Joe Shearer
PROFESSIONAL
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- Apr 19, 2009
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Imply?
I have stated a fact. Do you mean you cannot work it out for yourself, and need pointers?
That itself is a claim without data to back up the claim. I suggest you particularise claims that I have made, which are unsupported by facts.
Perhaps you had better leave it to a people who have practised democracy for 60+ years to make a judgement on what constitutes democracy and what does not, rather than opposing a view based on considerably lesser experience. Every election has been fought by the National Conference, and they have lost as well as won, so there was no 'guided democracy' involved. On the other hand, the azaadi faction did not even exist except in the form of a few disconnected individuals until 1989, and never later did they put their supposed mass support to the test. The documentation is clear; what the electorate was, how many voted, and the percentages for various parties. Asking for more, and more, and more is such transparent delaying tactics as to remind us all that Pakistan practised precisely the same tactics in front of the Plebiscite Commission. But then Pakistan has always depended on tall claims, and then adopted delaying tactics when hauled in front of a tribunal. The decision on Pakistan's complaint about the alleged violation of the Indus Waters Treaty is a case in point.
In that case, why don't you counter-pose your own narration of events? Is it because what has been reported is correct? Would you like Shabir Chaudhary on the matter? I can get his account and reproduce it here.
There is no question of taking things personally here. It is you who have made unfounded allegations. If you check with those who have spent more time on this forum than you have, some several times more, you will find to your own fullest satisfaction that charges of falsification have never been made about me. So when you make such charges, you had better make them stick.
Yeah, right.
Here is a Pakistani opinion. It is far more realistic than the jingoism that I have been forced to listen to so far.
December 16
- There is no implication here. Anybody who knows the subject knows also that this has been documented time and again, and there is no speculative element here. There were 561 princely states, ranging in size from Kashmir to those about the size of a postage stamp, and they all had the same message from the British: that they would have to join one or the other commonwealth.
- You may or may not fully agree with that. What is important is that the princes at that time agreed with it, or were made to agree with it, including the princes of Hyderabad, Travancore-Cochin and Manipur, besides Kashmir. These other three were Hindu-majority states; the phenomenon of wanting independence from both Dominions was not confined to members of either contending religion (not counting the Khalsa). Unfortunately for your fanciful arguments, the British were fully in power to dictate such things. You need to brush up your knowledge of the system of governance of these states by the British, and their use of the Indian Political Service and of Agents. There was nothing a ruler could do contrary to the wishes of the British. They were given sovereignty on a day, but had already been warned that they would have to surrender this sovereignty to one or the other Dominion - as they wished, and subject to the test of contiguity (which is why Kalat stayed in Pakistan).
- The religious affiliations of the subjects had nothing to do with the rulers' decisions; it was not the principle on which British India was divided, strangely enough, and contrary to the views of many misguided Pakistanis, and Indians as well. Perhaps if you look into electoral results of the 30s and 40s you might run across evidence of what really happened in the Punjab, in Sindh and in the NWFP.
Fled? Disowned his people? More opinions divorced of facts?
Mighty fine coming from the heights of Olympus.
Perhaps you should remind yourself where Hari Singh went from Srinagar, and who was left in charge.
Then why are we debating this after so many years.
What debate? The matter is open in order to regularise the position of Pakistan Administered Kashmir, and not for debate. There cannot be a debate with one side whining for sixty years that it should not have lost, and that it should have won, when in reality it lost - and also lost a grip on reality.
The correction is simple. There were no two states. It was one and the same state, and the name of the state was Jammu and Kashmir. That does not mean that Jammu was ruled separately and Kashmir separately.
As regards Kashmir, Kashmir was the Vale of Kashmir. The rulers who conquered parts of Kashmir and bought out the rest also conquered Kishtwar, Ladakh, Gilgit-Baltistan (with help from the British) and the Pamir Emirates. They were given Mirpur to rule by the Sikh Empire. And the whole was known as Jammu and Kashmir. Kashmir nowhere meant all the rest of Jammu and Kashmir other than Jammu.
