Hari Singhji Quotes
With the conditions obtaining at present in my State and to great emergency of the situation as it exists, I have no option but to ask for help from the Indian Dominion. Naturally they cannot send the help asked for by me without my State acceding to the Domination of India. I have accordingly decided to do so and I attach the Instrument of Accession for; acceptance by your Government. The other alternative is to leave my State and my people to free-booters. On this basis no civilized Government can exist or be maintained. The alternative I will never allow to happen as long as I am Ruler of the State and I have life to defend my country.
India and Pakistan had separated and each wanted Kashmir to affiliate with them. Caught between the two countries, with a both Hindu and Muslim population, Kashmir tried to steer a neutral course and remain independent. Muslim irregular troops in small bands infiltrated into Kashmir started a campaign of terror—rape, pillaging, burning and looting. Kashmir was falling apart under the pressure. To survive, the Kashmiri Maharaja asked for help from India with accession being the price. India beat back the Muslim terrorists and, India and Pakistan have been fighting against each other over Kashmir ever since. See {618270} for the response which dictated the history of Kashmir for the next 60 years.
Hari Singhji, Maharaja of Kashmir, Letter to Louis Mountbatten, Viceroy of India, October, 26, 1947
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1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
India was soon to be granted Independence by the Labor Government, much to the chagrin of Winston Churchill and other Conservative politicians who wanted to diminish the British Empire as little as possible. Jinnah, not wanting the majority Muslim areas of India to be part of a Hindu majority India, came up with this clever alternative. Britain would grant independence only to the Hindu parts of India and the remainder—Pakistan—would remain in the Empire as an autonomous colony. Many of the British politicians believed that that would be a constant friction in the Empire as many of the "Pakistanis" would then want their own independence and use the terror tactics to fight for it. Besides, the Conservatives did not have enough votes to stop Independence to all of India. Jinnah's efforts however were enough to lengthen the debate in the British Parliament thereby delaying independence for all of India and angering the pro-independence leaders throughout India. Jinnah, by then an autocrat, did this in secret, behind the backs of his own Muslim colleagues, many of whom had Independence as their highest priority.
This famous quotation, from this important address, at such a critical time in history has been admired for years. Despite his great oratory, the next months were to see almost 2 million Indians of all faiths killed in what was probably the worst internecine violence in human history. Ironically, the politically motivated terrorism had stopped since all the decisions had been made. The motivation for the frightful atrocities that took place from then on was vengeance and fear of more vengeance." 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma
In the negotiations the Indian nationalists of the Congress Party did not get everything that they wanted. Rarely does anyone in legitimate negotiations. This was a masterful example of oratory where Nehru wanted to produce the euphoria and historical gravitas that was appropriate when the largest group of people in world history gained self-government and independence. Yet the Congress Party had made promises in the platforms over the years that had not been kept. The partition of the one nation into a Muslim state as well as India denied the Indians of some of their historically and economically most important territories and he had to acknowledge that failure without dampening the public enthusiasm for the great achievement. This was a masterpiece.
At Indian Independence from Britain, people could choose whether they wanted to be citizens of India or the new Muslim state created because many Muslims insisted on living in a country that was majority Muslim. However, and what came as a great shock to the then new Pakistani leadership, the majority of the Muslims of India choose not to become citizens of the new Islamic state and preferred to stay in Hindu dominated India which they knew would be democratic, free, and would protect their right to practice Islam as they saw fit. Many feared that in Pakistan Islamic extremists would dictate the exact form of Islam that Muslims must follow, and that is exactly what happened in Pakistan—not only from government action proscribing religious practice but from the government tolerating and not interfering with Islamic fundamentalist extremist terrorists who often assassinated Muslims whose particular form of worship was offensive to them or people would call for reforms of the protection of human rights.
He was arguing to reserve some states as Muslim states by designation. 7 years later he would insist on a separate homeland. India was partitioned and Pakistan and Bangladesh resulted but at a fearful cost of tens of millions of lives.
an old term for Muslims The Muslims were present in every state if India. Jinnah’s concept of nationhood is very Islamic in that Muslims are united even if they be in different states of nations. He was arguing to reserve some states as Muslim states by designation. 7 years later he would insist on a separate homeland. India was partitioned and Pakistan and Bangladesh resulted but at a fearful cost of tens of millions of lives.
This is one of the early calls for a partition of India which was to be so disastrous after the Second World War. The “free Muslim state of states” turned out to be Pakistan where they have been fighting amongst themselves about how much Sharia would prevail.
This quotation is often used as the antithesis of national pluralism. When India was partitioned, there were Muslims and Hindus both who subscribed to this view. The result was vicious interethnic slaughter and ethnic cleansing. However there was a large middle ground who did not accept this monocultural view of a nation. Many millions of Indian Muslims chose to stay in India as minorities and there were 200 million Muslims in India by the beginning of the 21st century. Modern India, is along with the United States, one of the leading ethnic and cultural pluralistic countries in the world. Pakistan was and still is totally monolithic. But it was India where Muslims have much more freedom than there Islamic brothers in Pakistan which although all Islamic constantly has better strife and killings over the degree of orthodoxy the State religion should take.
As early as 1933, 14 years before Indian independence, there was a movement for a separate Muslim nation within India. Ironically, Hindu India was never a nation in any sense of the word, but was a series of independent principalities much like Italy before its unification. However, with the Muslim conquest of the various Indian states, there was a central authority, ruler, and nation for the first time. Later the Muslims had to argue that India was not a country when it was they who had made it such. When the Muslim Emperors were in power, they argued that India was one country under their authority. But when they lost power, the Muslims argued the other side of the issue.
This do called “Direct Action” resolution was a threat of war. The view of these Muslims was that living in a democracy with a majority of Hindus would be “slavery.” Faced with this intimidation and that of Jinnah {627169} the British agreed to partition India.
Culturally and historically Muslims have an urgent need to dominate the societies in which they live. By the logic of Islam, how else could they institute Islamic Law—Sharia—which was religiously imperative.
The “adversary” was Pakistan, which was frequently sending military and terrorist attacks into Kashmire much if which has been disputed by Pakistan ever since the Partition of India in 1949. India had a very disciplined and well led military and like most sophisticated military powers did not immediately retaliate for military incursions despite the public pressure to do so. Instead they gave themselves time to plan and organize the logistics for a series of surgical strikes at the terrorist and/or military concentrations Pakistan had deployed close to the border which they launched several days later.
This is one of the first examples of a Muslim organization “playing the Palestinian card” in the hope of helping itself and second, the Palestinians. Note the explicit concern of a Western “base” which is how they perceived Jewish emigration from Europe to Palestine,
He was arrested and renditioned to Pakistan a few hours later. Nonetheless, the secession succeeded and Bangladesh became an independent country.