him – on September 13, 1948, the Indian Army conducted what was
referred to as ‘police action’ in Hyderabad state, incorporating it into
the Indian Union. Kashmir, on the other hand, desiring, with its Hindu
maharaja and Muslim-majority population, to be independent, and
geopolitically in an easily contested border area, was more problematic.
Kashmir’s borders were more or less artificial – bits had been added
on after the British conquest of Punjab in the 1840s and parts of Punjab
had been sold to the Dogra ruler of Kashmir. Sir Cyril Radcliffe had
awarded Amritsar to East Punjab (India) because of its sacred significance
for the Sikhs; British opinion agreed that parts of Gurdaspur District, in
which Amritsar fell, should go with it to India. This gave Kashmir a
border with India, and a more practical option of joining India should this
be desired.
The Congress’s policy before August 1947 had been to attempt to
guide Kashmir towards India, as opposed to its maharaja, Hari Singh’s
desire to have an independent Kashmir – which was an option that also
had substantial support in Kashmir. In September and October 1947,
Pathan ‘tribals’ from the North-West Frontier Province invaded Kashmir.
Some observers see this as a relatively spontaneous – to the extent that any
conscious activity can be ‘spontaneous’ – response to massacres of Muslims
in Jammu that had been part of the post-partition violence on the Indian
sub-continent (it is also alleged that the maharaja of Kashmir colluded
in this violence). But the Pakistan government was not opposed to the
incursion, and was soon providing logistical, and eventually formal
military support in the form of conventional troops. The British governor
of the North-West Frontier Province, Sir Olaf Caroe, also colluded with
the Pakistan government. September 13 saw the first ‘tribal’ incursions;
by October 25 a full-scale invasion was clearly underway, with non-
Muslims targeted by the invaders; Srinagar was threatened, and Maharaja
Hari Singh fled to India. On October 27, India airlifted troops to secure
the capital. In the interim, Hari Singh acceded to India.
Here was a strange situation. British officials knew of the support
provided to the invaders by Pakistan, but did not bring it into the open
for fear of exacerbating conflict. These officials – governors of provinces in
Pakistan, armed forces personnel on both sides, and Mountbatten –
regularly exchanged information that they could then decide whether or
not to share with their governments. At the outbreak of hostilities, Jinnah,
the governor-general of Pakistan – who now denounced Hari Singh’s
CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55 177