Monday, Feb. 04, 1957

KASHMIR: India Grabs It

For the better part of two days last week. India's gaunt, silver-maned V. K. Krishna Menon waved his arms, flashed his eyes and showered the U.N. Security Council with words. When the torrent finally petered out, the exhausted Menon held the alltime U.N. record for a single speech—7 hours 48 minutes. It was a performance worthy of a Southern Senator, and had a purpose familiar to any Southern filibusterer hoping to frustrate the majority will. Menon was out to stall Security Council proceedings while India's moralizing Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru completed India's illegal annexation of most of the strategic state of Kashmir.

Kashmir, a mountainous never-never land that lies jammed in between China, Tibet and Afghanistan, was a prize which both India and Pakistan had been eying greedily ever since the British left India. As a princely state, it was entitled to choose which new nation it would join. Kashmir's Hindu maharaja, panicked by an invasion of tough Pathan Moslem tribesmen from northwest Pakistan, chose India—despite the fact that 77% of his subjects were Moslems.* There followed a 14-month war in which the Indian army badly mauled both the Pathans and the Pakistani regulars who had come in to give the tribesmen a hand. By the time the U.N. succeeded in arranging a cease-fire in January 1949, India held two-thirds of Kashmir.

Four times the U.N. Security Council, by overwhelming vote, demanded a plebiscite in Kashmir. Nehru (whose family originated in the beautiful Vale of Kashmir) was well aware that in a free election the Kashmiris would almost certainly vote for Pakistan.

Nehru paid lip service to the principle of self-determination, but, in fact, steadily tightened India's hold on Kashmir. At first India ruled the state through 6-ft. 4-in. Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, a Kash miri Moslem who had long been a friend of Nehru's. But in 1953. when Abdullah showed signs of objecting to Indian domination, he was thrown into jail, and remains there now without trial. So-called "peace brigades" of Indians rigidly suppressed advocates of Kashmiri independence or union with Pakistan. At Indian behest, a hand-picked Kashmiri Constituent Assembly began to draw up a state constitution whose third article read: "Kashmir is and shall be an integral part of the Union of India."

Two weeks ago, as the target date for adoption of the "Kashmir Constitution" rapidly approached, Pakistani Foreign Minister Malik Firoz Khan Noon appealed to the U.N. to head off Indian annexation of Kashmir. Pakistan, Noon declared, was anxious to see a U.N.-organized plebiscite policed by U.N. troops, but India had repeatedly blocked plebiscite proposals "by insisting on some new condition or raising irrelevant issues." Since 1949, noted Noon, "eleven proposals for settling the differences [have been] put forward. Pakistan accepted each; India rejected every one."

"Sheer Impertinence." In his marathon reply to Noon, stonewalling Krishna Menon tediously led the Security Council through a nine-year maze of military reports, diplomatic exchanges, ministerial conferences, press clippings and gossip. To demonstrate the justice of India's position, he ranged from the status of Texas after the Civil War to Australian constitutional law. Out of it all emerged one clear point: India had no intention of permitting a plebiscite in Kashmir.

At the end of the first five hours of this. Security Council President Carlos Romulo wearily tried to shut Menon off, but the indefatigable Indian insisted that it would take him the better part of another session to finish his case. So far, Menon had kept his hair-trigger temper under control; but the following morning, when he discovered that the U.S. and four other powers were already circulating a resolution which began, "Having heard statements from representatives of the governments of India and Pakistan ..." Menon's control broke. In a fit of irritation he implied that Britain's Sir Pierson Dixon was anti-Indian, later accused Pakistan's Noon of "sheer impertinence," and snapped arrogantly: "We have suffered in the past in this discussion by trusting to the good sense of everybody all around."

Menon's pettishness did nothing to help India's case. "People here," said a Canadian delegate, "are not so much pro-Pakistan or pro-India as they are anti-Menon. Every time he opens his mouth, people want to vote against him." In the roll call that followed Menon's speech, this desire was freely indulged. By a vote of 10-0 (with Russia abstaining), the Security Council for the fifth time called for a plebiscite in Kashmir, and challenged the right of Kashmir's puppet assembly to unite the state with India. Indians were disappointed by Russia's abstention, after Khrushchev had noisily proclaimed India's right to Kashmir—but after all. Russia is currently trying to win Moslem friends in the Middle East.

"I Am Pained." Consoling as the moral victory was to the Pakistanis, it was not likely to have much practical effect. In New Delhi, Prime Minister Nehru, informed of the U.N.'s vote as he saw Red China's Chou En-lai off at the airport, announced: "I am deeply pained by this . . . But may I point out that the Kashmir Constituent Assembly has finished its work, dissolves itself tonight and disappears . . . The position remains as it is now." A few hours later, in the Kashmiri capital of Jammu. Puppet Premier Bakhshi Ghulam Mohammed formally proclaimed adoption of the constitution joining Kashmir to India—and in the process, gave the clearest statement yet of Jawa harlal Nehru's attitude toward the U.N.: "We are not bound by resolutions which are against our country and our interest."

^{*In precisely the opposite circumstances, the Moslem ruler o-f predominantly Hindu Hyderabad was opposed to joining ladia. The Indian army simply moved in and grabbed the place, has held it ever since.

Find this article at:}