It is significant that the UN did not give Pakistan any role or position in Jammu and Kashmir. Pakistan, however, has to date not vacated Kashmir. Since the preconditions were therefore not satisfied, the plebiscite could not take place, though India was very keen to hold it. In its absence, free elections were conducted and the Nation-al Conference, under the leadership of Sheikh Abdullah, who fought the elections on a platform of Kashmir's accession to India and won an overwhelming majority. Pakistan has since then twice tried to wrest control of Kashmir by force, in 1965 and in 1999, but failed. Since 1990, it has been engaged in a proxy war, infiltrating thousands of armed people into the state who have been carrying on a campaign of bloody terrorism.
In 1972, following the Indo-Pakistan war which led to the independence of Bangladesh (in the course of whose independence struggle, some 3 million East Pakistanis, mostly Muslim, were butchered by the Pakistani Army) the Cease Fire Line (CFL) was redesignated as the Line of Control (LOC). This change of terminology has clear implications. The line has been the effective border between Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and the rest of the state, an integral part of India. Under the Shimla Agreement of 1972 and the Lahore Declaration of 1999 both sides are committed to maintaining the inviolability and sanctity of the LOC.
So much has happened and changed in the past 50 years that a plebiscite is no longer a practical possibility and this has been recognized publicly by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan during a visit to Pakistan some months ago.
It should be mentioned, incidentally, that India has the world's second largest Muslim population after Indonesia, and greater than the populations of either Bangladesh or Pakistan. It should also be pointed out that there is a state in India with a majority Christian population and another with a ma-jority Sikh population. India is proud to be a multi-ethnic, multi-lingual, multi-religious, pluralist, secular democracy, unlike Pakistan which has been ruled by military dictators for almost half of its independent existence.
As this letter demonstrates, Pakistan has neither a de jure locus standii vis-a-vis Kashmir, nor a moral case deriving from religion-based demography.
Ranjit Gupta
Director general, India Taipei Association in Taipei
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