great britain and kashmir, 1947-49

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Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749Rakesh Ankit

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aUniversity of Southampton, UK

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To cite this article: Rakesh Ankit (2013): Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749, India Review, 12:1,

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

Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749

RAKESH ANKIT

IntroductionA 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 andAugust 14/15, 1947 when, with the birth of independent India and Pakistan, GreatBritain ceased to be the paramount power in the subcontinent, all except three amongthe Princes, prodded by the last British Viceroy Lord Mountbatten and prevailed uponby 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 mostsignificant as it was surrounded by Tibet, Sinkiang, the North-West Frontier Province(hereafter NWFP) of Pakistan and the narrow Wakkhan corridor of Afghanistan thatseparated it from the former Soviet Union. It had a Hindu ruler and predominantlyHindu administration, the 80 percent Muslim population was divided in two factions,one supporting the Indian National Congress the other Muslim League and, covetedby both India and Pakistan, had been identified by Mountbattens predecessor LordWavell as far back as in October 1945 as a likely seat of political trouble beforelong.3

On October 22, 1947, Kashmir was invaded by tribals from the NWFP and fivedays later, it signed the Instrument of Accession with Indiathe very thing the tribalraiders wanted to pre-emptleading to an airlift of Indian troops to combat theinvasion.4 Government of India claimed that the invasion was aided and abetted by theGovernment 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 ofpartition. Thus began a conflict which was difficult to fight then, given the terrain, theweather, and the fragile state of the two nations (politically as well as militarily, whatwith the process of partition as yet incomplete), and write about now, given the emo-tions the enduring dispute continues to arouse. The conflict itself was a start-stop affairwith periods of warfare (winter 1947, spring-summer 1948, and winter 1948) inter-spersed with a lull between the storms. In December 1947, India decided to file acomplaint to the United Nations Security Council (hereafter UNSC) against Pakistanthus widening the scope of international diplomatic involvement. The UNSC facilitatedthe formation of the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan on Kashmir(hereafter UNCIP), which brought about a ceasefire in December 1948. Announcedon January 1, 1949 it brought the curtains down on this undeclared war, which had theunique 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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Great Britain and Kashmir, 194749 21

This article, however, is not an addition to the vast historical literature that exists onthe Kashmir conflict of 194749 and the subsequent bilateral dispute. Instead, it is anattempt to examine the evolution of the conflict in the-then emerging twin internationalbackground of the end of British Empire in India and the beginnings of the Cold Warin 1947: the year of the Marshall Plan, Truman Doctrine and partition plans for Indiaand Palestine. International personalities and policies, especially those of Great Britain,therefore occupy the foreground in this article. A study of British hopes and fears shedsa strong light on the international evolution of the Kashmir conflict especially once itreached the UNSC. Great Britain understood the outbreak of hostilities in Kashmirin parallel prisms of its destabilizing impact on India-Pakistan relations as well as itssignificance for British Imperial (later Commonwealth) and larger Western concernsagainst the former Soviet Union in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Thisapplication of larger, subcontinental and international, calculations to a local, regionalcrisis 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 ofthese other examples, Kashmir has escaped a somewhat similar scrutiny and what littlehas been accomplished is of recent, limited, and fragmented vintage.

A second reason for this attempt is the availability of new material. The sixty-yearrule of the British Official Archives has meant that the hitherto closed files of theForeign Office, former Commonwealth Relations Office, former Dominions Office,Cabinet Office and Prime Ministers Office from the years of 194752 are now outin the open, with the exception of the files that analyze the legal validity of the Indiaclaim 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 thisperiod. Finally, in the last decade, some important monographs have appeared bringingto 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 con-siderations in the post-1945 world and continues with a close look at the emergingpolitical, diplomatic and military agendas in the immediate aftermath of the transfer ofpower in India. It then moves to the early British response to the outbreak of hostili-ties in Kashmir in October 1947 and the consequent diplomacy around it at the UnitedNations (hereafter UN) from January 1948 until the proclamation of a ceasefire a year

later. Throughout, it argues that Kashmir was seen as a security challenge by Londonwithin the context of fears that it would become an ideological battlefield in the ColdWar. In doing so, it shows how the first India-Pakistan conflict on Kashmir furthercomplicated for the British policy-makers what R.J. Moore called the crisis of Indiasinternational identity in 1940s.10

HistoriographyIf it is useful to bear in mind that all history reflects the period in which it was

written,

11

then it is more so with respect to the earliest Indian-Pakistani works onKashmir 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 beenbuilt around the two themes of identity and self-determination. Initially, firmlylocated within the realm of nation-building in India and Pakistan, it has been changedby war and peace, democracy and dictatorship, end of the Cold War and 9/11 and, ofcourse, along the way by the opening of archives. Thus far, the historiography on theKashmir dispute has developed within three main themes:13

1. The prism of India-Pakistan relations; in other words, an approach to Kashmir fromthe 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 culturein their own right encapsulated in the word Kashmiriyat; especially so after the out-break of insurgency in India-administered Kashmir from 1989 onward. Naturallythis theme of Kashmiri exceptionalism has been responded to as well by writingsthat present Kashmir as a complex but not unique entity and explore the ideas and

imagination behind this complexity. Furthermore, most recently and increasingly,literature, fiction, and poetry are being resorted to by chiefly Kashmiri writers topresent their political arguments.

3. An understanding of the evolution of the Kashmir dispute in the backdrop of inter-national relations: first, the end of the British Empire in India and then the Cold Warin South Asia.

In the 1950s, the earliest writings on the Kashmir conflict reflected the nationalistclaims and counter-claims on Kashmir. Often, it included memoirs or reminiscencesby 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 unfinished business of partition. British failureof paramountcy, Congress intransigent vision of a secular state, and the MuslimLeagues insistence on the two-nation theory were established as the dominant histo-riographical expressions. The most authoritative and classic statements of the respectiveIndian and Pakistani positions that in many ways established the contours of thedebates which were adhered to for the next two decades come from the 1960s.15 Thiswas also the period in which works appeared covering the legal aspect of the Indianclaims and Pakistani counter-claims on Kashmir.16 Post-1970s, as the first set of archivesopened; 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 of194749.17

The period 1975 to 1989 saw mounting disenchantment with the gap between theideals 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 fromNovember 1989 in the Kashmir Valley against the Indian State, understood as the revoltof the hostile periphery against an assertive center and immediately held as the mostserious challenge to Indias secular and democratic credentials,18 turned historiog-raphy toward the present of Kashmir rather than its past and attracted a great deal

of attention from various disciplines (political science, sociology, anthropology, con-flict 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 plightand cost of violence and insurgency in Kashmir as much that of the Kashmiri Panditsas of the Kashmiri Muslims,21 and international accounts sympathetic to Kashmiriaspirations of autonomy, even independence,22 away from the prism of India-Pakistanrelationship.

But the most valuable and distinguished group was that of theoretical treatmentsfrom political science, sociology, conflict-resolution studies, and ethnic studies, whichsought to understand the Kashmir dispute in comparative terms with other exam-ples from across the world.23 One explanation referred to the nature of mobilizationand deinstitutionalization of Kashmiri politics and the dispute over power betweenprovincial elites and New Delhi and compared Kashmirs treatment by New Delhiwith other Indian states, like West Bengal and Tamil Nadu.24 A related sub-strandenquired into the nature of federal autonomy in Kashmir and compared its socio-

cultural multiplicity with Bosnia and Herzegovina and Northern Ireland.25

Lookedat from the bottom-up the insurgency was also explained, by theories of ethnic mobi-lization and separatism, as an endogenous assertion of the periphery against a stiflingcenter, a general trend in Third World politics.26 For these writings the crux was alack of reconciliation between Indian nationalism and Kashmiri ethno-nationalism;the crisis, a failure to harmonise nation-building and democratization; and the cul-prit, an Indian state, absorbed in its secular psyche and security concerns.27 It was allpart of a new, non-state sub-theme of contemporary South Asian studies that comparedthe historic evolution of state, society, and polity in the Indian sub-continent beyondits boundaries. The attempt was three-fold: to explain the emergence of contrasting

political patterns from a common colonial history, to show the comparable challengesfrom the periphery, and to argue for decentralized state structure from the re-definedpremises of democracy, sovereignty, legitimacy, citizenship, and rights.28

The turn-of-the-century literature attempted to interpret Kashmirs history exter-nally in a four-fold scheme of regional rivalry, global intervention, religious identity,and conflict resolution and internally within three levels of relationships: betweenits princely rulers and the colonial state (later Srinagar and New Delhi), between therulers and the ruled within Kashmir, and interactions between its different population-groups.29 Further, a policy-oriented scholarship emerged devoted to explaining theintricacies 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 anincreased documentation on the daily life in Kashmir, saluting the human dimensionof an acute geopolitical fault and providing perspective to militancy as the Kashmirdebate shifted from the ideological to political domain.31 In the last ten years politicalscientists and anthropologists have increasingly produced people-centered narrativesbased on intense fieldwork in the state while making a contribution to larger dis-courses within their fields,32 and whether a history of events or ideas, the focus is onKashmirs place in popular imagination as a territory to be desired in both India andPakistan.33

The latest aspect of Kashmir studies constitute those writings which transcend geo-graphical 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 multipleinfluences [and] explores the ideas that have given Kashmir a particular shape in ourimaginations though an analysis of a variety of sources, including poetry, art, filmsand oral histories.34 These works seek to transcend the bitterness generated by theconflict in an attempt to chart the longer histories of religious identity formation andnationalism in Kashmir, eschew pursuing partisan ideological agendas at the expenseof historical truths and employ a variety of multi-disciplinary approaches to uncoverunexplored areas of Kashmirs medieval, pre-modern and early-modern culture andhistory to understand better the contemporary situation through a wider networkof interaction and exchange.35 Finally, increasingly fiction and poetry are providingthe creative outlet for Kashmiri writers across the political spectrum to voice theirfears, disillusionment and hopes.36 All this taken together represents a turn awayfrom purely political aspects of the territorial conflict 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 heterogeneitythus also moving beyond the disciplines of history/political science.37

Stepping aside from the latest historiographical trends, this article goes back toexplore the place of Kashmir in British calculations in the contexts of Decolonizationin South Asia and Cold War in the late 1940s and is situated in a historiographical land-scape 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 specific ques-tion of international involvement in Kashmir, original material has been brought tolight and argued in a particular narrative by a second, more recent, valuable group ofC. 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, inde-pendence, subsequent nation-building and state-formation in India and Pakistan, andtouches upon Kashmir from within this paradigm.40 While Western concerns may havebeen conspicuous by being over-shadowed in the aforementioned survey of literatureon early days and decades of the Kashmir conflict, Western historians certainly are not.Fifty years on, Michael Brechers The Struggle for Kashmir(1953) and Josef KorbelsDanger in Kashmir(1954) remain classic narrations of the military engagements andthe UN diplomacy surrounding the conflict.41 Five years ago, Andrew WhiteheadsMission in Kashmir (2007)42 brought to light with deep empathy survivor accountsand personal diaries from a Christian Mission and Hospital in Baramulla (Kashmir)

which had been attacked by the invaders in 1947, thus freshly highlighting the impactof the invasion and the conflict on daily life in Kashmir. And, while there remains avast literature on the Cold War in South Asia and the Indian subcontinents relation-ship with the superpowers, the orthodox understanding has been that the east-westrivalry was subdued before the events of 195455: the U.S.-Pakistan military pact andthe Bulganin-Khrushchev visit to India.43 The behavior of Great Britain in the con-flict of late 1940s thus escapes from this focus on great powers and their concerns fromthe mid-1950s. This is a crucial gap because Britain had always understood Kashmir asthe guardian of the northern frontieran imperial interest which seamlessly mergedwith the developing Cold War geopolitics and this understanding had an impact on itsattitude toward the conflict.44


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ArgumentThe first troubles in Kashmir in 1947 arose against a complex international backgroundand Great Britain occupied the crucial role in this background due to its superiorknowledge and experience of the Indian subcontinent. It is this role and its driversthat are the focus of this article. For neither the outbreak of the conflict nor the diplo-macy around it was confined to Indian and Pakistani characters and concerns. While theformer involved overbearing British presence; the latter saw, under the aegis of the UNand alongside leading British influence, involvement of the U.S., Canada, Australia, andeventually the former Soviet Union. It has been well noted that:

Indias own experience of the final years of Empire was not isolated. It had impli-cations for Britain . . . and for the shape of the world order emerging after theSecond World War. . . . From the imperial order emerged two independent nations. . . whose damaging conflict 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 con-stitutional conundrum in India and devolve power upon stable successor dominionsso as to minimize the nightmarish consequences of a disorderly British withdrawalfrom India has been explained well;46 this article tries to explain the actions of theAttlee Government when the stable successor governments got almost immediatelyembroiled in an undeclared war. Similarly, the significance of India in Britains strate-gic considerations and Cold War calculations has been well documented,47 and wasprobed by Wm. Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson in their article The Imperialism

of Decolonization, in which they argued that compared with the reinforcement ofthe 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 articleaided by fresher materialprobes the extent to which the unprecedented reality oftwo Commonwealth members, sister-dominions, turning upon each other in a bitterbattle within three months of independence and partition complicated the imperialgreat game. If, as has been argued that Londons chief aim and attempt in the post-war and post-empire world was to build the British Commonwealth as a global systemfocused on the eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East alongside the specialAnglo-American relationship,49 then this fifteen months long conflict between India

and Pakistan was, at best, an awkward proposition and, at worst, the last thing theAttlee Government needed.

This international awkwardness was compounded by the unprecedented and ratherstrange internal spectacle of British nationals leading the armies and air forces of Indiaand Pakistan against each other. British Foreign Office (FO), in this period, frequentlycharacterized Kashmir as an odd type of war50 as not just the Commander-in-Chiefsbut the Supreme Commander above them, the Governor-General in India and cru-cial provincial Governors in Pakistan were all British and appeared to take up cudgelsagainst each other on behalf of the dominion they served.51 This considerable British

presence, with definite perceptions about the potential impact of the Kashmir con-flict on British interests, sought to retain informal influence even as it had relinquished


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formal control in India. Moreover, the external dependence of India and Pakistan formilitary supplies, economic assistance, and diplomatic support made the British HighCommissioners in India and Pakistan important participants in policy-making in boththe British dominions. Finally, when Kashmir became the first inter-state conflict toreach the UN, the obvious British knowledge, experience, and influence saw it shapingearly international response to the conflict.52 No wonder then that while the BritishGenerals in India and Pakistan help contain the actual fighting in Kashmir, the AttleeGovernment 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 inOctober 1947, the FO had prepared a succinct note anticipating the potential impactof the Kashmir conflict on Britains three wider geopolitical concerns:

The prospect is extremely disturbing since if the North-West Frontier tribesembark 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 abreakdown in law and order in South-Western Waziristan and this in turn might beused by Russia as a pretext for intervening . . . 53

These considerations were also reflected in the three personalities of the day who wereall-important in policy formulation on Kashmira difficult tight-rope as Pakistan wasemerging as an ally while India remained a valuable partner.54 At the center stood PrimeMinister Clement Attlee, working for a strong, stable, and friendly post-British Indiansub-continent, preferably inside the British Commonwealth yet antagonizing India onKashmir 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 formerBritish colonies and mandates, a need complicated by British support of the parti-tion of Palestine, thereby furthering British interests in and standing firm against themuch feared Soviet specter in the whole region from Turkey to Sinkiang. Bevin felt thatIndia was not going to be morally committed to Britain whether inside or outside theCommonwealth while he looked upon Pakistan as a barrier to Soviet penetration.56

And finally, Minister for Commonwealth Affairs, the Quaker pacifist Philip Noel-Baker who was committed to his linear vision of a safe Kashmirsafe PakistansafeCentral Asia and Middle East and, therefore, a safe world for British interests andassiduously promoted the same in both New York and Washington.

By 1946, the emergence of two superpowers and British dependence on one of themhad sealed the fate of Britains Indian empire despite, as John Darwin put it, the AttleeGovernments commitment to empire and a world roleeven if the empire was tobe remodelled.57 Over 194647, this dependence and commitment collided with theimperative to confront the Soviet Union from the Middle East to the Far East. Britainprepared for new strategic burdens while still anxious to shed the old ones. In particu-lar, Britain sought a unitary, stable and compatible India as well as Palestine to continueto contribute in the old way to its new needs. However, both were partitioned. WhileAttlee, until early 1947, continued to hope for a unitary transfer of power the Tories,

specifically Churchill and Amery, had been quite content with the idea of a Muslim con-federation 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 pol-icy in India that was tied to the British belief that a firm hold in the Middle East wascrucial for security from Russia and that the anticipated repercussion on Britains deli-cate position in the Middle East had an impact over transfer of power in India has notgone unremarked.59 The newly available official archives of the period now enable aninvestigation of the extent to which this well-established axiom affected British behav-ior once the Kashmir conflict broke out. The transfer of power sought the goodwillof both the successor states but the bitter partition complicated the pursuit of imperialpurposes as India and Pakistan diverged in their foreign and defense policies. Attleeresponded 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 Indiahave been seen through the Cold War prism61 and this article attempts the same withthe first Kashmir conflict.

In the Lead-Up to the ConflictAn idea of the British concerns for the unstable northwest frontier of the Indian sub-continent in the interwar years can be gained from the speech given by the Secretaryof State of India, the Earl of Birkenhead, at the ninth meeting of the Imperial DefenseCouncil on October 26, 1926. Emphasizing that the potential enemy on the northwest 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 byPeter the Great of penetrating to the warm water so far as an advance towards Indiais concerned. Aided by the new factoraircraft, Russian aggression toward India

had seemingly appeared in a new and more dangerous form as the existence of land-ing grounds in Afghanistan gives to the Russians the power of placing considerable airforce at very short notice within striking distance of the plains of India.62 Over thenext twenty years, as the need for fuel expanded and the world contracted, the shad-ows lengthened from the north giving rise to the imperative of a close accord of theGreat Powers around the Muslim lake.63

Over 194647, London approached the strategic implications of the coming inde-pendence of India in terms of an orderly transfer of power to a stable India andsatisfactory defensive arrangements with the new India.64 Apart from the obviousvalue of India economically, geo-politically and militarily, for the penultimate Viceroy

Lord Wavell, this was also important to thwart the greatest dangerthe domina-tion of Russia.65 Attlees instructions to Wavells successor, Mountbatten, accordinglystressed the defense requirements of India on an all-India basis, continuity of the Indianarmy and collaboration in the security of the Indian Ocean area.66 However, once theCabinet Mission failed in 1946 and partition became a certainty in 1947, in the ensuingre-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 tothe 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 Britishconnection as against Indian ambivalence towards a coordinated foreign policy andintransigence even hostility towards British colonial policy.68

Before the end of the Second World War and the beginning of the hostilities inKashmir, the British Chief of Staff (CoS) had produced a series of strategic appre-ciations which give a good idea of their understanding of the impact of Indianindependence and partition on imperial strategic considerations, an understandingwhich proved the lynchpin of a similar analysis when the Kashmir conflict began.In May 1945, long before the wartime ally Soviet Union turned the Cold War adver-sary, the CoS had insisted on Britain retaining military connection with India in viewof the Soviet menace for four strategic reasons: base for force deployment, transitpoint for air and sea communications, reserve of manpower and presence of air bases inthe northwest of the subcontinent.69 By July 1946, as partition of India loomed on thehorizon, the CoS had identified 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 WesternIndia with Karachi and Peshawar (post-Partition Pakistan) was crucial for Britishinterests;71 and five weeks before the partition, the CoS rested its case: The area ofPakistan is strategically the most important in the continent of India and the majorityof 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 theAfghan intrigues on the northwest frontier which could only result in Pathan fragmen-tation and in lessening the ability of Pakistan and India to defend themselves againstthe Russians. They feared that the Indian Communists would take advantage of the

communal troubles accompanying the partition of India.73 By early October, a monthbefore the conflict broke out in Kashmir but when the worst of the post-partition riotswere going on north India, the FO noted the tug-of-war for Kashmir and expectedit to produce just the kind of chaos which Russia would welcome and might profitby.74 To the former India Office, the possibility of a Russian incursion via the north-west was, of course, an old bogey and even before the crisis had broken, the FO thusconcluded that in the interests of the stability of Kashmir it will no doubt be betterthat it should come under the sole control of Pakistan rather than remain a cats pawbetween the two dominions.

On the eve of the tribal invasion of Kashmir on October 22, 1947, the

Commonwealth Relations Office (hereafter CRO) produced two appreciations thatsummed up its position at the outset of the Kashmir conflict. The first note foresaweither the emergence of another Palestine situation in Kashmir on a greater scale orthe disappearance of Pakistan at the hands of an aggressive India, suspect Afghansand intriguing Soviets, with considerable effects, in both cases, on the Middle East.75

The second note and subsequent analysis recommended backing Pakistan to shield itagainst an India bitterly resentful of partition, in the interest of imperial defense alongthe northwest frontier, to preclude Pakistan from making overtures to Russia and thehuge Islamic aspect.76

Thus, for the three pillars of the British official mindthe Chiefs of Staff, theForeign Office and the Commonwealth Relations Officewhatever the origins of the


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conflict,77 once it started evolving and moved towards the international stage, it wouldhave presented London with difficult problems by inserting itself in the British plans inthe NWFP and the Middle East against the Soviet Union. Peace and stability in thesetwo areas against the Cold War adversary was more important and Pakistan with itsstrategic location, religious composition and willingly favorable foreign and defensepolicies was emerging as more important in this mosaic than India.78 But its ability washampered by the conflict in Kashmir and this understanding of Pakistans potential rolefor British interests and Kashmirs impact on it was to calibrate the British efforts tocontain and settle Kashmir. Sir Horace Rumbold of the CRO aptly called it a case ofdriving from the dickey.79

Outbreak of the Conflict and the Early AnalysisAnd 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 consid-ered vulnerable to Soviet expansion.80 Pakistans downfall was feared, at the handsof the stronger, aggressive India with the probable participation of the frontier tribesinstigated by the opportunist Afghans.81 It was advised that Pakistan be helped indischarging its inherited responsibility for NWFP as chaos there will affect imperialstrategy even at the risk of ruining our present entirely friendly relations with India;82

because, first, its collapse would be understood as HMGs failure and, second, in thelight of the unrealistic Indian thinking on foreign affairs,83 it was concluded thatwhatever the merits of the case might be, war in Kashmir, present HMG with mostserious problems.84

By November 1947 this anticipation had turned into an appreciation based on SirMaurice Petersons (UK Ambassador to the USSR) report that Russians tend to favorIndia as against Pakistan.85 After the third meeting of the Commonwealth AffairsCommittee held on October 30, 1947, it was opined that while both India and Pakistanwere at fault in Kashmir, the bigger danger was that Pakistan will be unable to controlthe Pathan tribes of the North and the North-West, Afghanistan will be drawn in andby degrees the whole continent will slide into chaos. Russia is waiting.86 A monthlater, the Far Eastern and Middle Eastern sections of the FO jointly produced a reporttitled The Russian Menace with advice from the Russian section which unambigu-ously 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 standtestimony to this possible outcome.87

Apart from the Russian menace, there was another international considerationemerging strongly to affect policy on Kashmir. The stronger India was being consid-ered much more difficult than the more fragile Pakistan from the point of view ofmaintaining a connection with Britain as well as serious international implications inAsia and the Middle East; Nehrus India held a key position in Asia whereas Londonexpected Jinnahs Pakistan to be of use in the latter.88 A closer look at the territoriesof the erstwhile British Empire reveal how much its extent coincided with the Arab-

Muslim 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 wasfurthering its interests in the middle of the planet as whoever controlled the val-ley of Kashmir, controlled the strategic and commercial communications there.89

Finally, Indian and Pakistani attitudes to these British concerns could not have beenmore starkly different. On the one hand was what Sir Archibald Nye (UK High-Commissioner in India, 194852) recalled as Nehrus unrealistic thinking on foreignaffairs,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 countrieshas not sent a congratulatory message on the birth of Pakistan.91

In the first month of fighting in Kashmir, Pakistan Government sent Sir FerozeKhan Noon to Muslim countries to apprise them of Pakistans position on Kashmirand solicit support. This began a flurry of telegrams and memos for a fortnight fromLondon to its embassies in the countries that Noon visited. The UK Ambassador toTurkey 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 bebadly strained.92 The diplomats in the Trans-Jordan were instructed to quash any talkthat HMG would be unfair to Pakistan over Kashmir in the present difficult positionover Palestine; after all, Pakistan owed its existence to HMG, which could have eas-ily handed over the whole of India to the Hindu majority.93 Throughout the MiddleEast, British diplomats were asked to reassure their hosts that having facilitated the cre-ation of a separate independent Muslim state, Britain would always come to Pakistanshelp.94 When Lord Mountbatten visited London in November 1947 to explain Indiasposition and ensure that Indias relationship with UK did not deteriorate, his advocacymade things difficult 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 facedwith the grave decision whether to take more active steps to save Pakistan therebyrisking Indias secession from the Commonwealth or alternatively to risk Pakistanscollapse, thus losing an incalculable amount of prestige and influence in the Muslimcountries of the Near and Middle East.95

Mountbatten met the Chancellor of Exchequer Sir Stafford Cripps, apart from Bevinand Noel-Baker, to seek economic assistance to India and was informed that it wouldbe folly to work out means of increasing our supplies to India as along as she is in herpresent mood and liable to begin an aggressive war at any moment. Nor would thishelp our relations with Pakistan and the Islamic World generally.96 Bevin later bluntly

confirmed to Mountbatten that the emphasis on India may well have repercussionon Pakistan [and on the Islamic World]. India has hardly played fair in the division ofmilitary and economic assets and Pakistan is in a difficult situation.97 Mountbattenappears slow to appreciate the shift in the fulcrum of British strategic interests from theFar 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 com-pletely 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 PersonifyingIndian bewilderment at the British attitude, he complained to Attlee albeit in terms ofinternational 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 nowlikely to give a lead in the Far East, is being treated this way. The policy whichyou initiated and which I have endeavoured to carry out [to keep India in theCommonwealth] is now being compromised by the leaning towards Pakistanscause and Noel-Bakers obvious antagonism to India.99

At the UNOnce the Kashmir question reached the UNSC in January 1948, Britain presentedit as a critical corner besieged by the unreliable Afghans, unstable Pathans and theunprincipled Communists. The British aim in New York was first how to stop thefighting and bring about conditions under which a fair plebiscite can be held ratherthan arbitration between India and Pakistan100 and second to persuade the U.S. totake 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 interna-tional focus, quite away from the strict merits of Indias complaint against Pakistan andPakistans counter-arguments, at the UNSC throughout 1948 and achieve these aimswere later remembered as The Christmas Pantomime by Sir Alexander Cadogan (UKPermanent Representative to the UN, 194550).102

Noel-Baker was instructed by Attlee to be particularly careful to avoid givingPakistan the impression that we are siding with India against her. In view of thePalestine situation this would carry the risk of aligning the whole of Islam againstus.103 Bevin had conveyed to Attlee the FO position that we simply cannot affordto 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 Pakistanand particularly of her resentment, and strongly advise Attlee to formulate policyaccordingly on Kashmir.105 With respect to the Soviet Union, the FO initially felt thatthe Russians are trying to play on both sides, with probably the ultimate intentionof ensuring that war breaks out, from which they could be the only gainers.106 It didnot take long for Noel-Baker at New York to form an opinion though. Three weeksinto 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 toa 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 independentKashmir and heal the breach between India and Pakistan so that Russia would not causemischief.108

These two chief concerns of a tremendous anti-Western movement in the Arab-Muslim world following the creation of Israel on May 14, 1948, and a Pakistanioverture to Russia with serious consequences not only locally but in the whole ofthe Middle East,109 were also joined by British concerns about the tension betweenPakistan and Afghanistan. Noel-Baker had been concerned about Pakistans perse-cution complex vis--vis Afghanistan even before the Kashmir conflict started.110 Sir

G Squire (UK Ambassador in Afghanistan) had been reporting to the FO throughoutthe early months of the conflict 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 severelycritical of Pakistans policy in Kashmir and complained that it has already resulted inenormous increase in modern weapons in tribal hands as well as money with growingdanger. Afghanistan also appeared disappointed that Pakistan refused Afghan medi-ation. The Ambassador feared that the Afghan government may revert to the oldpolicy of encouraging tribes to make difficulties for Pakistan.111

It was thus increasingly being felt in London that the difficulties of Pakistan inher dispute with India over Kashmir are likely to be increased by deterioration inher relations with Afghanistan.112 London understood only too well the importanceof maintaining traditional position on the frontier given its own painful history ofAnglo-Afghan Wars.113 Afghanistan was the only Muslim country which had refusedto formally recognize the dominion of Pakistan in August 1947 and had voted againstits inclusion in the UN. In January 1948, Afghanistan still rejected the Durand Lineas border with Pakistan and claimed to supervise the welfare of the tribal communi-

ties on either side of that line. The FO was also worried about the belligerent positionof the Young Afghan party in Kabul which openly expressed territorial ambitionsin the NWFP. It blamed the Afghans as seeking to profit from Pakistans presentdifficulties.114

Meanwhile, in the UNSC India had nominated Czechoslovakia as its nominee onthe UNCIP. With the impending Communist takeover in Czechoslovakia, Londonsaw it for what it was and disliked Indias choice of Czechoslovakia, which has beenmade with the idea that Czechoslovakia is independent of the Western Union andthe Anglo-American bloc which Pt. Nehru now sees as the opponent of fair play toIndia.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 bringabout anarchy and chaos throughout the whole sub-continent.116 The other worrywith respect to Soviet intrigue was the possibility of an independent Kashmir. Londonsaw it as a recipe Soviet flirting and intrigue.117 The Kashmiri leader and Nehrusfriend Sheikh Abdullah was looked upon as having a communist cohort around himand with Czechoslovakia a member of the UNCIP, it was feared that no solution ofthe Kashmir problem will be possible, if one of the members of the UNSC Commissiontakes orders from Moscow, and intrigues with fellow travelers in Sheikh Abdullahscabinet.118

Back in Kashmir, fighting had resumed in the spring and summer of 1948 after the

winter lull. Internationally, a new worrying development in the vicinity of Kashmir wasthat Sinkiang province abutting the north-eastern boundary of Kashmir was poisedto fall to the Communists in the last phase of the Chinese Civil War (194649). Thisonly served to further enhance the strategic significance of Kashmir in British eyes.Internally, the new issue was the clandestine presence of regular Pakistani troops inKashmir from May 1948 onwards. Thus far the bulk of the fighting had been borneby the various tribal groups aided by the local and provincial government in theNWFP. London became aware of this courtesy Sir Laurence Graffety-Smith (UK HighCommissioner in Pakistan, 194751). The first response of both the FO and the CROwas that UK should not confront Pakistan about their troops presence or move-ments 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 diplomaticrepresentatives.119 The disapproving Americans were also requested to not pursue thematter for the same reason.120 The UNCIP members too were briefed about the gravityof any overture that Pakistan might make to Russia either through an act of despair orthrough a break-down of the present administration.121

However, the presence of regular Pakistani troops in Kashmir and the possibilityof their engaging the Indians meant, above all, that the HMG would have to issuestand down orders to British officers in Indian and Pakistani armies. In July-Augustand later December 1948, India repeatedly requested the Attlee Government for thesame. 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 apartwithout British officers while India which had embarked on nationalization of itstroops would suffer little.122 In August 1948, there were 351 British personnel in Indianarmed 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 nobecause, above all, Pakistan stood as a barrier to Russian penetration into the Indiansub-continent and secondly there was the rest of the Muslim World to consider.123

Continuing to look at specific issues related to Kashmir in the light of, what they heldto be, the nonsensical foreign policy of Nehru, the FO summed up its priorities: TheIndians, in particular, as the bigger partner, who made the original fundamental errorof going into Kashmir, must somehow be brought to see that they are fiddling whileRome is burning. In other words, that while the shadow of Bolshevism is falling moreand more over South East Asia, they are fighting with a sister dominion without whoseco-operation they are both likely to be overwhelmed.124

In the latter half of 1948, the FO and the CRO directed their energies to impressupon the Americans the three-fold danger of Soviet-Afghan-Indian designs toPakistan along its northwest frontier. The onerous defense of this frontier on the weakshoulders of Pakistan was understood a British legacy and were it to collapse underits weight, the resultant dissension within the Muslim bloc could only benefit theRussians.125 The Indians were not given up on either. In October 1948, both Bevinand the American Secretary of State George Marshall met Nehru at Paris and sepa-rately sought to impress upon him the necessity to settle the continued disturbancesin Kashmir and Indonesia in the light of the Russian menace.126 The CRO went astep 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 ofthe significance of the Kashmir issue in the wider setting of recent developments inSouth-East Asia and the Far East [especially after] the recent Communist successesin China.127 Nothing came of it as the Americans at this stage still looked uponKashmir as essentially a British Commonwealth issue and were unwilling to play aleading role. Additionally, Marshall remembered well his own recent unhappy andunproductive experience of mediation in the east between Mao Tse-tung and ChiangKai-shek in 194546. Faced with this advice from their Ambassador to the U.S., theprudent Attlee and the pragmatic Bevin overruled the zealous Noel-Bakers attempt tosought American intervention.128 The duo therefore turned their attention to containthe conflict and bring in a ceasefire under the aegis of the UNCIP.


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34 India Review

London had been helped in restraining the partisan ardor of Indian and Pakistaniarmies throughout the war by the simple fact that both the armies were led by Britishgenerals.129 On the Indian side the incumbents during this period were Rob Lockhartand Roy Bucher who always kept in mind the larger political consequence of theKashmir affair weakening both India and Pakistan thereby making the rapid spread ofCommunism all over Asia all the more likely.130 Their Pakistani counterparts, FrankMesservy and Douglas Gracey, feared that the conflict in Kashmir would see the cryof Islam in Danger being raised and believed that their real job was to train the twoforces so that together they can deal with the communist menace which is the real oneand the only one that really matters.131An 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 andPakistan 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 Sovietscheme of expansion, and only unity of purpose and policy will enable the powersconcerned to resist Soviet infiltration and aggression.132

As the gun-fire of 1948 was ceased in 1949 in Kashmir, chief British concerns regardingSoviet foreign policy in the Indian sub-continent remained two-fold. It was worriedabout the Soviet support to the government of the fellow traveler Sheikh Abdullah andthe Government of India against Pakistan over Kashmir and about the Soviet supportto 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 influence along the lines of China.133 That nothing else mattered as much,neither Indias legal claims on Kashmir nor Pakistans politico-religious arguments, wasmade clear by Field Marshal Sir Claude Auchinleck, last British Commander-in-Chiefof the British Indian Army (19431947) and first and only Supreme Commander ofIndian and Pakistan armies (AugustNovember 1947), in a speech he gave at RoyalInstitute of International Affairs (Chatham House) on April 20, 1950: Discontentand disturbed conditions in an area of vital strategic importance to the defence of theCommonwealth against USSR must be avoided and it is in this context that the futureof Kashmir must be understood, interpreted and settled.134

ConclusionThe crisis of 1947 in Kashmir, as R. J. Moore put it so well, bore the contradic-tions of Britains past policies as well as the partition of India.135 This article hassought to analyze British interests and involvement during its evolution over the twoyears of 1947 and 1948 through the prism of British concerns, implicit in the back-drop of Decolonization and the Cold War. While the combat neither started nor endedwith British approval, it was certainly contained, both militarily and diplomatically,by British efforts. As Britain viewed the conflict through its own concerns about the

strategic situation in Asia, it was anxious that any full-fledged conflict between Indiaand 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 dis-pute, thus, played itself out against a complex international background which affectedits evolution. The Jammu and Kashmir question very quickly became the India-Pakistan question and the future of Jammu and Kashmir became intertwined with thefuture of Pakistan itself in British perceptions.

As Britain withdrew from India, it sought to safeguard its political and strategicinterests in both India and Pakistan, either through the Commonwealth or throughbilateral relations. While India was a more valuable and influential player because ofits size and resources, Pakistan emerged as the more promising and reliable strategic,military and ideological ally with her willingness to join defense arrangements, crucialgeopolitical location, and proximity to the strategically vital Middle East. As a result,although Britain had more extensive, complex, and long-term politico-economic inter-ests in India, it was Pakistan which in the context of the developing Cold War, bestserved 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 con-cerns were bound to impact the evolution of the crisis and this was made possible bythe ubiquitous British presence in the subcontinent and British influence internation-ally during the conflict. And yet, British hopes and fears did not materialize the waythey expected them to. America refused to get involved in the way London wantedit to in this period. The feared Soviet intervention did not occur. Afghanistan did notattack Pakistan. India did not over run Pakistan and the Arab-Muslim World remainedmore concerned about its problems than worrying the British about Kashmir. Aboveall, at home disagreements and divisions within the British official and political mindsover the comparative importance of India and Pakistan for British interests made

for a vacillating, poorly coordinated British policy on Kashmir which annoyed bothdominions.136 London may have looked upon Kashmir as its main unfinished busi-ness from the imperial and international viewpoints in 1947 and approached it on thebasis of a revival of the Great Game in Asia but this did not help it in its aim to holdinfluence 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); andBarbara Ramusack, The Indian Princes and their States (Cambridge: CUP, 2004).

2. For a critical memoir see Sir Conrad Corfield, 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 Office Records

(hereafter IOR), British Library, sheds valuable light on the invasion. Cunningham was then the Governor ofthe 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 first battle of the Cold War. See, among others, ChristopherMontague Woodhouse, Apple of Discord(London: Hutchinson, 1948); Heinz Richter, British Interventionin 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, Journalof 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); andPhilip Carabott and Thanasis D. Sfikas, eds., The Greek Civil War(London: Ashgate, 2004).

6. Where does one begin to chart the troubled history of Israel-Palestine conflict? It would suffice to men-

tion some prominent names like Avi Shlaim, Benny Morris, Ilan Pappe, Tom Segev, and Noam Chomskyalongside a sample of other more specific 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, Conflicts 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: IndianaUniversity Press, 1982); and John Mearsheimer and Stephen P. Walt, The Israel Lobby and U.S. ForeignPolicy (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2008).

7. See Robert J. McMahon, Colonialism and Cold War: The United States and the Struggle for IndonesianIndependence, 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.

8. 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); BruceCumings, 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 ShuGuang Zhang, Maos Military Romanticism (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1995).

9. For an overview of historiography see Simon Hall, Scholarly Battles over the Vietnam War, HistoricalJournal 52 (September 2009), pp. 81329. Again, among a mountain of material, only a few notablesmay 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 AmericanCommitment to War in Vietnam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and F. Logevall, Embersof War: The Fall of an Empire and the Making of Americas Vietnam (New York: Random House, 2012).

10. R. J. Moore, India in the 1940s in Robin W. Winks, ed., Volume V: Historiography of The Oxford Historyof British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. 232.

11. W. M. Roger Louis in the Foreword to Robin W Winks edited Volume V: Historiography of The OxfordHistory of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), p. viii.

12. A typical example would Aziz Beg, Captive Kashmir(Lahore: Allied Corporation, 1957).13. 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. 103347.14. 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: KashmirConfrontation, 194748 (Delhi: Orient Longman, 1969); and Akbar Khan, Raiders in Kashmir(Islamabad:National Book Foundation, 1970).

15. See from the Indian side Sisir Gupta, Kashmir: A Study in India-Pakistan Relations (London: AsiaPublishing House, 1966) and for the Pakistani case Alastair Lamb, Crisis in Kashmir, 194766 (London:Routledge, 1966).

16. 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 thePakistan side is Ijaz Hussain, Kashmir Dispute: An International Law Perspective (Islamabad: NationalInstitute of Pakistan Studies, 1998).

17. 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 Versionsof History (New Delhi: OUP, 1996).

18. Ajit Bhattacharjea, Kashmir: The Wounded Valley (New Delhi: UBSPD, 1994), p. xiv.19. 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 theNineties (Delhi: Penguin, 1999).

20. 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: PakistanForum, 1993); and Tahir Amin, Mass Resistance in Kashmir: Origins, Evolution, Options (Islamabad:Institute of Policy Studies, 1995).

21. For the Kashmiri Pandit perspective in this period see Anil Maheswari, Crescent over Kashmir: Politics ofMullaism (Delhi: Rupa, 1993) and Dinanath Raina, Distortions and Reality (Delhi: Reliance, 1994).

22. Representative examples are Paula Newberg, Double Betrayal: Repression and Insurgency in Kashmir(Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1995); and Vernon Hewitt, Reclaimingthe Past (London: Portland, 1995).

23. Apart from those quoted immediately below see Ishtiaq Ahmed, State, Nation and Ethnicity inContemporary South Asia (London, New York: Pinter, 1996); Mushtaqur Rahman, Divided Kashmir: Old

Problems, New Opportunities for India, Pakistan and the Kashmiri People (Boulder, Colorado: WestviewPress, 1996); Aasma Barlas, Democracy, Nationalism and Communalism (Oxford: OUP, 1995); Iffat Malik,


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Kashmir (Oxford: OUP, 2002); and Seema Kazi, Between Democracy and Nation (New Delhi: WomenUnlimited, 2008).

24. 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: UppsalaUniversity Press, 1997).

25. See Sumantra Bose, The Challenge in Kashmir: Democracy, Self-determination and a Just Peace (Delhi:,1997).

26. Sumit Ganguly, The Crisis in Kashmir: Portents of War, Hopes of Peace (Cambridge: CUP, 1997), pp. xixii.27. Suranjan Das, Kashmir and Sindh (London: Anthem Press, 2001), p. 76.28. Ayesha Jalal, Democracy and Authoritarianism in South Asia (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), pp. xixiii.29. 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.30. 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 Conflict (New York: Novinka Books,2003).

31. See Humra Quraishi,Kashmir(New Delhi: Penguin, 2004), Andrew Whitehead,A Mission in Kashmir(NewDelhi: 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.

32. See Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies, pp. 103547; examples are Sumantra Bose, Kashmir: Roots ofConflict, 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 ofHomeland, International Journal of Hindu Studies Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 4164.

33. See Ananya Jahanara Kabir, Territory of Desire: Representing the Valley of Kashmir(Minnesota: Universityof Minneapolis Press, 2009).

34. Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1033; an early example would be MohammadIshaq Khan, Kashmirs Transition to Islam (New Delhi: Manohar, 1994), whereas more recent exampleswould 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., TheParchment of Kashmir: History, Society and Polity (Basingstroke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).

35. Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1034.36. 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).

37. Zutshi, Whither Kashmir Studies (see note 13 above), p. 1046.38. 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: BasilBlackwell, 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 Endgamesof Empire: Studies of Britains India Problem (Oxford: OUP, 1988); Anita Inder Singh, The Limits ofBritish Influence: South Asia and the Anglo-American Relationship, 194756(London & New York: PinterPublishers & St. Martins Press, 1993); and Wm. Roger Louis, Ends of British Imperialism: The Scramble forEmpire, Suez and Decolonisation (London: IB Tauris, 2006).

39. C. Dasgupta, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir 194748 (New Delhi: Sage, 2002); Shuja Nawaz, CrossedSwords (Karachi: OUP, 2008); and Howard Schaffer, The Limits of Influence: Americas Role in Kashmir(Washington, DC: Brookings, 2009).

40. See the works of Ayesha Jalal and Mushirul Hasan on nation-building and state-formation in indepen-dent 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 onthe last Viceroyalty of Lord Mountbatten and his handling of the Kashmir problem and finally volumeson the clash of colonialism and nationalism in British India starting from Cyril Henry Philips and MaryDoreen Wainwright, eds., The Partition of India: Policies and Perspectives 19351947 (London: GeorgeAllen & 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)).

41. Michael Brecher, The Struggle for Kashmir (New York: Oxford University Press, 1953); Josef Korbel,Danger in Kashmir(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1954).

42. Andrew Whitehead, Mission in Kashmir(Delhi: Penguin/Viking, 2007).

43. J. P. D. Dunbabin, The Cold War (London: Longman, 1994), p. 238. Also see for a representative sam-ple 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 andthe 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: FromEarly Empires to India, Pakistan and Bangladesh (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000); for an exception thoughfocusing on the Americans see Robert J. McMahon, The Cold War on the Periphery (New York: CUP,1994).

44. Robert Johnson, A Region in Turmoil (London: Reaktion Books, 2005), pp.9597; also see RobertHuttenback, British Raj and Kashmir, 18471947(Oxford: OUP, 2004) and Peter John Brobst, The Futureof the Great Game (Akron: Akron University Press, 2005).

45. Judith M. Brown, India in Judith M. Brown and Wm. Roger Louis, ed., Volume IV: The TwentiethCentury of The Oxford History of British Empire (Oxford: OUP, 2001), pp. 42122.

46. See Moores trilogy, Escape from Empire (see note 38 above), and Singh, The Limits of British Influence (seenote 38 above).

47. Nicholas Mansergh, E. W. R. Lumby, and Penderal Moon, eds., The Transfer of Power 19427 (hereafterTOP) (London: HMSO, 197083); and Ronal Hyam, ed., The Labour Government and the End of Empire,194551 (London: HMSO, 1992).

48. Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History Vol. XXII (1994), pp. 462511.49. 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: Historiographyof 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).50. December 23, 1948, DO 142/524, The National Archives (hereafter TNA), London.51. 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), andSir George Cunningham (Governor, NWFP).

52. Singh, The Limits of British Influence (see note 38 above), p. 29.53. November 6, 1947, F 1486/8800/85/G, POL/DEF, 6 November 1947, FO 371/63569, TNA.54. Robert Pearce, ed., Patrick Gordon-Walker: Political Diaries, 19321971 (London: Historians Press, 1991),

p. 22.55. May 4, 1949, Attlee to Alexander, M 100/49, PREM 8/997, TNA.56. 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.

57. Darwin, The End of the British Empire (see note 38 above), pp. 6266.58. Apart from Moores aforementioned works, see N. S. Sarila, The Shadow of the Great Game (New Delhi:

Harper Collins, 2005).59. See Louis, Ends of British Imperialism (see note 38 above), the chapter on Leo Amery.60. See Moore, Making the New Commonwealth (see note 17 above).61. Apart from Darwin and Roger Louis, also see Peter Clarke, The Last Thousand Days of the British Empire

(London: Penguin, 2008).62. Item No. 18, MSS Eur C/152/2, Birkenhead Papers, IOR.63. Olaf Caroe, Wells of Powers (London: Macmillan, 1951), p. 185.64. July 13, 1946, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Item No. 26, Volume VIII, TOP.65. May 11, 1949, Wavell to Liddell-Hart, LH 1/733, Liddell-Hart Papers, Liddell-Hart Center for Military

Archives, Kings College London (hereafter KCL).66. April 4, 1947, Attlee to Mountbatten, MUL 1222, Auchinleck Papers, John Rylands Library, University of

Manchester.67. September 8 and October 23, 1946, Wavell to Pethick-Lawrence, Item No. 286 and 501, Volume VIII, TOP.68. November 1946, Griffith 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 BritishImperialism (see note 38 above), p. 417.

69. May 19, 1945, PHP (45) 15 (0) Final, L/WS/1/983-988, IOR.70. July 10, 1946, CoS Report No. (46) 19 (0), TNA.71. November 29, 1946, Tp (46), CoS (46-47), L/WS/1/1030, IOR.72. July 7, 1947, Tp (47), CoS 90, TNA.73. June 28, 1947, N 7493/69/38 91/26/47, FO 371/66320, TNA.74. October 11, 1947, Pol 1375/47, F 13715/8800/85, FO 371/63570, TNA.75. October 14, 1947, F 200/102, Mountbatten Papers, IOR.76. 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,


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TNA; December 1, 1947, MSS Eur D 714/84, IOR; December 29, 1947, Scoones to Gordon-Walker, GNWR1/6, Gordon-Walker Papers, CAC.

77. October 1948 and May 1949, DO 142/521 and DO 142/529, TNA.78. January 5, 1951, LH/15/5/425, Liddell-Hart Papers, KCL.79. July 24, 1948, Rumbold to Gordon-Walker, DO 142/516, TNA.80. DO 142/521, TNA.81. F200/102, Mountbatten Papers, IOR.82. F200/103, Mountbatten Papers, IOR.83. June 21, 1949, Nye to Liesching, DO 121/71, TNA.84. October 1948, 85/48, DO 142/521, TNA.85. November 4, 1947, F 14772/8800/85, FO 371/63571, TNA86. November 6, 1947, F 14832, FO 371/63571, TNA.87. December 3, 1947, F 15955/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA.88. November 5, 1947, The Indian Scene, Memo by Lord Addison; F 14776/8800/85G, CA (47) 11, FO

371/63571, TNA.89. October 27, 1948, Bevin to Marshall, FO 800/470/IND/48/33, TNA.90. June 21, 1949, Nye to Liesching, DO 121/71, TNA.91. 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 DocumentationCenter (Islamabad).

92. November 20, 1947, FO to Ankara, F 15381/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA.93. December 1, 1947, FO to Amman, F 15821, FO 371 /63574, TNA.94. 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.95. November 26, 1947, F 15639/8800/85, FO 371/63574, TNA.96. December 16, 1947, F 16424/8966/85, FO 371/63574, TNA.97. 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 IndianCabinet of which Mountbatten was the Governor-General were implacably determined to do all in theirpower to prevent the establishment of the dominion of Pakistan on a firmer basis, F 200/102, MountbattenPapers, IOR.

98. February 8, 1948, Mountbatten to Attlee, T. No. 304, DO 35/3164, TNA.99. February 24, 1948, Mountbatten to Attlee, T. No. 459, L/WS/1/1141, IOR.

100. January 5, 1948, L/P&S/13/1948, IOR.101. November 9, 1948, L/WS/1/1145, IOR.102. 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).103. January 10, 1948, T. No. 131, FO 371/69705, TNA.104. January 9, 1948, F 452/6/85/G, FO 371/69705, TNA.105. May 13, 1948, Bevin to Attlee, PM/48/52, Ind/48/24, FO 800/470, TNA106. January 1, 1948, F 6/6/85 2865, FO 371/69705, TNA107. January 21, 1948, Noel-Baker to FO, T. No. 139, F 1060, FO 371/69706, TNA.108. January 21, 1948, Orme Sargent to Cadogan, 21 January 1948, 42 F 1099, FO 371/69706, TNA.109. Moore, Making the New Commonwealth (see note 17 above), p. 84.110. October 13, 1947, F 13771/8800/85/G, FO 371/63570, TNA.111. January 12, 1948, Squire to London, F 488/6/85, FO 371/69705, TNA.112. January 14, 1948, Pol 118/48, DO 142/501, TNA.113. There had been three Anglo-Afghan wars in 183942, 187880, and 1919 with chequered results for Great

Britain.114. January 27, 1948, F 1472/6/85, FO371/69708 and February 12, 1948, F 2330/6/85/G,FO 371/69709, TNA.115. February 14, 1948, F 2383/6/85, FO 371/69709, TNA.116. February 9, 1948, Noel-Baker to Shone, T. No. 470, FO 371/69710, TNA.117. March 15, 1948, London to New York, F 4318/6/85, FO 371/69712, TNA.118. 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.119. May 14, 1948, F 6983/6/85 G, FO 371/69717, TNA.120. May 14, 1948, London to New York and Washington, F 1377/6/85 G, FO 371/69717, TNA121. July 7, 1948, F 9420/6/85 G, FO 371/69720, TNA.122. 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 AsianStudies Vol. 19, No. 1 (1985), pp. 2953 and Indias Partition and the Defence of Pakistan: An HistoricalPerspective, Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth Studies Vol. 15, No. 3 (1987), pp. 289310.

123. August 9, 1948, F 11799/6/85 G, FO 371/69721, TNA.

124. 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, F15081/10338/85, 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 Influence (see note 38 above), pp. 2930.137. Moore, India in the 1940s (see note 10 above), pp. 24041.

great britain and kashmir, 1947-49

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