KASHMIR SITUATION

Sardar Patel's Attitude towards Kashmir

Extracts from Krishna's Biography

What was Patel's attitude towards Kashmir? Hardly anyone knows or knew. He seldom opened his mind even to his intimate colleagues. While travelling with him in his car once, Vishnu Sahay heard him muttering to himself: "I will not take what's not mind, but I will not part with what's mine". Dr. Rajendra Prasad told Jayaprakash Narayan: "The Sardar used to evade an answer with the remark that he had left the problem for Jawaharlal to tackle. But once he did say that when we had given away Punjab, Sind and the NWFP, of what value could the small valley of Kashmir have for us? Will the people there ever agree to live happily with us?" Rajendra Prasad said that "it was an unexpressed thought with Patel that the Valley could be separated from the State and given to Pakistan, while Ladakh and Jammu would remain with India"? When a peaceful solution could have possibly been thus reached, India was, an Alan Campbell-Johnson confirms, amply provoked' by the tribesmen's invasion of the Valley. Hence, in Mountbatten's view, "the accession had indeed been brought about by violence, but the violence came from the tribes, for whom Pakistan, and not India, was responsible". As opposed to Jinnah's petulance and impetuousness, Patel was calm, cool and tremendously patient. According to Campbell-Johnson, "Mountbatten was empowered to advise him (the Maharaja) on the authority of Patel that if his decision was to throw in his lot with Pakistan and join their Constituent Assembly in advance of the transfer of power, it would not be regarded as an unfriendly act by India".”

Patel told M.R. Masani that, "but for Nehru, he could settle the Kashmir issue in no time by arranging that the Kashmir Valley go to Pakistan and East Pakistan to India. Both countries would benefit from such an arrangement." V.P. Menon held the same view. Patel knew that Jinnah would succumb to the idea both on emotional and strategic grounds. Kashmir was nearer to his heart than East Pakistan. He could sojourn there during Pakistan's hot summer in the regal style of the Moghuls. He considered, though erroneously, that the Kashmiri Muslims were nearer to the West Pakistan Muslims culturally and ethnically than the Muslims from East Pakistan, who were closer to the Bengali Hindus in language and culture. Field-Marshal Auchinleck wrote to a friend: "Pakistan should let East Pakistan go. They will always be a millstone round their necks and a great danger, or more. Jinnah made a big mistake when he fought for their inclusion. Punjabis and Pathans will never mix with Bengalis; they are like oil and water. They differ so in every way except religion, and I always think a Bengali is a Bengali first and a Muslim second! I think myself that they should agree to separate". He wrote to another friend in December 180: "Jinnah should not have insisted on East Pakistan. It is alien to West Pakistan in every conceivable way except religion. Much more akin to Hindu Bengal. Why cannot they do a deal over Kashmir?" That was coming round to Patel's thinking.

There was more of logic and less of emotion in Patel's thinking in the exchange of the two regions. His logic was that of an Administrator who sought a quick settlement of the Kashmir issue without letting outsiders poison Indo-Pakistani relations, and without allowing time to make it more and more complicated as years pass. An exchange would have drained out the poison on which successive rulers in Pakistan whipped up anti-India hysteria. Nor would it have given foreign powers an opportunity to play power politics between India and Pakistan; and even plot with Abdullah to turn Kashmir into a sovereign 'Switzerland'. If Kashmir spared the Defense Budgets of India and Pakistan from running a mad race for arms, the two under-developed countries would have had enough money for developmental activities aimed at the economic well-being of the poor. Patel appeared to have had other reasons as well: the highly complementary economies of the two Bengals in agricultural produce especially jute, the harnessing of waterways, harmony through the composite culture of the two, which would have promoted and sustained India's secularism, protection of nearly 10 million non-Muslim Chittagong hill-tribes, and proper control of India's eastern land borders and eastern waters through the port. of Chittagong. Above all, Patel would have thereby eliminated East Bengal becoming West Pakistan's second front on India's back. In 1960, when the Naga trouble. erupted, the rebels were found receiving assistance 'in various ways by the authorities in what was then East Pakistan'.

Mr. Rao's three nation policy of India, Pakistan and Jammu and Kashmir was worse than Mohammad Ali Jinnah's two nation concept. -L.K. Advani, BJP President

I will wait through my life tire if I have to until my people can vote freely.

-Farooq Abdullah, NC Leader