690D.91/4–2852
The Ambassador in India (Bowles) to the Assistant Secretary of State for United Nations Affairs (Hickerson)1
official—informal
Dear John: I certainly do wish that I could sit down with you and really talk out the Kashmir situation in detail. Cablegrams on a complicated subject such as this are certainly an unsatisfactory means of communication.
I am really quite in the dark as to the Department’s attitudes and reasoning. Probably there is good reason for the positions which have been taken but I do wish that I knew exactly what it was.
In all frankness as it appears to stand as I write this, Graham’s last two trips to the subcontinent were doomed to failure in advance, and there seems to be a possibility that he will soon be out here again with a little better hope for success.
His mission early in the winter came as you know right at the time of the Indian elections. Kashmir was a hot issue and Nehru was under strong fire from the Hindu right wing which charged him with being about to hand Kashmir over to Pakistan. Under the circumstances Indian government officials including Nehru acted just about [Page 1234] the way any American politician would act if he were accused next October of planning to turn Formosa over to Mao Tse-tung.
Bajpai came to me early in December, told me that it was impossible for the Indian government to make any moves during the elections, and urged me to tell my government not to be discouraged at Graham’s failure. Bajpai said that if Graham came back, it was his opinion that he had a very fair chance for settling the dispute. I told Bajpai that I knew Graham intimately and I was certainly not prepared to see him come back again and simply break his heart with no real chance for success. I further told him that if he had a tangible basis for saying Graham’s mission might be successful, he should tell me.
For several weeks Bajpai and Nehru gave me very little except generalities, but I continued to tell them that under the circumstances I could not personally recommend Graham’s return. As a result, the night before I left for the States early in January, Bajpai called at my house to say that the basis for his hope for a settlement lay in the belief that both Pakistan and India should be able to get together on a partition which would give Azad Kashmir to Pakistan and Jammu to India outright, with the plebiscite confined to the valley.
He stated that in the first place this was the right solution because it was the only way that the winner of the overall plebiscite could avoid the presence of a bitter unrelenting minority. He said that if India won an overall plebiscite, they knew very well that the Azad Kashmiri would remain their unrelenting enemies, and that this would mean more refugee problems and increased bitterness and suffering. He stated that if Pakistan won, they would be faced with the same situation in Jammu. Moreover, Bajpai said that by confining the plebiscite to the valley, the question of troop numbers would certainly be eased.
I stopped over in London for a few hours and reported this to our Embassy there and to the British with whom I had luncheon. They were most interested and urged me to get ahold of Graham in Paris. However, I was unable to locate him before my plane left.
I also covered the same ground in Washington, and on the basis of Bajpai’s statement urged very strongly that Graham should return to the subcontinent with the understanding that he could open up the partition issue, either formally or informally.
Everyone seemed to feel that it would be a mistake to ask for a change in the terms of reference because of the possibility of an open conflict in the Security Council, and I gather that it was the general understanding that apparently Pakistan would not agree to handle this change quietly and without debate. However, I understood that Graham would be given the full background on this partition angle, and indeed it was only on that basis that I recommended his return.
[Page 1235]Shortly after my return, however, I received a cable describing a talk between Ernie Gross and Sheikh Abdullah in which to my surprise Abdullah’s oblique reference to the possibility of partition was immediately rejected.
We sent a cable on February 11 again strongly pointing out that partition seemed the only possible basis for a settlement, and it was pretty much a waste of time to carry on these talks unless we were willing to tackle it from that angle. I do wish, John, that you would get out this cable and reread it, because I am honestly buffaloed about the whole development from that time on.
Perhaps the Department simply assumed that my reports were partly incorrect and that an agreement could be reached through the same approach which had failed twice previously. But actually what seems to have happened is that my advice was taken, although somewhat reluctantly, on sending Graham back, but the very basis for my urging him to come was not taken into acccount. In any event, Graham arrived without any knowledge whatsoever of the partition proposal.
He told me in our first visit that not only had he had no discussion on the subject but that his talk with Ernie Gross in New York had seemed to him to indicate that our government was standing firmly on the requirement that he talk about no subject outside his terms of reference.
Graham said that in looking back on it, it seemed to him that the British had tried to tip him off that he was free to tackle the problem on a broader base, but that he was not even sure of this.
On the Saturday night before Graham left Delhi, he and Marin had a talk with Bajpai and Nehru, during which Graham asked Nehru if the Indian government had any proposal which might lead to a settlement. Nehru stated that he would let Graham know in a day or so, and on Monday morning Bajpai called Marin and said that India would like to open up the possibility of a partition such as was previously described. Marin, however, acting under instructions from Graham, said that in view of his terms of reference, this subject was beyond the limits of his powers.
Bajpai told me of this talk an hour later with the deepest disappointment and surprise. I then had a long talk with Graham in which he verified Bajpai’s statements to me as to what had transpired. I urged him on a personal basis to stay on and to open up the whole subject of partition as a private citizen. I asked him if he would feel more willing to do this if I could get a cable to him from Dean Acheson and from the British specifically stating that he was free to act on his own once he was confident that he could not succeed under his terms of reference.2
[Page 1236]However, after much long and tortuous consideration, Graham decided that he simply could not do this. He told me however that he felt quite optimistic about his ability to get a settlement on the basis of partition, with the idea coming perhaps from Graham or possibly terms of reference and allow him to come back. He said he thought he could make his report, get an agreement from the Security Council, and be back before the latter part of April, provided he could convince the Pakistanis to continue the negotiations on this basis without letting them know that India had proposed partition.
The latter point he felt was vitally important because in his opinion if the Pakistanis knew that the idea of partition had come from the Indians, they would not, in all likelihood, accept it.
At that time, Graham expressed great satisfaction at the willingness of the Indian government to modify its position on troops immediately and without compensating advantages.
Bajpai then called me to his office for a long and searching discussion of the whole subject. Bajpai was hopeful that Graham would come back and that the whole subject could be reopened on the basis of partition, with the idea coming perhaps from Graham or possibly even from the Pakistanis, if that could be maneuvered.
Although he did not give me the exact figures, he implied that the gap on demilitarization was still quite substantial, perhaps 16,000 Indian troops against 4,000 Azad Kashmir, half of whom would be volunteers. I pointed out that unless he was willing to modify these figures substantially, agreement would probably be no easier even if the problem was approached from the point of view of partition, but he stated that as long as Azad Kashmir was given on an outright grant to Pakistan and Jammu to India, the troop problem would be a lot easier if only the approach could be really opened up.
A short while later Bajpai called me over to tell me about Graham’s proposal that he come out with a plebiscite administrator associated with him. Bajpai was extremely disappointed that Graham had apparently decided not to go to the Security Council for broader terms of reference, and said that they had written a rather cool reply, inferring that the Indian government was losing its patience. I suggested that perhaps Graham had run into trouble with the Pakistanis on changing his terms of reference, and that he was resorting to a plebiscite administrator as a means of introducing the subject in another way.
Bajpai grasped at this possibility and stated that this would make everything much easier. When I reported this to the Department, I received a rather cursory cablegram asking me to stop talking about partition. However, Bajpai again brought up the subject with me, as I reported by cablegram, and this time stated that while India was not going to put itself in a position of refusing to negotiate, he felt that it [Page 1237] was more or less a waste of time unless they could really get at the heart of the problem.
He again stated that he felt that a substantial reduction of troops in the valley could be made if the Azad Kashmir and Jammu problems were cleared up.
I asked him if the Indian government had really thought through to the position that they would take if Graham did open up the partition approach, and had they considered just how far they would be willing to go on troop reductions. I said that they must know the kind of agreement that the Pakistanis would accept, and if they want a settlement as sincerely as they seem to want one, they should decide what they were willing to do.
Otherwise, I suggested that they would be in the position of finally having gotten everybody to agree to the problem from the point of view that they wished without themselves offering an acceptable proposal on the basic question which would probably continue to be the quantum of forces.
Bajpai said that he agreed that they had not thought the thing through in as hard-headed a way as they should, and that he thought they should do so. He said if any test was needed of their sincerity, it lay in the fact that they had refrained from any publicity whatsoever on their proposal, and had even gone so far as to keep the partition discussions on a purely verbal basis both with me and with Marin. He repeated what he told me last March, that he was afraid that any document would become known and if it became evident that this proposal was coming from them, it would be doomed to failure.
He said that if India did not want an agreement and simply wanted to secure a solid propaganda position before the world, they would have long since made an appealing case in writing for partition, with emphasis on the rights of minorities, their willingness to compromise substantially for the sake of agreement, the fact that the plebiscite confined to the valley would greatly ease the military quantum of forces, etc.
He reiterated that the one reason they had not done this was because they wanted an agreement and not simply strategic advantage.
This is the story and I really wish I knew what had been going on at the other end of the line. For some reason, our views on this whole question have been pretty much disregarded, and I can’t quite figure out why. The result, however, was one fruitless trip on the part of Graham, and unless we face up to the basic problem, it looks as though another fruitless trip was in the making. It is possible, of course, that Graham can come out on the same old basis, end up in a deadlock, and then ask both India and Pakistan if they would agree to a discussion of the partition approach, provided he can get agreement from the [Page 1238] Security Council. However, there is a good chance that Pakistan may refuse.
In any event, by that time everyone will be even more tired of the whole business. Finally, he would only be suggesting a course of action in June or July which it seems to me could have been followed last February.
I would deeply appreciate it if you would let me know what is going on, as we are entirely in the dark here. I feel as you do that it is desperately important that this conflict should be settled, and I have yet to have anyone explain to me why we can’t tackle it through this most promising avenue.3
Sincerely,
An attached chit by Sandifer to Hickerson, dated May 2, reads as follows:
“I think you will want to see this before it goes to UNP.
“It should have a very substantial reply, as it reflects an astonishing gap between Bowles and the Department.”
↩- A marginal comment by Sandifer, which begins opposite this paragraph, reads as follows: “Rather amazing suggestion from an Ambassador. How does he think Graham could possibly act as a private Citizen?”↩
- For Hickerson’s reply, dated May 29, see p. 1252.↩