Obama comes job-shopping

Are we mindful of our concerns?

A friend on Twitter, @naveenks, made the most profound comment on US President Barack Hussein Obama’s visit to India, which officially begins tomorrow morning: “There was a time when Indian Prime Ministers used to visit the US looking for food to feed hungry Indians. Now US Presidents visit India looking for jobs for Americans.” There couldn’t have been a more apt comment as Mr Obama makes his first halt on a job-shopping trip to Asia. To Mr Obama’s credit, as also to his advisers’, no false claims of furthering ‘strategic relations’ have been made; hence, expectations should not soar in Lutyens’s Delhi or elsewhere in India. To that extent, it was unfair to expect him to name Pakistan — or its ‘non-state actors’ — as the perpetrator/s of the November 26, 2008 bloodbath while reading out his treacly message for the victims and survivors of Mumbai’s unending night of horror. This is not the first time people have pretended the fidayeen came from outer space and Kasab is an extra-terrestrial alien. His immediate predecessors, Mr Bill Clinton and Mr George W Bush, were keen on striking a strategic alliance between the US and India as part of a realignment of geostrategic interests designed to fetch mutual long-term benefits; Mr Obama does not need to toe their line and is at liberty to aggressively seek for America a ‘strategic relationship’ with Pakistan. The ongoing US-Pakistan ‘strategic dialogue’, which involves the active participation of Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, speaks for itself and where India stands in the changed circumstances. Whiners do not make winners; a country that does not fight to protect its interests should not expect others to join an imaginary battle.

That does not necessarily detract from the importance of Mr Obama’s visit. An American President knocking on our doors for jobs to sustain his presidency back home is not an everyday occurrence. If only Mrs Indira Gandhi had been alive today, she would have relished this moment of triumph: India’s sweet revenge on the US for treating her so shabbily. Mrs Gandhi was not in Washington, DC with a begging bowl to feed her hungry millions, but to plead the case of Bangladesh and seek American support for a just war of liberation. MV Kamath, who was posted in Washington those days, recalls, “The United States, under President Richard Nixon, was strongly on the side of Pakistan. Nixon hated India with the intensity of a burning Sun. His unprincipled Secretary of State, a real chamcha and an unscrupulous one at that, was ever-willing to back his boss to the hilt. If Nixon showed anger against India, Kissinger would happily fan it. If Nixon abused India, Kissinger was willing to go all the way to insult it … The plane in which she (Mrs Indira Gandhi) travelled was ordered to come a halt at New York’s Kennedy Airport close to a stinking urinal deliberately. One had to hold one’s nose while passing by. According to the lowest level of protocol, she was received by a junior State Department official. I was one of those present on the occasion … The first meeting between her and Nixon was fixed. Punctual to the point, Mrs Gandhi presented herself but Nixon deliberately made her wait for some 40 minutes to show his contempt for his visitor ... It was bad manners at their worst…”

No matter how lofty the cause, Mrs Gandhi was a supplicant in Nixon’s court and he was loath to let this fact go unnoticed. That does not, however, require us to be boorish as Mr Obama comes looking for jobs to bail out Americans from an economic crisis that continues to get worse, causing unemployment to rise to a level that has forced his ‘coalition of voters’ — the college-educated, the suburbanites, the politically uncommitted — to disown their ‘Apostle of Change’ and make Tea Party a fashionable political term of grassroots resistance to what is increasingly being perceived in the US as bad governance and which has fetched the Democrats a walloping in last week’s mid-term elections the like of which has not been witnessed in 72 years. Mr Obama’s approval rating, let us not forget, hovers at 45 per cent, and he is not even in the last year of his term.

So here are the bare facts. Mr Obama arrives in India not as the world’s most powerful person (that honour now goes to Mr Hu Jintao, President of China), an American President who can assert his authority and swing congressional approval for long-term strategic deals. The mid-term elections have left him severely bruised and his presidency hobbled. Republicans now have a majority in the House; the Democrats’ lead in the Senate is too narrow to over-ride opposition to presidential initiatives. The reversals are far worse than those suffered by Mr Clinton and Mr Bush. Unlike Mr Obama, neither Mr Clinton nor Mr Bush was isolated within his party. The Democrats are increasingly reluctant to either endorse him or be seen to be endorsing him. Few candidates wanted him to campaign for them and the party is already divided on renominating him for 2012, although these are early days for the race which begins late next year.

Domestic issues, especially the American economy, will preoccupy Mr Obama through 2011 to shore up his ratings. It’s unlikely he will focus on foreign relations and policy unless they are directly linked to domestic concerns. Hence his honest admission that his Asia visit is meant to ‘shop for jobs’: Any big ticket agreement that is arrived at while he is in New Delhi is likely to be linked to job-creation in America. That’s why Mr Obama is pushing hard for Government-to-Government defence purchases by India. It obviates procurement norms, fast tracks contracts, and advantage accrues to the supplier Government: The Obama Administration can boast to have created that many more jobs.

India has agreed to purchase 10 C17 transport planes for the IAF. The deal would fetch the US $ 5 billion. More importantly, it would save up to 30,000 jobs. Mr Obama now wants India to place its order for 126 multirole aircraft for the IAF with Lockheed Martin or Boeing, or both. That would save and generate as many as 27,000 to 31,000 jobs. If India agrees, we would be underwriting Mr Obama’s job-creation programme and funding the recovery of the US’s badly hit economy to the tune of more than $10 billion. Curiously, as soon as India agreed to the purchase of the C17s, Mr Obama announced an additional military aid package of $ 2.037 billion (over and above the $ 7.5 billion ongoing aid) for Pakistan. So, by placing orders for American merchandise, India not only creates jobs in the US but also defrays part of the mounting cost of American civil and military aid to Pakistan. For the record, since 9/11, American aid to Pakistan has surpassed $ 25 billion; nearly all of it in military assistance.

India Inc has made two points in response to Mr Obama’s job-shopping agenda. First, with India emerging as one the fastest growing source of FDI in the US, thousands of jobs have been created and secured by us in that country. Second, notwithstanding this fact, Mr Obama has become increasingly protectionist. For example, tax breaks for companies that outsource business or employ non-Americans are being withdrawn; H1B visa fees have been raised astronomically; and, it’s more difficult to get business visas than ever before while many Indians with business visas are being refused entry at port of arrival.

It is against this backdrop that we should judge the outcome of Mr Obama’s visit to India, not imagined slights and grievances which have no place in hard-headed diplomacy.

[This appears as my Sunday column, Coffee Break, in The Pioneer on November 7, 2010.]

Ten years after explosion of national pride

A decade after May 11, 1998
Ten years ago this Sunday, India stealthily conducted three nuclear tests at Pokhran, sending shockwaves around the world. The 'Powerful Five' and Janus-faced moralists like Canada and Australia were aghast and almost disbelieving -- not so much because India had decided to demonstrate its nuclear capability, which it had kept under wraps for years, but because of its audacious disregard for consequences, especially economic sanctions. The US had an additional reason to feel hugely upset: For all its 'eyes' in the sky and 'ears' on the ground, it had been taken by utter and total surprise.
Unlike PV Narasimha Rao, who almost dared the world but stopped short of conducting the crucial tests that would enable India to cross the Rubicon and emerge as a nuclear power, Mr Atal Bihari Vajpayee was both crafty and determined. We will never really know whether an accidental discovery by the Americans of preparations for conducting tests at Pokhran resulted in sufficient pressure being applied on Rao for him to call them off. But we do know that Mr Vajpayee instructed, and ensured, that no such discovery occurred between his giving the green signal for Operation Shakti and Buddha 'smiling' on May 11, 1998.
That demonstration of India's shakti was no doubt essentially the achievement of our scientists and technologists who toiled ceaselessly to put together, with indigenous know-how, nuclear devices of calibrated yields, including a hydrogen bomb, despite the barriers that had been raised after Mrs Indira Gandhi taunted the world with her 'peaceful' explosion of May 18, 1974, erasing forever the image of India as a nation with a begging bowl, perpetuated in no small measure by a mocking America since the days of PL 480 aid. Unlike Pakistan, we neither received nuclear technology nor burgled it from unsuspecting countries.
Hence, when the tests were conducted in May 1998, they were seen as an assertion of self-esteem and self-pride, a declaration of national resolve -- thrice over on May 11 and twice over on May 13. The front page of this newspaper captured the mood of the nation by running the story on the tests under a banner headline, 'India explodes H-Bomb', accompanied by a triumphant signed editorial, 'Explosion of self-esteem', by its editor, Mr Chandan Mitra.
Yet, it would be nothing short of cussedness to deny Mr Vajpayee the credit for daring to tread where his predecessors had feared to venture. Since Mrs Gandhi's decision to conduct the first test in 1974, all other Prime Ministers, including Rajiv Gandhi, had chosen to indulge in peacenik mumbo-jumbo about universal disarmament, hoping to join the ranks of disingenuous non-proliferationists like former US President Jimmy Carter. Mr Vajpayee chose to be different and, as subsequent events were to prove, initiated a tectonic shift in India's foreign policy and strategic posture.
Yes, it marked a break with the past, which had become so pitifully meaningless ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Empire. But it also marked the beginning of India's foray into a brave new world heralded by the advent of the 21st century two years later. In his own way, Mr Vajpayee foresaw the potential of India entering the 21st century as a nuclear power and acted accordingly. It helped that the BJP had never been squeamish when it came to the nuclear question.
The fallout of Pokhran II was felt on two fronts. Pakistan, enraged that it had been upstaged, conducted five nuclear tests on May 28 and a sixth test on May 30. That was Islamabad's assurance to Pakistanis that it could still steal a march over New Delhi. Almost simultaneously, donor countries turned off their taps and came down heavily with economic sanctions, apart from imposing harsh restrictions on technology transfer or whatever little of it was happening.
India rode through the storm and survived the vicious response. We continue to be a stable and responsible state, unlike Pakistan whose nuclear arsenal has become a cause for worry across the world as an unstable state implodes on itself, notwithstanding an elected Government taking over from the illegitimate regime of Gen Pervez Musharraf.
Our strategic engagement with the US to fashion a new over-arching security paradigm and the attempt to redefine our relationship with other countries, including Russia and China, both aggressively pursued by Mr Vajpayee, stands in sharp contrast to the co-option of Pakistan by the post-9/11 US-led Western alliance, not as an equal but as a client state. When the US refers to Pakistan as a "staunch ally" what it means is beggars can't be choosers.
But a decade after that stunningly awesome display of India's determination to secure its rightful place in the comity of nations, of announcing its arrival in a world where the voice of the powerful is heard over the clamour of those whose survival depends on the munificence of the 'Powerful Five', and 34 years after Mrs Gandhi posed for photographers at Pokhran, we appear to be losing the gains that accrued from Mr Vajpayee's decision to go nuclear.
Just how much we have compromised on our self-esteem, our self-pride, can be gauged from Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's desperation to strike a flawed deal with the US for civil nuclear cooperation. It is reflected in the hesitation that has replaced confidence while dealing with foreign policy, most noticeably in our relations with China. It is exemplified by our reluctance to take Pokhran II to its logical conclusion by putting in place a credible minimum deterrent that is alive to changing geo-political realities and not a stagnant doctrine with an irrelevant posture.
The decline is as perceptible on the domestic front where non-governance has become the mantra of survival and as Ministers indulge their own perverse whims and fancies, a weak Prime Minister watches from the margins. It's nice to think of India as a nuclear power but that idea of India does not square up to facts that should embarrass us. Nor does it make sense to sell national honour for a nuclear agreement with America when basic issues remain untouched by either policy or programme.
It would be foolish to believe that the image of a resurgent India, that captivated the world after May 11, 1998, still obtains. The Prime Minister and his cronies in the media believe that India's deliverance depends on the 123 Agreement, that nuclear power -- as opposed to nuclear power - will take us to new heights of prosperity and a new level of strategic clout. What they forget is that in this wondrous land of ours, 67 million children below the age of five live without basic healthcare, more than a million children die every year before they complete a month of their wretched lives, and millions of adults and children still go to bed hungry even as the middle class struggles to cope with runaway prices and a tottering economy.
Mr Vajpayee had a vision for India to emerge as a powerful nation, prosperous at home, equal to others abroad. The most memorable highlight of his years as Prime Minister will no doubt remain the decision to empower India by going nuclear on May 11, 1998. But we would be unfair to his legacy if we failed to recall the beginning he had made in empowering Indians by improving their lot. That legacy has been squandered by Mr Manmohan Singh; it's not surprising that his Government should choose to shun the 10th anniversary of Pokhran II.

US too pushy with nuclear deal

US too pushy with N-deal
Americans want Indians to believe they know what's good for this country and are pushing for an early closure of the nuclear deal. This is gunboat diplomacy in disguise: Coercive tactics couched as constant, mounting pressure. Should India get hustled?

Back in 1850, a Gibraltar-born British subject, David Pacifico, was 'harmed' in Athens. The British Foreign Office imperiously demanded that Pacifico be 'compensated', but King Otto chose not to oblige. Lord Palmerston, the British Foreign Secretary, was incandescent with rage and ordered the Royal Navy to blockade the Greek port of Piraeus. Many consider this to be the origin of latter day 'gunboat diplomacy', though others insist it began with the British sending a gunboat up the Yangtse river to quell the Chinese rebellion during the Opium War.
Over the centuries, powerful countries, taking a cue from Lord Palmerston (and/or whoever decided to despatch a gunboat up the Yangtse) have devised various coercive methods to force foreign Governments to toe their line, taking recourse to gunboat diplomacy. As a contemporary commentator has said, "Government's use of coercion is now a well-oiled machine" -- gears are shifted depending upon who is being coerced. After 9/11, the Bush Administration despatched Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage to Islamabad with a simple message for Gen Pervez Musharraf: If Pakistan did not join the US war on terror, "we will bomb you back to the Stone Age".
But such crude coercive tactics cannot be used by the US against India in its effort to push through the civil nuclear cooperation agreement, which the Americans seem to want more than Indians do. If the absence of support for the deal in Parliament is any indication, only a section, and not all of, the Congress-led UPA Government wants the deal to come through; many among the votaries of the deal do not have the foggiest idea about what the Hyde Act is all about or the technical details of the 123 Agreement.
That, however, has not prevented the US Administration from 'stepping on the gas' and, at times gently and on other occasions bluntly, telling India to hurry along and close the deal because Washington believes it is good for this country. Gunboats have not been sent to the Bay of Bengal or the Arabian Sea, but an endless stream of deal-pushers have been jetting their way to New Delhi where awe-struck mediapersons are told -- and they dutifully report -- that great benefits lie in India signing on the dotted line. This is gunboat diplomacy by another name, a more sophisticated version of what Mr Armitage told Gen Musharraf.
This "we-know-what's-best-for-you" attitude has been on display right from the beginning when the US first offered the deal in July 2005 when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh left for Washington, DC, without any knowledge of the contents of the crucial portion of the final draft of the joint statement; he got to see it only on arrival.
Recall Mr Singh's statement in the Lok Sabha: "I hope I am not revealing a secret. I think when the final draft came to me from the US side, I made it quite clear to them that I will not sign on any document which did not have the support of the chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission. It held up our negotiations for about 12-15 hours." Mr Anil Kakodkar, the AEC chairperson, was not a member of Mr Singh's delegation; he was in Beijing when the Americans sprang the surprise. He was asked to take the first flight to Washington, DC, arriving on the eve of the signature ceremony.
Between then and 2007, there was little movement as the US discovered India was no pushover, that Parliament could not be ignored, and that not all Indians are convinced that it is a 'win-win' arrangement. With time running out for the Bush Administration, which is keen to showcase the nuclear deal as its 'foreign policy achievement' in the absence of any other visible successes abroad, the US began to mount pressure in the last quarter of 2007, insisting that India must begin negotiations with the IAEA.
Such was the urgency to get the deal moving, Mr Bush called up Mr Singh while the latter was in Africa. Even Mr Henry Kissinger, who ordered the Seventh Fleet into the Bay of Bengal in 1971, was trotted out to sell the deal. The American pressure worked and India began negotiations with the IAEA, which are now believed to have reached near-conclusion.
That done, the US has now begun to put pressure for an early closure of the IAEA negotiations, so that it can seek India-specific exemptions from the 45-nation Nuclear Suppliers' Group, which is scheduled to meet in Berlin in May. After that, the deal is only an up-or-down vote in the US Congress away, and Mr Bush could yet claim a foreign policy success heavily weighed in America's favour. Senator Joseph Biden has summed up the US's policy gains with his trenchant comment, "(The deal) will limit the size and sophistication of India's nuclear weapons programme." This is apart from commercial gains that will accrue to American firms.
Mr Biden has been economical with his words. The US has a two-fold strategic stake in the nuclear deal. First, it will make India more than just a strategic partner. Given the geopolitical realities of the 21st century, nations mindful of their national interest are pursuing multiple partnerships with different players in diverse settings. The deal seeks to prevent India from doing that; the US wants India to become a new Japan or Britain, a 'faithful ally' who will not look elsewhere but only up to America. Second, the deal is the means to prevent India from emerging as a full-fledged nuclear-weapons state and bringing it into the US-led non-proliferation regime -- America's central goal since Pokhran-II -- even if this strategically disadvantages New Delhi vis-à-vis Beijing.
Meanwhile, the UPA Government's not-so-strange inability to read the writing on the wall has prompted Minister for External Affairs Pranab Mukherjee to tell Parliament on March 3: "The Hyde Act is an enabling provision that is between the executive and the legislative organs of the US Government... India's rights and obligations regarding civil nuclear cooperation with the US arise only from the bilateral 123 Agreement that we have agreed upon with the US." Mr Richard Boucher, the US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs and the latest deal-seller to visit New Delhi, had a different, and more correct, take on this issue. He told newspersons on March 5: "The Hyde Act is a domestic legislation and the 123 Agreement is an international agreement. I think we can move forward with both in a consistent manner."
For a better understanding of Mr Boucher's comment, take a look at what US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee on February 14: "We will support nothing with India in the NSG that is in contradiction to the Hyde Act. It will have to be completely consistent with the obligations of the Hyde Act".

Interventionism as policy

Kanchan Gupta / Essay / November-December, 2008.

Part I

US President Barack Hussein Obama’s utterances on Jammu & Kashmir, indicating that the so-called ‘Kashmir issue’ will figure on the agenda of his Administration, just as it featured on the ‘To Do’ list of Mr Bill Clinton during his first term as President, have raised more than eyebrows in India. To his credit, President George W Bush had steered clear of the ‘Kashmir issue’; he snubbed Pakistan each time it tried to push for a revival of American interventionism, insisting that Islamabad had to deal directly with New Delhi. Even Gen Colin Powell, with his pronounced pro-Pakistan bias, could not get Mr Bush to change his view and send in Nosy Parkers from the State Department to play their insidious games. Recall a busybody called Ms Robin Raphael whom Mr Clinton promoted during his first presidential term to ‘solve’ the ‘Kashmir issue’. She used the opportunity to forge the All-Party Hurriyat Conference with disastrous consequences in Jammu & Kashmir, and colluded with Benazir Bhutto to create the monster called Taliban in the hope Mullah Mohammed Omar would look after Unocal’s business interests.
With the shadow of American interventionism as policy looming large, it would be instructive to scan the past, if only to figure out the genesis of the West’s proclivity to interfere in an issue that neither impacts it directly nor does it understand entirely. Interestingly, much before the US decided to get into the act, it was the UK which manipulated events in a manner that whetted Washington’s appetite. Equally interesting is the reason that shaped Anglo-American perception and policy on Jammu & Kashmir, which does not figure in much of the discourse on this issue but has been presented in great detail by former diplomat C Dasgupta in his path-breaking book, War and Diplomacy in Kashmir — 1947-48.
First, some bare facts. Maharaja Hari Singh signed the Instrument of Accession on October 26, 1947, making Jammu & Kashmir an integral part of India. Simultaneously, Indian forces were airlifted to Srinagar to evict the Pakistani invaders and establish India’s sovereignty over its territory. The accession was — and remains — entirely valid in terms of the Government of India Act of 1935 and India Independence Act of 1947; it is total and irrevocable in international law. Speaking in the UN Security Council on February 4, 1948, the US representative, Warren Austen, said: “The external sovereignty of Kashmir is no longer under the control of the Maharaja... with the accession of Jammu & Kashmir to India, this foreign sovereignty went over to India and is exercised by India and that is why India happens to be here (at the UNSC) as a petitioner...”.
India went to the UN in good faith after Pakistan refused to vacate territory occupied by its armed raiders. In its formal reference, lodged with the Security Council on January 1, 1948 under Article 35 of the UN Charter, which permits member states to bring any situation whose continuance is likely to endanger international peace and security to the attention of the Security Council, India asserted: “Such a situation now exists between India and Pakistan owing to the aid which invaders, consisting of nationals of Pakistan and of tribesmen from the territory immediately adjoining Pakistan on the North-West, are drawing from Pakistan for operations against Jammu & Kashmir, a State which has acceded to the Dominion of India and is part of India... The Government of India request the Security Council to call upon Pakistan to put an end immediately to the giving of such assistance which is an act of aggression against India.”
In the reference, India also asserted its right, under international law, to self-defence by initiating military action against Pakistan by way of what is today termed as ‘hot pursuit’: “In order that the objective of expelling the invader from Indian territory and preventing him from launching fresh attacks should be quickly achieved, Indian troops would have to enter Pakistan territory...”.
In addition to the five permanent members, the UNSC in 1948 had Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Colombia, Syria and Ukraine as non-permanent members. The instant reaction of the UNSC was to issue a Presidential Statement on January 6, 1948, making an “urgent appeal (to India and Pakistan) to refrain from any step incompatible with the (UN) Charter and liable to result in an aggravation of the situation”. This was followed by Resolution 38 on January 17, 1948, reiterating the Presidential Statement and requesting both countries to immediately report to the Security Council any material change in the situation.
Across the Atlantic, the Commonwealth Relations Office entered the picture at this point, formulating a political perspective that came to greatly influence the Security Council’s subsequent handling of the ‘Kashmir issue’, at least up to the formation of the UN Commission for India and Pakistan. The CRO’s perspective was rooted, and strangely so, in the British Foreign Office assessment of the emerging political crisis in West Asia. Britain in those days stood accused by Arabs (and their sympathisers in Europe and the US) of having abjectly failed in its Mandate over Palestine as it had been unable to control the immigration of Jews. Britain was also seen as having failed in its responsibility to prevent or contain the outbreak of what was then referred to as ‘civil war’ (which still continues to rage between Palestinians and Israelis).
Britain took the Palestine issue to the UN in April 1947 and announced its decision to abandon its mandate by May 1948. The UN General Assembly immediately adopted a Resolution for dividing Palestine into separate Jewish and Arab states, paving the way for Israel’s re-birth as the homeland for Jews in Palestine and the Diaspora. The Arab reaction was vicious, instantaneous and directed in bulk against Britain.

* * *

Part II

After Britain took the Palestine issue to the United Nations in April 1947 and announced its decision to abandon its mandate by May 1948, resulting in the General Assembly adopting a Resolution for the creation of separate Jewish and Arab states, thus unleashing Arab rage against the West, especially the United Kingdom, the British Foreign Office embarked on a duplicitous and dangerous course. It convinced the British Government, struggling to cope with the rapidly changing post-War geopolitical realities, that the only way Britain could contain — and reduce — Arab anger was by adopting a policy on Jammu & Kashmir that would be perceived as weighing in favour of Pakistan, a Muslim state. It believed this would assuage enraged ‘Arab nationalism’ (which the British Foreign Office, to its credit, had the far-sight to recognise as incipient radical Islamism). A second factor that propelled British policy in this direction was Britain’s oil interests that had become crucial in post-War Europe’s search for energy sources that would reduce dependency on coal.
British Foreign Office records, including minutes of discussions approved by Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs Ernest Bevin, substantiate this assessment. For instance, a Foreign Office minute prepared for Prime Minister Clement Attlee said, “The Foreign Secretary has expressed anxiety lest we should appear to be siding with India in the dispute between India and Pakistan over Kashmir which is now before the United Nations Security Council. With the situation as critical as it is in Palestine, Mr Bevin feels that we must be very careful to guard against the danger of aligning the whole of Islam against us, which might be the case were Pakistan to obtain a false impression of our attitude in the Security Council.” If six decades ago the Attlee Cabinet was keen to appease Islamists by short-changing India on Jammu & Kashmir, Mr Barack Hussein Obama’s Administration may be tempted to do something similar to establish its credentials in the Islamic world since it won’t dare to push around Israel.
Interestingly, Louis Mountbatten, who had played no small role in steering the Jammu & Kashmir issue to the Security Council, found the British Foreign Office policy harmful to larger Commonwealth interests. In one of his reports he recorded: “Everybody here (in India) is now convinced that power politics and not impartiality are governing the attitude of the Security Council... Indian leaders counter this (attempts to dispel this conviction) by saying that the Anglo-American Bloc apparently attaches so high a value on the maintenance of Muslim solidarity in the Middle-East that they are even ready to pay the price of driving India out of the Commonwealth into the arms of Russia...”.
Not known for being tolerant of Indian sensitivities, Philip Noel-Baker, the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations, was easily persuaded by Bevin’s perspective and he took it upon himself to pro-actively lobby with the US and non-permanent Security Council members to toe a pro-Pakistan line in enforcing a solution to the Jammu & Kashmir issue through a UN-sponsored plebiscite. Noel-Baker had his way with Resolution 39 adopted by the Security Council on January 20, 1948, on the setting up of a three-member UN Commission for India and Pakistan which would visit the two countries, study the ground situation, and report back to the Security Council.
Noel-Baker followed this up by aggressively pushing a draft resolution that was crafted in a manner to favour Pakistan. The US representative was initially hesitant to go along with Noel-Baker’s draft, but was soon won over. Surprisingly, at this stage the Chinese representative came up with an alternative draft that was comparatively more balanced. In a change of tactics, necessitated by his being reprimanded by Attlee who feared ‘irreparable damage’ to relations with India, Noel-Baker seized upon this draft and cunningly had it amended to such an extent that it bore no resemblance with the original draft; the Noel-Baker version of the Chinese draft came to be adopted as Resolution 47 by the Security Council on April 21, 1948.
Resolution 47 set out the terms of reference in two parts. Part One increased the number of members of the UNCIP from three to five (Noel-Baker believed that a larger team would enable a report more in tune with his perspective) and instructed the UNCIP to “proceed at once” in order to “place its good offices and mediation” at the disposal of India and Pakistan with the twin goals of restoring peace and order and holding a plebiscite. Part Two comprised the Security Council’s recommendations to India and Pakistan for achieving these goals:
i. Pakistan should “use its best endeavours” to secure the withdrawal of the raiders (tribesmen and other Pakistani nationals) from Jammu & Kashmir;
ii. India should withdraw its forces and reduce them to the minimum level required for the maintenance of law and order; and,
iii. UNCIP might employ troops of either dominion “subject to the agreement of both the Government of India and the Government of Pakistan”.
Pakistan rejected Resolution 47, demanding an amendment that the deployment of Pakistani troops should not be subject to the agreement of the Government of India. The amendment was defeated. India rejected the Resolution on the ground that it was weighed in favour of Pakistan and that it skirted the main issue as contained in India’s reference to the Security Council — that of vacating the Pakistani aggression. India also pointed out that the Security Council had failed to issue a clear call to Pakistan to withdraw the raiders before going into the plebiscite arrangements. However, both India and Pakistan accepted the setting up of the UNCIP and agreed to receive the Commission.
The UNCIP visited India and Pakistan in July 1948. By May 1948, the ground situation had undergone a radical material change with Pakistani Army regulars being deployed in the occupied areas of Jammu & Kashmir. Zafarullah Khan admitted to the UNCIP that Pakistani Army regulars had been deployed since May 1948. This was seen by the UNCIP as a violation of earlier Security Council Resolutions that had insisted on there being no material change in the ground situation.
The UNCIP’s findings and its subsequent Resolutions (of August 13, 1949, and January 5, 1948) were not influenced by Noel-Baker primarily because there was no British representative in the commission. Also, by then India had launched a diplomatic offensive as well as demonstrated its determination to force out the Pakistani invaders militarily. Therefore, the UNCIP reports and Resolutions, unlike the Security Council’s Resolution 47, did not reflect a deliberate pro-Pakistan tilt; recognised that the entry of Pakistani Army into Jammu & Kashmir was a violation of Security Council Resolution 38; demanded that Pakistan must withdraw its forces from Jammu & Kashmir since their presence constituted a “material change in the situation”; and, conceded primacy to a ceasefire based on withdrawal of the invaders.
The rest is history.