Islamabad: An American historian claims India's first High Commissioner to Pakistan told Lord Mountbatten that "for the sake of peace all around," the "best thing" India could do was to hand over Kashmir. Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru turned down the proposal.
According to Stanley Wolpert's new book on the Partition, Nehru was amazed at Sri Prakash’s proposal and wrote him a sharp letter.
"I was amazed that you hinted at Kashmir being handed over to Pakistan. If we did anything of the kind our Government would not last many days and there would be no peace,” Nehru wrote to Sri Prakash, who was based in Karachi.
"It would lead to war with Pakistan because of public opinion here (in India) and of war-like elements coming in control of our policy. We cannot and will not leave Kashmir to its fate. The fact is that Kashmir is of the most vital significance to India. Here lies the rub...we have to see this through to the end," Nehru said.
"Kashmir is going to be a drain on our resources, but it is going to be a greater drain on Pakistan," he said according to a Washington-dateline report published in Paksitani newspaper Daily Times on Monday.
Wolpert says in Shameful Flight: The Last Years of the British Empire in India that if Nehru had allowed Mahatma Gandhi to mediate in the Kashmir dispute between India and Pakistan, history would have been different today.
"If Nehru had only listened to Gandhi, inviting him to arbitrate the Kashmir conflict with (Mohammad Ali) Jinnah, India and Pakistan might have been spared three wars and the tragic loss of countless lives, at least 50,000 of whom were Kashmiri," the book says.
According to Wolpert, "(Viceroy) Mountbatten's frenzied plans had blinded him (Nehru) to the wretched realities of Partition's monstrous problems, the cause of so many deaths, and sixty more years at least of fighting and hatred".
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Nehru wrote to his friend, the Nawab of Bhopal, on July 9, 1948 that "it has been our misfortune ... the misfortune of India and Pakistan, that evil impulses triumphed.
"Can you imagine the sorrow that confronts me when I see after more than 30 years of incessant effort the failure of much that I longed for passionately?" Nehru said.
"Partition", he said, "came and we accepted it because we thought that perhaps that way, however painful it was, we might have some peace. Perhaps we acted wrongly".
"Perhaps these conflicts are due to the folly or littleness of those in authority in India and Pakistan Ultimately, I have no doubt that India and Pakistan will come close together ... some kind of federal link ... There is no other way to peace. The alternative is ... war," Nehru said.
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