Unravelling the Kashmir Knot, Aman Hingorani’s first book published in 2016, turned out to be an eye opener. That was because the author had delved into the British archives declassified in 2012-13, which clearly brought out why India was partitioned and why Jammu and Kashmir was left the way it was by the Brits.
These archives reveal that the British needed the predominantly Islamic and strategic north-western slice of undivided India to add on to and extend the ideological Islamic barrier stretching from Turkey to the Chinese border, to prevent the then Soviet Union from dominating Central Asia. Partitioning this crucial region to create an accommodating and reliable sovereign state in the Indian sub-continent, ‘Pakistan’, would complete this crescent, as Britain’s master ploy in the Great Game.
Post 1857, the British propped up the Muslim League to counter the political threat of the Congress to their colonial rule. The idea was to use the Muslim League to demand ‘Pakistan’ ostensibly based on the two-nation theory, which asserted that Hindus and Muslims could not live peacefully together in one country and were to be considered as two separate nations in every respect.
At the 1945 Simla Conference, the British projected the pork-eating and non-pious M.A. Jinnah of the Muslim League as the sole representative of all Indian Muslims, even though he had little or no support among them. The British outwitted the Indian leadership into letting the Congress-ruled North West Frontier Province go to Pakistan and were complicit in Jinnah’s ‘Direct Action’ leading to a bloodbath in Bengal, Punjab and other parts of the country that ultimately compelled the Indian leadership to accept partition. They set people against each other, like they did to disintegrate the Ottoman Empire. They encouraged traditional Hindu-Muslim differences to deteriorate into a killing frenzy.
In 2024, Hingorani’s third edition of the book titled Unravelling the Kashmir Knot: Past Present and Future includes a major extension that covers the period after abrogation of Article 370. While in the first and second editions highlight important declassified documents of British Archives clarifying the status of Pakistan Occupied Kashmir and some other areas and recommends that India approaches the International Court of Justice (ICJ), a step which India has not been in favour of taking. He argues that India must have the Kashmir issue examined by the ICJ and that the findings will remove the “disputed territory” status strengthen India’s moral authority over Kashmir and that it will be much more effective than declaring ad nauseum that it is a part of India.
The third edition also presents a roadmap of what all needs to be done to engage ICJ and what the outcome will be.
While this third edition was published before the elections in Jammu and Kashmir, it turned out to be well timed as it can be referred to for countering the renewal of demand for restoration of Article 370, which some leaders have promised the electorate.
After World War II, Allied powers — United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union — came together to form the International Military Tribunal (IMT) and from 1945 to 1946, made Nazi Germany leaders stand trial for crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit any of the foregoing crimes. The United States held 12 additional trials in Nuremberg after the initial International Military Tribunal. Of the 199 defendants tried, 161 were convicted, and 37 were sentenced to death.
In the case of Pakistan army there have been many instances of its soldiers killing Indian Army personnel, particularly officers by highly brutal torture, including beheading. After the 1971 India-Pakistan war, Pakistan has not returned/ repatriated 54 Indian armed forces personnel, nor acknowledged their presence despite it getting known.
They were made to languish in various Pakistani jails, preventing them from meeting their next of kin who repeatedly tried to. It is not known how many of these unfortunate personnel are alive. This is another horrible kind of torture. But India never went to the International Court of Justice.
In the case of Indian Navy’s veteran, Kulbhushan Jadhav, sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court, India went to ICJ and at least succeeded in getting the sentence stayed. Even today, India should proceed against Pakistan army for its heinous crimes.
For resolving the Kashmir issue, law may not be the only recourse. Past mistakes need to be undone as mentioned in the book, which uncovers important history painstakingly hidden by some of India’s founding and floundering leaders. Freedom at Midnight, a tele-drama series directed by Nikhil Advani and released recently (November 2024), reveals precisely who these leaders were.
Unravelling the Kashmir Knot is a must read for both Indians and Pakistanis.
Title: Unravelling the Kashmir Knot: Past, Present and Future
Author: Aman Hingorani
Publisher: Macmillan
Pages: 589
Price: Rs 750
(Col Anil Bhat, VSM (Retd), is a strategic affairs analyst and former Defence Ministry and Indian Army spokesperson, can be contacted at [email protected])
