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Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749

Rakesh Ankit
a a

University of Southampton, UK Version of record first published: 08 Feb 2013.

To cite this article: Rakesh Ankit (2013): Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749, India Review, 12:1, 20-40 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14736489.2013.759467

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India Review, vol. 12, no. 1, 2013, pp. 2040 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC ISSN 1473-6489 print/1557-3036 online DOI: 10.1080/14736489.2013.759467

Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749

RAKESH ANKIT

Introduction A princely India of over 500 states existed alongside British India until August 1947.1 Between the partition plan of June 3, 1947 which announced the latters end and August 14/15, 1947 when, with the birth of independent India and Pakistan, Great Britain ceased to be the paramount power in the subcontinent, all except three among the Princes, prodded by the last British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and prevailed upon by the Indians and Pakistanis,2 had signed an instrument of accession either with India or Pakistan. Among the threeHyderabad, Junagadh and Jammu and Kashmirleft, Kashmir was the largest and, for the retreating imperial power, strategically the most signicant as it was surrounded by Tibet, Sinkiang, the North-West Frontier Province (hereafter NWFP) of Pakistan and the narrow Wakkhan corridor of Afghanistan that separated it from the former Soviet Union. It had a Hindu ruler and predominantly Hindu administration, the 80 percent Muslim population was divided in two factions, one supporting the Indian National Congress the other Muslim League and, coveted by both India and Pakistan, had been identied by Mountbattens predecessor Lord Wavell as far back as in October 1945 as a likely seat of political trouble before long.3 On October 22, 1947, Kashmir was invaded by tribals from the NWFP and ve days later, it signed the Instrument of Accession with Indiathe very thing the tribal raiders wanted to pre-emptleading to an airlift of Indian troops to combat the invasion.4 Government of India claimed that the invasion was aided and abetted by the Government of Pakistan which, naturally, denied any involvement. The latter, though, had expected the Muslim Kashmir to be a part of Pakistan by the two-nation logic of partition. Thus began a conict which was difcult to ght then, given the terrain, the weather, and the fragile state of the two nations (politically as well as militarily, what with the process of partition as yet incomplete), and write about now, given the emotions the enduring dispute continues to arouse. The conict itself was a start-stop affair with periods of warfare (winter 1947, spring-summer 1948, and winter 1948) interspersed with a lull between the storms. In December 1947, India decided to le a complaint to the United Nations Security Council (hereafter UNSC) against Pakistan thus widening the scope of international diplomatic involvement. The UNSC facilitated the formation of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan on Kashmir (hereafter UNCIP), which brought about a ceasere in December 1948. Announced on January 1, 1949 it brought the curtains down on this undeclared war, which had the unique spectacle of British generals commanding the armies on both sides.
Rakesh Ankit is a Doctoral Student at University of Southampton, UK.

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This article, however, is not an addition to the vast historical literature that exists on the Kashmir conict of 194749 and the subsequent bilateral dispute. Instead, it is an attempt to examine the evolution of the conict in the-then emerging twin international background of the end of British Empire in India and the beginnings of the Cold War in 1947: the year of the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine and partition plans for India and Palestine. International personalities and policies, especially those of Great Britain, therefore occupy the foreground in this article. A study of British hopes and fears sheds a strong light on the international evolution of the Kashmir conict especially once it reached the UNSC. Great Britain understood the outbreak of hostilities in Kashmir in parallel prisms of its destabilizing impact on India-Pakistan relations as well as its signicance for British Imperial (later Commonwealth) and larger Western concerns against the former Soviet Union in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. This application of larger, subcontinental and international, calculations to a local, regional crisis was not unique to Kashmir. In this period, arguably, a similar attitude was evinced toward the crises in Greece (1947),5 Palestine (1948),6 Indonesia (1949),7 Korea (1950),8 and, subsequently, Vietnam (1954).9 Somehow, while there are many books on each of these other examples, Kashmir has escaped a somewhat similar scrutiny and what little has been accomplished is of recent, limited, and fragmented vintage. A second reason for this attempt is the availability of new material. The sixty-year rule of the British Ofcial Archives has meant that the hitherto closed les of the Foreign Ofce, former Commonwealth Relations Ofce, former Dominions Ofce, Cabinet Ofce and Prime Ministers Ofce from the years of 194752 are now out in the open, with the exception of the les that analyze the legal validity of the India claim on Kashmir, which are still closed. Then there are the formerly over-looked or not-easily accessible private papers of many British and Indian personalities from this period. Finally, in the last decade, some important monographs have appeared bringing to light aspects of British involvement and international concerns in Kashmir. Focused on the motivations, thoughts and actions of the Attlee Government (194551), the article opens, after a historiographical survey, with British strategic considerations in the post-1945 world and continues with a close look at the emerging political, diplomatic and military agendas in the immediate aftermath of the transfer of power in India. It then moves to the early British response to the outbreak of hostilities in Kashmir in October 1947 and the consequent diplomacy around it at the United Nations (hereafter UN) from January 1948 until the proclamation of a ceasere a year later. Throughout, it argues that Kashmir was seen as a security challenge by London within the context of fears that it would become an ideological battleeld in the Cold War. In doing so, it shows how the rst India-Pakistan conict on Kashmir further complicated for the British policy-makers what R.J. Moore called the crisis of Indias international identity in 1940s.10

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Historiography If it is useful to bear in mind that all history reects the period in which it was written,11 then it is more so with respect to the earliest Indian-Pakistani works on Kashmir since 1947, which may be called a battle of words.12 Historiography on

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modern Kashmir, which is as old as the dispute itself and intensely polemical, has been built around the two themes of identity and self-determination. Initially, rmly located within the realm of nation-building in India and Pakistan, it has been changed by war and peace, democracy and dictatorship, end of the Cold War and 9/11 and, of course, along the way by the opening of archives. Thus far, the historiography on the Kashmir dispute has developed within three main themes:13 1. The prism of India-Pakistan relations; in other words, an approach to Kashmir from the events of 1947-partition and its disputed accession to India. 2. A focus on the state of Jammu and Kashmir, its distinct history, identity, and culture in their own right encapsulated in the word Kashmiriyat; especially so after the outbreak of insurgency in India-administered Kashmir from 1989 onward. Naturally this theme of Kashmiri exceptionalism has been responded to as well by writings that present Kashmir as a complex but not unique entity and explore the ideas and imagination behind this complexity. Furthermore, most recently and increasingly, literature, ction, and poetry are being resorted to by chiey Kashmiri writers to present their political arguments. 3. An understanding of the evolution of the Kashmir dispute in the backdrop of international relations: rst, the end of the British Empire in India and then the Cold War in South Asia. In the 1950s, the earliest writings on the Kashmir conict reected the nationalist claims and counter-claims on Kashmir. Often, it included memoirs or reminiscences by civil and military participants in/around the events of 194749 and contributed to the communal consciousness in which Kashmir remains wedged.14 Simultaneously, Kashmir was understood as an unnished business of partition. British failure of paramountcy, Congress intransigent vision of a secular state, and the Muslim Leagues insistence on the two-nation theory were established as the dominant historiographical expressions. The most authoritative and classic statements of the respective Indian and Pakistani positions that in many ways established the contours of the debates which were adhered to for the next two decades come from the 1960s.15 This was also the period in which works appeared covering the legal aspect of the Indian claims and Pakistani counter-claims on Kashmir.16 Post-1970s, as the rst set of archives opened; there was a reconsideration of the high politics of the summer of 1947 and a revision of the established concerns, characters, and chronology of the events of 194749.17 The period 1975 to 1989 saw mounting disenchantment with the gap between the ideals of Indias democracy and the reality of New Delhis relationship with Srinagar, thus providing a new context for writings on Kashmir. The violent turn of events from November 1989 in the Kashmir Valley against the Indian State, understood as the revolt of the hostile periphery against an assertive center and immediately held as the most serious challenge to Indias secular and democratic credentials,18 turned historiography toward the present of Kashmir rather than its past and attracted a great deal of attention from various disciplines (political science, sociology, anthropology, conict studies, journalism, as well as human rights activists). Mainly there were works

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from Indian writers critical of the Indian state and its unpopular presence in Kashmir,19 Pakistani condemnations of Indian activities in Kashmir,20 books on the human plight and cost of violence and insurgency in Kashmir as much that of the Kashmiri Pandits as of the Kashmiri Muslims,21 and international accounts sympathetic to Kashmiri aspirations of autonomy, even independence,22 away from the prism of India-Pakistan relationship. But the most valuable and distinguished group was that of theoretical treatments from political science, sociology, conict-resolution studies, and ethnic studies, which sought to understand the Kashmir dispute in comparative terms with other examples from across the world.23 One explanation referred to the nature of mobilization and deinstitutionalization of Kashmiri politics and the dispute over power between provincial elites and New Delhi and compared Kashmirs treatment by New Delhi with other Indian states, like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.24 A related sub-strand enquired into the nature of federal autonomy in Kashmir and compared its sociocultural multiplicity with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland.25 Looked at from the bottom-up the insurgency was also explained, by theories of ethnic mobilization and separatism, as an endogenous assertion of the periphery against a stiing center, a general trend in Third World politics.26 For these writings the crux was a lack of reconciliation between Indian nationalism and Kashmiri ethno-nationalism; the crisis, a failure to harmonise nation-building and democratization; and the culprit, an Indian state, absorbed in its secular psyche and security concerns.27 It was all part of a new, non-state sub-theme of contemporary South Asian studies that compared the historic evolution of state, society, and polity in the Indian sub-continent beyond its boundaries. The attempt was three-fold: to explain the emergence of contrasting political patterns from a common colonial history, to show the comparable challenges from the periphery, and to argue for decentralized state structure from the re-dened premises of democracy, sovereignty, legitimacy, citizenship, and rights.28 The turn-of-the-century literature attempted to interpret Kashmirs history externally in a four-fold scheme of regional rivalry, global intervention, religious identity, and conict resolution and internally within three levels of relationships: between its princely rulers and the colonial state (later Srinagar and New Delhi), between the rulers and the ruled within Kashmir, and interactions between its different populationgroups.29 Further, a policy-oriented scholarship emerged devoted to explaining the intricacies of the stance of India and Pakistan and, increasingly, the U.S. on Kashmir as well as providing possible solutions.30 This informative strand continues alongside an increased documentation on the daily life in Kashmir, saluting the human dimension of an acute geopolitical fault and providing perspective to militancy as the Kashmir debate shifted from the ideological to political domain.31 In the last ten years political scientists and anthropologists have increasingly produced people-centered narratives based on intense eldwork in the state while making a contribution to larger discourses within their elds,32 and whether a history of events or ideas, the focus is on Kashmirs place in popular imagination as a territory to be desired in both India and Pakistan.33 The latest aspect of Kashmir studies constitute those writings which transcend geographical and political determinism as well as the course of Kashmiri exceptionalism, to

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present Kashmir as a complex but not unique entity that has been shaped by multiple inuences [and] explores the ideas that have given Kashmir a particular shape in our imaginations though an analysis of a variety of sources, including poetry, art, lms and oral histories.34 These works seek to transcend the bitterness generated by the conict in an attempt to chart the longer histories of religious identity formation and nationalism in Kashmir, eschew pursuing partisan ideological agendas at the expense of historical truths and employ a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches to uncover unexplored areas of Kashmirs medieval, pre-modern and early-modern culture and history to understand better the contemporary situation through a wider network of interaction and exchange.35 Finally, increasingly ction and poetry are providing the creative outlet for Kashmiri writers across the political spectrum to voice their fears, disillusionment and hopes.36 All this taken together represents a turn away from purely political aspects of the territorial conict over the region and insurgency, towards a more people-centered approach through an analysis of memories of 1947, aspects of popular imagination and culture and an expression of Kashmiri heterogeneity thus also moving beyond the disciplines of history/political science.37 Stepping aside from the latest historiographical trends, this article goes back to explore the place of Kashmir in British calculations in the contexts of Decolonization in South Asia and Cold War in the late 1940s and is situated in a historiographical landscape of these two broader themes which is dominated by the works of John Darwin, Wm. Roger Louis, R. J. Moore, and Anita Inder Singh.38 In terms of the specic question of international involvement in Kashmir, original material has been brought to light and argued in a particular narrative by a second, more recent, valuable group of C. Dasgupta, Shuja Nawaz, and Howard Schaffer.39 This is in addition to the vast and still growing literature that exists on end of the British Raj in India, partition, independence, subsequent nation-building and state-formation in India and Pakistan, and touches upon Kashmir from within this paradigm.40 While Western concerns may have been conspicuous by being over-shadowed in the aforementioned survey of literature on early days and decades of the Kashmir conict, Western historians certainly are not. Fifty years on, Michael Brechers The Struggle for Kashmir (1953) and Josef Korbels Danger in Kashmir (1954) remain classic narrations of the military engagements and the UN diplomacy surrounding the conict.41 Five years ago, Andrew Whiteheads Mission in Kashmir (2007)42 brought to light with deep empathy survivor accounts and personal diaries from a Christian Mission and Hospital in Baramulla (Kashmir) which had been attacked by the invaders in 1947, thus freshly highlighting the impact of the invasion and the conict on daily life in Kashmir. And, while there remains a vast literature on the Cold War in South Asia and the Indian subcontinents relationship with the superpowers, the orthodox understanding has been that the east-west rivalry was subdued before the events of 195455: the U.S.-Pakistan military pact and the Bulganin-Khrushchev visit to India.43 The behavior of Great Britain in the conict of late 1940s thus escapes from this focus on great powers and their concerns from the mid-1950s. This is a crucial gap because Britain had always understood Kashmir as the guardian of the northern frontieran imperial interest which seamlessly merged with the developing Cold War geopolitics and this understanding had an impact on its attitude toward the conict.44

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Argument The rst troubles in Kashmir in 1947 arose against a complex international background and Great Britain occupied the crucial role in this background due to its superior knowledge and experience of the Indian subcontinent. It is this role and its drivers that are the focus of this article. For neither the outbreak of the conict nor the diplomacy around it was conned to Indian and Pakistani characters and concerns. While the former involved overbearing British presence; the latter saw, under the aegis of the UN and alongside leading British inuence, involvement of the U.S., Canada, Australia, and eventually the former Soviet Union. It has been well noted that:
Indias own experience of the nal years of Empire was not isolated. It had implications for Britain . . . and for the shape of the world order emerging after the Second World War. . . . From the imperial order emerged two independent nations . . . whose damaging conict with each other was to feed the fears and aspirations of the two great superpowers in the ensuing Cold War.45 The determination of Attlee Government to achieve an agreed solution to the constitutional conundrum in India and devolve power upon stable successor dominions so as to minimize the nightmarish consequences of a disorderly British withdrawal from India has been explained well;46 this article tries to explain the actions of the Attlee Government when the stable successor governments got almost immediately embroiled in an undeclared war. Similarly, the signicance of India in Britains strategic considerations and Cold War calculations has been well documented,47 and was probed by Wm. Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson in their article The Imperialism of Decolonization, in which they argued that compared with the reinforcement of the empire by an Anglo-American coalition based on American wealth and power, the loss of India in the imperial great game seems almost derisory;48 this article aided by fresher materialprobes the extent to which the unprecedented reality of two Commonwealth members, sister-dominions, turning upon each other in a bitter battle within three months of independence and partition complicated the imperial great game. If, as has been argued that Londons chief aim and attempt in the postwar and post-empire world was to build the British Commonwealth as a global system focused on the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East alongside the special Anglo-American relationship,49 then this fteen months long conict between India and Pakistan was, at best, an awkward proposition and, at worst, the last thing the Attlee Government needed. This international awkwardness was compounded by the unprecedented and rather strange internal spectacle of British nationals leading the armies and air forces of India and Pakistan against each other. British Foreign Ofce (FO), in this period, frequently characterized Kashmir as an odd type of war50 as not just the Commander-in-Chiefs but the Supreme Commander above them, the Governor-General in India and crucial provincial Governors in Pakistan were all British and appeared to take up cudgels against each other on behalf of the dominion they served.51 This considerable British presence, with denite perceptions about the potential impact of the Kashmir conict on British interests, sought to retain informal inuence even as it had relinquished

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formal control in India. Moreover, the external dependence of India and Pakistan for military supplies, economic assistance, and diplomatic support made the British High Commissioners in India and Pakistan important participants in policy-making in both the British dominions. Finally, when Kashmir became the rst inter-state conict to reach the UN, the obvious British knowledge, experience, and inuence saw it shaping early international response to the conict.52 No wonder then that while the British Generals in India and Pakistan help contain the actual ghting in Kashmir, the Attlee Government sent a special delegation on Kashmir to the UN led by a Cabinet Minister, Philip Noel-Baker. Within ten days of the outbreak of disturbances in Kashmir in October 1947, the FO had prepared a succinct note anticipating the potential impact of the Kashmir conict on Britains three wider geopolitical concerns: The prospect is extremely disturbing since if the North-West Frontier tribes embark on religious war against the Hindus in Kashmir, the Pathans on the Afghan side of the frontier are almost certain to be drawn in. This involves the danger of a breakdown in law and order in South-Western Waziristan and this in turn might be used by Russia as a pretext for intervening . . . 53 These considerations were also reected in the three personalities of the day who were all-important in policy formulation on Kashmira difcult tight-rope as Pakistan was emerging as an ally while India remained a valuable partner.54 At the center stood Prime Minister Clement Attlee, working for a strong, stable, and friendly post-British Indian sub-continent, preferably inside the British Commonwealth yet antagonizing India on Kashmir with his regard for the delicate Middle East.55 Next to him, Foreign Minister Ernest Bevin, convinced of the twin needs to lead a united Muslim World of former British colonies and mandates, a need complicated by British support of the partition of Palestine, thereby furthering British interests in and standing rm against the much feared Soviet specter in the whole region from Turkey to Sinkiang. Bevin felt that India was not going to be morally committed to Britain whether inside or outside the Commonwealth while he looked upon Pakistan as a barrier to Soviet penetration.56 And nally, Minister for Commonwealth Affairs, the Quaker pacist Philip NoelBaker who was committed to his linear vision of a safe Kashmirsafe Pakistansafe Central Asia and Middle East and, therefore, a safe world for British interests and assiduously promoted the same in both New York and Washington. By 1946, the emergence of two superpowers and British dependence on one of them had sealed the fate of Britains Indian empire despite, as John Darwin put it, the Attlee Governments commitment to empire and a world roleeven if the empire was to be remodelled.57 Over 194647, this dependence and commitment collided with the imperative to confront the Soviet Union from the Middle East to the Far East. Britain prepared for new strategic burdens while still anxious to shed the old ones. In particular, Britain sought a unitary, stable and compatible India as well as Palestine to continue to contribute in the old way to its new needs. However, both were partitioned. While Attlee, until early 1947, continued to hope for a unitary transfer of power the Tories, specically Churchill and Amery, had been quite content with the idea of a Muslim confederation in the north-west and a princely states dominion inside the Commonwealth

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without the Congress-India.58 That there was an element of realpolitik in British policy in India that was tied to the British belief that a rm hold in the Middle East was crucial for security from Russia and that the anticipated repercussion on Britains delicate position in the Middle East had an impact over transfer of power in India has not gone unremarked.59 The newly available ofcial archives of the period now enable an investigation of the extent to which this well-established axiom affected British behavior once the Kashmir conict broke out. The transfer of power sought the goodwill of both the successor states but the bitter partition complicated the pursuit of imperial purposes as India and Pakistan diverged in their foreign and defense policies. Attlee responded by moving on to the creation of the New Commonwealth with, remarkably, both India and Pakistan in it.60 These key milestones of British decolonization in India have been seen through the Cold War prism61 and this article attempts the same with the rst Kashmir conict.
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In the Lead-Up to the Conict An idea of the British concerns for the unstable northwest frontier of the Indian subcontinent in the interwar years can be gained from the speech given by the Secretary of State of India, the Earl of Birkenhead, at the ninth meeting of the Imperial Defense Council on October 26, 1926. Emphasizing that the potential enemy on the north west frontier is Afghanistan, acting alone or as the instrument of Bolshevik Russia, F. E. Smith noted that the Bolsheviks were carrying on with the policy initiated by Peter the Great of penetrating to the warm water so far as an advance towards India is concerned. Aided by the new factoraircraft, Russian aggression toward India had seemingly appeared in a new and more dangerous form as the existence of landing grounds in Afghanistan gives to the Russians the power of placing considerable air force at very short notice within striking distance of the plains of India.62 Over the next twenty years, as the need for fuel expanded and the world contracted, the shadows lengthened from the north giving rise to the imperative of a close accord of the Great Powers around the Muslim lake.63 Over 194647, London approached the strategic implications of the coming independence of India in terms of an orderly transfer of power to a stable India and satisfactory defensive arrangements with the new India.64 Apart from the obvious value of India economically, geo-politically and militarily, for the penultimate Viceroy Lord Wavell, this was also important to thwart the greatest dangerthe domination of Russia.65 Attlees instructions to Wavells successor, Mountbatten, accordingly stressed the defense requirements of India on an all-India basis, continuity of the Indian army and collaboration in the security of the Indian Ocean area.66 However, once the Cabinet Mission failed in 1946 and partition became a certainty in 1947, in the ensuing re-assessment of British interests in a divided, possibly mutually hostile subcontinent, the Congress-led India was not considered particularly amenable to British concerns. Lord Wavells infamous Breakdown Plan of September-October 1946 and his letters to the Secretary of State for India, Lord Pethick-Lawrence acknowledged the likelihood of the Muslim League-led Pakistan to prove to be the more reliable ally ideologically, defensively, and geographically.67 British bureaucracy in India and the Tory Party in

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England understood similarly Pakistans anxieties, needs and value vis--vis the British connection as against Indian ambivalence towards a coordinated foreign policy and intransigence even hostility towards British colonial policy.68 Before the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the hostilities in Kashmir, the British Chief of Staff (CoS) had produced a series of strategic appreciations which give a good idea of their understanding of the impact of Indian independence and partition on imperial strategic considerations, an understanding which proved the lynchpin of a similar analysis when the Kashmir conict began. In May 1945, long before the wartime ally Soviet Union turned the Cold War adversary, the CoS had insisted on Britain retaining military connection with India in view of the Soviet menace for four strategic reasons: base for force deployment, transit point for air and sea communications, reserve of manpower and presence of air bases in the northwest of the subcontinent.69 By July 1946, as partition of India loomed on the horizon, the CoS had identied the crucial arc from Turkey to Pakistan for essential oil supplies and defense and communication requirements against the Soviet Union.70 Three months before the creation of Pakistan, the CoS had concluded that Western India with Karachi and Peshawar (post-Partition Pakistan) was crucial for British interests;71 and ve weeks before the partition, the CoS rested its case: 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.72 In June 1947 the FO anticipated the possibility of Russian involvement in the Afghan intrigues on the northwest frontier which could only result in Pathan fragmentation and in lessening the ability of Pakistan and India to defend themselves against the Russians. They feared that the Indian Communists would take advantage of the communal troubles accompanying the partition of India.73 By early October, a month before the conict broke out in Kashmir but when the worst of the post-partition riots were going on north India, the FO noted the tug-of-war for Kashmir and expected it to produce just the kind of chaos which Russia would welcome and might prot by.74 To the former India Ofce, the possibility of a Russian incursion via the northwest was, of course, an old bogey and even before the crisis had broken, the FO thus concluded that in the interests of the stability of Kashmir it will no doubt be better that it should come under the sole control of Pakistan rather than remain a cats paw between the two dominions. On the eve of the tribal invasion of Kashmir on October 22, 1947, the Commonwealth Relations Ofce (hereafter CRO) produced two appreciations that summed up its position at the outset of the Kashmir conict. The rst note foresaw either the emergence of another Palestine situation in Kashmir on a greater scale or the disappearance of Pakistan at the hands of an aggressive India, suspect Afghans and intriguing Soviets, with considerable effects, in both cases, on the Middle East.75 The second note and subsequent analysis recommended backing Pakistan to shield it against an India bitterly resentful of partition, in the interest of imperial defense along the northwest frontier, to preclude Pakistan from making overtures to Russia and the huge Islamic aspect.76 Thus, for the three pillars of the British ofcial mindthe Chiefs of Staff, the Foreign Ofce and the Commonwealth Relations Ofcewhatever the origins of the

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conict,77 once it started evolving and moved towards the international stage, it would have presented London with difcult problems by inserting itself in the British plans in the NWFP and the Middle East against the Soviet Union. Peace and stability in these two areas against the Cold War adversary was more important and Pakistan with its strategic location, religious composition and willingly favorable foreign and defense policies was emerging as more important in this mosaic than India.78 But its ability was hampered by the conict in Kashmir and this understanding of Pakistans potential role for British interests and Kashmirs impact on it was to calibrate the British efforts to contain and settle Kashmir. Sir Horace Rumbold of the CRO aptly called it a case of driving from the dickey.79

Outbreak of the Conict and the Early Analysis And so, when hostilities were joined in Kashmir by India on October 27, 1947, it was immediately looked upon in London as the main bar to unity in a region considered vulnerable to Soviet expansion.80 Pakistans downfall was feared, at the hands of the stronger, aggressive India with the probable participation of the frontier tribes instigated by the opportunist Afghans.81 It was advised that Pakistan be helped in discharging its inherited responsibility for NWFP as chaos there will affect imperial strategy even at the risk of ruining our present entirely friendly relations with India;82 because, rst, its collapse would be understood as HMGs failure and, second, in the light of the unrealistic Indian thinking on foreign affairs,83 it was concluded that whatever the merits of the case might be, war in Kashmir, present HMG with most serious problems.84 By November 1947 this anticipation had turned into an appreciation based on Sir Maurice Petersons (UK Ambassador to the USSR) report that Russians tend to favor India as against Pakistan.85 After the third meeting of the Commonwealth Affairs Committee held on October 30, 1947, it was opined that while both India and Pakistan were at fault in Kashmir, the bigger danger was that Pakistan will be unable to control the Pathan tribes of the North and the North-West, Afghanistan will be drawn in and by degrees the whole continent will slide into chaos. Russia is waiting.86 A month later, the Far Eastern and Middle Eastern sections of the FO jointly produced a report titled The Russian Menace with advice from the Russian section which unambiguously warned that there is a real danger of a loose political control over north-western India and the regions further west by a power west of Hindu Kush. Former ages stand testimony to this possible outcome.87 Apart from the Russian menace, there was another international consideration emerging strongly to affect policy on Kashmir. The stronger India was being considered much more difcult than the more fragile Pakistan from the point of view of maintaining a connection with Britain as well as serious international implications in Asia and the Middle East; Nehrus India held a key position in Asia whereas London expected Jinnahs Pakistan to be of use in the latter.88 A closer look at the territories of the erstwhile British Empire reveal how much its extent coincided with the ArabMuslim regions of the Middle East and North Africa and following the British support, if begrudging, for the partition of Palestine, Bevin told his American counterpart that

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in supporting Pakistan on Kashmir which was on the Soviet frontier, Britain was furthering its interests in the middle of the planet as whoever controlled the valley of Kashmir, controlled the strategic and commercial communications there.89 Finally, Indian and Pakistani attitudes to these British concerns could not have been more starkly different. On the one hand was what Sir Archibald Nye (UK HighCommissioner in India, 194852) recalled as Nehrus unrealistic thinking on foreign affairs,90 on the other was Jinnah who was clear that Pakistan, an Islamic Democracy, would stand with the West and had noted that Russia alone of all the great countries has not sent a congratulatory message on the birth of Pakistan.91 In the rst month of ghting in Kashmir, Pakistan Government sent Sir Feroze Khan Noon to Muslim countries to apprise them of Pakistans position on Kashmir and solicit support. This began a urry of telegrams and memos for a fortnight from London to its embassies in the countries that Noon visited. The UK Ambassador to Turkey was reminded that if the Turks really had grounds for believing that we were throwing the Muslim lamb to the Hindu wolf; their goodwill towards us might be badly strained.92 The diplomats in the Trans-Jordan were instructed to quash any talk that HMG would be unfair to Pakistan over Kashmir in the present difcult position over Palestine; after all, Pakistan owed its existence to HMG, which could have easily handed over the whole of India to the Hindu majority.93 Throughout the Middle East, British diplomats were asked to reassure their hosts that having facilitated the creation of a separate independent Muslim state, Britain would always come to Pakistans help.94 When Lord Mountbatten visited London in November 1947 to explain Indias position and ensure that Indias relationship with UK did not deteriorate, his advocacy made things difcult at both the CRO and the FO. A brief prepared for Noel-Baker before his meeting with Mountbatten cautioned him that HMG may soon be faced with the grave decision whether to take more active steps to save Pakistan thereby risking Indias secession from the Commonwealth or alternatively to risk Pakistans collapse, thus losing an incalculable amount of prestige and inuence in the Muslim countries of the Near and Middle East.95 Mountbatten met the Chancellor of Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, apart from Bevin and Noel-Baker, to seek economic assistance to India and was informed that it would be folly to work out means of increasing our supplies to India as along as she is in her present mood and liable to begin an aggressive war at any moment. Nor would this help our relations with Pakistan and the Islamic World generally.96 Bevin later bluntly conrmed to Mountbatten that the emphasis on India may well have repercussion on Pakistan [and on the Islamic World]. India has hardly played fair in the division of military and economic assets and Pakistan is in a difcult situation.97 Mountbatten appears slow to appreciate the shift in the fulcrum of British strategic interests from the Far East to the Middle East in this period. Waging a lone hand for his friend Nehru, he was convinced that the attitude of the U.S. and the UK on Kashmir was completely wrong and would have far-reaching results and worried, rather prophetically, that Russia may well win India to her side by sponsoring her case.98 Personifying Indian bewilderment at the British attitude, he complained to Attlee albeit in terms of international considerations and not Indian claims to Kashmir:

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I am at a loss to understand why India, which is the only country which is now likely to give a lead in the Far East, is being treated this way. The policy which you initiated and which I have endeavoured to carry out [to keep India in the Commonwealth] is now being compromised by the leaning towards Pakistans cause and Noel-Bakers obvious antagonism to India.99

At the UN Once the Kashmir question reached the UNSC in January 1948, Britain presented it as a critical corner besieged by the unreliable Afghans, unstable Pathans and the unprincipled Communists. The British aim in New York was rst how to stop the ghting and bring about conditions under which a fair plebiscite can be held rather than arbitration between India and Pakistan100 and second to persuade the U.S. to take a greater interest in Kashmir by contextualizing it in the wider setting of recent developments in South Asia and Far East.101 British attempts to impose this international focus, quite away from the strict merits of Indias complaint against Pakistan and Pakistans counter-arguments, at the UNSC throughout 1948 and achieve these aims were later remembered as The Christmas Pantomime by Sir Alexander Cadogan (UK Permanent Representative to the UN, 194550).102 Noel-Baker was instructed by Attlee to be particularly careful to avoid giving Pakistan the impression that we are siding with India against her. In view of the Palestine situation this would carry the risk of aligning the whole of Islam against us.103 Bevin had conveyed to Attlee the FO position that we simply cannot afford to put Pakistan against us and so have the whole of Islam against us.104 Later, in May, he was to repeat being seriously perturbed at the trend of feeling in Pakistan and particularly of her resentment, and strongly advise Attlee to formulate policy accordingly on Kashmir.105 With respect to the Soviet Union, the FO initially felt that the Russians are trying to play on both sides, with probably the ultimate intention of ensuring that war breaks out, from which they could be the only gainers.106 It did not take long for Noel-Baker at New York to form an opinion though. Three weeks into January 1948, he informed the FO that Pakistans representative to the UNSC, Sir Zafrullah Khan, had told him that Russias policy was dangerous and could lead to a war while Pakistan wanted to stand with the West against Russian Aggression.107 London wrote back devising a four-pronged thrust of UKs diplomacy over Kashmir: check hostile Afghanistan, discourage Pathanistan, discourage weak or independent Kashmir and heal the breach between India and Pakistan so that Russia would not cause mischief.108 These two chief concerns of a tremendous anti-Western movement in the ArabMuslim world following the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948, and a Pakistani overture to Russia with serious consequences not only locally but in the whole of the Middle East,109 were also joined by British concerns about the tension between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Noel-Baker had been concerned about Pakistans persecution complex vis--vis Afghanistan even before the Kashmir conict started.110 Sir G Squire (UK Ambassador in Afghanistan) had been reporting to the FO throughout the early months of the conict in Kashmir about the real and immediate [Afghan]

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danger. The Afghan Minister of Foreign Affairs had told him that Kabul was severely critical of Pakistans policy in Kashmir and complained that it has already resulted in enormous increase in modern weapons in tribal hands as well as money with growing danger. Afghanistan also appeared disappointed that Pakistan refused Afghan mediation. The Ambassador feared that the Afghan government may revert to the old policy of encouraging tribes to make difculties for Pakistan.111 It was thus increasingly being felt in London that the difculties of Pakistan in her dispute with India over Kashmir are likely to be increased by deterioration in her relations with Afghanistan.112 London understood only too well the importance of maintaining traditional position on the frontier given its own painful history of Anglo-Afghan Wars.113 Afghanistan was the only Muslim country which had refused to formally recognize the dominion of Pakistan in August 1947 and had voted against its inclusion in the UN. In January 1948, Afghanistan still rejected the Durand Line as border with Pakistan and claimed to supervise the welfare of the tribal communities on either side of that line. The FO was also worried about the belligerent position of the Young Afghan party in Kabul which openly expressed territorial ambitions in the NWFP. It blamed the Afghans as seeking to prot from Pakistans present difculties.114 Meanwhile, in the UNSC India had nominated Czechoslovakia as its nominee on the UNCIP. With the impending Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, London saw it for what it was and disliked Indias choice of Czechoslovakia, which has been made with the idea that Czechoslovakia is independent of the Western Union and the Anglo-American bloc which Pt. Nehru now sees as the opponent of fair play to India.115 Noel-Baker repeatedly asked the UK High Commissioner in Delhi to leave Nehru in no doubt that Russias game is to prevent a settlement and then to bring about anarchy and chaos throughout the whole sub-continent.116 The other worry with respect to Soviet intrigue was the possibility of an independent Kashmir. London saw it as a recipe Soviet irting and intrigue.117 The Kashmiri leader and Nehrus friend Sheikh Abdullah was looked upon as having a communist cohort around him and with Czechoslovakia a member of the UNCIP, it was feared that no solution of the Kashmir problem will be possible, if one of the members of the UNSC Commission takes orders from Moscow, and intrigues with fellow travelers in Sheikh Abdullahs cabinet.118 Back in Kashmir, ghting had resumed in the spring and summer of 1948 after the winter lull. Internationally, a new worrying development in the vicinity of Kashmir was that Sinkiang province abutting the north-eastern boundary of Kashmir was poised to fall to the Communists in the last phase of the Chinese Civil War (194649). This only served to further enhance the strategic signicance of Kashmir in British eyes. Internally, the new issue was the clandestine presence of regular Pakistani troops in Kashmir from May 1948 onwards. Thus far the bulk of the ghting had been borne by the various tribal groups aided by the local and provincial government in the NWFP. London became aware of this courtesy Sir Laurence Graffety-Smith (UK High Commissioner in Pakistan, 194751). The rst response of both the FO and the CRO was that UK should not confront Pakistan about their troops presence or movements as there was a real danger that Pakistan may take some desperate action which

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might include overtures to Russia whom they recently invited to exchange diplomatic representatives.119 The disapproving Americans were also requested to not pursue the matter for the same reason.120 The UNCIP members too were briefed about the gravity of any overture that Pakistan might make to Russia either through an act of despair or through a break-down of the present administration.121 However, the presence of regular Pakistani troops in Kashmir and the possibility of their engaging the Indians meant, above all, that the HMG would have to issue stand down orders to British ofcers in Indian and Pakistani armies. In July-August and later December 1948, India repeatedly requested the Attlee Government for the same. These requests were turned down for Attlee, Bevin, and Defense Minister A. V. Alexander knew only too well that the Pakistan army and air force would fall apart without British ofcers while India which had embarked on nationalization of its troops would suffer little.122 In August 1948, there were 351 British personnel in Indian armed forces and 801 in Pakistan. The question then was whether the disintegration of the Pakistan armed forces was in UK interests and the answer was an emphatic no because, above all, Pakistan stood as a barrier to Russian penetration into the Indian sub-continent and secondly there was the rest of the Muslim World to consider.123 Continuing to look at specic issues related to Kashmir in the light of, what they held to be, the nonsensical foreign policy of Nehru, the FO summed up its priorities: The Indians, in particular, as the bigger partner, who made the original fundamental error of going into Kashmir, must somehow be brought to see that they are ddling while Rome is burning. In other words, that while the shadow of Bolshevism is falling more and more over South East Asia, they are ghting with a sister dominion without whose co-operation they are both likely to be overwhelmed.124 In the latter half of 1948, the FO and the CRO directed their energies to impress upon the Americans the three-fold danger of Soviet-Afghan-Indian designs to Pakistan along its northwest frontier. The onerous defense of this frontier on the weak shoulders of Pakistan was understood a British legacy and were it to collapse under its weight, the resultant dissension within the Muslim bloc could only benet the Russians.125 The Indians were not given up on either. In October 1948, both Bevin and the American Secretary of State George Marshall met Nehru at Paris and separately sought to impress upon him the necessity to settle the continued disturbances in Kashmir and Indonesia in the light of the Russian menace.126 The CRO went a step further. They wanted an approach to the Americans at the highest level to secure the services of General Eisenhower as plebiscite administrator in Kashmir in view of the signicance of the Kashmir issue in the wider setting of recent developments in South-East Asia and the Far East [especially after] the recent Communist successes in China.127 Nothing came of it as the Americans at this stage still looked upon Kashmir as essentially a British Commonwealth issue and were unwilling to play a leading role. Additionally, Marshall remembered well his own recent unhappy and unproductive experience of mediation in the east between Mao Tse-tung and Chiang Kai-shek in 194546. Faced with this advice from their Ambassador to the U.S., the prudent Attlee and the pragmatic Bevin overruled the zealous Noel-Bakers attempt to sought American intervention.128 The duo therefore turned their attention to contain the conict and bring in a ceasere under the aegis of the UNCIP.

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London had been helped in restraining the partisan ardor of Indian and Pakistani armies throughout the war by the simple fact that both the armies were led by British generals.129 On the Indian side the incumbents during this period were Rob Lockhart and Roy Bucher who always kept in mind the larger political consequence of the Kashmir affair weakening both India and Pakistan thereby making the rapid spread of Communism all over Asia all the more likely.130 Their Pakistani counterparts, Frank Messervy and Douglas Gracey, feared that the conict in Kashmir would see the cry of Islam in Danger being raised and believed that their real job was to train the two forces so that together they can deal with the communist menace which is the real one and the only one that really matters.131 An FO brief of the period, prepared for Bevin, was quite clear and emphatic: With the darkening world situation it does seem to us essential that India and Pakistan should get on with one another. That corner of the world represented by Persia-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India is bound to be one of the danger spots in Soviet scheme of expansion, and only unity of purpose and policy will enable the powers concerned to resist Soviet inltration and aggression.132 As the gun-re of 1948 was ceased in 1949 in Kashmir, chief British concerns regarding Soviet foreign policy in the Indian sub-continent remained two-fold. It was worried about the Soviet support to the government of the fellow traveler Sheikh Abdullah and the Government of India against Pakistan over Kashmir and about the Soviet support to the Government of Afghanistan against Pakistan over Pathanistan in the NWFP. At both the places, it feared, at worst, Soviet intervention along the lines of Greece and, at best, Soviet inuence along the lines of China.133 That nothing else mattered as much, neither Indias legal claims on Kashmir nor Pakistans politico-religious arguments, was made clear by Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, last British Commander-in-Chief of the British Indian Army (19431947) and rst and only Supreme Commander of Indian and Pakistan armies (AugustNovember 1947), in a speech he gave at Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on April 20, 1950: Discontent and disturbed conditions in an area of vital strategic importance to the defence of the Commonwealth against USSR must be avoided and it is in this context that the future of Kashmir must be understood, interpreted and settled.134

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Conclusion The crisis of 1947 in Kashmir, as R. J. Moore put it so well, bore the contradictions of Britains past policies as well as the partition of India.135 This article has sought to analyze British interests and involvement during its evolution over the two years of 1947 and 1948 through the prism of British concerns, implicit in the backdrop of Decolonization and the Cold War. While the combat neither started nor ended with British approval, it was certainly contained, both militarily and diplomatically, by British efforts. As Britain viewed the conict through its own concerns about the strategic situation in Asia, it was anxious that any full-edged conict between India and Pakistan would force the UK to take sides, create an opening for Soviet and Afghan

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interference(s) and possibly sour relations with the Arab states. The Kashmir dispute, thus, played itself out against a complex international background which affected its evolution. The Jammu and Kashmir question very quickly became the IndiaPakistan question and the future of Jammu and Kashmir became intertwined with the future of Pakistan itself in British perceptions. As Britain withdrew from India, it sought to safeguard its political and strategic interests in both India and Pakistan, either through the Commonwealth or through bilateral relations. While India was a more valuable and inuential player because of its size and resources, Pakistan emerged as the more promising and reliable strategic, military and ideological ally with her willingness to join defense arrangements, crucial geopolitical location, and proximity to the strategically vital Middle East. As a result, although Britain had more extensive, complex, and long-term politico-economic interests in India, it was Pakistan which in the context of the developing Cold War, best served its immediate defense, strategic, and energy concerns. Given the coincidence of the evolution of the Kashmir dispute and the emergence of the Cold War, British concerns were bound to impact the evolution of the crisis and this was made possible by the ubiquitous British presence in the subcontinent and British inuence internationally during the conict. And yet, British hopes and fears did not materialize the way they expected them to. America refused to get involved in the way London wanted it to in this period. The feared Soviet intervention did not occur. Afghanistan did not attack Pakistan. India did not over run Pakistan and the Arab-Muslim World remained more concerned about its problems than worrying the British about Kashmir. Above all, at home disagreements and divisions within the British ofcial and political minds over the comparative importance of India and Pakistan for British interests made for a vacillating, poorly coordinated British policy on Kashmir which annoyed both dominions.136 London may have looked upon Kashmir as its main unnished business from the imperial and international viewpoints in 1947 and approached it on the basis of a revival of the Great Game in Asia but this did not help it in its aim to hold inuence sans power in the Indian subcontinent in the coming years.137
NOTES 1. See Ian Copland, The Princely States in the Endgame of Empire, 19171947 (Cambridge: CUP, 1997); and Barbara Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States (Cambridge: CUP, 2004). 2. For a critical memoir see Sir Conrad Coreld, The Princely India I Knew: From Reading to Mountbatten (Madras: Indo-British Historical Society, 1975), especially pp. 17073. 3. Penderel Moon, ed., Wavell: The Viceroys Journal (London: OUP, 1973), p. 177. 4. For an account of the invasion see Sir George Cunninghams diary, MSS Eur D 670/6, India Ofce Records (hereafter IOR), British Library, sheds valuable light on the invasion. Cunningham was then the Governor of the NWFP. Among early secondary accounts see Christopher (Lord) Birdwood, Two Nations and Kashmir (London: Robert Hale, 1956). 5. The Greek Crisis of 194647 is often called the rst battle of the Cold War. See, among others, Christopher Montague Woodhouse, Apple of Discord (London: Hutchinson, 1948); Heinz Richter, British Intervention in Greece (London: Merlin Press, 1985); Bruce R. Kuniholm, The Origins of the Cold War in the Near East (Princeton: PUP, 1980); A. Nachmani, Civil War and Foreign Intervention in Greece, 194649, Journal of Contemporary History Vol. 25 (1990), pp. 489522; Howard Jones, A New Kind of War (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997); M. Mazower, ed., After the War Was Over (Princeton: PUP, 2000); and Philip Carabott and Thanasis D. Skas, eds., The Greek Civil War (London: Ashgate, 2004). 6. Where does one begin to chart the troubled history of Israel-Palestine conict? It would sufce to mention some prominent names like Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, and Noam Chomsky alongside a sample of other more specic works like George W. Ball and B. Douglas, The Passionate

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Attachment: Americas Involvement with Israel, 1947 to the Present (New York: Norton and Company, 1992); Meron Benvenisti, Conicts and Contradictions (New York: Random House, 1986); Edward Said, Politics of Dispossession (New York: Pantheon Books, 1994); Peter Grose, Israel in the Mind of America (New York: Knopf, 1983); Seth P. Tillman, The United States in the Middle East (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982); and John Mearsheimer and Stephen P. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008). See Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for Indonesian Independence, 1945-1949 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981); and Richard Mason, The United States, the Cold War and the Nationalist Revolution, 19451950, Journal of Oriental Studies Vol. 30, Nos. 1 & 2 (1992), pp. 6075. Among a wealth of titles some may be mentioned like David Halberstam, The Coldest Winter (New York: Hyperion, 2007); Zhihua Shen, Mao, Stalin and the Korean War (New York: Routledge, 2012); Bruce Cumings, Origins of the Korean War (Princeton: PUP, 1981); and Koreas Place in the Sun (New York: Norton and Company, 2005); Jian Chen, Chinas Road to the Korean War (New York: CUP, 1994); and Shu Guang Zhang, Maos Military Romanticism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995). For an overview of historiography see Simon Hall, Scholarly Battles over the Vietnam War, Historical Journal 52 (September 2009), pp. 81329. Again, among a mountain of material, only a few notables may be mentioned like David Halberstam, The Best and the Britghtest (New York: Ballantine Books, 1969); Neil Sheehan, A Bright and Shining Lie (New York: Random House, 1989); Mark Moyar, Triumph Forsaken (Cambridge: CUP, 2006); M. Atwood Lawrence, Assuming the Burden: Europe and the American Commitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and F. Logevall, Embers of War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of Americas Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012). R. J. Moore, India in the 1940s in Robin W. Winks, ed., Volume V: Historiography of The Oxford History of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. 232. W. M. Roger Louis in the Foreword to Robin W Winks edited Volume V: Historiography of The Oxford History of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. viii. A typical example would Aziz Beg, Captive Kashmir (Lahore: Allied Corporation, 1957). For a latest overview of the state of historiography on Kashmir especially on the trends since 1990 see Chitralekha Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies?: A Review, Modern Asian Studies, 46 (2012), pp. 103347. For examples on the civilian side see V.P. Menon, The Story of the Integration of the Indian States (Bombay: Orient Longman, 1956); and Chaudhury Muhammad Ali, The Emergence of Pakistan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967). For military accounts see L. P. Sen, Slender Was the Tthread: Kashmir Confrontation, 194748 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1969); and Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir (Islamabad: National Book Foundation, 1970). See from the Indian side Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations (London: Asia Publishing House, 1966) and for the Pakistani case Alastair Lamb, Crisis in Kashmir, 194766 (London: Routledge, 1966). For example A.G. Noorani, The Kashmir Question (Bombay: Manaktalas, 1964); and Rahmatullah Khan, Kashmir and the United Nations (Delhi: Vikas Publications, 1969). A typical, if later, example from the Pakistan side is Ijaz Hussain, Kashmir Dispute: An International Law Perspective (Islamabad: National Institute of Pakistan Studies, 1998). The classic treatment from the British side is R. J. Moore, Making the New Commonwealth (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987); from the Pakistani perspective see Alastair Lamb, Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy, 18461990 (Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1991); Birth of a Tragedy: Kashmir, 1947 (Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1994); and Incomplete Partition: The Genesis of the Kashmir Dispute (Hertingfordbury: Roxford Books, 1997). Responding to Lamb was the Indian Prem Shankar Jha, Kashmir, 1947: Rival Versions of History (New Delhi: OUP, 1996). Ajit Bhattacharjea, Kashmir: The Wounded Valley (New Delhi: UBSPD, 1994), p. xiv. Best examples are Asghar Ali Engineer, ed., Secular Crown on Fire: The Kashmir Problem (Delhi: Ajanta Publications, 1991); M. J. Akbar, Kashmir: Behind the Vale (New Delhi: Viking, 1991); Tavleen Singh, Kashmir: A Tragedy of Errors (Delhi: Viking, 1995); and Manoj Joshi, The Lost Rebellion: Kashmir in the Nineties (Delhi: Penguin, 1999). For example see Shaheen Akhtar, Terror in Indian-held Kashmir: Massive Violation of Human Rights (Islamabad: Institute of Regional Studies, 1993); K. Yusuf, ed., Perspectives on Kashmir (Islamabad: Pakistan Forum, 1993); and Tahir Amin, Mass Resistance in Kashmir: Origins, Evolution, Options (Islamabad: Institute of Policy Studies, 1995). For the Kashmiri Pandit perspective in this period see Anil Maheswari, Crescent over Kashmir: Politics of Mullaism (Delhi: Rupa, 1993) and Dinanath Raina, Distortions and Reality (Delhi: Reliance, 1994). Representative examples are Paula Newberg, Double Betrayal: Repression and Insurgency in Kashmir (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1995); and Vernon Hewitt, Reclaiming the Past (London: Portland, 1995). Apart from those quoted immediately below see Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation and Ethnicity in Contemporary South Asia (London, New York: Pinter, 1996); Mushtaqur Rahman, Divided Kashmir: Old Problems, New Opportunities for India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri People (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996); Aasma Barlas, Democracy, Nationalism and Communalism (Oxford: OUP, 1995); Iffat Malik,

7.

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24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

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35. 36.

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Kashmir (Oxford: OUP, 2002); and Seema Kazi, Between Democracy and Nation (New Delhi: Women Unlimited, 2008). See Atul Kohli, Democracy and Discontent (Cambridge University Press, 1990); and Sten Widmalm, Democracy and Violent Separatism in India: Kashmir in a Comparative Perspective (Uppsala: Uppsala University Press, 1997). See Sumantra Bose, The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-determination and a Just Peace (Delhi:, 1997). Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. xixii. Suranjan Das, Kashmir and Sindh (London: Anthem Press, 2001), p. 76. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), pp. xixiii. See Robert Wirsing, Kashmir in the Shadow of War (New York: ME Sharpe, 2003); and Mridu Rai, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects (London: Hurst, 2004) respectively. See Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies, pp. 103435; cases in point are Sumit Ganguly, ed., The Kashmir Question: Retrospect and Prospect (London: Frank Cass & Co., 2003) and K Leather, Kashmiri Separatists: Origins, Competing Ideologies and Prospects for Resolution of the Conict (New York: Novinka Books, 2003). See Humra Quraishi, Kashmir (New Delhi: Penguin, 2004), Andrew Whitehead, A Mission in Kashmir (New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2007), p. x; David Devadas, In Search of a Future (New Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2007), p. xv; and Navnita Chadha-Behera, Demystifying Kashmir (Washington DC: Brookings, 2006), pp. 23. See Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies, pp. 103547; examples are Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots of Conict, Paths to Peace (Harvard: HUP, 2003) and Haley Duschinski, Destiny Effects: Militarisation, State Power and Punitive Containment in Kashmir Valley, Anthropological Quarterly Vol. 82, No. 3, pp. 691718 and Survival is now our Politics: Kashmiri Hindu Community Identity and the Politics of Homeland, International Journal of Hindu Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 4164. See Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir (Minnesota: University of Minneapolis Press, 2009). Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1033; an early example would be Mohammad Ishaq Khan, Kashmirs Transition to Islam (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), whereas more recent examples would be Chitralekha Zutshi, Languages of Belonging: Islam, Regional Identity and the Making of Kashmir (Oxford: OUP, 2004); Mridu Rai, Hindu Rulers, Muslim Subjects: Islam, Rights, and the History of Kashmir (Princeton: University of Princeton Press, 2004); T. N. Madan and Aparna Rao, eds., The Valley of Kashmir: The Making and Unmaking of a Composite Culture (Delhi: Manohar, 2008); and Nyla Ali Khan, ed., The Parchment of Kashmir: History, Society and Polity (Basingstroke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1034. Examples are M. A. Mansoor, Yeh Basti Azaboon Ki (Bandipora: Mir Publications, 2009); Basharat Peer, Curfewed Night: A Frontline Memoir of Life, Love and War in Kashmir (London: Harper Press, 2011); Sanjay Kak, ed., Until My Freedom Has Come: The New Intifada in Kashmir (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011); and Mirza Waheed, The Collaborator (New Delhi: Penguin, 2011). Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1046. See John Darwin, Britain and Decolonisation: The Retreat from Empire in the Post-War World (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988); and The End of the British Empire: The Historical Debate (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1991); R. J. Moore, Escape from Empire: The Attlee Government and the Indian Problem (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983), Making the New Commonwealth (see note 17 above), and Endgames of Empire: Studies of Britains India Problem (Oxford: OUP, 1988); Anita Inder Singh, The Limits of British Inuence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship, 194756 (London & New York: Pinter Publishers & St. Martins Press, 1993); and Wm. Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble for Empire, Suez and Decolonisation (London: IB Tauris, 2006). C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 194748 (New Delhi: Sage, 2002); Shuja Nawaz, Crossed Swords (Karachi: OUP, 2008); and Howard Schaffer, The Limits of Inuence: Americas Role in Kashmir (Washington, DC: Brookings, 2009). See the works of Ayesha Jalal and Mushirul Hasan on nation-building and state-formation in independent India and Pakistan and Kashmirs place therein, the vast literatureboth laudatory (for instance H. V. Hodson and Alan Campbell-Johnson) and critical (Stanley Wolpert and Andrew Roberts)that exists on the last Viceroyalty of Lord Mountbatten and his handling of the Kashmir problem and nally volumes on the clash of colonialism and nationalism in British India starting from Cyril Henry Philips and Mary Doreen Wainwright, eds., The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 19351947 (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1970) or the general histories of Modern India by Sumit Sarkar (Modern India: 18851947 (Delhi: Macmillan, 1983)) and Judith Brown (Modern India: The Origins of an Asian Democracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985)). Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953); Josef Korbel, Danger in Kashmir (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954). Andrew Whitehead, Mission in Kashmir (Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2007). J. P. D. Dunbabin, The Cold War (London: Longman, 1994), p. 238. Also see for a representative sample along decades W. Norman Brown, The United States and India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Harvard:

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HUP, 1972); Stanley Wolpert, Roots of Confrontation in South Asia: Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and the Superpowers (Oxford: OUP, 1982); Vernon Marston Hewitt, The International Politics of South Asia (Manchester: MUP, 1992); Dennis Kux, Estranged Democracies (New Delhi: Sage, 1994) and Disenchanted Allies (Washington, DC: John Hopkins, 2001); Graham P Chapman, The Geopolitics of South Asia: From Early Empires to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); for an exception though focusing on the Americans see Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery (New York: CUP, 1994). Robert Johnson, A Region in Turmoil (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), pp.9597; also see Robert Huttenback, British Raj and Kashmir, 18471947 (Oxford: OUP, 2004) and Peter John Brobst, The Future of the Great Game (Akron: Akron University Press, 2005). Judith M. Brown, India in Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, ed., Volume IV: The Twentieth Century of The Oxford History of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), pp. 42122. See Moores trilogy, Escape from Empire (see note 38 above), and Singh, The Limits of British Inuence (see note 38 above). Nicholas Mansergh, E. W. R. Lumby, and Penderal Moon, eds., The Transfer of Power 19427 (hereafter TOP) (London: HMSO, 197083); and Ronal Hyam, ed., The Labour Government and the End of Empire, 194551 (London: HMSO, 1992). Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Vol. XXII (1994), pp. 462511. See, from various standpoints, William Jackson, Withdrawal from Empire (London: Batsford, 1990); John Kent, British Imperial Strategy and the Origins of Cold War, 194449 (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1993); Allan Bullock, Ernest Bevin: Foreign Secretary, 194551 (London: Norton, 1983); Ritchie Ovendale, The Empire-Commonwealth and the Two World Wars, in Robin W. Winks, ed., Volume V: Historiography of The Oxford History of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), pp. 35465; and The English-speaking Alliance: Britain, the U.S., the Dominions and the Cold War, 194551 (London: Routledge, 1985). December 23, 1948, DO 142/524, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), London. Lord Mountbatten, Field Marshal Claude Auchinleck, Generals Rob Lockhart and Roy Bucher (India), Frank Messervy and Douglas Gracey (Pakistan), Sir Robert Francis Mudie (Governor, West Punjab), and Sir George Cunningham (Governor, NWFP). Singh, The Limits of British Inuence (see note 38 above), p. 29. November 6, 1947, F 1486/8800/85/G, POL/DEF, 6 November 1947, FO 371/63569, TNA. Robert Pearce, ed., Patrick Gordon-Walker: Political Diaries, 19321971 (London: Historians Press, 1991), p. 22. May 4, 1949, Attlee to Alexander, M 100/49, PREM 8/997, TNA. August 11, 1948, Bevin-Noel Baker talks, F 11799, 11800/85/G, FO 371/69721, TNA and February 10, 1949, Bevin to Cabinet, GNWR 1/6, Gordon-Walker Papers, Churchill Archives Centre (hereafter CAC), Cambridge University. Darwin, The End of the British Empire (see note 38 above), pp. 6266. Apart from Moores aforementioned works, see N. S. Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game (New Delhi: Harper Collins, 2005). See Louis, Ends of British Imperialism (see note 38 above), the chapter on Leo Amery. See Moore, Making the New Commonwealth (see note 17 above). Apart from Darwin and Roger Louis, also see Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire (London: Penguin, 2008). Item No. 18, MSS Eur C/152/2, Birkenhead Papers, IOR. Olaf Caroe, Wells of Powers (London: Macmillan, 1951), p. 185. July 13, 1946, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Item No. 26, Volume VIII, TOP. May 11, 1949, Wavell to Liddell-Hart, LH 1/733, Liddell-Hart Papers, Liddell-Hart Center for Military Archives, Kings College London (hereafter KCL). April 4, 1947, Attlee to Mountbatten, MUL 1222, Auchinleck Papers, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester. September 8 and October 23, 1946, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Item No. 286 and 501, Volume VIII, TOP. November 1946, Grifth to Pethick-Lawrence, Item No. 249, Volume VIII, TOP; October and December 1946, Item No. 537, Volume VIII and Item No. 173, Volume IX, TOP; May 1947, Caroe quoted in Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game (see note 56 above), p. 30; Lord Salisbury quoted in Louis, Ends of British Imperialism (see note 38 above), p. 417. May 19, 1945, PHP (45) 15 (0) Final, L/WS/1/983-988, IOR. July 10, 1946, CoS Report No. (46) 19 (0), TNA. November 29, 1946, Tp (46), CoS (46-47), L/WS/1/1030, IOR. July 7, 1947, Tp (47), CoS 90, TNA. June 28, 1947, N 7493/69/38 91/26/47, FO 371/66320, TNA. October 11, 1947, Pol 1375/47, F 13715/8800/85, FO 371/63570, TNA. October 14, 1947, F 200/102, Mountbatten Papers, IOR. October 22, 1947, F 200/103, Mountbatten Papers, IOR; November 11, 1947, DO 142/493, TNA; November 25, 1947 and February 26, 1948, CRO to its missions worldwide, DO 35/3178 and DO 133/73,

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

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50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68.

69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76.

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77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91.

92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97.

98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122.

123. 124.

TNA; December 1, 1947, MSS Eur D 714/84, IOR; December 29, 1947, Scoones to Gordon-Walker, GNWR 1/6, Gordon-Walker Papers, CAC. October 1948 and May 1949, DO 142/521 and DO 142/529, TNA. January 5, 1951, LH/15/5/425, Liddell-Hart Papers, KCL. July 24, 1948, Rumbold to Gordon-Walker, DO 142/516, TNA. DO 142/521, TNA. F200/102, Mountbatten Papers, IOR. F200/103, Mountbatten Papers, IOR. June 21, 1949, Nye to Liesching, DO 121/71, TNA. October 1948, 85/48, DO 142/521, TNA. November 4, 1947, F 14772/8800/85, FO 371/63571, TNA November 6, 1947, F 14832, FO 371/63571, TNA. December 3, 1947, F 15955/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA. November 5, 1947, The Indian Scene, Memo by Lord Addison; F 14776/8800/85G, CA (47) 11, FO 371/63571, TNA. October 27, 1948, Bevin to Marshall, FO 800/470/IND/48/33, TNA. June 21, 1949, Nye to Liesching, DO 121/71, TNA. January 21, 1948, New York to London, T. No. 139, FO 371/69706, TNA; also see Dennis Kux, Disenchanted Allies, archival reference, September 7, 9, and 11, 1947, 67/CF/47, National Documentation Center (Islamabad). November 20, 1947, FO to Ankara, F 15381/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA. December 1, 1947, FO to Amman, F 15821, FO 371/63574, TNA. December 4, 1947, FO to British Embassies in the Middle-East, F 16039, 8845/47, FO 371/63574 and December 6, 1947, FO to Angora, Amman, Baghdad, Beirut, and Jeddah, T. No. 752, FO 371/63571, TNA. November 26, 1947, F 15639/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA. December 16, 1947, F 16424/8966/85, FO 371/63574, TNA. December 24, 1947, F 16771/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA; a feeling which was also held strongly by Auchinleck who had reported to Attlee in a similar, bitter vein as early as September 28, 1947 that the Indian Cabinet of which Mountbatten was the Governor-General were implacably determined to do all in their power to prevent the establishment of the dominion of Pakistan on a rmer basis, F 200/102, Mountbatten Papers, IOR. February 8, 1948, Mountbatten to Attlee, T. No. 304, DO 35/3164, TNA. February 24, 1948, Mountbatten to Attlee, T. No. 459, L/WS/1/1141, IOR. January 5, 1948, L/P&S/13/1948, IOR. November 9, 1948, L/WS/1/1145, IOR. February 24, 1950, ACAD 1/21, Cadogan Papers, CAC; for details on UNSC debates on Kashmir and the UNCIP discussions see Korbel, Danger in Kashmir (see note 41 above). January 10, 1948, T. No. 131, FO 371/69705, TNA. January 9, 1948, F 452/6/85/G, FO 371/69705, TNA. May 13, 1948, Bevin to Attlee, PM/48/52, Ind/48/24, FO 800/470, TNA January 1, 1948, F 6/6/85 2865, FO 371/69705, TNA January 21, 1948, Noel-Baker to FO, T. No. 139, F 1060, FO 371/69706, TNA. January 21, 1948, Orme Sargent to Cadogan, 21 January 1948, 42 F 1099, FO 371/69706, TNA. Moore, Making the New Commonwealth (see note 17 above), p. 84. October 13, 1947, F 13771/8800/85/G, FO 371/63570, TNA. January 12, 1948, Squire to London, F 488/6/85, FO 371/69705, TNA. January 14, 1948, Pol 118/48, DO 142/501, TNA. There had been three Anglo-Afghan wars in 183942, 187880, and 1919 with chequered results for Great Britain. January 27, 1948, F 1472/6/85, FO 371/69708 and February 12, 1948, F 2330/6/85/G, FO 371/69709, TNA. February 14, 1948, F 2383/6/85, FO 371/69709, TNA. February 9, 1948, Noel-Baker to Shone, T. No. 470, FO 371/69710, TNA. March 15, 1948, London to New York, F 4318/6/85, FO 371/69712, TNA. March 18, 1948, New York to London, T. No. 910, F 4265/6/85/G, FO 371/69712 and April 15, 1948, F 5514/6/85, FO 371/69715, TNA. May 14, 1948, F 6983/6/85 G, FO 371/69717, TNA. May 14, 1948, London to New York and Washington, F 1377/6/85 G, FO 371/69717, TNA July 7, 1948, F 9420/6/85 G, FO 371/69720, TNA. That Pakistani army was far more fragile compared to Indian was beyond doubt. On Pakistans defense issues see Ayesha Jalal, Inheriting the Raj: Jinnah and the Governor-Generalship Issue in Modern Asian Studies Vol. 19, No. 1 (1985), pp. 2953 and Indias Partition and the Defence of Pakistan: An Historical Perspective, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies Vol. 15, No. 3 (1987), pp. 289310. August 9, 1948, F 11799/6/85 G, FO 371/69721, TNA. September 28, 1948, Grey to Cadogan, F 13613/6/85, FO 371/69721, TNA.

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125. February 7, 1949, T. No. 1510, 7, F 2070/1192/85/G, FO 371/76103 and August 25, 1949, T. No. 125/49, F 15081/10338/85, FO 371/76094, TNA. 126. October 21 and 28, 1948, F 15364/6/85/G & F 15366/6/85, FO 371/69722, TNA. 127. November 9, 1948, London to Washington, T. No. 11995, F 15737/6/85/G, FO 371/69722, TNA. 128. November 11, 1948, T. No. 366 & F 16121/6/F, F 15818/6/85 G; November 15, 1948, T. No. 5224, FO 371/69723 and November 27 and 29, 1948, F 17071/G, FO 371/69725, TNA. 129. For details see Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy (see note 39 above). 130. June 24, 1948, Bucher to HM Patel and Elmhirst; December 13, 1948, Bucher to Elizabeth Bucher, File No. 7901-87-6-1, Bucher Papers, National Army Museum (London). 131. June 25, 1948, Speech by Messervy at the Royal Institute of International Affairs (hereafter RIIA) Chatham House (Reference No 8/1558); June 21, 1948, Gracey to Elmhirst, ELMT 3/1, Elmhirst Papers, CAC. 132. November 17, 1948, F 16186/6/85, FO 371/69723, TNA. 133. October 27, 1948, Bevin to Marshall and December 6, 1948, Bevin to Franks, Ind/48/33 & Ind/48/39, FO 800/470, TNA. 134. RIIA (Reference No. 8/1800), Chatham House. 135. Moore, Escape from Empire (see note 38 above), p. 337. 136. Anita Inder Singh, The Limits of British Inuence (see note 38 above), pp. 2930. 137. Moore, India in the 1940s (see note 10 above), pp. 24041.

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