by A. G. NOORANI
July 20, 1950: Jawaharlal Nehru (right), with Sir Owen Dixon and Liaquat Ali Khan (left), Prime Minister of Pakistan, in New Delhi. Dixon, appointed by the U.N. to mediate the differences between India and Pakistan on the Kashmir issue, came up with the Dixon Plan, the only one which came closest to a peaceful solution. PHOTO/The Hindu Archives
Though most of the U.N. resolutions on Kashmir have been overtaken by recent events, two that define the contours of the conflict are still relevant: Kashmir is a dispute between Pakistan and India, and no solution to the dispute will be legitimate without the participation of the people of Kashmir.
January 5, 2016, Syed Ali Shah Geelani held a meeting of his increasingly dwindling band of active supporters at his house to commemorate the anniversary of the resolution of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) on a plebiscite in Kashmir. It is doubtful whether this autocrat or his likes have ever read the minutiae of that document or, still less, reflected on a question of fundamental importance.
What if India, or any other state, had not taken the Kashmir dispute to the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) and, consequently, it had passed no resolution on it at all? Would the people of the State of Jammu and Kashmir have been deprived of their right to decide their future? Does that right derive from anything which any organ of the U.N. did or failed to do? To bank on a resolution of that erratic body is to belittle the Kashmiris’ birthright.
However, if “the U.N. Resolutions” are relied on as scripture by some in Pakistan and Kashmir, in India they are derided as being irrelevant and obsolete. Neither school cares to specify which resolution it has in mind, the ones adopted by the UNSC or those adopted by the body it set up, the UNCIP.
The Partition Plan of June 3, 1947, was followed by talks on its consequences. As early as on June 13, 1947, at a meeting of the Joint Defence Council over which Governor-General Mountbatten presided, the differences —which have ruined the subcontinent—came to the fore. Mohammad Ali Jinnah asserted that it was for the ruler [of a princely state] to decide on the issue of accession. Jawaharlal Nehru rejoined that it was for the people to decide that issue. Jinnah made his stand public in statements made on June 17 and July 30.
The All India Congress Committee declared in a Resolution on June 15 that “the people of the States must have a dominant voice in any decisions regarding them” (The Times of India, June 16, 1947). By Jinnah’s logic, Hari Singh was free to opt for India. Jinnah accepted Junagadh’s accession to Pakistan and strenuously encouraged the Nizam of Hyderabad not to accede to India. When, following a tribal raid from Pakistan, Hari Singh acceded to India, India stuck to its stand. The Instrument of Accession had a collateral document signed by Mountbatten, on the very same date and also simultaneously with his acceptance of that Instrument, which said explicitly: “Consistent with their policy that, in the case of any State where the issue of the accession has been the subject of dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the State, it is my Government’s wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invader, the question of the State’s accession should be settled by a reference to the people” (emphasis added throughout). This recognised that an India-Pakistan dispute existed.
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