Excerpts from Chapter 7 of 'Ghosts of Empire' by K Kwarteng
It took the British more than three hundred years to build up their Indian Empire. They dismantled it in just seventy days in 1947.
Nehru, a Kashmiri Brahmin, loved Kashmir like a supremely beautiful woman whose beauty is impersonal and above desire.
Muslim League in Punjab and NWFP are making preparations to enter Kashmir in considerable numbers. Nehru.
Arrangements are in train to send immediately supplies of arms and ammunition to Kashmir. Sardar Patel.
It would be a very good thing if Kashmir could be filled up with armed Muslims to the greatest possible extent, out line here must be that all officers and our police etc. give no support or sympathy to the movement. Abdul Qayum governor NWFP.
The invading Pathans had sensed an opportunity of gaining both religious merit and rich booty.
If there is going to be a plebiscite, then obviously we have to work in such a way as to gain the goodwill of the majority of the population of the State, which chiefly means Muslims. Nehru
Direct action against Kashmir (by the tribal Pashtuns) now would tend to make the Maharajah join Pakistan than otherwise. Abdul Qayum.
Jinnah is conscious of having made a blunder (of sending the Tribals into Kashmir). Cunningham.
A unique situation had arisen, in which both the opposing armies were led by nationals of a third country.
British Government seemed to be divided, with Attlee etc favouring Pakistan and a group led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Cripps, supporting India.
Whatever errors may have been committed by both sides since the trouble started, the basic cause was the action of the Hindu ruler in suppressing popular agitation in favour of Pakistan. British Indian Gov. memo.
It was disingenuous to say, as was said subsequently, that Kashmir had the option to accede to either Dominion, as the India was divided on communal grounds and the only rational course was for a state if it decided to accede, to assure itself first whether its population would support the accession.
Religious enthusiasm, and the strong identification people have with their religion, was a phenomenon which the Congress party, in its secular liberal way, had never really confronted.
It was Lord Mountbatten's idea to refer the dispute to the UN's, and he urged Nehru to take the step.
On 1 January, India took the issue to Security council. The received wisdom among Indians is that this was a mistake. They have always felt that they have failed to get a fair hearing at the UN.
It has become part of the Indian mythology that Pakistan, in Sir ZafarUllah Khan, had a 'superbly gifted orator', and that Philip Noel-Baker, a member of the British delegation at the UN, was a 'vigorous' supporter of Pakistan.
One enterprising Indian historian has even stated that British support for Pakistan's position was somehow 'compensation' for the recent creation of the state of Israel, after which there was need to placate Muslims world wide.
The simpler explanation was that, on the face of things, the Pakistanis had a powerful case.
The Maharajah was an embarrassment to the Indian case....
The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war -- which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms. George Orwell 1941.
It is ironic that revisionist historians have pointed to Indian democracy as the British Empire's greatest legacy. Democracy in Kashmir never existed; the system of Indian princes, was absolute opposite of democracy.
To which Dominion the state should accede -- strictly speaking, according to the Government of India Act, I alone am the authority to decide. Hari Singh.
L'Etat, c'est moi, Louis XIV
It took the British more than three hundred years to build up their Indian Empire. They dismantled it in just seventy days in 1947.
Nehru, a Kashmiri Brahmin, loved Kashmir like a supremely beautiful woman whose beauty is impersonal and above desire.
Muslim League in Punjab and NWFP are making preparations to enter Kashmir in considerable numbers. Nehru.
Arrangements are in train to send immediately supplies of arms and ammunition to Kashmir. Sardar Patel.
It would be a very good thing if Kashmir could be filled up with armed Muslims to the greatest possible extent, out line here must be that all officers and our police etc. give no support or sympathy to the movement. Abdul Qayum governor NWFP.
The invading Pathans had sensed an opportunity of gaining both religious merit and rich booty.
If there is going to be a plebiscite, then obviously we have to work in such a way as to gain the goodwill of the majority of the population of the State, which chiefly means Muslims. Nehru
Direct action against Kashmir (by the tribal Pashtuns) now would tend to make the Maharajah join Pakistan than otherwise. Abdul Qayum.
Jinnah is conscious of having made a blunder (of sending the Tribals into Kashmir). Cunningham.
A unique situation had arisen, in which both the opposing armies were led by nationals of a third country.
British Government seemed to be divided, with Attlee etc favouring Pakistan and a group led by the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Cripps, supporting India.
Whatever errors may have been committed by both sides since the trouble started, the basic cause was the action of the Hindu ruler in suppressing popular agitation in favour of Pakistan. British Indian Gov. memo.
It was disingenuous to say, as was said subsequently, that Kashmir had the option to accede to either Dominion, as the India was divided on communal grounds and the only rational course was for a state if it decided to accede, to assure itself first whether its population would support the accession.
Religious enthusiasm, and the strong identification people have with their religion, was a phenomenon which the Congress party, in its secular liberal way, had never really confronted.
It was Lord Mountbatten's idea to refer the dispute to the UN's, and he urged Nehru to take the step.
On 1 January, India took the issue to Security council. The received wisdom among Indians is that this was a mistake. They have always felt that they have failed to get a fair hearing at the UN.
It has become part of the Indian mythology that Pakistan, in Sir ZafarUllah Khan, had a 'superbly gifted orator', and that Philip Noel-Baker, a member of the British delegation at the UN, was a 'vigorous' supporter of Pakistan.
One enterprising Indian historian has even stated that British support for Pakistan's position was somehow 'compensation' for the recent creation of the state of Israel, after which there was need to placate Muslims world wide.
The simpler explanation was that, on the face of things, the Pakistanis had a powerful case.
The Maharajah was an embarrassment to the Indian case....
- his wisest policy, is to do nothing at all. Nehru writing to Patel.
- he believed UN Security Council will take an adverse decision and that the state will eventually have to accede to Pakistan.
- he felt he could have had better terms from Pakistan.
- he complained to Sardar Patel that the Indian army had been hopeless in its military engagements in the Kashmir dispute.
By 1956, Kashmir had been integrated into India, and Nehru had abandoned his earlier commitment to a plebiscite.
By the end of 2010, Kashmir was one of the most militarized regions in the world, although the aspirations for greater independence remain largely unrealized.
The Kashmir dispute from the very beginning has been a battle of different ideas of what constitutes a state. Pakistan was built as an avowedly Muslim state, whose basis is the religion which, it believed, united the country. India, under its Congress leaders, has always proudly maintained its secular status. According to one writer, the battle of Kashmir is an 'uncompromising struggle of two ways of life, two concepts of political organization, two scales of values, two spiritual attitudes'.
The energy that actually shapes the world springs from emotions - racial pride, leader-worship, religious belief, love of war -- which liberal intellectuals mechanically write off as anachronisms. George Orwell 1941.
It is ironic that revisionist historians have pointed to Indian democracy as the British Empire's greatest legacy. Democracy in Kashmir never existed; the system of Indian princes, was absolute opposite of democracy.
To which Dominion the state should accede -- strictly speaking, according to the Government of India Act, I alone am the authority to decide. Hari Singh.
L'Etat, c'est moi, Louis XIV
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