The Longest August (21 page)

The two leaders agreed to set up a Ministry for Minority Affairs to be headed by a member of the minority community. The newly established Minority Commission in each country was charged with ensuring that the refugees were allowed to return unmolested to sell their property, the pillaged possessions were returned to the owner, the abducted women repatriated, and forced conversions nullified. Even so, by the end of 1950, more than one million Hindu refugees migrated from East Pakistan to West Bengal. In contrast, of the seven hundred thousand Muslims who left West Bengal because of communal turbulence, five hundred thousand returned later.
8

On the eve of the 1951 census, East Pakistan had nine million Hindus, forming 22 percent of its population of forty-one million. In polar contrast, West Pakistan had only one million Hindus, almost all of them in Sindh. Altogether Hindus were nearly 13 percent of Pakistan's population. And Muslims in India constituted a minority of 10 percent.

Ali Khan and His Assassin Killed

On the afternoon of October 16, 1951, Ali Khan was the star speaker at a huge public rally held at the Company Park in Rawalpindi. At 4:10
pm
, as he opened his speech with the welcoming words “
Braadran-e-Milla
t
” (Urdu: Brothers of the nation), two shots fired from a Mauser pistol from a distance of six feet hit him in the chest. He collapsed, muttering the Islamic creed in Arabic, “
La ilaha illallah, Muhammad ur rasul Allah
” (“There is no god but Allah, and Muhammad is messenger of Allah”).

The weapon was fired by the twenty-nine-year-old Saad Akbar, a resident of Abbottabad, where he had settled as a political refugee from Afghanistan in 1944 and survived on a modest government stipend. Intriguingly, he had arrived a few hours before the event and had assisted the volunteers of the Muslim League National Guard to fix the dais and make other arrangements for the rally.

In the melee that followed his murderous act, Akbar was hit by five shots fired by police subinspector Muhammad Shah Gul. His fatal injuries did not spare him further stabbings, breaking of his arms, and gouging of his eyes by those who pounced on him. Meanwhile, Ali Khan was rushed to the hospital, where he died at 4:50
pm
.
9

The inquiry commission led by Justice Muhammad Munir, in its report on August 17, 1952, said that it had not been possible to decide definitively whether the assassin, Akbar, had acted as an individual or as the agent of a conspiracy. The known facts and documents tended to suggest that he was “the conscious or unconscious tool of some clever third party.”
10
The matter rested there, enveloped in mystery—the first in a series that dogged the history of Pakistan, the other unsolved cases being those of General Muhammad Zia ul Haq and Benazir Bhutto.

Thus within four years of its birth, Pakistani lost its two prime cofounders, known respectively as the Quaid-i-Azam and Quaid-i-Millat (Urdu: Leader of the Nation). Since none of the succeeding politicians had the charisma or popularity of either one, the politics of the fledgling state started to unravel.

Contrary was the case in India. There Nehru went from strength to strength. In Delhi the Constituent Assembly adopted a new constitution in November 1949 that came into effect two months later. The newly inaugurated Republic of India (Bharat in Hindi), with Rajendra Prasad as its president, was able to maintain its membership in the British Commonwealth thanks to the change in Britain's law. With the December 1950 death of Vallabhbhai Patel, who represented the Hindu nationalist trend within the Congress, the grip of the Nehru-led secular wing in the ruling party tightened.

The first general election for the directly elected lower house of the national parliament, called the Lok Sabha (Hindi: People's Council), was held with universal suffrage between October 1951 and February 1952. The Congress Party won three-quarters of the 491 seats. As in the past, the party's star vote-puller was Nehru, who undertook a whirlwind tour of the country. He continued as the prime minister and foreign minister, assiduously pursuing his nonalignment policy.

By contrast, Ali Khan's successor, Khwaja Nazimuddin (in office October 1951–April 1953) kept up the practice of periodically dispatching a delegation to Washington to seek arms. His chances brightened when (Retired) General Dwight Eisenhower followed Truman into the White
House in January 1953 and appointed the rabidly anticommunist John Foster Dulles as his secretary of state.

By then the two neighbors in South Asia had consolidated their positions in Kashmir.

Consolidation in Kashmir

Following the truce on January 1, 1949, the Azad Kashmir government became the administrative authority for the territory west of the cease-fire line, including Gilgit Agency—composed of Gilgit, Hunza, and Nagar—and Baltistan. Later in 1949, Pakistan imposed direct rule on Gilgit Agency and Baltistan after merging them and named the new entity Northern Areas. Next year it issued an ordinance, “Rules of Business of the Azad Kashmir Government,” which served as the basic law for the territory. The supreme head of this government functioned under the watchful eyes of the Ministry of Kashmir Affairs. Pakistan retained control of defense, foreign policy, and dealings with the United Nations, while Azad Kashmir authorities continued to administer the territory and develop it economically.

In March 1950 the UNCIP gave way to the UN representative charged with the task of bringing about demilitarization in both parts of Kashmir. The first such representative, Australian judge Owen Dixon, reported that since Delhi would never agree to demilitarization, two other alternatives should be considered. One: hold four regional plebiscites—in Jammu, Kashmir Valley, Ladakh, and the Northern Areas. Two: partition the state, with some areas to India and others to Pakistan, and hold a plebiscite only in the Kashmir Valley.

Nehru showed interest, but Ali Khan rejected Dixon's proposals. He insisted on a plebiscite to decide the fate of all of Jammu and Kashmir, confident that its Muslim majority would opt for accession to Pakistan. This was the earliest of several missed opportunities to peacefully resolve the dispute, which has since then proved intractable.

Forced by Delhi, Maharaja Sir Hari Singh abdicated in favor of his eighteen-year-old son, Karan Singh, in 1949, while Shaikh Muhammad Abdullah remained the state's chief executive. Article 370 in the secular Indian constitution accorded Kashmir the right to have its own constitution. Elections for the 75-member Constituent Assembly were scheduled for August through September 1951. In the end polls were held only in
four constituencies because those opposing Abdullah's National Conference, concentrated in the Jammu region, were told that they had all filled their nomination papers “incorrectly” and could therefore not contest the election! Such tactics were the staple of a one-party dictatorship rather than a multiparty democratic entity.

By so doing, Abdullah accentuated the traditional animosity that had existed between the Hindus in Jammu who had identified with the maharaja and the Muslims in Kashmir who loathed the Hindu ruler. Now the Hindus in Jammu began protesting against “Kashmiri domination” and demanding closer ties with India. Abdullah agreed to give the Indian president power to “declare state of emergency” in Jammu and Kashmir in the event of external aggression. This did not satisfy the staunchly pro-India elements in Jammu. Led by the communalist Bharatiya Jan Sangh (Hindi: Indian People's Union), they launched an agitation for “One constitution, one flag, and one president” in late 1952. This caused apprehension among Kashmiri Muslims, who saw in this a threat to the special status conferred on the state by the Indian constitution.

It was in this atmosphere of escalating tension and suspicion in the state that a plan to arrest Abdullah was hatched in Delhi by a Nehru-guided cabal, which included Bakshi Ghulam Muhammad, deputy of Abdullah; Durga Prasad Dhar, a Hindu colleague of Abdullah; and Karan Singh. What spurred them into action was the letter by President Prasad to Nehru on July 14, 1953, in which he wrote that on his return from a visit to Kashmir, Vice President Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan told him that “even Shaikh Abdullah thought that we would lose in a plebiscite.”
11

On August 9, 1953, on the order of Karan Singh, Abdullah was arrested under the state's Public Security Act and detained “for the time being.”
12
His incarceration ended briefly in January 1958.

Much changed during the intervening period in Pakistan, domestically and externally.

Pakistan in Washington's Orbit

The Eisenhower-Dulles duo set out to build a ring of containment around the Sino-Soviet bloc, and Pakistan was a key part of that ring. Washington viewed Pakistan as a strategically located country with “a volunteer army of 300,000,” which was “not neutral but [was] anti-communist.” I
t was “extremely well-disciplined, professional, well trained armed forces whose morale and bravery are unquestionable.”
13

Muhammad Ali Bogra, the prime minister of Pakistan, had previously served as his country's ambassador to the United States from February 1952 to April 1953. On April 2, 1954, the United States signed a Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement with Pakistan, capped by a separate pact to meet Congressional requirements on May 19.

“I send you this personal message because I want you to know about my decision to extend military aid to Pakistan before it is public knowledge, and also because I want you to know directly from me that this step does not in any way affect the friendship we feel for India,” wrote Eisenhower to Nehru on February 24.

What we are proposing to do, and what Pakistan is agreeing to, is not directed in any way against India. I am confirming publicly that if our aid to any country, including Pakistan, is misused and directed against another in aggression I will undertake immediately . . . appropriate action, both within and without the U.N., to thwart such aggression. . . . We also believe that it is in the interest of the free world that India should have a strong military defense capability, and have admired the effective way in which your government has administered your military establishments. If your government should conclude that circumstances require military aid of a type contemplated by our mutual security legislation, please be assured that your request would receive my most sympathetic consideration.
14

Nehru declined Eisenhower's offer. “You are, however, aware of the views of my Government and our people in regard to the matter,” replied Nehru on March 1. “Those views and policy which we have pursued after most careful thought are based on our desire to help in the furtherance of peace and freedom. We shall continue to pursue that policy.” By making this suggestion, he observed, “the President has done less than justice to us or to himself. If we object to military aid being given to Pakistan, we would be hypocrites and unprincipled opportunists to accept such aid ourselves.”
15

On that day Nehru publicly denounced Washington's military assistance to Pakistan as “intervention” in Indo-Pakistan affairs. As such, his government was no longer prepared to accept the American members of the UN observers' team in Kashmir as neutral. Domestically, by leading
the denunciation of the Pakistan-US pact in its demonstrations and rallies, the Congress Party preempted any chances of the right-wing Bharatiya Jan Sangh or the Communist Party of India exploiting the issue to shore up its popular following.

Before Nehru's open disagreement with Eisenhower, his administration had made use of its neutrality to end the war in Korea. During his spring 1953 global tour, Dulles visited Delhi, where he paid tribute to “India's efforts at the UN to end the war in Korea.” He also said that Washington would aid India's First Five Year Plan for economic development.
16

When the negotiations for a cease-fire in the Korean War became deadlocked on the issue of the repatriation of prisoners of war, a solution was found in establishing the Neutral Nations Repatriations Commission, headed by India. It was mandated to interview in a neutral setting individual prisoners who refused repatriation and have them choose their side. That process finally led to the signing of the truce on July 27, 1953.

By strange coincidence, it was during that month that, overriding America's objections, India went ahead with a shipment of thorium nitrate—a substance with potential for use in nuclear industry—to Communist China. To qualify for receiving any aid from the United States, Delhi had to abide by its End User Agreement, which incorporated its Export Control Act of 1949. That act restricted export of certain strategic or military items to the Soviet bloc and covered a wide range of materials needed for the production of weapons, with particular focus on anything that could aid atomic weapons research and construction. In 1953, when Washington learned of India's impending export of thorium nitrate to Communist China, which it considered part of the Soviet bloc, it pointed to its acts to abort the shipment. Keen to assert his country's newly won independence, Nehru refused to accept any US-imposed restrictions on India's trade. Breach of the US law would have led to the termination of aid by Washington. Realizing that cutting off all aid to India would do more harm than good, Dulles negotiated a compromise whereby India agreed to send only one shipment to Communist China.
17

This minor concession to India left untouched the Eisenhower-Dulles strategy to cordon off the Sino-Soviet bloc. Four months after signing the Mutual Security Assistance Agreement, Pakistan attended a meeting of eight nations in Manila to form the South-East Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).
18
This was followed by Pakistan joining Iran, ruled by the shah Muhammad Reza Pahlavi, and Turkey, a member of the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO), to form the Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955.