to release Sheikh Abdullah from jail, and to seek the National Conference’s
cooperation. Nehru hoped that the National Conference would lean
towards India rather than Pakistan. Fortunately for him, at the time
Abdullah (a personal friend of Nehru’s) believed that accession to India
was the lesser evil, and closer to the independence desired by Kashmiris
than accession to Pakistan would be.
It was Mountbatten who persuaded Nehru to place the Kashmir
case before the UN. Nehru agreed; it was to be an appeal to the Security
Council for condemnation of Pakistani aggression. ‘We have refrained
[from attacking Pakistani bases near the Kashmir border],’ Nehru wrote
to Mountbatten, ‘because of our desire to avoid complications leading
to open war. In our avoidance of this we have increased our own peril
and not brought peace any nearer.’^13 When the case was referred to the
Security Council in early 1948, however, the terms of reference were
extended. Pakistan brought up the question of atrocities against Muslims
(the undeclared war continued). Mountbatten was put in a false position;
having persuaded Nehru to go to the UN, he had not anticipated conflicts
within British official thinking. Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin’s con-
tinued hope that Britain could still offer an alternative to US power
required him not to antagonise Pakistan. According to him, Pakistan
could take the lead in organising the Arab states in the Middle East (or
West Asia, as Nehru insisted on calling the region instead) on Britain’s
behalf. Bevin’s attempt to preserve British power in the Middle East came
into play: the Palestine question, that of the creation of the Jewish state
of Israel, now occupied the UN, and the British did not want to look anti-
Muslim and align Muslim opinion against Britain (thereby providing
an opportunity for a communist or Soviet takeover); in addition, many
British officials now working in Pakistan took up a pro-Pakistani position.
Therefore, it was quite impossible simply to provide a verdict on Pakistani
aggression.
On the military front, a stalemate had been achieved in Kashmir by
- In September 1948, Muhammad Ali Jinnah died of tuberculosis.
On December 23 and 25, 1948, UN plebiscite conditions were accepted
by India and Pakistan, respectively; a ceasefire was to come into effect from
New Year’s Day 1949, along a line of actual control. (Militarily the
Pakistan army was incapable of defeating the Indian army both in terms
of size and equipment; the best they could hope for was a stalemate helped
by geography. This is eventually what happened: the ‘line of actual
CONSOLIDATING THE STATE, c. 1947–55 179