Making sense of Pakistan's desperate quest to bleed India

The bitterness and greed that marked the Partition masterfully guided by the British colonialists represented by lord Edwin Mountbatten, ironically killed by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) decades later, is yet to be forgotten.

The fate of Kashmir, where the British hoped to have a strategic foothold, was a major contest between the newly formed Pakistan and a truncated India.

It seemed obvious that a Muslim majority state ruled by a Muslim ruler bordering West or East Pakistan would be absorbed into Pakistan, whereas based on the same principle a contiguous Hindu majority state with a Hindu ruler would merge with India.

But there was a problem with the state of Junagadh; with a Muslim ruler, it was contiguous to West Pakistan but its population was largely Hindu.

Then the Kashmir imbroglio rose to the forefront.

The maharaja of Kashmir was a Hindu, but the majority population was largely Muslim. So following the Junagadh example, Pakistan made a strong case for Kashmir.

What happened next was that the Jawaharlal Nehru government sent a badly-drafted plebiscite resolution to the UN, as the legal commentator Aman Hingorani points out in his recently published book on Kashmir. Then, the maharaja signed an instrument of accession in favour of India.

The outstanding and unrivalled leader of Kashmir Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah was convinced by Nehru that he would work in the interests of the Kashmiris and self-rule.

Abdullah was betrayed. Kashmiri historians have sharply criticised his role, his naïveté in dealing with Nehru. The fact that the Sheikh was in house arrest for 20 years because of his principles is scarcely mentioned in his homeland.

Nehru's successors like his redoubtable daughter Indira Gandhi made no attempt to fulfil the promises to Sheikh Abdullah. In the UN resolutions put on the table were clearly not acceptable to one side or another. Eventually, the UN threw up its hands.

The last three UN secretary generals have ignored earlier debates as no solution seemed possible. Thus Pakistan has an enduring grouse: what about the plebiscite? India argues that successive elections have proved majority support.

But in a number of elections polling has been low, and Kashmiris have claimed rigging enforced by the Army. Unable to win at the UN or in any concord of nations, Pakistan has decided to fight it out.

Apart from the infiltration of Pakistani irregulars in 1947-48 leading to war, followed by the 1965 War, then the 1971 War in which a genocidal Pakistani army killed three million East Pakistanis later called Bangladeshis after the success of the Indian Army assisted Bangladeshi freedom struggle, despite overt US support to Pakistan. India released 92,000 Pakistani soldiers, who were not tried for genocide.

PM Indira Gandhi offered the Pakistani leadership the Shimla Accord, which the Pakistanis reinterpreted as suited them.

Indian concerns that driving a hard bargain would rebound, did not lead to a lasting agreement. So what thereafter?

Obviously terrorism.

Virtually the whole world and certainly the great powers are fully aware that this is a very knotty problem. Pakistan has decided to do a Bangladesh on India. The terrorist attacks on India are meant to bleed India, as India allegedly did in East Pakistan/ Bangladesh.

The way things are going, especially after PM Narendra Modi's strong warning to Pakistan, the signs are ominous. The Sangh Parivar is intrinsically opposed to what Pakistan stands for, like many Indians.

Terrorism cannot be tolerated beyond a point. But since the positions of both sides are embedded in their nationalism, and both are nuclear weapons states, the situation is grim.

During the Vietnam War, peace activists chanted, "Give peace a chance!" Is anyone listening?

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