The Dissolution of National
Frontiers
By Dr. M.K. Teng
The nature of the failure of Indian Leadership:
The Indian leadership did not realize that the
partition of India had also brought about the
territorial division of India. They were unable to
comprehend the importance of princely States in
the determination of the territorial borders of
the two Dominions of India and Pakistan, the
partition of India created. The Indian National
Congress, which spearheaded the struggle for
Indian freedom, had long before the British
decided to quit India, abandoned their commitment
to the continuity of the Indian history and the
civilizational frontiers of the Indian nation.
Congress did so in its abortive attempt to
reconcile the Indian freedom with the separate
freedom that the Indian Muslims lay claim to.
It was on the instance of the Muslim League
leaders that the Indian National Congress refused
to integrate the States peoples’ movements for the
freedom of India. Had the Congress taken a bold
stand and integrated the States peoples’ movements
in the national movement, India would not have
faced the disaster that partition led to.
Even after the Indian leaders drew close to the
freedom of their country based on two nation
principle, they failed to recognize the
significance of their national frontiers and their
civilizational content. An insight into the
outlook of the Indian leaders about the national
frontiers of India is provided by their
pronouncements in the Asian Solidarity Conference
which was held in New Delhi in 1946, a year before
India won freedom. Both Gandhi and Nehru reflected
a complete disregard of the crucial importance the
national borders had assumed with the commencement
of de-colonization and the emergence of new
nations of the former colonial peoples. Except
India, most of the newly independent nations of
the former colonial peoples guarded their borders
jealously.
It has been a historical reality that wherever, in
Asia or Africa, the newly independent nations of
the former colonial peoples lost their caution and
ignored the security of their borders, foreign
intervention disrupted their unity. India did not
prove to be an exception. The lack of a systematic
policy framework to integrate the Indian political
culture and the identification of the national
unity of India with pluri-cultural and
multi-national composition of Indian social
organization negated the process of the national
integration. That led to the subversion of the
national consensus on national unity in the
north-eastern states, Jammu and Kashmir and
finally Punjab.
The Indian leadership did not change its outlook
about the territorial integrity of India and the
consolidation of its civilizational frontiers even
after it assumed the reins of power in 1947. The
Indian leaders refused, rather stubbornly the
necessity to protect the frontiers of India, which
the partition had severely impaired and which the
recalcitrance of the rulers of several major
princely States threatened to erode. Indian
leaders failed to evolve policy plans, which
underlined the unity of India and the
re-integration of the Indian political culture,
the consolidation of the civilizational frontiers
of the Indian nation with the national borders of
the Indian state and the preservation of the
Sanskrit content of the cultural configurations in
the border regions of the country.
The Northern Frontiers
The Indian leaders were oblivious of the
implications of the territorial divide, the
partition of India had brought about, for the
northern frontier of India. The Jammu and Kashmir
formed the central spur of the northern frontier
of India. There was none among the leaders of
India who realized the importance of the Jammu and
Kashmir state to the security of Himalayas,
crucial for the security of whole of the north
India and basic to any future balance of power in
Asia.
Pakistan launched a surreptitious war of
subversion in Jammu and Kashmir to undermine the
stability of the State Government and its security
organization, right from the day that country was
brought into being on 14 August 1947. Within days
Pakistan cut off rail and road communications with
the State and stopped the transit of all essential
supplies to the State. By the beginning of
September 1947, Pakistan had begun to smuggle arms
and ammunition into the Muslim majority border
districts of the Jammu province to foment an armed
uprising against the State Government. And by the
end of September 1947, the border districts of
Jammu province were embroiled in a civil war.
The Government of India was not unaware of the
developments in the State. However, it did not act
till Pakistan launched a full fledged invasion of
the State on 22 October 1947. Led by Tochi Scouts,
a part of the mechanized troops of the Pakistan
army, the invading forces could reach Srinagar,
the capital of Jammu and Kashmir in a day. The
dogged resistance of the state army kept the
invading columns at bay till 26 October 1947. The
airborne troops of the Indian army reached
Srinagar on the morning of 27 October 1947, five
long days after the invading hordes had swooped on
the border township of Muzaffarabad. The advance
columns of the First Sikh Regiment of the Indian
army established contact with the invading forces
while the latter were advancing to invest Srinagar.
Not many of the soldiers of the First Sikh, who
went into action that day, returned home.
The Indian leaders faltered once again. No
measures were taken to ensure the defense of the
frontier division of Ladakh, Baltistan, Gilgit,
and the Gilgit Agency along with the Dardic
dependencies of the State, including the
strategically important Dardic principalities of
Hunza, Nagar, Punial, Yasin, Ishkoman, Koh Gizir
and Darel. Before the British quit India, the
Gilgit Agency was fortified by the British and was
garrisoned by the Gilgit Scouts, a military force
raised by the British from the local Shiate Muslim
population of Gilgit and commanded by British
officers. The administrative and military control
over Gilgit Agency was transferred to the
government of Jammu and Kashmir when the British
left. There was an air strip in Gilgit over which
the Dakota planes, which carried troops to
Srinagar, could have safely landed. Gilgit stood
on the precipice for four days. Finally the Gilgit
Scouts mutineed, took the Governor of Gilgit
prisoner, and declared accession of the Gilgit
Agency to Pakistan. On October 1, 1947, airborne
troops of Pakistan army landed in Gilgit. The
Muslim officers and ranks of the State army posted
at Bunji in Baltistan also mutineed and killed
their Hindu and Sikh officers and comrades in
arms. As the invading armies began to spread
across Baltistan, the remnants of the State army
and civil police, Hindu and Sikh survivors and the
elements of local Buddhist population regrouped to
organize resistance against them, which eventually
saved Kargil and Ladakh for India, till the
Indian army scrambled up the Zojilla Pass to join
them.
After the cease-fire in 1949, Pakistan
consolidated its hold on the territories of the
State, which remained under its occupation and
which included the Muslim majority district of
Muzaffarabad, and a part of the Baramulla district
in the province of Kashmir, the district of Mirpur
and a part of Poonch in the Jammu province, the
whole of Baltistan, Gilgit and Gilgit Agency along
with the Dardic tribal dependencies of the State.
Pakistan refused to implement its commitments on
the withdrawal of the invading army from the
occupied territories and instituted a local
government, known as Azad Kashmir Government, to
administer them. Pakistan raised a Muslim militia
of more than thirty thousand men from among the
“Muslim deserters of the Dogra army, Muslin
ex-servicemen of Mirpur, Poonch and Sudhunti, who
had been demobilized from the British Imperial
Troops of India after the end of the second World
War and recruits from the adjoining districts of
Pakistan, who had brought up the rear of the
invasion into the State and tasted blood and booty
in their adventure”. In less than a year the
occupied territories were turned into a
springboard for a Jihad to liberate the part of
the State on the Indian side of the Cease-Fire
line from the Indian hold.
Pakistan followed a different strategy in respect
of the frontier division of the State, which
remained under its occupation. It integrated the
Gilgit Agency, Gilgit and Baltistan along with the
Dardic dependencies of the State into a separate
administrative region, which was placed under the
direct control of the Government of Pakistan.
Right from 1954, when Pakistan joined the
Anglo-American-Muslim alliance system for the
containment of Communism, the Northern Regions
were fortified into a most formidable military
outpost of the Cold War in Asia. As the Cold War
receded with the disintegration of the Soviet
power, the Northern Regions formed an important
centre of the struggle for the rise of the Taliban
to power in Afghanistan.
Territorial Dispute
The invasion of Jammu and Kashmir in 1947 had
territorial objectives. The Jihad, Pakistan has
been waging against India in Jammu and Kashmir
ever since, is also aimed to achieve territorial
objectives. After having swallowed more than
one-third of the territories of the State,
Pakistan seeks to grab the part of the State on
the Indian side of the Cease-Fire Line. The
annexation of whole of State of Jammu and Kashmir
or the critical portions of it will open the way
for the eastward expansion of the Muslim power of
Pakistan into the north of India and the
demolition of the northern frontier of India. This
will enable Pakistan to extend its hold over the
Himalayas, which it is frantically craving, to
exclude India from any future balance of power in
Asia.
Pakistan has already encircled northern India into
a pincer-hold of its strategic alliances: the
Anglo-American-Pakistan alliance and the
Sino-Pakistan axis, both aimed at the reduction of
the Sanskrit culture of the Himalayas. The
pronouncements of the American President, Barrack
Obama during his recent visit to China, indicate
the extent of isolation, India has been pushed
into.
The dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, between India
and Pakistan, is a territorial dispute. Pakistan
has succeeded in steering ‘peace process’ between
the two countries to facilitate its territorial
gains. Even the Musharaf proposals, which the
Indian leaders claim to be a blue- print of a
non-territorial settlement, have a territorial
content. The most significant territorial
stipulation of the Musharaf proposals is the
separation of the Muslim majority regions from the
Hindu majority regions of the state, situated to
the east of river Chinab and the recognition of
the Jammu and Kashmir State on the Indian Side as
a ‘sphere of Muslim interests’ in India.
The Congress leaders accepted the Cabinet Mission
Plan which envisaged a non-territorial settlement
of the Muslim demand for the territorial division
of India, in the hope of retaining the unity of
India. The Cabinet Mission Plan in essence
envisaged a Muslim State within a united India.
The Cabinet Mission Plan was ingeniously designed
by the British on the advice of the Muslim leaders
of the Indian National Congress. The Plan lead
straight to the division of India, when the Muslin
League repudiated it on the issue of the princely
states. However, had the Plan been implemented,
India would have been totally balkanized.
The acceptance of the territorial claims of
Pakistan on Jammu and Kashmir under the cover of a
non-territorial settlement is bound to impair the
entire northern frontier of India from Kashmir to
Arunachal Pradesh. The pressures being built on
India to recognize the territorial claims of China
in Arunachal Pradesh, is a strategic maneuver to
delink India from Himalayas as are the claims made
on Jammu and Kashmir by Pakistan. The security of
Himalayas is crucial to the unity and the
territorial integrity of India. Non-territorial
settlement is a sure recipe to compromise the
security of the Himalayas. Indian People must put
all the pressures on the Indian government to
reclaim and retrieve Gilgit and Baltistan along
with the Dardic dependencies of the erstwhile
State of Jammu and Kashmir. This reclamation will
break the encirclement of India in the pincer-hold
of the Anglo-American- Pakistan alliance and the
Sino-Pakistan axis and give meaning to the
‘strategic partnership’ the Indian government
claims to have established with the United States
of America. The strategic partnership has no
meaning so long the Americans act as a “laughing
balancer’ in between Pakistan and China over the
northern frontier of India.
Source: Kashmir
Sentinel
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