Resolution 47 on Kashmir: When India ran into ‘power politics’ at the UN

In what circumstances did India take J&K to the UN? What transpired there, and what was UN Resolution 47? We explain.

Partition, war, plebiscite

As is well known, when Pakistan was carved out of India, Maharaja Hari Singh, the Hindu ruler of Muslim-majority Jammu and Kashmir, did not accede to either country, preferring to remain independent, a neutral ‘Switzerland of the East’.

Within two months, in October 1947, tribal raiders, armed and supported by Pakistan (though the country denied this), streamed into the region from the then North West Frontier Province. Hari Singh asked India for help, which was provided after he acceded to the Union.

Lawyer and author AG Noorani, in his book The Kashmir Dispute, quotes the Maharaja’s letter to Viceroy Lord Louis Mountbatten after accession. The letter said: “…I have no option but to ask for help from the Indian Dominion. Naturally, they cannot send the help asked for by me without my State acceding to the Dominion of India. I have, accordingly, decided to do so and I attach the Instrument of Accession for acceptance by your Government. The other alternative is to leave my State and my people to free-booters.”

Hari Singh, Maharaja of Kashmir. (Express archive photo)

Mountbatten’s reply to Hari Singh said, “Consistently with the policy that, in the case of any State where the issue of the accession has been the subject of dispute, the question of accession should be decided in accordance with the wishes of the people of the State, it is my Government’s wish that as soon as law and order have been restored in Kashmir and her soil cleared of the invader, the question of the State’s accession should be settled by a reference to the people.”

For Indian leaders too, including Nehru and Vallabhbhai Patel, plebiscite was important to settle the J&K question once and for all. Kashmiri masses choosing India would have repudiated Pakistan’s claim of all Muslim-dominated regions wanting to get away from India. When Junagadh, a Hindu-dominated principality ruled by a Muslim, acceded to Pakistan, a plebiscite settled the question overwhelmingly in favour of India in February 1948.

India involves the UN in Kashmir

On the battlefield, Indian forces in Kashmir had made significant military gains, retaking Dras, Kargil, and the hills around Poonch. However, fighting was still on, and there were fears it would spill over into Punjab.

Mountbatten advised involving the United Nations. British Prime Minister Clement Attlee too wrote to Nehru, warning him against moving forces into Pakistan. British historian Alex von Tunzelmann, in her book Indian Summer quotes Attlee as writing: “I am gravely disturbed by your assumption that India would be within her rights in international law.”

In these circumstances, India decided to go to the UN with a simple request: ask Pakistan to get the invaders out.

In a statement to the press on February 2, 1948, Nehru listed what India had asked of the UN Security Council: “The Government of India requested the Security Council, therefore, to ask the Government of Pakistan: (1) to prevent Pakistan Government personnel, military and civil, from participating in or assisting the invasion of the Jammu and Kashmir State; (2) to call upon other Pakistan nationals to desist from taking any part in the fighting in the Jammu and Kashmir State; and (3) to deny to the invaders: (a)access to and use of its territory for operations against Kashmir; (b) military and other supplies; (c) and all other kinds of aid that might tend to prolong the present struggle. The reference to the Security Council is thus limited to the matters mentioned above.”

However, what transpired at the UN was different.

‘Betrayed’ by the British

Pakistan framed the Kashmir issue as part of the larger Partition problem, raised allegations of India mistreating Muslims, and claimed that the infiltrators had moved in to help their “suffering” Muslim brethren.

Pakistan’s claims here were lent weight to by the US and England, in part because Pakistan seemed a better ally against the Soviets than India, and because, as Tunzelmann writes, Israel was in the process of being born, and Attlee feared that if the British were seen as going against Muslim interests in Pakistan too, “In view of Palestine situation this would carry the risk of aligning the whole of Islam against us”.

Historian Ramachandra Guha wrote in his book India After Gandhi of the Jan-Feb 1948 UN sessions, “India suffered a significant symbolic defeat when the Security Council altered the agenda item from the ‘Jammu and Kashmir question’ to the ‘India-Pakistan question’.”

Nehru felt betrayed. Even before the resolution was adopted, he said in a speech in Jammu in 1948, “Faced with a difficult situation, the Indian Government, although it had sent its soldiers to help Kashmir to get rid of the enemy, had to devise some other method for permanently solving the trouble. We did not want the agony of Kashmir to be prolonged further. Nor did we want the hostility in Kashmir to develop into a full-scale fighting between India and Pakistan. After deep consideration, the Government referred the dispute to the U.N. Instead of discussing and deciding upon our reference in a straightforward manner, the nations of the world sitting on that body got lost in Power politics. That has opened the eyes of India a bit.”

In April of that year, in a cable to N Gopalaswami Ayyangar, who was leading the Indian delegation at the UN, Nehru wrote, “Krishna Menon [India’s High Commissioner of India to the United Kingdom] has again seen [Clement] Attlee and [Stafford] Cripps. He has pointed out that I have been greatly disturbed by divergence between instructions said to have been issued from London and policy actually pursued in New York by [Philip] Noël-Baker. He has come away with the impression that difficulty has arisen from Noël-Baker not keeping to his instructions.”

Noel-Baker, Leader of the British Delegation to the Security Council, believed that third party intervention was necessary to prevent a “holocaust” in the Indian subcontinent.

The US Office of the Historian, in a conversation report titled ‘India-Pakistan Dispute over Kashmir; Proposed Security Council Action’ from January 1948, records, “ Mr. Noel-Baker opened the conversation by emphasizing the danger of a holocaust on the Indian subcontinent arising from the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir. Neither side can back down, he said. He expressed the opinion that only the voice of international authority can prevent war.”

The UN Resolution 47

The UN Security Council Resolutions website says about Resolution 47, “The resolution instructs… a cessation of hostilities and creating conditions for a free and impartial plebiscite to decide whether Jammu and Kashmir should accede to India or Pakistan. It recommends detailed measures for restoring peace and order, including the withdrawal of non-resident fighters, phased reductions of Indian forces to the minimum required for civil order, and safeguards to prevent intimidation or coercion of the population.”

The plebiscite was never conducted, because, as India pointed out, Pakistan never fully withdrew its fighters.

After 1954, as Pakistan moved closer to the US and the two signed a military pact, Nehru’s stand hardened against a plebiscite. Meanwhile, Jammu and Kashmir continued to engage with the democratic processes of India, during the drafting of the Constitution and after. Article 370 was included in the Constitution on October 17, 1949, giving J&K ‘special status’ in the Union of India. On August 5, 2019, the Centre scrapped Article 370.