THE KASHMIR DISPUTE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP79T00472A000600010008-7
• Release Decision: RIPPUB
• Original Classification: S
• Document Page Count: 13
• Document Creation Date: December 14, 2016
• Document Release Date: March 11, 2003
• Sequence Number: 8
• Publication Date: September 20, 1965
• Content Type: IM

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CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY
Office of Current Intelligence
20 September 1965
SUBJECT. The Kashmir Dispute
The Kashmir dispute remains one of the bit-
terest legacies of the partition of British-ruled
India in 1947? In the ensuing eighteen years,
neither Pakistan nor India, has been willing to
consider a solution which would leave the other
country in control of the central Vale of Kashmir,
regardless of the inducements offered, Pakistan's
frustration over its inability to wrest the Vale
from India is still the basic emotion, pervading
its entire foreign policy, which finally led to
the risky decision to send infiltrators into
Indian Kashmir in early August. India's Kashmir
policy also rests on a foundation built on intense
patriotic and communal sentiment. While each side
adopts legal arguments derived from the events of
1947, when India took over the Vale, the roots
of the dispute go far back into the past.
Historical Background
Kashmir is a, rugged land, lying across the
western invasion route from Tibet and Sinkiang
into the Indian subcontinent. The heart of the
country is a. beautiful valley, 85 miles long by
25 miles wide and a mile above sea level, This
is the Vale of Kashmir, surrounded by inhospitable
ountains which include, on the north, the Kara-
koram, the world?s highest range. Outside the
Vale, the population is sparse and poverty-ridden,
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and the docile people of the main valley have
long feared the more warlike tribes from the
neighboring hills. Although this whole region
is in dispute, it is the Vale that is the heart
of the matter,
Kashmir proper has been Muslim since the
14th century, and was annexed to the Moghul
Empire by Emperor Akbar in 1587. Hindu control
was not re-established until 1946 when the British
turned the state over to the Hindu Maharaja of
Jammu as part of their efforts to improve the se-
curity of British India along its northwestern
perimeter. Hindu rule was autocratic and the
Muslims in the state felt themselves cruelly
oppressed. Although more direct British influ-
ence improved conditions in the state, Muslim
restiveness led to open agitation--in many cases
associated with the efforts of the Indian National
Congress further south--in the years preceeding
World War II.
With the partition of British India at the
time of independence, the status of Kashmir, like
that of the other princely states, remained to be
settled. Most of the maharajas, who had the
option of acceding either to India or to Pakistan,
made their decisions promptly. The Hindu maharaja
of Jammu and Kashmir stalled, however, in hopes of
securing a substantial degree of autonomy. By
October 1947 a revolt had broken out among his
Muslim subjects in the Poonch region, who were
soon joined by several thousand Pushtoon tribesmen
from Pakistan's Northwest Frontier Province.
Slaughtering indiscriminately as they swept into
the Vale along the Jelum River, the Pushtoons came
perilously close to Srinagar.
Unable to cope with the situation himself,
the maharaja opted for India, and New Delhi imme-
diately sent troops who drove back the tribesmen
and suppressed the local Muslim agitation. India's
claim to the state thus has a technically strong
legal foundation in the maharaja's act of accession
The Pakistani advocates point out, however, that
the basic concept of Partition was that Pakistan
was to comprise the contiguous Muslim-majority areas
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of British India. They insist that Kashmir is
such an area, that the Ka.shmiri people without
question would have preferred to join Pakistan,
and that they were prevented from doing so only
by Hindu troops, first those of the maharaja
and then those sent by New Delhi.
Subsequent mediation efforts and negotia-
tions have not moved the parties from these
positions, nor from the territory that the
respective forces occupied. In 1948 and 1949,
the UN Commission for India. and Pakistan secured
the agreement of both parties to a cease-fire,
demilitarization, and a. plebiscite. With minor
interruptions, the cease-'fire remained in effect
until the new outbreak last month. The demilitari
zation agreement, however, was never carried out,
and in 1956 India announced that it therefore nlonger held itself bound to conduct a plebiscite.
Kashmir Today
Since the cease-fire, the two sides hae$e
organized their Kashmir territories along qv
different lines. Pakistan controls several
? t 'cts comprising about one third of
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mountain s
the total area of Jammu and Kashmir, The districts
to the north had relatively tenuous ties with the
old princely state and are administered as special
political agencies under the Central Pakistani
Government at Rawalpindi. The districts lying
along the western edge of the Vale make up what
is known as Azad ("Free9') Kashmir, supposedly a
separate, provisional government pending the
settlement of the dispute, but actually under the
control of Rawalpindi.
Pakistan has not attempted to make Azad Kashmir
a showplace; the local administration is supported
mainly by local taxation, and Pakistan?s financial
contribution seems to be limited to a few million
dollars for agricultural extension services and
food subsidies. Economic development consequently
is negligible.
India's portion of Kashmir, on the other hand,
includes the famous Vale and the capital city of
Srinagar, by all odds the most desirable part of the
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state and the traditional center of power where
the "true" Ka.shmiri lives. Over the years the
Indian government has gradually integrated Kashmir
more fully into the Indian union until by now all
significant constitutional distinctions have been
swept away.
As part of the integration process, New Delhi
has furnished a considerable amount of financial
assistance to the state over the years--a contri-
bution that has ?ra.nged as high as 60 '. percent of
the state's revenue in some years. This support
may have reduced Kashmiri resentment in some
measure, but there is little question that the
Kashmiri population would vote to break away from
India if offered the choice.
Indian Attitudes
Although India, like Pakistan, claims the
whole of the old Jammu and Kashmir state, it is
in fact fairly well satisfied with the status quo.
Although now adamantly opposed to any discussion
of Kashmir, the Indians would have no fundamental
objections to a permanent division of the state
more or less along the cease-fire line. Indeed,
Indian defensive arrangements in Kashmir, such
as the depopulation of the 500 yard "demilitarized"
zone, have treated, the line as a de facto inter-
national boundary. Any proposal threatening
India's complete control of the Vale, however,
would meet with hostility in New Delhi.
Most Indian leaders have a deep emotional
commitment to the concept of a secular and united
India. It has heavy Ghandian overtones--Gha.ndi
himself was strongly opposed to Indian acceptance
of independence based on partition--and is rein-
forced by the remembrance of forty years of resis-
ta.nice to the growing influence of the Muslim League.
The League, founded in 1906, aimed initially at
insuring that the Muslim majority would be protected
as India moved toward self government. It did so
by ingratiating itself with the British Raj, which
Muslims viewed as a far safer bet than the Hindu
rule that might replace it. In the two decades
immediately preceding independence, however, the
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League took a. new tack, and the concept of an
independent Muslim state arose. Nehru and his
Congress colleagues who were to rule India follow-
ing independence grudgingly accepted partition
only after an unbreakable deadlock with the League
over constitutional arrangements led to serious
communal rioting in 1946 and 1947.
The Chinese attack in October 1962 strengthened
India's emotional resolve to hold Kashmir. After
its belated discovery in 1959 of the Chinese road
crossing "Indian" territory on the Aksa.i-Chin plateau
to link Tibet with Sinkiang Province, New Delhi in-
sisted with considerable bravado that the Chinese
would be compelled to Withdraw. The series of
border scrapes that followed and the Indian military
debacle of 1962 drove home the lesson that India
must seriously attend to its Himalayan defenses.
In Ladakh this means the stationing of a full in-
farntry division, which must be suppled by an almost
continuous truck convoy along the Srina.ga.r-Leh
road from the Vale.
While the Kashmir dispute is only one of India's
foreign policy problems, it often seems to come
close to being the very raison d'etre for Pakistan's
foreign policy. Every Pakistani leader has known
that he could assure his place in national history
if he could somehow bring Kashmir under Pakistani
control. This is especially true of President Ayub,
who has already promulgated a new consitution and
would like to rival the late Mohammed Ali Jinnah as
the "father" of the country. To the Pakistani,
Kashmir is a blight on Pakistan's national honor
and a perpetual reminder that the Pakistani Muslim,
whose heritage includes the glory of the Moghul
Empire, is now a citizen of a country that is weaker,
poorer, less skilled, and generally inferior to its
"Hindu" counterpart. Proposals aimed at saving
face for Pakistan--but leaving India in control of
the Vale--have no appeal in Rawalpindi, since pos-
session of the Vale is the essence of the question.
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After a decade of frustration, Pakistani
leaders cast about for new means of exerting
leverage on New Delhi. In 1959, Ayub first tried
to capitalize on the Sino-Indian border difficul-
ties by proposing a joint Indian-Pakistani defense
of the subcontinent--obviously predicated on a.
Kashmir settlement. Nehru received this coolly.
Another strategy apparently was then developed:
to wait until Chinese pressure on the Indian border
would oblige India to secure its flank with Pakis-
tan by offering real concessions in Kashmir. The
Pakistanis believe, however, that this maneuver
was upset by Pakistan's western allies, who brought
military assistance to India. following the Chinese
invasion in the fall of 1962 and thereby freed
India from the necessity of entering serious nego-
tiations
Most recently, Pakistan's worry that time is
on the side of Indian in Kashmir has been sharpened
by Indian moves to complete the integration of
Kashmir into the Indian Union. The latest steps
in this process--the extension of constitutional
provisions allowing for direct "President's" rule
from New Delhi during emergencies and for the
popular election of Kashmir's representative to
the national legislature --erased the last signifi-
cant distinctions between Kashmir and the other
states. The declaration of Indian Home Minister
Nanda on 1 July, following the signing of the
Ra.nn of Kutch agreement, that Kashmir is "not a.
matter for discussion" merely confirmed the obvious.
Recent Deve lopments
The tightening of the Indian position was all
the more painful to Rawalpindi since it followed
an apparent easing of New Delhi's stand in early
1964--the last months of Nehru's life o In August
1963 Nehru ridded the state of the ten year old
regime of Kashmiri political boss Bakshi, whose
reputation for corruption had worsened the already
tarnished Indian image in Kashmir n Dakshi's ouster
touched off four months of political conflict
between New Delhi and the Bakshi forces for control
of Kashmir's political machinery. In December the
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theft of a Muslim relic from a mosque near Srinagar
led to the most serious outbreak of rioting the
Vale had seen since independence. It has been
alleged but not proven that Bakshi himself insti-
gated the theft to provoke instability and facili-
tate his return to office, but regardless of the
motive, the net result was a. recognition in New
Delhi of the need for a new deal in Kashmir.
Nehru, who suffered his first debilitating
stroke shortly after the theft, sent Shastri to
Srinagar to repair the damage. A regime both more
honest and more amenable to New Delhi?s lead was
installed, A more liberal approach was ushered
in by the release of Sheikh Abdullah, by far the
most influential figure in Kashmir, who had been
jailed ten years previously for his advocacy of
an independent Kashmir, The Sheikh began a. round
of talks with both Nehru and Ayub, and prospects
for a. Kashmir settlement, while not bright, seemed
improved.
Nehru's death in May 1964 closed out any real
hope of a Kashmir solution. He was the only Indian
who wielded sufficient political power to sell any
significant concessions to India.?s Hindu majority.
Although Shastri initially showed an inclination
to continue along the path charted by the late
prime minister, he soon became so embroiled in
the political conflicts that surrounded his own
accession that further consideration of the Kashmir
problem was shelved. In March 1965 the Sheikh
was rearrested, this time for having met with Chou
En-lai while both were visiting Algiers, Meanwhile,
the gradually building Rann of Kutch confrontation,
which had begun as early as January 1965 but did
not reach crisis stage until April', had seriously
strained Indo-Pakistani relations. With the last
hope for a settlement fast receding and Indian armed
strength, growing each year, Pakistan embarked upon
its guerrilla, campaign designed to force the Kashmir
question into the open,
Intermittent a,ttemtps since 1947 to reach a
settlement, or even to put Pakistani and Indian
leaders on the road toward one, have proven consis-
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tently futile. Pakistan's own ploys to exact con-
cessions from India have been rebuffed by New Delhi
or countered by circumstances beyond the Pakistanis'
control, At the moment Rawalpindi's latest effort
seems also destined to fall flat. Unless Pakistan
is able to capture and hold for ransom a substantial
section of the Indian Punjab, Pakistani bargaining
power will be reduced in proportion to the amount
of military hardware it expends in the current
fighting. Third country and UN efforts to settle
the long festering problem are likely to founder
I inless major politico-economic
sanctions are applleu. Indeed, the Indian emotional
commitment may be heightened to such a degree by
the current fighting that New Delhi would accept
virtually ruinous sanctions without giving ground.
Thus, the prospects fora settlement even after
the smoke clears do not seem bright,
On the other hand, the military outcome of
the Indo-Pakistani war is still in considerable
doubt, with the possibility of further escalation
before it ends. If both sides fall into a, frenzy
of mutually destructive violence, it is conceivable
that the whole political structure,of the subcon-
tinent will undergo radical changes. In such an
event, the destiny of Kashmir defies prediction.
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25X1
20 September 1965
OCI No. 2323/65
Copy No.
INTELLIGENCE MEMORANDUM
THE KASHMIR DISPUTE
DIRECTORATE OF INTELLIGENCE
Office of Current Intelligence
Gaour I 25X1
Excluded from automatic
downgrading and
declassification
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This Document contains information affecting the Na-
tional Defense of the United States, within the mean-
ing of Title 18, Sections 793 and 794, of the U.S. Code, as
amended. Its transmission or revelation of its contents
to or receipt by an unauthorized person is prohibited
by law. The reproduction of this form is prohibited.
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