For a long time, India has accused Pakistan of being a revisionist state while branding and marketing itself as a status quo power. This is sheer nonsense. Let me explain.
As I have written elsewhere, the term ‘status quo power’ is used cleverly in modern interstate relations. It ignores the direct and indirect influence exerted by stronger states on the weaker ones (through diplomacy as well as soft and hard power) on whatever matters to the stronger states, all the while keeping the spotlight fixed on whether ostensibly revisionist states want to capture another state’s territory. Power projection is not always a function of occupying territory: it’s about influencing the behaviour of other states.
Let there be no doubt that states aspiring to project power and creating their own versions of a Monroe Doctrine are revisionist states. Given the available evidence regarding India’s troubled relations with its neighbours, India is not just a state aspiring to big power status and but one which is acting to implement that aspiration.
India accuses Pakistan of being a revisionist state primarily vis-a-vis Occupied Kashmir. Pakistan has no designs on India. But Kashmir is not a part of India. It is an internationally-recognised dispute, a fact India denies blatantly in contradiction to UN Security Council resolutions as well as bilateral arrangements. Additionally, and separate from the disputes, Pakistan is a status quo power because it checks India’s desire to project power in South, West, and Southern Asia.
But let’s get to some more facts.
On May 4, New Delhi lodged a “strong protest” against an order by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to allow elections to be held in Gilgit-Baltistan. The Indian protest statement said that Pakistan’s institutions have “no locus standi on territories illegally and forcibly occupied by it”. The Indian statement further noted that its démarche had “clearly conveyed that the entire Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, including the areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, are an integral part of India by virtue of its fully legal and irrevocable accession”.
On May 9, Indian media reported that the Indian government had decided to ask Indian television channels to include weather reports and forecasts for Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan. One report mentioned that the move was conceived by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval “some time back.” The formal proposal for the move was drafted in January and “went out from Deputy National Security Adviser (Strategic Affairs) Rajinder Khanna’s office on 3 February to the secretaries of foreign and home ministries apart from chiefs of India’s two lead intelligence agencies: Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.”
The move was approved last week. According to official sources in India, “The central point is that this is my area and I am asserting my sovereignty by taking all the steps”. The move is thus meant as “a daily, and public reiteration of India’s stand.” This is part of what International Law describes as state practice and which can, given the wider acceptance of the practice, create opinio juris, i.e., “a subjective acceptance of the practice as law by the international community.”
However, while India’s belligerence has increased manifold since the advent of Narendra Modi and the current RSS-BJP government, India’s approach to Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is not new. On 22 February 1994, both houses of Indian parliament unanimously adopted a resolution, “emphasising that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India, and that Pakistan must vacate parts of the State under its occupation”.
In other words, while India is a revisionist power in its desire to project power, it is an irredentist power in relation to the Kashmir dispute that relates, centrally, to ascertaining Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.
There’s also the matter of historical facts with reference to Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the territories of Gilgit Baltistan, which contradict India’s claim to these areas.
Three important events occurred before the so-called instrument of accession signed by Hari Singh on Oct 26, 1947: (a) the Jammu massacre, (b) the Poonch uprising and, (c) the liberation of large areas from the Dogra rule and the formation of the AJK government. As Christopher Snedden notes, “The people of Jammu and Kashmir therefore began the Kashmir dispute and not outsiders, as India claims, a claim in which Pakistan has surprisingly acquiesced.”
The trouble in Poonch began as early as February 1947 when Muslims in Poonch jagir staged a ‘no tax’ campaign. The Dogra ruler sought to quell it, as usual repressively. Those actions fanned the flames and the campaign developed, Snedden notes, into a fully-fledged anti-Maharaja uprising. Snedden estimates that about 50,000 Muslim Poonchi men were trained soldiers who had returned after having fought World War II as part of British Indian Army. As the uprising evolved, Poonchis were joined by Mirpuris and other pro-Pakistan Muslims in what is today’s AJK. By the time the tribal lashkars got into play in October, the current area comprising AJK had already been liberated. The AJK government was formed on October 24, 1947, two days before the fraudulent accession of Kashmir by Hari Singh to India.
In September-October 1947, communal riots broke out in Jammu, especially in the Hindu-majority area. The Dogra army, RSS cadres and Sikh jathas, especially from Patiala, participated in killing Muslims. This was the time when Indian Punjab was already witnessing killings on both sides. One report suggested that over 200,000 Muslims were killed. These numbers don’t reflect other crimes such as grievous injures, rape, looting and arson. About 400,000 Muslims fled to the liberated areas of AJK or crossed over to Sialkot and Gujranwala. These actions caused a reaction in Mirpur and surrounding areas, as also in parts of Poonch, and consequently large numbers of non-Muslims lost their lives. This is a chapter of which no genuine Kashmiri can be proud.
According to Snedden, these three developments were (and remain) highly significant because they clearly indicated that Hari Singh had lost effective control of areas of his state and did not have the authority to make any decision about the future of the state and the peoples living in it.
Interestingly, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru knew these facts but emphasised the tribal lashkars story to present the loss of control by Hari Singh as a situation caused by outsiders rather than acknowledging either the uprising by Poonchi Muslims or the anti-Muslim lynch crowds in eastern Jammu.
Similarly, in Gilgit-Baltistan, the Gilgit Scouts mutinied on 31 October 1947, removed Brigadier Ghansara Singh, and hoisted the Pakistan flag. Indian writers have tried to make much of the actions of Major William Brown, quoting from his memoir Gilgit Rebellion: The Major Who Mutinied Over Partition of India, but they conveniently tend to forget that Brown simply supported the aspirations of the peoples of the area. If the people of Gilgit-Baltistan wanted to join the Indian Union, Brown and his second-in-command would have been relieved of the command and put under arrest rather than making Ghansara Singh see the light of day.
In fact, the people of GB have, for decades, agitated the point about absorption in Pakistan. Pakistan, much to their displeasure, has baulked, leaving them in a constitutional limbo. The decision by the Supreme Court has to be seen in light of the demand by the people of GB.
The only real point here is not about AJK and GB as liberated areas. That is an undeniable fact and it can be ascertained by various means. The real point, to reiterate, is that India is not only a revisionist state, to the extent of Kashmir, as it existed on the eve of August 14, 1947, it is also an irredentist state.
Its recent actions are clear evidence of that.
Pakistan will have to rethink how to counter the Indian narrative and get out of its “business as usual” mode.
The writer is a former News Editor of The Friday Times and belongs to Poonch, Azad Kashmir. He reluctantly tweets @ejazhaider
As I have written elsewhere, the term ‘status quo power’ is used cleverly in modern interstate relations. It ignores the direct and indirect influence exerted by stronger states on the weaker ones (through diplomacy as well as soft and hard power) on whatever matters to the stronger states, all the while keeping the spotlight fixed on whether ostensibly revisionist states want to capture another state’s territory. Power projection is not always a function of occupying territory: it’s about influencing the behaviour of other states.
Let there be no doubt that states aspiring to project power and creating their own versions of a Monroe Doctrine are revisionist states. Given the available evidence regarding India’s troubled relations with its neighbours, India is not just a state aspiring to big power status and but one which is acting to implement that aspiration.
India accuses Pakistan of being a revisionist state primarily vis-a-vis Occupied Kashmir. Pakistan has no designs on India. But Kashmir is not a part of India. It is an internationally-recognised dispute, a fact India denies blatantly in contradiction to UN Security Council resolutions as well as bilateral arrangements. Additionally, and separate from the disputes, Pakistan is a status quo power because it checks India’s desire to project power in South, West, and Southern Asia.
But let’s get to some more facts.
On May 4, New Delhi lodged a “strong protest” against an order by Pakistan’s Supreme Court to allow elections to be held in Gilgit-Baltistan. The Indian protest statement said that Pakistan’s institutions have “no locus standi on territories illegally and forcibly occupied by it”. The Indian statement further noted that its démarche had “clearly conveyed that the entire Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh, including the areas of Gilgit and Baltistan, are an integral part of India by virtue of its fully legal and irrevocable accession”.
On May 9, Indian media reported that the Indian government had decided to ask Indian television channels to include weather reports and forecasts for Azad Jammu and Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan. One report mentioned that the move was conceived by National Security Adviser Ajit Doval “some time back.” The formal proposal for the move was drafted in January and “went out from Deputy National Security Adviser (Strategic Affairs) Rajinder Khanna’s office on 3 February to the secretaries of foreign and home ministries apart from chiefs of India’s two lead intelligence agencies: Intelligence Bureau and the Research and Analysis Wing.”
The move was approved last week. According to official sources in India, “The central point is that this is my area and I am asserting my sovereignty by taking all the steps”. The move is thus meant as “a daily, and public reiteration of India’s stand.” This is part of what International Law describes as state practice and which can, given the wider acceptance of the practice, create opinio juris, i.e., “a subjective acceptance of the practice as law by the international community.”
However, while India’s belligerence has increased manifold since the advent of Narendra Modi and the current RSS-BJP government, India’s approach to Occupied Jammu and Kashmir is not new. On 22 February 1994, both houses of Indian parliament unanimously adopted a resolution, “emphasising that Jammu and Kashmir was an integral part of India, and that Pakistan must vacate parts of the State under its occupation”.
In other words, while India is a revisionist power in its desire to project power, it is an irredentist power in relation to the Kashmir dispute that relates, centrally, to ascertaining Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.
There’s also the matter of historical facts with reference to Azad Jammu and Kashmir and the territories of Gilgit Baltistan, which contradict India’s claim to these areas.
Three important events occurred before the so-called instrument of accession signed by Hari Singh on Oct 26, 1947: (a) the Jammu massacre, (b) the Poonch uprising and, (c) the liberation of large areas from the Dogra rule and the formation of the AJK government. As Christopher Snedden notes, “The people of Jammu and Kashmir therefore began the Kashmir dispute and not outsiders, as India claims, a claim in which Pakistan has surprisingly acquiesced.”
The trouble in Poonch began as early as February 1947 when Muslims in Poonch jagir staged a ‘no tax’ campaign. The Dogra ruler sought to quell it, as usual repressively. Those actions fanned the flames and the campaign developed, Snedden notes, into a fully-fledged anti-Maharaja uprising. Snedden estimates that about 50,000 Muslim Poonchi men were trained soldiers who had returned after having fought World War II as part of British Indian Army. As the uprising evolved, Poonchis were joined by Mirpuris and other pro-Pakistan Muslims in what is today’s AJK. By the time the tribal lashkars got into play in October, the current area comprising AJK had already been liberated. The AJK government was formed on October 24, 1947, two days before the fraudulent accession of Kashmir by Hari Singh to India.
In September-October 1947, communal riots broke out in Jammu, especially in the Hindu-majority area. The Dogra army, RSS cadres and Sikh jathas, especially from Patiala, participated in killing Muslims. This was the time when Indian Punjab was already witnessing killings on both sides. One report suggested that over 200,000 Muslims were killed. These numbers don’t reflect other crimes such as grievous injures, rape, looting and arson. About 400,000 Muslims fled to the liberated areas of AJK or crossed over to Sialkot and Gujranwala. These actions caused a reaction in Mirpur and surrounding areas, as also in parts of Poonch, and consequently large numbers of non-Muslims lost their lives. This is a chapter of which no genuine Kashmiri can be proud.
According to Snedden, these three developments were (and remain) highly significant because they clearly indicated that Hari Singh had lost effective control of areas of his state and did not have the authority to make any decision about the future of the state and the peoples living in it.
Interestingly, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru knew these facts but emphasised the tribal lashkars story to present the loss of control by Hari Singh as a situation caused by outsiders rather than acknowledging either the uprising by Poonchi Muslims or the anti-Muslim lynch crowds in eastern Jammu.
Similarly, in Gilgit-Baltistan, the Gilgit Scouts mutinied on 31 October 1947, removed Brigadier Ghansara Singh, and hoisted the Pakistan flag. Indian writers have tried to make much of the actions of Major William Brown, quoting from his memoir Gilgit Rebellion: The Major Who Mutinied Over Partition of India, but they conveniently tend to forget that Brown simply supported the aspirations of the peoples of the area. If the people of Gilgit-Baltistan wanted to join the Indian Union, Brown and his second-in-command would have been relieved of the command and put under arrest rather than making Ghansara Singh see the light of day.
In fact, the people of GB have, for decades, agitated the point about absorption in Pakistan. Pakistan, much to their displeasure, has baulked, leaving them in a constitutional limbo. The decision by the Supreme Court has to be seen in light of the demand by the people of GB.
The only real point here is not about AJK and GB as liberated areas. That is an undeniable fact and it can be ascertained by various means. The real point, to reiterate, is that India is not only a revisionist state, to the extent of Kashmir, as it existed on the eve of August 14, 1947, it is also an irredentist state.
Its recent actions are clear evidence of that.
Pakistan will have to rethink how to counter the Indian narrative and get out of its “business as usual” mode.
The writer is a former News Editor of The Friday Times and belongs to Poonch, Azad Kashmir. He reluctantly tweets @ejazhaider