3rd Panos-Himal Roundtable

The India-Pakistan 'Composite Dialogue'
Bentota, Sri Lanka
September 2004

Witnessing history: The kernel of Kashmir

By A G Noorani

This term, the 'composite-dialogue', is a rather misleading summation of what has been at the kernel of India-Pakistan relations since their birth. Immediately after Partition, it became quite apparent that the basis of the Indo-Pak conflict could be neatly classed into Kashmir of 'K' and other 'non-K' issues. Kashmir on the one hand, and the others, which included evacuee property, division of cash balances, refugee movement and the division of the Punjab rivers. The passage of time dealt with some of the problems, but Kashmir remained standing in all its starkness.

Even through the problem began when the three states of Kashmir, Junagadh and Hyderabad did not accede to one side or the other, everyone knew the issue would come to a head on Kashmir. It was unfortunate that they did not devise ground rules so that the problem of all three states would be settled in one go. On 1 November 1947, less than a week after the ruler of Kashmir had acceded to India following a raid by the tribals, India did offer Pakistan a formula – if the ruler belonged to one religion and people to another, the matter should be settled by plebiscite. This was rejected by Jinnah. It is, however, historically correct to say in the light of available documents, that even without that raid by tribals, the ruler would have acceded to India. And Sheikh Abdullah was privy to this.