The British raj, which once controlled
India's northwest frontier province of Kashmir, exacted a token annual
tribute of two Kashmiri shawls and three handkerchiefs from the
maharajah. Never since has the price of peace been as small. In the
years after independence in 1947 split the Indian subcontinent into the
sovereign states of India and Pakistan, the two nations have paid with
strife and bloodshed to establish their conflicting claims over the
disputed region. Last week, after 15 years of bitter wrangling, Indian
and Pakistani delegates finally met in the Pakistan capital of
Rawalpindi to seek a solution to the Kashmir problem.The disputed land is the size of Minnesota, lakes and all. It falls from
the wind-whipped mountains of Gilgit and Ladakh in the north to the
idyllic Vale of Kashmir. In the Himalayas, primitive mountain tribesmen
keep herds of graceful, sure-footed Kashmir goats, whose soft fleece
becomes the cashmere of Fifth Avenue and Regent Street; the cool lakes
near Kashmir's capital city of Srinagar are dotted with the elegant
houseboats of wealthy Indians.Vow Forgotten. At the time of partition, Kashmir, like all of India's
562 princely states, was given the choice of joining either Pakistan or
India. The fact that 77% of Kashmir's 4,200,000 people were Moslem
pointed to control by Moslem Pakistan. But though he had signed
preliminary trade and administrative agreements with Pakistan,
Kashmir's Hindu maharajah began to hedge. Angered by his failure to
accede to Pakistan, hordes of Pakistani “volunteers” swept into Kashmir
to establish Pakistan's claim to the land. In terror, the Hindu ruler
opted to join India, appealed for immediate military aid. India was
happy to respond, airlifted troops into Kashmir to fortify its own
claim.Thus began a full-scale war in Kashmir. India went to the United Nations
for relief. In 1949 the U.N. demarcated a cease-fire line that gave
India the richest two-thirds of Kashmir, including most of Ladakh, the
Vale, and the predominantly Hindu area of Jammu. But India's Prime
Minister Jawaharlal Nehru had pledged that “the fate of Kashmir must
ultimately be decided by its people.” Declared Nehru: “We are prepared,
when peace, law and order have been established, to have a referendum
under some international auspices like the U.N.”Nehru soon forgot that vow, for it became obvious that Kashmir would
vote either for independence or accession to Pakistan. Indian Kashmir's
Moslem ruler, Sheik Mohammed Abdullah, an old friend of Nehru's and a
fiery Kashmiri nationalist, confused things by starting to pro mote a
local independence movement. India clapped Sheik Abdullah into jail in
1953 and introduced a series of repressive measures to halt other
nationalist or pro-Pakistan movements. Except for three months in 1958,
Sheik Abdullah has languished in prison ever since, was last week on
trial on charges of conspiracy to overthrow the government.
