Logically,the second round of the post-1962 Swaran Singh-Bhutto talks at New Delhi in January 1963 (IE,January 22) should have ended the entire fruitless and frustrating exercise. It didnt because neither side wanted to take the blame for the breakdown. More importantly,the United States and Britain were closely monitoring the talks and constantly goading both sides to persevere. Thus it was that the two ministers agreed to continue their sterile efforts at Karachi early in February. The only thing that can be said in favour of the Karachi round is that here the two sides did come to brass tacks.
The Indian delegation was carrying with it four different maps of Kashmir,indicating the minimum,medium and maximum concessions New Delhi was prepared to make to settle the Kashmir issue. However,Swaran Singh decided not to haggle with Bhutto in the style of Srinagars carpet bazaars. He took a map of Jammu and Kashmir marked only by the ceasefire line and broadly indicated to his counterpart the maximum limit to which India would go. The changes in the ceasefire line he proposed would have added 1,500 square miles to Kashmirs territory Pakistan already occupied. Bhutto rejected the Indian offer disdainfully. When asked to state his position,he put the map on the table,pointed to the small town of Kathua,drew a small circle around it with his forefinger and said: You can have this part of Kashmir. We want the rest. With his customary skill in combining courtesy and firmness,Swaran Singh told Bhutto that his idea would not wash. But Commonwealth Secretary Gundevia burst out: Do you really want us to go home with this? What do we tell our people? They would say that we went to Pakistan for three days aur kachhua le ke aye (after three days we brought back a tortoise).
Anxious that the Calcutta round should not be called off,Ambassador Galbraith called on Gundevia and received a mouthful from the Indian official,evidently tired of the unending Anglo-American intervention in bilateral talks. It is your refrain of substantial part of the valley for Pakistan,said Gundevia,that has encouraged them to claim all of Kashmir minus Kathua.
The Calcutta round,the fourth in the series,duly took place in mid-March. However,unlike the proverbial mountain in labour it did not produce even a measly little mouse. On the contrary,Pakistan sullied the atmosphere by signing a formal border agreement with China and virulently attacking India in its national assembly. Even Swaran Singhs infinite patience ran out and he thought of asking for a long postponement of the talks. Galbraith dissuaded him by arguing that even a temporary break would jeopardise ministerial talks then on in Washington to finalise US military aid to India. Thus the fifth round of talks was scheduled for the last week of April in Karachi.
Then,in the run-up to the Karachi round,appeared on the scene what was promptly nicknamed the mediation mouse one India wanted crushed as soon as possible. Remarkably,it was Paul Gore-Booth,then British high commissioner in New Delhi,who first used this expression and the Indian delegation took it up in a big way. At first,around mid-April,American and British envoys in Karachi flew to Dhaka to hand over to Bhutto a paper called Kashmir: Elements of Settlement without formally presenting it to India. But there was no let-up in Western pressure on New Delhi; nor was there any diminution in Indian resistance to it. In any case,Western exertions were irrelevant because at the Karachi meet both sides repeated their totally incompatible positions with such monotony that the termination of the talks seemed inevitable. But surprisingly Bhutto virtually beseeched Sardar Saheb for another go at it. The two sides agreed to meet again in Delhi in mid-May.
This triggered Anglo-American concern that the talks might end acrimoniously. The mediation mouse therefore assumed inflated proportions. A very high-powered American delegation,headed by Secretary of State Dean Rusk,descended on Delhi,immediately followed by a British mission,led by the insufferable Duncan Sandys and including Lord Mountbatten,reputedly the only foreign dignitary able to soften Nehru. However,there was no softening the Indian Prime Minister even though Rusk had brought a letter to him from President Kennedy saying mediation over Kashmir was the best option for the subcontinent. At one stage Nehru was so irked by the lecturing of the two delegations that he told his advisers: One more word about mediation,and I will throw the whole lot of them out of my room. Ironically,Pakistan also was wary of the mediation it used to ask for,which might explain President Ayubs unacceptable conditions that the mediator must give his decision in three months and there must be a plebiscite in Kashmir within a year. Against this backdrop the futility of the Delhi round was manifest,and for once the joint statement acknowledged that the two ministers had failed to reach an agreement. Galbraiths pithy comment was: At last there is agreement. Both India and Pakistan reject the American proposal.
Much later in October 1988 at his home in Boston he told me that as ambassador to India he had had two great satisfactions: dismissal of Krishna Menon in 1962,and my success in persuading President Kennedy to abandon the idea of mediation over Kashmir. He added: When we talked,the president was in the bath tub,twirling the faucets with his toes.
The writer is a Delhi-based political commentator
