:: Inder Malhotra

Was Miliband really speaking for Britain?

By Inder Malhotra

For two reasons it is necessary to return to the subject of Kashmir and the penchant of the United States and Britain to meddle in it, though the days of their mediation ended long ago. The first is the appalling behaviour of the British foreign secretary David Miliband who was visiting India from January 13-15, linked the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Tayyaba’s horrific attack on Mumbai with the Kashmir issue. He pontificated that India needed to "incentivise Pakistan" by showing "some movement on Kashmir". And, for good measure, he absolved the Pakistani establishment of any blame for the Mumbai outrage, thus contradicting on Indian soil a statement Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had made a few days earlier.

The second reason is an article by Ramachandra Guha in which he has ably explained why azadi for Jammu and Kashmir — also called the "third option" — is totally untenable. But, surprisingly, the well-known scholar has got some of his historical facts wrong. On both issues the record needs to be set straight lest these inaccuracies become raw material for future historians.

Of the two, Mr Miliband’s shabby and unacceptable performance is more important. Though South Block tersely announced "unsolicited" advice was unwelcome, it apparently believes his puerile conduct to be an outcome of his immaturity, inexperience, stridency and arrogance. This impression is strengthened by the fact that British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who visited India and Pakistan a month earlier, said nothing about Kashmir and had been forthright about Pakistan-based terrorism. However, the matter cannot be allowed to rest at that. Some agonising questions must be answered.

For example, why was it necessary for Mr Miliband to arrive within four weeks of Mr Brown’s visit? Was he foolish to air his personal views, or had he brought a message from the government he represents, even if he delivered it rudely and crudely? At one stage in his hectoring talks with Dr Singh and foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee, Mr Miliband spoke of his discussions with US President Barack Obama’s team. Was he using this to reinforce his own remarks? All in all, the situation calls for a keen vigil and brisk activity on the part of Indian diplomacy. It is no secret that during the last eight years India has dealt with the Republican administration in the US. When the controversial Indo-US nuclear deal was the main item on the agenda and former President George W. Bush was exceptionally supportive of India, this country had put virtually all its eggs in the Republican basket. Whether sufficient effort has been made to contact, inform and befriend the new rulers in Washington is not known.

There is another aspect of the matter that most official sources are trying to avoid, but it cannot be waved aside with snide remarks about the British foreign secretary. So objectionable were Mr Miliband’s misdemeanors that he should have been asked to cut short his visit and return home. In similar circumstances even world statesmen of Charles de Gaulle’s stature have been so treated, as happened when, during a visit to Canada, the towering French leader had spoken of independence for the French-speaking Canadian province of Quebec. Here, Mr Miliband was invited to accompany Rahul Gandhi to the latter’s parliamentary constituency, Amethi.

As for Mr Guha’s article, he is in error in asserting that the Indian Independence Act gave the rulers of undivided India’s 562 princely states the option to accede either to India or Pakistan and that there was no third option. The fact is that the British Parliament simply abolished the paramountcy that the Raj, had exercised over the princes who were then free to do what they liked. Not only was there no legal or technical bar on the independence of princely states, the fact is that some of them lost no time in declaring that they wanted to exercise this right.

The first to do so was the Maharaja of Travancore or rather his dewan, Sir C.P. Ramaswami Iyer. The British hand behind this sinister move was obvious. Sir Iyer had signed away Travancore’s thorium resources to Britain "in perpetuity". Jawaharlal Nehru, as head of the interim government, got the deal rescinded. The Nizam of Hyderabad’s desire to be independent was stronger and his efforts towards that objective even more determined. These lasted nearly 13 months, until September 1948, when its patient negotiations with the Nizam failed, and the Union government took the necessary police action. The disastrous delay in the Maharaja of Jammu and Kashmir’s decision on which dominion to join was also caused by dreams of independence. Most princes slowly bowed to the compulsions of circumstances and acceded to one dominion or the other, depending on contiguity and composition of population, as Lord Mountbatten had advised them to do. Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel played a stellar role in this.

India’s considered decision to offer a plebiscite under the UN’s auspices in Kashmir, while taking its complaint to the UN Security Council, also needs to be put in perspective.

If the need to replicate the Junagarh precedent in J&K played any part, it must have been marginal. India was basically responding to complex challenges. On the one hand, Mohammad Ali Jinnah, obviously with Hyderabad in mind, insisted that the ruler had the right to decide on accession and that the people had no say in it, Nehru said that the people’s will was supreme and the ruler had to act accordingly. Moreover, as the Kashmir crisis had mounted, Britain kept insisting that the matter should be resolved by a reference to the UN. Its original suggestion that India and Pakistan should jointly go to the world body was not acceptable to India. Britain then hinted that it might take the initiative to go to the UN over Kashmir.

S. Gopal, Nehru’s official biographer and eminent historian, who had access to the Kashmir file, he told me that in December 1947 Nehru had taken the file to Mahatma Gandhi who endorsed both, the decision to go to the UN and commit the country to a plebiscite. How and why the plebiscite was never held is a long story.