Integrity Score 240
No Records Found
No Records Found
The Fourth fundamental continues..
The oft-quoted Article 103 of the UN Charter has no application here since the Instrument of Accession is not a treaty, or a part of the statute that created Pakistan out of an undivided India. The UN Plebiscite Resolution of 1949 also does not recognize any right of the people of Kashmir other than the right to decide in a Plebiscite whether to be a part of India or of Pakistan. There is no third alternative of independent Kashmir envisaged in the UN Resolution either. Pakistan’s stand has therefore been to demand self-determination by the Kashmiri people to resolve the status of Kashmir. Pakistan cleverly does not directly call for making Kashmir a part of Pakistan since there can be no legal basis for such a demand. Pakistan which controls presently about one-third of Kashmir (taken by force in 1947-48) acts as the protector of a “liberated” or Azad Kashmir. This portion has its own Prime Minister and other trappings of an independent government but without real independence. Following the 1947 merger of Kashmir with India, India had recovered two-thirds of Kashmir after sending troops to clear the Pakistan army and Pakistani infiltrators. The Gilgit portion, was denied to India by the perfidy of a British brigadier of the Indian Army, who after our jawans had captured Gilgit, hoisted the Pakistani flag and defected! Nehru acquiesced in it. Subsequently, India lost half of the secured area to China in the late 1950s when the PLA built a highway through Aksai Chin connecting Tibet with Sinkiang. By the time India woke up to it, or took notice of it, it was too late-the road had been built and the Chinese Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) vehicles were traversing to and fro. In 1962, after an incompetent attempt by Nehru to recover the area (“I have asked the army to throw the Chinese out”, Nehru had said pompously) the Chinese demonstrated how determined they were to keep Aksai Chin. Thus of the total original area of Kashmir, today India, Pakistan and China have a third each of the area under their respective control.
to be continued...