Jammu & Kashmir - flashback to 1948

October 5th 1948:

Pakistan most certainly will not give Kashmir up in the face of Indian threats.  To many Pakistani officers it seems probable that the war in Kashmir is at present essential to the existence of the Indian Union.   They see it as the one common factor uniting all the different forces, which, if left to themselves, would pull the State to pieces.  Without a "popular war" the Nehru Administration would have to settle the conflicting claims of its own members, satisfy the Sikhs, reconcile labour and capital, deal with the Communists and take drastic and unpopular measures to stop the drift of the national economy towards complete chaos.  Hyderabad was a card which was good as long as it was held; now that it has been played there remains only Kashmir and the stakes on that card have been made so heavy in both men, money and prestige, that it cannot remain unplayed much longer.  Recent speeches by Union Ministers do tend the suggest the obtrusion [sic? intrusion] of the U.N.O. into the relations between India and her State of Kashmir has been a tedious restraint on the Union's ability to manage her own affairs efficiently.  Patel going so far as to remark on October 1st, that "if the Security Council releases us from that embarrassment we shall perform that operation also (i.e., Kashmir) with the least amount of danger." A singularly vacuous remark if ever there was one! Either Mr. Patel was using Hyderabad as a yard-stick to measure the Indian Army's martial prowess, or else he was completely ignorant of the military implications and the political consequences of a Union advance upto the Pakistan border.

This is from Adrian Reed (Junior Staff Member, Lahore Deputy High Commission posted to Rawalpindi) to Olver  (?Stephen Olver, Pakistan Foreign Service in Karachi).

(# 70 in "Towards a Ceasefire in Kashmir, British Official Reports from South Asia, 18 September - 31 December 1948", Editor: Lionel Carter).