Foreign Policy Blunder I: Kashmir

There are political leaders and there are statesmen. There is a big difference. Sardar Patel was a statesman. Nehru was a politician. Narsimha Rao and Atalji were statesmen to a minor degree. Indira Gandhi was a politician. Statesmen are blessed with a vision, wisdom to formulate strategies. Politicians are blessed with all kinds of tricks for their survival. Of course one can say that to call someone a statesman based on hindsight is wrong. But that is precisely the point. Statesmen are like chess players who can see a few moves ahead or like a statistician who can extrapolate graphs and make predictions. It’s not magic. In India there have been many foreign policy blunders. We elected the leaders. They made mistakes. It is our fault. But since we are paying for it, it is our right to examine and even criticize. Maj Gen Mrinal Suman has written an article where he has examined seven blunders. It is an excellent article in its own right but I am going to examine and add to his analysis of individual blunder. The first in this series is:

The Kashmir Mess

Every hot spot in the world with a territorial dispute has a British hand in it. J&K mess has there grubby paws all over it. When they were leaving, they decided and convinced others in the west that a Muslim Pakistan was going to be a better bulwark against the spread of communism than a Hindu India. They would painfully realise their mistake as we all know. In an review of a book (referred below), Mr. Sriram Chaulia says “Briefed that the "area of Pakistan is strategically the most important in the continent of India and the majority of our strategic requirements could be met … by an agreement with Pakistan alone" (p 17), Mountbatten and the British personnel on the ground knew whom not to displease if it really came to a choice between India and Pakistan”.

It was clear that the British were going to side with the Pakistanis in all territorial disputes. Their machinations failed in Junagadh because of Sardar Patel’s intervention but they made sure that same thing did not happen in J&K. It is also said in the article “Before the Pakistani "tribal" invasion of Kashmir in October 1947, General Lockhart was secretly informed by his British counterpart in Rawalpindi of the preparations underway for the raids. The commander-in-chief shared the crucial information with his two other British service chiefs but not with the Indian government”. The chips were stacked against us. The British were conniving and our leadership very trusting and pliant (the Sardar could only do so much).

Gen Suman points out two things:

First, India erred by not insisting on unequivocal accession of the state to the Dominion of India and granted special status to it through Article 380 of the Constitution.

Secondly, when on the verge of evicting all invaders and recapturing the complete state, India halted operations on 1 January 1949 and appealed to the Security Council. It is the only case in known history wherein a country, when on the threshold of complete victory, has voluntarily forsaken it in the misplaced hope of winning admiration of the world community.

What this tells me is that despite of some exceptional leadership provided by the intrepid Sardar Patel, we had no chance of coming out ahead in this mess with the actual leadership in the hands of Nehru. I do not know how much did Mahatma Gandhi have to do with all this but his role could not have been the kind that would have gotten us the entire J&K. Our leaders were at best naïve and at worst gullible. Because of them, 40% of J&K is in the hands of Pakistanis and (even worse) Chinese. The godless Chinese can take a dip I the Kailash Mansarovar but you and I may get that chance in another life. The Chinese machinations in J&K are no secret. They are using the loyal Pakistanis to ensure that they can effectively surround us when they need to. All this could have been avoided if we had a leader with a vision and courage rather than survival instincts and hubris.

Maj Gen Mrinal Suman's article can be read at: http://www.indiandefencereview.com/2010/07/seven-blunders-that-will-haunt-india-for-posterity.html Mr. Chaulia's article can be read at: http://www.atimes.com/ind-pak/DE22Df01.html The image is from: http://0km.jp/?tag=Jammu