Body of Victim, Body of Warrior. Cabeiri deBergh Robinson

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Body of Victim, Body of Warrior - Cabeiri deBergh Robinson South Asia Across the Disciplines

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By late August, the tax protests had shifted to a full revolt against the Maharaja’s authority; armed fighting began between Kashmir State Dogra Army troops and protesters in Poonch who concurrently made demands for Azad Kashmir and ilhāq-e-pakistān (accession to Pakistan).42

      Political leaders in Poonch declared in August 1947 that they had overthrown the Maharaja’s government, and in October, they announced the establishment of what they called the Provisional Revolutionary Government of Azad Kashmir: “Maharaja Hari Singh’s title to rule has come to an end from August 15, 1947 and he has no constitutional or moral right to rule over the people of Kashmir against their will. He is consequently deposed with effect from October 4, 1947. All the Ministers and officials of the State will henceforth be duty-bound to carry out the orders of the Provisional Revolutionary Government. Anyone disobeying this duly constituted Government of the People of Kashmir or in any way abetting the Maharaja in his usurpation of the rule of Kashmir will be guilty of an act of high treason and will be dealt with accordingly.”43 The Revolutionary Government described itself as a war council. It formed an army it called the “Azad Forces,” with three zones of military command—one in Kashmir Province, one in Jammu Province, and one in the former Poonch Jagir.

      

      Several weeks later, prominent AJKMC leaders reconstituted the Provisional Revolutionary Government as the “Azad Kashmir Government,” run by the Central Committee of the Muslim Conference. This committee included leaders from the Kashmir and Jammu Provinces of the Princely State—such as Sardar Mohammad Ibrahim Khan (a Praja Sabha representative from Poonch), Ghulam Abbass (who had been recently released from Jammu Jail), and Yusaf Shah (the Mirwaiz of Kashmir, who was in exile from Srinagar). On the matter of political rights, the Azad Kashmir Government addressed India and Pakistan, not the Maharaja, whom it considered already deposed: “The Azad Government hopes that both Dominions [India and Pakistan] will sympathize with the people of Jammu and Kashmir in their efforts to exercise their birthright of political freedom. . . . The question of accession of Jammu and Kashmir to either dominion can only be decided by the free vote of the people in the form of referendum. . . .”44 As Sardar Mohammad Ibrahim Khan, the president of the first Azad Kashmir Government, announced in November 1947: “Our Government is [a] Government of the people and has behind it a majority of the elected representatives in the Kashmir Assembly. Today the major portion of the State Territory is in our hands and we alone are the real government of Kashmir. . . . On the other hand, the despotic Maharaja has brought foreign aid [and] armies of occupation are pouring in from the Indian Union.”45

      In late October 1947, loosely organized lashkars (militias) of Pathans from the Northwest Frontier Provinces (NWFP) of Pakistan entered the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir at Muzaffarabad, the frontier administrative outpost of the Kashmir Province, and advanced along the Jhelum River road toward the capital of Srinagar.46 Maharaja Hari Singh quickly signed an Instrument of Accession that conferred defense, foreign affairs, and communications to the Government of India. The accession agreement reserved all residual powers for the Princely State government, and the Maharaja ceded internal administration to the National Conference party.47 In Srinagar, Sheikh Abdullah declared the National Conference to be the state’s “Emergency Interim Government,”48 and he mobilized civil defense committees.49 Indian Army forces joined the Kashmir State Dogra Army in fighting on the Jhelum road at Baramullah and in the Poonch region of Jammu. The government of Pakistan did not accept the Maharaja’s accession and sent in its own army troops to prevent the capture of Jammu and Kashmir by India. Thus, by mid-November 1947, the armies of the newly independent nation-states of India and Pakistan were fighting their first war in Jammu and Kashmir, and two different internal governments claimed to be the government of the entirety of the former Princely State and its state subjects.

      Local Authorities and Successor States

      During the war of 1947–1949, both the “Emergency Interim Government” based in Srinagar and the “Azad Kashmir Government” based in Palundri, claimed to function in place of the Praja Sabha (the state’s legislative assembly). International representatives and relief workers recognized both of these governments as “local authorities.” They negotiated with both administrations on pragmatic issues, such as entry into specific territories, and on humanitarian issues, such as refugee relief, protection of minorities, and prisoner exchanges.50 The United Nations Commission on India and Pakistan (UNCIP) tacitly acknowledged both the Interim Government and the Azad Kashmir Government in Security Council resolutions on Kashmir. The resolutions distinguished the Azad Kashmir Government from the Government of Pakistan and the Interim Government from the Government of India, instructing the UN to work with local authorities in reestablishing law and order and arranging for a popular referendum to determine the political future of Jammu and Kashmir.51

      Neither government recognized the authority of the other, however. The National Conference and Sheikh Abdullah (who represented Jammu and Kashmir at the UN in Geneva), claimed to be the local authority for the whole of the former Princely State.52 The Muslim Conference identified the Azad Kashmir Government as the government of both “territories of the State of Jammu and Kashmir which have been liberated by the people of that state” and of “the people of the state of Jammu and Kashmir” as a whole.53 As soon as the 1949 ceasefire between India and Pakistan was established, this recognition of local authorities became a central problem for UN mediators, who were trying to carry out the Security Council resolutions by arranging a popular referendum on the future political status of the state. The Government of India and the National Conference’s Interim Government refused to recognize the Muslim Conference’s Azad Kashmir Government, suggesting instead that all officials in AJK territory be replaced with Kashmir State officials appointed by Sheikh Abdullah. They also insisted not only on the withdrawal of Pakistan Army troops but also on the complete disbanding of the Azad Forces and Azad Government Police Services, to be replaced by Kashmir State Troops. The British Commonwealth appointed mediators in 1950 and in 1951, both of whose proposals eventually failed, at least in part, over the question of recognizing the actual authority of the Azad Kashmir Government.54 During these negotiations, refugees from Jammu and Kashmir were recognized as a nascent political constituency when the Government of India agreed to keeping civil armed forces in Azad Kashmir territories, provided that the troops consisted of “residents of the territories who were not followers of the Azad Government,” preferably refugees from the Kashmir Valley.55

      The National Conference’s Interim Government and the Muslim Conference’s Azad Kashmir Government each operated under the legal provisions and practices established by the Maharaja’s court.56 Each government attempted to establish its legitimacy by claiming to represent displaced people who were dispersed across spaces not under the governments’ actual territorial control. By 1951, the definition of a “refugee of Jammu and Kashmir” had been firmly established through principles laid out in bilateral Inter-Dominion agreements between India and Pakistan and in the actual administrative practices of allocating temporary land and properties to people displaced from and unable to return to their homes and lands. A Kashmiri refugee was defined as a state subject of the Princely State of Jammu and Kashmir who was displaced from his or her home or who could not return as a result the war of 1947–1948.

      Jammu and Kashmir State maintained a distinct “permanent resident” status that conferred separate state rights and privileges even after the Delhi Agreement (1952) gave Indian citizenship to Jammu and Kashmir state subjects.57 This separate status was important for many reasons, not least because it recognized the continuing and uninterrupted status of displaced state subjects resident in Azad Kashmir territory and in Pakistan. In his address to the Constituent Assembly of Jammu and Kashmir on August 11, 1952, Sheikh Abdullah instructed the representatives to recognize the rights of “State Subject Evacuees [who were] living as refugees in [Pakistan and Azad Kashmir].”58 The constitution that the assembly drafted based Jammu and Kashmir state “permanent resident” status on the 1932 Hereditary State Subject definition59; the rights reserved

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