Nehru And Kashmir Issue

Although Sardar Patel was the Home minister and responsible for the integration of the Indian states, it was Pandit Nehru who took over the Kashmir issue as Minister for External Affairs. The handling of the Kashmir issue by Nehru rather than by Patel was one of the factors that created the impression that India herself regarded the Kashmir dispute as an international issue.

Nehru’s attempt to combine idealism and realism was apparent from the beginning in his handling of the Kashmir issue.

When the Maharaja of Kashmir, backed by Sheikh Abdullah, who was the President of the Kashmir National Conference and the undisputed leader of the Kashmir Muslims at the time, offered the unconditional accession of the State to India, it was mainly due to Nehru’s idealism the accession was made conditional by India unilaterally.
It was Nehru and not Mountbatten who insisted that the Governor-General’s letter to the Maharaja must state categorically that the accession was contingent on the wishes of the people of Kashmir. It is this conditional character of the accession that Pakistan has always emphasized with telling effect at the United Nations and elsewhere, and which has been the main weakness in India’s claim on Kashmir.
India’s reference of the Kashmir issue to the UN under Chapter VI of the Charter, which deals with the pacific settlement of the internal disputes through negotiation, mediation, conciliation, etc. rather the under Chapter VII which deals with the enforcement action, and her subsequent criticism of the UN, verging on denunciation, for the latter’s inability to compel Pakistan to withdraw from so-called Azad Kashmir, were self-contradictory.

If India regarded Kashmir as incontestably Indian Territory after the accession and the Pakistani action in Kashmir as aggression on India, She should have either defended herself without going to the UN or made a reference to the UN under Chapter VII of the Charter. Alternatively, if India thought that Kashmir was Indian Territory, but what Pakistan had done in Kashmir constituted a violation of international law short of aggression on India, a reference should have been made to the International Court of Justice rather then the Security Council. Only if India believed that Kashmir was an international dispute of a political nature which had to be resolved peacefully through international mediation over an indefinitely long period on time ,was there any case for going to the UN under Article 35 of the Charter. It is obvious that India’s case was based on the first contention, and yet the reference was made to the UN under Article 35; and when the UN predictably failed to put an end to the “aggression on Indian territory” by Pakistan, Nehru was apparently shocked.

Immediately after the US-Pakistan military agreement of 1954, Nehru declared that there had taken place a material change in situation and that India’s commitment regarding a plebiscite was no longer valid. By this sudden and controversial stroke of realism Nehru created serious misgivings in world public opinion regarding his earlier idealism. Paradoxically, it was Pakistan that afterwards brought the Kashmir issue periodically before the Security Council and it was India that was on the defensive mode.