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This is not a new book and has been around a couple of years, but the material it contains is original and this itself will make the book a reference for a long time to come. The mystery of why India took the J&K issue to the UN becomes ever clearer. It was the direct result of a misplaced trust of the British colonial master. The real question is why the Indians placed so much trust on the integrity of the Brits. Surely this was naivete of high order or was it lack of confidence in the ability of the Indians to govern themselves effectively and decisively.



A Review of Chandrashekhar Dasgupta's War and Diplomacy in Kashmir,

1947-48 Sage Publications, New Delhi. 2002. ISBN: 0-7619-9588-9.

Price: US$17.75. 239 pages)



[url="http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE22Df01.html"]http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE22Df01.html[/url]



May 21, 2002 atimes.com



By Sreeram Chaulia



Peace will come only if we have the strength to resist invasion and

make it clear that it will not pay.



- Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru to Governor General Louis

Mountbatten, December 26, 1947



Having won accolades for more than 30 years as one of the brightest

and best Indian Foreign Service officers, the legendary

Chandrashekhar Dasgupta has once again proved his mettle by writing a

highly original, revelatory and myth-shattering book on the genesis

of the Kashmir imbroglio. No competent historian until now has been

able to portray the undeclared 1947-8 India-Pakistan war over Kashmir

from the standpoint of British strategic and diplomatic calculations.



It comes as no surprise that the Promethean "CD" (as Dasgupta is

admiringly called by the "old boys" of his St Stephen's College,

Delhi, and in the diplomatic corps) decided to fill the gap with a

lucid and well-referenced treatise on the perfidies of Whitehall and

its representatives who remained in authoritative positions on the

subcontinent even after formal transfer of power to the domains of

India and Pakistan.



While the origins of the Kashmir conflict are highly contested by

both the claimant parties and this debated history has produced

several partisan as well as impartial accounts, Dasgupta's work is

the first to unearth the complex military and diplomatic decision-

making in the crowded 15-month war that was influenced and distorted

by Britain.



British aces on the eve of the Kashmir crisis

Immediately after Indian and Pakistani independence, by a peculiar

quirk of circumstances, Britain had a number of "men on the spot" at

its disposal to protect and buttress its interests. First, the

governor-general and head of state in India was Lord Louis

Mountbatten of the British Royal Navy. True to his blue-blooded

lineage and decorated career rendering yeoman service to "His

Majesty, the King of England", Mountbatten took

regular "appreciations" and advice on his role in India from Clement

Attlee, Defense Minister Alexander Albert, the UK chiefs of staff,

British high commissioners in Delhi and Karachi, and the Secretary of

State for Commonwealth Relations, Noel Baker. In the words of

Mountbatten's aide, Ismay, anything that brought the two dominions,

India and Pakistan, into a crisis "was a matter in which the

instructions of His Majesty the King should be sought [by the

Governor-General]" (p 21).



Second, Field Marshall Auchinleck remained supreme commander of the

British Indian army even after August 15 1947, and closely conferred

with Commanders-in-Chief Rob Lockhart and Roy Bucher, Air Chief

Marshall Thomas Elmherst and a host of other generals in both India

and Pakistan. Their importance as trump cards for guaranteeing

British strategic objectives was underlined by the Commonwealth

Affairs Committee in London, which proclaimed that in an emergency

involving India and Pakistan, "the Minister of Defense, in

consultation with the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations,

should send instructions to the Supreme Commander" (p 33). Throughout

the Kashmir war, Nehru and Patel had occasions to be furious with the

solicitation of external instructions by British commanders who owed

primary loyalties to London.



With nationals of a third country leading the opposing armies and top

executive structures of India and Pakistan, the Kashmir war of 1947-8

was unique in the annals of modern warfare, yet fell into the

predictable pattern of third world conflicts that were "moderated"

or "finessed" by great power pressures. Without full national control

over respective armies, India and (to a lesser extent) Pakistan were

unable to determine the course and outcome of the war as their

political elites wished.



Twin British 'instructions' and the fatal tilt

Two broad British interests, conveyed and acted out through

Mountbatten and other operatives, were at stake in an India-Pakistan

war. One was integrity of the commonwealth and avoidance of inter-

dominion warfare. Reduced to a "half great power" by 1945, London

foresaw immense prestige and economic and political merit in

retaining both India and Pakistan in its sphere of influence and knew

the dangers inherent in taking sides, irrespective of the legality or

morality of the Indian or Pakistani case. In July 1947, Whitehall

issued a "Stand Down" instruction to British authorities if

hostilities broke out between the two dominions "since under no

circumstances could British officers be ranged on opposite sides" (p

19). Averting open war thus became a sine qua non of British purpose,

regardless of the relative rectitude of the two sides.



"Stand Down" was not, however, meant to be neutrality, leave alone

benevolent neutrality, for the larger geopolitical reassessment

conducted by British planners in 1946-7 was clear that "our strategic

interests in the subcontinent lay primarily in Pakistan" (p 17).

Hopes of a defense treaty with India were present but not deemed as

vital as the retention of Pakistan, "particularly the North West",

within the commonwealth. The bases, airfield and ports of the North

West were invaluable for commonwealth defense. Besides, the UK chiefs

of staff reasoned that Pakistan had to be kept on board to preserve

British "strategic positions in the Middle East and North Africa".

Employing typical communal logic, the former colonial masters also

felt that estranging Pakistan would harm Britain's relations with

the "whole Mussulman bloc", a premise that would be fatal when the

Kashmir war came up before the UN Security Council. Briefed that

the "area of Pakistan is strategically the most important in the

continent of India and the majority of our strategic requirements

could be met … by an agreement with Pakistan alone" (p 17),

Mountbatten and the British personnel on the ground knew whom not to

displease if it really came to a choice between India and Pakistan.



Prelude in Junagadh

A curtain-raiser to this tilt came over the disputed accession of

Junagadh in September 1947, when British service chiefs tried to

falsely convince Nehru and Patel that the Indian army was "in no

position to conduct large-scale operations" to flush out the Nawab's

private army from neighboring Mangrol. Patel rebutted bitterly to

Mountbatten, "senior British officers owed loyalty to and took orders

from Auchinleck rather than the Indian government" (p 26). The

governor-general, who constituted a defense committee of the cabinet

during the stand-off appointing himself, not Nehru, as the chairman,

backed off and allowed Junagadh's incorporation into the Indian

union, not before cheekily suggesting "lodging a complaint to the

United Nations against Junagadh's act of aggression". Kashmir would

be a different kettle of tea because Pakistan had a much greater

interest in it and the British were wary of the dangers of "losing"

Pakistan from their grand strategic chessboard.



Constraining India at war

Before the Pakistani "tribal" invasion of Kashmir in October 1947,

General Lockhart was secretly informed by his British counterpart in

Rawalpindi of the preparations underway for the raids. The commander-

in-chief shared the crucial information with his two other British

service chiefs but not with the Indian government (Nehru discovered

this delinquency only in December, leading to Lockhart's dismissal).

After the invasion and the accession of Jammu and Kashmir to India,

Lockhart and Mountbatten worked feverishly behind the scenes to

prevent inter-dominion war, which in fact meant restraining Indian

armed retaliation against the invading Pakistani irregulars.

Patel's directive that arms be supplied urgently to reinforce the

Maharaja's defences "was simply derailed by the commander-in-chief

acting in collusion with Field Marshal Auchinleck". (p 42).

Mountbatten, privately chastising Jinnah for actively abetting the

tribal invasion, publicly advised the Indian government that it would

be a folly to send munitions to a "neutral" state since Pakistan

could do the same and it would end up a full-scale war. Nehru and

Patel were certain than an informal state of war already existed and

urged an airlift of Indian armed forces to relieve Srinagar from the

rampaging Pathans. The service chiefs warned that an airlift

involved "great risks and dangers", but Nehru refused to be deterred.

In November, as the situation worsened in the Jammu-Poonch-Mirpur

sector and Nehru asked for immediate military relief, Mountbatten and

Lockhart painted somber pictures of the incapacity of the Indian

armed forces. When Nehru still insisted on action to "rid Jammu of

raiders", the British slyly changed the order to mean

merely "evacuating garrisons".



In the absence of Pakistani "appeals" to the raiders to withdraw and

with more evidence of invader brutalities in Kashmir, the Indian

cabinet exhorted more and more forceful policies - air interdiction

of Afridi invasion routes and even a counter-attack into West

Pakistan to "strike at bases and nerve centres of the raiders". A

desperate Moutbatten then mooted complaint against the tribal

invasion to the United Nations as the proper course of action and

simultaneously promised full military preparations for a counter-

attack. Nehru accepted this in good faith, hoping the British service

chiefs would keep their part of the agreement. "This proved to be a

fatal error. The Governor-General was determined to thwart the

cabinet" (p 101). General Bucher saw to it that no measures were made

for a lightning strike across the border and Britain also imposed a

sudden cut in oil supplies in early 1948, with serious implications

for India's capacity to carry out military operations in Kashmir.



Ismay, Mountbatten's chief of staff and British high commissioner to

India, Shone, reported to London that Pakistan was "the guilty state

conniving in actual use of force in Kashmir" (p 58). Attlee was, of

course, unprepared to alienate Pakistan and "the whole of Islam" and

accepted the latter's contention that Karachi could appeal to the

tribal invaders only after a "fair" solution was reached in Kashmir.

Noel Baker marshalled this thinly veiled pro-Pakistan approach at the

Commonwealth Relations Office and then transferred his communal bias

to the UN Security Council (UNSC) in the early months of 1948.



British skullduggery at the UN

Around the same time, the partition of Palestine earned bitter Arab

recriminations against Britain and America, and the Foreign Office in

London decided, "Arab opinion might be further aggravated if British

policy on Kashmir were seen as being unfriendly to a Muslim state" (p

111). Aneurin Bevin's pro-Pakistan line, shared by Noel Baker, meant

that British proposals in the Security Council were supportive of

Pakistan on every major point. Kashmir's accession to India was

ignored and the problem of irregular invasion pushed under the

carpet. "The only yardstick used by Bevin and Noel-Baker was

acceptability to Pakistan. Indian reactions, not to mention legal or

constitutional factors, were hardly taken into account" (p 114).



Close British allies America, Canada, and France were brought around

to supporting the Pakistani stand, but not before US Secretary of

State George Marshall plainly stated that his government "found it

difficult to deny the legal validity of Kashmir's accession to India"

(p 121). But in the desire not to present a rival proposal and thus

convey to the USSR divisions in the "Anglo-Saxon camp", Washington

reluctantly followed the British agenda. American ambassador to

India, Grady, went on record saying the US "would have adopted a more

sympathetic attitude to India, had it not been for the pressure

exerted by the British delegates". Even as loyal a Briton as

Mountbatten had to record, "power politics and not impartiality are

governing the attitude of the Security Council" (p 123). Attlee

himself was disturbed at the undue discretion Noel Baker was

exercising in New York and wrote: "all the concessions are being

asked from India, while Pakistan concedes little or nothing. The

attitude still seems to be that it is India which is at fault whereas

the complaint was rightly lodged against Pakistan" (p 129). Following

a rethink by the major players, the April resolutions of the UNSC,

despite Noel Baker's best efforts, called for withdrawal of the

invaders from "Azad Kashmir" for which "Pakistan should use its best

endeavours", to be followed by a plebiscite as Nehru had agreed. The

August 1948 UNCIP (United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan)

resolution restated the sequential de-escalation with greater

clarity.



The Bucher-Gracey deal

Baker's pitch that "stabilization" of the situation required the

induction of regular Pakistani army soldiers into Jammu and Kashmir,

though not succeeding in the UNSC, found another votary in General

Roy Bucher, Lockhart's replacement as commander-in-chief of the

Indian army. Behind the back of his government, Bucher had top-secret

confabulations with his British counterpart in Pakistan, Douglas

Gracey, in March 1948. An informal truce was agreed upon (with the

assent of Pakistan premier Liaqat Ali Khan) where Bucher promised not

to launch any offensive into territory controlled by the "Azad

Kashmir" forces and to withdraw Indian troops from Poonch town and

the environs of Rajouri. "Each side would remain in undisputed

military occupation of what are roughly their present positions … and

it will be essential for some Pakistan Army troops to be employed in

the Uri sector" (p 139). Upon learning of this scheme, Nehru and

Patel flatly rejected it as unauthorized contradiction of their aim

of expelling occupants from the entire territory of Jammu and

Kashmir.



The Bucher-Gracey deal never materialized, but it presaged Pakistan's

unilateral push of its regular battalions into raider-held areas in

May, a crucial movement known to Bucher in advance but conveniently

hidden from Nehru until it was too late. Noel Baker hush-hushed the

violation of "Stand Down" when Gracey personally ordered the influx

of the Pakistani army with British officers into Kashmir, citing

threats to British interests: "Pakistan might leave the Commonwealth;

the hostility of the Muslim population of the world to the UK might

be increased" (p 160).



A 'very secret' alliance



In September 1948, as an Indian advance into Mirpur looked imminent,

Pakistan sent its deputy army chief to London on a "very secret

mission" to negotiate a defense treaty with Britain. Attlee welcomed

Liaqat's demarche and the preliminary discussions "served to enhance

the pro-Pakistan tilt in British policy" (p 170). As a reward for

Pakistan's eagerness to join the West, London offered the Pakistan

army "hints", "tips" and "assurances" about Indian army plans in the

last three months of the Kashmir war. Most appallingly, while

maintaining the fa?ade of neutrality, the UK High Commission in

Karachi noted, "from London, assurance had now been given by H M G

that an attack by India on west Punjab would not be tolerated" (p

171, emphasis original). Bucher restricted Indian offensive action to

the utmost and relayed all vital intelligence to his opposing number

in Pakistan, allowing the latter to relocate forces in most

vulnerable sectors. Attlee also bent the rules of "Stand Down" in

favor of Pakistan, what with British officers planning and

executing "Operation Venus" in Naoshera.



Besides military aid, Pakistan's offer of a defense pact elicited

Noel Baker's promise to return the Kashmir question to the UNSC

before India evacuated invaders from the whole of Jammu and Kashmir.

In November, Britain tried mobilizing support in the UNSC for

an "unconditional ceasefire", freezing the trench lines but

permitting Pakistan to retain troops in Jammu and Kashmir. America

turned it down as "inappropriate" and inconsistent with UNCIP and

UNSC resolutions. John Foster Dulles complained, "the present UK

approach to Kashmir appears extremely pro-Pakistan as against the

middle ground" (p 195). The final UNCIP proposals, reaffirming the

earlier resolutions, fell short of Indian expectations, but Nehru had

no other option than accepting them since Bucher and his cohorts had

convinced the cabinet with their "superior expertise" that India

was "militarily impotent".



Conclusions

Drawing upon recently declassified British Foreign Office

archives, "CD" has dug out some of the most telltale and hermetically

sealed secrets of Whitehall malfeasance during the first Kashmir war.

The much-trumpeted British "sense of fairness" comes unstuck in this

damning book, inducing the reader to wonder what kind of neutrality

it was that caused General Cariappa to remark he was "fighting two

enemies - army headquarters headed by Roy Bucher and the Pakistani

army headed by Messervy" (p 137). What kind of impartiality was it

that the British high commissioner in India could upbraid the British

chief of the Indian Air Force for "foolish, unnecessary and

provocative action" (p 209)? The counter-factual conclusion one

gleans from War and Diplomacy in Kashmir is that the history of

Kashmir and of the subcontinent would have been a lot different had

Britain not toyed with facts and legality to serve its ulterior ends

through eminences grises in India and Pakistan or had America taken a

keener interest in the region and not left the nitty-gritty in the

hands of its "Anglo-Saxon ally".

The real naivete of Indians comes through in the sentences above. The question Indians should have asked themselves is why should Britain help India, after all the Congress had wrested the Crown jewel in the British empire and now the Brits are supposed to help them govern themselves !



Incidentally, "CD"'s research has also demythified Nehru's alleged

pacifism, feebleness and "softness" towards Pakistan. The Indian

prime minister emerges from the narrative as, to use a term he

disapproved, a courageous "realist" who thoroughly understood the

geopolitical and military context of Kashmir. It has, of late, become

fashionable in Indian politics to demean Nehru as a dreamy utopian

who practiced appeasement and squandered Indian advantages in foreign

policy. "CD" has shown that whatever mistakes India made in 1947-8

had to do with the sabotage of external agents who kept Nehru in the

dark on several outstanding counts. While i do not quibble with this assessment, it remains undeniable that it was Nehru who asked Mountbatten to remain as GG and it was he who decided to retain the British service chiefs to head the armed forces. surely the thought must have occurred to him , as to the loyalty of these high level Brits to India



In terms of policy relevance, this book should be read by those who

currently advocate "third party arbitration" to solve South Asian

disharmony. It is useful to know from history that facilitators and

mediators had and have their own gooses to cook in Kashmir.



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