Foreign Relations of the United States, 1948, The Near East, South Asia, and Africa, Volume V, Part 1

501.BC Kashmir/9–2448

The Chargé in Pakistan (Lewis) to the Secretary of State

restricted

Karachi, September 24, 1948.

No. 427

Subject: Kashmir Dispute: India-Pakistan Commission

Sir: I have the honor to refer to my despatch No. 409 of September 10, 1948 with regard to the publication by the United Nations India-Pakistan Commission of the correspondence between the Commission and the Governments of India and Pakistan, on the subject of the Kashmir dispute, and to enclose for the information of the Department a copy of a letter addressed to the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Pakistan under date of September 19¹ by the Chairman of the Commission (Ambassador Huddle) in response to Sir Zafrullah Khan’s letter of September 6.² The Commission’s letter was released for publication by the Commission on its transit through Karachi from New Delhi to Geneva on September 22. There is likewise enclosed a copy of a resolution adopted by the Commission at a meeting held in Srinagar on September 19 calling upon both India and Pakistan “to use their best endeavors during the absence of the Commission to lessen the existing tension in this dispute so as to further prepare the ground for its peaceful final settlement which both Governments have declared to be their most sincere and ardent desire.”³ There is also enclosed a copy of the reply⁴ of the Government of Pakistan to this resolution.

It will be observed that in the last part of the Chairman’s letter to Sir Zafrullah it is stated that, as regards the conclusions contained in Point 11 of Sir Zafrullah’s letter of September 6, “upon presentation of the resolution (of August 13) the Commission requested the Governments of Pakistan and India to consider and accept this document as a whole. It was intended that the details for the implementation of the Resolution be discussed at common meetings between the representatives of both Governments and the Commission in subsequent stages, and following the cessation of hostilities.” The Chairman’s letter then continues:

“The Commission observes with regret that the Government of Pakistan has been unable to accept the Resolution without attaching certain conditions beyond the compass of this Resolution, thereby making impossible an immediate cease fire and the beginning of fruitful negotiations between the two Governments and the Commission to bring about a peaceful and final settlement of the situation hi the State of Jammu and Kashmir.”

The letter then concludes with the statement that the Commission sincerely hopes that the Government of Pakistan “may find it possible to reconsider their position and to accept the proposals contained in its Resolution of August 13, 1948, as clarified and elucidated in the present letter and the correspondence mentioned therein.”

Inasmuch as the Commission seems clearly to have placed the onus for the non-acceptance of the Commission’s resolution of August 13 upon Pakistan it is perhaps desirable that certain features of the situation be carefully analyzed with a view to determining whether that onus has in fact been well placed.

Point 11 of Sir Zafrullah’s letter of September 6 reads as follows:

“Although there are several features in the Commission’s proposals which from the point of view of Pakistan Government are not satisfactory, nevertheless as a step towards the solution of the situation in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, and in the interest of furthering international peace and security, the Pakistan Government have authorised me to inform the Commission that:

“Subject to the clarifications and elucidations furnished by the Commission to the Government of Pakistan being accepted by the Government of India, and the elucidations and clarifications, if any, furnished by the Commission to the Government of India being acceptable to the Government of Pakistan, and provided the Government of India accept the conditions laid down in part B (article 6 to 15, both inclusive) of the Security Council’s resolution of 21st April, 1948, as explained by the sponsors of the Resolution in the Security Council for a free and impartial plebiscite to decide whether the State of Jammu and Kashmir is to accede to India or Pakistan, the Government of Pakistan accept the proposals contained in the Commission’s Resolution of the 13th August, 1948, as clarified and elucidated to the Pakistan Government by the Commission.”

The above quotation from Sir Zafrullah’s letter indicates that the Government of Pakistan did attach reservations to its acceptance of the proposals contained in the Commission’s Resolution and that it did not accept the Resolution “as a whole” in the sense intended by the Commission.

It is well to bear in mind, however, that the Government of India also did not, contrary to the representations of India and, by implication, of the Commission, accept the Commission’s Resolution as a whole and without reservations.

Point 3 of Pandit Nehru’s letter of August 20,⁵ in reply to the Commission’s Resolution of August 13, stated in part as follows:

“Since our meeting of the 18th August, we have given the Commission’s resolution our most earnest thought. There are many parts of it which we should have preferred to be otherwise and more in keeping with the fundamental facts of the situation, especially the flagrant aggression of the Pakistan Government on Indian Union territory. We recognise, however, that, if a successful effort is to be made to create satisfactory conditions for a solution of the Kashmir problem without further bloodshed, we should concentrate on certain essentials only at present and seek safeguards in regard to them. It was in this spirit that I placed the following considerations before Your Excellency:

(1) That paragraph A. 3 of Part II of the resolution should not be interpreted, or applied in practice, so as

(a) to bring into question the sovereignty of the Jammu and Kashmir Government over the portion of their territory evacuated by Pakistan troops,

(b) to afford any recognition of the so-called “Azad Kashmir Government,” or

(c) to enable this territory to be consolidated in any way during the period of trace to the disadvantage of the State.

(2) That from our point of view the effective insurance of the security of the State against external aggression, from which Kashmir has suffered so much during the last ten months, was of the most vital significance and no less important than the observance of internal law and order, and that, therefore, withdrawal of Indian troops and the strength of Indian forces maintained in Kashmir should be sufficient to ensure security against any form of external aggression as well as internal disorder.

(3) That as regards Part III, should it be decided to seek a solution of the future of the State by means of a plebiscite, Pakistan should have no part in the organization and conduct of the plebiscite or in any other matter of internal administration in the State.”

Pandit Nehru repeated the latter condition in Point 4 of his letter, saying: “Finally, you agreed that Part III, as formulated, does not in any way recognize the right of Pakistan to have any part in a plebiscite.”

The subject of most vital concern to the Government of Pakistan among Pandit Nehru’s reservations, or “considerations,” is this precise point, that Pakistan should not in any way be recognized as having a right to participate in the organization and conduct of a plebiscite in Kashmir. This is totally out of line with the United Nations Security Council resolution of April 21, 1948, yet in the Commission’s reply of August 25⁶ to Pandit Nehru’s letter the Chairman of the Commission, Mr. Korbel, stated that the Commission requested him “to convey to Your Excellency its view that the interpretation of the Resolution as expressed in paragraph 4 of your letter coincides with its own interpretation,” and added that “the Commission wishes me to express to Your Excellency its sincere satisfaction that the Government of India has accepted the Resolution and appreciates the spirit in which this decision has been taken.”

In another letter from Pandit Nehru to the Commission under date of August 20⁷ the Prime Minister of India presented another, and from the point of view of the Government of Pakistan, an extremely important reservation. In that letter Pandit Nehru, referring to the “sparsely populated and mountainous region of Jammu and Kashmir State in the North,” said that the authority of the government of Jammu and Kashmir over that region as a whole had not been challenged or disturbed “except by roving bands of hostiles, or in some places like Skardu which have been occupied by irregulars or Pakistan troops.” Pandit Nehru then went on to say that the Commission’s Resolution, “as you agreed in the course of our interview on the 18th, does not deal with the problem of administration or defence in this large area. We desire that, after Pakistan troops and irregulars have withdrawn from the territory, the responsibility for the administration of the evacuated areas should revert to the Government of Jammu and Kashmir and that for defence to us. (The only exception that we should be prepared to accept would be Gilgit.)”

Briefly, the salient features of the Commission’s cease fire and truce proposals were that the governments of India and Pakistan would issue separately and simultaneously a cease fire order to apply to all forces under their control in the State of Jammu and Kashmir, that the Commanders-in-Chief of the forces of India and Pakistan should promptly confer regarding any necessary local changes in present dispositions which might facilitate a cease fire, that simultaneously with the acceptance of the proposal for the immediate cessation of hostilities the Government of Pakistan would withdraw its troops from the State of Jammu and Kashmir, that the Government of Pakistan would use its best endeavor to secure the withdrawal from the State of Jammu and Kashmir of tribesmen and Pakistan nationals not normally resident therein, and that pending a final resolution the territory evacuated by the Pakistan troops would be administered by the local authorities under the surveillance of the Commission. Nowhere in the Resolution is authorization given to the Government of India to advance its forces into areas occupied either by Pakistan troops or by irregular forces. By whatever name called the Government of Pakistan and the Azad Kashmir authorities regard the forces in northern Kashmir as organized forces under the Azad Kashmir authorities. Nevertheless Pandit Nehru in his letter insisted that the Government of India should be permitted to reoccupy a very large part of northern Kashmir now admittedly held by non-Indian forces. His position was that permission for Indian troops to occupy or reoccupy those areas was a further condition or “consideration” precedent to his acceptance of the Resolution yet the Commission did not consider the condition as a reservation. This is confirmed by the Commission’s letter of August 25 to Pandit Nehru in which it stated with reference to this question: “The Commission wishes me to confirm that, due to the peculiar conditions of this area, it did not specifically deal with the military aspect of the problem in its Resolution of 13 August 1948. It believes, however, that the question raised in your letter could be considered in the implementation of the Resolution.” The phraseology used in the latter sentence is not exactly clear, but the Government of Pakistan understood it to mean an acceptance of Pandit Nehru’s position, never denied by the Commission, and Pandit Nehru certainly accepted the Commission’s letter as a confirmation of his position on that point.

If, therefore, in the light of the documents on the subject, the Government of Pakistan did not accept the Commission’s Resolution “as a whole” can it be logically said that the Government of India did accept it as a whole? The difference, of course, is that the Commission accepted Pandit Nehru’s interpretations but did not accept Sir Zafrullah’s, holding that his “were beyond the compass” of the Resolution.

Whatever may have been the intentions of the Commission the onus of rejecting its Resolution has thus been placed on Pakistan while India is permitted to pass before world opinion as in effect an aggrieved and injured party, which has accepted without reservation the Commission’s Resolution. The Pakistanis feel, with due deference to the Commission, that what in effect seems to have happened, although the Commission may not be conscious of it and would resent the implication, is that the Commission has been unable, as stated by Dawn in an editorial in its issue of September 24 “to persuade Pakistan to surrender to the will of India to whom the Commission most inadvisedly and against the specific terms of the Security Council Resolution of April 21, itself surrendered.”

The observations in this despatch reflect the authentic views of the Government of Pakistan and yet throughout this period when the tide of the Commission’s opinion has steadily and obviously been running against Pakistan the Government of this country and the press have borne, and still bear, themselves with dignity and without any signs of malice. This is perhaps all the more remarkable in that it has not escaped them that the question has recently become a matter of far more importance than the mere question of the settlement of the Kashmir dispute, for if world opinion is to gain the impression that Pakistan has been the guilty and obstructive party that impression would inevitably, and perhaps disastrously, affect the very existence of Pakistan should India avail itself of the presence of Pakistan troops in Kashmir, or avail itself of any other excuse, for waging war on this country. India’s press has always been far more effective than has the press of Pakistan. In the final analysis, therefore, should India have aspirations in the direction indicated, Pakistan would be functioning not alone at tremendous odds in terms of military potential but also in terms of world opinion. One has only to read the article in the September 20 issue of Time entitled “Pakistan. That Man”, and particularly the last paragraph, to grasp the significance of this observation.

It is accordingly vital to Pakistan that its position in relation to the Kashmir dispute and to the Commission’s Resolution be objectively stated and objectively understood and that the same should be done with reference to India’s position in these matters. There may never be agreement, but there is no need for either party to suffer the injustice of misrepresentation.

I know that most, if not all, of the members of the Commission believe that Kashmir, or most of it, should logically fall to Pakistan, but I also know that they are extremely annoyed with Pakistan for not having bowed to their judgment in the matter of the approach to the settlement of the problem and thereby having made the Commission’s efforts to achieve a settlement infructuous. Entirely apart from questions of principle, little or no consideration was given by the Commission to the practical reasons, to which I referred in my despatch of September 10, why Pakistan could not bow to the Commission’s judgment. Had the Commission bowed less to India’s intransigence on the plebiscite issue those practical reasons would largely have disappeared and with them the questions of principle which troubled Pakistan.

Respectfully yours,

Charles W. Lewis, Jr.

1. SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, pp. 48–49.
2. SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, pp. 41–45.
3. For text, see SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, p. 49.
4. Not printed.
5. See SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, p. 35.
6. For text, see SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, pp. 36–37.
7. For text, see SC, 3rd yr., Suppl. for Nov. 1948, p. 37.