The Jammu and Kashmir is a UNSC recognized dispute between Pakistan and India. At the time of the partition of the British India into two independent countries in August 1947, according to the partition formula, 562 princely states in India, including the princely state of Jammu and Kashmir were required to either join Pakistan or India based on the affinity of their population and their contiguity to the either country. Accordingly, the Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir state were supposed to join Pakistan.
However, to grab the Muslim majority Jammu and Kashmir, propagating thatits ruler, Hari Sigh had signed to accede the state toIndia, it landed its army in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmiron 27 October 1947(although the signing of the instrument of accession is doubtful as India has never made the document public). And then, to face the Indian army’s offensive towards Uri/Muzaffarab, in November 1947, Pakistan also deployed its army in the state and the war broke out between India and Pakistan.
On January 1, 1948, under Article 35 of the UN Charter, India referred the Kashmir dispute to the UN Security Council.The UNSC, as per its Resolution 38passed on 17 January 1948, asked both India and Pakistan to take prompt action to improve the situation in the state.On 20 January 1948, the UNSC passed Resolution 39, calling for an urgent investigation into the disputeto void a major war. Resolution 39 also established the UN Commission for India and Pakistan (UNCIP) to investigate the dispute.
On 21 April 1948, the UNSC adopted the Resolution 47,asked for the cease fire, and decided that the accession of the state to Pakistan or India will be done through afree and impartial plebiscite, as was agreed by both, Pakistan and India. The Resolution also instructed the UNCIP to visit the subcontinent and to mediate and facilitate both the countries to hold a plebiscite.
On 5 August 2019, the BJP majority, Indian Parliament, abrogated Articles 370 and 35 A, the Modi government ended Kashmir’s special status, divided the state into two union territories to be governed by the Centre, and allowed Hindus to settle there
In the later years, India foiled all the UNSC and UNCIP efforts to hold the plebiscite on one pretext or the other. In 1954, the dispute got more complicated, when, India enticed the Occupied Jammu and Kashmir state (IOK) leaders that the state’s constituent assembly shouldratifythe accession of the state to India, in return to getting autonomy, its own constitution, its own flag and its executive to be called as the Prime Minister, as per Articles 370 and 35 A, which were later made part of the Indian constitution.
The IOK’sconstituent assembly members got into India’s trap and formally ratified the state’s accession to India in 1954 and its approved IOK’s constitution in 1957. After that, India denounced the plebiscite, it started calling the accession as final and started referring IOK as its integral part.
But, on 24 January 1957, the UNSC rejected the IOK constituent assembly’s ratification of the accession to India through its Resolution 122, and declared that no action by the state constituent assembly,to decide the final disposition of the state, would be considered legal, thus reaffirming plebiscite as the final solution.
Experiencing India’s intransigence, since 1989, the people of Occupied Jammu and Kashmir have launched their peaceful freedom struggle and India has deployed above 900,000 security troops to crush the freedom struggle, and the security forces have committed rampant HR violations and genocide in the Kashmir valley.
On 5 August 2019, the BJP majority, Indian Parliament, abrogated Articles 370 and 35 A, the Modi government ended Kashmir’s special status, divided the state into two union territories to be governed by the Centre, and allowed Hindus to settle there.The state is also kept under the lockdown/curfew till today, and all the Kashmiri leaders and the youth are behind the bars. The former pro-India Kashmiri leaders, Farooq Abdullah andMehbooba Mufti have ferociously lamented their parties’ pastdecision of acceding the state to India in 1954.
The Indian government’s actionson5 August 2019, of dividingthe Occupied Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories and its decision to settle the Hindus there, under an act of the Indian Parliament, are in stark violation of the UNSC Resolutions 47 and 122. Whereas Resolution 47 calls for holding a plebiscite to decide the accession of the state to Pakistan or India as the final solution, the Resolution 122 rejects any unilateral action to change the legal position of Jammu and Kashmir state or a part thereof as defined in the UNSC resolutions, till the dispute is settled by the UNSC, no matter, whether the changes are done after approval of the state assembly, or the Parliament.
Therefore, Pakistan should take up a case with the UNSC immediately, that India’s unilateral actionson 5 August 2019 of bifurcating the Occupied Jammu and Kashmir into two union territories and allowing settlement of Hindus there, through an act of the Indian Parliament,should be disapproved and declared as illegal by the UNSC through a formal resolution, as it was done by it under its Resolution 122, where it had disapproved the change brought in the legal status of the state by India on 24 January 1957, based on the approval of the accession of the state to India by the state constituent assembly in 1954.
If Pakistan, as a party to the dispute, fails to effectively lobby/advocate this case in the UNSC and get a favourable resolution before January 1, 2021, (when India will assume its seat as a non permanent member of the UNSC and then it will be difficult to get a Pakistan favourable resolution), then after some years, new generation leaders of the world would tend to accept India’s position, and even its recent claim over the AJ&K
The writer is a former Consultant and Research Fellow of Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI), and Senior Research Fellow of Strategic Vision Institute (SVI), Islamabad