Kashmir-historic facts can't be Altered
By Ayaz Daudzai

HISTORIC facts cannot be altered by the passage of time. That is why occupied Kashmir could not be considered as part of India, despite India's continued claim on it as being its integral part.

The past 55 years of the illegal occupation of a major part of Jammu and Kashmir has kept South Asia under constant threat of catastrophe, and the Indian lofty claims of being an advocate and upholder of international norms and morality are not convincing at the international level.

On October 27, 2003, 56 years of Indian aggression in Jammu and Kashmir will be complete. It was on this day in 1947 that the Indian troops had overtly invaded the Kashmiris' soil. 

In fact, the Indian armed forces, in blatant contravention of the principle of partition of the sub-continent into two sovereign states, Pakistan and India were long before present in Srinagar and other places. This day reminds us how the world community has failed to resolve the oldest issue on the UN agenda in accordance with the UN resolutions. 

The Kashmir dispute is one of the well-documented issues and the entire world is aware of India's violation of international norms and principles by keeping under its occupation a territory the political future of which is yet to be decided within the framework laid down by the UN resolutions.

All the political ruses resorted to by India to legitimize its military occupation of Jammu and Kashmir coupled with fraud and conspiracies to make possible and Justify its aggression have proved to be no more than chasing mirages.

Its conspiracies to alter to its advantage the report of the Boundary Commission, its forgery of the so-called accession document, its defiance of the UN resolutions and its continued victimisation and brutalisation of the Kashmiri people, struggling for their right to self-determination stand thoroughly exposed at the world level.

India has mainly based its claim to Kashmir on a so-called accession document. The validity of this document was a burning topic in the Indian press in September 1995. There have been press reports, emanating from New Delhi to the effect that the so-called document of accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India is missing.

This fraudulent document has been the subject of controversy for the past 50 years because its validity was in doubt right from its execution. That is why the then British governor general Lord Mountbatten, is on record having accepted the accession with the provision that the final disposition of the state would be decided by a reference to the people of Jammu and Kashmir.

It was due to this controversy that the Indian government had kept the so-called accession document as a closely-guarded secret. The New Delhi press reports quoted an English weekly of Jammu, The Sahayogi Times as saying that '.the missing of the historic treaty is reported to have come to light when it was required for compiling the case to rebut the 'charge' of Pakistan and the doubts raised in the United States of America and some Arab and Western countries about the validity of the so-called Instrument of Accession.

The New Delhi press reports had also pointed out that the Jammu and Kashmir High Court had issued notice to the chief-secretary of occupied Kashmir and the director of Archives of India to file a written reply before September 28, 1995 to a writ petition, seeking production of the original document of the Instrument of Accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India. Justice Bilal Ahmad of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, had also issued a notice for the appointment of a commission, receiver or a sitting judge to take charge of the archives and verify the truth from the original document. The petitioners had prayed that the Instrument of Accession "be made public for the satisfaction of the people."

It is a universally known fact that the story of Jammu and Kashmir has been told many a time during all these years in all its aspects, and nothing has remained obscure from the piercing gaze of the incisive analysts and the probing historians. The Hindu-British perfidy has been fully exposed and the inaction of the United Nations to implement its pledge to the Kashmiris viewed from a variety of angles. In his book, Kashmir-A Disputed Legacy, the British author, Alastair Lamb, has revealed some very telling details relating to the Redcliffe. Award and the circumstances in which the bogey of the so-called accession of Kashmir to India materialized.

The facts as narrated by him in this context can be clearly construed to be thoroughly exposing the partiality of Mountbatten towards India and his decisive role in influencing the accession of Jammu and Kashmir as well as the working of the Boundary Commission. He has stated that Sir Cyril Redcliffe was given residence in the Viceroy's Lodge, who frequently dined with him and thus was prone to succumb to viceregal wishes.

Moreover, the Boundary Commission for the partition of Punjab had four members, two Muslims and the other two non- Muslims (a Hindu and a Sikh). The Muslim members were Justice Din Muhammad and Justice Muhammad Munir, Mehar Chand Mahajan was the Hindu and Taj Singh the Sikh member. In the event of difference of opinion between the members, Sir Cyrill Redcfiffe frequently resorted to using his 'casting vote' in favour of Hindu and Sikh members. 

The view that Nehru and Mountbatten were in league, and that Redcliffe was amenable to Mountbatten's mounting pressure has been conclusively proved by the statement of Christopher Beaumont, secretary to Sir Cyril Redcliffe, released to the press on February 25, 1992. This statement proves beyond any doubt that Sir Redcliffe had not only drawn his award in conformity with the wishes of Lord Mountbatten, he had even altered it to the great disadvantage of Pakistan.

Beaumont, in his statement, has said "Sir Cyril Redcliffe, head of the Boundary Commission, had yielded to overwhelming political expediency, by agreeing after he had decided the line, to the transfer of the Ferozpur and Zira sub-division in Punjab from Pakistan to India. But no change was made in the North Punjab line in the Gurdaspur district, which abutted Kashmir.

The Line in Gurdaspur, it is obvious, was not changed because it had the viceregal pleasure behind it. Mr. Christopher Beaumont, in his statement, added that, "the a1teration took place under the pressure from Mountbatten who was in turn under pressure from Nehru and almost certainly from the Maharaja of Bikaner whose state would have been adversely affected if the Canal Headworks in Ferozpur had gone to Pakistan.

The Maharaja of Bikaner had told Mountbatten that unless Ferozpur was allotted to India, he would have to accede to Pakistan. Thus, Ferozpur was given to India, so that Bikaner state remains in the Indian Union and Gurdaspur was awarded to that country to facilitate the farcical accession to it by the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir." Beaumont has also described it as a serious mistake to appoint a Hindu, Rao Sahib VD Ayer, to the confidential post of assistant secretary to the Commission. The job, he thought, should have gone to someone brought from Britain.

Beaumont said that he had little doubt that Aver Kent, Nehru and Menon who handled the accession of states to India were informed of the progress. The Award of Redcliffe, who died in 1977, has been the subject of subsistent controversy and now Beaumont has pronounced the final judgement about the mala fide of the Boundary Commission's Award. Even the official biographer of the last Viceroy of India, Philip Zieglen, while stoutly defending Mountbatten, in his book published in 1985 of the charges that he had tampered with the Award, had at least this much to concede that "at one point, Mountbatten, under pressure from Nehru, did contemplate asking Redcliffe to amend the award."

Professor Alastair Lamb in his book has totally demolished India's case regarding the Kashmir issue. His conclusions regarding the Kashmir case were carried out in a monograph titled The Indian claim to Jammu and Kashmir: a reappraisal, which was released to the press in London on February 20, 1993. In this document the author proclaimed, "the ruler of the princely State of  Jammu and Kashmir, Maharaja Hari Singh, never did sign the Instrument of Accession to India.

And to date no satisfactory original Instrument, signed by Maharaja, has been produced, though a highly suspect version, complete with false date of October 26, 1947, has been in circulation since 1960. Prof. Lamb's monograph, based on research and irrefutable evidence from the available archives, has brought to light for the first time India's fraudulently obtained accession of Jammu and Kashmir. It lays bare over five decades of Indian falsehood on Jammu and Kashmir and has altered fundamentally the nature of the Indian intervention in Jammu and Kashmir on October 27, 1947.

The author asserts that, "India was not defending its own but intervening in a foreign state." The monograph stresses, had the United Nations and the world at large been aware of the falsification of the record by Indians, they would have listened with less sympathy to arguments made by successive Indian representatives."

Given the facts as they are known, Prof. Lamb holds, "it may well be that an impartial international tribunal would decide that India had no right at all to be in the State of Jammu and Kashmir."  The fact that till the writing of these lines, India has not contradicted the reports of the missing of the Accession Document is not surprising because it is of, no use even if it existed at any point of time. As pointed out by Alastair Lamb, India has been circulating a fake document, calling it Instrument of Accession. Therefore, it is not important whether such a piece of paper is missing or not. What is vital is that India yields to the verdict of the United Nations and leaves Kashmiris alone to decide their political future, through UN-supervised plebiscite.●

© 2005 Ayaz Daudzai