Distortion a la Indian style

The POST, Sun, March,18, 2007.

Pervaiz Iqbal Cheema

In an article entitled ‘Will Kashmir Stop India’s Rise’, (Foreign Affairs, Vol.85, No.4) the author, an Indian settled in US, argues to make the ongoing Kashmir dispute as irrelevant and insignificant. He attempts to advise the American administration to abandon its Kashmir policy in order to strengthen its friendship with India. He asserted that US will have to stop ignoring Pakistan’s efforts to wrest Kashmir from India if it wants durable relations with India.

The views expressed by this particular author do not surprise most people at all. But what was somewhat difficult to absorb was the tone and un-academic manner in which the India’s case has been projected with special focus on tarnishing Pakistani image. Perhaps the most astonishing aspect was that the editor of a reputed magazine found it fit in his wisdom to publish a clever propaganda piece at the cost of compromising its own reputation and objectivity. Four aspects of the article deserve comments; Kashmir is a territorial issue, distortions of facts’,  a low view of American ability to analyze, and painting Pakistan in accordance with RAW’s (an Indian intelligence agency) agenda.

To begin with it needs to be explained that Kashmir is not a territorial issue. Most Indian scholars tend to project it as a real estate issue in their well contrived attempts to mislead the world opinion. Territorial issue would imply that Pakistan is fighting to get the piece of land called Kashmir and totally unconcerned with rights and aspirations of the people of Kashmir. The Kashmir dispute is part of the unfinished agenda of partition. It was brought before the United Nations on 1^st January 1948 by India. Initially the UN established Commission called UNCIP (United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan). The UNCIP visited the area and discussed the dispute with the leaders in India, Pakistan and Kashmir and tabled the resolution.

The UNSC (United Nations Security Council) passed two resolutions on13th August 1948 and 5^th January 1949. Taken together these resolution implied ceasefire (because the first Kashmir war had already started in the spring of 1948 when India launched its spring offensive in Kashmir), demilitarization and plebiscite. Both India and Pakistan accepted the resolutions. The ceasefire was quickly arranged but difference of opinion emerged over the demilitarization mechanism. To over come this problem the UN decided to send its representatives to resolve the issue of demilitarization. Sir Owen Dixon, Dr. Frank Graham and Gunner Jarring all tried their skills to secure an agreement acceptable to both India and Pakistan but failed. All that Pakistan has been stressing is to hold plebiscite under the UN auspices in order to ascertain the wishes of people of Kashmir. Efforts directed towards the holding of a plebiscite do not mean that Kashmir is a territorial dispute. On the contrary it implies that the rights of people are being accorded deserving respect.

By stressing that it is a territorial dispute implies that India does not care for the legitimate rights of the Kashmiri whereas Pakistan has been consistently fighting for the rights of the Kashmiri people. Currently it is Pakistan that has been regularly stressing that it would accept any solution that is acceptable to the people of Kashmir. Perhaps that is why Pakistan has also been consistently asserting that the Kashmiris should be associated with the ongoing dialogue process.  

While the article contains so many distortions of facts and it may not be possible for me to deal with all of them in this short piece, I would like to focus on the massive distortion that appears on page 46 of article. In this article it has been stated that ‘in 1963 Pakistan ceded a small tract of its territorial claim in northern Kashmir to China, thereby enabling China to build a road to connect the provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang’. This of course is totally incorrect and amounts to a massive distortion of the actual facts. In the 1963 boundary treaty it is clearly written that the final decision regarding this boundary would be taken when the Kashmir dispute is resolved between India and Pakistan. The territory that has been claimed to have been ceded was neither being used by either side except for grazing purposes by both sides nor it was ceded as it is mentioned above that the entire treaty has to be renegotiated after the final resolution of the Kashmir dispute.

Second distortion on the same page deals with the road connecting Xinjiang with Tibet. The author writes that ‘1963 Pakistan ceded a small tract of its territorial claim in Northern Kashmir to China, thereby enabling China to build a road to connect the province of Tibet and Xinjiang’. The road does not pass through the territory allegedly ceded by Pakistan in 1963 treaty but through the territory of Aksai Chin area which is located on the far eastern edge. The road actually passes through the territories which the Chinese took over after Tibet became part of China. This territory was supposed to be part of Tibet and since Tibet had become part of China, it was legitimately taken over by the Chinese. If this was a territory forcibly snatched from another country, would it not be right to also state that this territory, at the time of take over, was under the Indian occupation?

The third aspect of the article that deserves to be commented upon is that article (page 49) stresses that ‘Pakistan has refused to stop supporting the insurgent’. The author attempts to make the case that Pakistan continues supporting the insurgents because of pressures emanating from the radical Islamists and their allies in parliament and military. Again this is incorrect. On the contrary the government of Pakistan has categorically denied any support to insurgents and had take appropriate measures to plug all possible infiltrations. Admittedly one can perhaps make a case regarding the support extended by sympathetic elements on their own but to put the blame on Pakistan’s government amounts to be nothing more than a leaf out of RAW’s propaganda book.

It needs to be mentioned here that the government of Pakistan is frequently blamed by the sympathetic elements within its own society for not supporting the freedom fighters and the Indians accuse the government of Pakistan for supporting what they refer at times as insurgents and at other times as militants or terrorists. However one interesting change that amounts to a retraction is that now some Indian writers are not employing the word terrorists but insurgents. This author, of course, uses both words terrorists and insurgents on different pages to describe what most Pakistanis call the freedom fighters.

Finally it would not be out of order to comment on the underneath tone of the author which amounts to recommending the policy line to American policy formulator in congruence with his own thinking is accompanied by a covert threat. The article reflects not just the disdain and low view of American decision makers but attempts to teach them what is right and what is wrong. Admittedly there is nothing wrong with this assertion as every writer attempts to communicate to the target audience his own interpretations but the way it was done in this article merely reflects both the arrogance and sense of superiority.

In the end it needs to be stressed that the publication of such articles tends to add propagandist flavor to what is otherwise viewed as a good magazine. It is known to have published excellent articles and also some propaganda pieces but these pieces were more or less either written by the heads of governments or movements or an eminent personality. The author of the above mentioned article does not fall into any of these categories. Article such as this one could not only damage the magazine’s reputation but could effectively curtail its readership. The article containing glaring distortion of facts needs to be carefully scrutinized before its publication.

The writer works for Islamabad Policy research Institute.