Selected Articles and Features

It is impossible to discuss the dispute between  India and Pakistan over the former princely state of Jammu and Kashmir, without mentioning ‘the plebiscite’: the pledge made   by both leaders of recently independent India and Pakistan – Prime Minister Jawaharhal Nehru and Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah - to hold a plebiscite to confirm (or reject) Maharajah Hari Singh’s accession to India in October 1947.

Given the hurried nature of the accession, carried out in the face of mounting unrest in the state and a tribal invasion from neighbouring Pakistan, it was Mountbatten – in his capacity as  Governor-General of India – who had first suggested that the accession should be confirmed by a ‘referendum, plebiscite or reference to the people.’ Mindful that the Maharaja was a Hindu, the majority of his people were Muslim, in the heat of the moment, Mountbatten’s suggestion seemed a democratically acceptable  way of giving closure to the issue.

At the time no one pointed to the cultural and religious diversity in the state – its varied regions brought together as a Princely state in 1846 by the British as a counterweight to the rising power of the Sikhs in the Punjab. No one raised the issue of whether what might suit the inhabitants of Gilgit and Baltistan (accession to Pakistan) might not  suit the minority Buddhist population of Ladakh, who were far more ideologically attuned to reuniting with Tibet (pre the 1949 Chinese invasion) in preference to becoming part of Pakistan.

No one considered  that whereas the predominantly Muslim valley of Kashmir might opt for union with Pakistan, predominantly Hindu Jammu would be most likely to prefer remaining with India. It took Australian jurist, Sir Owen Dixon, travelling to the region in 1950 on behalf of the United Nations Committee for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) , to  highlight the complexities of  the issue  by suggesting that holding regional plebiscites might   produce a more equitable result. But even that more pragmatic approach was not heeded, having as its inevitable outcome  the break-up of the state.