of India.

Readers may ask, what about the letter that Maharaja Hari Singh is purported to have sent to Lord Mountbatten along with the signed IoA and the reply the latter sent back to the maharaja. Those documents, whose existence is not in doubt, thankfully, are not included in the file containing the IoA and the standstill agreement. They seem to remain in the custody of the Union home ministry. The text of this correspondence is published in a document published by the Political Branch of the Ministry of States.[16]

What about the overwriting in the J&K IoA?

Maharaja Hari Singh of Jammu and Kashmir. Credit: Wikimedia

Some writers have commented on the overwriting visible in the J&K IoA to argue that it is not a genuine document.[17] This issue can be explained by the fact that a common template was used for the purpose of the IoAs. The printed stationery mentioned the month of August, leaving a blank space for filling up the exact date of accession at the time of signature by each Ruler. While a large number of Rulers signed their respective IoAs in August itself, Maharaja Hari Singh signed it in October when his hands were forced by the invasion from across the State’s borders. This explains the striking out of “August” to insert “October” in the IoA.

Making such minor technicalities as the basis to contest the authenticity of the J&K IoA may not help advance the debate much because overwriting is seen in at least one other IoA whose copy I was able to obtain form the National Archives. For example, in the Mysore IoA, the date of acceptance was initially mentioned as the “ninth” day of August in black ink. Lord Mountbatten seems to have put in the correct date, namely, the “sixteenth” while appending his signature. The correction is made in green ink – the same colour he used for signing his acceptance of every IoA that I have looked at. Further, in the case of the standstill agreement with Mysore, the dewan signed on the portion which was reserved for the signature of the Secretary of the States Department of the Dominion. So the designation of V. P. Menon had to be typed up manually at the bottom of this document.

While the title of the rulers of Manipur and Udaipur were type-written on the IoAs, those of their counterparts in the case of the IoAs of Mysore, Tehri Garhwal were hand written. Should this discrepancy then be used to dispute the validity of the accession of any of these princely States to the Dominion?

Interestingly, while the IoAs and the standstill agreements in the case of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur indicate that they were drawn up in the names of the rulers of those states and the Dominion of India, in the case of J&K, both documents are drawn up in the name of the Jammu and Kashmir State.[18] Should this curious titling be taken to imply that the residents of J&K had consented to the accession, when they were not even consulted on this matter? Such nitpicking does not help informed debate on the subject. Given the trying circumstances in 1947 and the sheer number of documents that had to be signed from across the country, such discrepancies are highly likely to occur, especially in a newly created department that was short staffed and had set a near impossible deadline for itself to secure the integration of India.

Is the J&K IoA a unique document?

There is a general consensus that unlike other princely states, J&K acceded to the Dominion of India under unique circumstances. I do not intend to delve into these circumstances to examine the claims and counter claims in this brief article. However, another myth that popular lore about J&K has perpetuated is that Maharaja Hari Singh signed a specially drafted Instrument of Accession that took care of his demands. Almost every layperson I met with in J&K during my travel to promote awareness and the use of the state’s RTI Act would point out during informal discussions that the maharaja had recognised the powers of the Dominion to make and implement laws only on three subjects matter, namely foreign affairs, defence and communications. Until I began my research on this subject, I had also harboured a similar misconception.

A comparison of the four IoAs of Mysore, Manipur, Tehri Garhwal and Udaipur that I accessed from the National Archives and a careful reading of V. P. Menon’s narrative account of the process by which India was integrated, indicates otherwise.


First page of Manipur’s Instrument of Accession

Second page of Manipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Schedule attached to Manipur’s Instrument of Accession.

Standstill agreement with Manipur

Schedule attached to Manipur’s standstill agreement.
Every one of the 140 princely states that signed IoAs with the Dominion of India agreed to the same terms and conditions as J&K. All these rulers also initially acceded to the Dominion limited to the same three subjects. The remaining powers were retained by them just as the maharaja of J&K had sought to do. However, eventually some of them signed instruments of merger, to form larger administrative units such as the Matsya Union, Vindhya Pradesh, PEPSU, Travancore and Cochin etc. and finally accepted the scheme of administration laid down by the new Constitution. The then yuvaraj of J&Km who exercised all powers delegated to him by the Maharaja, issued a proclamation on November 25, 1949 stating that the soon-to-be-adopted Constitution of India would govern the relations between J&K and the Union only to such extent as its provisions would apply to J&K. Article 309 – which would later become Article 370 – laid down the terms and conditions of this relationship. Interestingly, the provisions under Article 370 were intended to be transitional and temporary in nature. Menon’s tome contains a detailed account of these developments. Subsequently, Noorani[19] and others have extensively dwelt upon the manner in which the protection provided by Article 370 was eroded from the very beginning. I do not intend to go into those matters in this brief article.

Tabling of the IoAs in the Constituent Assembly (Legislative)

In fact, my inspiration to seek copies of the IoAs including that of J&K came from a reading of three pieces of legislation, namely, The Government of India Act, 1935 (GoI Act), the India Independence Act, 1947 and The India (Provisional Constitution) Order, 1947.

While the GOI Act had laid down the accession procedure for the princely states (to the undivided Dominion of India as was envisaged then), the provisional constitutional order made an important amendment to its provisions, amongst several others. Section 6 of the GOI Act relating to the accession of the Indian states to the Dominion was amended to incorporate several changes. Sub-section 6 of the new Section 6 required the laying of copies of the Instrument of Accession on the table of the dominion legislature soon after they were accepted by the governor general. Eventually, the dominion legislature came to be known as the Constituent Assembly-Legislative (CA-L) when it was performing legislative functions outside of its main mandate, namely the framing of a constitution for India.

When the MHA did not respond to my request for copies of the IoAs, I filed an RTI application with the Lok Sabha secretariat seeking access to the same documents and the CA-L debates. I pointed out that the IoAs were required to be tabled before the CAL and the Lok Sabha being a successor body to the CA-L, ought to have maintained copies of these documents. The CPIO of the Lok Sabha has not responded to my RTI application till date. Subsequently, I secured access to the library of Parliament and located the debates of the CA-L for the period 1947-1948.[20]

Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel, as the deputy prime minister, in charge of the Ministry of States, tabled the IoA of J&K along with those signed by 116 other princely states before the CA-L on 19 November 19, 1947.[21] Kashmir is listed at #68 in Schedule I Part A of the paper laid on the table of the house. The date of signature of the IOA is mentioned as October 26, 1947 and the date of acceptance as October 27, 1947. Several writers have raised doubts about these dates. This is an area I intend to research next, so I will not offer any comment on this matter for now.

Before closing, it is necessary to dispel one more myth popularised by those who question the existence of the J&K IoA. Its origin seems to be based on the write-up attributed to Prof. Lamb.[22]If he has truly written that the signed copy of the IoA was never attached to the White Paper on J&K that the Government issued in 1948 or included in the documents that the Indian government sent to the UN Security Council that year, that discrepancy may also be explained in simple terms. It must be remembered that during the late 1940s and 1950s, photocopying and mimeography were not available in India. So the government perhaps appended only a copy of the IoA template which was commonly used to secure the accession of the 140 princely States to these documents. I have already shown that the text of the IoA templates was retyped for the purpose of laying them before the CA-L. Of course the government could have anticipated its future acerbic and often vituperative critics and included photographs of the signed copy of the J&K IoA in all these documents. It was within its powers to so do. Why it elected not to do so, is not my job to explain. That explanation should come from the government of India.

My objective in this article is limited – to place legitimately obtained true-to-the original images of the J&K Instrument of Accession along with other comparable and supporting documents to encourage informed debate across the country and elsewhere on this subject. I trust this article has accomplished this objective.

It will not be an exaggeration to describe the IoAs and the standstill agreements as the threads that knit the disparate administrative jurisdictions into a Union. Instead of tucking them away and providing access to researchers only on demand, the National Archives should work with the government to display them in a museum which people can visit at will. Citizens have the right to know more about these building blocks that became India.

Venkatesh Nayak is an RTI activist and a history researcher based in New Delhi. He works with the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative.

Endnotes

[1] While the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) of the MHA did not bother to reply to my request, my RTI application was transferred to the National Archives only after I submitted the first appeal to the appellate authority in MHA. According to Section 7(2) of The Right to Information Act, 2005 where a CPIO fails to send a reply to an RTI application within 30 days, it will be deemed that he or she has refused to the request for information and the right of the applicant to submit a first appeal gets activated automatically.

[2] The Public Records Act, 1993 and the Public Records Rules, 1997 lay down the statutory framework for the declassification and the archivisation of official records, including those labelled “top secret”, “secret” or “confidential”, held by public authorities under the Central Government. The National Archives is the custodian of such archived records and provides access to such records to researchers. Similar laws and rules have been put in place by several State Governments for the purpose of placing their old records with their own State-level Archives.

[3] National Archives Register No. R.R. 271, page no. 27. The J&K IOA is preserved in file no. P-I/20/47, Year 1947. Strangely, the National Archives refused to provide a photocopy of this page. This register indexes various treaties and agreements signed between 1831 and 1985

[4] This is what Prof. Alastair Lamb wrote about the J&K IoA in 1991: “The actual Instrument of Accession…was, in fact, no more than a printed form, not unlike an application for a driving licence, with blank spaces left for the name of the State, the signature of the Maharaja and the date; and it also contained a printed form of acceptance which required dating and signature by Mountbatten as Governor-General.” See Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy 1846-1990, Roxford Books, Hertfordshire,1990, page 137: accessed on 22 October, 2016. In an alleged excerpt from another work attributed to him: The Myth of Indian Claim to Jammu and Kashmir: A Reappraisal, uploaded on the website of Pakistan’s Ministry of External Affairs, the following statement is displayed: “The far more important document (a), the alleged Instrument of Accession, was not published until many years later, if at all…. The 1948 White Paper in which the Government of India set out its formal case in respect to the State of Jammu & Kashmir, does not contain the Instrument of Accession as claimed to have been signed by the Maharajah: instead, it reproduces an unsigned form of Accession such as, it is implied, the Maharajah might have signed. To date no satisfactory original of this Instrument as signed by the Maharajah has been produced: though a highly suspect version, complete with the false date 26 October 1947, has been circulated by the Indian side since the 1960s. On the present evidence it is by no means clear that the Maharaja ever did sign an Instrument of Accession. There are, indeed, grounds for suspecting that he did no such thing. The Instrument of Accession referred to in document (c), a letter which as we have seen was probably drafted by Indian officials prior to being shown to the Maharajah, may never have existed, and can hardly have existed when the letter was being prepared.”:, accessed on 22 October, 2016. Despite several efforts I could not locate on the Internet reliable bibliographical information about this work attributed to Prof. Lamb. There is no mention of this work in subsequent scholarly publications on Kashmir such as Andrew Whitehead’s Mission in Kashmir, etc. (see f.n. #4 below) or in Victoria Schofield’s Kashmir in Conflict: India, Pakistan and the Unending War”: I. B. Tauris & Co. Ltd., London, 2003) and A. G. Noorani’s, The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012, Vol. 1, Tulika Books, New Delhi, 2013.

[5] “The Instrument of Accession is in the holdings of India’s National Archive. I have been refused permission to consult the document because it is, apparently classified. A facsimile of the entire document was posted in 2005 at the Indian Ministry of Home Affairs website”. See f.n. #29 in Chapter 6: Signing up to India in Andrew Whitehead, Mission in Kashmir, Viking, Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 2007, New Delhi, page no. 255, accessible online on the author’s website, accessed on 22 October, 2016.

[6] See: http://www.jammu-kashmir.com/documents/instrument_of_accession.html, accessed on 22 October, 2016. This document is surprisingly replicated on the website of the Commissioner of Customs, Excise and Service Tax, Hydebarad-IV, accessed on 22 October, 2016.

[7] See f.n. #29 in Chapter 6: Signing up to India in Andrew Whitehead’s Mission in Kashmir etc. (see f.n. #5 above).

[8] Please note that the image files have been created from the images I obtained legitimately upon payment of the prescribed fees at the National Archives. All copyright vis-à-vis these IoAs is claimed by the National Archives. I request readers to access these files in the original from the National Archives using the file numbers mentioned in these foot notes.

[9] With deep respect to Prof. Lamb, it must be said that the parallel he drew in 1991, between the template on which the J&K IoA was drawn up and an application for a driver’s license, is uncalled for, for multiple reasons (see f.n. #4 above). First, the integration of the princely States into the Dominion could not afford a diversity of arrangements, if integration were to be achieved at all. The process by which the common text of the IoA template was drawn up by the newly established Ministry of States under the leadership of Deputy Prime Minister Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel and the stewardship of its Secretary, Shri V. P. Menon is documented in Chapter V of his well known publication: The Story of the Integration of the Indian States, Longmans Green & Co. London, 1956, pages 67ff. Second, practicality, based on common sense, dictated the need for printing a common template for the IoA to be used for securing the accession of all major princely States instead of having to retype each document. This would have required at least 280 documents to have been typed up i.e. 140 sets of 2 documents each – one copy for the Ruler who signed the IoAs and another for the government of the Dominion. Given the pressing times, I believe this would have been a cumbersome course of action to follow, resulting in delays which the country could ill afford.

[10] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 22. The Mysore IoA is preserved in File No. M-II/1/47, Year 1947.

[11] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 1. The Manipur IoA is preserved in File No. A-I/1/47, Year 1947.

[12] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no. 34. The Tehri Garhwal IoA is preserved in File No. U-I/8/47, Year 1947.

[13] National Archives Register No. R. R. 271, page no.20. The Udaipur IoA is preserved in File No. I/33/47, Year 1947.

[14] Although I had sought copies of the IoAs signed by the Rulers of 16 Princely States in my RTI application to MHA, the duplication fee rates (Rs. 20 per page) charged by the National Archives for providing photographs of the IOAs forced me to limit them to five. So I elected to pick up one IoA from each part of India – east, west, north and south as representative samples. Perhaps if I had a handsome fellowship to work on this task full time, I might have secured scanned images of all IoAs signed by the Rulers in India. The National Archives also provides photocopies of these documents. As monochrome copies do not satisfactorily reproduce the appearance of the original documents, I elected to obtain coloured images for publishing them in this article.

[15] See the works of Prof. Lamb, Andrew Whitehead and Victoria Schofield, cited at f.n. #4 and 5 above. After serving in J&K, Justice Mahajan was appointed Judge of the Supreme Court established by the new Constitution, in 1950 and became the third Chief Justice of India, in January 1954.

[16] File No. 11(8)-PR/47 on the subject: Kashmir Affairs – Accession of Kashmir State to the Dominion of India. The author has in his possession a legitimately obtained photocopy of Copy No. 4 of this long document form the National Archives. Some parts of this document are published in Noorani’s Article 370… etc. (see f.n. #19 below).

[17] While I have not read the original work, Kashmir: Triumphs and Tragedies, Gulshan Books, Srinagar, 2014, authored by Dr. Abdul Ahad, an archivist of repute (this book is out of stock on all e-seller websites), I found a reference to his claims in Abdul Majid Zargar, “Kashmir Accession Document Shrouded in False Myths”, Counter Currents, 27 October, 2013.

[18] See the title of both documents in the images accompanying this article.

[19] For example, see A. G. Noorani, The Kashmir Dispute: 1947-2012, Vols. 1 & 2, etc. and A. G. Noorani, Article 370: A Constitutional History of Jammu and Kashmir, Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 2011. Interestingly, Mr. Noorani dedicates Article 370 to Ms. Mridula Sarabhai. While researching the IoAs and declassified files relating to J&K in the National Archives, I came across multiple files containing the correspondence between Ms. Sarabhai and the Government of India, particularly in relation to the abducted women and children after the partition of the sub-continent. The Indices of Proceedings of the Ministries of State and Home Affairs, 1947 onwards, contain references to several files which demonstrate the leading role played by her in the relief and rehabilitation efforts. This is a subject matter for other scholars to research and bring to light her contributions to alleviating the sufferings of the worst affected during the chaos caused by the partition of the sub-continent. These documents are open for researchers to access at the National Archives.

[20] I am grateful to Shri Husain Dalwai, MP, Rajya Sabha, and his secretarial staff for facilitating easy access to the library of Parliament for doing this research. I am also grateful to the staff of the library for providing immediate access to the volumes containing the CA-L debates and facilitating photocopying of the relevant pages despite the fact that the monsoon session of Parliament was on at that time.

[21] The text of the IoA signed by the 140 States similar to that of J&K were also laid down before the House. There were other templates for the IoA of the smaller princely States, especially, the rulers of small sized principalities in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha. These IoAs along with the names of acceding Princely States were also tabled before the CA-L. The text of these IoAs is also reproduced in the record of the CA-L proceedings from 19 November, 1947. Earlier members of the CA-L had raised starred queries seeking to know the status of integration of princely States into the Dominion of India. On the same day Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru made a statement on the events in J&K at the CA-L.

[22] See f.n. #4 above.

https://thewire.in/history/public-first-time-jammu-kashmirs-instrument-accession-india

1) International law clearly states that every treaty entered into by a member of the United Nations must be registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations. "The Instrument of Accession" was neither presented to the United Nations nor to Pakistan. Hence India cannot invoke the treaty before any organ of the United Nations.


2) The legality of the Instrument of Accession may also be questioned on grounds that it was obtained under coercion. The International Court of Justice has stated that there "can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void."..... India’s military intervention in Kashmir was provisional upon the Maharaja’s signing of the Instrument of Accession. More importantly, however, the evidence suggests that Indian troops were pouring into Srinigar even before the Maharaja had signed the treaty. This fact would suggest that the treaty was signed under duress.


3) The Maharaja had no authority to sign the treaty, hence the Instrument of Accession can be considered without legal standing . The situation on the ground demonstrates that the Maharaja was hardly in control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hari Singh was in flight from the state capital, Srinigar. And it is highly doubtful that the Maharaja could claim that his government had a reasonable chance of staying in power .....



Thus, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding the signing of the Instrument of Accession shows that the accession of Kashmir to India was neither complete nor legal, as Delhi has vociferously contended for over sixty years.


The Fate of Kashmir
International Law or Lawlessness?
BY VIKAS KAPUR AND VIPIN NARANG
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/3.1.06_kapur-narang.html


----

Excerpts from 'The Myth of Indian Claim to JAMMU & KASHMIR ––A REAPPRAISAL'

by Alastair Lamb

THE INDIAN CLAIM TO JAMMU & KASHMIR A REAPPRAISAL

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/autonomy...ipe-for-disaster.440287/page-12#ixzz4FhRGU9hA


Moreover, further shedding doubt on the treaty`s validity, in 1995 Indian authorities claimed that the original copy of the treaty (letter of accession) was either stolen or lost !!!




The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), based in Geneva, passed a resolution in 1995 proclaiming Kashmir's accession to India as bogus and null and void.



----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

@HalfMoon

The Instrument of Accession

Indian position: Maharaja Hari Singh, the ruler of the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, on 26 October 1947 executed the Instrument of Accession under the provisions of the Indian Independence Act 1947 and acceded his state to the Dominion of India. India claims that the accession is unconditional and final.


Pakistan's position: Pakistan rejected this accession as this accession was predicated on fraud and violence. Pakistan claimed that the Maharaja had no authority to sign the Instrument of Accession as he had lost the confidence of his people. Moreover, regarding the signing of the Instrument of Accession, its timing, terms and conditions, the timing of the landing of Indian troops, and even the very existence of such a document are controversial.


The UN position: The UN holds that while the accession of Kashmir to India may not be invalid, it's incomplete. Many Security Council members held that Lord Mountbatten’s letter regarding accession (which stated that the question of State’s accession should be settled by the reference to the people) was an integral part of the terms of accession.

The Security Council passed Resolutions that established self-determination as the governing principal for the settlement of the Kashmir dispute. It explicitly and by implications, rejected India's claim that Kashmir was legally Indian territory.

It is also pertinent to mention that the UN through its resolutions 91 (March 1951) and 122 (January 1957) also repudiated Indian stance that the issue of accession of Kashmir had been resolved by the constituent assembly of Kashmir. These resolutions reiterated that the question of accession could not be resolved by any means other than enunciated in the UN resolutions on the subject.

The UN Resolutions are still valid.




Accession of Kashmir is different from accession of any other Indian Princely State as the accession has been placed before the UN Security Council for arranging a ratification or otherwise by the people of the State under the auspices of the United Nations. Therefore, the arrangement caused through the accession of 26 October 1947 has been taken over by the interests of 195 countries of the UN (including Pakistan as a member nation of UN and as a party). Pakistan as a party to the dispute administers two administrations of the State on its side of cease fire line.

 

[HalfMoon]

1) International law clearly states that every treaty entered into by a member of the United Nations must be registered with the Secretariat of the United Nations. "The Instrument of Accession" was neither presented to the United Nations nor to Pakistan. Hence India cannot invoke the treaty before any organ of the United Nations.


2) The legality of the Instrument of Accession may also be questioned on grounds that it was obtained under coercion. The International Court of Justice has stated that there "can be little doubt, as is implied in the Charter of the United Nations and recognized in Article 52 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, that under contemporary international law an agreement concluded under the threat or use of force is void."..... India’s military intervention in Kashmir was provisional upon the Maharaja’s signing of the Instrument of Accession. More importantly, however, the evidence suggests that Indian troops were pouring into Srinigar even before the Maharaja had signed the treaty. This fact would suggest that the treaty was signed under duress.


3) The Maharaja had no authority to sign the treaty, hence the Instrument of Accession can be considered without legal standing . The situation on the ground demonstrates that the Maharaja was hardly in control of the state of Jammu and Kashmir. Hari Singh was in flight from the state capital, Srinigar. And it is highly doubtful that the Maharaja could claim that his government had a reasonable chance of staying in power .....



Thus, an analysis of the circumstances surrounding the signing of the Instrument of Accession shows that the accession of Kashmir to India was neither complete nor legal, as Delhi has vociferously contended for over sixty years.


The Fate of Kashmir
International Law or Lawlessness?
BY VIKAS KAPUR AND VIPIN NARANG
http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjir/3.1.06_kapur-narang.html


----

Excerpts from 'The Myth of Indian Claim to JAMMU & KASHMIR ––A REAPPRAISAL'

by Alastair Lamb

THE INDIAN CLAIM TO JAMMU & KASHMIR A REAPPRAISAL

Source: https://defence.pk/threads/autonomy...ipe-for-disaster.440287/page-12#ixzz4FhRGU9hA


Moreover, further shedding doubt on the treaty`s validity, in 1995 Indian authorities claimed that the original copy of the treaty (letter of accession) was either stolen or lost !!!




The International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), based in Geneva, passed a resolution in 1995 proclaiming Kashmir's accession to India as bogus and null and void.

Instrument of Accession was accepted by the then Governor general of India Lord Mountbatten on 27-OCT-1947.

End of the discussion.

 

[M. Sarmad]

Instrument of Accession was accepted by the then Governor general of India Lord Mountbatten on 27-OCT-1947.

End of the discussion.

That's why only India claims that Kashmir is integral part of them

The UN rejects Indian claim and considers Kashmir as an internationally recognized disputed territory whose final accession to Pakistan or India is yet to be decided in accordance with the will of people of Kashmir

End of discussion