The Kashmir Conflict and the British Empire

Kashmir is the most dangerous of the British imperial legacies. The state of Jammu and Kashmir was the largest of the princely states, ruled by a Hindu maharaja over a Muslim-majority population, and the accession of the state to India in October 1947 was the act that produced the first India-Pakistan war. The ceasefire line that ended that war has held for seventy-five years, and it has become, since the 1998 nuclear tests, the most heavily militarised border in the world. The argument of this article is that the Kashmir conflict was not the inevitable consequence of partition but the consequence of specific decisions, by specific British, Indian, and Pakistani officials, that could have been taken differently. The most consequential of those decisions was the British decision, in 1947, to leave the accession of the princely states to the rulers themselves, with no clear guidance and no time to make a considered choice.

The Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir

The princely state of Jammu and Kashmir was the largest of the princely states of British India, with a population of perhaps 4 million people and a territory of perhaps 86,000 square miles. The state was ruled by a Hindu maharaja, Hari Singh, of the Dogra dynasty, which had been established in 1846. The population of the state was overwhelmingly Muslim, with Muslim majorities in the Kashmir Valley and the Frontier districts, and Hindu and Buddhist majorities in the Jammu and Ladakh regions. The state was a complex multi-religious and multi-ethnic entity whose political future was, in 1947, unclear.

The political situation in the state in the years before the partition was complex. The All-India Muslim League, the principal political organisation of the Indian Muslim community, was committed to the establishment of Pakistan as a separate Muslim state, and the Kashmir state, with its Muslim-majority population, was a natural candidate for inclusion in Pakistan. The Indian National Congress, the principal political organisation of the Indian independence movement, was committed to a united, independent India, and the Kashmir state, with its Hindu maharaja, was a natural candidate for accession to India. The maharaja, Hari Singh, was determined to maintain his independence and to keep the state out of the partition.

The British position on the princely states was, most directly, that the rulers of the states had the right to accede to one or the other dominion or to remain independent. The Indian Independence Act of 1947 provided that the rulers of the states would have the right to accede to one or the other dominion, or to remain independent. The British government, however, was not neutral on the question: the British, having decided to withdraw from India as quickly as possible, were keen to ensure that the states acceded to one or the other dominion, and the British position was, in effect, that the states should accede to the geographically contiguous dominion. The British failure to provide a clearer framework for the accession of the princely states was the principal British responsibility for the Kashmir conflict. The historian Alex von Tunzelmann, in Indian Summer (2007), has described the British position as “the most consequential example of imperial hand-washing in the history of the British Empire.”

The Tribal Invasion and the Accession

The crisis came in October 1947, when a tribal force from the North-West Frontier Province, supported by the Pakistani government, invaded the Kashmir state. The tribal force, perhaps 5,000 strong, was supported by Pakistani army officers and was aimed at the capture of the Kashmir Valley and the accession of the state to Pakistan. The tribal force advanced rapidly, and on 24 October 1947 the maharaja fled the capital, Srinagar, and sought Indian military assistance.

The Indian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, was reluctant to intervene militarily in Kashmir without a formal accession by the maharaja. The maharaja, on 26 October 1947, signed the Instrument of Accession, by which the state of Jammu and Kashmir acceded to India. The accession was conditional: the Indian government undertook that, once the situation had stabilised, the accession would be confirmed by a plebiscite, and the people of the state would have the right to determine their own future. Nehru’s promise of a plebiscite, made under the pressure of the moment, was the most consequential of his many political mistakes. The promise was not, as the subsequent Indian argument has held, a tactical manoeuvre: the plebiscite was the condition on which the Indian military intervention was justified, and the failure to hold the plebiscite has been the principal Indian responsibility for the subsequent conflict.

The Indian government, having received the Instrument of Accession, immediately airlifted Indian troops to Srinagar. The Indian forces, with the support of the local population and the local maharaja’s forces, were able to halt the tribal advance and to establish control over the Kashmir Valley. The first India-Pakistan war, fought between October 1947 and the ceasefire of 1 January 1949, was the first major military conflict between the two new states.

The First India-Pakistan War

The first India-Pakistan war was fought on multiple fronts. The principal front was in the Kashmir Valley, where the Indian forces, having secured Srinagar, were able to halt the tribal advance and to push the tribal forces back. The Indian forces, in the course of the war, were able to capture a substantial portion of the state, including the Kashmir Valley, the Jammu region, and the Ladakh region. The Pakistani forces, having failed to capture the Kashmir Valley, were able to establish control over the northern portion of the state, including the Gilgit-Baltistan region and the Azad Kashmir region.

The ceasefire of 1 January 1949, established by the United Nations, was the basis for the ceasefire line that became the Line of Control in 1972. The ceasefire line divided the state into two portions: the Indian-administered portion (Jammu and Kashmir, the Kashmir Valley, and Ladakh), and the Pakistani-administered portion (Gilgit-Baltistan and Azad Kashmir). The most important political consequence of the first India-Pakistan war was the failure to hold the plebiscite that the Indian government had promised. The Indian government, having taken the position that the accession was final, refused to hold the plebiscite, and the United Nations, having failed to agree on the conditions for the plebiscite, was unable to enforce its demands. The plebiscite has been a major source of tension in the Kashmir conflict, and it has been a central element in the political positions of India and Pakistan.

The 1965 War and the Simla Agreement

The second India-Pakistan war, fought in August–September 1965, was a turning point in the Kashmir conflict. The war was provoked by the Pakistani attempt to seize the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir, and the Indian response was a major military operation in the Punjab and the Rajasthan sectors. The war was a stalemate: the Pakistani forces, having failed to capture the Indian-administered portion of Kashmir, were not pushed back from the Pakistani-administered portion, and the ceasefire line remained essentially unchanged.

The political consequences of the 1965 war were substantial. The Tashkent Declaration of January 1966, brokered by the Soviet Union, restored the status quo ante bellum and committed the two countries to the peaceful resolution of their disputes. The 1971 war, in which the Indian intervention in the Bangladesh Liberation War produced the disintegration of Pakistan as a united state, was a more substantial event. The Simla Agreement of July 1972, which followed the 1971 war, established the Line of Control as the basis for the bilateral settlement of the Kashmir conflict, and committed the two countries to the peaceful resolution of their disputes. The Simla Agreement, in the words of the historian Sumantra Bose in Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (2003), was the moment when India and Pakistan “agreed to disagree” about Kashmir, and the moment when the international community effectively gave up trying to resolve the dispute.

The Kashmir Insurgency

The Kashmir insurgency, which began in 1989, was a major new development. The insurgency was provoked by a number of factors, including the 1987 election, which was widely seen as rigged against the Muslim United Front, the execution of Mohammad Yusuf Halwai, a prominent Kashmiri separatist, in 1984, and the broader political context of the Cold War and the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The Indian government’s response was the deployment of perhaps 700,000 troops, the mass detention of Kashmiri men, and the legal architecture of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act. The casualty toll of the insurgency has been, by the most careful estimates, perhaps 100,000 since 1989.

The 2019 revocation of Article 370 of the Indian constitution, which had granted special status to the state of Jammu and Kashmir, was the most consequential Indian act in Kashmir since the accession. The Indian government, having revoked Article 370, has imposed direct rule on the state and has reorganised the state into two Union Territories: the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir, and the Union Territory of Ladakh. The reorganisation has been a major source of tension, and the post-2019 political situation in Kashmir has been the subject of substantial international criticism. The British government, in particular, has been an advocate of the restoration of Kashmiri political rights, and the British government’s decision to raise the Kashmir question in the United Nations Human Rights Council has been a major element in the international response to the Indian action.

The Kashmir Conflict and International Politics

The Kashmir conflict has been a major source of international tension since 1947, and the conflict has been a defining element of the nuclear standoff between India and Pakistan since the 1998 nuclear tests. The 1998 tests, in which both India and Pakistan demonstrated nuclear weapons capability, transformed the strategic context of the conflict: the war option, which had been available to both sides in 1947, 1965, and 1971, became much more dangerous, and the limited military options that the two sides have pursued since 1998 — the Kargil War of 1999, the 2001–2002 military mobilisation, the 2016 surgical strikes, the 2019 Balakot airstrike — have all been calibrated to avoid nuclear escalation.

The most important recent development has been the 2019 revocation of Article 370. The reorganisation of the state into two Union Territories has been a major source of international criticism, and the post-2019 political situation in Kashmir has been the subject of substantial international concern. The British government, in particular, has been a major advocate of the restoration of Kashmiri political rights, and the British government’s decision to raise the Kashmir question in the United Nations Human Rights Council has been a major element in the international response. The British position has not, however, been sufficient to alter the Indian position, and the Indian government, in 2021, has made it clear that it will not accept international mediation in Kashmir.

The British Legacy

The Kashmir conflict is, in the most direct sense, a legacy of the British withdrawal from India. The British failure to find a constitutional framework that would accommodate the Muslim-majority princely states, and the British determination to complete the withdrawal from India as quickly as possible, were major causes of the crisis of October 1947. The historian Yasmin Khan, in The Great Partition (2007), has argued that the British, by leaving the accession of the princely states to the rulers themselves, “created a constitutional vacuum that the Hindu and Muslim political parties of British India were bound to fill.” The argument is correct, and the British responsibility for the Kashmir conflict is a substantial one. The British did not create the Hindu-Muslim tension that made partition possible, but the British imperial state had been the principal manager of that tension for the previous century, and the decision to withdraw without a constitutional settlement for the princely states was, in the end, the most consequential decision the British made in 1947.

Historiographical Note

The historiography of the Kashmir conflict has been substantially revised since the 1990s. The older tradition, of which the work of the British historian Alastair Lamb in Kashmir: A Disputed Legacy (1991) is representative, treated the conflict as a consequence of the British withdrawal from India. The more recent scholarship, of which Victoria Schofield’s Kashmir in the Crossfire (2000), Sumantra Bose’s Kashmir: Roots of Conflict, Paths to Peace (2003), and the Pakistani journalist Ahmed Rashid’s Descent into Chaos (2008) are the most distinguished examples, has produced a more nuanced picture. The Kashmir conflict, on this more recent view, is a consequence of a complex set of political, religious, and strategic factors, and the British role in the conflict is a consequence of the British failure to find a constitutional framework that would accommodate the Muslim-majority princely states. The current generation of historians, of whom Bose, the Indian journalist Basharat Peer, and the human rights researchers at Human Rights Watch and Médecins Sans Frontières are the most distinguished representatives, has produced a more integrated picture in which the military, the political, and the humanitarian dimensions of the conflict are all given their proper weight.

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